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Re: Do you want a French "little" or a Dutch "little"? :))

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 5, 2002, 16:46
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim May" <butsuri@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: Do you want a French "little" or a Dutch "little"? :))


> H. S. Teoh writes: > > On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 05:14:00PM -0400, Nik Taylor wrote: > > [snip] > > > Yeah, I think most Americans would consider a 100-year-old building
to
> > > be very old. > > [snip] > > > > Whereas in places like England, people would laugh at you if you
pointed
> > at a 100-year-old building and called it "very old". > > > > Well, a 100-year-old English building isn't as outrageously old as a > 100-year-old American or Australian building*, but it's still older > than the buildings most people live and work in. You probably > wouldn't call it very old, but it'd still be an old building (despite > the fact that you could find something five times that age not so far > away, if you looked). Context-dependent. > > These days most people have little historical perspective anyway, > regardless of where they live. At least, so it appears to me. > > > * I don't mean to imply that the age of these buildings literally > incites outrage in the former colonial nations, of course. >
Not really. In fact, there are a nice little row of 400 year old houses near the town centre. Trust me, most buildings in England are older than you'd think. My school is 104 years old...

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Tim May <butsuri@...>