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

Joe writes:
 > ----- 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...

Well, perhaps "most" is stretching it, and it varies a lot over the
country.  There are a lot of Georgian and Victorian terraces, for one
thing...  But there are a lot of new buildings too.  Like I said, it's
context dependent.