Re: Untouchables [Andreas J., please read]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:
>
> > Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > > Actually, nothing in Roger's post said I had to do it by hand. :P
> > >
> > Actually, I was going to say "You will go to the _[black]board_ and
> > write....." but didn't, as I wasn't sure younger people would recognize the
> > term. At least in many (all?) schools in the US, blackboards are now green.
> > However, I see Tristan used the word, so apparently it persists.
Well, that only means it's current in Australia :)

> I know the word perfectly, actually.
And the English taught as a second language :)

> The Swedish form is _svarta tavlan_, which means much the same. It's actually
> a bit of a funny word; it's essentially always used in the definite singular
> (indefinite _svart tavla_ sound like we're speaking of a painting), and felt
> to be a single unit, thus not requiring the preposed extra definite article
> normally used with AN phrases. Most I've seen are indeed dark green; I for one
> don't feel that "blackboard"/"svarta tavlan" says anything of the actual
> _colour_ of the thing.
I don't think I've ever seen a dark green one, apart from a small
(slightly larger than an A4 page) magnetic toy thing my brother got. It
struck me as cheap and didn't hold the chalk properly; if I saw a green
one, I'd probably think the same of it, at least initially. Blackboards as
used in classrooms have always been ... well, dark grey, thanks to all the
chalk.

> Incidentally, I was unfortunate enough to have to do maths on one today;
> they're quite popular here in Germany. Back in Sweden, we had them in
> elementary school, but in high school and at Uni, they always
> use "whiteboards", whitish things you write on with special pens. They have
> the major advantage of not involving chalk.
OTOH, they have the major disadvantage of being so reflective that you
have to move around to read half of them. I'd rather deal with chalk then
a whiteboard (and my yr 11 Maths teacher was the same). And dealing with
chalk isn't that bad: I had to do it for a semester of Maths tutorials
(two different maths subjects, both did it) and will have to do it for
another semester next year.

Whiteboards were common at my high school, but they always had both
blackboards and whiteboards: Some teachers preferred whiteboards, others
blackboards. (Mum's school---where she teaches---appears to have
whiteboards at least on offer; she only uses them.)

> "Whiteboard" is the Swedish term, BTW, altho I figure it would be usable in
> the English-speaking world too!
Good to see other languages are inheriting bizarre orthographies from us!

--
Tristan

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