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Re: "write him" was Re: More questions

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Friday, November 28, 2003, 0:50
Stephen Mulraney scripsit:

> _I'm after going there_: I mean "I've just gone there". Interpreted as > "I want to go there" (bizarrely phrased)
This is heavily marked as Hiberno-English.
> _press_: I mean "cupboard" (which to me means a "kitchen dresser").
And what do you mean by that? To me a cupboard is essentially a tall thin wooden (or metal) box attached to the wall, with shelves and a door, and used to store non-perishable food, plates, glasses, and such. It can be either near the floor or near the ceiling, but rarely in between. If it contains anything else, it is a "cabinet". I know what a clothes press is, but I've never seen one. The only other "press" to me is a printing press, or journalism generally.
> _pot_: I mean a "saucepan" (a word I can't bring myself to use - it's > like saying _spikespoon_ for _fork_). Sometimes understood. Thanks to > context, I've never had it taken as a reference to marijuana. But I'm > surprised it misunderstood at all.
I share your view about "pot", and am frequently confused when my wife (a Southerner) refers to an obvious pot as a pan. She calls all such utensils pans, whereas for me "pan" has to be qualified as "frying pan" or "cake pan" or such.
> In the other direction, I once missed out on a useful aid in a maths
"Math" in North America.
> And even English people don't seem to be able to agree on what "Warning: > Adverse camber" means on a road sign :)
Well, I gather it means that the road is excessively slanted, but whether up, down, left, or right, I have no idea.
> One further example, in pronunciation. The county-name _Berkshire_ > presents some difficulties for me: it's said it should be pronounced > _Barkshire_, but that's no good to me, since I speak rhotic English, and > the vowel mutation seems inextricably bound up with the flavour imparted > by the non-rhotic 'r'.
I too am rhotic, and have no trouble saying [bar\kli] for the philosopher, and [br\=kli], as the natives do, for the city in California. This is a sound change in the 17th-18th century that mostly got backed out, but left a few traces behind in proper names and the RP pronunciation of "clerk" and a few other words. -- "But the next day there came no dawn, John Cowan and the Grey Company passed on into the jcowan@reutershealth.com darkness of the Storm of Mordor and were http://www.ccil.org/~cowan lost to mortal sight; but the Dead http://reutershealth.com followed them. --"The Passing of the Grey Company"

Replies

Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...>