Re: Greek plurals

Mark J. Reed wrote:

> quoting me:
>> Well, these languages, which include Norwegian (and, I thought,
>> Swedish), define "current" and "electricity" as synonymous in the
>> vernacular because static electricity and non-electrical currents
>> relatively seldom are encountered in common speech.
>
> !!!
>
> Are these countries not near the ocean?  The weather reports here
> mention "currents" all the time that have nothing to do with
> electricity.
>
> And static electricity is the stuff of television advertisements.  Use
> a fabric softener to get rid of static cling!
Well, the usage of "strøm" (current) to mean just "electricity" is
older than television advertisements and older than meteorological
broadcasts or at least the practice of mentioning ocean currents in
them, which isn't very widespread here anyway because the Gulf
Stream, the only one that's seriously impacting our weather, is
rather stable (as yet), and doesn't fluctuate like the west coast
Pacific ones for example.

It's just that electric current so much more is a part of everybody's
life that it's the one thing we immediately associate with current,
just as static electricity is a much more sporadic phenomenon in our
consciousnesses than the electric current that we have to deal with
almost every moment of our lives.

LEF

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