Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> "Ski" is always understood to be on snow.
Same in the dialect of English I'm familiar with, and that's the dialect
in Florida, where water-skiing is the only kind of skiing you can do
without traveling long distances.  :-)

> As for "courier", the French word for "mail", it is also
> always understood to be postal mail.
Same here.  If someone said "I'll mail it to you", I'd assume they meant
postal mail (or "snail mail" as I'd generally call it if I wanted to
distinguish from e-mail).  In fact, in my idiolect, "mail" can't even be
used at all for "e-mail", not even in the right context.

Then there's the interesting fact that e-mail is a count noun, while
mail is a mass noun.

> French people seem rather to keep names for original things and give new names
> to specialised offsprings, something that I personally find rather logical.
> Surprising that English is different in that respect...
We generally use the basic term for whatever's most common.  Digital
watches are, these days, far more common than analog watches, so, unless
the context is clear, the term is assumed to refer to a digital watch.
Of course, "watch" can actually be applied to either kind, altho only
wristwatches.  :-)  The old-fashioned pocket watch can only be (in my
experience, at least) called a "pocket watch".

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

Replies