Re: USAGE: subway

(Warning: this posting may contain unmarked humor, as Thorin used to say.)

Tristan McLeay scripsit:

> What, then, is the difference between a subway in the train sense and a
> suburban train? I've always understood the American sense of 'subway'*
> just to refer to an undeground train system (our underground system is
> called the loop, generally, as it completes the city loop. It's
> only three stations).
Certainly subways are prototypically underground, but it is quite usual
for them to have aboveground portions.  New York's system, the second most
large and complex in the world (after London's), has 230 route miles (370
km), of which 137 miles (220 km) are underground, 70 miles (113 km) are
elevated on steel platforms above street level, and the remaining 23 miles
(37 km) are either on the surface, in an open trench, or on an embankment.

Subway systems in general are confined to, or just outside, the city
limits, and are meant for general transportation.  Surburban train
systems extend into the suburbs, obviously, and are meant primarily
to serve commuters coming into the city or returning to the suburbs.
Some systems, like Washington D.C.'s Metro, serve both functions.

> I'm going to say I'm horribly
> disappointed in you Americans, can't you speak normally like the rest of
> us?
I see I must break it to you gently, mate.

Two hundred years ago we all shared a common language.  Since then, the
Poms have changed the semantics and lexis *and* ruined the phonology,
and the Aussies have kept almost all of those changes (even if you
did have the good sense to adopt the dollar as your currency unit)
and destroyed the phonology beyond all recognition.  We and We alone
have preserved the pure well of English undefiled -- while of course
sensibly fixing some of the worst spelling glitches laid down by that
notorious Tory, Dr. Johnson.  (Our Neighbors to the North are in on this
with Us, except for their irritating tic of saying "eh?" all the time --
but We forgive them for that.)

> (Read that knowing full well that the Author knows there's 19.5
> million people who speak the way he does and at least 260 million who
> speak the way Americans do.)
And that's no accident.  It's the Way It Should Be.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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