Re: USAGE: subway

On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 20:46, John Cowan wrote:
> 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.
Okay, thanks. Why would you call something aboveground a subway, though?

> 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.
Sorry, you've lost me. 'City limits' to me would refer to the far outer
limits of the city i.e. those places where when cross the road, on one
side your in a suburb and on the other you're in the country or the
bush.

> > 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
Do Americans use that word too?

> have changed the semantics and lexis *and* ruined the phonology,
Sometimes to improve something, you need to break it down first.

> 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 use real measurements.

> and destroyed the phonology beyond all recognition.
Hey, it's very much the same as what we inherited. Just with extra added
features.

> We and We alone
> have preserved the pure well of English undefiled
Above-ground *sub*ways? Malls whose closest encounter with a road is a
carpark? (And lest you bring up 'bush', I'll point out that there is no
word in the English language other than bush that adequately describes
the bush---and no, forest doesn't cut it. Trains and shopping centres
(or shopping centers).)

>  -- 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.)
Really? A Google search for 'labour -labor site:.ca' and 'labor -labour
site:.ca' has 555 000 hits vs 77 000 (~7.2:1); using cent(re|er), you
get 1 890 000 to 429 000, about 4.4:1. (I would do searches of
particular words that got changed on their ownsome, rather than word
classes, but I can't think of any but grey, cheque and tyre, and they
all have associated problems.)

> > (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.
Oh, I never said otherwise. People can be entirely too annoying at times.
And I'd rather you be the International Police who can Never Do Anything
Right.

Tristan.

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