Re: OT: we quaint Brits (was: those irregular prepositions)

On 6/23/06, daniel prohaska <danielprohaska@...> wrote:
> I always thought the form <gotten> you USE speakers use in <I have gotten>
> was cutely quaint.
The odd thing about that is that it's only used in the full form "I
have gotten" or "I've gotten"; the idiomatic reduction is "I got", not
*"I gotten".

Responding to myself:
>  But over here, measuring by
> weight is considered newfangled, not quaint.  Kinda like the metric
> system: something new that the rest of the world does that hasn't
> caught on, rather than something old that we don't do anymore.  :)
By "that hasn't caught on", obviously what I meant is "that hasn't
caught on over here in everyday life".  Both the metric system and the
weighing of baking ingredients have evidently "caught on" around the
world. :)

In the US,  physicists naturally use the SI system, as do auto
mechanics working on cars designed overseas.  But if I go to the Home
Depot, boards are measured in feet, inches and fractions; paint comes
in gallons; fertilizer comes in 50-lb bags; etc.  And while the chef
in the fancy restaurant downtown no doubt weighs his dry ingredients,
your typical home cook uses volumetric measure instead (and that, of
course, in the pre-metric English system).

It's all very confusing.  I mean, is a 9mm Beretta bigger or smaller
than a .357" Magnum?  I gotta make sure my cannon is at least as big
as my homies'.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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