Joseph Fatula:
> From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@...>
> Subject: Hymn to Ikea (was: Re: Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.
>
>
> Despite frequently reading your posts, And, I had forgotten where you were
> from. This lapse was quickly banished from my mind, replaced instead with
> an unenviable sense of confusion...
Chuckle. (I suspect your confusion is about as serious as my rant...)
I'm very flattered to be found so dialectal. I spend so much
time green with envy at my students fluent in regional dialect,
so now I can pride myself on my regionalisms a little....
I share my office with a new colleague who has come back from
20 years in LA (after speaking Britishish Indian English for
her first 20) & is having trouble readjusting and reacquiring
all the Briticisms she had had to lose. "Queue" was one she
mentioned. Another was the telephone being "engaged", which
apparently tickles Californians no end. (Are public lavatories
either "vacant" or *"busy"* in America?)
> > ploughing
> Coughing comes to mind, but I doubt there's a connection, given the
context.
> Maybe it means something like "wading"?
Plowing.
> > trolley
> I've never seen an Ikea, but I doubt they're large enough that people need
> trolleys to get around in them. What does this mean when it isn't a sort
of
> train car that runs on a city street (usually pulled by a cable buried in
> the asphalt)?
What do you call them? Carts? Like you wheel round in airports and
supermarkets.
> > queue
> Already encountered, but always jarring to see it used like this. It'd be
> like if you said "the readying of people waiting to claim one", meaning
the
> same thing.
>
> > settee
> Goatee? Something that has been set?
Sofa? Couch? Chesterfield? I forget what you call them. They
sit on them all the time in Friends.
> > chicanes
> Usually that's spelled chicanos here in the US...but you probably don't
> mean that, do you?
Hoho. OED: "An artificial barrier or obstacle, esp. a sharp double
bend, on a motor-racing track".
> Despite some curious dialectal barriers to my understanding of your Hymn
to
> Ikea, I did get the basic message. Henceforth, I will be sure to have no
> part in the fostering of Ikea's evil world empire.
Do, if only for your own sanity's sake.
--And.