Re: CHAT: Hymn to Ikea (was: Re: Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.

From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@...>
Subject: Re: Hymn to Ikea (was: Re: Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.


> Joseph Fatula:
> > 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...)
Indeed.  Chicanes was the only one I had never heard before, but all of them
were very striking.

> 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....
If being dialectal flatters you, then be flattered.  (Which is an altogether
different thing from being flatter...)

> 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?)
You'd be hard pressed to find a "lavatory" around here, though about half
the people in this city would understand that "lava" means "wash"...  But to
answer your question, a public bathroom would be either "vacant" or "in
use", depending on its contents.

> > > ploughing
> > Coughing comes to mind, but I doubt there's a connection, given the
> context.
> > Maybe it means something like "wading"?
>
> Plowing.
I assumed so, but I'd never seen it before, except in (the very
marked-British) "ploughman".  It'd be as if I wrote "cloughed" for "cloud"
or "groughle" for "growl"

> > > 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.
Yeah, they're called "carts" or "shopping carts".  Though I still haven't
got used to living in California - here they're "baskets".  Which was
particularly disturbing when I worked at a store that _sold_ baskets, and
I'd send customers to that part of the store when they asked for one.
Serves 'em right.
Then again, what do you call the sort of car that I'm calling a trolley?

> > > 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.
Haven't seen it, though I know what a sofa/couch is.  Chesterfield sounds
like something you made up just to yank my chain, but that probably means
it's a real English word.

> --And.
Out of curiosity, does your name (in its short form, And) have the vowel of
"halve, pass, bath" or that of "hat, have, lath"?  Or is it something else
entirely?

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