Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities

On 3 Feb 2005, at 8.59 pm, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:

> On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 18:15:27 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>
>> Indeed, like eating a cow. The distinction is much the same :) It's
>> only natural that something should fill the void left by the loss of
>> the Norman-derived word beginning with p- that I can't remember.
>
> Poulet, I suppose (a common word in Switzerland, only for the meat,
> not for
> the animal, and of course pronounced in a Swiss fashion: /'p:ule/).
Probably _pullet_ in English, and I imagine it'd be pronounced
englishly like 'pull it' or to rhyme with 'mullet'... and indeed the
dictionary includes that word, but it's specifically limited to young
chooks.

Adrian Morgan:
> It's the same as "should" in the sense of "Would you approve of this
> course of action?" except that it also implies a promise that if you
> say yes then I will.
I'm not sure where the 'should' is in 'Would you approve of this course
of action?', I suppose you edited it out at some stage...

> Besides, "shall" is easier to say than "should" :-)
I think you'll find it hard to prove that!

> An example in dialogue might be:
>
> "So, do you have anything planned for tea?"
> "Er, no I don't, but shall I go down the shop and get a chicken?"
> "Yeah, sounds good to me."
here, wait, was the missing 'to' between 'down' and 'the' in your
earlier post not an error then? I assumed it was---in fact, I read it
in, so to speak, because I wasn't proofreading. Stop breaking the
language! God gave us prepositions for a reason---to prepose---so do
it, damnit!

> Only I and we. You can't really make implied promises on behalf of
> other people. :-)
Yeah, but I didn't know it was an implied promise, did I? I was aware
that there's a prescriptivist rule about using 'shall' in the first
person and 'will' in the second and third though...

> Naturally, I'm surprised that you'd be surprised.
I don't see why you should be, it seems like a very limited word. Only
used in questions with first-person subjects. Easy to fall out of use.
Anyway, I don't use it. I'm surprised that Andreas reckons he was told
that 'shall''s only used in questions and the bible; I thought it was
only used in the KJV.

--
Tristan.

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