Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Dirk Elzinga :
>
>
> >Only a few companies now really pay careful attention to the
> functional
> >aspects of a fountain pen (Pelikan, Pilot, Namiki, maybe Parker),
> while
> >companies which once made outstanding pens now turn out expensive
> crap
> >(most notably Montblanc; I don't know anything about Cross, though I
> >suspect them to be posers).
>
> I've been reading this thread with wonder: do you really mean that
> fountain
> pens are uncommon in America?!!!!! In France, not only they are
> extremely
> common, safe and cheap, but pupils are *obliged* to learn to write
> with
> fountain pens. All fountain pens we usually have are empty, and you
> put
> small plastic ink reserves in them to use them. All important things I
> write I use a fountain pen for it. I've never been, since I've learned
> to
> write, without a fountain pen with me, and I don't have expensive ones.
> The
> cheapest ones are hardly more expensive than a ballpoint, and since
> afterwards you only need to buy ink reserves, they prove to actually
> be
> cheaper in the long run :)) .
I don't think I've ever owned a single fountain pen - I have dozens and heaps
of ballpoint ones. I've written with fountain pens a few times, tho'; possibly
I ran across some very good ones, but I found them little harder to use than a
ballpoint.

What I typically use for writing nowadays, tho', is a _stiftpenna_. I dunno
the English word - it's those plastic things with a thin graphite rod in.
Would they class as "pencils"? I'm rarely to be found without one of those.

                                                         Andreas

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