Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

Anybody remember "Bic" pens?  Always yellow, opaque plastic.  Do they still
sell those?  (I go for italic fountain pens, she said loftily, or sparkly
gellcap pens, she said pertly).

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."



----- Original Message -----
From: "Tristan McLeay" <kesuari@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: Phoneme winnowing continues


> Joe wrote:
>
> >Biro means a ballpoint pen.  Particularly ones made of clear plastic.  I
> >think someone called Biro was the inventor of the ballpoint pen.
> >
> >
> Seeing as fountain pens are always fountain pens and felt-tip pens are
> always textas (or texters because they sound the same here) unless
> you're talking to a NZer when they may be felt-tip pens, one starts
> running out of things to call pens. The cheaper the pen the more likely
> it is to be called a biro, but I wouldn't've excluded ones made out of
> non-clear plastic simply because they're made of non-clear plastic.
> Indeed, my (~3.50 AUD, which is expensive for a pen) pen would be
> described as a biro if 'pen' was presently being ambiguous.
>
> --
> Tristan                  <kesuari@...>
>
>

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