29 Mar
2017
29 Mar
'17
11:18 a.m.
> It's amazing how isolated pockets of our
cultures can be from each
> other! "Multiple peoples divided by a common language"
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
This is something that continually delights me, from
the time that I was
ridiculed by the downstate Hoosier farmers' sons for calling a green
runner bean a "string bean". "Those ain't string beans, they're
green
beans. String beans are yellow." One wonders what would have been the
reaction if I'd referred to them as haricot beans.
SOME people insist that "haricot beans" are navy beans or Boston beans!
Or the time an English co-worker related the story
surrounding her
initial job interval in the US. She described the stunned look on the
face of the desk clerk at the local Holiday Inn when she asked to be
knocked up at 7:30 the next morning.
British V American/"Colonial"? idioms are not surprising.
What's more surprising are the mutually exclusive variations within a
country.
It's a wonder that we can communicate so well
between continents on this
list in spite of regional differences. It used to be that there were
very substantial differences in the vocabulary used by different
manufacturers (cf. "Label" vs. "VTOC") but that seems to have
standardized greatly now.
Some manufacturers seemed to go out of their way to AVOID using the same
terms as their competitors. Even on stuff as simple as a disk space
allocation unit.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com