On 03/29/2017 09:05 AM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > It's amazing how isolated pockets of our cultures can be from each > other! "Multiple peoples divided by a common language"
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. 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. Even in the last few days, discussion on another list concerned the words "proctor" and "invigilate". USA English uses the word "proctor" both as a verb and a noun to denote the task of supervising a written examination. British English uses "invigilate" and "invigilator" for that. "Proctor" occurs only as a noun--and when not a church official, denotes someone whose job description involves discipline. "Invigilate" is pretty much unknown in US English, though Canadian English uses it. 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. For whatever it's worth, Chuck
