On Fri, 07 May 2004 00:33, William Ballard wrote: > On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 12:12:06AM +1200, cr wrote: > > Yes I know exactly which meaning of the word 'affect' you were using. > > Since your comment was IIRC in response to my post, I wondered if you > > thought I was American, or were you referring to someone else? > > Nope, I'm American, and even though I like flavour and colour and find > your use of "billion" and "trillion" intriguing because you can count > higher without having to use words like sexigiliion, still I have to not > adopt too many British customs because it gets goofy.
Okay, you were referring to yourself, then, I take it. It is of course entirely acceptable to refer to oneself in mildly deprecatory tones. I have occasion to do it all the time <g> > For instance, if I were to start using the British billion, it would > just be dumb. And if I start talking about pubs and fags, people roll > their eyes. I like *a lot* of Britishisms. One of my favorites is to > call a carton of cigarettes "Two Hundred" -- although I won't call them > fags. "Give me 200, please." > > Another real problem for me is I *really* like the Contenintal style of > writing the dates: dd/mm/yy. That's the standard British style, actually. I've never used any other. I remember a TV western (!) from years ago where some plot point hinged on the date of a will and it turned out that the writer of the will was British - so '5/12/97' was 7 months later than originally assumed.... > But you can cause *endless* confusion by > not just going with the flow. I had a Math prof. once who was also sort > of my philosopical/Jungian psych. "mentor" tell me that one should just > use Month Day, Year because in our culture the year is usually well > known, and it is important to contexualize the Month and Day quickly -- Sounds like a 'just so' story to me ;) > but he mostly was telling me why the fuck did I want to go be difficult Yeah, that sounds more likely. :) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
