In this particular case, I heard Damien's Oz/Anglo voice (or rather, the
generic plug-in voice I have for that) in my head and got his meaning
first time. But it does make me wonder how many times I *fail* to do
that. Food for thought, and one more notch in the "affectlessness log"
of ASCII media.
GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 1/22/00 10:01:47 PM Central Standard Time,
> d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au writes:
>
> > By `have a problem with' I meant `strenuously object to'; Greg and
> > QueenMuse read it, I think, as `are plagued by a high frequency of'. Just
> > the opposite of what I meant, or at least orthoganal.
> >
> > Damien (not fluent in American)
>
> Just shows to go you how subtle language is -- what you took as the primary
> and obvious meaning of your phrase would be a secondary and very
> context-driven one in American English (but would have been consistent with
> the British usage, I believe).
>
> Back when my primary clientele was British, I used to have a fairly complete
> British-English usage module in my head and could switch pretty fluently
> between them, although it caused some cognitive dissonance from time to time,
> especially when the difference in usage pointed to a real (albeit usually
> very, very subtle) cultural difference between American and British
> perceptions and values.
>
> Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
> Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
> http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
> ICQ # 61112550
> "We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
> enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
> question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
> -- Desmond Morris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:02:35 MDT