Text 310, 68 rader
Skriven 2004-12-23 12:40:09 av Ardith Hinton (1:153/716.0)
    Kommentar till text 301 av Olga Zhegulo (2:5061/112.16)
Ärende: What corporate America can't build: a sentence
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Hi, Olga!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

OZ>  A problem is with dictionaries available. Especially
OZ>  paper (cooler noise doesn't help learning!).


         Yes, I prefer the good old-fashioned hard copy too... [chuckle].



OZ>  AFAIK the most of dictionaries here in Russia are for
OZ>  British variant. I don't know a dictionary where "only
OZ>  British" and "only American" meanings and phrases are
OZ>  marked.


         Maybe what you need is an English/English dictionary published on this
continent to supplement what you're already using.  You may have noticed that I
use Canadian & American dictionaries together with the OED.  Since Canada & the
U.S. are right next door to each other, the inhabitants of both appreciate help
with these matters... and their dictionaries often include notes such as "[esp.
Brit.]".  Until quite recently many Britishers remained serenely indifferent to
how North Americans use the language, however, because virtually everybody else
from Land's End to Vladivostok used it more or less the way they did.

         Another complication, for those who want some guidance as to levels of
formality & preferred spellings etc., is a philosophical shift which took place
during the 1960's.  The general consensus among linguists was that dictionaries
should report on what people actually do rather than make recommendations about
what to do.  I see that notes about formality levels are now reappearing in the
more recent dictionaries, however... so I guess I was not alone in resorting to
an earlier edition to track down this sort of information!  I also find that...
in general... the most commonly used pronunciation is listed first and the most
commonly used spelling is the main entry while any others are cross-referenced.



OZ>  I still prefer spelling with unneccessary letters
OZ>  (except for "program") because it is surely correct
OZ>  in all dialects and... helps to learn French :-)


         My linguistics instructor at U.B.C. (here in Vancouver) had an amusing
story about that.  While she was working on a postgraduate degree in the States
one of her instructors wrote "No pseudo-British spellings, please!" on a lot of
her papers although she was using Canadian spellings.  So when this man spelled
"program" as the French do she said "No pseudo-French spellings, please!"  :-))



OZ>  I discovered about half of French words are spelled
OZ>  the same with English (with all vowels :-) so a bit
OZ>  of grammar and 2 auxiliary verbs are nearly enough
OZ>  to get a main of text.
            |the main idea of the text.


         Heh... I imagine you read French the same way I read Italian & German!
I have to tell you, though... if you pronounce "boulevard" or "petit point" the
way the French do most native speakers of English won't have a clue what you're
saying.  I imagine that's fairly typical of how the English language developed.
We adopted the spelling but didn't get the pronunciation quite right... [grin].




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver BC, CANADA [604-266-5271] (1:153/716)