tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post5155848772323905594..comments2024-03-16T00:21:43.240+00:00Comments on Separated by a Common Language: theatre / theaterlynneguisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-76656395084518240612019-07-23T15:43:32.527+01:002019-07-23T15:43:32.527+01:00BrE, Scot, mid 60s. It’s years since I hear th pro...BrE, Scot, mid 60s. It’s years since I hear th pronunciation thee-AY-ter. When I was growing up, I often heard this, but the usage was exactly opposite to that described for AmE: it was people trying too hard to be posh.<br /><br />Practically, there is a tendency for people (including scientists) to use units expressed in a range of about 1 to 100. So, for example, when measuring viscosity, I would tend to use centipoise, even although I would translate my results to Pascal-seconds for reporting. This is because I know that water is about a centipoise, and I have a “feel” for how viscous my 10 and 100 centipoise standards are. Giving furniture sizes as 1000 mm (EU standard) feels awkward. So does giving the distance to a junction in thousands of feet instead of hundreds of yards.<br /><br />Tillman: Sorry. I really can’t hear any difference between kill- o’metre and killo-metre. The kill and the metre are about equally stressed, the o only just pronounced.<br /><br />Shy-replyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01891566073375322808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-16772535600419002702016-04-07T19:20:01.418+01:002016-04-07T19:20:01.418+01:00Tilman, would you rather that we used the spelling...Tilman, would you rather that we used the spelling pronunciation KIGH-low-mee-tuh?David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-22981726162028497122016-04-07T12:22:02.981+01:002016-04-07T12:22:02.981+01:00I have to admit that the British 'KILL-o-meeta...I have to admit that the British 'KILL-o-meetah' drives me nuts. Especially the strong emphasis on o-meetah.<br />It is clearly a word derived from kilo and meter(metre). Kill-ometre is just a completely unnatural way to rip this word apart.<br />Clearly it should be kilo-metre.<br />Because we also don't say mill-imminitre or cent-immetre. (mm to signify emphasis)<br />Also not Kill-ogramme.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06834919748628526427noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-12882401663966671442016-03-17T14:04:10.186+00:002016-03-17T14:04:10.186+00:00Re: Dan Jones's point above, the motto of Cinc...Re: Dan Jones's point above, the <a href="http://www.cincyplay.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=175&Itemid=558" rel="nofollow">motto</a> of Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park is "Great Theatre in a Great Theater".Nathanhttp://nathan.clnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-16670197875842253092016-03-01T16:21:39.257+00:002016-03-01T16:21:39.257+00:00Eloise-
A mole is just a unit of quantity, like a...Eloise-<br /><br />A mole is just a unit of quantity, like a dozen. It's 6.02214x10^23 units of something. One could have a mole of atoms, a mole of molecules, even a mole of ping-pong balls (theoretically). That particular value of the mole was chosen because it represents the number of carbon-12 atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12 which lets chemists bridge the gap between atomic scale characteristics and macroscale phenomena they can measure.Sbardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-7755919231871646822016-02-17T09:50:53.197+00:002016-02-17T09:50:53.197+00:00I thought of this conversation when watching Micha...I thought of this conversation when watching Michael Portillo's "Great American Railroad Journeys" yesterday. I noted that the site of President Lincoln's assassination said "Ford's Theatre" on its front.Kate Buntinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17223976536411967222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-53256516427335729612016-02-05T12:57:47.442+00:002016-02-05T12:57:47.442+00:00e.d. driscoll
Yes, I mentioned that earlier.
Or ...e.d. driscoll<br /><br />Yes, I mentioned that earlier.<br /><br />Or are you asking a question?David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-9825267225718674302016-02-05T12:17:44.689+00:002016-02-05T12:17:44.689+00:00ClapometerClapometere.d.driscollhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08975557198404106554noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-10525051465185041842016-02-03T23:15:45.780+00:002016-02-03T23:15:45.780+00:00Thanks Biochemist!
I looked it up in the OED, and...Thanks Biochemist!<br /><br />I looked it up in the OED, and they even give as a possible spelling the ultimate French borrowing <i>aérogramme</i>.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-84073690407745803852016-02-03T23:04:16.705+00:002016-02-03T23:04:16.705+00:00David Crosbie - we have aerogramme, the folded pap...David Crosbie - we have aerogramme, the folded paper that forms a letter and envelope all in oneBiochemistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-69016294657672634472016-02-02T23:45:36.383+00:002016-02-02T23:45:36.383+00:00Boris Zakharin
But I think the reason that progra...Boris Zakharin<br /><br /><i>But I think the reason that program(me) is different is that it was borrowed wholesale into English. </i><br /><br />I'm sorry I wan't clearer. That's exactly the point I wished to make. <br /><br />I wish I could think of another <i>-gramme</i> word that we got from French, but I can't identify a single one.<br /><br />It may be different in that universities formerly used the actual Latin <i>programma</i> as an everyday <b>thing</b>, a type of notice. By contrast, <i>epigramma</i> etc were mere words in dictionaries.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-81109510829073237772016-02-02T21:24:17.855+00:002016-02-02T21:24:17.855+00:00vp:
According to Wikipedia, "The UK Weight...vp: <br /><br />According to Wikipedia, "The UK Weights and Measures Act 1985 explicitly excluded from use for trade many units and terms, including the ton and the term "metric ton" for "tonne".[3]" <br /><br />Still, I have only ever seen tonne in the US in technical articles dealing with things like carbon dioxide releases and global warming. Even in those, I suspect the author was not American. Metric ton is more common, although also pretty rare in absolute terms.Kirk Poorenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-67457272489455315132016-02-02T18:13:01.625+00:002016-02-02T18:13:01.625+00:00@David Crosbie,
Another difference between meter a...@David Crosbie,<br />Another difference between meter and gram is that only one of the two different meanings of gram used in word compositions (a unit of mass and something that is written) is a standalone English word. <br /><br />But I think the reason that program(me) is different is that it was borrowed wholesale into English. That is to say it is not compositionally transparent in its current meaning like other -gram and gram- words are.Boris Zakharinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16560756640621720539noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-63956392496442992462016-02-02T12:47:29.717+00:002016-02-02T12:47:29.717+00:00Anonymous
Gram turns out to be more interesting t...Anonymous<br /><br /><i>Gram</i> turns out to be more interesting than I thought.<br /><br />We've seen that English did two things with the word/word fragment <b>meter</b><br /><br />1 It took French complete words and retained the French <i>metre</i> spelling, just as with <i>theatre, centre</i><br /><br />2 It treated it as a 'foreign' (from Latin from Greek) element and used the Latin-like <i>meter</i> spelling<br /><br />BrE settled on (1) for metric units and (2) for everything else,<br /><br />As you imply, there are also 'everything else' words with <i>-gram</i>. They seem to be treated like <i>thermometer</i> in that the -<i>gram</i> bit is a 'foreign' word-forming element, as in <i>anagram, histogram, telegram</i>.<br /><br />From old quotations I gather that BrE initially and until recently treated <b>gram</b> like <b>meter</b>.<br /><br />1 As a French whole word with French spelling <i>gramme</i> for the unit, just as with <i>programme</i><br /><br />2 As a 'foreign' word-forming element with Latin-like <i>gram</i> spelling <br /><br />This might well have persisted as the only BrE standard but for school science lessons, where even I learned the spelling <i>gram</i> for the unit.<br /><br />Another interesting difference between <b>meter</b> and <b>gram</b> is that the latter has served as a <b>first</b> element in a widely used word: <i>gramophone</i>. Quaintly, this first element became a second element in <i>radiogram</i>.<br /><br />Now there's a natural pressure to double the consonant for <b>English</b> (i.e. not French) spelling pressures. It's not GRAYmophone, so why not mark the 'short-A' sound and spell it <i>grammophone</i>? This spelling has existed, but the official spelling of <b>The Gramophone Company</b> generally prevailed.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-7950563043685520952016-02-01T12:58:01.143+00:002016-02-01T12:58:01.143+00:00@David Crosbie
"The SI system has been taugh...@David Crosbie <br />"The SI system has been taught in British schools since at least as far back as 1970.<br /><br />You don't surprise me, but that's ten years after my last school maths lesson and twelve years after my last school science lesson.<br /><br />Back then it was always cc's, not ml's. Subsequently I've lived and worked — and, more to the point, shopped — in many counties that used 'the metric system'. I never noticed shopkeepers using different measurements from the ones I'd learned — except for the Italian etto (hectogram) and the way the Soviet Union used neither cc nor ml but g."<br /><br />When I started physics at school, we were the first to use SI. That would have been 1968-69. Previously, they had taught CGS. The "metric" system used in the UK is not the same as SI. For example, diving cylinders in the UK are marked in Bar, whereas in Australia, they use Kilopascals. Energy is quoted in Calories whereas the SI unit is Joules.<br /><br />I was taught that kilometre was pronounced with the emphasis on the "kil", not the "om", but almost everybody pronounces it "kil-OM-eter".<br /><br />I was also taught that "gram" was the correct UK spelling - not "gramme". TV "programme" is odd, because it's the only "gram" word that has an "e" on the end.. anagram, diagram, telegram etcAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-47058349786128027882016-01-30T23:06:50.741+00:002016-01-30T23:06:50.741+00:00PW,
Only a hazy memory of what an American friend...PW,<br /><br />Only a hazy memory of what an American friend once told me. <br /><br />I believed it to be true because it clearly was;t true of any other English-speaking country. What I didn't Know is what vp turned up: that it had once upon a time been a British saying.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-24905426863567769362016-01-30T21:05:45.993+00:002016-01-30T21:05:45.993+00:00David Crosbie said:
American children used too l...David Crosbie said: <br />American children used too learn <br /><br />A pint's pound the world around.<br /><br />Do you have a source for that statement? PWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-20915196369543452082016-01-30T17:27:05.677+00:002016-01-30T17:27:05.677+00:00I think I see why there's some miscommunicatio...I think I see why there's some miscommunication here about measurements. There are, I think, three purposes of measurement::<br /><br />1 talking about things<br />2 calculating<br />3 publishing standards<br /><br />1 is the oldest and shaped the way British and American systems evolved. Memory was more important than written record for the majority of users, so as far as possible any object could be sized or priced in terms of a memorable — i.e. small — number of units. And the little bit over or under was not expressed by a fraction but by a smaller unit. We went further than the US in this. We found shillings really useful as intermediate between pounds and pennies. And we still find stones of enormous use. All those hundred of pounds sound the same but weight expressed in stones brings home exactly what we want to know.<br /><br />2 Of course this runs totally counter to purpose 1. Calculating yards-feet-inches and stones-pounds-ounces is tedious and prone to error. Maybe this mattered less when popular literacy and numeracy was limited and accounting was left to specialists, but that's not the modern world.<br /><br />My understanding of 'the metric system' was shaped in primary school — and I suspect the same is true for Annabel. As our primary teachers envisaged the system it was a compromise between purpose 1 and purpose 2. There was a richness of units applicable to different objects, although not as rich as our own system. Against this it was much much easier to do calculations. This may not have been exactly what the original metric system had in mind, but it's a plausible inference from its original lterminology.<br /><br />The problem with this compromise is that it does;t serve too well the practice of science and technology. Here the proliferation of units is not a richness but a diversion. Figures don't have to be memorable as everything is written down. Fractions, in decimal form. are not confusing but desirable. The movement to CGS then to MKS and finally to SI followed the scientists' agenda. Logically it excludes all but seven basic units. In practice, several derived units are tolerated for descriptions outside the laboratory.<br /><br />Incidentally, the timing of this shift in British school science teaching left me stranded with a <b>centimetre</b> and <b>cubic centimetre</b> mindset. And I suspect this may be a world-wide phenomenon. My wife thinks in centimetres and in all the other countries where I've been the centimetre seems to have been the <b>conversational</b> standard. And everywhere but everywhere they talked about <b>litres</b>. It's not that these measures are <b>incompatible</b> with SI — it's just that they flourish in fields os discourse where SI is <b>irrelevant</b>.<br /><br />Purpose 3 is the one that produces some too the odd results. nation states or supra-national bodies such as the EU control the <b>published</b> measurements on labels. Enforcement could be left to common sense since any unit of measurement can be converted to any other. Claimed units could be converted to SI units and checked accordingly. But that's not how bureaucracies work. The <b>weights and measurement</b> regulations stipulate which units are to be used. But there's a conflict between simplicity (which suits the bureaucrats) and use and practice (which suits the consumer). <br /><br />The EU compromise recognises both <b>Litre</b> and <b>millilitre</b>. For the wine trade, at least, it even recognises <b>decilitres</b>. Not just for France; I've found a bottle of Chilean wine with a label entirely in English stating <b>75 cl e</b>. Britain has acquired an enormous concession. The <b>pint</b> and the <b>mile</b> are recognised units — albeit in closely defined contexts; you can bur a pint of beer but strictly speaking you can't buy a pint of shandy. And if I understand it correctly we can imply some imperial units on our r labels provided that that they are in fact the nearest equivalent in grams or millilitres. So we buy a pint of milk in a glass bottle or 568 millilitres of milk in a plastic carton.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-33346884581602997472016-01-29T23:06:52.985+00:002016-01-29T23:06:52.985+00:00@markn
You see both spellings. You also see &quo...@markn<br /><br />You see both spellings. You also see "tonne" for the metric ton -- it's even made inroads into traditional expressions. I see spellings like "come down on someone like a tonne of bricks", which always makes me laugh.<br /><br />Interestingly, according to Google N-grams, <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gramme%2Fgram%2Ctonne%2Fton&year_start=1790&year_end=2015&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%28gramme%20/%20gram%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28tonne%20/%20ton%29%3B%2Cc0" rel="nofollow">"tonne" has recently become relatively more popular than "gramme" in British English</a>.vphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647609487352038948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-36418251644923655442016-01-29T22:53:19.006+00:002016-01-29T22:53:19.006+00:00I notice that David Crosbie is spelling it "g...I notice that David Crosbie is spelling it "gram" while Eloise and Mrs Redboots are using "gramme". In the US it's always gram. Is it variable for different writers in the UK?<br /><br />--Mark<br />marknhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13276874205913141933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-42326858235177482962016-01-29T19:55:44.814+00:002016-01-29T19:55:44.814+00:00Mrs Redboots
When I was too young to use words li...Mrs Redboots<br /><br />When I was too young to use words like <i>controversy</i>, I nevertheless heard people on the radio. To the best of my recollection I never heard people complaining about conTROVersy until it was already familiar with it and regarded it as THE pronunciation. <br /><br />My impression is that your generation is something like the third or fourth to shift the stress.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-13791239137584296512016-01-29T17:58:32.396+00:002016-01-29T17:58:32.396+00:00@ Dick Harzell - sorry, meant to get back to you y...@ Dick Harzell - sorry, meant to get back to you yesterday, but fell asleep! Yes, my grandmother was not untypical of her age and class; her preference for "CONtroversy" was not unique. I have a feeling that my father, now aged 92, would say it, too, and it my generation (born in the 1950s) who were the first to shift the stress.<br /><br />@Eloise: Surely the centimetre exists because it is 1/100 of a metre? I mean, even if people didn't use it, as they do not (to my knowledge) use hectometres and dekametres, it would still exist. As a schoolgirl - ten years after Dick Crosby, but still long enough ago that dinosaurs practically walked on the earth, I was taught that the units of measurement of fluids, mass and length all consisted of one base unit (litre, gramme and metre - incidentally, how come a gramme is so much smaller than the other two?), which could be divided into tenths, prefix deci-; hundreds, prefix centi- and thousandths, prefix milli- - and, of course, smaller units still, which each had their own prefix. Each unit could also be multiplied by ten, giving it a prefix of deka-, a hundred, prefix hecto- and a thousand, prefix kilo- (and, of course, mega, giga and tera, but we didn't learn those in school). These may not all be in common use, but they certainly all exist!Mrs Redboots (Annabel Smyth)https://www.blogger.com/profile/11270027663691257254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-85552490831964434182016-01-29T14:32:43.016+00:002016-01-29T14:32:43.016+00:00John Cowan: "When I pointed this out to a Bri...John Cowan: "When I pointed this out to a Brit, he said that to him tire centre would be a place to go to get tired."<br /><br />Surely, it should be a place to get re-tired. 8-)<br /><br />Eloise: "Centimetres exist because people wanted something about the size of the inch. But if you work with the units all the time, you don't use centimetres, centilitres and the like (and I wish no one did, it would make teaching people a lot easier). The French using 75 cl for a bottle and the UK using 750 ml is probably historical but 750 ml is more correct, in terms of the SI unit structure."<br /><br />Unit choices vary with context. When I was an astrophysics student, the practice was to use CGS rather than MKS units, so ergs rather than joules, for instance. If you understand the system, there's no need to be so prescriptive. (Though dietitians' Calories, which equal kilocalories, do irritate me.)<br /><br />Eloise: "Kelvin is the base unit of temperature. It's the same size as the ºC (so if the temperature rises 1K it also rises 1ºC) but rather than starting from the arbitrary melting point of water at Standard Pressure, it starts from absolute zero."<br /><br />While 0° C is defined <i>as</i> the freezing point of water at standard pressure, the system is, of course, defined <i>from</i> the triple-point of water, which is a bit less arbitrarily related to a place.Doug Sundsethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12416285410276713188noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-23076197069408971792016-01-29T14:05:03.123+00:002016-01-29T14:05:03.123+00:00Dick Hartzell
As vp says, the reduction of the -v...Dick Hartzell<br /><br />As vp says, the reduction of the <i>-vers-</i> in owes much to the non-rhotic nature of accents such as RP.<br /><br />However, there is a non-rhotic pronunciation with a full vowel in, for example, <i>controversial</i>.<br /><br />John Wells in his Longman Pronunciation Dictionary gives as primary pronunciations<br /><br /><b>ˌkɒntrəˈvɜ:ʃl</b> <i>controversial</i><br /><b>ˈkɒntrəvɜ:si</b> <i>controversy</i><br /><br />The latter (presumably the pronunciation of Mrs Redboot's grandmother) has only one stressed syllable. Personally, I could never say that because in ordinary speech my NURSE vowel is always stressed. The stresses removed, <b>vɜ:</b> becomes . So, like most BrE speakers (and presumably Mrs Redboots) I say <b>kənˈtrɒvəsi</b>.<br /><br />However, that's not the full picture. John reports:<br /><br /><i>Among RP speakers the</i> ˈkɒntr- <i>form probably still predominates; but in BrE in general the</i> -ˈtrɒv- <i>form is clearly more widespread. BrW poll panel preference:</i> ˈ.... <i>44%,</i> .ˈ... <i>56%. In AmE</i> 'kɑntr- <i>is the only possibility.</i><br /><br />This is from the First Edition published in 1990. I suspect that the proportions have changed in BrE.<br /><br />'RP' is a prestige <b>reference</b> accent, not by any means the most widespread BrE accent. My generation are attracted to emulate RP, so I'm either an RP speaker (loosely defined) or a near-RP speaker.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-65093141874013844642016-01-29T13:36:28.260+00:002016-01-29T13:36:28.260+00:00Boris, I've observed that the liquid container...Boris, I've observed that the liquid container sizes in the US have been whipsawed between tradition, manufacturing, metric system conversion, all affected by marketing. I think the progression went like this: Milk traditionally came in the pint/quart/half gallon/gallon sizes as you said. When plastic jugs came along, they were in the half gallon and gallon sizes. When water started being sold in stores, it used the same gallon plastic jugs as milk. Soft drinks, being pressurized, couldn't use the half gallon size milk jugs and needed a new bottle, and this was the 70's/early 80's when there was a metric system push, so the 2 liter bottles were used. 3 liter bottles came along after that, but must not have sold well--I haven't seen them for a good 20 years. 1 liters came along a while back, mostly sold in convenience stores aimed at drivers or riders I think. Recently the marketers have come out with 1-1/2 liter bottles to try to replace the 2 liter bottles, a marketing ploy to sell smaller quantities at the same price. That doesn't seem to have worked well at the grocery store I use.<br /><br />Oh, and the only place I've ever heard of "SI" instead of "metric" in the US is in science classes. And as a former Air Force weather officer, I always use "centigrade" instead of "Celsius". For some reason, the latter always pushes my buttons, as does the pretentious use of "centre" and "theatre" in AmE.<br />Kirk Poorenoreply@blogger.com