Le 2014-04-30 09:47, Peter Humphrey a écrit :
On Tuesday 29 Apr 2014 16:05:04 walt wrote:
On 04/29/2014 05:49 AM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
I don't suppose it's misuse, just different use, which is fine when
separated by
a few thousand miles :-) . It just annoys me when I'm offered a regular
coffee,
when I would have said standard, or medium (size). It's happened
particularly
since our high streets were flooded with Starbucks and the like. To me,
"regular" is closely associated to "regularity", as one might think of
in
personal habits (sorry!). Or, "regular as clockwork" is a common phrase
and
gets my meaning across.
I suspect that your habits for "regular" or "ordinary" came from French,
where the first translation of regular is "régulier", "habituel" which
mean that it is something is a habits.
And "ordinary" will be translate to "ordinaire" that have the means of
"common", "standard".
I know that some difference from UK and US English come from the nearby
European country (monstly France) (i.e: colour vs color, behaviour vs
behavior, etc.)
