On Sat, Jan 13, 2007 at 10:04:04PM -0800, Kim Morton wrote: > If you look at this logically, we are actually the > ones fighting prescritivism by saying that we are > correct in calling Icelandics "ponies" in American > English. The Icelanders come over and insist that we > in the US use the word "horse" for Icelandics, they > keep telling people that over and over. Then there > are certain people who go ahead and give in and start > doing it, not only that, they start correcting other > people. In the US we would naturally, and do naturally > call Icelandics "ponies". They are the ones doing the > prescribing, actually. I think we are just tired of > all the prescribing:)
i think this seems very likely. but now that you describe it, i can see it as another reason icelanders might call the hestur "horses" in the usa, which is the american english links where "ponies" are for "kids", "horses" are for "adults" or "riders". i recall there being a lot of resistance here on this list to the idea that i was going to be putting a lot of kids on my icey; that he would be a bad choice for that b/c of his breed. i can imagine that if one were selling in this market, one might prefer the term that goes with "for riders" for the beasties. --vicka
