On May 27, 2004, at 20:56, Ruth Budge wrote:
I come from England, have lived in Australia most of my life - and after all, both countries are supposed to speak the same language! However, after all these years, I still find that the occasional Australian phrase comes up which I don't understand, I still use expressions which turn out to be particularly English.
The difference is more in the culture than in the language per se; in the divergence of daily habits which, in turn, produce the words needed to describe a *specific* situation. And, the longer the split, the biggger the accumulation of differences. I remember reading (my MA thesis was on socio-cultural aspects of teaching English as a foreign language, and, with material being scarce at the time and place, I was really *reaching* <g>) about German... It used to be, more or less, one language (with regional varieties). Except, of course for the *Austrian* variety, which had its own regional sub-divisions. But then, after WWII, came the split into two Germanys; the "Eastern" Germany (German Democratic Republic), which was under the communist rule, and the "Western" Germany (German Federal Republic), which wasn't. The articles I was reading indicated that, by 1971 -- less than 30 years after the division -- the differences between the two versions of German (other than the regional ones) were already discernible. Had the process not been arrested in '89 by re-unification, the two would have "forked apart" further. As American English, Canadian English, Australian English, South African English have done, and will continue doing...
And on the matter of cultural differences... Quite apart from the fact that an American "window" is still not a "proper" window to me (the sash-horror <g>), 31.5 yrs "down the American road", I still have *vital* problems with the American *calendar*... :)
The week *starts* with a *Sunday*?!?!?
Sunday is the day of rest, *after* a week of labour; that's how God set things up, and even the communists knew it :) And, please, don't tell me that its because "Sunday" is the "Sabbath"... Christians have moved the day of rest to Sunday *long* ago, and, linguistically, neither Saturday nor Sunday has anything to indicate the "Sabbath" in English. In Polish and in Russian, there's at least a vestige of it ("sobota" and "subota", respectively), and it's the only "foreign" day's name, with no roots within the language. But it is, definitely, *Sunday*, which is a "no work day" in both languages, and Monday is "the day after the no work day". And, Tuesday is "the second day", just in case anyone missed the point on Monday, with Wednesday being "mid day", and Thursday and Friday being the "fourth" and the "fifth", respectively... :)
*Every time* I look at a calendar to find out what day of a week a particular date is, I look in the wrong place, because the arrangement has been moved by one...
And the arrangement of dates? Don't even get me started...Where's the logic of having "month, day, year" sequence???
Yours, still giddy from the relief of having got rid of The Booklet (it's at the printers', with a sample copy to be ready for me to approve/bitch about at the beginning of the week, but not Monday, it being a holiday). Spent most of the day catching up on "domestic duties" (cleaning, laundry, some food stockpiling for DH, against the time when I'll be gone), just to keep my feet on the ground <g> And started on Suchanek's wire hummingbird pendant... Sheer bliss, to have everything worked out for one; not an anxious moment (how am I going to describe/diagram it?), except how far to tension before my cake becomes dough... :)
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
