Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff
Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 3:48 am
A role in which it would be hard to bluff one's way out of a mischievously induced giggle would be that of a corpse.
http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/
http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=107953
For sure. A role not to be hoped for, on so many levels.david_h wrote:A role in which it would be hard to bluff one's way out of a mischievously induced giggle would be that of a corpse.
Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."Nanohedron wrote:Ditto. Frankly, it would be unintelligible to any local not informed about the RH side of the Pond's usage. And that's most of us. I myself didn't know of it until this thread.Tunborough wrote:Not something I've ever heard around here.david_h wrote:Is "revising for an exam" something that would be widely understood on the LH side of the pond?
With the meaning of going over something to more firmly memorize or reacquaint oneself, we would instead use "review", "recap", "bone up on", "brush up on", and others. On my soil, "revise" only means "to alter", and nothing else. The difference is so stark that using it in the sense of "review" defies even affectation: I might say "nappies", and someone would knowingly say, "Ah. He watches EastEnders and the like," but if I said "revise for an exam," most would go, "Huh? That makes no grammatical sense." And I too must admit it looks very strange to me!
"Revise" in the sense of "change" of course implies review, but being already understood, the act of review is only peripheral and therefore irrelevant to the core meaning of the word as I am familiar with it.
Tunborough wrote:Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."
Since both uses of the word are current in the UK we would use something like "we will begin by revising the work we did on Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'"Tunborough wrote:Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."
I'll grant you that "Shakespeare" is redundant, necessary only for my own rhetorical purposes.david_h wrote:Since both uses of the word are current in the UK we would use something like "we will begin by revising the work we did on Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'"Tunborough wrote:Consider what North Americans would make of a course description that says, "We will begin by revising Shakespeare's play, The Tempest."
(except I think we could skip "Shakespeare's play" unless we had looked at someone else's The Tempest)
A term I've only recently become aware of when I have colleagues!coworker
That's an interesting one, all right. As a Statesider, for me "colleague" typically means an equal (more or less) in a higher profession such as education, law, or medicine. Two professors in a particular field may never have met, yet they may well refer to each other as colleagues. In the States, the word implies education, gravitas, and authority in kind. A factory or office worker doesn't have colleagues. Colleagues consult, debate, and defer from a position of specialized expertise; coworkers slog for a paycheck from a position of basic employment. It may be highly skilled employment, but here "colleague" doesn't fit the social order unless it's in the context of something like a world conference of master glassblowers. If you are referred to as a colleague, you are acknowledged as a member of standing within an elite group of specialists.Peter Duggan wrote:A term I've only recently become aware of when I have colleagues!coworker
Well, this does seem to be a genuine difference then. I'm surprised. Nowadays, every person in a company is a colleague, whatever the type of work. The term "colleague" doesn't imply seniority or expertise at all in my experience. Way back, when I used to be a bus driver in Cardiff, if we were talking formally (yes, we did sometimes) then all the bus drivers would have been "colleagues" (talking informally, we were "mates"). The Inspectors were just referred to as "Inspectors", and the management were only ever referred to, by us at least, using fairly extreme insults. So, at that time, there was a divide. By the time I became MD of a print firm, in the early years of the current millennium, everyone employed by the business was a "colleague", and the same applies pretty much everywhere now.Nanohedron wrote:So from the perspective of Yankspeak: Since you are an educator, Peter, you do indeed have colleagues. However, were you to jump ship and take up stonecutting, since it is a trade - albeit a most honorable one - your associates at the quarry would simply be your coworkers.
Given my experience of the realities of the workplace, it could be argued that that is the beauty of the term: It assumes nothing.benhall.1 wrote:As far as I know - that is, from my own personal experience - the only workplaces using the term "co-worker" are American owned. I must admit, I can't stand the term. It has no implication of solidarity or of people pulling in the same direction. It just implies to me that people are stuck with each other, in the same workplace or business.
Think they'd be my workmates here if they weren't my colleagues!Nanohedron wrote:So from the perspective of Yankspeak: Since you are an educator, Peter, you do indeed have colleagues. However, were you to jump ship and take up stonecutting, since it is a trade - albeit a most honorable one - your associates at the quarry would simply be your coworkers.