Wordsmith Talk |
About Us | What's New | Search | Site Map | Contact Us | |||
Register Log In Wordsmith.org Forums General Topics Q&A about words Another question!
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
in the UK we would say:...
who's this "we", white man? hi, F!
I don't agree it's as straightforward as that. Surely you can recognise the range of legitimate variants like these:
1. "Two cars and a bus collided in the High Street today"
2. "Two cars and a bus collided on the M4 today"
Similarly we could find without surprise these sentences in any UK publication:
3. "Seventeen shops in central Croydon closed last year"
4. "Seventeen shops on Pembury Hill closed last year"
We might find these forms in daily speech:
5. “The car was standing at the corner outside Woolworths”
6. “The woman was standing on the corner outside Woolworths”
I don’t pretend to have any special powers of observation in these matters, but I can certainly observe quite a wide range of options being exercised by English mother-tongue speakers around me – and I am uncertain how dogmatic we can be about what (if any) discriminations are being made.
This is instinctive to most speakers, and we all have I think a range of styles, which have areas of confusion but some general sense of relationships. Personally, I travel in my car to the station, then go on the train into London - I disembark at the station, alighting on the platform.
To my ear, the use of in suggests a complete logical subset – the milk is in the jug. Conversely, the use of on suggests a less detailed relationship – the jug is on the shelf. The use of at suggests a clearly known point in space or time – the shelf is at worktop height.
Entire Thread Subject Posted By Posted Another question! JessCC 04/26/02 07:28 AM Re: Another question! jmh 04/26/02 07:47 AM Re: Another question! maverick 04/26/02 08:49 AM Re: Another question! Keiva 04/26/02 10:45 AM Re: Another question! dxb 04/26/02 04:08 PM Re: Another question! maverick 04/27/02 12:12 AM Re: Another question! Bridget 04/27/02 11:13 AM Re: Another question! dxb 04/27/02 06:34 PM Re: Another question! Jazzoctopus 04/27/02 09:32 PM Re: Another question! maverick 04/27/02 10:46 PM Re: Another question! of troy 04/27/02 11:03 PM Re: Another question! Bridget 04/28/02 10:27 AM Re: Another question! Bingley 04/26/02 09:01 AM Re: Another question! maverick 04/26/02 09:15 AM Re: Another question! Faldage 04/26/02 10:03 AM Re: 9-letter word AnnaStrophic 04/26/02 06:24 PM Re: Another question! ladymoon 04/27/02 04:16 AM Re: Another question! JessCC 04/27/02 12:42 PM Re: schlemiel wwh 04/27/02 12:52 PM Re: Another question!At, On, In wow 04/27/02 03:29 PM
Moderated by Jackie
Link Copied to Clipboard
Forum Statistics Forums16Topics13,913Posts229,351Members9,182 Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
Newest Members Ineffable, ddrinnan, TRIALNERRA, befuddledmind, KILL_YOUR_SUV
9,182 Registered Users
Who's Online Now 0 members (), 580 guests, and 0 robots. Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Top Posters(30 Days) A C Bowden 22ddrinnan 1
Top Posters wwh 13,858Faldage 13,803Jackie 11,613wofahulicodoc 10,549tsuwm 10,542LukeJavan8 9,918Buffalo Shrdlu 7,210AnnaStrophic 6,511Wordwind 6,296of troy 5,400
Forum Rules · Mark All Read Contact Us · Forum Help · Wordsmith.org