Re: Bus boys: two nations divided by a common language

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

Matthew Faupel writes:

> "Home from home" describes a place that makes you feel at home, e.g. "I know
> a lovely little B&B that's a regular home from home; they make you feel
> really welcome there."

In American, that's "home >away< from home", and the British form sounds
(as I said) like a word has been dropped by the typesetter.

> When was the first printing though?  The examples you give sound very much as
> if the researchers did their investigations somewhere around the 1950s :-)

The first edition was in 1973; the preface notes some of the changes
(particularly dropping definitions for American words now used in the U.K.).
Of course it is impossible to keep such a book fully up-to-date.

Equivalents in such a book can't possibly hope to preserve all
distinctions of tone, register, and such:  American "buck for" is defined
as "go for, aim at", which is not incorrect, but misses the connotation
of "acting so as to be noticed (and promoted) by the powers that be".
Likewise, there are a few flat-out errors:  "discombobulate" is defined as
"fall to pieces" rather than the normal "be in a state of confusion", and
a "swot" is incorrectly given as a grid, rather than a grind -- an error I
was able to reconstruct only by reading the nearby definition of "to swot".

And Rosta asks quite correctly what this thread is doing on Lojban List.
Well, the only hook is the original discussion of "bus boy"; however,
Nick has made a number of complaints about excessive Americanism in the
gismu list -- "zarci" being the worst case: "zarci" in Commonwealth English
is "shop", which word in American suggests either a high-priced and
excessively fashionable retail establishment (this is a Briticism) or a
work place, as in "shop talk".

ObLojban:

        "valporsi gi'e ganai se lidne le xe fanva be fi le drata bangu
        pe le gi'uste gi'e se sruri lo sitna lerfu gi jitfa"
        is a phrase and, if preceded by its translation into the other language
        of the gismu list and surrounded by quotation marks, is false.

(after Douglas Hofstadter)

--
John Cowan              sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.