Drive up ATM's OT, OOP (was Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Languages)

[Daniel Myers]

Quoted from Laura C. Minnick - 5/21/02, 7:42 PM -0700:
>At 10:24 PM 5/21/02 -0400, you wrote:
>>There's a building nearby that has a big sign on the door of the men's room
>>that says "ACCESSIBLE RESTROOM", and while I know what it means (and am all
>>in favor of it) I still can't help imagining each time I see it that
>>somewhere in the same building, in a crawlspace above the 5th floor, is a
>>door that's welded shut that has a sign on it saying "INACCESSIBLE
>>RESTROOM".
>>
>>(it must be a mental disease because no one else I've met imagines that
>>sort of thing)
>
>I dunno- wasn't that in 'Being John Malkovich'?
>
>I also wonder what it is to be 'couth', and why 'flammable' and
>'inflammable' mean the same thing, and why if 'progress' is a good thing,
>what does this say about 'congress'?...

<geek type=linguistic>
Don't know about the couth/uncouth thing, but there actually is a
difference between flammable and inflammable.  Flammable means "will burn",
but inflammable means "can become inflamed".  For example wood is flammable
but not inflammable, but gasoline is both.
</geek>

My favorite linguistic quirk is a process known as "back derivation".  This
is where a word is introduced into a language that sounds like a particular
part of speech (but isn't) and corresponding forms are then developed.

A perfect example of back derivation is the word "pea".  In period, the
word "pease" was introduced into English (from French, I think) as a
partitive noun (like butter - you can have "some butter" but you can't have
"a butter".  This was because peas were served essentially like a
porridge).  To the ear of English speakers though, the word "pease" sounds
like a plural noun, so they started referring to the individual item within
the pod as "a pea".

There.  I managed to work it around to a period topic after all.


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 Edouard Who Is Not 'Lainie's Edouard (Daniel Myers)
 I BELIEVE! http://www.bookofrefreshments.com
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