Pedantic question about standardisation

[batwister]

Today I discovered cliveh is British.

4x5 makes logical sense - which is something you don't associate with the States (!) - but 5x4 is more linguistic and pleasing somehow.
They'll catch up sooner or later. Either way, too much expense for me, so sometimes I say "4x5" out of spite and jealousy.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

It depends..

I just shoot 5x7 instead. Problem solved.

If you're shooting portrait or landscape. Landscape is 7x5 and portrait 5x7. I'm assuming you'll be shooting a landscape in the UK and a portrait in the US.

 

[TimFox]

It's a curious fact that customary units in the USA are actually defined within the metric system. For example the length of the US yard is exactly 3600/3937 metres and the pound is exactly 0.453 592 4277 Kilograms. The change happened in the Mendenhall Order of 1893. An inch may be a convenient unit but you have to ask the metric system to be sure how long it is!

Yes, the legal definition of US customary units is tied to the metric system.
However, in 1959 the definitions were changed slightly, so the inch is now defined as exactly 2.54 cm, which is a few ppm different from the older definition you quote.
An interesting side effect was the need for yet another unit, the "US survey foot", based on the old definition of the inch, so that we would not need to re-define every land ownership document in the nation.
I refer to 1959 as the year that the US went metric, but did not tell anyone.

 

[Steve Smith]

I sometimes reply to people who say "my bad" by asking, "your bad WHAT?"

Well done!!

some standards are logical like how the date is expressed

Our way or yours? US = mm/dd/yyyy, UK = dd/mm/yyyy.


Steve.

 

[TimFox]

H L Mencken once said that when one-third of the people who speak a language from early childhood say "goods train" and two-thirds say "freight train", then "freight train" is standard and "goods train" is dialect.
(Incidentally, the first edition of the Oxford dictionary defined "freight train" as US for "goods train", but neglected to define "goods train".)

 

[Steve Smith]

then "freight train" is standard and "goods train" is dialect.

On the subject of trains - When I was a child, everyone referred to those places trains stop at to let people on and off as railway stations. Now they call them train stations which doesn't sound right. I think it's another Americanised thing over here.

Oh yes, you call them railroads don't you?!!


Steve.

 

[TimFox]

American usage permits either railway or railroad.
Different corporations use either term in their name.
For example, the Union Pacific Railroad purchased the Chicago and North Western Railway (which had been renamed Chicago and North Western Transportation Company) a few years ago.
It's not pretty being easy.

 

[Leigh B]

...everyone referred to those places trains stop at to let people on and off as railway stations.

"Sittin' in a railway station,
Got a ticket for my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands,
My suitcase and guitar in hand."

Would make a good song.

But it would not work at all with 'train station'.

- Leigh

 

[Steve Smith]

"Sittin' in a railway station,
Got a ticket for my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands,
My suitcase and guitar in hand."

Would make a good song.

But it would not work at all with 'train station'.

It's lucky he wasn't a travelling harpsichord player too!


Steve.

 

[E. von Hoegh]

"Sittin' in a railway station,
Got a ticket for my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands,
My suitcase and guitar in hand."

Would make a good song.

But it would not work at all with 'train station'.

- Leigh

Similarly,
"I lay my head on the railroad tracks
And wait for the double E
But the railroad don't run no more,
Poor poor pitiful me"

could work either way, railroad or railway, but railroad works better.

 

[zsas]

Train
Train Track
Train Station
They are kept at the railyard


If one said, "How are you getting up north?" The reply would be, "I'm taking the northern line." or maybe, "I'm taking the northern train line."

 

[TimFox]

In the verb form,
"Railroadin' on the Great Divide
Nothin' around me but Rockies and sky"
would be horrible with "way".

 

[blansky]

On the subject of trains - When I was a child, everyone referred to those places trains stop at to let people on and off as railway stations. Now they call them train stations which doesn't sound right. I think it's another Americanised thing over here.

Oh yes, you call them railroads don't you?!!


Steve.

Yes but don't forget in "merica" they also call a mass transit "people hauler" (rapid transit) a train even if a downtown above ground subway (WHAT???).

Some people also differentiate a railway car and a train car by if it's a people or freight hauler.

Also some people call those things trains travel on as railway tracks.

BUT all these words for the same things make it possible for people who write lyrics to songs to have synonyms to help with the whole rhyming thing.

 

[TimFox]

The above-ground (and subway) CTA "El" systems in Chicago are, in fact, "heavy rail", with the same technical standards as mainline railroads.
Steetcar systems (such as San Diego, Portland, and Boston) are "light rail".
Many people confuse subway and surface lines in Chicago and New York with "light rail".
A "train" is legally "that which is between the markers", or informally, a set of cars coupled together.

 

[benjiboy]

"Sittin' in a railway station,
Got a ticket for my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands,
My suitcase and guitar in hand."

Would make a good song.

But it would not work at all with 'train station'.

- Leigh

Paul Simon actually wrote that song "Homeward Bound" while sitting in a railway station in Widnes Lancashire in the U.K

 

[TimFox]

Another folk song:
"The Lord made me,
The Lord made you.
He must have made the CB&Q.
For in the Bible, the psalmist sings,
'The Lord he made all creeping things'."
[CB&Q = Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, now part of Burlington Northern Santa Fe]

 

[benjiboy]

According to Inspector Lewis and Sgt. Hathaway, there is one murder in Oxford each week during the new series airing on TV. Wonder what those students are up to? In the US, before time zones, travellers used to set their watches based on the conductors announcements, as they moved east or west.

Consider bonnet and hood. A bonnet is removable and a hood is attached. So, which is the best definition for a car?

PE

In Victorian times in the U.K we had railway time, when each company had it's own time.

 

[MattKing]

In the US, (and the rest of the world) each town set it's clocks according to the true local time, usually ascertained by the suns' zenith.

Can you say "Sanford Fleming", eh?

 

[benjiboy]

Ben, Doesn't Great Tom still peal at 9:05 PM instead of 9?

Yes it does Brian that's just traditional it rings 101 times a day to commemorate the original 100 scholars +1 it was the archaic Oxford time.

 

[Diapositivo]

H L Mencken once said that when one-third of the people who speak a language from early childhood say "goods train" and two-thirds say "freight train", then "freight train" is standard and "goods train" is dialect.
(Incidentally, the first edition of the Oxford dictionary defined "freight train" as US for "goods train", but neglected to define "goods train".)

This is the old normative/customary use of language debate, which is moot. The majority can be wrong. The vast majority can be utterly wrong. Actually the majority is likely to be wrong. Languages have a logic and a "system". Most people don't understand that, just out of sheer ignorance - lack of interest - linguistic vandalism, but the Happy Few, the true White Knights of Correct Usage, will always keep their flag high and their "panache" ready.

If linguistic form had to be comply with the "majority" principle, than the following expressions would be right:

Kodak lost it's reason to be;
In who's interest should somebody defend Kodak?
Perez and he's colleagues are a bunch of morons;

etc.

Defend the purity of your language! Fight in the name of Grammar!

Fabrizio

PS Americanisms are right, no problem with that. Lift, elevator, that stuff. I'm just very concerned with the new "he or she", "his of her", it's all just so clumsy and ridiculous. If Shakespeare had to write his works, what a mess would he be forced to write by the zealots of political correctness!

PPS Go on, find orthographic mistakes in this post, and consume my martyrdom on the field of Linguistic Truth!

 

[blansky]

Fight in the name of Grammar!

Too late I'm afraid. My grammar died a month ago. She was 98.

 

[MattKing]

So Fabrizio when you enter your home through your own front door, do you announce: "It is I"?

 

[cliveh]

Paul Simon actually wrote that song "Homeward Bound" while sitting in a railway station in Widnes Lancashire in the U.K

Also, if you have ever seen the film "The Railway Children", you know this wouldn't work as "The Train Station Children".

 

[lxdude]

(Incidentally, the first edition of the Oxford dictionary defined "freight train" as US for "goods train", but neglected to define "goods train".)

Oops, their bad.

 

[Diapositivo]

So Fabrizio when you enter your home through your own front door, do you announce: "It is I"?

I don't because I live alone and in any case I live in Italy and can say "Sono io" without any problem and any decent language should not pose this kind of doubts in the cultivated speaker . And if I lived in the UK I would say "It is I" of course...