Re: Gauche pronunciation

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:41:52 +0100, Peter Duncanson
<mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:39:25 -0700, Bob Cunningham
<exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 06:52:22 +0800, Robert Bannister
<robban@xxxxxxxxx> said:

Bob Cunningham wrote:


"AmE vs BrE" reeks of ingroupness.


The other problem is that the main differences of vocabulary and
occasionally of grammar are not simply between the United States and
Britain, but between the US (and sometimes Canada) and every other
English speaking country, so perhaps we need better descriptions than
"AmE/BrE" as well.

In a newsgroup whose readers represent an unknown mix of
backgrounds, the jargon of specialists is best avoided,
"AmE" and "BrE" represent the jargon of linguistics.

Ingroupy terms might be acceptable if there are no
equivalent terms in general English, but "American English"
and "British English" do as well as the jargon terms.

When I first came to AUE some years ago I interpreted "AmE" and
"BrE" as very reasonable and convenient abbreviations of "American
English" and "British English". The fact that they might have also
have a specialist meaning in linguistics did not enter my mind until
much later. I am perfectly content with the idea that "AmE" and
"BrE" are used here as non-specialist terms.

This newsgroup has thousands of visitors who come only once.
That means there are thousands who can't be expected to know
the meanings of ingroupy abbreviations. If you avoid
abbreviations for the sake of those innocents, you are at
the same time producing cleaner looking copy for everyone.

I make it a practice to spell out the names of dictionaries,
newsgroups, languages, and other things that posters
commonly denote only by esoteric abbreviations. I follow
the guideline that I was required to follow during my
working years: I spell out a name the first time it occurs
in my message, and if I expect to use it again in the same
message, I follow the spelled-out version with an
abbreviation in parentheses that I can use for any
additional mentions. If I don't want to mention the item
again, I have no reason to add the abbreviation in
parentheses.

The fact that a linguistician might need to take account of the
register in which these abbreviations are being used to recognise
the intended meaning is unfortunate, but hardly a task beyond such a
person.

And
if a discussion is so technical that specialized language
must be resorted to, the discussion should probably be in a
forum whose charter is restricted to the narrow field, not
in a forum like this one, whose acceptable topics range from
politics to pizza to sheep to naked Choctaw ladies.

We have yet to see a picture of a naked Choctaw lady eating a pizza
while surrounded by sheep discussing politics.

Be patient.
.

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