HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: avoiding sexist language (was Re: Less versus Fewer)
Date: 8 Sep 92 16:36:01 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Sep7.161944.1@wombat.newcastle.edu.au> eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) writes:
>
>Note that the original poster was not from the U.S.  I'm not sure
>about Britain, but Australian supermarkets don't have cashiers.
>


Oooh!  Free food in Australia!  




-- 
Lauren Crawford  //  crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu

I believe we are on the irreversible trend toward more freedom and
democracy -- but that could change.   -- J. Danforth Quayle  
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan)
Subject: Re: avoiding sexist language (was Re: Less versus Fewer)
Organization: University of Newcastle, AUSTRALIA
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 01:12:31 GMT

In article <88183@netnews.upenn.edu>, crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:
> In article <1992Sep7.161944.1@wombat.newcastle.edu.au> eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) writes:
>>
>>Note that the original poster was not from the U.S.  I'm not sure
>>about Britain, but Australian supermarkets don't have cashiers.
> 
> Oooh!  Free food in Australia!  

OK, Lauren, I caught the implied smiley; but just in case anyone
missed the point: an Australian "cashier" has slightly higher status
than a check-out operator.  I'm not sure precisely where to draw
the line, but a cashier is certainly too important to be confined to
duties like counting groceries and handing out change.

-- 
Peter Moylan                      eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
From: bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Bonita Kale)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: difference between boyfriend and girlfriend
Date: 12 Sep 1992 10:43:10 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu




In a previous article, stef@Apple.COM (Stef Jones) says:

>>qcg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Qing Guo) writes:
>
>>>I hear from time to time female students say, for example, "I went shopping with a girlfriend yesterday", but I have never heard a male student say I did so and so with a boyfriend. Why do women call their female friends girlfriends but men don't call t
>
>A few thoughts:
>(1) 'girl' is still somewhat acceptable when referring to a young adult female, 
>but 'boy' is not acceptable when referring to a young adult male. 'Guy' is
>somewhat equivalent to 'girl' but the phrase 'guy friends' is not used
>much by men; 'one of the guys' or 'some of the guys' is used more frequently.
>
>(2) If you use a word that refers to a person without specifying gender, it
>is often assumed that the person is male. If one says, "I went shopping with 
>a friend," one's listener may assume that the friend is male unless 
>specified otherwise. The woman must therefore say 'girlfriend' or mention a
>feminine name to specify that it is a female friend. The same would go for
>a man who said that he did something with a friend: it would be assumed
>that the friend was male unless he specified otherwise.

Actually, when a woman says "friend," female is usually assumed.  I think
"girlfriend," said by a woman is just a variation.

Men still have nights out with the boys.  I believe they don't say
"boyfriend," as a previous poster suggested, because they are afraid their
(boy)friends will joke with them about being homosexual. 

Groups of women engage in jokes too, but the joking insult that is also a
jockeying for one-up position is less a part of female life. 
 
[Note: calling someone gay is not in itself an insult, but is often meant
as one.]

Bonita Kale
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: What is a GAROTTE?
Date: 9 Sep 92 21:06:14 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <26179@dog.ee.lbl.gov> jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov writes:
< <...>conquistadors garrotted an Aztec (? fuzzy memory alert!) king who
<had made the mistake of complying too fully with their demand for
<his gold, thereby rendering himself superfluous.

It was the last Inca, Atahualpa.

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: cthorne@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Charles E Thorne)
Subject: Re: difference between boyfriend and girlfriend
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 18:24:35 GMT

In article <1992Sep10.163708.10671@news.acns.nwu.edu> qcg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Qing Guo) writes:
>Althogh English is not my first language, I am good enough at it to understand that a boyfriend is male and a girlfriend is female. My question belongs to a higher level than that. 8=) 

>I hear from time to time female students say, for example, "I went shopping with a girlfriend yesterday", but I have never heard a male student say I did so and so with a boyfriend. Why do women call their female friends girlfriends but men don't call their male friends boyfriends?

When I was growing up, boys did have boyfriends just as girls had girlfriends.
Boys could also have girlfriends and girls could have boyfriends.  In todays
world, if a boy mentioned that he had a "boy" friend, people might assume that
there was a romantic attachment which was not intended by the statement.

Charlie
From: masuda@fcs280b.ncifcrf.gov (Michiaki Masuda)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Phobia
Date: 15 Sep 92 03:16:20 GMT
Organization: Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center

Hello netters.

  As I understand it, the word "xenophobia" means "fear or distaste against
something different from one's own." Therefore, "People of <some country> 
are not friendly to foreign visitors because they are xenophobic" is a correct
sentence.

  Then, how can I describe those who have a repulsive feeling against their 
own culture or fellow citizens. Is there any good noun/adjective?
I once wrote the following sentence and put myself into, ah, an embarrassing
situation.

"When I walk on the street of Washington D.C., I often come across Japanese 
tourists, but they seem to try to neglect me (I'm Japanese). When they
_mistakingly_ have an eye contact with me, I usually smile back. Then
suddenly, they avert their eyes as if they saw something disgusting.
Maybe, they are just homophobic in a foreign country."

   I'm not homosexual if I should mention it, and if I had known the meaning
of "homophobic", I wouldn't have used that word. But then, what can I use?

Michiaki Masuda
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: dant@techbook.com (Dan Tilque)
Subject: Re: Pommies
Organization: Pseudopolis Yard
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 09:39:50 GMT

rjkaduck@student.business.uwo.ca (Raymon J. Kaduck) writes:
}I quote Bill Hornadge in "The Australian Slanguage" p. 169 without 
}permission:
}
}The origin of the term is in much dispute, the two favoured versions 
}being:
}        (2) That the term POM or POMMY is a contraction of POMEGRANATE,
}            the theory being that Englishment were so named because their
}            rosy cheeks resembled this typical English fruit.

Maybe their sailors got tired of being called limeys and changed their
diet...

---
Dan Tilque    --     dant@techbook.com
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan)
Subject: Re: Petrified of ... (A False Accusation?)
Organization: University of Newcastle, AUSTRALIA
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 02:03:52 GMT

[Quoted material edited a bit to make it clear who did what and to whom]

Peter Moylan (that's me):
>I doubt that you'd find any native speaker of English
>saying "petrified of", even when speaking informally.

Evan Kirshenbaum:
> And now I'm not even a native speaker!  Listen, I've gotten used to
> the British with their "we spoke it first, so don't tell us how it's
> supposed to go", but, I do believe that the American variety *is*
> slightly older than the Australian. :-)

Simon Read:
> Hey guys (gender neutral implied here), am I being accused of a "holier than
> though" - I'm British *therefore* my English is perfect attitude?
> 
> Look back over the posts, I didn't write any of the above! If I implied that
> attitude I'm sorry, in future I'll prefix everything with IMHO.

Summary: I was the "offender", and since I've been away for a week
I wasn't able to set the record straight.

It had nothing to do with a "holier than thou" attitude.  I am
genuinely surprised to hear that some people find "petrified of"
natural.  Now that I know it, I'm quite happy to accept that some
native speakers do indeed say it that way.  (And I did take note
of Evan's smiley.)

By the way, I agree with what someone else said about unclear
attributions.  Many articles posted in this newsgroup contain great
masses of quoted material, often much more than is needed to establish
a context, and it's frequently poorly edited.  It's as important,
I think, to be careful about the presentation of the quoted material
as it is to check the new contribution.

(And if that last paragraph shows a "holier than thou" attitude,
so be it.)

-- 
Peter Moylan                      eepjm@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: naomib@sco.COM (Naomi Brokaw)
Subject: avoiding sexist language (was Re: Less versus Fewer)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 21:28:58 GMT
Keywords: nice and short


In article <1992Aug24.160215.3475@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> segr@nessie.mcc.ac.uk (Simon Read) writes:

>How about when you go to the check-out and hand the check-out
>operator (avoiding use of sexist pronouns) a 10 thingummy note.

Does sexism cause people to completely forget the the word "cashier?"

Naomi
From: hermit@cats.UCSC.EDU (William R. Ward)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Articles and acronyms (was re: University)
Date: 9 Sep 92 04:28:43
Organization: Computing and Telecommunications Services, UCSC
Distribution: world
	<HERMIT.92Sep6181050@am.ucsc.edu>
	<1992Sep7.110951.14784@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: uojy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu's message of 7 Sep 92 11:09:51 EDT

In article <1992Sep7.110951.14784@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> uojy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
|In article <HERMIT.92Sep6181050@am.ucsc.edu>,
|hermit@cats.UCSC.EDU (William R. Ward) writes: 
|> Well, there are two large US/rest-of-world differences here.  One is
|> the "He's at xxx" and the other is the "college"/"university" word
|> use.  The former is because Americans use more articles than
|> British/rest-of-world people.  If an American is sick, he is "in the
|> hospital"; if a Briton is taken ill, she is "in hospital."

|During recent news coverage of the North American Free Trade Agreement
|(NAFTA, pronounced in two syllables), I noticed that American economists
|tended to call it just "NAFTA" whereas Canadian economists tended to call
|it "the NAFTA".  Is there some rule of thumb about articles, acronyms, and
|flavor of English?

Well, there is a philosophical difference among various people when it
comes to pronouncing and using articles with acronyms.

Some people prefer to think of it as a bunch of letters, in this case
"N. A. F. T. A.," rather than a single word, "NAFTA."  Still others,
think of it as the words it represents, "North American Free Trade
Agreement."

So consequently, when you decide whether you add "the" to it or not,
you can think of it as a word or bunch of letters, in which case you
don't add "the."  If you think of it as a bunch of words, however, the
full title is "THE North American Free Trade Agreement," and since the
word "The" is not included in the acronym, you add it to the
beginning.

Similar things happen with acronyms whose first letter is a vowel in
situations where it would be preceded by "a" or "an."
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: ccjal@cc.newcastle.edu.au (John A Lambert)
Subject: Re: Brit. vs. Amer. spelling, was: Re: Improper spelling
Organization: University of Newcastle, AUSTRALIA
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 01:03:17 GMT

In article <6sxnjrp@lynx.unm.edu>, jfreter@triton.unm.edu (The Myth) writes:
> There is a logical basis for spelling certain words in the American way
> as opposed to spelling them the way the Brittish do (ex.: Humor vice Humour,
> draft vice draught, etc.).  The simple reason, in today's world, is cost.
> 
> Eliminating one, two, or three letters from common words will save money.
> Sure, eliminating one letter from one word will not save much money; but,
> when this extremely small savings (about .00001 cents and about 1 letter-
> width for the average laser printer) is multiplied by the amount of papers
> that are produced each year, the savings can be significant.  I don't have
> any hard numbers to back this up, but I would suspect that the savings is
> only on the order of 1% (at most).
> 
> I still can't come up with an explanation for the Brittish _centre_, _metre_
> and others instead of the _center_, _meter_, et al. that are used here in
> the US.  Does anyone know why this difference exists?
> 
> 
-- 
Both the `-our' and `-or' spellings were used in England pre Dr Johnson. He
favored the `-our' spelling to show that it came into English from French
(`-eur') rather than directly from the Latin (`-or'). Many words for which he
favored `-our' lost the `u'; e.g. `terrour', `governour', and there are
complicated rules about when the `u' is dropped (e.g. `humour' but `humorous').
Both the `-or' and `-our' are regarded as acceptable by the (standard
Australian) Macquarie Disctionary.

The `-our' also crept into words which were not derived from Latin or French
(e.g. `neighbor' and `harbor').

I stick to the `-or' spellings as being more consistent.

If one is think of saving printing costs, why do USAns write `Mr.', `Ms.',
`Mrs.', `Dr.' etc instead of `Mr', `Ms', `Mrs', `Dr' as is Australian (and I
believe UK) usage. We draw a distinction between _abbreviations_ which use a
`.' and _contractions_ (which start with the initial and final letters of the
word in question) which do not use a `.'.

John A Lambert
Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing
The University of Newcastle NSW 2308 Australia
Phone National        (049)21 5751    Fax National       (049) 21 6910
      International +61 49 21 5751        International +61 49 21 6910
VAXPSI  PSI%0505249626002::CCJAL      AARNet  ccjal@cc.newcastle.edu.au
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: What is a GAROTTE?
Date: 9 Sep 92 19:05:50 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Reply-To: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

>Is there someone who knows what kind of weapon a GAROTTE is?

American Heritage defines it as the iron-ring gadget used by the
Spanish Inquisition, but I've heard the term used, er, loosely
to mean any device for taking someone from behind and strangling
him (or, as a verb, to use a garrotte).  It can be as simple as
the piano wire used so vividly in the recent movie "Cape Fear,"
or a ready-made device with a handle for tightening the rope. 

If you feel like browsing the National Geographics of the mid-70s,
you'll find a painting of what it might have looked like when
conquistadors garrotted an Aztec (? fuzzy memory alert!) king who
had made the mistake of complying too fully with their demand for
his gold, thereby rendering himself superfluous.

There are books you can find on weapons and means of torture. Go 
to the library or ask some of the more bloodthirsty types on the
martial-arts or Society for Creative Anachronism newsgroups and 
you'll find out more than you probably ever wanted to know.

--Joe
"Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: dant@techbook.com (Dan Tilque)
Subject: Re: No smegma please, we're American
Organization: Pseudopolis Yard
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 07:14:09 GMT

wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
>> 
>Just a moment. Which OED do you use? My Concise Oxford has two little symbols:
>a parallel indicates a Briticism (||pavement meaning the bit on the side of the
>road) and an asterisk indicates an Americanism (*pavement meaning the surface 
>of the road). As far as I can remember, the second edition of the OED, that
>massive twenty-something volume work that was published last year, does the
>same. Do you have different dictionaries in the states that also emanate from 
>St Giles (OED dictionaries department in Oxford), or has someone borrowed the
>name? 

I believe Oxford is a trademark for the Oxford University Press.  So if
something is titled "The Oxford <whatever>", it's from them.  And they
did publish an Oxford American Dictionary.  I'm not sure what it's like,
I've just seen it on the shelf.

But the OED Second Edition uses the parallel lines to indicated a
foreign word.  This was the same as in the first edition.  It does
indicate that a usage is American by saying "U.S.".  I don't remember
them ever saying "British" or anything similar.

By the way, the OED2 was published in '89 and is 20 volumes.  Unless
they published a revised version last year, of course.

---
Dan Tilque    --     dant@techbook.com

PS I just noticed that the writter of the messages that vi gives you
must have been a pedant.  It said "1 fewer line" instead of "1 less
line".
From: lawe@enea.se (Lars Westin)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Hedgehog vs Porcupine
Date: 8 Sep 92 17:01:50 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB


My American friend and I are having a dispute about hedge-
hogs and  porcupines. 

In _my_ book, a hedgehog is a rather small (up to 10" long) 
_insectivorous_ mammal with sharp spines, while a porcupine
is a _rodent_, much larger than a hedgehog (approx. 2'5") but
also having spines  for protection. The hedgehog curls up when
threatened, while the  porcupine just sticks out its spines. 

She claims that "hedgehog" is an archaic word not used in USA,
and furthermore that the little fellow (which I call a hedge-
hog) is called a "porcupine" where she comes from (Tarzana, CA). 

Now, do Americans really use the same name for these quite
different animals? Do hedgehogs even exist in some part of USA,
outside of zoological gardens? Here in Sweden they are quite
common. My friend says she hasn't seen a wild one before she
came to live here. 

The following excerpt from "Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary"
did not convince her: 

	Hedgehog: any of a genus (Erinaceus) of Old World nocturnal
	insectivorous mammals having both hair and spines that they
	present outwardly by rolling themselves up.

	Porcupine: any of various relatively large rodents having
	stiff sharp erectile bristles mingled with the hair and
	constituting an Old World terrestrial family (Hystricidae)
	and a New World arboreal family (Erethizontidae).
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lars Westin - ENEA Data, Stockholm (Sweden) - lawe@enea.se
From: cochran@spam.rtp.dg.com (A. Jing Hippy)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: This usage, it makes me wince (was: Another Americanism?)
Keywords: "I should have went....."
Date: 3 Sep 92 12:21:45 GMT
Distribution: all
Organization: A Suffusion of Yellow

In article <dian.715297990@egg.gg.caltech.edu>, dian@arpeggio.gg.caltech.edu (Dian  De Sha) writes:
|> In <1992Aug28.114714.25710@dg-rtp.dg.com> cochran@spam.rtp.dg.com (A. Jing Hippy) writes:
|> 
|> >In article <1992Aug26.193831.13522@Princeton.EDU>, roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
|> >|> 
|> >|> Well, that colleague of mine who makes me wince -- HE SAYS THIS TOO!
|> 
|> >Totally off the subject that was being discussed, but the additional pronoun
|> >in the above sentence makes me wince when I sound it out.  Do the hyphens
|> >in it (as opposed to the comma that I put in the subject), make it an
|> >acceptable usage?
|> 
|> It isn't a problem of punctuation but of word usage.  It is redundant
|> and awkward to use the noun and its pronoun in the same phrase.  
|> I think it is this duplication that causes the wince.  Instead of:
|> 
|>          This usage, it makes me wince.
|>      and
|>          Well, that colleague of mine who makes me wince -- HE SAYS THIS TOO!
|> 
|> try:
|>          This usage makes me wince.
|>      and
|>          Well, that colleague of mine who makes me wince says this, too!

Oh yes, I'm totally aware of how to phrase it properly, I just didn't know
if there was some way to make it acceptable.  Obviously, the phrase that I
included in the subject line is totally unacceptable (which is why I did it
that way), but I thought that there might be some structure with hyphens,
semicolons, or some other punctuation that might make it usable.  It would
still make me wince when I read it aloud, though.

+--------------------------------------------------+
|Dave Cochran, Data General Corporation, RTP, NC   |
|cochran@dg-rtp.dg.com                             |
+--------------------------------------------------+
|What to do I find it hard to know. The road I walk|
|is not the one I chose.   -Yes                    |
+--------------------------------------------------+
From: bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Bonita Kale)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Re: Improper spellingscreen
Date: 9 Sep 92 10:39:56 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu




In a previous article, fish@hpscit.sc.hp.com (John Fisher) says:

>
>I can't speak for the world of poor spellers, but I *can* speak for one
>of them... me.  I am a poor speller because I put very little effort
>into it.  My rationale (I just looked this word up) is all that
>information is stored in a very handy memory device... the dictionary.
>So, the last thing I do to anything I write is to check the spelling.
>The words I use most frequently, I remember.  Those I use less often, I
>look up.  
>
>Some people might view this as lazy.  Perhaps they are right.
>But, as one not equipped with the Spelling Gene (if that, in fact, is
>what is needed), I chose to view my approach as simply incredibly
>intelligent.  (Insert the smiley of your choice here.)


Intelligent, sure.  Not lazy, because for those with the Spelling Gene,
there is little effort involved.  It doesn't take any more effort for a
good speller to spell right than it does for a good singer to sing the
right notes.  The wrong notes simply sound all wrong to the good singer;
the wrong spelling looks all wrong to the good speller. 

I can spell, but I can't sing.  I think singing would be more fun.


Bonita Kale
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: qcg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Qing Guo)
Subject: difference between boyfriend and girlfriend
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 16:37:08 GMT

Althogh English is not my first language, I am good enough at it to understand that a boyfriend is male and a girlfriend is female. My question belongs to a higher level than that. 8=) 

I hear from time to time female students say, for example, "I went shopping with a girlfriend yesterday", but I have never heard a male student say I did so and so with a boyfriend. Why do women call their female friends girlfriends but men don't call their male friends boyfriends?
From: hermit@cats.UCSC.EDU (William R. Ward)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Short question on word sequence
Date: 7 Sep 92 01:20:56 GMT
Reply-To: hermit@bayview.com
Organization: Computing and Telecommunications Services, UCSC
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: frerk@informatik.uni-kl.de's message of 1 Sep 92 12:15:38 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.121538.28437@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> frerk@informatik.uni-kl.de (Frerk Meyer) writes:
|What is correct:
|1. "One less car", or
|2. "One car less" ?

"One fewer car," of course!