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Subject: Hm.

Author:
Ed Harris (Venezia)

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Date Posted: 18:44:03 11/15/04 Mon
In reply to: Davey Blunkett 's message, "A letter from the British Home Office to the People of America" on 18:34:35 11/15/04 Mon

A French mate of mine sent me this a few days ago. It is evidently 'doing the rounds', like that thing where you go to Google and type in "weapons of mass destruction" and click 'I'm feeling lucky' and get taken to that funny page. I think that's still up and running, if there is anyone in the world who hasn't yet tried it.

I have but two arguments with it:

1) There is a place called "Devonshire", as in the Duke of Devonshire, HMS Devonshire, and Devonshire Cream Teas. Calling it 'Devon' is a modern affectation by the west-country bumkins who run the Council, who are too addled with cider to spell "shire" at the end of their county's name, involving, as it does, a particularly tricky combination of letters.

2) Why on Earth do Americans seem to think that we use the metric system? I know that this horse has been flogged dead elsewhere on this forum, but Yanks come over here and see miles on the roadsigns and buy pints and can tell people their heights in feet and inches and weights in pounds and everyone knows what they're talking about, and still they go home and say, "Hey, Billy-Bob-Joe, that metric system sure is awful quaint."

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Replies:

[> Subject: you don't mean they will get to vote in serious elections, do you?
Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 18:48:02 11/15/04 Mon Maybe we should wait until they have handed in their guns, sacked their therapists and lawyers, learned how to spell, etc, before we let them in? [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: "Learned"? What's that? Do you mean "learnt"? :P
Author: Roberdin [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 18:50:06 11/15/04 Mon [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> Subject: the Macquarie dictionary says the two are the same
Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 19:39:46 11/15/04 Mon pardon my antipodean ignorance if that does not hold in other realms [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: Learned
Author: A [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 19:31:47 11/15/04 Mon I think it's alright if you talk of someone being "learned" (pronounced "lurn-ed" rather than "lurnd"). [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> Subject: Yes but...
Author: Ed Harris (venezia) [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 19:36:06 11/15/04 Mon ... the former is the supine and the latter is the past participle. I know that in most cases they are the same in the English language ('He was tired' and 'running tired him', for example), but this is one of the exceptions. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]