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[quote=Nick Maclaren]In article ,
wrote: but there wasn't a channel tunnel in 1974, or was there a secret one we didn't know about? ***** I have not read on here, so I'm probably repeating what has already been said: There was a building attempt in 1974, but, as usual, we Brits got scared and pulled out after several miles had been dug, much to the dismay of the French. |
[quote=Kay]In article but I'm not sure where pork
comes from - the latin? - is it the modern french that has moved away? I don't know either, but in German, it is Schwein, as in the similar English word Swine (except that the 'W' is pronounced like a 'V'). |
[quote=Kay]In article ,
writes[color=blue][i] Douglas, I don't know what you are posting with, ***** A computer? ;-) ***** but you must notice that it's impossible to identify your part of the text when you reply to posts? I'm slow here to get the hang of things, but I usually show my reply by warking it with stars. I tend to reply to bits of the message individually instead of saying it all at the end. i'm sure I will improve eventually. |
It was in use long before anybody with or without a geology degree had
heard of the word tsunami in UK. At primary school more than 20 years ago I was taught the difference between a tsunami and a tidal wave. To say they're interchangeable smacks of dumbing down to me. Confusing the two is like calling a spider an insect or am astronomer an astrologer. Ok, plenty people make the mistake, but that doesn't make it right. Regards, Stuart |
"Stuart" wrote in message ... A tidal wave is something completely different to a tsunami, but a lot of people don't seem to realise this. For the last time, it is not. Get hold of a dictionary and look up the meaning. Maybe its a common use of it, but its not correct, as those of us with degrees in geology know. It may have become an alternative name for those who don't know better, but the original meaning is quite different. Interesting. What, then, would you say is the 'correct' meaning of 'tidal wave', and why do you think that to be the 'original' meaning? (All this, of course, is yet more evidence in favour of the proposition that 'tidal wave' is much more likely to be misunderstood than 'tsunami') |
In article ,
Stuart wrote: It was in use long before anybody with or without a geology degree had heard of the word tsunami in UK. At primary school more than 20 years ago I was taught the difference between a tsunami and a tidal wave. To say they're interchangeable smacks of dumbing down to me. Assuming that English words have unique meanings, irrespective of context, is the result of being exposed only to dumbed-down teaching. Assuming that a self-selected cabal has the right to define the meaning of words is either ignorance or arrogance. You get a very good example of this in statistics. People with a minimal exposure (e.g. "Statistics for geologists") often get on their high horses about correlation being used for non-linear association. More qualified and experiences statisticians don't. We know that every field uses words differently, and that normal English usage is not scientific usage. Confusing the two is like calling a spider an insect or am astronomer an astrologer. Ok, plenty people make the mistake, but that doesn't make it right. Insect (1589). An animal with its body divided into segments (from animalia insecta). Its original meaning and one of its two main standard meanings in normal English includes essentially all of the arthropoda. Zoologists use it to refer to the insecta alone (e.g. not including the arachnida), but would have done better to follow the botanists and stick with Latin for such precise use, to avoid ambiguity. Regards, Nick Maclaren. |
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"BAC" wrote in message ... "Stuart" wrote in message ... A tidal wave is something completely different to a tsunami, but a lot of people don't seem to realise this. For the last time, it is not. Get hold of a dictionary and look up the meaning. Maybe its a common use of it, but its not correct, as those of us with degrees in geology know. It may have become an alternative name for those who don't know better, but the original meaning is quite different. Interesting. What, then, would you say is the 'correct' meaning of 'tidal wave', and why do you think that to be the 'original' meaning? (All this, of course, is yet more evidence in favour of the proposition that 'tidal wave' is much more likely to be misunderstood than 'tsunami') The Severn Bore is a tidal wave. |
"Duncan Heenan" wrote in message ... "BAC" wrote in message ... "Stuart" wrote in message ... A tidal wave is something completely different to a tsunami, but a lot of people don't seem to realise this. For the last time, it is not. Get hold of a dictionary and look up the meaning. Maybe its a common use of it, but its not correct, as those of us with degrees in geology know. It may have become an alternative name for those who don't know better, but the original meaning is quite different. Interesting. What, then, would you say is the 'correct' meaning of 'tidal wave', and why do you think that to be the 'original' meaning? (All this, of course, is yet more evidence in favour of the proposition that 'tidal wave' is much more likely to be misunderstood than 'tsunami') The Severn Bore is a tidal wave. Yes, I have heard it referred to as a 'tidal wave', or a surge wave, and, in fact the Concise OED definition of a tidal bore refers to a 'tidal wave', although the same dictionary's definition of 'tidal wave' doesn't refer to a 'tidal bore' but to an abnormally large ocean wave caused by an underwater volcano or earthquake. So, 'tidal wave' can mean either tidal bore or tsunami, depending on the context. Each meaning is 'correct'. Hence I remain of opinion it is probably less confusing to refer to a tsunami as a tsunami rather than a tidal wave, even though I have to acknowledge that one of the accepted meanings of tidal wave is the same thing as a tsunami. |
In article , Douglas Douglas.1i
writes[color=blue][i] Kay Wrote: In article , writes Douglas, I don't know what you are posting with, ***** A computer? ;-) ***** but you must notice that it's impossible to identify your part of the text when you reply to posts? I'm slow here to get the hang of things, but I usually show my reply by warking it with stars. I tend to reply to bits of the message individually instead of saying it all at the end. i'm sure I will improve eventually. Hey! Not one single bit of what you quoted was written by me, despite the attribution! You're absolutely right to reply to each bit individually - that's the convention in this newsgroup, and makes it a lot easier to follow the argument than with the top posting convention generally used in business emails. If you were posting here directly instead of via garden banter, you would be using a newsreader program. I use Turnpike (as do many others) and when I hit 'reply' it automatically inserts '' before each line of the text I am replying to (with more ''s for each successive previous poster) - Therefore the number of ''s at the beginning of the line tells you which person said what. This is a general newsgroup convention and is what allows us to see who said what when we're all interleaving replies. In addition, when I read a post, Turnpike displays all text with a '' in red and just the last author's contribution, with no '', in black. So when your posts turn up with '' at the beginning of each line, they are displayed in red. It's compounded by the fact your posts have the same number of '' as the previous poster - so, as was said above, it is totally impossible to identify your contribution ... or was, until you explained your personal convention of using stars. I don't know how gardenbanter works, but other people seem to have managed to suss out how to get the ''s working - perhaps you could ask in gardenbanter how they do it? -- Kay "Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river" |
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In article , Sacha
writes On 5/1/05 23:28, in article , "Kay" wrote: In article , Lazarus Cooke writes snip No- you still talk about 'un porc' in french. What is the english translation of that? Is it 'pig' or 'pork'? A pig in French is "un cochon" and the dictionary gives "un porc" too. I've never heard the latter used to describe a pig but only to describe the meat as in "cotelette de porc" for example. Taken with your other post, it suggests either the Normans were using 'un porc' for the pig and we picked up it up for the meat, and that French moved on to 'cochon' later, or that the normans used 'porc' for the meat only. Either way around fits into the pattern. What about 'poultry'? Am I right in thinking it's derived from 'poulet'? -- Kay "Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river" |
Stuart wrote:
A tidal wave is something completely different to a tsunami, but a lot of people don't seem to realise this. For the last time, it is not. Get hold of a dictionary and look up the meaning. Maybe its a common use of it, but its not correct, as those of us with degrees in geology know. It may have become an alternative name for those who don't know better, but the original meaning is quite different. Regards, Stuart Hi, reading your reply, I was hoping you would actually explain what the difference is ... In my dictionary tidal wave: 1. a nontechnical name for tsunami 2. an unusually large incoming wave, often caused by high winds and spring tides tsunami a huge destructive wave, esp one caused by an earthquake. Also called: tidal wave. Does this mean that in the common use they are synonymous, but only tsunami is really caused by earthquakes? Regards Griz |
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