Hi, Mark!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  I'll go so far as to spell "elite" without the
AH>  accent mark if it's an acceptable alternative
AH>  in Canadian English.  In that regard I concede
AH>  to US English.  But I also concede to UK English
AH>  when I say "trousers" because I realize "pants"
AH>  may have a different meaning in Old Blighty.

ml>  yeah but...

ml>  liar! liar! trousers on fire!


           Hanging on a telephone wire.  Yes, the kids in my neighbourhood said
 that when I was growing up... using "pants", of course.  ;-)



ml>  just doesn't work  


           Nor does (now that I see many younger Canadians haven't the faintest
 idea what we're on about when we use Imperial and/or US measurements):

                30 g of prevention is worth 454 g of cure

                                   or

                Approximately 2.4 km onward, approximately 2.4 km onward...
                Into the valley of death rode the six hundred

                                   or

                2.54 cm worm, 2.54 cm worm....  :-Q


Some things don't translate easily from one dialect to another.  Here is a joke
 I read in a British magazine years ago, for example, which may leave some of
my modem buddies wondering why it made such an impression on me at the time:

                Q.  A soldier, a sailor, and an airman were riding
                    together in a car.  Who was driving?

                A.  The soldier, because he had the khakis.


It's a pun.  Hereabouts "khaki" may be pronounced in either of two ways, one of
 which indeed sounds like "car key".  It seems to me that folks who live or
once lived in London... or whose recent ancestors did... generally prefer the
latter while USAians generally use a hard short "a" as they do in "drama" and
save the /r/ for situations where they can actually see it in print.  YMMV...
[chuckle].



AH>  I figured that out years ago when as a newlywed
AH>  I used the latter in the presence of a uncle-in-
AH>  law I hadn't met previously... [blush].

ml>  ooohhh... that sounds like a story just begging
ml>  to be shared 


           Thankyou.  I'm not sure I have much to tell, however.  For a variety
 of reasons I unexpectedly found myself alone with this person & both of us
were trying to make polite conversation.  I don't recall now why I mentioned
"pants"
... but I could tell by the look on his face that I'd made a faux pas.  My GAGE
 CANADIAN DICTIONARY informs me in definition #3 that this word may be used
with reference to underwear, but in those days I was working from an earlier
edition and (as is fairly typical of native speakers) hadn't looked up the word
 because I thought I knew & because none of my students seemed to have problems
 with it. Where we came from most people would specify "underpants" and/or use
a synonym. Meanwhile the only two individuals who might have been able to help
out because they'd experienced life on both sides of the ocean were effectively
 absent.  As soon as I saw his facial expression I knew what was going on in
his mind... but he was a schoolteacher too, and we managed to get on the same
wave length.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)