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

 PQ>  And that is why I've never feared purple people
 PQ>  eaters.  :-P

 AH>  Or ferocious fire-breathing dragons, or enormous
 AH>  meat-eating dinosaurs?

 PQ>  The order of adjectives supports an old joke: I'm
 PQ>  safe because I'm not purple.


            Ah... good one!  I hadn't heard it before.  :-)



 AH>  You've reminded me of another song here too... i.e.
 AH>  the one about an "itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka
 AH>  dot bikini".  It seems to me that with all of the above
 AH>  we're not afaid of them because, if they ever actually
 AH>  existed, they don't pose any real danger to us... and
 AH>  because, if the series is very long &/or very silly,
 AH>  it makes us laugh.

 PQ>  Holy mackerel!  There's some wild old memories you're
 PQ>  digging up there.


            I may be showing my age... but I know Jenny's phone number too.  I
have a joke for you which I found in the READER'S DIGEST years ago.  According
to the author his grandparents say "gramophone", his parents say "phonograph",
he says "record player"... and his kids say "what's a record player?"  Our kid
knows a lot of words others her age don't know, including the above.  When she
was younger I often had to dummify my language to talk to other people's kids.
But nowadays she has friends who are intelligent enough to recognize what they
don't know & aren't ashamed to admit it.  I love students like that... [grin].



 PQ>  So, was it a white bikini?  


            I was wondering about the same thing until I remembered that polka
dots & coin dots (which were larger & typically worn by little old ladies 'way
back when) were almost invariably white in those days.  As I understand it the
bathing suit in question was probably bright yellow with white polka dots, and
the teenager who was wearing it desperately wanted to sport the latest fashion
from Europe but wasn't quite ready to do so on a public beach....  :-Q

            Anyway, I've been working on a theory that WRT clothing & textiles
we generally mention the background colour or predominant colour & add details
about the pattern or weave which indirectly provide more information as to any
other colours which may or may not be present... e.g. blue (denim) jeans, grey
tweed sports jacket, white damask linen tablecloth, yellow paisley scarf.  The
colour -> material sequence outlined by Mark Forsyth works there as well.  :-)



 AH>  Thankyou!  I hope other native speakers will join the fun.
 AH>  I also hope somebody will have noticed that I used "a"...
 AH>  not "an"... with "one-eyed".  ;-)

 PQ>  We probably accepted it as being correct without making
 PQ>  a specific check.


            I take that as a vote of confidence.  Some native speakers are not
handicapped by grade three rules which say "an" must be used before a vowel...
or which fail to explain why "an" may be used before words beginning with "h",
except when it isn't.  I didn't notice what I'd done until I re-read it later.
But I see how it might be confusing to other folks here, and I think I've come
up with a logical explanation for it if anybody needs one....  :-)



 PQ>  OTOH, I note with interest that you a use a single word
 PQ>  'thank you'.  Is that a Canadian thing?


            You've opened a nice can of worms there, my friend.  Give yourself
another gold star & fasten your seat belt... [chuckle].

            In short:  this spelling has been traced to Australia, Canada, the
UK, and the US.  If you prefer to be on the safe side, "thank you" is the most
widely accepted version... but many of its proponents seem to think you should
hyphenate it if you're using it as a noun or an adjective.  Like a few writers
on the Internet, however, I was taught to spell "thankyou" as one word... I've
been doing it for over thirty years... and until now I wasn't aware that it is
often regarded as incorrect.  Some folks see it as the wave of the future, and
FOWLER'S notes that it is becoming increasingly common in private letters & on
restaurant receipts.  In formal writing it is definitely not recommended.  :-)




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