Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT 2036 - 2040, Oct 17th - 21st 2011
Carl-E:
--- Quote from: Near Lurker on 19 Oct 2011, 07:58 ---
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 19 Oct 2011, 06:47 ---And my folks live in Massachussetts. "The City" is Boston, to be avoided at all costs...
--- End quote ---
They probably live east of Worcester, then, is my point. Northampton's waaay outside the radius where people call Boston "the city."
--- End quote ---
Yeah, in Hyannis, the armpit of Cape Cod.
Someone else asked why Boston's to be avoided. The streets are narrow, ill-marked, and the surrounding maze of highways was unnavigable. I say "was" because the "big dig" was supposed to take care of all that. What it did was make the mess worse for several years, run over budget, and drive the last few nervous travellers away. It's finished now, but the bad taste still lingers...
That, and my folks are pushing 80. Mom's arthritic and dad's deaf as a post. So they've kind of given up.
All for the better.
--- Quote from: Near Lurker on 19 Oct 2011, 07:58 ---
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 19 Oct 2011, 06:44 ---
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 19 Oct 2011, 06:29 ---NorthHampton
--- End quote ---
I'm interested to note that in many of the Northamptons (one "h") in the US, there is a parallel usage of "North Hampton" in names of institutions. In the town of Northampton in the UK, there is no such usage that I'm aware of. (Same goes for Southampton.)
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Sometimes I've seen it abbreviated "NH," when it's clear from context that can't mean "New Hampshire" or "New Haven," but actually writing it out as two words, especially in CamelCase, is what folks call "wrong."
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Well, excuuuuse me! I just couldn't remember if it was one or two words, so went with the mashup.
gangler:
Over here the city just means the one you're in. Just like how if I said "The house is looking lovely today" you'd assume I meant the one we were standing in and not the whitehouse. As such the issue sounds a little foreign to me.
I'm personally of the opinion that we need to stop calling places like New York and Los Angeles cities anyway. If your population is in the hundred thousands you're a city. If your population is in the millions then you're not a city anymore. You're a Metropolis. You don't have cityfolk. You have Metropolitans.
I suppose the phrase that would substitute "Heading to The City" or "Going up to town" over here would be "Heading North". We all know what that means.
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: Andy147 on 19 Oct 2011, 10:30 ---Really? I've never heard anyone say "up to town" to mean "to London". (I'm not sure I've heard anyone say it at all).
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--- Quote from: pwhodges on 19 Oct 2011, 06:44 ---In most of the UK, at least among the older generation, saying "I'm going up to town" pretty much always means London.
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OK, I may be half a century behind with this; but Lord Peter Wimsey could be in an ancestral pile in the Lake District and say it perfectly naturally, and my parents used it (though we were not so far North).
Interlude:
Faye might not have meant it as "The City." If someone invites you to a restaurant you can say, "I've already been to the restaurant, and I hated it" without it implying anything more than what you said. That's how I took it. She's already been to THAT city. Then again, I live a little more south, and I would definitely not think of NYC as THE city. If anyone said "I'm going to the city," I would have no idea where they meant. Haha.
Hebes:
Well, if anyone wanted to know what DJ Squeekz looks like...
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