Railroad vs Railway?

You have to get everything to the back of your mouth/throat to pronounce the .oech.. bit, .erk.. really isn't it!

Regards, Greg.P.

Bugger - my guess is I would have got the same answer and still not understood it! ;-)

LOL! When did Mistwagenen stop operating?

Did you know that Rolls Royce (tentatively) named the model after the Royal Cloud the Royal Mist until the German agent objected?

Greg.P.

Two is still a single digit number. You need to learn how to spell "h-a-r-b-o-r" There is no 'u' in it. Ditto "a-l-u-m-i-n-u-m" only a single ' i ' .

Froggy,

Froggy @ thepond..com spake thus:

You know why the Brits chose "aluminium", don't you? Being the rectilinear folks they are, they wanted the name of the newly-discovered element to be orthogonal with the others (sodium, cadmium, etc.).

Which begs the question: What about oxygen, carbon, chlorine, gold, copper, lanthanum and manifold others that do not end in "ium"? What is to become of those?

I have an unobtanium (atomic number 113, atomic weight 287) mine modeled on my model railway. However I am going to have to remove the points going into it since the mine has never produced anything to date, and has never shipped a car. It now appears that unobtanium is only readily available inside the event horizon of black holes.

Froggy,

What about "Chemin de Fer" as in SNCF?

Way of iron Froggy,

In the mid to late 50s.

Froggy @ thepond..com spake thus:

I believe the only unobtanium mines are in Obscuristan.

By the way, is it related to upsidasium?

Very true, however it advances the current total twice as far towards double digits.

Of course there is - it reflects the way the word is pronounced.

That's only because you yanks can't cope with four syllable words, we wouldn't expect you to.

Regards, Greg.P.

I knew I'd overlooked something on my layout!

Greg.P.

IIRC the Italian designation for USA is gli stati uniti or SA for short.

Bob

Indeed. It has nothing to do with concatenating polysyllabic words; it has to do with affected spelling. This is the 21st Century man! It is time to throw off the affectations of the "Better than thou" class and streamline the lexicon. Clinging to old-fashioned, misspelled words is a thoroughgoing manifestation of one's curmudgeonliness.

Indeed. It has nothing to do with concatenating polysyllabic words; it has to do with affected spelling. This is the 21st Century man! It is time to throw off the affectations of the "Better than thou" class and streamline the lexicon. Clinging to old-fashioned, misspelled words is a thoroughgoing manifestation of one's curmudgeonliness.

Please re-write the above quoted text, demonstrating the effective use of words containing four or more syllables in the sentence. EXAMPLE: "A - mer - i - can", instead of "Yank".

I haven't the slightest difficulty understanding words of more than four syllables. Trust me on this one. I wouldn't prevaricate anent such an important issue. Oh, by the way, don't worry about spelling, since the problem is likely the way you were taught in the early years. It's not really your fault.

Froggy,

EXAMPLE: "A - mer - i - can", instead of "Yank".

No, that's pronounced "merkin". BTW, you should look that word up. :-)

-- Cheers

Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

I know you consider yourselves to be American and of course you are, but logic dictates that all people living in or of the Americas are Americans, so If you say "Americans" then I cannot be certain that you are Peruvians or Guatamalians or Mexicans. You have no name for yourselves or your country and "United States of Americans" is a bit wordy while "yanks" (note small "y") is a term recognised world wide without confusion.

Certainly, but yanks as a whole have settled on a simplified version of 'aluminium' which says it all.

I was quite happy spelling aluminium as I was taughr - you or whoever attempted to convince me that it should be dumbed down. ie, I'm the one being attacked.

Regards, Greg.P.

A railway is what you call your railroad after you've reorganized after the bankrupcty. Or vice-versa. :-)

Eric

LOL!

I suppose you're going to try to convince us that centre, metre and theatre are spelled incorrectly as well. {;^)

What about the "permanent way"?