A Conversation for Deep Thought: The Railway Car of Babel

Man the stations!

Post 1

Caiman raptor elk - Inside big box, thinking.


Dutch have it easy, we just call it 'station' with the aforementioned discussion. In English, I would use railway station, because the train isn't always there, the railway is. This doesn't work for buses though, so we do have the 'bus station' In Dutch, because otherwise it would probably be the 'road station', which isn't clear enough.

The 'older version' discussion (UK-US) also goes for large parts of Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans. The latter two tending toward creating their own words for new concepts, whereas the Dutch tend to adopt the 'foreign' words that are already there.

Sometimes, priorities determine the naming. US soccer and football are football and American football to me. Nort Americans referring to 'hockey' usually mean the cold and slippery full body armour variety, while here it is the grassy, bally, shorts / short skirts sort of thing that is prevalent.


Man the stations!

Post 2

Dmitri Gheorgheni, Post Editor

Good point about Dutch, Flemish, and Afrikans. That's true of any language that has had migrations, too, like the different varieties of German from Siberia (Volga Germans) to Pennsylvania and Texas.

English is a wonderfully flexible language that has given birth to any number of pidgins and creoles - which makes it kind of silly when certain parties on a small island attempt to claim that they 'own' it. smiley - winkeye It would be like, say, the Athenians in the 1st Century trying to regulate koine Greek. smiley - laugh


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