Ms. vs. Miss; to Dame or not to Dame (was Re: Titles)

[pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no]

Sorry about the previous posting.  Bloody Yahoo!

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Koinonia wrote on the main list:
> 
> In my understanding, "Miss" means "single woman" and "Mrs."
> means "married woman," which means one must assume (not polite)
> or ask a woman's marital status (also not polite) in order to
> grant her a title.  "Ms." was a great innovation because it
> granted women what men already enjoyed: the right to be
> addressed without their marital status being part of their title.

How do you pronounce Ms.?  I have always assumed it is pronounced 
as "Miss", but the way I read the posts on this subject, you can 
apparently hear the difference.

We have no equivalent for Ms. in Norway, perhaps because we are a 
rather informal country.  Students are even on first-name basis with 
their teachers (and many professors in university).

[snip]

> Amy Z
> generally untitled, until the happy day the Queen makes me a 
> Dame . . . oh, wait, Americans can't use "Sir" and "Dame," can
> they?  
> Shoot.

To my knowledge, while the Queen can award membership in the relevant 
orders to foreign citizens, these recipients do not receive the right 
to title themselves "Sir" or "Dame".  I believe it also is not common 
for foreign recipients to use the abbreviation connected with the 
order (the full title of Sir Humphrey from "Yes, Minister!" and Yes, 
Prime Minister!" is Sir Humphrey Appleby, K.C.M.G., for instance).  

I also have the understanding that British orders are not awarded to 
citizens in the other countries in the Commonwealth, as requested by 
these governments, such as Australia and Canada.  This is mainly due 
to a desire in these countries that the decision on who is to receive 
an award for service to, for instance, Canada, should rest with the 
Canadian government, not the British government in London.

FWIW, in the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Thistle, the 
female members are titled "Lady", rather than "Dame".