Realators--meet on in FeBOOary in the Liberry

[sistermagpie]

> > Geoff:
> > The only word in this lot which is famliiar to me as a UK English
> > speaker is 'hospitalise' which has been around a long time.
> > 
> > I am surprised by 'burglarise'. What's the matter with the good 
old
> > verb 'burgle'? It's much easier to write and to say....
> > 
> > Magpie:
> > I couldn't say why that happened, but can only offer that "He's 
been 
> > burgled" sounds like like a joke--like something out of a comedy 
> > sketch where people are pretending to be faux-Dickensian.:-) "His 
> > house was burglarized" is just, you know, a construction I've 
always 
> > heard, though I acknowledge "burgled" as being valid too.
> 
> Geoff:
> I don't see why that phrase should sound odd... I had my house 
broken 
> into two years ago and when I said to people, "We came back from 
> holiday to find that we had been burgled", no one treated it as 
funny. 
> It's used as a standard word on radio and TV.
> 
> 'Burglarised' is one of those American words which make me cringe. 
> It sounds awkward and cumbersome.

Magpie:
Of course--that's why it's regional. One said completely normal to 
you, while the other is cumbersome. One sounds normal to me while the 
other seems funny or twee or something. I've never heard the 
word "burgled" on US TV or radio that I came remember. In that 
situation I'd probably say, "Our house was broken into while we were 
on vacation."

Most more importantly--I'm sorry to hear you *were* burgled. That's 
terrible!

-m