doublets / langue / traffic

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Geoff wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36425>:

<< But doublets exist. They were a close-fitting jacket worn by men
between the 15th and 17th centuries. You have possibly heard of
'doublet and hose'? >>

I heard of doublets, the garment, long before I even heard of
doublets, a thin slice of opal with a slice of stronger stone glued on
the back, less valuable than opal all the way through, but more
valuable than triplets, a thin slice of opal with a slice of opaque
stone glued on the back and a slice of glass glued on the front. And I
heard of the opals long before I ever encountered the word 'singlet'.

An earlier phase of this conversation caused me to look up the
etymology of 'doublet' (the garment) and it was so named because it
had two layers of fabric. Doesn't that mean a lining? Which is not a
very unique feature of that garment.

Annemehr wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36518>:

<< Hang on, I just double-checked -- Nouveau/nouvelle is indeed one of
the exceptions! So it would precede the noun. >>

My friend says it changes the meaning whether 'nouveau' and 'ancien'
are before or after the noun. Ancien after the noun means 'ancient'
and ancien before the noun means 'former', such as mon ancien femme
for 'my ex-wife' and the well-known phrase 'le ancien regime'. 

I can't remember exactly how she said it, but putting nouveau before
the noun means it's kind of revolutionary, like 'Beaujolais nouveau'
is the newly available young wine just released for sale, and 'nouveau
Beaujolais' would be something made in the same region from the same
grape that was totally unlike real Beaujolais.

I'm rather ignorant about Christianity, but it occurred to me that for
the celebration of Pentecost, pastor may have *intended* to imply
something revolutionary, a whole new *kind* of language. Because isn't
Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and they
started speaking in a language that came from God?

Geoff wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36425>:

<< The nearside lanes. In other words, in the UK, the left hand lane
of a three lane road or dual carriageway; the right hand side in
countries who, just to be different <g>, drive on the right. 
Though I fail to see how that question arises from my post..... >>

Carol replied in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36428>:

<< I could have sworn that in the U.S., where we drive on the
right-hand side of the road, the "inside lane" would be the one
nearest to facing traffic, IOW, the left-hand lane, and farthest from
the shoulder or sidewalk, which abuts the right-hand lane (or,
sometimes, the right-turn lane). >>

Because Geoff spoke of car parts (hood/bonnet, trunk/boot), that
reminded me of one (of many!) bone of contention with my ex, that he
claimed I was wrong about which were the inside lanes and which were
the outside lanes.

So I took this opportunity to find out if he was merely claiming that
an erroneous British usage was correct, or if he was making the whole
thing up to be obnoxious. After all, it's OBVIOUS that the inside
lanes are the ones farthest inside the street, the fast lanes, nearest
the oncoming traffic and high-speed head-on collisions, and the
outside lanes are the ones closest to the outside of the street, the
slow lanes, closest to the sidewalks and pedestrians on surface
streets or the sound wall on the freeways.

The replies confirm that he wasn't just making it up from whole cloth. 

Carol replied in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36428>:

<< "freeways" (as opposed to toll roads, which are, I think, mostly an
Eastern phenomenon)  >>

The name 'freeway' means free of stop signs and cross traffic, not
free of payment. There is a freeway in Orange County, built by private
investors with Caltrans permission, named The Toll Road -- that's how
it's referred to on traffic reports, not by number. 

There is a current brew-ha-ha in Los Angeles about a plan to turn some
freeway HOV lanes into toll lanes -- I-10 east of downtown and I-110
south of downtown have been suggested -- with vast disagreement about
what the *facts* of the proposal are. For example, would the carpools
and the hybrids with stickers who now use those lanes, for free, have
to pay the toll to use those lanes? Proponents say no, opponents say yes.

Geoff wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36435>:

<< UK. We are taught that the left hand side (nearer the *pavement* if
there is one or the hard shoulder on a motorway) is the one to stay in
unless you are overtaking. >> [Emphasis added by Catlady.]

Yet another bone of contention with my ex! He snarled that American
drivers are ignorant idiots, who should be taught never to go into the
slow lane except for entering or leaving the freeway, and never to go
into the fast lane except for overtaking. And I told him that the
authorities hadn't built this lovely six lane (three in each
direction) freeway, now masquerading as a crowded parking lot, so that
two lanes each direction could be almost empty while the middle lane
was three times as crowded as now. So he hit me (also not unusual, but
I don't blame it on Britain).

By the way, is anyone going to mention that Brits say 'pavement' to
mean 'sidewalk'. My ex had some joke about a Brit who drives on the
pavement is drunk and so is an American who drives off the pavement.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36524>:

<< Better yet, follow the link in note 8 of the wikipedia entry to
<http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20on%20the%20left.htm>
and click on the link to "History and Origin."  >>

Which says, inter alia, <<After the Second World War, left-driving
Sweden, the odd one out in mainland Europe, felt increasing pressure
to change sides in order to conform with the rest of the continent.
The problem was that all their neighbours already drove on the right
side and since there are a lot of small roads without border guards
leading into Norway and Finland, one had to remember in which country
one was.>>

I heard one radio show discuss a two-lane road (one lane each way)
without signage that wandered back and forth across the Sweden-Norway
border, and how had drivers known when to drive on which side of that
road, and someone phoned in who claimed to have lived there and
commuted on the road in those days, who said that he and all his
neighbors solved the problem by driving in the middle of the road.
Well, I suppose it would just be the same as on one-lane roads, where
you have to watch out for on-coming vehicles and there are rules of
etiquette about which vehicle has to back up to a spot where it is
possible to pull off the road to let the other one pass -- I think it
is the one going uphill who has to back down.