On Mar 19, 2009, at 15:36, jeria...@aol.com wrote:
It reminded me of the day Lacefairy (Lori) arrived
at my house with a newly-purchased automobile with a vanity license
plate
"Lacefry".[...] Imagine what people who do not know her interpret
this to mean!!! :)
My licence plate used to be TNLACE, which I thought was quite
straightforward. Then, someone visiting asked "why Tennessee, if you
live in Virginia?" (TN is the abbreviation for Tennessee). So, now,
it's T N LACE and nobody asks me any questions about it any more :)
Vis the plural of fish and sheep, versus plural of trousers, pants and
scissors. We treat them differently, because they're vestigial remnants
of a more complex counting system. We now have only singular (one) and
plural (more than one). But there used to be singular, dual, group and
plural. Fish and sheep are remnants of group number, trousers etc of
dual number. It's easier in Polish, where we *still* have all four
(though also in vestigial form), with their own special endings.
English has gotten rid of all the grammatical non-essentials :)
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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