OT for Lia and other spellers

yup, that works for me too.
i do think farmers refer to animals coupling....must be two then, eh.
what about train cars coupling, again, two cars joining up.
but a couple-a ways is indeed a vague number, doesnt really need to be
specific, eh.
a couple is two when referring (rr?) to people unless its context is vague,
as 'i'll invite a couple of them around for a **** up.'
oops did i say that.
omg, cant take me anywhere, lol.
hugz,
jeanne
--
san-fran at ihug dot co dot nz
nzlstar on yahoo msg'r
http://community.webshots.com/user/nzlstar

"frood" wrote in message
m...
"A couple" is 2, but "a couple-a" is from 1-5. I'm part of a married
couple, and I know a couple-a ways to fix collard greens.

--
Wendy
http://griffinsflight.com/Quilting/quilt1.htm
De-STUFF email address to reply
"Julia Altshuler" wrote in message
...
Here's a regional usage that I haven't seen discussed befo What's the
meaning of "couple"? Is it closer to two or few?


I grew up in Miami. "Couple" meant a vague small number. It be two, but
it could also be one or 3. Who's counting. A couple of candies meant a
small handful, smaller than a few, not a definite number.


I went to college in New Orleans. I was out of college and chatting with
a friend there from New Jersey. I don't remember how we got on the
subject, but he insisted that "couple" meant "two" as in a pair. He was
adamant that it couldn't mean anything else. When two people are dating,
they make a "couple," and anything else is kinky. We were always getting
into competitive discussions like this, and I normally won the ones about
words so I couldn't have been more surprised when I got the dictionary
and found that one of the definitions of "couple" was "two items of the
same kind; a pair." Boy do I hate it when I'm sure I'm right then I'm
not.


Fast forward 25 years. I work in a wine and cheese shop in New England.
The customer was buying a number of items that I was getting for her and
putting in a basket. She asked for a couple of packaged sausages that
were behind the counter. As I was reaching for them, I asked her how many
she'd like. She was a nice lady and so not truly perturbed, but I
thought I caught a touch of "what sort of idiot are you" in her voice as
she answered "two." (At that point I laughed and explained that I'd only
recently been coming to the conclusion that "couple" could have a
regional meaning; she understood. The conversation turned to
regionalisms, and I liked her more than ever.)


Later that week I was talking again with my friend who was visiting.
She's originally from Hattiesberg. We met in New Orleans. She's lived
up here where I do in the Northeast and now lives in London. Naturally,
we were talking about New Orleans and her family down South. All of a
sudden I asked her the meaning of "couple." She laughed and said "well,
that depends." The way I grew up it was an indiscriminate number, a
small one, but not definite, but up here (shrug) ..." And she let her
voice trail off.


It's the funniest thing. I don't have what you would call a Southern
accent, not from Miami. I adopted "y'all" and "all y'all only in New
Orleans. I understand when a casual acquaintance, male or female,
possibly a clerk in a store or a server in a restaurant, calls me
"sweetheart" or "doll" or "babe," but those words don't trip off my
tongue with any degree of ease. And yet somehow I got the Southern
definition of "couple" not the Northeastern one.


So here's the question: What does "couple" mean to you? Is it "a few"?
Or "two"?


--Lia

Ooooh don't start.....

--
Sharon from Melbourne Australia (Queen of Down Under)
http://www.geocities.com/shazrules/craft.html (takes a while to load)
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/shazrules/my_photos (same as website but
quicker)

"Liz & Allan MacDonald" wrote in message
newsR64f.4501$p_.3939@trndny05...
There's also eensy weensy...

Sally Swindells wrote:
Here its Incy Wincy.

--
Sally at the Seaside~~~~~~~
http://community.webshots.com/user/sallyswin

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 17:37:33 +1000, "Sharon Harper"
wrote:


LOL - I get into heaps of trouble over that (being from NSW and all).
Tell
me is it "Incy Wincy Spider who climbed up the water spout" or "Itsy
Bitsy
Spider"??? We all know he got washed out when down came the rain but
cannot
agree on whether he was incy wincy or itsy bitsy.

Everybody who responded to this thread with lists of pet peeves needs to
read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynn Truss. Release your Inner Stickler!
Roberta in D

"Julia in MN" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
I am bothered by hearing nu-cu-lar instead of nu-cle-ar and re-la-tor
instead of re-al-tor

Julia in MN
--
This message has been scanned for viruses by Norton Anti-Virus

http://webpages.charter.net/jaccola/

---and "tore-nament " for tournament. I hear that on TV a lot !...

"Phyllis Nilsson" wrote in message
...
One that drives me nuts is pronouncing tour as "tore" instead of "toor".

Sharon Harper wrote:
what about pasgetti instead of spaghetti? Or aks instead of ask? But
what
about the plain old fashioned forgetting to say please and thank you????
Drives me nuts. mmm-hmmm, it does.

Oh, I meant to read that book!!....Thanks for the reminder !!. I heard about
it months ago...Mary



Everybody who responded to this thread with lists of pet peeves needs to
read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynn Truss. Release your Inner Stickler!
Roberta in D

A couple is two of something. I used to hear people say " a couple,
three"---usually in
for an answer requiring a number...
How many hamburgers do you want???..
Oh,, a couple, three. LOL.....Mary


" ...
Here's a regional usage that I haven't seen discussed befo What's
the meaning of "couple"? Is it closer to two or few?


I grew up in Miami. "Couple" meant a vague small number. It be two,
but it could also be one or 3. Who's counting. A couple of candies
meant a small handful, smaller than a few, not a definite number.

I'm sorry, but I don't see the difference. May be because I am from
Lawn Guyland.

I teach a developmental reading class and when doing phonics
instruction, I often have to demonstatrate the difference between our
NY accents and the ways words should be pronounced. I have them do it
- it makes them laugh - it helps them remember.

By the way, how to you spell "OPOSTA"? Used in a sentence, "I am
oposta take the bus home from school." - this from a 10 year old.

Linda
PATCHogue, NY
On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 00:54:40 -0400, Phyllis Nilsson
wrote:

One that drives me nuts is pronouncing tour as "tore" instead of "toor".

When I taught HS, the teacher I shared a room with had a rather
gruesome picture of a kid standing over his mother with the caption,
"I'll have to axe my mother."

An interesting aside I learned in a linguistics class:

The use of the word Yous (as in: Yous are going to be quilting this
afternoon) in NYC, particularly Brooklyn came about because of the
large numbers of European immigrants from countries that had both
singular and plural forms of the word "YOU". As they were learning
English, they could not internalize the idea that "YOU" in English
could be both singular and plural.

Linda
PATCHogue, NY

On 16 Oct 2005 11:06:13 GMT, dogsnus wrote:

More here that is used today...and I noticed that axe is there...
still used in NE England apparently.

I , too, like regional accents. A town we moved to years ago...only 100
miles north in the same
state had different ways with words. I can remember people saying be-uns
for beans,
be-uts for beats, draw for drawer and in both towns a lot of "ayuh" for yes.
Surprisingly
"ayuh" seems to be a think of the past. I'm sure that TV has a lot to do
with many changes.
BTW...what does "yat" mean?..... Also, women would say that they were going
to do their
"tradin' " ...instead of grocery shopping. I was amazed at how many
people that lived NO, LA , that we
heard interviewed on TV, that didn't seem to have any regional accents.
Also, so many diff.
ways of saying the words " New Orleans" !... Mary

"Axe" is also said often in the New Orleans area, as is "ambuLANCE",
and "yat".
New Orleans has what is called a "Brooklynesque" accent, unique
to the area and not at all what is usually thought of when thinking
of a Southern accent. They also have their very own terms such
as my SIL who says "locker" for "closet". Nowhere else have I ever
hear the road median referred to as "neutral ground". Accents
and languages fascinate me and I've had a blast these last two years
listening to the locals down here around N'awlins. The cadence
of the speech was also different that what I'd thought prior
to moving here-more rapid.

Here's a favorite site of mine explaining some of the local
venacular & terminology. While done humorously there is a great deal of
truth to it. http://www.gumbopages.com/yatspeak.html

Also of possible interest:
http://www.experienceneworleans.com/glossary.html
http://www.experienceneworleans.com/glossary.html
http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/REF/dial-map.html

Terri

I can remember one guy in my class , when the teacher would reprimand him,
saying ..
"I wont ( ?) doin' nothin'. The teacher didn't mind the dropping of the
g's but
did take him to task for using a non-existant word !!...One time he kept
arguing with her until
he finally said, " Judas Priest !"..He then had to write 100 times on the
blackboard ( see how old I am ! ):
"I will not take the Lord's name in vain" !!!...Mary


By the way, how to you spell "OPOSTA"? Used in a sentence, "I am
oposta take the bus home from school." - this from a 10 year old.

Linda
PATCHogue, NY