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Discussion Groups / British English / July 2007An observation on settlements in Britain
Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The Town Crier, but very few towns do. Just a thought. G DAEB COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 SIPSTON -- > Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does > seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The > Town Crier, but very few towns do. > > Just a thought. O Apostrophe! Where is thy sting?  SignatureJohn Briggs > > Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does > > seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > O Apostrophe! Where is thy sting? > John Briggs Pub' - contraction of "Public House". Archaic and unneccessary? Yes. Grammatically incorrect? Not exactly. G DAEB COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 SIPSTON -- In uk.culture.language.english on Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:01:37 -0700, FCS <sipston_777@my-deja.com> wrote: }On Jul 9, 9:27 am, "John Briggs" <john.brig...@ntlworld.com> wrote: }> > Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does }> > seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The }> > Town Crier, but very few towns do. }> }> > Just a thought. }> }> O Apostrophe! Where is thy sting? } }> John Briggs } }Pub' - contraction of "Public House". } }Archaic and unneccessary? Yes. } }Grammatically incorrect? Not exactly. Almost no native Englishman will refer to a pub as anything other than a pub in normal conversation, if you say "public House" the native will look at you oddly. If a pub is refereed to as a Public House then this will be in formal, legal, licensing, police etc stuff > Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does > seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The > Town Crier, but very few towns do. Leaving the apocatastrophe aside, I find from a quick Google search that there are pubs of that name in the towns of Weston-super-Mud, South Woodham Ferrers, Monmouth, Chelmsford, Bexhill on Sea, and Exmouth. That's before I ran out of patience. What brought that comment on? Paul Burke >> Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does >> seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > Exmouth. That's before I ran out of patience. What brought that > comment on? A surfeit of trolls? SignatureJohn Briggs > > Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does > > seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Woodham Ferrers, Monmouth, Chelmsford, Bexhill on Sea, and Exmouth. > That's before I ran out of patience. What brought that comment on? A memory which occasionally needs to be reminded of things. I'm glad I did bung it up here, albeit attracted a variety of mutterings and accusations I could interpret as a cicumlocution of "f.ck off" Town Criers are a long-standing tradition and I'm working on the basis that Canterbury and Winchester were counted as "cities" by Chaucer's time and the word is credited as OFr (via L) rather than simply of Latin from the Roman Era, yet the word town is of Germanic origin. Now I've the chance to sit down with a dictionary open I see: "town" has a subsidiary definition which does include cities in that it applies to the centre (and this usage is consistent with people's usages in smaller cities I've lived in); that "crier" is listed on its own as a functional role, albeit only pertaining to the culture of a court of justice in contemporary usage. As people say of mutations in Welsh, once you are a speaker of the language the mutations come as second nature because they are easier to say. With this in mind I had been thinking along the lines of it being due both to the stress pattern of the rhythm of the consonants and the contrast in vowel sounds with the tongue low in the mouth for town, and higher for crier. But having clarified my understanding of the range of traditional and historical meanings of "town" to include the commercial and administratiive centres of cities, the areas around which town criers would walk to orate the news I now suggest that familiarity alone may be why it seems (to me as a first-language Anglophone) somehow easier to say than "city crier", although the nearest equivalents we do have, being the street-vendors of newspapers, tend to drop the "ti" syllable in "city" when advertising vocally (In My eXperience) > Paul Burke That's all really. It interests me. It is language use in a cultural context that so far as I know is distinctly British if not exclusively English. Even if you lot think I'm sad f.cking windbag waste-of- bandwidth (streamed any movies recently?) I asked out of interest. G DAEB COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 SIPSTON -- > Maybe I haven't lived enough places. But it does > seem that plenty of cities have pub's named The > Town Crier, but very few towns do. > > Just a thought. The difference between a town and a city (you seem to live in England) is currently one of governmental recognition. Historically, it was related to the possession, or not, of a christian cathedral. In reality of course, if one disregards the issue of 'inner city funding', there is no difference between the two. In certain other languages, there is one word for the two things and that seems perfectly reasonable. I know a town which has a pub called 'The frog and cucumber', yet many / most / all other towns do not. Just a thought. SignatureBlue Sow |
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