"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , David
wrote:
Thou vain unchin-snouted knave!

How about 'mauchit', 'glaikit', and 'crabbit' then? :-)

Sounds like a firm of Scottish solicitors:-)

But "tatty-bogle" needs to be added to the list.
Iain

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Iain Churches" wrote in message
news
Hmm. Interesting. I have just asked my Swedish colleague if he
can diffeerentiate between "service" and "repair" in English. He
looked at me as if I were mad, and said "Surely the two are
totally different things? You repair something that is broken,
but service something as a part of routine scheduled maintenance"

Glad to see that someone here has at least a passing familiarity with the
word that really makes the difference clear

Erm, actually Arnie he is not "here" and you are the
main reason for that. But nevertheless......

Maintenance. Too bad so many people here are so full of themselves and
their own perceptions of their authority and perfection.

And, too bad also that others can't differentiate between
two different words in English. The words "service and "repair"
are not synonymous. Interesting to note that the only two people
here who think they are do not speak "proper" (UK) English.

Iain

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:
It is all a result of their extreme parochialism. I can't remember the
numbers, but I do remember being deeply shocked at how many of them
have never owned a passport, for example. It has become a culture in
which ignorance is lauded.

Especially how often the Hollywood myth of the US winning WW2 for 'us' is
trotted out.
Oh - and the vast amount of money they extracted from the UK for their
help is also conveniently forgotten.


IIRC we only finished paying off that debt in the 1990s.

Cheers

Ian

"Don Pearce" wrote in message

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:42:56 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Don Pearce" wrote in message

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:05:45 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

You fail to grasp that service is actually a very
generalized word. It includes both maintenance and
repair, and it includes many other things.

No, we are not failing to grasp.

The following paragraph may represent a new high in UKRA
miscommunication. I am talking about one word and you
respond as if you were talking about 2 words:

We are quite clear about
the distinction. If they meant the same thing we
wouldn't need two words .

The two words | am referring to are service and repair.
The same two words we have been discussing all through
this thread. Now do try to keep up.

Arrogant little gutter snipe, are we today? Midol days upon you? ;-)

Service - the name of a large superset of operations

Repair - a member of the set called service.

Maintain - another member of the set called service.

I guess that is another big difference between the UK
and the USA. You act like your dictionary has only one
meaning for service, and our dictionaries list something
like 21 different meanings for the word!

Plenty of definitions, many of them useful.

So why not avail yourself of them? You know that just because it comes from
the US doesn't mean that it is bad. ;-)

However that
is all wide of the point. We are discussing the specific
difference between service and repair, which you fail to
grasp.

I grasp it very well. Howerver I ROTFLMAO at your lack of an adequate world
view. It is either laugh or cry! :-(

Of course from what I've heard about the UK attitude
towards service, whether in the electronics shop or the
coffee shop, I think I understand a lot of the
confusion that you guys are experiencing. No concept
of service. No service attitude.

What confusion would that be? We English (and apparently
Swedes too) understand the difference between service
and repair perfectly. The confusion obviously lies with
those who muddle them up.

In this context USA English indicates that repair is a
subset of service.

This is uk.rec.audio. Nobody here cares how US English
defines a word.

Intersting that us allegedly provincial colonials can grasp the larger
picture, and some of the blokes in the mother land can't.

This is UK group that works in English English.

Sue me for being a citizen of the world.

In the US we consider the "Service Industry" to be a
major business segment. We've profited well by
educating the rest of the world about the meaning of
the word service. Pity that it did not take better in
the UK.

You are joking, right? Service in the US comes from
pimply teenagers more interested in dating than serving,
or superannuated grandmothers in unsuitable mini skirts
and support tights. I sigh with relief when I get back
here to be served by actual, real people.

The exclusion of teenagers and retirees from the set of
legitimate providers of service if not the entire human
race seems to be another problem that you struggle with.

Again you miss the point - get it totally backwards in
fact. Over here, waiting staff are drawn from the widest
demographic.

Don't puff yourself up over that.

It is in the US that they are typically part
of an underclass - the poor student, the penniless
retired, the immigrant without benefit of green card etc.

Interesting that you have become so expert about life in the US after
spending how many minutes here?

Service staff in the US is drawn from as wide of a group of people as
anywhere. Next time you visit here (if ever!) do try to visit a better class
of service establishment!

So no, it is nothing to do with exclusion of teenagers
over here.

Exactly what do you do with your teenagers, if you don't let them work at
McDonalds?

BTW it appears that we're going to seriously damage
Toyota in world markets because they did not adequately
learn the meaning of the word service from us. We
tried! To the world it looks like they did themselves
in. Our hands are clean but we are the ones most likely
to profit from their stumbles, all centering on the
meaning of the word service.

Meanings, surely? You are now using the words in a
quite different context to the one the discussion was
about.

You mean that you admit that word meanings can depend on
context?

That would be real progress!

It is what I have been telling you all along.

You have me fooled!

In the
context of sending things away to be attended to, service
and repair have totally different meanings. It is you who
have been insisting that they don't.

I have never said any such thing, and defy you to stop blathering and quote
me saying any such thing.

FWIW I've always had pretty good service in hotels and
resturants in the UK, but I have only been in the the
more civilized parts that foreign tourists commonly
visit, like on the Heathrow side of London.

Visit the rest too. Go to Brick Lane where the
Bangladeshi immigrant community gathers and enjoy some
of the best curry you ever tasted. And of course go to
the bagel shop any time day or night for a salt beef
bagel second to none.

That would be your conceit, that no excellent
Bengladeshi cooks ever set up business in the USA.
There are only about 10 times more Bengladeshi in the UK
than USA. Given that we never mistreated ours as you
did, it is possible that we have the far better
selection.

How did you get that from my reply?

Reading between the lines and recalling a little world history about how the
British treated their other colonies, you know the ones that didn't slip
free of the yoke of the UK as early as we did.

I was urging you to
go further afield than the Heathrow side of London. You
probably won't get murdered if you do. Everywhere in
London is civilized, for a reasonably broad definition of
the word.

For me, everywhere in Detroit is civilized, with a "reasonably broad
definition of the word." ;-). Not necessarily literate, but in its way
civilized. ;-)

As for service, it should be what you want it to be.
Personally I cringe when I go into a restaurant and
somebody I don't know announces "Hi, I'm Brian and I'm
going to be your waiter this evening". Two things - 1. I
couldn't give a crap what his name is and 2. I will
probably guess he is the waiter when he hands me a
menu".

Yes, we are aware of how class conscious some in the UK
are. We can actually stomach the idea that the people
who serve us are equals or sometimes even our betters,
merely following a different avocation. Therefore, their
name is important to us.

See my reply above.

Just an example of how I forced you to backpedal.

We don't use an underclass for
service, and I personally never encounter class
consciousness - unless I go to the US and see how people
need to dress to impress.

By some accounts it is the U.S. underclass that acutely feels the need to
dress to impress. The more intelligent and mature people over hear dress for
the occasion, usually with the intent of blending.

Apparently the attitude towards the primacy of the word
service is lost in other parts of the UK. Sad.

At this point, you're doing a better job than average of
convincing me that I'm right about the UK not getting
the fullness of the concept of service.

And thus you have failed to grasp everything you have
been told.

What you do not seem to grasp is the fact that there can be considerable
benefit to not swallowing whole everything that one is told.

Sue me for never being good at learning by rote. ;-)

"David Looser" wrote in
message
"Don Pearce" wrote


And thus you have failed to grasp everything you have
been told.

I can't make up my mind whether Arny is being
deliberately obtuse as a wind-up, or genuinely fails to
understand the thread.

Neither.

But he's made himself look ridiculous whichever is true.

Wrong again. You just aren't self-conscious enough to see yourselves.

I also never realised just
what a typical American he is with his blind belief in
the American myth.

American myth? And there is no such thing as a UK myth?

LOL!

"Don Pearce" wrote in message

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:28:50 -0000, "David Looser"
wrote:

"Don Pearce" wrote


And thus you have failed to grasp everything you have
been told.


I can't make up my mind whether Arny is being
deliberately obtuse as a wind-up, or genuinely fails to
understand the thread. But he's made himself look
ridiculous whichever is true. I also never realised just
what a typical American he is with his blind belief in
the American myth.

David.

It is all a result of their extreme parochialism.

One difference between the UK and the US is that we were able to assemble
the common continent-wide political, industrial, agricultural, and
residential organization that Europe can still only dream of close to 200
years ago. Well 200 years would be controversial, but surely 100 years ago.
We did it without modern transportation or communication. It was an act of
vision, will, self-sacrifice, and intelligence. Many of our states are
larger, wealthier, and more populous than even many of your larger,
wealthier countries. The only truely impressive European country is
Germany.

There are what 4 times more states in the US than there are countries in
Europe? The moral equivalent of the news and government of the UK in the US
might be called California or Texas. We have all that and 48 more! (50 more
if you realize that Mexico and Canada are effectively quasi-states of the
US.)

I can't
remember the numbers, but I do remember being deeply
shocked at how many of them have never owned a passport,
for example.

That's because we can go to at least 52 what you Europeans somwhat amusingly
call countries and travel 1,000s of miles without a passport and have been
able to do that for at least 100 years.

It has become a culture in which ignorance is lauded.

Prove it. We have more effective institutions of learning almost by accident
then the UK has on purpose.

"Ian Bell" wrote in message

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article
, Don
Pearce wrote:
It is all a result of their extreme parochialism. I
can't remember the numbers, but I do remember being
deeply shocked at how many of them have never owned a
passport, for example. It has become a culture in which
ignorance is lauded.

Especially how often the Hollywood myth of the US
winning WW2 for 'us' is trotted out.
Oh - and the vast amount of money they extracted from
the UK for their help is also conveniently forgotten.


IIRC we only finished paying off that debt in the 1990s.

Probably with zero interest and with highly devalued currency. ;-)

In article , Iain Churches
wrote:

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , David
wrote:
Thou vain unchin-snouted knave!

How about 'mauchit', 'glaikit', and 'crabbit' then? :-)

Sounds like a firm of Scottish solicitors:-)

Indeed. The Edinburgh versions of "Sue, Grabbit, and Run" ;-

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
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Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article ,
Arny Krueger wrote:
One difference between the UK and the US is that we were able to
assemble the common continent-wide political, industrial, agricultural,
and residential organization that Europe can still only dream of close
to 200 years ago.

Do us a favour. There's more harmonisation of laws within Europe than
between many US states.

--
*Go the extra mile. It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in
message

In article
, Arny
Krueger wrote:

One difference between the UK and the US is that we were
able to assemble the common continent-wide political,
industrial, agricultural, and residential organization
that Europe can still only dream of close to 200 years
ago.

Do us a favour. There's more harmonisation of laws within
Europe than between many US states.

I'm sure that your internal propagandists tell you that. The exceptions are
pretty glaring, like UK and the rest of Europe not even sharing the same
currency.

BTW, how many countries in Europe are still not part of the EU?

Let me know when you all do very basic things that we initated and largely
perfected over 300 years ago like all speaking the same language...