Small and Little

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:34 PM +0000 6/17/10, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>It seems to me that, as second language "imperfections" go, this one
>is little and tiny. His English is definitely better than my Swedish.
>
>And maybe he was just attributing to BP the point of view expressed
>in the Billy Joel song:

Wasn't that Randy Newman?

LH

>small people got no reason to live. Very subtle, very masterful.
>------Original Message------
>From: Cohen, Gerald Leonard
>Sender: ADS-L
>To: ADS-L
>ReplyTo: ADS-L
>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Small and Little
>Sent: Jun 17, 2010 10:20 AM
>
>I assume Swedish has the same use of "the little/small people" that
>German does, where the term ("die kleinen Leute") means roughly "the
>little guy" (i.e., those who are not the big bosses,
>wealthy/influential tycoons, etc.).  If so, I'm sure we deal here
>merely with the BP board chairman translating a Swedish phrase
>literally into English without being aware that its nuance is
>different in English.
>
>So his English is excellent but not perfect. And those of us who
>deal with foreign languages can empathize with that.
>
>Gerald Cohen
>
>________________________________
>
>Original message from Bill Palmer, Thu 6/17/2010 7:09 AM:
>
>These two words are nominal synonyms,  but definitely not
>interchangeable.
>
>If the BP board chairman had referred to the *little people*, it would
>have just been patronizing, but *small people* is not only that, but
>weird, too.  Surprisingly inartful word choice for a Swede, most of whom
>speak English more precisely than native speakers.
>
>Bill Palmer
>
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