dialect in novels

[Dennis R. Preston]

>You bet. And imagine how entymologists would react if they heard
>somebody call them crawdads "mid bugs"!


dInIs





>On Sat, 24 Feb 2001 14:00:13 -0500 "Dennis R. Preston"
><preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> writes:
>>
>>  I'm always yukkin it up up here to Michigan when they call them
>>  little critters crayfish.
>
>"Critters" is an interesting word. Entymologists commonly refer to the
>things they study as critters, and they do this because it is actually
>more precise than words that a layman might use and might sound more
>scholarly. So, for example, a gardener might refer to all those things
>eating his flowers and vegetables as "bugs". But to an entymologist a bug
>is a specific class of insects. A Japanese beetle is NOT a bug. Similarly
>to a lay person insects are bugs and beetles and spiders and such. But an
>entymologist knows that spiders are not insects. To get around the
>problem, they usually call the whole group of such things "critters."
>even in rather formal venues.
>
>D

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736