"Railway"

[Wilson Gray]

Your point was clear to me, Lynne. You were making a general statement
about American English, with which I am in total agreement. My
comments were meant merely to add information about how these words
work in US BE and why they do so.

BTW, since no one has asked about it, I assume that the meaning of the
term, "running on the road," is either transparent or obvious from
context.

-Wilson

On 11/9/07, Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at sussex.ac.uk> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at SUSSEX.AC.UK>
> Subject:      Re: "Railway"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --On Thursday, November 8, 2007 1:24 pm -0500 Wilson Gray
> <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> > Perhaps because of my age and the fact that "running on the 'road" and
> > postal work were the primary "white-collar" jobs for black men, back
> > in the day, "railway station," like "railway" itself, sounds perfectly
> > American to me, regardless of the history of these terms in American
> > big business, in which, at the time, no black Americans participated.
>
> FWIW, my claim was not that 'railway station' was not AmE (not that I'd
> ever say it...) but that 'train station' is, or at least is felt to be so
> by older BrE speakers.  Sorry if that was less than explicit.
>
> L
>
> Dr M Lynne Murphy
> Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
> Arts B135
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QN
>
> phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
> http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
>
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