Small and Little

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

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: 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

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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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org