LL-L "Lexicon" 2003.02.17 (04) [E]

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From: Dana Lockhart <lockhdr at wku.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2003.02.16 (13) [E]

>>Secondly, _queuing_ cannot of course be an American
>>form, as the word _queue_ is absent in American
>>English.
>
>Is it? I see no marks in my dictionaries. What is it replaced by
>then, like in the technical sense, as a data structure in programming?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary 'To Queue' first entered the
English Language in 1837 in the UK. Since American English had already
separated from British English, Americans never adopted the word. I honestly
never heard the word Queue until I was in an English class in Germany as a
exchange student. Generally the word line (i.e.. to line up, to form a line)
is used. However, queue is used in Computer Sciences in a technical sense
(to
avoid all the ambiguities with the word 'line'). The technical use of queue
is
on the decline however. The only Americans who use queue in everyday
language
are Computer Science majors  trying hard to appear to be sophisticated. This
is just an example of how American English has retained older language
constructs than British English.

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Lexicon
>
>Ruud (above) responding to Ian Parsley's message under "Orthography":
>
>> 13:19 16-2-2003 -0800, Lowlands-L:
>> >Secondly, _queuing_ cannot of course be an American
>> >form, as the word _queue_ is absent in American
>> >English.
>>
>> Is it? I see no marks in my dictionaries. What is it replaced by
>> then, like in the technical sense, as a data structure in programming?
>
>"Queue" *is* used in American English, albeit far more rarely and mostly in
>specialized jargon, such as in computer programming and networking jargon.
>It is true that Americans do not use "queue" and "queuing" with reference
to
>people standing in line, in which cases "line" and "lining up" tend to be
>used instead.  I dare say that many American speakers will  not understand
>the words, certainly not easily when used in this latter sense.  I had to
>switch from "queue" to "line" when I moved to the United States.
>
>Regards,
>Reinhard/Ron
>
>----------
>
>From: Alannah Stepa <astepa at shaw.ca>
>Subject: Frank Verhoft's request for information
>
>I sent a personal reply to Frank indicating that I had gone to work in
>Holland many years ago and I did not have a big problem learning the
>language as so many of the words are similar to English with changes to
>spelling and pronunciation. They also use many French words and I had
>studied that in school.
>Some phrases I never really understood the translation of nor the use of
>them in different situations.
>The main problem myself, and other English people had was with phone
numbers
>because of the formatting of the numbers in pairs, not our standardized 3
>and 4 groupings.
>The ij letter in words is a more logical use in many words such as ijs,
mij,
>dijk than the English forms, ice, my, dyke.
>
>The Japanese have problems with articles and prepositions as they do not
>exist in the Japanese language. For the past five years we have had
Japanese
>college students living with us and I spent 2 years tutoring university
>English to another Japanese boy.
>TOEFL, (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is written in American, not
>Canadian, so for school here, in Canada, they have to use the English
>spelling but to write the exam they have to learn American.
>They have some problems learning "English" because our word processors are
>formatted to American not "English" and when they type in a correct English
>spelling their computer will indicate a spelling error.

----------

From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2003.02.16 (13) [E]

At 02:17 PM 02/16/03 -0800, Reinhard/Ron wrote:
>"Queue" *is* used in American English, albeit far more rarely and mostly in
>specialized jargon, such as in computer programming and networking jargon.
>It is true that Americans do not use "queue" and "queuing" with reference
to
>people standing in line, in which cases "line" and "lining up" tend to be
>used instead.  I dare say that many American speakers will  not understand
>the words, certainly not easily when used in this latter sense.  I had to
>switch from "queue" to "line" when I moved to the United States.

Standard use in Canada is "line", but "queue" is fairly universally
understood and occasionally used.  Interesting, my Eudora email software
"queues" messages to be sent, though I've never heard or seen the word used
in any other American context.

>And Alannah Stepa  wrote:
>TOEFL, (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is written in American, not
>Canadian, so for school here, in Canada, they have to use the English
>spelling but to write the exam they have to learn American.
>They have some problems learning "English" because our word processors are
>formatted to American not "English" and when they type in a correct English
>spelling their computer will indicate a spelling error.

Perhaps the weirdest misunderstanding of a foreign culture (our topic of
some recent days past) is revealed when one selects Canadian English in
Microsoft Windows 98, which yields a French Canadian keyboard, complete
with accents grave and égue, cedille, etc., so most of us have just gotten
used to seeing the little double red line when we type programme, colour
and so forth.

Ed Alexander, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

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