LL-L "Lexicon" 2007.09.16 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  16 September 2007 - Volume 04
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: "KarlRein at aol.com" <KarlRein at aol.com>
Subject: East-West

My earliest memories are from New Jersey where houses had "cellars"
occasionally called "basements".  When I moved to Oklahoma it was made clear
to me that "cellars" were storm-cellars (underground tornado-shelters), and
the floor below the first floor of a house was a "basement", not a "cellar".
Now I live in eastern Texas where practically nobody has a basement, and
your country cousins think a cellar is where their kinfolks kept food for
storage.  Come to think of it, we also a mighty close to sea-level, and
underground garages have, you hope, pumps for when the bayous rise.
As to corridor and hallway, they have, all my life, been plain "halls".
Karl [Reinhardt]

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From: "Ben J. Bloomgren" <ben.j.bloomgren at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2007.09.16 (02) [E]

 It has long seemed to me that two sets of English words are geographically
distributed "east vs west," where "east" is Britain and British Commonwealth
country as well as Eastern North America, and "west" is the rest of North
America and territories of its influence.  I am wondering if there is any
basis
to it.

East:

1. cellar
2. corridor

West:

1. basement
2. hallway

If this is at least roughly correct, I wonder where the dividing line is.  I
expect it to be somewhere in the Eastern Midwest (in Canada perhaps at the
eastern end of Ontario).

Admittedly, I am not totally sure about Canada in this regard.  I do hear
the "western" set in British Columbia and Alberta, but as a Commonwealth
Country
with large numbers of British immigrants and greater exposure to
non-American English media Canada tends to be more of a mixed bag.

Most US Americans understand "cellar" and "corridor."  So far I have only
come across one young Californian that didn't understand what was meant by
"corridor,"
believing it was some special Mexican thing ...

Ron, I live in Arizona (while I'm not in Mexico), and we rarely have
basements. However, wine collectors are said to have a wine cellar. Also, a
cellar connotes a stuffy, musty place below a building where ya really don't
wanna go trapsing around unless ya have to. A basement can connote that, but
I've heard about more basements that are functional rooms. As far as a
dividing line for basement/cellar, I hear cellar more back in the east, like
by New York and such. "Ah just put in in de cella." As far as a corridor
versus a hallway, to me, a corridor is a huge hallway in an enormous
building. I would use corridor in the sense of "The corridors of the UN" or
'We went down a long corridor to get from the lobby to the secretary
general's office." Hallways are normally sized hallways in something like a
school or an office building. "My classroom is the last one on the right
side of this hallway."

Furthermore, I wonder about the distribution of the following.

In Europe (not only in English), generally "first floor" (or "first
stor(e)y") is what at least in parts of North America is "second floor,"
while "ground

floor" is "first floor" in North America.

In my lifetime, the ground floor has always been the first floor or first
story. We say first floor when we're talking about where something is
located. "The professor's office is on the fourth floor." We use story when
we're saying how tall a building is. "This tower is fifty stories tall."
Ben

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