Bad Manners and Brimstone

Would knowing her location make a difference?  You're pretty adamant that you didn't understand it, so I doubt that looking at her location would make you think "Oh, she's from Chagrin Falls, Ohio - she must have meant 'cellophane'!"

If someone doesn't want to share their location, they shouldn't have to.

I thought I had made clear that I was only asking for location in the broadest sense. It happened that this was an informal-language question, and I'm a language geek so I wondered in what part of the English-speaking world that was a normal shortening of the word. But this is a manners board, and manners do vary a LOT from place to place. When someone says on this board 'The rule always used to be[X]' and someone else replies 'Nobody does that! I've never heard of that etiquette rule and neither have any of my family! The proper thing is [Y]'', it makes a whole lot more sense if the location of one reads 'Scotland' and the other reads 'California'.

And frankly I do maintain that anyone who posts things like 'people hereabouts do X' really needs to be prepared to say at least which hemisphere  'hereabouts' is in.

Quote from: Aleko on April 02, 2021, 05:12:06 am

Quote

Woman insisted that Molly give her the cello and ribbon.

When I got to that sentence I honestly thought ‘Whoa!- where did a large stringed musical instrument come into this story?’  and had to go back and read again till I could make sense of it. Is ‘cello’ a normal abbreviation of ‘cellophane’ where you live*? Because I’ve never heard it this side of the Pond.


* And where is that, roughly? It would be really helpful if you put something in the ‘Location’ field of your Profile Summary, which will appear below your name whenever you post, so you don’t have to mention it every time you say something like ‘people round here say/do X’. It can be as vague as you like - you don’t need to put anything that might identify you. Even the country you live in is helpful, given that this is a truly international board with members in at least four continents.

Would knowing her location make a difference?  You're pretty adamant that you didn't understand it, so I doubt that looking at her location would make you think "Oh, she's from Chagrin Falls, Ohio - she must have meant 'cellophane'!" 

If someone doesn't want to share their location, they shouldn't have to.

I think that there are many good reasons why someone may choose to not advertise where they are located. I failed to list it. Personally, I talk very candidly about a lot of personal things on this board. (It's amazing that I can do that here!) However, I prefer to be very vague in case someone I know should stumble into things. I think that it's fine to ask for someone's location, but if they choose not to share, I think the polite thing to do is to accept that. If this was part of the forum rules, then I missed that one... and I may have decided to decline to participate here.

On another forum, I did identify someone I knew; they provided too many details and it was very easy to figure it out.

I don't think listing country location will help much anyway, especially on regional phrases. Countries are large places and each area has their own idioms. Nevermind state to state in the US. It can even happen in the same neighborhood!

Pop vs soda
Water fountain vs bubbler
Sprinkles vs jimmies ("hundreds and thousands" in the UK)

We just need to look for context, or ask for clarification if we honestly don't know what a word means. Or look it up. Looking up cello comes up with matches for cello bags.