by coach and boat we'll bear you home
Apr. 19th, 2010 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyumeI love that the British government is sending out warships to bring its stranded citizens home. I also love that in British English touring buses are called coaches, because then, when the BBC says that they are also sending coaches to help bring people home, you can picture this huge gathering of teams of coaches-and-six, horses stamping, people climbing in.
Let's hear it for international emergencies that (a) don't involve one group of people hurting another and (b) involve (as far as I know?) no loss of life. Really just huge inconveniences. But what an adventure! I suppose I'd be pretty stressed out if I were stranded in a foreign country, but if I wasn't about to have a baby or in need of medical attention, I think it would be exciting, all things considered. Thrown together with other people, maybe being the recipient of the kindness of strangers... neat.
When 9-11 happened, we hosted some stranded tourists, friends of my husband's parents, who had been seeing the sights in New England and were stuck here. 9-11 was awful, but hosting people in an emergency was wonderful and warm.
Let's hear it for international emergencies that (a) don't involve one group of people hurting another and (b) involve (as far as I know?) no loss of life. Really just huge inconveniences. But what an adventure! I suppose I'd be pretty stressed out if I were stranded in a foreign country, but if I wasn't about to have a baby or in need of medical attention, I think it would be exciting, all things considered. Thrown together with other people, maybe being the recipient of the kindness of strangers... neat.
When 9-11 happened, we hosted some stranded tourists, friends of my husband's parents, who had been seeing the sights in New England and were stuck here. 9-11 was awful, but hosting people in an emergency was wonderful and warm.
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Semantic buses
Date: 2010-04-20 06:17 pm (UTC)Aren't semantic boundaries fun? The British have a point, in that over-the-road "buses" are closer in function to the old over-the-road coaches than they are to urban omnibuses. On the other hand, an over-the-road bus is built more like an omnibus than it is like a horse-drawn coach.
I wonder how the two nations arrived at those choices? I wonder whether it's related to the American railroad "car" versus the British railroad "carriage" -- that, when over-the-road buses were developed, the over-the-road coaches felt like a more distant memory in America than they did in Britain?
I wonder whether horse-drawn over-the-road coaches actually persisted longer in Britain, for all that Britain was more industrially advanced through most of the 19th century, and probably had railroads developed earlier?
(Come to think of it, I wonder about that? The British were equal or, probably ahead, in the engineering; but, maybe, British railroads replaced existing over-the-road transportation, but in America railroads often went where there'd been no satisfactory land transportation at all.)
Re: Semantic buses
Date: 2010-04-20 06:37 pm (UTC)I suspect, based on things my husband has told me, that horse-drawn stuff did persist longer in England than it did here, though whether that affect the choice of term would be hard to say.
It might just come down to what the various enterprises chose to call themselves. In other words, if the best-established touring service in England chose to call its vehicles "coaches," whereas in this country entrepreneurs chose "bus," that would affect the term the public used. Sort of like us calling clear adhesive tape "Scotch tape" after that manufacturer's name for it, whereas in England they call it "Sellotape"--also a manufacturer's name.