On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, John Briggs wrote:
> Tony Mountifield wrote:
>> In article <1193155236.692724.205580@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>> Mitch <maharri@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> On Oct 22, 5:18 am, Matthew Huntbach <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> The "alley" question was the only one I couldn't find my preferred
>>>> answer listed - the classic Sus*** dialect word for this,
>>>> "twitten", was not given.
>>> Hm...I have a semantic distinction here... the thing that cars can go
>>> on and dumpsters are in can be called an 'alley', but if a car can't
>>> go there, then it's -not- an alley...it's a ... I don't know. It's
>>> not a walkway or a sidewalk (even though I might say ' you know, the
>>> place between too buildings, the walkway that you take to get to the
>>> back' (i.e. I might -refer- to it as a walkway but I don't -call- it
>>> a walkway). It might even have a gate/not easily opened barrier, and
>>> might not even be walkable, but is nevertheless a gap between two
>>> buildings, wide enough for a person to walk through. What is -that-
>>> called (pick your dialect)?
>> A passage or passageway?
>>
>> In the UK, we would probably call it an alley or alleyway. Over here,
>> alleys are usually too narrow for cars.
> That's because they were built before cars were invented...
When I was young, I'd call it a "twitten" - that's what we used the
word for "the place between two buildings, not wide enough to take
a car". The archetypal twitten to me was a paved footway which went
between
two blocks on our council estate, we often had to refer to this when
I was young as it was almost next to us, and it was just "the twitten".
It was built after cars were invented. I think an "alley" too refers
to a narrow passage - it wouldn't be an "alley" if cars could fit down it.
BTW, I don't know what a "dumpster" is.
Matthew Huntbach
|
