Syd wrote: ↑22 Sep 2021, 8:30pm
Some weird folk on here with a predilection to talk to, or at least acknowledge, total strangers.
Weird?
It was you who first used that word.
Not arguing in the slightest, and being friendly and happy.
I cannot- for the life of me - understand people not passing others and saying Hello. If one does, the other may reply and feel better about it.
Ignore, and you get ignored.
That can't be good for anybody.
Walking the dog along the river or the lanes, I often meet walkers and always swap a word or two. Some of them, are strangers round here, but we always say something. It would be rude to ignore people - here at least.
He had a puncture and was (hopefully fixing it) and I asked him if he was ok.
He had no idea that I was a cyclist, as I was walking the dog!
I still asked him, and he replied he was ok ......... but I would have had to walk back home - 2 miles? ............. to get the tools to sort him out.
I still spoke to him, and still asked if he was ok.
I didn't know him from Adam, and he didn't know me or the dog, but we still spoke and we didn't ignore each other.
He was a person in (mild) distress, potentially in need of help. He wouldn't have known it, but you happened to have the knowledge and skills to help, so you offered. This is normal. It is merely incidental that he was a cyclist – he could have been, say, an equestrian whose horse had lost a shoe and you happened to have horsey knowledge – and is only tenuously linked to a greeting.
Yes, true I suppose. Likeminded people?
He wasn't to know I was a cyclist, yet still chatted.
I'm not "horsey" in the slightest, but I would still ask how they were. Can't stand horses - and I've often thought of starting a thread on the subject of horses and why they exist (not counting racing etc)
Mick F wrote: ↑24 Sep 2021, 10:09am
- and I've often thought of starting a thread on the subject of horses and why they exist (not counting racing etc)
DaveReading wrote: ↑24 Sep 2021, 7:54amWe Scots have a more elegant solution - a plural version of you.
English used to have an elegant solution as well of course, in that you was plural and thou was singular (rather like tu/vous in French, where tu is a familiar form and only used with friends and relatives, vous being also used as a singular in formal situations). But thou fell out of use, except in older writing such as traditional hymns, leaving us with probably the reverse to French, so that thou suddenly sounded very formal.
When we lived in Castleford in the 1950s, the second person singular, or at least a version of it, was still in normal use. The next thing to go may well be the third person singular and everybody will be "they."
Incidentally, there seems to be currently a lot of contrived controversy about the cricket authorities replacing "batsman" with "batter." Fifty years ago, batter was certainly standard usage at Headingley. It's consistent with bowler and fielder.
drossall wrote: ↑24 Sep 2021, 11:09am
English used to have an elegant solution as well of course, in that you was plural and thou was singular (rather like tu/vous in French, where tu is a familiar form and only used with friends and relatives, vous being also used as a singular in formal situations). But thou fell out of use, except in older writing such as traditional hymns, leaving us with probably the reverse to French, so that thou suddenly sounded very formal.
thirdcrank wrote: ↑24 Sep 2021, 11:22am
When we lived in Castleford in the 1950s, the second person singular, or at least a version of it, was still in normal use. The next thing to go may well be the third person singular and everybody will be "they."
My uncle was born in Huddersfield in something like 1910. His friends switched in and out, but they knew that it was amusing.
thirdcrank wrote: ↑24 Sep 2021, 11:22am
When we lived in Castleford in the 1950s, the second person singular, or at least a version of it, was still in normal use. The next thing to go may well be the third person singular and everybody will be "they."
We were newly arrived in Derbyshire, about 1960.
A great uncle flustered me asking, "Art Aussie, lad?"
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?