The original purpose of insurance was not to receive compensation in the event x happens. It was to ensure that any leins against whatever property x happened to were payable to the lein holders. For example, I have a car on which I owe $10K to

"Youse"? That's funny. It would sound like Brooklyn (NY) talk In that usage it would be pronounced "yooz" rather that "yoose", surely? I was commenting on the differing pronunciations of use/used. I understand.

'erbs' I understand taht this was the original pronunciation. "Language colonies" ... as can be seen from rhymes in 18th century poetry. Yes, the root is 'erby' but I can't recall hearing it on TV or radio programmes

This supposed "Standard American English accent" sounds like a variation on the now rarely-used term "General American": From the dictionary at www.infoplease.com , which appears to be the *Random House Webster's Unabridged

MW and AHD give both pronunciations ('father' and 'cat'). MW ... that in my experience the 'father' pronunciation is not common. Since your experience stems from NY, I'm not surprised. In California, the

(For what it's worth, I'd say it *does* matter a great deal where one abides when one makes generalised statements about usages in places where one doesn't abide. And Richard no longer abides in New York.) But my statements are always

vowel 'ay' in 'bank', 'language', etc. and you may well ... 'ay' is the long form of 'e'. Hope thishelps, Janet We have here a confusion between two different definitions of "longvowels." I and

I wonder whether this is really the modern sense of "cool". Granted, it seems to be used to suggest "approval". Actually, thinking about it again, it seems that there are only two possibilities: (a) "Cool" =

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"Frances Kemmish" kija kitbet So what informal notation do you propose that can be ... you, Im genuinely curiosu toknow if such a beast exists. Perhaps one could use the example words in the table here: