I have been in downtown.
Masa
2)I have been to downtown.
Both sentences show that I'm not in downtown now.
How different are they in what each means?
tony cooper
wrote:
Neither would be heard in the US. Americans would say "I have been
downtown" or "I have been in (or "to") the downtown area".
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Masa
> >1)I have been in downtown.
> >2)I have been to downtown.
>
> >Both sentences show that I'm not in downtown now.
> >How different are they in what each means?
>
> Neither would be heard in the US. Americans would say "I have been
> downtown" or "I have been in (or "to") the downtown area".
>
Quite so.
How about this?
I have been in the countryside.
I have been to the countryside.
How are they different?
tony cooper
wrote:
>>
Different in that they would probably appear in different context.
The first would probably be in some context where a prolonged visit to
the countryside was being described, and the second indicates only a
short visit to the countryside.
However, you can't take a single sentence and say that it *always*
belongs in this context or that context, or that this or that
particular meaning applies.
Both sentences could be used in describing either a prolonged visit or
a brief visit. One might be more *likely* to be in a particular
context, but it's not a clear thing. Sentences like those do not tell
you much about context.
Cece
Good question. As a native speaker of English, I don't know why
"downtown" and "the countryside" are treated differently; I just know
they are.
It's so hard to explain things that have always been taken for granted!
James Hogg
The difference is that "the countryside" is a noun phrase and can quite
naturally be governed by a preposition like "in", while "downtown" is an
adverb in the sentence "I've been downtown" (like "I've been away").
--
James
Masa
2)I have been in the countryside for two months.
2) This means I have lived there since two months ago, and I'm still
there, right?
but, in 1), I'm not in the countryside now.
By the way,
about I have been downtown,
you couldt distinguish whether I have been (to) downdown, or I have
been (in) downtown.
How do you tell apart?
R H Draney
>
>Cece wrote:
>> On Jan 12, 1:14 pm, Masa <aut...@infoseek.jp> wrote:
>>>>> 1)I have been in downtown. 2)I have been to downtown. Both
>>>>> sentences show that I'm not in downtown now. How different are
>>>>> they in what each means?
>>>> Neither would be heard in the US. Americans would say "I have
>>>> been downtown" or "I have been in (or "to") the downtown area".
>
>naturally be governed by a preposition like "in", while "downtown" is an
>adverb in the sentence "I've been downtown" (like "I've been away").
I can't rule out the possibility that some city describes a certain district as
"Downtown" (like San Diego has "The Gaslamp Quarter" or Scottsdale "The
Couplet")...in that case, you might very well hear a resident say either "I've
been to Downtown" or "I've been in Downtown"....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
tony cooper
wrote:
>1) I have been in the countryside.
Context. I'm sorry to keep using that word, but you seem not to be
aware that we can't effectively deal with sentences isolated from
their context.
"I've been to the downtown area" *usually* means that the person is
indicating that he's at least visited the downtown area in question
and is familiar with it. "I've been in the downtown area" *usually*
means that the person has just returned from that area and is
explaining where he's been.
But...but...but...but, either interpretation could be the opposite of
what I've said based on context.
It just isn't going to work if you insist on trying to find specific
changes of meaning of a sentence based on changing one word like this.
Garrett Wollman
R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>I can't rule out the possibility that some city describes a certain district as
>"Downtown"
Um, Manhattan? Uptown, Midtown, and Downtown, all without a
preposition. I don't know about Atlanta, though. Any Atlantans here?
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Glenn Knickerbocker
> R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> >I can't rule out the possibility that some city describes a certain district as
> >"Downtown"
> Um, Manhattan? Uptown, Midtown, and Downtown, all without a
> preposition.
Midtown without a preposition? I'm going midtown? I've been midtown?
I don't think so.
When I lived in Houston, where Downtown is in the middle, "in Downtown"
or "to Downtown" was common. In Poughkeepsie, too, to some extent, to
differentiate Downtown from Lower Main Street farther down. In
Kingston, Uptown is very definitely a place and not a direction, Midtown
lies above Uptown, and downtown doesn't really mean anything at all.
�R
tony cooper
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:
>In article <hiir0...@drn.newsguy.com>,
>R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>>I can't rule out the possibility that some city describes a certain district as
>>"Downtown"
>
>Um, Manhattan? Uptown, Midtown, and Downtown, all without a
>preposition. I don't know about Atlanta, though. Any Atlantans here?
Even in little old Orlando there's a downtown area.
http://downtownorlando.com/ http://orlando.nightguide.com/nl1dt.htm
Masa
Because we don't have a word
equivalent to downtown, while we have one for INNER CITY.
But I have rarely come across "inner city".
tony cooper
wrote:
>DOWNTOWN is not so easy to understand in our way of terminology.
I don't know what "inner city" connotes in Japan, but in the US it is
the part of the city that is the periphery of the downtown area that
has fallen into urban decay; the slums in most cities. It's almost a
code term for "the area where poor blacks live".
Therefore, if - in Japan - the "inner city" is highly urban but a
respectable, high-rent area, you would not want to tell an American
you live in the inner city.
Peter Moylan
"Downtown" is mostly an American English word. You will hear "inner
city" in other English-speaking countries. Sometimes we also call it the
CBD, which stands for "central business district".
In Australia, "I went into town" is one common way of describing a trip
to the inner city.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> On 13/01/10 16:29, Masa wrote:
>> DOWNTOWN is not so easy to understand in our way of terminology.
>> Because we don't have a word
>> equivalent to downtown, while we have one for INNER CITY.
>> But I have rarely come across "inner city".
>
> "Downtown" is mostly an American English word.
I was going to say this, but you've beaten me to it. In BrE I would say
that "uptown" and "midtown" are not used at all, and "downtown" is much
less common (and less precise) than it is in AmE. You'd never use it as
an adjective in BrE.
> You will hear "inner
> city" in other English-speaking countries. Sometimes we also call it the
> CBD, which stands for "central business district".
>
> In Australia, "I went into town" is one common way of describing a trip
> to the inner city.
--
athel
Jonathan Morton
news:7r661r...@mid.individual.net...
> On 2010-01-13 09:09:10 +0100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep> said:
>
>> On 13/01/10 16:29, Masa wrote:
>>> DOWNTOWN is not so easy to understand in our way of terminology.
>>> Because we don't have a word
>>> equivalent to downtown, while we have one for INNER CITY.
>>> But I have rarely come across "inner city".
>>
>> "Downtown" is mostly an American English word.
>
> I was going to say this, but you've beaten me to it. In BrE I would say
> that "uptown" and "midtown" are not used at all, and "downtown" is much
> less common (and less precise) than it is in AmE. You'd never use it as an
> adjective in BrE.
Agreed. One might, of course, go down town in colloquial BrE, but it would
always be two words.
Regards
Jonathan
John Varela
wrote:
> Good question. As a native speaker of English, I don't know why
> "downtown" and "the countryside" are treated differently; I just know
> they are.
And while one would not say "I have been to downtown", "I have been
to town" is normal.
--
John Varela
Trade NEWlamps for OLDlamps for email
John Varela
Cities in the US are young enough that original settlement patterns
still govern modern urban organization and nomenclature.
Because there were no roads, early settlements in the US were
located on rivers. As a settlement grew into a town and then a city,
it tended to expand upriver because the water there had not been
fouled by the town and its port. Or, in some places like Boston,
expansion was only possible upriver. "Uptown" and "downtown" are
relative to flow of the river. The earlier settled part of the city,
the downtown, would contain the business and governmental districts,
while uptown would be more residential.
Many cities that were not located on rivers adopted the "downtown"
nomenclature to mean the business district or the older part of the
city.
sjde...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> On 2010-01-13 09:09:10 +0100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep> said:
>
> > On 13/01/10 16:29, Masa wrote:
> >> DOWNTOWN is not so easy to understand in our way of terminology.
> >> Because we don't have a word
> >> equivalent to downtown, while we have one for INNER CITY.
> >> But I have rarely come across "inner city".
>
> > "Downtown" is mostly an American English word.
>
> I was going to say this, but you've beaten me to it. In BrE I would say
> that "uptown" and "midtown" are not used at all, and "downtown" is much
> less common (and less precise) than it is in AmE. You'd never use it as
> an adjective in BrE.
Uptown is not particularly common as a location designation in AmE.
Downtown is very commonplace, even in relatively small towns. "I'm
going downtown" is a normal AmE phrase; I'd have a sense of what it
meant in nearly any US town or city.
"I'm going uptown" is meaningless, in general, except in a handful of
cities that have a region designated by the name "Uptown"--to most
people in the US, if you said "I just returned from uptown" the
assumption would be that you'd returned from a visit to Upper
Manhattan in New York City (unless their town or city had its own
"uptown"). As as place designation, it's almost like "Soho"--it's not
a well-defined general English word, but if you're in one of many
cities such as London, New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, or
Birmingham that has an area by that name, saying "I'm headed to Soho"
makes sense. If not, saying "I'm headed to Soho" means you're taking
a trip to London (if you're in the UK) or to New York (if you're in
the USA).
"Uptown" does have another meaning in AmE, though; it's synonymous
with "posh" or "upscale", because by far the most widely recognized
"uptown" area in the country is the affluent Upper Manhattan section
of New York City. Billy Joel's song "Uptown Girl" is probably
partially responsible for popularizing this meaning.
As a term indicating location, Wikipedia lists 16 cities with
"uptowns" in the United States. That's a very permissive list,
though; I've lived for over 6 years in two of the cities that are
listed (Pittsburgh and Washington, DC), and even in those cities, I
think that without specific context most people would assume anyone
using "uptown" was referring to Manhattan. If you said you were
headed uptown in Pittsburgh or DC, I'd have only the vaguest idea what
you were talking about--it's certainly not a currently used term among
the people I know in either city.
Richard Bollard
wrote:
>On 13/01/10 16:29, Masa wrote:
>> DOWNTOWN is not so easy to understand in our way of terminology.
>> Because we don't have a word
>> equivalent to downtown, while we have one for INNER CITY.
>> But I have rarely come across "inner city".
>
>"Downtown" is mostly an American English word. You will hear "inner
>city" in other English-speaking countries. Sometimes we also call it the
>CBD, which stands for "central business district".
>
>In Australia, "I went into town" is one common way of describing a trip
>to the inner city.
For Canberra, we go to "Civic".
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT.
R H Draney
>
>On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:09:10 +1100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep>
>wrote:
>
>>On 13/01/10 16:29, Masa wrote:
>>> DOWNTOWN is not so easy to understand in our way of terminology.
>>> Because we don't have a word
>>> equivalent to downtown, while we have one for INNER CITY.
>>> But I have rarely come across "inner city".
>>
>>"Downtown" is mostly an American English word. You will hear "inner
>>city" in other English-speaking countries. Sometimes we also call it the
>>CBD, which stands for "central business district".
>>
>>In Australia, "I went into town" is one common way of describing a trip
>>to the inner city.
>
>For Canberra, we go to "Civic".
In Phoenix, we go to "Downtown", except that nobody goes there....r
Glenn Knickerbocker
>"Downtown" is mostly an American English word. You will hear "inner
>city" in other English-speaking countries.
"Inner city" usually has a different meaning for Americans: a former
business center now in decay, the rough part of town.
�R http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/hallobob.html
Don't never, but never, look inside the Mojo Bag!
Pablo
> Neither would be heard in the US. Americans would say "I have been
> downtown" or "I have been in (or "to") the downtown area".
As a kid, watching the american cops & robbers series, I always thought
"downtown" meant the police station. "You're coming downtown" (cop to the
robber).
--
Pablo
Peter Moylan
usually used without explanation. Why would you feel the need to explain
anything in the "everybody knows it" category? This can cause confusion
when somebody who doesn't know it arrives on the scene.
Allan Sherman's song "Harvey and Sheila" contains the lines
Switched to the GOP
That's the way things go.
to describe what happened as H&S became more prosperous. When I first
heard this, I didn't have a clue as to what the GOP might be. I worked
it out from context, though. The words "That's the way things go"
obviously referred to things flushed out of the house. From this it was
clear to me that the GOP was some sort of sewage treatment works. I
already knew that Americans had more than one phone company, so it
seemed likely that they would also have a choice of which company to
connect their toilet pipes to.
Looking back at this, I'm starting to wonder whether I was right about
the phone companies. The present state of play here is that I'm free to
give my business to one of about a hundred phone companies, and this
remains true even in small towns. From comments I've read in this
newsgroup, I have the impression that small-town Americans have a very
limited choice of phone companies, and that some companies might even
have a monopoly in some areas.
How close am I to the truth? I have to admit that the left-winger in me
can accept the notion of a state monopoly - because that's subject to
voter control - but is horrified by the thought of a private company
monopoly. I suppose, though, that the latter would be more acceptable in
an area dominated by right-leaning voters.
Pat Durkin
"Peter Moylan" <gro.nalyomp@retep> wrote in message
news:6KSdnSqlG6Zy8snW...@westnet.com.au...
> On 18/01/10 21:38, Pablo wrote:
As for a private company monopoly, back in the late '70s, early '80s,
ATT (also called "Ma Bell" for Bell Telephone) was broken up as a
result of an anti-trust action. The 5 resulting "Baby Bells"
immediately began growing and changing focus. The new ATT is not as
big as the fierce monopoly its predecessor once was, but has branched
into cell phones, broadband, and television signal distribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT&T
Strangely, Verizon apparently came from one of the Baby Bells, too. I
did not know that. But I can't recall which Baby Bell ATT (SBC)
developed from, much less Verizon's momma.
I think that at one time Wisconsin had more telephone companies than
had any other state. There are fewer, now, though perhaps after some
period of mergers there are more again, though under other names.
Century Telephone and Frontier are now interstate companies,
originating in the South and the West, and they have gobbled up most
(all) of the small companies that served Wisconsin. General Telephone
was founded in Wisconsin, and I couldn't tell you whether, after it
had expanded, it swallowed up the burgeoning Verizon, or was swallowed
up by it. I think the Mount Horeb Telephone Company still exists,
though I only recognize it by seeing it as the ISP for some cousins'
email addresses.
tony cooper
wrote:
>
>Looking back at this, I'm starting to wonder whether I was right about
>the phone companies. The present state of play here is that I'm free to
>give my business to one of about a hundred phone companies, and this
>remains true even in small towns. From comments I've read in this
>newsgroup, I have the impression that small-town Americans have a very
>limited choice of phone companies, and that some companies might even
>have a monopoly in some areas.
>
>How close am I to the truth? I have to admit that the left-winger in me
>can accept the notion of a state monopoly - because that's subject to
>voter control - but is horrified by the thought of a private company
>monopoly. I suppose, though, that the latter would be more acceptable in
>an area dominated by right-leaning voters.
I have never lived in an area where I could subscribe to land-line
telephone service from a choice of companies. Some government agency
in each of the states I've lived in have awarded franchises to
telephone companies for particular geographic territories. The rates
are regulated by a state agency. Several years ago, though, we were
allowed choices of our long distance provider on land lines.
If there is an area around here where more than one telephone company
offers service, I would expect it is in the downtown area.
The mobile phone situation is different, of course. That's always
been based on choice of providers.
Jerry Friedman
> On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:27:58 +1100, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp@retep>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Looking back at this, I'm starting to wonder whether I was right about
> >the phone companies. The present state of play here is that I'm free to
> >give my business to one of about a hundred phone companies, and this
> >remains true even in small towns. From comments I've read in this
> >newsgroup, I have the impression that small-town Americans have a very
> >limited choice of phone companies, and that some companies might even
> >have a monopoly in some areas.
>
> >How close am I to the truth? I have to admit that the left-winger in me
> >can accept the notion of a state monopoly - because that's subject to
> >voter control - but is horrified by the thought of a private company
> >monopoly. I suppose, though, that the latter would be more acceptable in
> >an area dominated by right-leaning voters.
>
> I have never lived in an area where I could subscribe to land-line
> telephone service from a choice of companies. Some government agency
> in each of the states I've lived in have awarded franchises to
> telephone companies for particular geographic territories.
I believe the vast majority of the country got landline service from
one subsidiary or another of AT&T (the Bell System). For instance,
the vast majority of Ohio was served by Ohio Bell. This part of AT&T
was broken up geographically into seven "Baby Bells", now reduced by
mergers to three, and the vast majority gets landline service from one
of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Bell_Operating_Company
However, the small town where I live has long been served by a non-
Bell company, changed by various acquisitions and currently
Windstream.
> The rates
> are regulated by a state agency. Several years ago, though, we were
> allowed choices of our long distance provider on land lines.
>
> If there is an area around here where more than one telephone company
> offers service, I would expect it is in the downtown area.
>
> The mobile phone situation is different, of course. That's always
> been based on choice of providers.
And in rural areas, by the providers' choice of what areas to serve.
--
Jerry Friedman
Garrett Wollman
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>I believe the vast majority of the country got landline service from
>one subsidiary or another of AT&T (the Bell System). For instance,
>the vast majority of Ohio was served by Ohio Bell. This part of AT&T
>was broken up geographically into seven "Baby Bells", now reduced by
>mergers to three, and the vast majority gets landline service from one
>of them.
Not so true any more. In some states, the (semi-monopoly) cable
companies have a majority of household landlines. (I believe Rhode
Island is one; the whole state is Cox.) This is why some telcos, like
Verizon, are trying to get out of the traditional landline business.
Particularly because more profitable services (that include bundled
video and Internet) are unregulated and generally do not carry with
them the legal obligation to serve the entire franchise area, unlike
traditional POTS lines. If you build a house in a new development in
Massachusetts today,[1] it is very likely that traditional POTS would
not be available at all -- you'd have the same duopoly providers, but
Verizon would only offer FiOS and Comcast would offer the same service
it offers everywhere else. There would be no other choices -- it
wouldn't be dense enough for RCN to bother serving, and because there
would be no copper wires leading direct to a telephone CO, competitive
DSL would not be available either.
-GAWollman
[1] Such things do happen, even here.