May 23 2006
Castle
After spending a couple of days (according Alison a couple is ‘two’, but I think it’s more ‘between two and four’. What do you think?) touring the Netherlands we rent a car and escape the horrible weather (cold and rainy) to drive South.
We only have a week and we (actually I, because Alison doesn’t have a driver’s license) don’t want to drive 15 hours a day so we probably won’t make it very far South. But since Alison hasn’t seen much of Europe so far, every bit is new and exiting. We manage to get to a campsite in the Palatinate (Pfalz) in Germany which adds already two new countries (we drove over Luxembourg) to her list of visited countries.
We made a short hike just outside the campground and not only found rocks where I used to climb, but also this, very well preserved castle, with parts originating from the 14th century. We find out that the Palatinate really is dotted with castles, almost as many as there are windmills in the Netherlands. On every hill top there seems to be a castle. Some in ruins, but other’s are still inhabited. Unfortunately we don’t have time to visit other castles, we have to go on, for our ‘Europe in one week’-tour.
I didn’t sleep very well, camping mattresses and my shoulder don’t go well together…
Sunday, 11 June, 2006 @ 21:01
A couple is indeed 2… A few can be more than 2, like 3-4. I think so anyways. :P
Europa is zo leuk! Gewoon met de auto weg en naar andere landen toe zonder dagen lang te reizen! Ik heb het meest van UK gezien in een week met de auto, ongeveer 5 uren reizen per dag gemiddeld.
Leuke fotos weer!
Thursday, 15 June, 2006 @ 06:48
Yes, I ran into the ‘a couple’ problem as wel down under. They tend to take it to mean two as well, usually, while I assumed it could be a bit more (which it sometimes can be for them as well). Last week I worked on a text where ‘a couple of hundred GeV’ indeed referred to 200, while ‘a few hundred’ could be 300 or so. Clear as mud, hm?
To me then it was about as confusing as the ‘this weekend’/’next weekend’ problem — do you have that too?
(Glad to see you back on blog, by the way.)
Thursday, 15 June, 2006 @ 07:39
“A couple” is two… when the exact number isn’t that important.
For instance, if you’re organising a party and check the pantry and note that you have “a couple of cases of beer,” that means you have two… but if you’d had 1.5 or 3 instead it wouldn’t have made any difference to the fact that you have enough beer for the party. Or “come look, there are a couple of beautiful butterflies on this leaf,” there are two. But if there had been three, they would still have been beautiful and you still would have been calling “come look.”
Two is when the exact number is important: the newborn weighed 2.0 kilos at birth. That’s important: 1.5 would be even worse but 3.0 would have been just fine. Or, “turn right at the stoplight, walk two blocks and my house is the third on the left.” One or three blocks would have your friend knocking on the wrong door.
So yes, there is a vagueness to “a couple” but it still means two.
RE this weekend / next weekend, yes, it’s ambiguous. I look for a less ambiguous phrasing. “On the weekend” or “not this coming weekend but the next one.” Awkward, but there you go.
Also, “ground floor” is less ambiguous than “first floor.”
Thursday, 15 June, 2006 @ 08:54
Yeah, I grew up thinking couple meant a few, but have gradually grown into thinking it exclusively means two. Alison’s explanation is on the mark, but I think I would still feel free to say that you could walk a couple blocks instead of only saying two blocks.
It’s funny, but sometimes living with someone who speaks English as a second language can be educational. At other times it can make it more confusing when I’m not exactly sure what is the correct phrasing, like the weekend thing. Determining the origin of phrases can also make me question whether I am speaking correctly.
Monday, 19 June, 2006 @ 14:13
Oh how I do NOT miss those wet, cold Northern European summers.