What do you call the long boxes for air conditioning?

[cftranslate]

It seems that a google search does not prodice many results.

I am talking about those relatively new electric appliances for the living room in the form of white boxes whose air temperature you can adjust with a remote?

Thanks

[fluffyhamster]

Well, in Japan they are called "aircon" - no, not the Nic Cage movie, but a shortening of "air conditioner". I've never seen one back in the UK, there we generally have things like central heating (gas) or electric fires for winter, and simply sit mopping our stiff upper lips if there is a heatwave in summertime.

Hey, maybe we should ask Dave to start a "Translation" thread to deal with your many queries, cf! Then again, perhaps they make a welcome relief from the so-called AL discussions that only infrequently "rage" on this (moribund?) site!

[Andrew Patterson]

Air conditioner unless it puts water vapour into the air, then it's a humidifier. I think you can get either ionisers or deionisers, too.

[fluffyhamster]

Incidentally, cf, which dictionaries do you regularly turn to? I'm not a translator myself (I wish!), but I imagine that the net often is too blunt an instrument, and it hardly makes use of e.g. a defining vocabulary in the same way that good ("learner") dictionaries do. Perhaps the answers you seek are often to be found in just such a dictionary (especially if you can search selected parts of the entire contents on CD-ROM), or in a good illustrated dictionary?

[Stephen Jones]

I am talking about those relatively new electric appliances for the living room in the form of white boxes whose air temperature you can adjust with a remote?

Presuming you're talking about aircondiitioners they actually celebrate their hundredth birthday this year. The first aircondiitioner was developed by Carrier in 1904.

I also presume you are referring to the newer kind of split unit air cons, where the heavy duty machinery is outside.. The remote control has in fact notning to do with the type of machine it effects.

They are known, not unsurprisingly, as split units.

[cftranslate]

In Spain these gadgets in the form of white long boxes have become popular only in the last few years. They usually come with a bulkier uglier square box you put outside while the fancy white box goes inside on the wall.

I have an old version of the Oxford Picture Dictionary. This thing is not there.

By the way, flufy, why don't you recommned a good dictionary. I mean Not one of those Websters with old words but one with words that people actually use.

I remember an English University that used to publish a corpus dictionary compiled from may modern sources and the spoken language. What was that called??

[cftranslate]

There's an image here. I look it up as aircon

http://nais.to/~yto/nikki/image/1998/1026-aircon.jpg

[lolwhites]

Isn't it an "air-conditioning unit"?

[fluffyhamster]

Maybe you need a picture dictionary with those things known as "cars" in them, not just horse-drawn carriages replete with a "postilion".

I've written at length about dictionaries elsewhere on Dave's, principally in the sticky thread at the top of the Bilingual Education forum (I was then known as "Duncan Powrie" ):
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=1754

The corpus dictionary that you are referring to is most likely the first and susequent editions of the COBUILD (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database?) Dictionary. Personally, I think Longman's dictionaries provide the most extensive and balanced coverage of speech vs. writing (due not only to them helping to compile, and then using the BNC, but also their Longman Corpus Network etc) - one gets the feeling with COBUILD that in their efforts to maintain the world's biggest "monitor" corpora, they are simply chucking in way too many scrap newspapers, and whatever other already printed matter they can lay their hands on! - and Longman's examples often seem very well chosen (clear and instructive, "contextualizing") compared to their competitors.

[cftranslate]

And here's another picture
http://www.unclepasha.com/moscow_accomm ... tioner.jpg

It seems I misspelled the word and that's why I got few google results.

Thanks. Yes I was talking about Cobuild and I've also always trusted Longman from Books about Teaching to Materials and dictionaries.

Talking about dictionaries, I want to teach the students American English but I found particularly funny that the bilingual dictionaries I bought in the US seem to have a big British influence and include mostly British words.

Is that an American complex about having 'spoiled' the original language?

I don't think they have spoiled anything and as usual I am interested in what MOST people say. You know, 293 vs 60 million speakers.

[fluffyhamster]

Wow, that looks like a dingy Japanese business hotel room's aircon, alright! (I say that because, although I can't make it out clearly, there appears to be a "No smoking" sign/sticker in Chinese characters plastered to the wall. Or maybe it says "No jumping out the window or otherwise killing yourself due to financial scandals" or something).

[fluffyhamster]

The problem with American dictionary publishers (or rather, the corporations that acquire them in takeovers) seems to be that they aren't willing to invest in the technology required to stay at the top, so they continue peddling the same old increasingly out of date and idiosyncrantic editions they depended upon to get to the top decades ago. I'm not a great fan of American native dictionaries, and I couldn't recommend ANY learner dictionary unless it was a joint publication with/from a British publisher. (I'm not sure about bilingual dictionaries, but I suspect they lag behind even monolingual native ones in terms of innovation, and are probably often just reprints licensed from the original, perhaps British, publishers, even though the "new" market might be an American one. It's not because American publishers feel they need to bend the knee to Queenypoo's English - just look at what that nasty Mr Webster did!).

See Sidney Landau's book, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, Second Edition for the complete lowdown on the state of American lexicography (you could do a search on Dave's for "Landau" to find further comments and links).

Even with all the British expertise floating around in especially the learner dictionary market, it is no problem adapting or making dictionaries for specifically American English customers or learners, however (see the ones from Longman and Macmillan), and in any case, even British English learner dictionaries are now usually compiled with full reference to, and a healthy regard for, the major international varieties of English that they strive to include in their corpora.

[Harzer]

Hey cf, what's this about 60 million vs 293 million?

Don't you realise that all other countries (except Canada) where English is spoken as a first, or global language use BritEng? Australia and NZ may not have big numbers, but what about India, Singapore, Malaysia and many countries in Africa, such as Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, South Africa? All together these double the number of US and Canadian speakers.

And which form do you think they teach in European schools?
Come on get real!

[woodcutter]

Canadians use British English too, officially. They have some of our dodgy spellings, at least.

[cftranslate]

Yes, Harzer, we both are right in our own way. It depends on how we look at the numbers.

The 'raw' numbers may favor BrE though I am not so sure. Do they learn or speak BrE in Asian countries other than Australia and NZ?

In any case the influence of AmE is overwhelming. Hollywood, Economy, Power... Emperor Bush...