Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!daemon From: Stewart.Clamen@CLAMEN.AVALON.CS.CMU.EDU Newsgroups: can.general Subject: Re: STOP vs ARRET Message-ID: <28854@watmath.waterloo.edu> Date: 2 Sep 89 23:29:38 GMT Sender: daemon@watmath.waterloo.edu Reply-To: Stewart.Clamen%CLAMEN.AVALON.CS.CMU.EDU@watmath.waterloo.edu Distribution: can Lines: 47 From: "Stewart M. Clamen" In article <428@maytag.waterloo.edu> giguere@aries5.uucp (Eric Giguere) writes: In article <28782@watmath.waterloo.edu> Stewart.Clamen%CLAMEN.AVALON.CS.CMU.EDU@watmath.waterloo.edu writes: >Actually, the reason why ARRET looks silly to me is because it is the >wrong part of speech. Most of the other signs are in the imperative >(Yield, Do Not Enter) and I've always assumed that the "Stop" on >international STOP signs was an imperative verb, as opposed to the >noun, which "Arret" implies. While the imperative verb is definitely used more frequently, you see the occasional nouns. These are mostly in pictorial form, though, such as the sign indicating a railway crossing. "Arret" just denotes "un arret". The problem with "Arretez" is that it is longer than "Arret". They avoid this problem at the Universite de Sherbrooke by using a pictogram for the stop sign (the palm of a hand inside a red octagon). I've seen the white palm STOP signs in Israel and like them a lot. I think that the red octagon IS the international symbol for a STOP sign (so any text within is redundant), but I still like seeing pictograms in signs. Here's one of my favourites: (You can see it on the Laurentian Autoroute (Quebec 15) north of Montreal) ----------- | / | | | | | <--- looks like a can | |_| | | | | .--. | | | |==== | <--- judge's gavel | |__| | | | | $50 | | | ----------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stewart M. Clamen School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 INTERNET: clamen@CS.CMU.EDU USENET: ...!uunet!"clamen@cs.cmu.edu"