American English a Creole language?
Um...no, Adam. First go find out what a creole is and then you can post on the subject.
Kudos to Kirk and Travis for exposing Enzo's ignorance and whittling his pitiful arguments down to size. I think I laughed the most at the claim that "downtown" was a slang word.
mjd, are you suffering from neurosis ? you just replyed one year after Enzo posted, did it marked you or something ?
dude, go to the UK and say "downtown" - its slang there,
>>dude, go to the UK and say "downtown" - its slang there, <<
So?
Yeah, I hadn't paid attention to the date. That wouldn't exactly be a neurosis there, Guest, more like carelessness. The thread was revived by some spamming that I had to get rid of and, like I said, I did not see the date, but felt the urge to chime in and agree with Kirk and Travis.
It doesn't matter if it isn't the norm in the U.K. No one says "lorry" over here, but "lorry" isn't slang. It is simply a different term that is used. How does that bolster Enzo's argument?....Answer: it doesn't.
I can't believe people who are posting here and who seem to have not a bad possession of English are not able to understand why 'downtown' called so and consider it a slang.
"downtown" - of, relating to, or located in the lower part or business center of a city" (Webster)
But isn't that clear that practically all the present big cities had begun as ports, which were built on coasts, bays, lakes, banks of rivers. Quite naturally their lower part served as a business center. So it was nowhere else to settle in and build a house but using a higher grounds. Many BIG cities it's been this way to the present time. It's completely understandable - from historic point of view - why city center called downtown.
There actually IS a meaning of "downtown" that IS slang -- to "go downtown" can refer to oral sex -- but when it comes to urban planning, it's not.