winter words

Pos   Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:22 am GMT
Which of the following expressions would you, as a native speaker, expect to find in 1) a gardening magazine or website and 2) in travel writing?

a) in winter
b) during the winter months
Skippy   Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:32 pm GMT
During winter
Guest   Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:13 pm GMT
<During winter>

Only then? Why?
Franco   Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:26 pm GMT
I often hear both 'in the winter' and 'in winter'.

Why can the article be ommited.
Guest   Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:30 pm GMT
”in winter" usually refers to this year's winter only, and "in the winter" refers to wintertime in general.
Guest   Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:59 pm GMT
<<”in winter" usually refers to this year's winter only, ><

!!

It doesn't snow here in winter.
I always wear a warm coat in winter.
We go to the mountains in winter.
Milton   Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:20 pm GMT
in the wintertime
in the summertime ;)
Guest   Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:23 pm GMT
<in the summertime ;) >

Mungo Jerry
Bob Monkhouse   Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:01 pm GMT
Thanks Guest, now I've got that bl**dy tune going round my head.
Uriel   Fri Jul 20, 2007 4:48 am GMT
<<Which of the following expressions would you, as a native speaker, expect to find in 1) a gardening magazine or website and 2) in travel writing?

a) in winter
b) during the winter months >>

Either one, as well as "in the winter", "during the winter" "in/during the colder part of the year" and any number of other permutations.

Why do you ask?
Pos   Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:56 am GMT
<Either one, as well as "in the winter", "during the winter" "in/during the colder part of the year" and any number of other permutations.

Why do you ask? >


I read a Corpus Linguistics report on those expressions which said that the first one was normally found in travel writing and the second in gardening magazines. I wanted to see how "ordinary" folk would respond.
furrykef   Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:50 am GMT
Hmm. This is one of those things that's only obvious once I already have the answer. Before Pos said which was found where, I didn't see much difference, though I hadn't given terribly much thought to it. But now that I see that travel magazines use "in winter" and gardening magazines use "in the winter months", it makes perfect sense to me.

A gardener is going to be more focused on the duration of the winter than a traveler is. A traveler can go on vacation for two weeks and then go back home and forget about it. A gardener is going to be concerned about the whole winter: those flowers, crops, or whatever must survive the whole winter. You may not be traveling in winter for "months", but your garden will be there that long -- at least, you hope.

Moreover, you might think of gardening in terms of months more often... they're a convenient unit of time for measuring the progress of a garden. Vacations and traveling typically doesn't occur over that sort of time span... some people travel all the time, of course, but most people just take a single relatively short vacation now and then.

- Kef
furrykef   Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:53 am GMT
I hasten to add that this kind of thinking in retrospect -- after having already been given the answer -- might just be some form of rationalization. For all I know, if Pos had mixed up the two answers and given them the other way around, I might still have invented an explanation that was also perfectly obvious to me...

Nevertheless, I think it's a decent hypothesis.

- Kef
Pos   Fri Jul 20, 2007 8:51 am GMT
I'm often wary of trusting information from corpora, so I wanted to see what natives would say. Then again, I don't often trust native intuition. Ah well...
Guest   Fri Jul 20, 2007 8:59 am GMT
Since you trust nothing, you will never attain true mastery of English. You will always be confused as to what is correct and what isn't.