Imralu wrote:No. A pipe wrench. It's adjustable, so it's a wrench. A spanner is a one-piece thing. You understood that two sentences before. I don't buy this (US) 'wrench' = (UK) 'spanner' thing. It just seems to me that you're just lacking the word 'spanner'.
I mixed up wrench and spanner in that post. It's a hard distinction to make when you've never used it before.
Imralu wrote:No, but we recognise that as an American word, short for condominium. I've never really understood what a condo was. I thought it was a type of apartment. If we own an apartment, we own an apartment, or a flat, or whatever we call it. It makes no difference if it's owned or rented.
An apartment is any dwelling which is rented and at least semi-detached (ie. only a whole rented house would not be called an apartment). Some apartments are units in buildings such as you are familiar with, some are subdivided houses/warehouses or other converted structures, and some are
townhomes.
A condo is essentially any of the above structures except owned (and usually not a subdivided house because that'd be weird)*. Those townhomes could easily be condos. A popular condo where I live is called a
garden condo (I guess, they don't really have a name though). If this type of building is rented it's more likely to be called a duplex. A condo is "usually" higher quality because it is owned.
The other big difference here is that since a condo is owned like a house you can alter a condo in almost any way you want (on the interior and somewhat the exterior), but an apartment can only have minor alteration (like paint), depending on the landlord or association. A condo also usually has HOA fees, so there can be a community pool, a community building, exterior maintenance, etc. (not to say apartments don't have that stuff, but it's factored into rent). Except in big cities, condos are usually for the older generation (who just buys them in cash) or for families just starting out. As you know, the American dream is to own a house, and except in big cities (except suburbs of course), people generally own a house once they start a family until they become too old to care for it, at which point they may get a condo or move into a nursing home, depending.
Imralu wrote:Uh, must be another weird American thing ... Can you say "I found a lego in the back of the couch."?
I suppose I would say 'I found a lego piece', or a 'lego brick'. We make an effort, AFAIK, to pluralise/possessise legos, so we may just say, 'I found some legos.'
We have a pluralisation/possession fetish here, especially in my state, Michigan. For example, stores such as Kroger, Meijer, Aldi, or JCPenny they become Kroger's, Meijer's, Aldi's, JCPenny's. But not WalMart.
*When I say a subdivided house I mean a building which was once a single family house which has been carved into units. This is typically cheap construction so it wouldn't really make sense as a condo.
