What's new
What's new

Trade language, correct designations, do you care?

Mechanola

Stainless
Joined
Mar 21, 2011
Location
Äsch
Holes and slits were forbidden with one of my teachers. I thought his is right. We are mechanics, machinists, manufacturers, makers of—well, bores and grooves and pockets and more.

My native language is German. I know a couple expressions in French which helps a lot with reading interesting literature. Of course, many things are explained and described in English and it is not so long ago that I understood how differing English can be. Anyway, I like to give things their proper name, you know, a tube is longer than a bushing, a piece of tubing can be taken for a ring. Where is the transition from ring to washer? At one-to-one relation of length and thickness?

Slide rule? Slide ruler? Gauge slide? Measure slide? Hex screw or hex head screw? Certainly no standards will ever be put to force for the lingo. Do you even care about expressions?
 
I'm sure there are some terms that are "more" correct than others, but most shops have different words for the same things. As long as the people communicating know what the other is talking about it's all good.

Some I can remember off the top of my head:

Jo blocks / gage blocks

scotchbrite / magic carpet
 
I don't care as long as I understand what the person is saying. Maybe it was because I was exposed to a large group of blokes from across the pond on my second machining job just two years in what is now 35 years of machining. One of them came from a decent size company that was closing at the same time the place I worked for moved a couple departments 40 miles causing a lot of people to quit. He started spreading the word back home and we had another British invasion. They have different terms for most everything compared to West Coast USA people of the time.
 
Part of the reason English is so prolific is that over time it has gobbled up words from just about ever other language. English has more cognates, or words that sound pretty much the same as words in another language with the same meaning.

Such as in your native German:
Hund - Hound - Dog
Katze - Cat

French was the language imposed on England for centuries, so it's no surprise that many English words are actually French words. The result of all of this is a huge vocabulary with so many synonyms that we have an entire book just for them (thesaurus).

Technical terms typically follow the country where the technology was invented. For example, France was huge in early aviation development, so many aircraft terms are French. Fuselage, aileron, etc. Many mathematical terms are Arabic in origin.

Fun times.
 
you ought to try learning Chinese names for things. after all over 1.6 billion Chinese speakers.
.
i often carried a picture book of standard tools. as often translator had no ideal what name of tool was even in Chinese. same as office person in USA might not know what a micrometer is
 
There is one case where using the accepted term can make a difference. Suppose you are talking to a new supplier on the phone and are using the proper terms for that line of work. You identify yourself as a professional and are likely to be treated like one. If you say something like "I have to put some threads in a hole with a threader." which may contain the necessary information, but you have signaled that you are an amateur and the person on the other end will not give you much attention.

Some things are never said, like "The White House is on Pennsylvania Road." It is always "Avenue".

There is a story about a panda that goes in a restaurant and orders a sandwich, eats it, draws a gun and fires a couple of shots in the ceiling, and runs out. The owner follows the panda and asks why he did it. The panda replies "Because I'm a panda." and tosses the owner an animal guide book. The entry for a panda says "A small bearlike animal native to China that eats, shoots, and leaves." The point is to illustrate the importance of a comma.

Bill
 
Part of the reason English is so prolific is that over time it has gobbled up words from just about ever other language. English has more cognates, or words that sound pretty much the same as words in another language with the same meaning.

Such as in your native German:
Hund - Hound - Dog
Katze - Cat

French was the language imposed on England for centuries, so it's no surprise that many English words are actually French words. The result of all of this is a huge vocabulary with so many synonyms that we have an entire book just for them (thesaurus).

Technical terms typically follow the country where the technology was invented. For example, France was huge in early aviation development, so many aircraft terms are French. Fuselage, aileron, etc. Many mathematical terms are Arabic in origin.

Fun times.

English is the whore of the linguistic world, partly because it is not really a language but a polyglot, a pidgin language formed to allow people in the south of England to communicate with Viking traders from the north. Other languages try to keep themselves "pure", but we don't care. Every time we send soldiers somewhere, an bunch of new words enter common use, like "skosh". The exception is the present deployment. I have not heard a single Arabic word incorporated into American English.

When you see instructions in multiple languages, the English one is almost always shorter, mostly because we have so many ways to express things.

Bill
 
The only thing I have trouble with are terms like "real accurate" or "close tolerance" or "good finish" , they can mean anything. Give me a definitive answer like within .0005" or .002 TIR, or 16 ra finish.
 
While not addressing trade vocabulary specifically, James D. Nicoll had this to say about the English language as a whole: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
 
A lot of this has to do with your current workplace culture and social environment. Often times a person needs to use a term they dislike or know to be inaccurate because everyone else uses it and look at you like you're an idiot if you say otherwise, despite being "correct".

Yup, first hand experience with this one.
 
While not addressing trade vocabulary specifically, James D. Nicoll had this to say about the English language as a whole: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

And when we encounter a word like "gestalt", we incorporate it and save having to write half a page describing an effect or we make up a word like "superheterodyne" or "klystron" and are able to refer to a complex operation in a few syllables.

Knowledge is power and knowledge transmitted in a few words more powerful.

Bill
 
To address the original post: there's no substitute for precision in language when you are dealing with technical subjects. The whole point of machining is to accurately produce an object from a description, either pictorial or verbal. If time is of the essence, it'll like as not be verbal and you better get it right the first time. I remember being a very junior-grade ajusteur (mechanic) in a Belgian steel mill and the boss would say something like Tony, vas me chercher un marteau, which meant, go get me a hammer. The consequences of bringing him, say, a shop rag or something other than a hammer in front of the rest of the crew being utterly unimaginable, I learned to memorize vocabulary words. As in, a grain d'orge was a cape chisel, which we used a lot. If I heard that today—50 years later—I would probably snap to attention and hurt my back.

Now I don't know technically at which point a bushing becomes a washer. Probably it has to do with function. Absent the split and the fact it's used under the head of a bolt, based on proportion a high-collar lock washer would be a bushing or possibly a sleeve. Is a bushing always dynamic like a bearing? Well, a pipe bushing is static, so that can't be right. I'd say if it matters to you careerwise, a bunch of catalogs would be a good study aid.
 
To address the original post: there's no substitute for precision in language when you are dealing with technical subjects.

Now I don't know technically at which point a bushing becomes a washer. Probably it has to do with function. Absent the split and the fact it's used under the head of a bolt, based on proportion a high-collar lock washer would be a bushing or possibly a sleeve. Is a bushing always dynamic like a bearing?

Thanx. Exactly what I mean. In German we have three expressions that are generally used without knowing, most mechanics don’t give a damn. Buchse, Büchse, Hülse. The English counterparts are box, bush(ing), hull. I don’t think I’ve ever read hull on this forum. That’s what it’s about, to grasp the function of something. A hull is free on the outside, it surrounds something. The bushing is surrounded by something itself plus it contains. The difference between Buchse and Büchse is that one has a straight through opening, the other is closed on one end. Büchsenmacher = rifle maker. The rifle, however, does not have a bore alone but rifles, Riefen in German, straight or helocoidal grooves.

See, the deeper I want to go the preciser I have to speak. The thing that turns on that other thing like . . . leads nowhere. Admittedly I talk of iron from time to time like the other week when it was about a lapping plate. That sales person didn’t deserve better than that I asked, do you want to sell me a simple piece of iron for that money? Anyway, I can’t find a book that names body forms. Washer, ring, disc/disk, sleeve, collet, tube, pipe? What’s a ring called whose thickness is bigger than its length? Aren’t rings always thinner than long?
 
I notice that there are no replies from that part of the world the King's english originated. Wrench and spanner for instance.

Probably because they can't read these posts in a foreign language. A sports car owner's manual actually had an English to American translation section.

A Commander Duggan was here helping with the installation of Rolls Royce engines in McDonnell built Harriers. I asked what type they were and he replied "One to one bypawss with reheat." I thought about that for a while and asked "Is that a fan jet with an afterburner?" He thought a while and said "I think so."

Bill
 
My native language is Castilian. I have been living in the US for about 10 years and still surprises me the differences between my Spanish and the Spanish from Mexico. Very often is confusing, and very easy to drive into misunderstandings, especially with technical words. I always try to speak in English, so I do care about different expressions for the same thing.
 
I for one would learn the proper words more easy if they are used with the same meaning every time. For instance "depth of cut of X". Sometimes is literally the depth of cut, sometimes the reduction in diameter is meant. Very confusing...
Peter
 
The recharacterization of common words to specialized meanings in narrow fields is very interesting as well. I'm sure every word in this paragraph has clear meaning to the general public, but the paragraph is meaningless to all but a very limited community. Within the community, it is concise and clear.

The very first hijacked term (dope) brought about some funny looks when discussed in public. It refers to a solvent solution of a plastic, and ties in with the "airplane dopes" used for fabric covered airplanes. The paragraph describes a bad day at my old job.

The dope in system 31 was contaminated by a leak in the fixed slot cooler and created a rash of slugs at the same time the 7th sub drum head caused cinches. The jet also had clear spots and BB lines. The paper clip friction was low. The softness was fine, but the removability was poor. Only one area was standard grade fine. Curl and residuals were ok. The stone crusher was starting to develop issues causing crosslines. Lowering the mica baffle had no effect. Lowering the Q baffle increased the vacuum and made the crosslines action grade, but made the bullseyes worse.
 








 
Back
Top