[WikiEN-l] Conventions and movie vs. film

[Richard Grevers]

On Sat, 3 May 2003 21:58:43 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Ehrenberg 
<littledanehren at yahoo.com> gave utterance to the following:
>
> This whole debate is pointless. Who cares if we use
> movie or film. Neither one is ambiguous. Neither is
> really that "uncultured". It doesn't matter. Just make
> redirects from one to another (since some use movie
> and others film) or else pick one and adopt it as a
> standard. Pick a number 1 or 2. One of them is movie,
> the other film. It really doesn't matter which one is
> used. Will one of them detract from our goal of
> creating an encyclopedia? Just think of that when
> debating these pointless issues.
> -LittleDan
>
I was about to raise my hand in favour of movie for the reason that film is 
ambiguous but movie isn't.

As to usage, movie is one word I don't regard as an americanism (it 
probably arrived in NZ with the troops during WWII). New Zealanders will 
say they are going to the movies, to see a movie, to the pictures, but they 
will seldom say "to a film" or "to the cinema". I think "the flicks" has 
almost died out as a term.

-- 
Richard Grevers
Christchurch, New Zealand