“I know China very well, President Xi is a friend of mine, I know him very well…The first thing they’re going to do is say you are not allowed to play ice hockey anymore. That’s not good. Canada’s not going to like that,” the president added.
Archive article: https://archive.ph/JAX75#selection-1443.0-1443.242
It’s just hockey
There are different kinds of hockey though.
If I say I went to school yesterday. People don’t think driving school.
If I say I played hockey yesterday, you wouldn’t think I played it on grass would you?
I’d ask, “Ice hockey or field hockey?” because there’s no way to tell until you specify.
Canadian here, I’ve never once met someone refer to field hockey as hockey. Actually I don’t know if I’ve ever heard someone mention field hockey at all, lol
Trump isn’t Canadian.
As a Canadian I have only once had the experience of someone talking about playing field hockey. Going on 30 something years.
Hockey is ice hockey, I might be surprised about which league you were talking about.
Trump isn’t Canadian though?
Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that field hockey was one of the major league sports that can be found playing in any sports bar in America provided it’s in season. That must be the big difference between Americans and Canadians. Thanks for clearing that up!
The point wasn’t that field hockey is a major league sport (though it is a popular recreational sport - my high school had a field hockey team but not an ice hockey team, for example).
The point is that this is a clear dialectal difference between some speakers of American and Canadian English, and so criticizing Trump for this, of all the things you should be criticizing him for, is stupid (and ignorant)!