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Post by Twoddle on Jul 31, 2019 21:46:02 GMT
'Tis now, 'twasn't then. Welcome to the August month. Will someone start the monthly thread? Will this do?
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 31, 2019 21:59:12 GMT
Sure will, Twod! Thanks.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 1, 2019 2:36:40 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Aug 1, 2019 3:49:58 GMT
Guest Experience Centre
Ouch. That hurts on so many levels.
People who drive their vans aren’t “guests”. (They’d be guests if allowed by Toyota to sit or ride in them for a short while.) In training their own staff to deal well with customers, it will be useful to concentrate on the experience those customers have in dealing with Toyota. But that’s for internal use. (It’s a similar mistake to that made by shops which tell us to “ask a colleague”.) Using internal language (or internal focus) is rude to the customers. Having a special “Centre” that deals with customer complaints/concerns suggests that all the rest of Toyota doesn’t bother to.
They really haven’t thought through the effect of language, have they!
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 1, 2019 5:59:48 GMT
Guest Experience CentreOuch. That hurts on so many levels. […] They really haven’t thought through the effect of language, have they! No. But they probably paid some "consultant" a ridiculous fee to come up with that risible term. After all, having a Complaints Department implies the possibility of complaints. Heaven forfend!
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 3, 2019 2:58:33 GMT
I am having frequent bouts of the irrits from reading the tautological "x-year anniversary" – on the ABC and BBC online news (and everywhere else it has invaded). I was irritated sufficiently today to email Aunty Beeb with the following. Of course it will achieve nothing other than my temporary relief, but I just had to express my annoyance. Dear Aunty Beeb:
PLEASE cease and desist from using the tautological nonsense of "x-year anniversary"!
Anniversary means a turning of a year, so "x-year anniversary" means x-year turning of the year – a tautological nonsense, recently birthed and now promulgated by the (anti)social media.
In the referenced article you used "five year anniversary" (in caption and text) twice. The expression does not aid the growth of language; rather it diminishes it.
Thank you.
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Post by Dave Miller on Aug 3, 2019 5:46:50 GMT
I’m with you on that, Vv. it also has the problem of spawning such nonsense as “six month anniversary” and - I’ve really heard this! - “three week anniversary”.
In 2013, the British version of The X-Factor had its tenth series, having started nine years previously, in 2004. Simon Cowell kept referring to it as the tenth anniversary. What is it that people don’t understand about a year completing a turn? The first anniversary was the second series, Simon - and so on.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 3, 2019 7:02:01 GMT
Aunty has emended it in the body of the article, but stuffed up in the caption, which now reads "fifth year anniversary". Half a win, I suppose.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 3, 2019 22:21:11 GMT
Your use of “cease and desist” bothered me a bit, Vv, as I am on an all-inclusive resort holiday in Spain with my grandchildren and don’t have access to my usual dictionary (nor to my preferred leisure activities). At first I thought that “cease and desist” was itself tautological but, on further consideration, I decided that “cease” means to discontinue an ongoing activity whereas “desist” means not to do an activity in the future. So far so good. Then I thought that the requirement was not that the BBC should cease an ongoing activity but that it should correct a completed activity. So I think the demand to the BBC should be to “correct, and desist from,”.
I defer to no-one in my admiration for your correct use of English, Vv, but have you nodded on this occasion?
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 3, 2019 23:26:06 GMT
LJH: Hmm food for thought over breakfast, but on first glance I might agree with you on the "correct, and desist from" after my third cup of tea. Last evening I treated myself to dinner with some Aussie authors and journalists at the Byron Writers Festival, and was more than delighted by those people's feedback on my stories (submitted to Benjamin and to Story Club some months ago). I feel encouraged to now proceed with publication. Last evening's Festival session was Story Club, in which five authors (including my four dinner companions) told stories: Kate McClymont, a much-awarded journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald; Scott Ludlam, former Oz Greens-politician-turning-writer; Sisonke Msimang (internationally published Zulu-South African author); Benjamin Law, author, essayist, journalist, and scriptwriter; and story writer Zoë Norton Lodge, creator of Story Club. I was strongly encouraged by Kate, Benjamin, Sisonke, and Zoë to continue with my writing and to become one of Story Club's continuing contributors. Perhaps some day I'll find my life squeezed between covers – if only I can stop writing for a while so I have time for the formalities. (MS is currently with a professional editor, who is helping me cull the crap.) Today, being Sunday, is not for writing more than this post, though; it's car-restoration day. Back to being a grease-monkey.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 10, 2019 8:33:22 GMT
Mr Trump said he had received the letter from Mr Kim on Thursday. " It was hand-delivered. It wasn't touched by anybody," Mr Trump told reporters on Friday at the White House. Does that [insert noun of choice] ever say what he means / mean what he says / says what he means to say / mean what he says to mean? Perhaps the missive was hand-delivered by a dextrous robot? (In Kim's case, rather dextrous than sinister, I suppose – no offence to southpaws.)
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 10, 2019 9:45:05 GMT
Fart pushes Speaker to suspend debateThat story reminds me of an event some 40 years ago – tenuously related to language (of the spoken variety). I was living in a student share-house, and a recent addition to our number was Edward from Uganda. He was, by Ugandan standards, very middle class; a school headmaster who drove a Peugeot and was in Oz for further education. Edward may have been as black as coal, but his attitudes and style were more pukka than those of his British former colonisers – almost a parody of them, in fact. He spoke with a mouth so full of marbles that it's a wonder he didn't choke on them. All five of us were playing a board game shortly after dinner, still at the dining table, when someone farted. Not a stinker, just a rip-roarin' elephant's trumpet blast. Edward stood so quickly that he knocked the table half over as he declared (and here you must image a Paul Robeson basso profundo with a very rich, plummy accent): “ How DARE you FOUL the AIR!” [“eh-ahh”]. We wet ourselves laughing at Edward’s regal antics. Seems a fart joke is common currency everywhere but Uganda. (“ Very common” do I hear from some?)
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 10, 2019 18:12:18 GMT
I usually complain bitterly when directors “mess about with Shakespeare” but I think contributors to this forum should play this YouTube video— m.youtube.com/watch?v=iqmgeth4tFY
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 13, 2019 1:49:26 GMT
Today I learned a new word: logizomechanophobia – fear of computers.
At my newspaper we have a frequent letter writer who refuses to type on any kind of device; consequently, his (always long and rambling) letters are transcribed by the paper's staff – with the occasional misinterpretation of the writer's hen-scratchings. This week we had a letter from him complaining about one such mistranscription. Our letters editor replied in a note after the letter: "Perhaps [name] needs to get over his logizomechanophobia so that errors won't be introduced by newspaper staff".
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 19, 2019 12:34:39 GMT
logizomechanophobia
I have been waiting for someone to comment on this word but no-one has so I will have to do so. It seems to me that it is one of the range of neologisms which someone invents for fun, in a similar way to the practice of inventing new nouns of assembly, most of which are unnecessary and only mildly amusing. Cyberphobia appears to be a pretty good example of what Tone would have called a true synonym and, if the word is actually needed, is a much more elegant invention. Where does the “izo” in logizomechanophobia come from?
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