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Post by Twoddle on Oct 8, 2018 21:48:40 GMT
I see no added value in some foreign language words but there is a German word that, as age creeps on, I increasingly need and for which there seems to be no English equivalent:— torschlusspanik = the sadness one feels on realising that one has left it too late. Literally “gate closing panic”. I will never climb Africa’s Killimanjaro or even Great Gable in the English Lake District. I will never get to see gorillas in the wild. I can’t eat that lovely cream cake that I had forgotten and which is well past its sell-by date. Even, I will never learn another language as my memory is now too fickle. Ah, me ☹️ I always wanted to walk the Lairig Ghru. "Wiser" councils dissuaded me and it's too late now. The term, "Bucket list", has long bemused me somewhat, meaning "A list of things one wishes to do before one dies". Is there another list, then, of things one wishes to do after one dies?
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Post by Twoddle on Oct 10, 2018 8:14:27 GMT
This BBC News item caught my eye, not because of the uncivilised activities of the dolts concerned, but because of the BBC's statement that, "A French court ordered both men to pay a €50,000 fine …". "Both"? Did they share the fine, then, with each of them paying €25,000? No, I imagine that the BBC's literary standards have taken yet another step in their downwards spiral.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 13, 2018 11:00:02 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 17, 2018 8:11:19 GMT
I have read the following statement on numerous news sites today and they are all identical (probably sourced from the same wire service): they all confuse by omitting parenthetical commas around “after Uruguay”.
Which was the first country to do it after Uruguay? If indeed Canada is only the second country to legalise (which it is, afaik), that parenthetical comma pair is surely needed for clarity.
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 17, 2018 20:53:29 GMT
You’re right Vv. The pattern is akin to that where, in reports of drink-driving, we often read ”three times over the limit”, when the writer means “at three times the limit”.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 18, 2018 10:39:30 GMT
I enjoy looking for unfortunate commas. In July, I posted the following. It is still my favourite.
I don’t know where I first came across this pair of stanzas but they nicely illustrate the importance of using commas carefully.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee Agreed to have a battle! For Tweedledum said Tweedledee Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee Agreed to have a battle! For Tweedledum, said Tweedledee, Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 18, 2018 10:56:54 GMT
Thanks, Dave. I was certain I wasn't the only one to see ambiguity there.
Now I'm dealing with multiple ambiguities. Today I took delivery of some new toys – a suite of musical instruments, in total nine devices from eight manufacturers – and am faced with making sense of the sometimes poorly considered, and/or poorly translated, instruction manuals, which range in size from three pages of infographics to 200 pages of dense text. The sources are variously Germany, Sweden, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Oz, and the instructions came in seven languages each! Only one of the devices had/needed no instructions: the piano/organ bench – just unfold and sit on it. And then there's the spaghetti: 28 cables in all. Oh well, the reading and wiring is something to amuse me during the constant Spring rains, I suppose. (Ten days ago we were cold and officially in drought; now we are warm and at risk of flood.)
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 18, 2018 11:02:53 GMT
I enjoy looking for unfortunate commas. [...] Yes, LJH, commas seem to confuse people as much as apostrophes. One of my daily gripes at work is the omission of the second of what should be a pair of parentheticals: Mr Brown, the chairman said blah blah ... rather than Mr Brown, the chairman, said ... . A companion gripe is the omission of the first comma, leaving the would-be second one separating the verb from its subject: Mr Brown the chairman, said ... . Perhaps we need a Comma Protection Society.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 20, 2018 2:59:36 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 20, 2018 11:06:02 GMT
And maybe troubled waters?
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 20, 2018 13:04:26 GMT
And maybe troubled waters? Nah, I'll just build a Bridge Over Troubled Waters. (But if I ever again hear the clichéd "build a bridge and get over it" I might need that oil.)
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 22, 2018 11:16:37 GMT
Mark 2 or Em Kay 2?
Increasingly I hear "Em Kay 2" (for MK2 or MK II – e.g. an updated model of a device or car), particularly from US speakers; however, today I heard a British bloke say Em Kay 2.
There was a Mark 2 (MK II) Jaguar (along with many other-numbered marks of that marque), and I'd never heard it said any other way until an American reviewer on YouTube said Jag-wah Em Kay 2. I have frequently heard Americans describe a certain Lincoln Continental as an Em Kay 3 / 4 etc, yet in Oz we'd say Mark 2/3/4 … for all of them, regardless of their origins.
Whatever happened to Mark II – Mark 2 (and its siblings I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X) of anything: Jaguars, Rovers, musical instruments, baby carriages … ?
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 22, 2018 16:54:11 GMT
Hmm ! In the UK, I have never heard mark numbers pronounced any other way than as Mark 2 or whatever. Much stranger to me is the Spanish (or at least South American) way of pronouncing the Jaguar car as “HAGwah”.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 22, 2018 20:09:52 GMT
Hmm ! In the UK, I have never heard mark numbers pronounced any other way than as Mark 2 or whatever. Much stranger to me is the Spanish (or at least South American) way of pronouncing the Jaguar car as “HAGwah”. Thanks, LJH. I hadn't heard of the Hag-wah; interesting. For the brief (though not brief enough!) time that Ford owned Jaguar and was producing models of the marque on a Fraud platform I referred to the product as a Faguar. (I must, despite my disdain for Henry's product, give credit to Ford for their having eliminated one of Jag's most constant failings: auto-electrics by Lucas the Prince of Darkness. At least the lights worked.)
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Post by Twoddle on Oct 23, 2018 9:44:26 GMT
I've not heard Jaguar pronounced "HAGwah", but there's a definite difference between the normal UK pronunciation of "JAG-you-uh" and the North American "JAGwah".
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