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Post by Verbivore on Jun 13, 2020 23:06:29 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 14, 2020 0:38:37 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 16, 2020 19:08:50 GMT
The article about coronavirus says, amongst other things: “Sadly most UK rhyming slang these days seems to be self-consciously invented by non-Cockneys."
I would like to know more about this as I thought all modern rhyming slang was self-conscious invention. Maybe it always was?
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 19, 2020 22:28:54 GMT
Opposites in (dis)respect: same language, different meanings in different cultures From a news article on the ABC: "Calling an African-American person 'aunt' or 'uncle' instead of 'Mr' or 'Mrs' is a sign of disrespect".Here in Oz, Aunty and Uncle (with or without a person's name) are terms of respect for elders (i.e. any adult person older than oneself) among our Aboriginal folk. Even a gubba * such as I can be an "uncle" in the eyes of our Indigenes provided we have earned their respect. * Oz Aboriginal term for whitefella, derived from "government man" / "gubba-man" (there's no V sound in our indigenous languages, so V is pronounced B. This is consequent upon initial mis-representation / mis-transcription by European invaders / settlers / rulers.)
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 21, 2020 19:41:02 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Jun 21, 2020 22:19:56 GMT
Not a lot changes:
And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
— Judges 12:5–6 KJV
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 21, 2020 22:25:36 GMT
A bizarre tale, LJH.
To minimise my chances of being shot I have emended my pronunciation to nyoo-fənd-land (previously nyoo-fənd-lənd).
In Oz, Victorians and South Australians pronounce castle as CAssəl while elsewhere in these Antipodes it's said CARsəl, but across the nation the new~ is pronounced nyoo, not noo. We say NEWcarsəl in most states / territories but NEWcassəl in Vic and SA. We usually get a giggle out of Americans' pronunciation of our big bird, the emu (eem-you), as ee-moo; however, I don't think we'd shoot them (not the Aussie style, really) – rather we'd sool the drop bears onto them.
Americans also get some of our cities wrong: CANbrə is mispronounced canBERrə; MELbən is mispronounced MEL-BORN; BRISbən is mispronounced BRIS-BANE. My birth town, Casino (CəSEEno, as in a gambling joint) was originally CASsəno, after Italy's Monte Cassino (CASsəno) – until some orthographically challenged town clerk in the late 1800s mis-spelled it with only one S, thereby leading to a change in the pronunciation.
OTOH, there appears to be some justification for a modern, controversial pronunciation of the Western Australian mission town of New Norcia, originally NOR-cha after its Italian namesake: now commonly New NOR-zhə (as in nausea); it was a Roman Catholic mission with an horrific history of (particularly Indigenous) child slavery and abuse – perhaps the worst of the worst in this country. New Nausea seems appropriate.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 23, 2020 0:10:20 GMT
My word of the day is chyron: a trademarked noun – an electronically generated caption superimposed on a television or cinema screen. 1970s: from Chyron Corporation, its manufacturer.
Now I know what to call those extremely annoying "ticker-tape" distractions. Fortunately, they are not much used by the news services I patronise, but our commercial "news" services' screens are cluttered with them. (I know this only by occasionally seeing them on other folks' TVs or viewing some US news channels on line.)
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 28, 2020 9:33:26 GMT
Elsewhere I was reading about / discussing the coronavirus pandemic when a poster uploaded a word list: "pundemic".
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 29, 2020 3:51:02 GMT
I take it for granted that politicians are windbags, but a medal must go to the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, for her recently reported single-breath non-statement:
”We certainly have been there doing what we can and recently not only have we appointed a building commissioner but put through new legislation to protect owners into the future so certainly we appreciate the angst they're going through and we'll continue to support them in whichever way feels appropriate”.
With such lung capacity, Gladys would probably survive a week in a capsised boat.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jun 29, 2020 7:13:51 GMT
That reminds me (glancingly) of a sentence I once received in a written report from a Chinese colleague who had excellent English. I went back over it carefully, and it was correct in both grammar and punctuation, but so replete with sub-sub-subordinate clauses and parenthetic phrases that it extended, in typewritten form on foolscap paper, to fourteen lines.
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