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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 11, 2020 9:43:54 GMT
I also recall (I may have mentioned this) that a work colleague, long ago in Hong Kong, was Inspector Wong. Like many Chinese, he had his Chinese given name, but mainly used an adopted Christian-style name. In his case, he'd adopted the name "Angus". Fair enough, until the personnel records at Police HQ got it slightly wrong. All correspondence to him arrived with the "g" missing: Inspector Anus Wong.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 11, 2020 10:03:25 GMT
I recall the photocopier contract at work telling us that we were entitled to two regular service visits per anum. I decided not to be involved. Dave: Thanks for the chuckle! Those per-anum service visits could be, er, fun – but they might also be a colonoscopy or proctoscopy. Think I'll pass, too.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 13, 2020 21:30:40 GMT
In the September thread, we discussed some differences among AU / UK / US names for things. Here is an excerpt from a recent article in the AU news organ The New Daily, on what I've long referred to as linguistic-cultural imperialism. (The article was decrying the AU adoption of US-style Hallowe'en.) […] one of those rants about Australia’s obsession with American culture and why buffed gym freaks and overweight middle-aged men wear baseball caps back to front and how people these days walk on sidewalks instead of footpaths and eat cookies instead of biscuits and visit the mall rather than the shops and call me dude and bro instead of mate and eat candy rather than lollies and sit on the sofa instead of the couch and put ketchup on their fries rather than sauce on their chips and fill up their cars with gas instead of petrol and use the restroom instead of the dunny and think that because of my breathless lack of punctuation I deserve a kick in the ass rather than an old-fashioned boot up the arse.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 15, 2020 3:28:40 GMT
The red mist descends. (Not sure if the misspelling Grammer Nazi was intended or not. The title-author had better watch out! And DM ought to educate himself on the difference between an acronym and an initialism.)
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 15, 2020 5:55:08 GMT
If one's name were Anon in a western country no-one would believe it. (para.#7)
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 15, 2020 15:33:39 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 15, 2020 16:23:25 GMT
I think "tomato sauce" is too all-enveloping a term to be a grammatical issue. Yes, If I order some form of pasta, which is to be made wet and sticky with a hot red liquid strongly featuring tomatoes, I'd expect that to be called "tomato sauce" and certainly not "ketchup'. If I want a bottle of something cold and thickly sticky, to bung on the side of my plate, or onto my fish finger butty, though, I'd ask for "tomato sauce" and expect that "tomato ketchup" is the same thing. Any carbootsale burger van will ask "brown or red sauce?" and never "ketchup?".
I'm perhaps steered, though, by living for some years where there's a Cantonese term pronounced roughly "kehjup". Ah, thought I on first encountering that, that's where we get "ketchup" from! And no, it isn't. That's tomato juice.
The yellow stuff on apple pies and rhubarb isn't custard, either: it's "custard sauce", apparently!
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 15, 2020 19:37:06 GMT
[…] The yellow stuff on apple pies and rhubarb isn't custard, either: it's "custard sauce", apparently! I had better make sure to have custard sauce with my rhubarb ice-cream (made four litres yesterday). Mmmm … . As for tomato sauce / ketchup: I find the former more peppery, the latter sweeter (being an American product it's loaded with sugar).
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 16, 2020 20:37:13 GMT
When half isn't 50 per cent:
[…] half of them will say, 'that's good, Calvin', and the other half — a small per cent — will say […]
– from an interview on ABC News.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 21, 2020 22:15:46 GMT
Just to keep the thread alive, a friend is studying some aspects of ancient civilisations and has encouraged me to read this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_languageMy friend says it is “fascinating” and those contributors to this forum who are more learned than me (or I ?) might find it so too. I struggle with modern languages and don’t know whether it should be me or I in the previous sentence so I haven’t made much progress with Proto-Indo-European. Can it really be possible to achieve certainty?
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 21, 2020 22:28:05 GMT
Just to keep the thread alive, a friend is studying some aspects of ancient civilisations and has encouraged me to read this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_languageMy friend says it is “fascinating” and those contributors to this forum who are more learned than me (or I ?) might find it so too. I struggle with modern languages and don’t know whether it should be me or I in the previous sentence so I haven’t made much progress with Proto-Indo-European. Can it really be possible to achieve certainty? Good link, LJH. Thanks. As for your uncertainty over "than me (or I ?)", I take the approach that "am" is the understood, if unvocalised / unwritten, verb attached to the "I", hence "than I [am]". It can sound stilted, but I believe it's technically correct.
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 21, 2020 23:19:36 GMT
I agree with Vv on that particular “than I”.
In fact, it often helps to add in the missing words. Consider:
He loves Chris more than I He loves Chris more than me
Those have quite different meanings (so the choice does matter) and those meanings become clearer if you expand:
He loves Chris more than I (do) He loves Chris more than (he loves) me.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 22, 2020 0:47:55 GMT
Excellent clarification, Dave.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 24, 2020 11:17:44 GMT
Along with homonym, heteronym, antonym, synonym, contranym, aptronym, pseudonym … there is another ~ nym: numeronym. In retrospect it seems obvious enough, but until now the concept of numeronym had not occurred to me. “C10k is a numeronym …” (as was, I suppose, Y2K?).
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 24, 2020 20:45:44 GMT
I am sorry you have posted this, V7e, as I would have preferred not to know about numeronyms and, in particular, it is with regret that I have had the misfortune to become aware of the examples of such things given under the heading in Wikipedia.
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