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Post by Little Jack Horner on Dec 4, 2020 9:32:37 GMT
This is one of my all-time favourite songs as it encapsulates for me the free-wheeling spirit of Australia and reminds me of a Christmas visit to my family in Queensland. I have only heard the (original?) version by Bucko and the Champs but they rhyme, as I would, ute and beaut with cute rather than boot. And they also seem to rhyme barbecue and pool, so they sing barbecuel. We British also refer to utes as pick-ups, usually without the following “truck”.
Ute also reminds me of other Aussie motoring phenomena. In the UK we only have what I think Aussies call style-side utes; tray-backs utes are “super rare”. Even more rare, to the point of non-existence, are the large truck trailers with long tow bars. And, until recently, we usually had lorries rather than trucks.
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 4, 2020 11:25:30 GMT
LJH: I think that song, and many others of its kind, demonstrate Aussies' rather laidback irreverence toward things elsewhere regarded as sacred. Indeed we have style-side utes; I drive one, a Ford Falcon. (The Aussie Falcon is our equivalent of the UK Granada.) We also have tray-back utes; very commonplace. It's been claimed – debatably – that the ute was an Aussie invention (no, not the "pickup", but the style-side coupé utility, as it was first called). A farmer's wife wanted a vehicle suitable for taking the family to church on Sunday and the pigs to market on Monday. At Ford's Geelong AU plant, a coupé was cut down to suitable dimensions and a legend was born. (Did that make it a coupé coupé?) Is the ute actually an Aussie invention?A history of the Australian uteCelebrating 80 years of uteDid the ute originate in Australia? Sadly, no.
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 4, 2020 21:11:33 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Dec 4, 2020 23:19:13 GMT
>> One can have empty champagne bottles, yes, but not “empty bottles of champagne”. If they were bottles of champagne then they wouldn't be empty, no? <<
You are, of course, correct, Vv, but it is a frequently encountered error and I am afraid I wouldn't have have noticed. You are still missing your former professional rôle it seems?
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 5, 2020 5:59:22 GMT
[…] You are still missing your former professional rôle it seems? LJH: In a word: Yes. [sigh + grin] It's taken / taking me a while to adjust to retirement – no externally imposed demands on my time, so structure hard to find or maintain. (Structure is one of my virgoan sanity essentials FWIW. Ahem.) I'm left wondering if or when my interests, faculties, or perceptions might drastically change (as they have at a few past junctures in my life), but for now they seem to remain very much in the realms of (written) language and classic motors / motoring. The restrictions owed to COVID-19, even here in relatively unaffected iso "country" Oz, frustrated my #1 retirement project (Benz rebuild) with a hiatus of eight months: lo-o-ong delivery delays; missing, damaged, and incorrect goods because of overwhelmed, under-resourced postal systems in time of national emergency; unavailability of specialist help, e.g. top-class leather-working car-trimmer already long-ago contracted; the uncomfortable and inconvenient finality of the 20-noughties policy change of Daimler whereby they would no longer manufacture or guarantee to supply parts for "any/every car they'd ever built" from 1886 or whenever. ... and saw me spending far too much time reading news (online, many sources), especially doomscrolling COVID, conspiracy nonsenses, and the US election soap opera. There wasn't a lot else to do – that I could find the motivation for. Six days weekly I read "my" former paper online and wince at some of the clangers, the infelicities and clunkers. Less and less frequently than my longtime wont do I write to "editors", journos, authors, publishers, or the like. I don't often find something completely new: solecisms seem to cross many stylistic and literary boundaries, and to be ineradicable. However, when something fresh does cross my path, e.g. empty bottles of bubbly, my ever-alert inner language geek guns into action and … well, you see the result. I thank the relevant gods / fairies / forces that at least one of those three "plagues" ( in red, above) appears (hopes!) to be a diminishing threat in Oz, and never has been (yet) in my region. I can only try to imagine what the pandemic is like in the UK, the Continent, the Asias, Russias, Americas … . May you here all survive it physically, socially, and mentally. Health bodies are now acknowledging a big surge in mental-health cases / needs / issues since COVID lockdowns were implemented. Had I been living in a city I'd have found major restrictions on movement and association, combined with shortages of goods and limited access to them, the anggrrrry crowds, the loss of work/income, the deprivation of life's rhythms … seriously grrr-inducing. However, in the relative luxury of an off-highway rural paradise among 5–15-acre lots of former farmland, still dotted with cattle, orchards, nurseries … my hectare (2.4-ish acres?) of hinterland hilltop was minimally affected. Two benefits were the noticeable lack of tourist traffic/crowds and of "missionary" visits. Perhaps the latters' "shepherds" advised them against door-to-door witnessing lest they die martyrs and go prematurely to their eternal reward. LOL If my former employer were to invite me back I'd probably accept. Every time I've tried to retire since age 45 I seem to have failed, and returned to non-retirement. I need to do, not just be. (Poor candidate for Buddhism, then, I suppose. LOL)
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Post by Dave Miller on Dec 5, 2020 9:55:56 GMT
I recognise in myself so much of what you say, Vv!
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Post by Twoddle on Dec 5, 2020 10:56:07 GMT
That set me wondering about languages in which nouns aren't used adjectivally in the casual way that they are in English. How would one say, in French for example, "an empty champagne bottle" when "champagne" can't be used as an adjective? "An empty bottle that contained champagne", perhaps?
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 5, 2020 11:17:30 GMT
Twod: I imagine les frogs would have it along the lines of la bouteille vide de champagne de ma tante de ... .
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Dec 5, 2020 12:16:40 GMT
Poor Vv! I truly sympathise. Can you buy a 3-D printer and make your own motoring bits and pieces? A project for 2021? I retired 28 years ago this Christmas so I am used to the experience.
I am no linguist but I think, in French, a champagne bottle whether empty or full would be une bouteille à champagne whereas a bottle of champagne would be une bouteille de champagne. Google Translate doesn't confirm this but that is my recollection. Certainly, I am sure one can’t say une champagne bouteille. Or, to be a pedanticly careful proof reader, one can say it but one should not (with Vv reading one’s posts, one has to be very careful).
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 5, 2020 20:16:02 GMT
Poor Vv! I truly sympathise. Can you buy a 3-D printer and make your own motoring bits and pieces? A project for 2021? I retired 28 years ago this Christmas so I am used to the experience.
I am no linguist but I think, in French, a champagne bottle whether empty or full would be une bouteille à champagne whereas a bottle of champagne would be une bouteille de champagne. Google Translate doesn't confirm this but that is my recollection. Certainly, I am sure one can’t say une champagne bouteille. Or, to be a pedanticly careful proof reader, one can say it but one should not (with Vv reading one’s posts, one has to be very careful). LJH: I had considered the 3D printing idea, but the items I needed could not be so reproduced. I'm driving to Brisbane on Wednesday to retrieve one remaining part (the one small, key component that must be installed before anything else can proceed) from a wreck, then it should be full steam ahead on the reassembly. As for others' being careful lest I spot a solecism: don't you worry, JH; I make enough of my own, particularly as my typing becomes increasingly sloppy. (I shan't mention your pedanticly ;-)
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Post by Dave Miller on Dec 5, 2020 21:52:40 GMT
Pedantically - one of those adverbs that don’t make sense. “In the manner of someone who is pedantical”?
There are, of course, several adjectives which make that odd change in becoming adverbs - but why?
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 5, 2020 22:51:56 GMT
Pedantically - one of those adverbs that don’t make sense. “In the manner of someone who is pedantical”? There are, of course, several adjectives which make that odd change in becoming adverbs - but why? One that catches many people is publicly (which they write as publically). Logic and consistency in English? Yeah, right. LOL One can be overly pedantical. ;-)
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Post by Twoddle on Dec 6, 2020 10:49:32 GMT
Twod: I imagine les frogs would have it along the lines of la bouteille vide de champagne de ma tante de ... . Verbivore, I don't like to think of the elderly without champagne at Christmas. I do hope your aunty manages to refill her bottle.
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 9, 2020 20:40:26 GMT
Unbuttoning business speakProfessional communication has traditionally been buttoned up. For better or for worse, a new generation entering the workforce may help us relax – at least a little. If the trend continues might we revert to pictographic writing and lose alphabetical / symbolic writing? Is written language being dumbed down?
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Dec 10, 2020 12:59:04 GMT
Good afternoon.
I don’t need Kate Morgan's article to realise that I am out of date, if not a dinosaur, but the whole point of communication is express oneself in a way which is clear to one’s correspondent, an obligation which attaches to “gen z” folk as much as the rest of us (I had never heard of gen z until reading this article). I still resent it when I am addressed by my given name in automated e-mails from supermarkets but I am beginning to realise that no discourtesy is intended. We move on. Sixty years ago I learned not to write “I am in receipt of your communication of the 3rd inst” which was at least perfectly clear. Incidentally, I use the term “given name” that in our multicultural society is more appropriate than the “Christian name” which was customary for most of my life.
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