Marching onwards

[Verbivore]

Mar 16, 2021 21:02:01 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

I have just asked an on-line thesaurus for a synonym for “couldn‘t care less”. The thesaurus wondered if I actually meant “could care less”. What is the world coming to? Or, to what is the world coming? 

LJH: Perhaps it was an American thesaurus (as it seems most online dictionaries and thesauruses are). The expression “I could care less” is, AFAIK, solely a US usage, and must surely be meant sarcastically, though it means the same as “I couldn’t care less” in UK/AU Englishes.

Synonyms include: apathetic, unconcerned, indifferent, not give a tinker’s damn.

NB: Many online dictionaries/thesauruses are not only American in origin and style but are also frequently rehashed old editions that are no longer entirely relevant.

[Verbivore]

Culturo-linguistic imperialism assaults our very fundament!

Until the COVID-induced toilet-paper-hoarding madness of last year, Aussie bum fodder was always toilet paper or toilet tissue.

Now, perhaps because the US retailer Costco has landed in Oz and is selling “university degrees” in bulk, we are being told that loo paper is actually bath tissue.

I have never found the need to use tissue paper in the bath.

Grrr!



PS: What is the stuff commonly called in your burg? (No, not as in Kleenex Wundersoft or Lady Scott 4-ply.) Formally or less so.

[Dave Miller]

“I could care less”:

That may have arisen from a sarcastic root, but it now seems to be taken by Americans simply to mean what “I couldn’t care less” means in British English.

I put it it in that strange class of oppositely mistaken phrases which includes “it’s impossible to underestimate the effect of ...” (when the speaker is trying to say that there was a large effect and means “it’s impossible to OVERestimate ...”) and “I miss not having the Smiths as neighbours”, when the speaker actually misses HAVING them as neighbours.

[Twoddle]

Mar 16, 2021 21:40:07 GMT Verbivore said:

Culturo-linguistic imperialism assaults our very fundament!
PS: What is the stuff commonly called in your burg?

The manufacturers call it "toilet tissue". I call it "toilet paper", or in the privacy of my home, "bog paper".

[Dave Miller]

Loo roll / toilet paper

[Verbivore]

What if English were phonetically consistent?

So many people, when proposing consistent or uniform pronunciations in English, seem to ignore or forget the fact that there are so many Englishes, which makes the idea naïve and impossible.

[Dave Miller]

Mar 18, 2021 3:21:36 GMT Verbivore said:

What if English were phonetically consistent?

So many people, when proposing consistent or uniform pronunciations in English, seem to ignore or forget the fact that there are so many Englishes, which makes the idea naïve and impossible.

We’d also hit problems with spelling vs pronunciation. Would a southerner be expected to write “I’ll go too town” and a Glaswegian “Al gor ee toon”?

Would he go on Wensdee, Wednsdee, Wednsday or Wensday?

[Little Jack Horner]

And, of course, there aren’t enough consonants for all the sounds. How does one cope with the soft and hard TH? I thought at first it depended on the following vowel, but not so. Consider: thank and that; or theme and then; or thin and this; or thousand and those; or thunder and thus.

[Dave Miller]

Mar 18, 2021 14:08:59 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

And, of course, there aren’t enough consonants for all the sounds. How does one cope with the soft and hard TH? I thought at first it depended on the following vowel, but not so. Consider: thank and that; or theme and then; or thin and this; or thousand and those; or thunder and thus.

And the different pronunciations of a final "s":

Spas, cobs, mods, floes, togs, skis, balls, cams, cans, loos, bars, losses, emus, spivs, spews, boxes, boys, fezzes

Tics, tiffs, coughs, locks, caps, Iraqs, lots,

In the first list, the sound is "zz"; in the second "ss".
The difference does seem to depend on the preceding letter sound though I haven't spent much time writing out that list and there may be anomalies.

[Verbivore]

Other than learning the IPA, what if any solutions exist?

Even the IPA (containing more than 200 symbols when one includes diacritics and suprasegmentals) doesn’t adequately meet all needs in US and BR Englishes (depending on the variety of English, the same symbol can represent different sounds), let alone the Englishes of AU, NZ, ZA, IN, CA … . The 44 basic symbols used for BR/AM Englishes are listed here.

Would it help if the English alphabet were to regain its "lost" symbols: (thorn (Þ, þ); wynn (Ƿ, ƿ); eth (Ð, ð); ash (Æ, æ); ethel (Œ, œ); yogh (ȝ)? Probably not: people (other than language geeks or obsessives) are generally lazy readers and are unlikely to bother learning an extended alphabet. Even yours truly, when studying Linguistics in the '70s, got only halfway through learning all the symbols – and I've since forgotten those that I don't need (and a few that I do).

Elon Musk named his child X Æ A-12 (a silliness common among “celebrities”). The name includes the Old English character, Ash (Æ).

My younger son, Ashley, some years ago adopted the letter Ash / Æ as both the first letter of his given name and as shorthand for its most commonly applied short form. He “signs” his first name as Æ. (No, he’s not a celebrity, just a regular musician.)

[Verbivore]

A little recreational reading today leads me to enquire if Earth is round, square, rectangular, flat, or perhaps some other shape. The turn of phrase responsible was "… took him to the four corners of the globe".

I know it's common to refer to the four corners of the world (or earth), but I don't recall encountering "the four corners of the globe" previously.

Are there any flat-earthers here who could clarify?

(The author was Philip Willan; the book was The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons and the killing of Roberto Calvi (a.k.a. God's Banker) – the former head of Banco Ambrosiano who was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in June 1982. Content-wise, the book makes Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code pale in comparison.)

[Little Jack Horner]

I am not sure why “the four corners of the globe” should be problematic as Earth is apparently a tetrahedron. According to its website, the Tetrahedron Earth-Society was: “Founded by G.L Lombardo in 2016 after a scientific break through involving a brief Google Image Search, our leader, Mr. Lombardo came to the realization that "Flat Earthers", and "Globe Tards" were both wrong, and that the Earth was neither flat, nor a sphere, but rather a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. Today, the Tetrahedron Earth-Society seeks to bring enlightenment to those lost in the corners, or circles of their small minded world view.”

www.facebook.com/TetrahedronEarthSoicety/

[Verbivore]

Mar 19, 2021 13:56:38 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

I am not sure why “the four corners of the globe” should be problematic as Earth is apparently a tetrahedron. According to its website, the Tetrahedron Earth-Society was: “Founded by G.L Lombardo in 2016 after a scientific break through involving a brief Google Image Search, our leader, Mr. Lombardo came to the realization that "Flat Earthers", and "Globe Tards" were both wrong, and that the Earth was neither flat, nor a sphere, but rather a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. Today, the Tetrahedron Earth-Society seeks to bring enlightenment to those lost in the corners, or circles of their small minded world view.”

www.facebook.com/TetrahedronEarthSoicety/

Thanks, LJH. So Earth is a pyramid? On which face does Mr Lombardo place Australia? Are we toward the base of a side, or are we on the underside? Does Earth have four poles? Which vertex is North? Surely, someone who misspells his website's URL (Soicety) is hardly credible?

At least I'll have a counter to the next flat-earther I meet (and where I live one's bound to find a few).

Thanks for posting the explanation; I didn't visit the site because I refuse to pollute my Mac with Fakebook. Meanwhile, I'll forgo Mr Lombardo's invitation to enlightenment and stick with my small-minded squashed-spherical world view, with or without its "four corners".

[Dave Miller]

I had a quick look, Vv ... and we may rest assured that the discussion is very tongue in cheek.

[Verbivore]

Thank the gods for “the dictionary”!

I recently found myself in debate with a neighbour, who'd asked me if I planned to get the COVID vaccination. I replied Yes, but I'll wait a while till they've sorted out the bugs.

Oh dear! That set the neighbour off on a full anti-vax rant.

You know it's not even a real vaccine?

According to whom?

Doctors.

Which doctors would those be?

I had to push her a bit, but when she answered she gave me the ammunition I needed.

She brought up the names of three "doctors" on her phone.

These.

On my phone I entered their credentials and learned that they were doctors of – believe it or not – philosophy, theology, and geology (rocks in the head, anyone?). Not a medical or even biological qualification among them.

I next enquired of her source(s). "Did you get that from Fakebook?"

No. From a magazine.

That magazine was Nexus, which describes itself as "In-depth articles on health, suppressed news, consciousness, ancient mysteries, future science, unexplained, free energy and much more, from a genuine alternative news and information magazine published worldwide for over 30 years". (Nexus was the publisher of all manner of bizarre conspiracy theories – including outer-space alien invasions! – about HIV/AIDS back in the '90s. Zero credibility!)

God help us! Is there a vaccine for stupidity? For persistent ignorance? If there were, it would have to be mandatory, because such people would never volunteer for it.

Neighbour's next tack was:

Don't believe what the media or the authorities tell you. They don't tell you the truth.

When I explained that Nexus qualified as "media" (barely!), she returned to her claim of "it" not being a "real vaccine".

Next, I asked her which vaccine she meant.

The COVID vaccine, of course.

Yes, but which one.? There are currently six in distribution and another 20 in development.

Well, why was I not surprised when the neighbour claimed no knowledge of any vaccine other than "the official one".

My next question was: whose definition?

The WHO's. And "the dictionary's".

Here she was, telling me that the media – and the authorities – don't tell the truth, yet she claimed to believe the WHO's definition of vaccine.

When pressed, she couldn't quote any definition.

I invited her to my library where I suggested that she might find a/the definition of vaccine in any of my 73 hard-copy dictionaries. That somewhat flummoxed her, but she did try, though only three dictionaries, all major, reputable ones. As I already knew, there was little more given than "a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases".

But but but ... .

She had no intelligent response, and left in a huff, telling me that books weren't to be believed. (Ahem. She's a writer, fergawdsake – though mainly a blogger! My favourite definition of blog is "graffiti with punctuation".)

I'm hoping she ignores me henceforth; life's too short to waste on stupid.

NB: I live in Byron Shire, home of the too-famous holiday town of Byron Bay; the administrative centre is the small hippie town of Mullumbimby. See here for a recent article on Australia's anti-vax capital.