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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 1, 2021 0:16:15 GMT
If I had Aladdin's lamp and the usual three wishes, the first would always be, 'Give me the first day of June. Gladys Bagg Taber (1948). “The book of Stillmeadow”.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 6, 2021 22:46:42 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Jun 7, 2021 3:30:36 GMT
Good to hear from you, Vv. The recent silence had me concerned. I read through the article, waiting for the moment when a link would give an aural example of all those clicks … only to find none. There’s one here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05dt84wIn that clip, the clicks are quite subtle, compared, say, with those I’ve heard from Trevor Noah, speaking Xhosa: www.youtube.com/watch?v=baEiWB2aM9Y
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 7, 2021 5:32:27 GMT
Thanks for that link, Dave. I'd heard Trevor Noah speaking Xhosa, but no others.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 8, 2021 1:17:42 GMT
On the Macquarie Dictionary's latest ‘Words to Watch’ blog, a few terms that are new to me:
neopronoun – an invented pronoun for a third or non-binary gender that's neither masculine nor feminine – or both at once
phubbing – snubbing someone you are with by playing on a mobile phone
teenior – a senior citizen who is acting like a stereotypical teenager
wokescold – to criticise someone for not having views that are left-leaning or ‘woke’ enough.
I have no use for wokescold because I have no use for woke, which is an African-American English (AAE / Black English) term, and I feel that for me to use it would amount to unwarranted/unjustified cultural appropriation. Perhaps I'm just unwoke.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 8, 2021 8:46:26 GMT
I am sorry to learn these new words. Here is another I have just invented: kakisermo. It is “an unwanted neologism”.
The word is derived from two classical language words, kakistos (κάκιστος; worst. Greek) and sermo (discourse, talk. Latin). It is an example of the etymological barbarism of hybrid words and is itself a kakisermo. It is also autological.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jun 12, 2021 1:23:54 GMT
I continue to rail at the rise of the “essless but singular” apostrophe, as in Chris’ brother or the bus’ seats.
When people didn’t understand the ordinary apostrophe-ess, it led to the problem of the grocer’s apostrophe (apple’s and orange’s). I’ve just come across something which makes me wonder whether a similar problem - of not quite understanding the pattern - will now arise:
What is Stephen Hawking’ favourite song?
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 12, 2021 8:36:49 GMT
Even more annoying, Dave: failure to include an esse on words ending in a sibilant, e.g. Karl Marx' writings .
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Post by Dave Miller on Jun 12, 2021 14:19:02 GMT
Even more annoying, Dave: failure to include an esse on words ending in a sibilant, e.g. Karl Marx' writings . Or - yet another variant! - failure to include an additional ess when the singular word does end in an ess, but not in a sibilant: the chassis’ paint had flaked off. I’d definitely put an ess after the apostrophe, there, to give something to pronounce!
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 17, 2021 4:20:20 GMT
A longtime acquaintance of mine has been awarded a Queen's Honour (a well-deserved gong IMHO). I couldn't resist commenting on the chap's phraseology, expected though it might be and as familiar as it is to me (I contributed to research and a book of his in the '90s). It strikes me as a classic example of wafflegab shop talk. “[…] I am most concerned with the critical relationship between lived experience, intersectionality and the everyday encounter and negotiation of structural and epistemic violence faced by many on account of their markers of difference […]” – from Professor Offord makes Queen’s Birthday Honours List Ahem. Well yes, of course. It is an academic speaking after all. (He's referring to discrimination, race-bashing, poofter-bashing, etc.) I’ve known Baden personally and professionally for nigh on 30 years and must state in his favour that the highfalutin language of his academic pursuits has always been complemented by his rooted-in-the-ground practical contributions to life beyond both the ivory towers of academia and the muck of his macadamia farm-cum-animal sanctuary. Gee, he's not even a conversational bore at parties! He earned his gong, shop jargon notwithstanding.
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Post by Twoddle on Jun 17, 2021 9:36:58 GMT
Are you sure he's not been using one of those online management-bullshit generators, Verbivore?
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 17, 2021 10:29:33 GMT
Baden Offord is to be congratulated both on his award and on his being “humbled”. If I had been given such an award, I would be very inclined to be proud and exultant and not in the least humble. I would want everyone to know. He is probably a nicer person than me. Or rather, I should say, a nicer person than I.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 17, 2021 10:31:18 GMT
Are you sure he's not been using one of those online management-bullshit generators, Verbivore? One could be forgiven for making the suggestion, Twod. In the early 20-noughties I helped "translate" some of that gent's "world leading" academic writings into books readable by Joe Blow, Hoi Polloi, and the Rest of Us. The resultant texts were published by the uni's own press (since closed down). I don't know how widely read they've been, but they'll never pose a serious threat to the world's forests. When B O and I both worked at the same university, I became the "go to" operator for "humanising" the bafflegab of "wankademics" from many disciplines – and each of those had its own stylistics, its own quirks. It was unarguably the high-thinking way-out Liberal Arts-bordering Modern Philosophy-cum Social (re)Engineering writers who posed me the greatest challenges in interpretation and translation. But it did pay me well, so that was okay.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 17, 2021 10:44:22 GMT
Baden Offord is to be congratulated both on his award and on his being “humbled”. If I had been given such an award, I would be very inclined to be proud and exultant and not in the least humble. I would want everyone to know. He is probably a nicer person than me. Or rather, I should say, a nicer person than I. I always have a spontaneous giggle when recipients of awards declare themselves both "humble and proud". The simultaneity must be a difficult juggle. The giggle is because the turn of phrase always takes me back to a yarn about the elderly parishioner and the pastor, who'd just delivered a sermon on Humility. (It appeals to this former trainee pastor.) On shaking hands when leaving the church, the Old Dear told the pastor how much she'd enjoyed his sermon. "I've always been humble, Pastor, and my father was humble before me."And I'm proud of that!"As for Baden: he is a truly humble fellow.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 17, 2021 11:19:21 GMT
This is a not-very-important thought, but I have been reading about the enormous number of spiderwebs being found in Victoria in Australia. The report says that one should not “get out the insecticide and spray them”. My not-very-important thought is that spiders are not insects so theoretically should not be affected.
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