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Post by Verbivore on Jul 1, 2021 23:57:42 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 2, 2021 2:51:12 GMT
Thanks for that, Vv. Though I am annoyed that the first article (from The Mail) was so dreadfully repetitive.
Mostly, though, I’m surprised that none of them touched on my disfavourite: brought used when the speaker means bought. This is now something that I encounter almost daily, both in speech and in writing. Why? The two words are common and - strangely - it’s the slightly less common one which is being wrongly chosen (against the pattern of “St Pancreas” or “removal of his prostrate”).
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 2, 2021 9:00:34 GMT
Dave, I took it that The Mail’s dreadful repetition was native to the genre. A Melbourne tabloid’s editor once confirmed to me (in the ’70s) that all copy passed for printing must be in language that a ‘normal’ [?] 10-year-old could read and understand, and that repetition was an effective "hammer".
The Mail’s not an organ I’d ordinarily consult, but that was linked to from one of the Guardian pieces.
I grew up aware of the bought/brought misuse, but have failed to notice it very much in recent years. (Perhaps because I’ve gone troglodyte and largely eschew ‘population centres’?)
There is one long-term friend who always confuses those two, along with specific/pacific and others. He also says arx/arxed for ask/asked. He does, however, have a reason (as he says, “not an excuse, just a reason”): he’s seriously dyslexic and quite subliterate. No attempt of many to address those challenges has succeeded and at age 50 he is unlikely to beat them now. However, he has made clever workarounds that keep him mostly out of trouble. (Motor-car purchase contracts, warranties, and insurance policies are real challenges for my friend, but hey! they can challenge me. They challenge my friend because he can't read; they challenge me because I can.)
I recall that back in my relatively divided Catholic/Protestant rural hometown in AU, through the 1950s to ’70s, b(r)ought was a common misuse across the ecumenical spectrum – almost anyone could/did get it wrong. That was in contrast to the Catholic schools’ ‘Irish’ pronunciations fillum and haitch, which always marked them out.
As to pancreatic and prostatic matters, a friend of mine returned from a surgical intervention to explain that his inflamed prostate had left him prostrate. I'm so glad he could laugh at his misfortune – it's the best medicine oft times.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 2, 2021 11:21:35 GMT
… and now to numeracy
I’ve probably bemoaned it previously, but where would today's shop servers be without their ‘smart’ registers that tell the correct change to give! Oh dear.
This afternoon I called in to my local village store and purchased 20 pieces of a confection. Those were 15 cents each.
The pleasant young serving wench didn’t appear to have trouble counting the lollies out of their jar and into a bag, but come time to calculate my debt she was hesitant. “Er, d’you know how much that is?”
With no barcode to scan, no ready-to-hand calculating gadget, no digital assistance … no clue, the lass was lost.
Of course from the start I'd known that 20 of a 15-cent item would be 300 cents (I was lightening the load of loose change in my car).
Because the lass was always sweet, pleasant, and helpful in the shop, and because she blushed with “I’m no good at arithmetic”, I tried patiently to explain thus:
* 15-cent item [Um, yes.] * 20 = [2 x 10] [Hmmm …] * Try 15 x 2 [Erm … um … ah … 30?] * Bingo! * Now 30 x 10 [Um um ummagumma… – probably a fan of early Pink Floyd] * To x anything by 10, just add a nought, so 30 x 10 = ? [ (audible clanking of mental comptometer) … 300?] * 300 what? Cents? [Um, yeah.] * 300 cents make how many dollars at 100 cents to the dollar? (just in case she wasn’t sure, ahem). [Um, lemme see: 15 cents. x 20. = [15 cents x 2 = 30 cents x 10] = 300 cents = $3. Is that right?]
She got it! She got it! By George, I think she got it! I think I had a Higgins moment. lol
What will our successors (should there be [m]any after injuries, starvation, thirst …) do when a whopping sunspot EMP event knocks out all tech and telecoms and survivors have to communicate face to face (with or without masks); to do simple mental arithmetic on the fly; write reasonably well without AI assistance. Figure out how to avoid/escape the final, inevitable gridlock when signals, systems, and vehicle electricals fail. Walk everywhere. Live without refrigeration; without medical technologies. Re-invent smoke signals? Avoid cannibalism?
Methinks they'll need a little more than just [15 cents x 2 = 30 cents x 10] = 300 cents = $3] to get by.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 2, 2021 17:03:33 GMT
I remember, some 40 years ago, remarking to my boss that kids wouldn’t need to learn their “times tables”, as calculators were now available. His reply, which I did see the sense in, was that people still need an appreciation of numbers - otherwise, how will they know when the answer they’ve been given (by wrongly-used calculator, or by someone else) is very wrong.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 2, 2021 22:49:10 GMT
A pandemic lexicon
The Oz prime ministerial pandemic lexicon has included meaningless guff and weasel words such as: proportionate measures; escalating threats; flattening the curve; targeted, measured and scaleable plans; the other side; the road out; unchartered [sic] territory; fighting the virus and winning; getting Australians home by Christmas; consolidated agreement; get to the next level; hit our straps; magic numbers; million-dollar question; threshold of vaccination; new deal for Australians; and national vaccination allocation horizons. It’s a wonder politicians don’t drown in their own lexical soup!
PM Morrison’s pre-political background was in advertising, and his speciality is couching unpalatable news in fancy wrappers. For “Scotty from Marketing” as the PM is known it’s all about being “on message”.
No doubt Boris and Joe have such lexicons, too.
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Post by Twoddle on Jul 3, 2021 8:40:58 GMT
My mental arithmetic is good, except in restaurants. Trying to work out how much tip I want to leave, without the aid of a calculator but with the waiter hovering, stops the higher functions my brain in their tracks.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 6, 2021 21:40:53 GMT
Mystery of the day: æsh / ash or œthel / ethel?
This is hardly a life-changing matter, but while reading a science article I met this word: cæcilian (it's a burrowing wormlike amphibian).
When I looked it up in the American Oxford Dictionary (the default dictionary on Macs) I was presented with two spellings – cæcilian and cœcilian, the latter of which makes no sense to me. The OED gives only one spelling, that with the æsh – no mention of the œthel variant.
Given its origin is modern Latin (i.e. the Latin of Linnaean nomenclature) – from cæcilia, a kind of lizard (in Pliny cæcus serpens: blind worm; a member of the Cæciliadæ) – I’m left wondering why the AOD gives the œthel spelling option. There’s no explanation of this AOD note, and the AOD is the only ready reference I have containing it. The Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention the œthel variant.
Apart from modern ignorance of æsh and œthel, how might the two have been confused and why does the AOD mention it while the OED doesn’t?
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 6, 2021 23:03:14 GMT
Might this be another unfortunate branding? A business by the name of Frango, a Portuguese charcoal chicken purveyor, is perhaps a tad too close to an Aussie slang term for condom: franga / franger. Will it last?
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 7, 2021 4:25:14 GMT
I hadn’t heard of Frango chicken (or of franga/franger the condom), but I’m further confused by something on Frango’s website: “ Opened in 1992, in the heart of the Portuguese capital of Sydney …”
Er, Lisbon, anyone?
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 7, 2021 6:14:02 GMT
I hadn’t heard of Frango chicken (or of franga/franger the condom), but I’m further confused by something on Frango’s website: “ Opened in 1992, in the heart of the Portuguese capital of Sydney …” Er, Lisbon, anyone? Sydney had, when I lived there in the late '80s, a large and lively Portuguese community with the attendant restaurants, taverns, and music. At one time it was regarded as the Lisbon of Australia. Little Portugal was slap nextdoor to Sydney's Chinatown.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 7, 2021 9:05:28 GMT
I know that Aussies are inclined to be a bit irritated when people pronounce the word with an S sound instead of a Z sound. The other day I was wondering about that and wondered why it was pronounced with a Z sound. I wondered whether there were any other English words where a double S was pronounced Z. I couldn’t think of any and decided to ask Google: “Are there any English words where a double S is pronounced Z”.
It took about half a second for Google to provide many websites which might be useful. Near the top of the list was one that provided six answers: scissors, dessert, hussar, brassiere, possess and dissolve. They are all common enough words so I was surprised that I couldn’t think of any of them. But then, sometimes, I can’t remember my daughter’s name. Possess is worth noticing perhaps because it has both the Z and the S sound in one word.
But I still don’t know why the word Aussie is pronounced with a Z.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 7, 2021 9:10:17 GMT
Neither do I, LJH.
My pater's given name was Oswald (Oz…) and he was called Ozzie (spelt Ossie).
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 7, 2021 17:32:15 GMT
> Possess is worth noticing perhaps because it has both the Z and the S sound in one word. <
A “single S” equivalent is buses. Very few people seem to realise that some pluralising esses are pronounced “ss” and others “zz”. I recall being annoyed at a pet shop calling itself KOOL KATZ AND DOGZ. Not because of the odd spellings, but because absolutely no-one says “catz”.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 8, 2021 2:30:59 GMT
Just thought I would mention that the name of the village of Puncknowle in Dorset in the UK is pronounced punnel. It rhymes with gunwale.
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