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Post by Verbivore on Nov 1, 2021 1:37:14 GMT
To start the month: An advert from an August 1963 AU newspaper promoting a set of vocab-building books. Note the price of ten shillings deposit and one shilling per week. For twelve bob a week one could rent a one-bedroom flat.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 1, 2021 2:34:39 GMT
To start the month: An advert from an August 1963 AU newspaper promoting a set of vocab-building books. Note the price of ten shillings deposit and one shilling per week. For twelve bob a week one could rent a one-bedroom flat. View AttachmentIt’s actually one shilling per DAY and to get all the books, it’s a shilling a day “for several months”! I wonder if someone followed up with a series on the vital power of not using too many capital letters. The whole concept appears ill-founded. I agree that there’s power in being able to use words appropriately, but the targeted customers are those people who feel inferior because of a distinct lack of that ability. If such people have not picked up a fluency with words from all those words which daily surround us, they probably do not feel a delight in, or cannot well handle, words. They are the last people who will devour texts listing rules or “ROOTS AND DERIVATION”. Extracting money from the gullible continues, of course. I’m reminded of those “build it” magazines which come out each year around Christmas and New Year, whereby the subscriber can build their own model of a battleship/supercar/galleon or whatever, with one part being given in each issue. Typically, the first issue is at a specially low price (say, £2.99), with later issues costing more (say, £6.99). The detail is usually given in the small print (perhaps by law), showing that the plastic models (are they ever completed?) will cost about £800.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 1, 2021 6:15:24 GMT
To start the month: An advert from an August 1963 AU newspaper promoting a set of vocab-building books. Note the price of ten shillings deposit and one shilling per week. For twelve bob a week one could rent a one-bedroom flat. <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button> It’s actually one shilling per DAY and to get all the books, it’s a shilling a day “for several months”! […] So it is, Dave; my misreading! According to the Reserve Bank of Australia's Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator, total change in cost is 1379 per cent, over 57 years, at an average annual inflation rate of 4.8 per cent. One shilling then = A$1.48 in 2020. The ten-shilling deposit = A$14.79 and the daily shilling x one week = A$10.36; "several" (3) months = A$124.32 and six months = A$248.64. A good, hard-copy illustrated dictionary with a similar number of headwords would today cost about A$40. The cost of a school tuck-shop lunch back then was about one shilling, and unless one is a verbivore one can't live on a diet of words. Your other comments are perhaps appropriate given that the newspaper carrying the ad was a low-brow tabloid, of which the editor once told me (aeons ago when I did work experience there as a schoolboy) the criterion for language use in that rag: use verbiage that could be understood by a 10-year-old. Not that such criterion is necessarily a bad thing, but that newsrag was a tits-and-arse scandal sheet with no pretensions to analysis or in-depth reporting. If the advert captured any suckers at all, they'd probably be the least likely to benefit from it. As for the over-use of initial capitals, I recall that being standard in the day. PS: Among my collection is a set of The New Oxford Illustrated Dictionary (published by Bay Books in association with OUP, 1973). It's bound into two fat volumes, each comprising 20 issues (released monthly, if I recall correctly) and totalling 1920 pages. There are hundreds of full-colour pictures and diagrams, some of those full-page, and 10 comprehensive appendices of general knowledge. It's printed on good-quality stock; the issues are bound between heavy, padded covers, and held together with fat brass screws. I've no idea what it cost new because I found it, in excellent condition, at a car-boot market. I think I paid about $20 for it a decade ago. I'm sure it would have given Vocabuild some serious competition.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 1, 2021 13:17:18 GMT
Typewriter, good working condition, ribbon will need replaced. My car has now done 40,000 miles and the dealer tells me the cambelt needs replaced.
These examples show a verb form which is new (and annoying) to me. I’d much prefer either “needs TO BE replaced”, or “needs replacING”.
I have a suspicion that it’s an American English pattern that, like many another, has found its way in recent years into British English. Or is that just my wrong guess?
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 1, 2021 19:35:58 GMT
Dave: I, too, increasingly see that kind of usage – particularly in YouTube comments, which appear to be mostly posted by Americans or NESB commenters (of those I can verify), though I note that Aussies are now following the trend. Another one of the kind is because without an of: "I did it because the weather".
Another change I've observed over the past decade is the use of the verb consult as a substitute for the noun consultation. "Call us now to book a consult".
When I challenged someone on the usage they responded with: "We Americans try to simplify everything". Techno-culturo-linguistic colonialism continues to spread the poison. Apart from grumbling about it, there's nothing I can do because [I'm] old and increasingly irrelevant.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 2, 2021 5:17:17 GMT
Unfortunate verbiage? "Acting Police Commissioner Col Blanch told ABC Radio police 'have eliminated them [possible suspects], and that's our focus at the moment — eliminate as many people as possible'."(From story on disappearance of a young child.)
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 2, 2021 12:39:11 GMT
Typewriter, good working condition, ribbon will need replaced.My car has now done 40,000 miles and the dealer tells me the cambelt needs replaced. These examples show a verb form which is new (and annoying) to me. I’d much prefer either “needs TO BE replaced”, or “needs replacING”. I have a suspicion that it’s an American English pattern that, like many another, has found its way in recent years into British English. Or is that just my wrong guess? I believe this to be standard usage in Scotland. I've often heard Scottish folk say (and write), "This room needs cleaned", "The house needs painted" and the like.
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Post by Trevor on Nov 2, 2021 14:09:35 GMT
Typewriter, good working condition, ribbon will need replaced.My car has now done 40,000 miles and the dealer tells me the cambelt needs replaced. These examples show a verb form which is new (and annoying) to me. I’d much prefer either “needs TO BE replaced”, or “needs replacING”. I have a suspicion that it’s an American English pattern that, like many another, has found its way in recent years into British English. Or is that just my wrong guess? I believe this to be standard usage in Scotland. I've often heard Scottish folk say (and write), "This room needs cleaned", "The house needs painted" and the like. I though it sounded Scottish, too, Twod. Your examples are definitely common usage. (Another Scottish usage that always gives me slight pause is "will" for "shall", as in "Will I put the kettle on?")
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 4, 2021 22:57:15 GMT
I've often wondered if there were a single term to describe, collectively, one's nieces and nephews. Now I've found it. Niblings – a gender-neutral term for the children of one's siblings.In the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a niece or nephew is a child of the subject's sibling or sibling-in-law. The converse relationship, the relationship from the niece or nephew's perspective, is that of an aunt or uncle. A niece is female and a nephew is male. The term nibling has been used in place of the common, gender-specific terms in some specialist literature. (Wikipedia)
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 5, 2021 1:48:23 GMT
Goodness! I think this is the first time that Vv has ever mentioned something new to him that I already knew! I came across nibling years ago! That being said, I think it is an ugly neologism which I prefer not to use. I can easily say “my nieces and nephews” without causing any confusion to my listeners. And I can think of no circumstances in which I would want to refer to a single one of them without identifying the sex and saying nephew or niece as appropriate. Of course, in this non-binary world, I could always ask them what word they would prefer and use that — or say, for example, “my brother’s kid”. I suppose “my sibling’s kid” might sometimes be desirable. Surely, better than inventing new words with no etymological basis. But I am not sure that I could refer to my adult nieces and nephews as “kids” without causing greater offence.
We have a similar problem with uncles and aunts, do we not? This website has quite a lot of suggestions. Most of them are extremely ugly and should, I think, be avoided anyone who likes the English language. genderrights.org.au/faq_type/language/
If many of us cannot accept the singular “they”, I think we have no chance of agreeing gender neutral terms for uncles an aunts.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 5, 2021 2:06:57 GMT
I have just recalled a 1902 book by E Nesbitt called “Five Children and It”. I read this as a child but came across it again recently. On the first page is the following sentence, “Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble to get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed to mind.” In this sentence, “its” refers to the five children. I think, perhaps, that “its” refers to a singular “everyone” rather than an early recognition of the need for gender neutrality but I thought it worth mentioning.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 5, 2021 4:53:25 GMT
Goodness! I think this is the first time that Vv has ever mentioned something new to him that I already knew! […] LJH: I'm more than pleased to learn that I don't know everything! People who know everything, a.k.a. smart-arses, know-it-alls or KAs, are a pain in the whatever. A saying I discovered decades ago is: 'The trouble with people who think they know everything is that they make it difficult for those of us who do'.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 5, 2021 10:11:52 GMT
There has often been mention in this forum of euphemisms referring to death. I have come across one today which I had not previously heard: crossing the rainbow bridge. Apparently it is frequently used today in regard to pet animals and here is a reference to it on the Internet.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 5, 2021 20:09:23 GMT
Rainbow Bridge
The linked article ends with: "What do you think about the Rainbow Bridge story?"
I could wax sarcastic but I'll leave it at "Groan".
Recently I upset someone when I responded to their announcement that someone had "passed" with a "What: a car, wind, or a kidney stone?".
People must be allowed their euphemistic denials of reality I suppose, but I prefer my truths unvarnished.
PS: I recently cancelled my prepaid arrangements with an undertaker because the business had been sold to a christian family who covered the office walls with all manner of religious and euphemistic garbage (including chocolate-box 'art' of the second advent!) and changed their policy of whatever the deceased (or family) wanted – including my choice of a box-free and ceremony-free incineration – to the non-negotiable engagement of a god-bothering celebrant. As I was speaking with the new operators my ears were assaulted at least a dozen times with pass and similar avoidances of plain reality, even after I'd made it clear that such terminology was neither required nor acceptable. It took the intervention of the government Office of Fair Trading to get my money back.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 6, 2021 18:32:39 GMT
“30 days hath November …” But I say “30 days hath September…” which is apparently more usual but not so early. The Wikipedia article suggests that this poem must be one of the earliest in the language which is known by virtually every English speaking person. Interesting. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Days_Hath_September
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