June, juin, Juni, Junie, Juuni, Jen, hunyo, mí an Mheithimh

[Little Jack Horner]

An exception to the general rule: Jonny Bairstow apparently said he “was hugely proud” of the way he played in the test match against New Zealand at Trent Bridge yesterday. And so he should be.

[Verbivore]

Jun 14, 2022 23:41:08 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

An exception to the general rule: Jonny Bairstow apparently said he “was hugely proud” of the way he played in the test match against New Zealand at Trent Bridge yesterday. And so he should be.

I have no objection to hugely proud – only humbly proud or proudly humble.

[Little Jack Horner]

That was intended to be my point. There was no mention of his being humble.

[Verbivore]

What the … ?

Damned if I know what "Iconic in Beverage Aesthetic" means. Neither the connection between a moose and tea.

(Found in shopping centre of major city in my new region.)

[Little Jack Horner]

Well, there are lots of things I don’t know, but I do know this isn’t a moose!

[Verbivore]

Jun 16, 2022 13:42:24 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

Well, there are lots of things I don’t know, but I do know this isn’t a moose!

Elk? Deer?

I'm not familiar with many northern hemisphere animals. Obviously, I failed the Moose Test!

[Little Jack Horner]

I really cannot say what kind of animal is used for the advertisements for the milk tea. It is, after all, only a sketch. But Vv‘s post does raise a point of linguistic and biological interest.

There is in North America an animal called the moose. This is the largest extant species of deer in the world and is notable for having semi-palmate antlers (which the advertisement illustration does not have). An identical animal in Europe is called the elk. There is a quite distinct species of animal in North America which there is called the elk. Elsewhere in the English-speaking world this animal is called the wapiti, the name of which derives from the Shawnee and Cree languages. Why the immigrant Europeans should have called this animal an elk, which from a European perspective it does not resemble, rather than a wapiti is difficult to know. Wapiti do not live in Europe but introduced specimens which are farmed in New Zealand are called wapiti there as well.

There is another species of “elk” which has been extinct for around 8,000 years. This is the Irish elk which is nothing like either the moose or the Eurasian elk but is more like an enormous wapiti.

There are, I think, about 20 or 25 species of deer which live in China. Of these, about half a dozen might be contenders for the identity of the animal on the milk tea advertisements. I would like to think the winner might be Père David’s deer which is, I think, the only one endemic to China; which, having been hunted to extinction in the wild, is now recovering as a result of zoo specimens being released; and which was formerly regarded as a symbol of good luck.

Parenthetically, it is perhaps worth mentioning that there is another species of deer which in Europe is called a reindeer. In North America it is called a caribou unless it happens to be pulling Father Christmas’s sleigh when it is called a reindeer.

I think I ought to add “E and O E” to this post!  

[Verbivore]

LJH: Thanks for the biology lesson  :-)

My preference is Anne Elk.

[Verbivore]

Reported (no photo!) on another forum, a bumper sticker declaring:

Grammar and spelling are the difference between ‘knowing your shit’ and ‘knowing you’re shit’.

[Little Jack Horner]

Are you amused or upset? If you are upset, here is a little comfort. “There, they're, their”.

[Little Jack Horner]

My teasing reference to “there there” as a comforting remark to a child made me wonder why we use those words. There seems to be nothing definitive but the best idea seems to be that it is just two comforting sounds with no relevance to the meaning of the words themselves. That does raise the question as to why we chose those two words rather than any two other comforting sounding words but who knows? It does leave me to wonder however whether there are any similar phrases in other languages which have the same purpose? Are any such phrases onomatopoeic or do they have object meanings?

[Verbivore]

Perhaps, LJH, there's something soothing about the sound and its repetition – like "coo coo" said to babies?

Now, now.

Come, come.

…

[Little Jack Horner]

I thought that was what I said. It does raise the question, though, about how misunderstandings can occur in places like the United Nations. I was writing in my native English and you, Vv, were reading in your native English so I do wonder how people manage to communicate complex ideas between English and other languages, especially where there are cultural differences. Perhaps onomatopoeia is not the exact word I intended?