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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 21, 2023 9:02:45 GMT
As usual, a fascinating and clear video from Geoff. From the analysis there, I’m old in many ways, but surprised to find that some of my pronunciations are (and have always been) those which he calls new and young. Some of that may be regional (I grew up in northern England), but some may be a background desire to be “accurate”, in following the spelling. For example, I hope I don’t say the equally-stressed “intrest”, and like to think I say “INterest”, with a crisply-define middle vowel. I definitely say “chrain”, but not “chrip”. That, I think, is a matter of my mouth taking the easy route, and that’s affected by the upcoming vowel. I’ve moved from the “offen” which was encouraged as correct in my childhood to “off-t-en”, I suppose because I feel it more carefully follows the full form. (I would say the poetic form as “oft”, not “off”.) One aspect I haven’t seen Geoff cover (though that doesn’t mean he hasn’t …) is the difference between conversational and formal pronunciation. In fast-moving chat with friends, I’ll probably say libry, Wensdy and even intrest, but would engage a more accurate set of pronunciations when speaking even slightly more formally (just as I would engage a different register of vocabulary). And I don’t care how many dictionaries they appear in, I shall not succumb to draw-r-ing, Sa’urday or exci’ed!
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 21, 2023 10:55:34 GMT
Before I started at school my mother started to teach me to read and write, beginning with my name (Ian). I assume it had something to do with being a sinistral, but I used to write it NAI, (with the N backwards, as in Verbivore's photo).
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 22, 2023 9:20:51 GMT
This evening I heard a most appropriate term for what used to be ‘tweets’ on Twitter.
Now that the platform has been renamed X, the posts thereon have become Xcretions.
So apt!
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 22, 2023 10:48:15 GMT
This evening I heard a most appropriate term for what used to be ‘tweets’ on Twitter. Now that the platform has been renamed X, the posts thereon have become Xcretions. So apt! Excellent!
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Post by Trevor on Nov 22, 2023 14:23:27 GMT
This evening I heard a most appropriate term for what used to be ‘tweets’ on Twitter. Now that the platform has been renamed X, the posts thereon have become Xcretions. So apt! I still call them tweets. But then I'm still calling it Twitter.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 26, 2023 16:31:16 GMT
I spend rather too much time watching snooker. The commentator often refers to "the blue" or "the black". In these circumstances are blue and black nouns or are they adjectives referring to an understood "ball"? That is blue ball for black ball. Just wondering.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 27, 2023 1:47:34 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 28, 2023 0:56:17 GMT
Malaphors
Here is a piece extracted from the latest newsletter of the team at the Australian Government Style Manual.
The human mind is a complicated thing, and sometimes this confusion manifests in interesting (and humorous) ways. Have you ever tried to bestow wisdom on someone with a neat and tidy idiom, only to come out with a mash-up of two phrases? These accidents happen so often that a word was coined for it – malaphor. Malaphor isn’t a real word, by which I mean it’s not in the dictionary. It’s a portmanteau of metaphor and malapropism. A metaphor is a figure of speech where a phrase is used to describe something to which it is not literally applicable. For example, you might say ‘you’ve hit the nail on the head’ to someone meaning ‘you are right’ – although they haven’t literally lifted a hammer. Malapropism is a term for using a word or phrase incorrectly. Put the two together and it does what it says on the tin (another idiom). A malaphor usually happens as a result of mixing up or combining wise sayings, clichés, or aphorisms. It’s similar to a mixed metaphor, where two different or incompatible metaphors are used in quick succession. But a mixed metaphor keeps each phrase whole, while a malaphor mixes up words and phrases and ends up as something new. And while you might mix your metaphors for comedic effect, emphasis, or intended absurdity, a malaphor is usually a mistake. ExampleWe’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. (This is a combination of two sayings, ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’ and ‘don’t burn your bridges’.) In an article about the cognitive science behind speech errors, Hofstadter and Moser (1989:196) describe malaphors thus: One can liken the production of a malaphor to someone who reaches into a cookie jar, grabs two cookies at once, and then, trying to pull both out at once through the narrow neck, breaks each of them in two. In the same article, they compare the cognitive production of a malaphor to a poorly executed magic trick. Not only do you spot ‘the miraculous appearance of a rabbit, but also … a bit of glue, or a hint of a trap door in the tabletop’ (197). I love these descriptions. They aptly capture that odd feeling when what comes out of your mouth isn’t what you thought it would be. Once you start thinking about them, you’ll hear malaphors everywhere. The term itself was coined by an American civil servant who frequently heard them in meetings. It fascinated him enough that he wrote an opinion piece about it in The Washington Post in 1976 (Hatfield 2013). This fascination seems to be shared by many. If you go looking, you’ll find websites, subreddits and Facebook groups dedicated to spotting and recording them. Here is a curated list of some of [the author’s] favourite malaphors. References
Hatfield, D (2013) ‘Confessions of a malaphiliac’ [paywall], Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website, accessed 11 October 2023. Hofstadter, D and Moser, D (1989) ‘To err is human; to study error-making is cognitive science’, Michigan Quarterly Review, 28(2):185–215, accessed 10 October 2023.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 28, 2023 17:10:43 GMT
I had thought that I had understood exactly what is meant by the term "metaphor". Having read the examples in the label in the above post, I am not at all sure that I have been correct all these years. Most of them look like idioms to me and not at all like metaphors. If anything, "like shooting fish in a barrel" must surely be a simile. I have never heard of "not my circus, not my monkeys" nor of "get your ducks in a row".
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 28, 2023 19:46:30 GMT
I had thought that I had understood exactly what is meant by the term "metaphor". Having read the examples in the label in the above post, I am not at all sure that I have been correct all these years. Most of them look like idioms to me and not at all like metaphors. If anything, "like shooting fish in a barrel" must surely be a simile. I have never heard of "not my circus, not my monkeys" nor of "get your ducks in a row". “Like shooting fish in a barrel” is certainly a simile, but the malaphor example doesn’t mention “like”, so I reckon “fish in a barrel”, if not referring to actual fish in an actual barrel, would be a metaphor. “Not my circus, not my monkeys” is a popular (though to me recent) expression meaning something along the lines of “luckily, that problem is not one that falls to me to solve”. I find that it originated in Polish, in the early 1990s. “Get your ducks in a row”, meaning to get things well organised, is much more common, having originated in the late 19th century. Perhaps you’re lucky not often to encounter clichés, ljh!
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