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Post by Verbivore on Mar 5, 2024 10:14:32 GMT
Oh dear! Someone didn’t catch the typo in the credits of this 2009 BBC film Creation on Darwin and the writing of his On the Origin of Species.  |
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 13, 2024 10:25:51 GMT
Bloody Chinglish!
I have spent two hours trying to make sense of the nine pages of instructions that accompany my new blood-pressure monitor (or sphygmomanometer as we used to call the thing – godnose how the Chinese would mangle that term!).
Aaarrrggghhh! It’s enough to raise one’s blood pressure.
Despite numerous illustrations, it’s impossible to know what the instructions mean beyond “Place elbow on the desk”. The rest is sheer gobbledegook!
Example:
“You’d better measure your basic blood pressure , (pressure of wake up and do not want emiction in the morning), if you cannot, please take before marl or sports.”
I can only guess – perhaps wrongly – what “emiction in the morning” might mean. Am I suppposed to wrap the pressure band around an organ other than my upper arm? Sheesh!
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Post by Dave Miller on Mar 13, 2024 12:01:52 GMT
I’m guessing “emiction in the morning” means “emiction, in the morning”.
Emiction (in use in the late 15th century) meaning urination.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Mar 13, 2024 20:41:59 GMT
I am not sure that adding a comma helps very much. My blood pressure monitor manages to give me all the information I require in about one page. And what is "marl"? I am not very enthusiastic about taking part in sports and I imagine I will be very happy to miss engaging in marl.
I have been monitoring this form for the past couple of weeks and have been wondering whether the number of recent viewings without a reply was a record?
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 13, 2024 20:55:24 GMT
LJH: Overnight it occurred to me that marl could perhaps be meal.
Dave: Thanks for the emiction. I’m emicted off that I missed that. I knew micturition and many of its synonyms, but even my onboard dictionary (a combination of UK and US Oxfords) missed emiction – until I delved deeper than usual.
I still haven’t figured the instructions in a totally meaningful way. However, I shan’t allow the issue to further raise my BP.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 13, 2024 21:05:18 GMT
And on the topic of dictionaries:
Last night I watched a 3-part documentary on the 1666 Great Fire of London. One of the three co-presenters (they were all Brits) consistently mispronounced fifth as fith – something I find a tad annoying.
For my own elucidation, I looked up fifth in my onboard dictionary (UK/US Oxford combo) and, to my surprise, found the reverse of what I’d thought were norms.
The UK-English entry gave only fɪfθ as the pronunciation, while the US entry gave fi(f)TH (so either fɪfθ or fɪθ). Odd, no?
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Post by Dave Miller on Mar 13, 2024 23:38:28 GMT
Vv: “ The UK-English entry gave only fɪfθ as the pronunciation, while the US entry gave fi(f)TH (so either fɪfθ or fɪθ). Odd, no?”
I’ve certainly never heard “fith” as a pronunciation for 5th (or if I have, have assumed it was lazy mispronunciation).
Mind you, my partner (who speaks English as his mother tongue, but is Indian and was brought up in Mumbai) consistently pronounces 12 as “twell”.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 14, 2024 0:47:25 GMT
twell … well, well! Never heard that one previously.
Fith is not terribly uncommon in AU: mostly found among those of my generation who say fillum for film and haitch for aitch – schooled in the Catholic (Marist) manner where they were taught by Irish nuns and brothers. Since the elimination of inadequately qualified religious and their replacement with qualified lay teachers, those pronunciations appear to be on the wane.
The presenter referred to is historian Daniel Gwynne Jones who, according to Wikipedia, was “born in Reading, England, in 1981 to Welsh parents. He was educated at The Royal Latin School, a state grammar school in Buckingham, before attending Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he achieved a first-class degree in history in 2002.”
In high school I had a teacher of English who also said fith; he was schooled by the Marists.
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Post by Dave Miller on Mar 14, 2024 7:56:59 GMT
I am not sure that adding a comma helps very much. No, it wasn’t intended as a grammatical correction! It was my way of saying, with hopefully humorous pomposity, that “emiction” meant emiction, and that “emiction in the morning” meant emiction … in the morning. Perhaps a bad idea, on a site devoted to accuracy in writing! |
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 14, 2024 8:06:43 GMT
A joke from Rob Words’ newsletter:
Q: What's the difference between a literalist and a kleptomaniac?
A: One takes things literally and the other takes things, literally.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 14, 2024 8:07:16 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Mar 14, 2024 23:47:04 GMT
I wonder if forum contributors have heard of toki pona? I had not heard of it until an hour or so ago and I have been watching a few YouTube items about it. You might like to watch the one from RobWords as I think that some of us enjoy Rob's contributions. There are some other YouTube contributions which have more explanations about vocabulary. At the moment, I don't know what I think about it. I will have to sleep on it. Here it is:
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 15, 2024 2:44:11 GMT
Yes, LJH, I saw that Rob Words on Toki Pona. I know some people with as small a vocabulary in English. Perhaps if politicians were forced to use TP we’d be far better off.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 27, 2024 3:02:26 GMT
How do pride and humility make good companions? When people are awarded a gong for something they’ve done (e.g. an act of bravery), they often claim to be proud and at the same time humble. Here’s one from today’s news: “It makes me feel proud that overall I was able to help someone, and I feel quite humble for it all”.Reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story of the little old lady who, as she was leaving the church service where the pastor had preached on humility, declared: “Pastor, I’ve always been ’umble. My father was a ’umble man, and his father before him – and I’m proud of it.” |
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Post by Dave Miller on Mar 27, 2024 8:30:58 GMT
Yes, Vv, I am regularly annoyed at the misuse of “humble”. When someone gets an OBE, or Best Actor award, and says they feel humbled, it seems to suggest that they expected more. It seems to suggest that they think getting a knighthood would have been appropriate, but to be given only an OBE is humbling.
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