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Post by Barry on Jun 3, 2008 8:55:38 GMT
Would they, by any chance, have been about to order 'four points of Goudy Stout'? (hides)
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Post by Trevor on Jun 3, 2008 9:01:15 GMT
An Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar.
The barman says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"
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Post by goofy on Jun 3, 2008 15:24:03 GMT
Bill Bryson says mongooses is the plural, pointing out that the word is not related to our English goose/geese. It's borrowed from Marathi मुंगूस mūṅgusa. Since the Marathi word is a masculine noun, it is unchanged in the plural. Therefore, following our rules for pluralizing foreign nouns, the English word is also unchanged in the plural. This is an interesting mongoose. Please provide me with three mongoose.
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 3, 2008 16:53:58 GMT
Therefore, following our rules for pluralizing foreign nouns What rules are those?
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Post by goofy on Jun 3, 2008 21:46:10 GMT
You know... the Official Rules in the big Book of Official English Rules. </goofy>
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 3, 2008 22:00:50 GMT
Is that the same tome that omits the alleged rule about less and fewer?
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Post by Gabriel-Ernest on Jun 4, 2008 13:04:46 GMT
Verbivore, And Gabriel-Ernest is a (retired, I think?) typesetter of the hot-metal school, . . .
A Compositor, if you please! After all we were known as the Gentlemen of the Trade. Possibly based on the fact that, originally, we needed to be educated enough to know how to read and write. A type-setter, by and large, operated a monotype or linotype machine. (Which admittedly I did [linotype] and have the deafness to prove it.) But a compositor hand-set, using a setting-stick, from a case of type, which I also did. I think it was considered more of an art, reading upside-down in mirror image, and especially when justifying the sentences - i.e. ensuring that they were flush both left and right.
It is a rather sobering thought that the only job I could get with such skills nowadays is in a heritage museum.
G-E.
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 4, 2008 13:08:35 GMT
It is a rather sobering thought that the only job I could get with such skills nowadays is in a heritage museum. Yes. It's rather sad that there's now no need for some of the old skills, especially one that involved reading upside-down in mirror image! I wonder what new skills people have today that they wouldn't have needed 50 years ago?
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Post by rickcarpenter on Jun 4, 2008 13:31:12 GMT
Perhaps a little type humour, then ... Four fonts walk into a bar. The barman says "Oi - get out! We don't want your type in here".Okay - all groan now! My Aunty Em told me that joke after she married Mr. N. Dash. He was, however, pointless, and eventually left her and moved to California for a job in case manufacturing. When they divorced, she didn't get antimony. She spent the rest of her life seeking her pound of gooseflesh...
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Post by Dave M on Jun 4, 2008 13:33:48 GMT
> I wonder what new skills people have today that they wouldn't have needed 50 years ago? <
There'll be a lot of technical skills (how to use a PC/camera/phone/satnav; how to process text and images) but when I see old documentary films and early TV programmes, I realise that we nowadays expect people, young and old, to have what we might call "PR" skills, that were very lacking just 50 years ago.
People interviewed in the mid-1950s, as they came out of factory gates or stood in queues at the baker's, look and sound, well, drab and thick! We nowadays expect people to have a sharper sense of dress and to be able to express themselves about wider issues.
(Whether their expressions make sense is quite another matter ...)
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Post by Gabriel-Ernest on Jun 4, 2008 13:58:30 GMT
Dave M, People interviewed in the mid-1950s, as they came out of factory gates or stood in queues at the baker's, look and sound, well, drab and thick! We nowadays expect people to have a sharper sense of dress and to be able to express themselves about wider issues.
I would agree with drab, but ‘thick’? The people interviewed (vox pops?) on the streets today seem scarcely capable of stringing a coherent sentence together let alone making their point. Those of fifty years ago seemed to be perfectly comprehensible, even if they were poorly informed or ignorant.
G-E.
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Post by Dave on Jun 4, 2008 14:14:20 GMT
Perhaps because those older interviews are in 'black & white,' not color?
As for incoherent interviews, just watch the sports!
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Post by Dave M on Jun 4, 2008 17:48:37 GMT
My point (perhaps badly put) was that the "common" people interviewed in the fifties were likely to say "Oh, I don't know", and give a sort of doffing of the hat, as if they were not entitled to know - peole noqadays would express an opinion (even if, as we often see, they express a stupid opinion, or express an opinion so badly that it's unassessible).
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Post by Tone on Jun 4, 2008 21:01:21 GMT
>The people interviewed (vox pops?) on the streets today seem scarcely capable of stringing a coherent sentence together let alone making their point.<Tone was actually one of those people some few month back. They were looking for "a slogan for Britain". Tone then was persuaded to accept being draped in a union jack (no, not a "union flag" unless you are saying it) and spake his slogan: "Britain -- down the drain". And the buggers broadcast/ed it! Tone
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