Athlone Scumbags

Mentioned by comedian Dara O'Briain in his recent stand-up DVD 'This Is The Show', this clip of two rough types having a free and frank exchange of views in a street in Athlone is noteworthy for its wide-ranging inventive use of language - virtually all of which is not in the slightest bit safe for work.

Serial apostrophe abuse

Repent, sport's nut's!

[Via Marathonpacks]

On Palinspeak

I don’t think Palin’s phraseology is actively attractive to her fans. Rather, what is remarkable is that this way of speaking doesn’t prevent someone, today, from public influence. Candidates bite the dust for being untelegenic, dour, philanderers, strident, or looking silly posing in a tank. But having trouble rubbing a noun and a verb together is not considered a mark against one as a figure of political authority [...]

The modern American typically relates warmly to the use of English to the extent that it summons the oral — “You betcha,” “Yes we can!” -- while passing from indifference to discomfort to the extent that its use leans towards the stringent artifice of written language. As such, Sarah Palin can talk, basically, like a child and be lionized by a robust number of perfectly intelligent people as an avatar of American culture. And linguistically, let’s face it: she is.

- John McWhorter, 'What Does Palinspeak Mean?', The New Republic, 6 April 2010

[Via ALD]

For all the bilingual lorry drivers out there

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated".

So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.

"When they're proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh," said journalist Dylan Iorwerth.

Swansea Council became lost in translation when it was looking to halt heavy goods vehicles using a road near an Asda store in the Morriston area. All official road signs in Wales are bilingual, so the local authority e-mailed its in-house translation service for the Welsh version of: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only".

The reply duly came back and officials set the wheels in motion to create the large sign in both languages.

- BBC News, 31 October 2008

Beauty is duty and duty beauty

Trademark nimble word-wrangling courtesy of Stephen Fry from 'A Bit Of Fry And Laurie':



[Via Mike Riversdale]

Did he just say that?

'A video of Spain's prime minister has become a viral video hit today after he accidentally uttered the F word in a news conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Reuters reports.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was outlining a Spanish-Russian plan to promote tourism between the two countries during Medvedev's state visit when his mouth momentarily disengaged from his brain.

"Tourism is an area of special economic importance in relations between Spain and Russia," said Zapatero, speaking in Spanish. "Therefore we have reached an agreement to stimulate, to favor, to f---."

With barely a pause, but looking down at his lectern, he quickly continued, "... to support tourism."

The Spanish word "to support" has a similar sound to the expletive uttered by Zapatero'

- Times Online, 4 March 2009

Malapropisms

The top ten malapropisms (mis-sayings) in Britain, according to a recent survey:

1) A damp squid (a damp squib)
2) On tender hooks (on tenter hooks)
3) Nip it in the butt (nip it in the bud)
4) Champing at the bit (chomping at the bit)
5) A mute point (a moot point)
6) One foul swoop (one fell swoop)
7) All that glitters is not gold (all that glisters is not gold)
8) Adverse to (averse to)
9) Batting down the hatches (batten down the hatches)
10) Find a penny pick it up (find a pin pick it up)

- Telegraph, 24 February 2009

Hazy phrasing

'Literary theorists used to say that their most abstruse prose was "writing the difficulty"—that the sentences were tortuous because there was no briskly commonsensical way of representing a complex issue. Sarah Palin, alas, talks the difficulty. She may claim, as she did in last Thursday's Vice-Presidential debate, that "Americans are cravin' that straight talk," but they are sure not going to get it from the Governor—not with her peculiar habit of speaking only half a sentence and then moving on to another for spoliation, that strange, ghostly drifting through the haziest phrases, as if she were cruelly condemned to search endlessly for her linguistic home: "I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you."'

 

- James Wood in The New Yorker, 13 October 2008

Our Father, who art in Hendon

Our Father
Who art in Hendon
Harrow Road be thy name
Thy Kingston come
Thy Wimbledon
In Erith as it is in Hendon
Give us this day our Berkhampstead
And forgive us our Westminsters
As we forgive those who Westminster against us
Lead us not into Temple Station
But deliver us from Ealing
For thine is the Kingston
The Purley and the Crawley
For Iver and Iver
Crouch End

- "The Bus Drivers' Prayer", Ian Dury & The Blockheads, 1992

[Courtesy of Turbo]

Stir-fried Wikipedia

Two Engrish menu photos, including 'stir-fried wikipedia' along with 'stir-fried wikipedia with pimientos':

 

Language Log: Stir-Fried Wikipedia

 

- Source: Guardian, 27 June 2008

 

 

If it ain't broke...

'Bundaberg [in Queensland] was gazetted a town in 1902 and a city in 1913. The main street is called Bourbong Street — the result of a typographical error by the local daily paper, the News-Mail. The street had originally been named Bourbon Street'

 

- Source: Wikipedia.org

From Nob End to Bitchfield

Ah, the many joys of the proud tradition of spotting rude British placenames. Some examples from the article include:

Wetwang

Wetwang is a Yorkshire Wolds village that sits on a busy main road along the coast. Debate surrounds the origins of its name; it means either "field for the trial of a legal action" or just "wet field". Whatever the meaning, the name attracts so many sniggers that the late Richard Whiteley was bizarrely made the honorary Mayor of Wetwang, a title now held by the BBC Look North weatherman Paul Hudson.

Muff

Muff – from the Irish word "magh" – is a village in County Donegal, on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Over the last decade, Muff has seen a huge growth in population, with people from Northern Ireland moving across the border. The first week in August sees the Muff Festival – and there's a diving club in the village called, yes, the Muff Diving Club.

For a more in-depth look at one such burgh, see Shitterton: The village that dare not speak its name.

- Source: Independent, 21 May 2008

Is that an official request?

This lady is concerned about the place of proper English in American society. Something tells me her campaign might struggle.

- Source: Buzz.se

A cab, innit

'A teenager was greeted by a display cabinet instead of a taxi because her 'Ali G-style' slang confused a series of phone operators.  The girl hurriedly dialled directory inq­uiries to book a taxi from her home in London to Bristol airport, using the cockney rhyming slang Joe Baxi.  But the operator told her they were unable to find anyone by that name.  Seething, the youngster snapped back: 'It ain't a person, it's a cab, innit.'  The operator duly gave her what she asked for and put her through to the nearest supplier of cabinets, Displaysense.

The teenager must have felt the world was against her when a cabinet saleswoman seemed equally confused.  'Look love, how hard is it?' she fumed. 'All I want is your cheapest cab, innit. I need it for 10am. How much is it?' The sales adviser told her £180. The tantrum-throwing teenager quickly left her address details before ringing off.

The next morning, rather than being picked up by a cab, the young woman had the cabinet dropped off'

 

- Metro.co.uk, 11 April 2008 

 

[Great stuff!  But too good to be true, surely?  And I love the idea that the girl thought that taking a taxi from London to Bristol airport - a distance of 200km - was a good idea in the first place]

Word up!

From a collection of new words observed in 2007:

 

bromance n.  A strong relationship between two heterosexual men.

 

global weirding n.  An increase in severe or unusual environmental activity often attributed to global warming. This includes freakish weather and new animal migration patterns.

lolcat n.  On the Internet, an odd or funny picture of a cat given a humorous and intentionally ungrammatical caption in large block letters. Originally called a cat macro.

post-kinetic environment n.  In military jargon, the site of an explosion, severe gunfire or a destructive engagement.

wide stance, to have a v. phr. To be hypocritical or to express two conflicting points of view. When Senator Larry Craig was arrested in a public restroom and accused of making signals with his foot that the police said meant he was in search of anonymous gay sex, Mr. Craig said it was a misunderstanding and that he just had a wide stance when using the toilet. The incident also popularized the derogatory term "toe-tapper," meaning a gay man.

- New York Times, 23 December 2007

Thou art stricken, my liege

'[Under] current EEC rules, doctors from other European countries are free to practice here [in the UK] without proving their linguistic ability. The Westminster coroner, Dr Paul Knapman, recently drew attention to this anomaly after a French doctor spent 10 minutes on the phone to a 999 ambulance service trying to make himself understood. A patient had collapsed in his clinic after being injected with a steroid, and later died. The doctor in question said he had studied Shakespeare at school, but had problems with English dialects'

- BMJCareers.com, 13 January 2007

[Naturally, the death of a patient is no laughing matter. I just liked the idea that a foreign student of English might think Shakespeare would assist them in deciphering modern British English]

On great writing

Author Kurt Vonnegut on the key to great writing:

 

Never use semi-colons. What are they good for? What are you supposed to do with them? You're reading along, and then suddenly, there it is. What does it mean? All semi-colons do is suggest you've been to college.

 

- Columbus Free Press, 5 March 2006

 

[Vonnegut was speaking at a college graduation ceremony.  The full article is here]

 

As opposed to unreality shopping

Christmas shopping without the long queues, masses of people, traffic jams, and parking hassles – impossible? Not for the hundreds of New Zealanders who are choosing this year to do their shopping online. Timaru woman Kimberley Fisher decided to surf the net recently after having no success in several stores to find a specific DVD. "I couldn't find it in the shops so I tried online. It was simple, just a click of the mouse and cheap postage as well, it got here in about 10 days."

Although the 20-year-old said she still preferred reality shopping, when looking for something in particular the internet was perfect.

- Timaru Herald, 18 December 2006

[What, so the internet isn't real?]

'A brown condom stuffed with walnuts'

Clive James knows perfectly well that a man with a talent to amuse will always have some difficulty persuading the public that he can, so to speak, quote Wittgenstein. And, once they know that he is also from “the bush”, they will expect some coarse material, too. Thus it’s brave of him to stand by the original version of his much-misquoted image of Arnold Schwarzenegger (it was “a brown condom stuffed with walnuts”) against subsequent plagiarism and dilution. He coins a new term for authorial humiliation, when he speaks of a publisher’s “advance” that is really a retreat.

- Christopher Hitchens reviews North Face of Soho (Unreliable Memoirs, Vol. 4) by Clive James, Times, 15 November 2006

[If you're interested, the Guardian has an entertaining spoof digested read of NFoS, which includes this passage on his filmstar interviewing: 'It wasn't an unmitigated success, as I invariably had a better understanding of the actors' work than they did, but it was none the less instructive']

On the meaning of Tingo

Tingo, nakkele and other wonders

English is a rich and innovative language. But you can't help feeling we're missing out. While English speakers have to describe the action of laughing so much that one side of your abdomen hurts (hardly an economical phrase), the Japanese have the much more efficient expression: katahara itai.

Of course, the English language has borrowed words for centuries. Khaki and croissant are cases in point.

So perhaps it's time to be thinking about adding others to the lexicon. Malay, for instance, has gigi rongak - the space between the teeth. The Japanese have bakku-shan - a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front. Then there's a nakkele - a man who licks whatever the food has been served on (from Tulu, India).

These fabulous examples have been collected by author Adam Jacot de Boinod into The Meaning Of Tingo - a collection of words and phrases from around the world.
"What I'm really trying to do is celebrate the joy of foreign words (in a totally unjudgmental way) and say that while English is a great language, one shouldn't be surprised there are many others having, as they do, words with no English equivalent," he says.

Having pored over 280 dictionaries and trawled 140 websites, he is also convinced that a country's dictionary says more about a culture than a guide book. Hawaiians, for instance, have 108 words for sweet potato, 65 for fishing nets - and 47 for banana.

The German propensity for compound words pays dividends. Kummerspeck is a German word which literally means grief bacon: it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.

A Putzfimmel is a mania for cleaning and Drachenfutter - literally translated as dragon fodder - are the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives.

Or there's die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen - to stick one's lower lip out in a sulk (literally, to play the insulted liver sausage). Perhaps it's a Backpfeifengesicht - a face that cries out for a fist in it.

Words and phrases can suggest the character of a nation.

The Dutch vocabulary, for instance, seems to confirm the nation's light-hearted reputation. The word uitwaaien is Dutch for walking in windy weather for fun.

The Maori-speakers of the Cook Islands sound like an enthusiastic bunch: the word toto is the shout given in a game of hide-and-seek to show readiness.

Perhaps the Inuit notion of a good time must be, of necessity, a little more constrained. The long winter nights must fly by as they play a game called igunaujannguaq, literally meaning frozen walrus carcass. (The game involves the person in the centre of a ring trying to remain stiff as he is passed around the ring, hand over hand.)

But it's those fun-loving people in the Netherlands who should have the last word - the phrase for skimming stones is as light-hearted as the action: plimpplampplettere.

The Albanians exhibit a strange fascination for facial hair. There are no fewer than 27 separate expressions for the moustache.

Madh means a bushy moustache, posht is a moustache hanging down at the ends and fshes is a long broom-like moustache with bristly hairs.

This hirsute obsession is not confined to moustaches. Vetullkalem describes pencil-thin eyebrows, vetullperpjekur are joined together eyebrows and those arched like the crescent moon are vetullhen.

Perhaps nothing so intriguingly displays differences between nations as the unusual occupations of some of its citizens. Geshtenjapjeks is an Albanian who sells roast chestnuts on the street. A koshatnik in Russian is a dealer of stolen cats.

A kualanapuhi is a Hawaiian officer who keeps the flies away from the sleeping king by waving a brush made of feathers. In Turkey a cigerci is a seller of liver and lungs and the Danish have a fyrassistent - an assistant lighthouse keeper.

And Spanish speakers in central America have a description of a government employee who only shows up on payday - an aviador.

Which brings us back to de Boinod's title: tingo is an invaluable word from the Pascuense language of Easter Island meaning "to borrow objects from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left".

The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod is published by Penguin.

- BBC News, 26 September 2005