Category: Grammar & Linguistics
PC again
Last week it was a politician being rebuked for comparing disabled with ‘normal’ folk for the purposes of employment. This week Snow White is making an appearance on stage but friends have to take the place of dwarves.
Is the norm – in any social context – no longer a suitable topic for comment? Are we not allowed to refer to any less usual combination of attributes except by avoiding mention of the usual?
The trouble is that a significant number of common English adjectives is now outlawed: blind, deaf, crippled, etc., unless euphemisms replace them. Which ironically takes us back to the reign of Victoria, when so many conditions were unspeakable.
I am not proposing offensive bluntness. Just a proper understanding that censorship tends to have effects quite opposite to those intended. Calling a spade a coloured person doesn’t advance the cause of integration.
Little things please little minds . . .
While sipping my second restorative mug of tea this morning, I chuckled quietly at the good-humoured badinage, subsequently removed, between Janus and Christopher on the subtleties of ‘council’ versus ‘counsel’.
But I almost spilt the scalding contents when I moved on to read Mr Mackie’s splendid gaffe ‘from whence’. And with relevance to Charterhouse, too. An old Kingstonian would never perpetrate such a solecism. 🙂
If you need an explanation, there’s absolutely no hope for you.
Life’s a Beach
On vacation this week, borrowed a house from my rich business partner, on the beach at Lewes (say Lew-is), Delaware. Got here late Friday night via Delaware City, Delaware (more about which later). Raining today and windy with it, holiday innit?
Lewes (the First Town in the First State) was settled by the Dutch in 1631 in what was to become Delaware (the first state to sign the Declaration) so naturally it is home to the Zwaanendael Museum just a couple of blocks away from here, and perhaps a little more surprising home to the Kalmar Nykel, a replica of the Dutch ship that brought original settlers to Wilmington, Delaware (sixty miles North of here), however, they were Swedes, following me so far?
Here she is back in 2011 on the Bay.
A few techo ramblings
You may have noticed that recent changes made by WordPress (they make changes pretty regularly) have resulted in the loss of the “Quote” facility and of the individual serial numbers for comments. Rather a shame, but I have checked everything that can be checked and there’s no way to bring them back, as far as I can see.
They’ve also mucked around with the comment box – it still works as it always did, but the text that used to remind you that you can’t comment unless you’re logged on is not there any more. You do still have to be logged in though. If you try to comment when you’re not logged in, nothing will happen when you click on the “Post” button. Nothing, nada, zilch. You’ll just be left hanging – not a friendly outcome, but there’s nowt I can do about it. 😦
Finally, for about the hundredth time, please can certain Charioteers remember that “it’s” (with an apostrophe) always means “it is” (or “it has”) and is never, ever the possessive (genitive, belonging) case. If you need the possessive, as in “the cat licked its paw”, leave the apostrophe out. Yes, it’s the opposite of what we do with all other words, but that’s English for you.
Lastly, totally off track, how about our young Canberran, Nick Kyrgios? What a guy! Pronounced “Kir-ee-os”, in case you were wondering; the “g” is silent.
Rote learning
Before the 11 plus our primary school classroom would be full of the sound of children’s voices chanting their times tables, and other important facts, such as length from inches up to miles, depths in fathoms, areas in hectares and acres, weights up to tons….but most of these facts are lost to me, partly I suppose because of decimalisation, negating the need to know in so much detail. I didn’t find rote learning a useful tool, quite often finding myself speaking the ‘Nine eights are…’ then mumbling the rest. I do know of course now know my most of my times tables and have strategies for checking my memory! What I remember from those classroom days are random things like the texture of the speckled paint, the smells, the anxieties, the friendship inconsistencies, the risk of having one’s head knocked sideways for not knowing the value of a minim….
I wonder if any of the Charioteers can remember the wordings for rest of these classroom chants…. this is to do with a poetry project I’m working on. Interweb searching has not yielded results!
And just to prettify the post, here is a picture. Continue reading “Rote learning”
Memories of Greece 1963, pt. 4
By now we were old salts, so we could handle the long voyage from Rhodes to Iraklion in northern Crete with aplomb, almost able to ignore the loukoumia problem; but we were glad to disembark to the frantic accompaniment typical of every busy port we visited.
Our focus was to see the work of a famous alumnus of our college, Sir Arthur Evans, the pionering archaeologist who, from the start of the 20th C. first gave meaning to the ruins of the ‘Minoan’ civilisation; he named it after the mythical King Minos of ‘Minotaur’ fame. The fabled bull was a common feature of the frescoes he excavated and controversially restored in the reconstructed ‘palaces’ – probably a misnoma for rooms and streets occupied by more than just royalty.
This formula is not only for nerds
What’s he going on about now? Formula? Nerds?
Yes, I’m sorry. It’s Backside again, being abstruse (one of his fave words). It’s about poetry – wot he likes doing – but he finds it impossible without a formula, a framework, a function. The three Fs, you might say.
So your mission this month, should you wish to engage, is to reveal your innermost workings by means of this plan:
- The first line of the poem involves an emotion: sadness, anger, confusion, hurt, love, jealousy.
- The second line describes the emotion as a colour. For example, you might describe anger as “red as a rag to a bull ;” happiness might be “as pink as a chimp’s chuff.”
- The third line starts with “It happens when . . ..” For example, “Anger happens. . .when I’m told to move myself or words to that effect.” “Confusion happens when I do it but apparently not well enough.”
- The fourth line begins with “It sounds like . . ..” For example, “Sadness sounds like. . .a Rangers supporter.”
- The last line of the poem repeats the original emotion.
There! That was easy, eh? Only five lines at a time, rhyming or not, scanning or not, serious or not – but as many emotions as your constitution will stand. But no deviation from the formula, p-lease!
Closing date 27th October after Backside’s standard, formulaic breakfast. Thank you.
Lost in translation
I’ve often wondered whether signs written in foreign languages akshully say what the translation suggests. In our local town a warehouse door sports a warning in Danish to the effect that unauthorised vehicles obstructing it will be towed but tantalisingly there’s a Russian version to deter – well – Russians, I suppose. But does the Russian say the same thing?
And now the Beeb reports this case from Wales (where’s Christina when you need her?). The Welsh version states: “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”
How Things Change …
When I arrived in Australia, some 23 years ago, one of the first things I learnt was that sausages were never called bangers. Their colloquial name, all over the Lucky Country, was snags. Never mind why, or what that word means to you in other contexts, in Orstrayia, saussies are snags. Full stop, end of discussion.
Boadicea's Chariot 
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