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Now You're Speakin' My Language (or Dialect)
That’s more just resting bitch face.... 🙁
Jacqueline wrote: "That’s more just resting bitch face.... 🙁"🤣🤣🤣
While watching a review of the new Honda E (https://youtu.be/x6G-3_Aasao) I encountered another British/American word divergence I’d forgotten: “homely”.While he’s effusive in his praise of the car he mentions that the faux wood dash is “homely”. By which he means comfortable and pleasant, what we USAns would call “homey”. But in America “homely” means plain and unattractive. Not ugly, exactly, but decidedly not beautiful.
Also, I finally watched Zombieland: Double Tap last night. Not quite as funny as the original but still pretty fun. He mentions the old saw that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. Which isn’t exactly true but the thing is, SO DO WE.All these snow-related words have different meanings: Snow, sleet, slush, sposh, crust, powder, flake, flurry, blizzard, sprinkle, snowshower, whiteout, snowdrift, snowbank, pack, sludge, piste, corn snow, pearl snow, skift, frost, hoarfrost, rime, etc.
A Frenchman accurately described the state of relation between French as spoken in Paris and the French spoken in the Province of Québec, in Canada: 'Those Québécois are geniuses! They understand everything we say but we can't understand a thing they say!'
Michel wrote: "A Frenchman accurately described the state of relation between French as spoken in Paris and the French spoken in the Province of Québec, in Canada: 'Those Québécois are geniuses! They understand e..."yep, a lot of Canadian TV shows, even when made in French, are subtitled on French TV
I think the homey and homely thing is just someone thinking they have the right word but don’t and everyone just went with it because they know nothing as well. It’s happening a lot especially in TV and radio. I heard something on the ABCs flagship radio current affairs radio show a couple of years ago that they got arse up but thought it was right. Can’t remember specifics now but it was a pretty big cock up. They’re clueless when it comes to the right words or sayings. Australia is like you describe the US to be and I’m pretty sure the UK is the same. Homely is plain and homey is feels like home.
Jacqueline wrote: "I think the homey and homely thing is just someone thinking they have the right word but don’t and everyone just went with it because they know nothing as well. It’s happening a lot especially in T..." Homely in British English means cosy and comfortable, as in one's home (homey and homely are synonyms in British English). Only in US English does it mean unattractive. Perhaps it was a euphemism that morphed into a meaning.
Cheryl wrote: "When I was in Boston in the 80s I had to start calling 'pop' 'tonic' instead to be understood by my working class Catholic mother-in-law. In some places in the southeast you'll hear ppl call all so..."When I moved to MA in the 1990s I had to start calling pop soda (outside of Boston) and milkshakes frappes. Here a milkshake is flavoured milk.
When my son and I were at the Chicago O'Hare airport, were we ended up stuck overnight due to storms, there was one sign that said something like "pop for lunch and soda for supper" re: flying somewhere.
Ryan wrote: "In the UK frowning is a furrowing of the eyebrows. When a Brit talks about frowning they are referring to those and the forehead. We do downturned mouths/lips, but that's not what we call frowning."Speaking of frowning, back when the site was active and the two young men were the first to publically hitchike all 50 US states in 50 days (Hitch50.com), they posted a few funny laws. In NJ it's illegal to frown at a cop, so they took a photo frowning at a NJ cop and then wrote about types of frowns: http://www.hitch50.com/2006/10/trail-...
I wanted to give them a ride, but they did New England in 1 day and it was before smart phones (I think--2006) so I missed their reports (they might have had one ride through a few states--can't remember now!) They were Canadian, btw, and it was just around the same time as the one red paperclip. In fact, I think there was some kind of friendship or family tie there, but I could be completely wrong, give that it was nearly 14 years ago!
Karin wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "When I was in Boston in the 80s I had to start calling 'pop' 'tonic' instead to be understood by my working class Catholic mother-in-law. In some places in the southeast you'll hear ..."Here in Australia, a milkshake is milk, ice cream, flavouring, and malt (if you like it), frothed up in a milkshake maker. They have froth, and they're not 'thick.' Thickshakes are heavily ice cream based and much thicker. They require real effort to suck them up the straw.
😂I’m surprised british people call mac n cheese just mac n cheese and not like PiDDyWiCkLeS & ChOnKerS
— brittany (@Brittany_broski) February 7, 2020
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I asked my Hungarian colleague to wish me luck today, and she paused, laughed, said "the way we wish that in Hungarian isn't polite, but what we say to friends is 'I wish you a hat full of shit.'"
So there you have it. May we ALL have a hat full of shit today!
In my case, pretty much like every other day then. At least now I know that in Hungary it's considered a good thing.
I'm by nature a skeptic, so I want to know more about that Hungarian wish. Not saying your friend is misleading you, but what is the rest of the story? While researching I found an absolutely fascinating list and discussion here: https://www.catchbudapest.com/23-awes...I really really like some of those words and want to sprinkle my conversations & writings with them... ;)
A plausible answer is here: http://hungarykum.blogspot.com/2015/1...It's kinda like the superstition that causes performers to get wished "Break a leg!"
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My colleague IS in Hungary, she is Hungarian natively and we talk regularly, so I'm pretty willing to believe they say this, no matter what superstition it pulls from :)
Oh sure, I totally believe her. I just always want to know more. The blogger says they usually stop at hatful, leaving of as implied the 'of shit.' Which makes sense to me.
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I've always been extremely confused by the terminology for fiction of different lengths in Finnish.Novel = romaani
Novella = pienoisromaani (mini novel)
Short story = novelli :S !!!
And now I just ran into the term
pitkä novelli = long short story ?!
Does that mean novelette? I have no idea! Thank goodness I only read short fiction in English, I don't have to deal with these terms.
And an important additional distinction outside literature: romaani ≠ romani."Long short story" :,D
Yeah, I will never forget when I told a co-worker that my TV broke, and I got comfy in bed with a novel instead. In English that's completely clear, but my co-worker's expression made it clear that he thought I'd just casually told him I had sex with a Roma(ni) person because I couldn't watch TV :/
*ha* :,DI had to go confirm/check the etymologies, and...
The etymology for "novelli" is pretty clear (same as for English 'novel'): from Latin 'novellus' ('new'/'recent') to Old French Novelle ('article of news'). Came to Finnish from our Swedish overlords' 'novell'.
"Romaani", which apparently also derives from the Old French meanings of Latin origin, "book of common/Romance language", came to Finnish through Russian's borrowing it from them French.. and that actually makes it rather nonsensical, for Finnish is in no way related to the etymological 'common/Romance languages'; the meaning rather loses its context there.
Though, somewhat same would go for most other languages, which have adapted to 'roman' for 'novel', but are not of the Romance language branch: Russian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Indonesian, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Ukranian... all but Romanian?
Continuing from here.re: Pronunciation of "primer"
I'm not going to argue about how to pronounce anything in English with an American living in the UK :D but I did a quick google, and if I was to go by the results, I'd say it doesn't seem to be as simple as that! One source says primmer is for textbook, prime+er for the stuff you put on the walls (or your face) before painting. I say prime+er for both, not knowing any better, but have heard primmer more than once, and like I said, assumed it's just a regional difference.
I know how annoying it is though! I just heard a super weird pronunciation of something I can't remember the other day. I usually bombard Allison with messages like "Is [thing] *really* pronounced like this somewhere?!" XD My biggest pet peeve was how people pronounce "secret" (verb) like "secrete" (verb), until I finally googled it and found out it's correct! :S And that's when it really started to annoy me, because WHY?!
edit: Adding a link: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...
Dawn wrote: "Language is super fun! I’m from Denmark and so I understand Swedish and Norwegian, as they’re all basically dialects of the same language. We are taught Englishin school at an early age and later w..."I was writing a recipe for a French friend and decided to run it through a translator. The recipe involved blackberries (French 'mure' ) but it came out as 'mur' which is French for 'wall'. Now tell me how that happened! At that point I decided that translators were useless.
Cheryl wrote: "Yes, Diane describes what I know from living in different places of the US. Of course, pancakes have lots of regional names, and perhaps slight differences, too: griddle cake, flapjack, journey cak..."In England a flapjack is a kind of cake baked in a tray and cut into slices. It is made by melting butter, brown sugar and syrup in a pan and adding porridge oats, then baking in the oven. You then cut it into slices.
Micah wrote: "Speaking of Québecois dialect ... Has anyone seen the show Au service de la France (strangely translated into English as A Very Secret Service) now on Netflix?In the second season there's a deleg..."
Translations are often inexplicably changed when the title of a book or film is translated. I really don't know why.
One thing that the Americans say that doesn't make sense is 'I could care less' when they mean they don't care at all. But they are, in fact, saying there is still less that they can care, so they do care.Also, when I read about somebody talking about their 'yard', I picture a small paved area, which is what a yard is over here. In England it's a garden.
There are lots of nouns (stress on the first syllable) that morph into verbs which then get the stress on the second syllable. Contract
Produce
Permit
Conflict
Project
All of those words with the stress on the first syllable are nouns. The same words with the stress on the second syllable are verbs.
I’ll agree that it’s weird with secret. I think it’s usually spelled “secrete” in that case.
It is really exciting to listen to English. Since I listen to audiobooks I had several revelations. The most surprising might have been "awry", which in my mind I always had pronounced the same way as "angry" and kind.
Diane yeah I get that, but "secrete" means something very different! :DMy wording was poor, I actually did know (once I googled it) that the verb is spelled with the extra e. Here is a copy of my post to Allison, in August 2019 :D
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Can you explain English to me please? Why is 'secreted' pronounced the same way as discharging fluids, when it means hiding something, ie. a secret, not a secretion? It's amazing how many audiobooks secrete and ooze weird things, like:
"Primrose adjusted her hat and reached for her special armed parasol. Once she ran out of bullets she’d switch to the darts secreted in its shaft."
"Percy, of course, was secreted in navigation..."
It's like the parasol produces darts, and I don't even want to know who/what secreted Percy into the navigation pit! I can't think about anything else, even though I know what it means. This is highly illogical!
I mean I always assumed that:
to secret = to hide -> secreted pronounced along the lines of seek-re-ted
to secrete = to ooze -> secreted pronounced along the lines of sec-ree-ted
but no, they're both secrete, which I found out today when I finally googled it, and I will probably continue thinking it's 'to secret something', because 'to secrete something' means oozing biological thingies!
OK, I'll stop now and finish the book. Hopefully no one secretes anything in any way. I mean secreting something in polite company really isn't the done thing, not the done thing at all!
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Can't use blockquote because it doesn't work on iOS <_<
I don't know why my secrete search also found this, but it's on topic so I'll share it! (Post to Allison in March 2020.)--
re: How NOT to pronounce 'geas'
I'm listening to Deep Secret (I've eye-read it before), and there is a magician character who is also a farmer, and he has all kinds of birds on his farm, and some of them (quack chicks) are hanging around. So listening to this was so confusing:
‘I hereby lay geese upon you ...’
‘... the geese will be your instant death.’
It's supposed to be a funny book (and is), so I guess that's OK :D
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Again, blockquote removed <_<
See what Allison has to put up with? I should post this stuff in this thread from now on, so she doesn't feel like she has to reply :D
edit: Added a NOT
Anna wrote: "but no, they're both secrete, which I found out today when I finally googled it, and I will probably continue thinking it's 'to secret something', because 'to secrete something' means oozing biological thingies!"Oh wow! I made the exact same assumption! I always pronounced it SEEK-cret-ed as well! It seems to be a common misconception. Personally, I love finding out my mistaken pronunciations. Getting your mind blown in little ways is pretty fun. As a desert dweller, I found naval and sailing terminology to be chock-full of odd ones, like quay, or boatswain.
Speaking of getting your mind blown by language... I don't think I can fully express how much this one takes the cake for me.I'm Japanese/English bilingual, and in Japanese the word for "chomp!" or "nom!" is「パク」(paku). Several years ago I was at a dinner with Japanese friends and an American girl. We two were being silly, miming biting at each other with sound effects, and one Paku! became another Paku! until I came at her with one hand chomping, saying "Paku-paku-paku-paku--" We both froze, looked wide-eyed at each other, and started screaming in realization, "Ahhhh!!!" Back and forth, pointing at each other. "Ah!" "Ah!" "Ah!!" "Ah!!!"
*reenactment*
！！ああぁぁあぁ=͟͟͞͞((=͟͟͞͞( (((つ◉ɷ◉)っc(☉Д☉⊂)))≣)=あああぁあぁ！！
Meanwhile, our Japanese friends had absolutely no idea what we were screaming about, and even after we explained, didn't really seem to get it.
See, for them, it was obvious that the game Paku-man was Chomp-man. But both of us had played the game in English as Pac-man, and never made the connection until that moment. In the past when I made similar connections like, "just a skosh" being the same as「少し」"sukoshi" (a little) or "head honcho" coming from 班長 "han-chou" (group leader) I think I was merely mildly interested. But whether it was the deep-seated childhood nostalgia, or whatever the reason, for both of us, it was the ultimate paradigm-shifting moment.
Anna wrote: "Continuing from here.re: Pronunciation of "primer"
I'm not going to argue about how to pronounce anything in English with an American living in the UK :D but I did a quick google, and if I was t..."
Actually, the stuff you put on before painting, (and as you say on your face, but in England that's foundation) and a book both actually mean the same thing. Both are a preparation for the main thing.
You put on the primer to produce a base coat before doing the proper coat of paint. With a book primer, you work through it to get you ready for the real course.
So both are preparations.
And I've never heard of 'primmer', nor of 'primer' being pronounced in that way.
Primer is the stuff you put on before foundation, if talking about makeup :)And yeah, I'm not claiming to know what is correct, just that it looks to me, as a non-native English speaker who has to rely on internet knowledge, that the correct pronunciation depends on who you ask!
Haha, I was taking another look at the Merriam-Webster link in my earlier primer post, and noticed there is a whole article about commonly mispronounced words, and primer is one of them!https://www.merriam-webster.com/words...
Anna wrote: "Primer is the stuff you put on before foundation, if talking about makeup :)And yeah, I'm not claiming to know what is correct, just that it looks to me, as a non-native English speaker who has t..."
The internet is brilliant for m any things, but also unhelpful for many things, too. It's hard to learn what is what!
Melissa wrote: "Speaking of getting your mind blown by language... I don't think I can fully express how much this one takes the cake for me.I'm Japanese/English bilingual, and in Japanese the word for "chomp!" ..."
In British English, we say, when enjoying food, 'yum yum'. Then an advertisement in the UK for a dog chew stick began using 'nom nom nom'. I had no idea what it was about. (Well, yes, I could guess, but it sounded odd.) If something is especially nice we say 'It's yummy'. Nom still sounds not right to me, but sadly, it seems to be creeping into British English.
V.M. wrote: "The internet is brilliant for m any things, but also unhelpful for many things, too. It's hard to learn what is what!"True about all things. With language, I feel like it's possibly easier to look at things from the outside, because I don't care who is correct, everyone can be correct! I'm fine with people who say primmer and those who say prymer. I know what they mean, and yeah I'd never say primmer myself, but I don't have a problem with hearing that pronunciation.
But if we're talking about mispronouncing words in my native language? Oh, I've got opinions! :D
V.M. wrote: "In British English, we say, when enjoying food, 'yum yum'. Then an advertisement in the UK for a dog chew stick began using 'nom nom nom'."Interesting. I think of yum yum as being related to yummy and tasty, so I might say yum yum to a small child to convince them something tastes good, or a single emphatic Yum~! for something delicious.
Nom I associate with more modern internet slang, from I Can Has Cheezburger lolcat memes and animal-speak, to a general comedic and cute way of saying to bite or eat something.
Melissa wrote: "Nom I associate with more modern internet slang, from I Can Has Cheezburger lolcat memes and animal-speak, to a general comedic and cute way of saying to bite or eat something."I always lol a tiny bit when my phone alerts me it's "Nom day!" :D Of course it means it's time to start the nominations thread, but who has time to type such a long word?!
V.M. wrote: "Micah wrote: "Speaking of Québecois dialect ... Has anyone seen the show Au service de la France (strangely translated into English as A Very Secret Service) now on Netflix?In the second season t..."
the most confusing change in titles of movies that I saw while living in France was A Very Bad Day for Hangover II
and I never did figure out the Dark Vador for Darth Vader bit though and then there's the Quick burger chain's Dark Vador burger complete with inky black bun:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dark-v...
it's ghastly looking and I never was tempted to try it
Anna wrote: "I don't know why my secrete search also found this, but it's on topic so I'll share it! (Post to Allison in March 2020.)--
re: How to pronounce 'geas'
I'm listening to Deep Secret (..."
I always thought that was pronounced gaysh!! I'll have to remember the correct pronunciation the next time I'm complaining that I've had a geas placed upon me ; )
Yeah geas is not pronounced like geese :D
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language (other topics)A Clockwork Orange (other topics)
On the Road (other topics)
Villains in Venice (other topics)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (other topics)
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That's the 'pub with no beer' face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E0aZ...