Messages

1

English & Linguistics / Re: English-to-English translation

« on: September 24, 2024, 05:44:48 AM »

A British one that I would have never understood without looking it up from a recent TV show:

connie = conscious objector (during wartime)

dunny = toilet, especially porta-potty-type

That one I know from watching Bluey, which is an almost daily occurrence at my house

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: July 19, 2024, 09:37:54 AM »

I have been using captions on Netflix and Prime a lot lately. And have noted when they do (or do not) indicate in the caption when speakers elide letters. (As in the example, do the captions say "gonna" or "going to" when what was said was definitely the former, etc. Do the captions reflect accents, real (either of the actor or the character) or temporary (like funny voices when a parent is reading a book to a child), and so on.) It's quite interesting.

Do you have opinions about spelling those out in, say, a novel or short story?

Personally, I find it very hard to read dialog that is attempting to reflect the accent.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: October 12, 2023, 08:18:01 PM »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do5vXn_Rap4

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: March 17, 2022, 06:53:16 AM »

I don't speak Hebrew, but someone on Twitter says that this literally means "all the honor" and is used to mean "well done" in the sense of "nice job" or "go you!"

Apparently the Turkish also means something along the lines of "bravo!"

Gotcha. Definitely sounds like someone was using an automatic translation service or maybe just a dictionary rather than consulting native speakers.

Any Portuguese speakers want to weight in on whether the Portuguese is weird too?

Can confirm that the Portuguese is has a similar meaning -- I would translate it as either "well done" or "great job".

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: October 27, 2017, 08:14:48 AM »

Mary Cate and I were carrying our new baby around during the graduation ceremony for our BS degrees.

We were a BYU cliche.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: September 14, 2017, 05:44:28 AM »

The world *would* be way easier if other people's opinions weren't so incorrect all of the time.

T-Rex, you understand me like no one else.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: September 08, 2017, 06:15:11 AM »

But the smiles he creates are literal and permanent.

I, too, have seen Tim Burton's Batman.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert

« on: August 31, 2017, 12:35:52 PM »

I've seen that usage in places where a word is shortened, but the shortened word is not considered a "real" word yet.

How 'bout that?

9

English & Linguistics / Re: The random etymology of the day

« on: April 09, 2017, 10:08:27 PM »

"Tumbler" means drinking glass, because the original design didn't have a flat base, so if you set it down before you finished your drink it would tumble over and spill everything.

What a stupid design!  What were they thinking?

This is just a guess, but perhaps it was the bar owners who were buying such tumblers.  If you can't put your drink down, it's a lot more difficult to "nurse" your drink, thus encouraging people to drink more.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: February 23, 2017, 10:24:25 AM »

I did *not* need that this morning.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: February 22, 2017, 12:02:03 PM »

12

English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert

« on: August 19, 2016, 10:26:05 AM »

Folk etymology guess:  it's a baseball reference.

13

English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: August 06, 2016, 10:57:19 AM »

I have read it.

I can confirm that there is no need for you to rush out and do so.

14

English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: August 04, 2016, 09:38:37 AM »

 Rivka, did you read Gentlman Jole and the Red Queen?  What did you think?

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English & Linguistics / Re: Is there a word for that?

« on: August 02, 2016, 07:07:01 AM »

I'm currently liking the word "indeterminate", although it also doesn't convey the full sense of what I was talking about.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Is there a word for that?

« on: July 27, 2016, 02:27:41 PM »

I'm trying to articulate why I didn't just go with that word in the first place.  It may be that my use of ambiguous is somewhat idiomatic, but here's why I don't like it for what I'm looking for.

Let's take this other situation where person A says that they have clearly, no doubt about it, felt God's touch in their life.  Person B says that it's just their imagination.

Now, if this situation were part of a story, depending on how it's written, we could easily say that it's ambiguous whether or not it really happened.

But if this were real life, I don't like the word ambiguous.  I might say that we can't know for sure what really happened, but I wouldn't say that it's ambiguous. 

Maybe it's because, at least in my mind, ambiguity is part of communication.  Stories, songs, and diagrams can be ambiguous (as all of my examples were), but real life can't.  Real life is uncertain or unknown, but not ambiguous.

Also, this word that I'm flailing around for is a noun for such "ambiguous" situations.

17

English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: July 27, 2016, 02:07:54 PM »

I like it.   For your FYI, I got $60 from the automatic teller ATM so I could buy something for the bring your own BYOB party.

Oh my OMG!

Literally laughing out LOL.

I think I need to lie down for a while after reading those.

18

English & Linguistics / Re: Is there a word for that?

« on: July 27, 2016, 02:00:46 PM »

I am looking for a word for a situation that, has multiple valid, incompatible interpretations.

For example, there's the classic wire-frame cube.  Are we looking at the top and right sides of the cube, or the bottom and left sides?   Both are equally valid answers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Or let's take the late 80's song More than Words by Exteme.  Is this a sweet song about how actions speak louder than words, or is it an icky song about "If you loved me, you'd do it with me"?  (While I agree that there's more evidence for the second interpretation, that doesn't make the first interpretation not work.)

Or the fan theory of the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which states that the character Ferris Bueller was all in Cameron's head.

So, do any of you know of a word that fits these sorts of situations?

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: April 29, 2016, 12:19:55 PM »

I just assumed that you picked up y'all from growing up in Texas (or was it Oklahoma?).

I grew up in both TX and OK, but I never said "y'all" until after coming back from Brazil.

In (Brazilian) Portuguese, they have a singular você and plural vocês.  I believe that those started out as the formal pronouns, but the language only has vestigial remnants of the informal ones, similar to how thou is and isn't part of English anymore.  It seems mostly relegated to scripturesque speech and love notes.

BTW, I always have a tough time typing out Portuguese.  Not only is the Portuguese portuges easier to spell, but Portuguese doesn't treat such words as proper nouns needing capitalization.  They'll capitalize the actual name of a place, not not derivative words.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: April 29, 2016, 10:12:08 AM »

I'm happy that it won. I've been boosting it for several years now.

I hadn't read that article, and I found it interesting that you used to be plural, but has since become plural and singular.

I find it especially interesting because while speaking Portuguese on my mission, I became accustomed to having different words for second person singular and plural.  Because of this, I adopted the second person plural y'all, even though it had never been part of my personal lexicon before.

Language change giveth and taketh away.

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English & Linguistics / Re: The random etymology of the day

« on: April 11, 2016, 03:48:02 PM »

Unlike blueberries, which get their name from the color, oranges aren't named for their color.  The color is named after the fruit.  Before they were widely enough propagated that people were familiar with what they looked like, there just wasn't a good name for that color.  They called it "yellow-red" or, later, "saffron".

This is why we call them redheads -- the term was coined before the word 'orange' entered the language.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert

« on: December 01, 2015, 10:25:27 AM »

What is the root behind cobblestone and cobbler?  Do we have any other related words?

What is the linguistic relationship between a cobbler (shoemaker), a cobbler (fruit-based desert casserole) and a cobbler (one who arranges things together in a haphazard or impromptu manner)?

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: October 27, 2015, 11:23:21 AM »

I'm trying to come up with a less controversial statement that isn't a tautology.

I'm failing.

But here are the two closest I could come up with:

Puppies are really cute.

The Star Wars prequels were a disappointment.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: October 27, 2015, 11:01:22 AM »

It's a perfectly understandable spelling.

25

English & Linguistics / Re: You keep on using that word

« on: October 21, 2015, 01:29:07 PM »

I'm sorry, but don't you know that all of you Mormons are going to Hell, bless your hearts?