quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
Not trying to step on Bob's question but I just found this article. It seems to fit in with the "silly signs" thread but I wanted to point out one word in the story that is used in a way that is not common usage here.

The woman interviewed complained that residents were only trying to make their porches "homely", in the sense of attractive or pleasantly livable. Here it means "ugly." I assume this is another instance of UK/US divergence.

Perhaps not. Homely as applied to a home would mean comfortable or welcoming but homely if applied to a person would certainly be a euphemism for unattractive.

If I were to visit someone and say their house was "homely", I'd be looking for new friends.

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
If I were to visit someone and say their house was "homely", I'd be looking for new friends.

You have friends?

OK, so I told everyone their house was "homely"....

So long as you don't say it to someone who's half deaf, and thinks you said "Your spouse is homely."

Asa, who, though not religious, eats homily grits for breakfast.

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if applied to a person would certainly be a euphemism for unattractive.

Now that you mention it, Bob, I haven't heard that word used to mean "ugly" in a very long time.

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Asa, who, though not religious, eats homily grits for breakfast.

You have talking grits?

My question about exclamation marks seems to have got lost in the discussion of homely.



Here's the article again.

Anyone agree!! Disagree?!?!

Having read the article twice I am still not sure where the author stands - but I think he is for the appropriate use of exclamation marks.

And I would agree that, used appropriately, an exclamation mark can add to meaning.

Of course, that could be said of all punctuation marks...

Re: Exclamation marks.
Someone wrote that the Declaration of Indepenence and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (each about the same length) have no exclamation points while Sarah Palin's transcript of her resignation has thirteen, plus other grammar faux pas. So I'd say times have changed for the worse.

quote:

The exclamation mark, it has been argued, derives from the Latin Io (which means joy).

io doesn't mean "joy", it's an interjection, like "hurray".

Multiple exclamation marks are used for humorous effect, as an apparent parody of the way some people write. For instance OMG!!!!1111ONE

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
Re: Exclamation marks.
Someone wrote that the Declaration of Indepenence and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (each about the same length) have no exclamation points while Sarah Palin's transcript of her resignation has thirteen, plus other grammar faux pas. So I'd say times have changed for the worse.

How exactly do Palin's 13 exclamation marks mean times have changed for the worse?

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So I'd say times have changed for the worse.

Why for the worse, specifically, Richard? Not that I disagree, necessarily ...

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How exactly do Palin's 13 exclamation marks mean times have changed for the worse?

A total laci of self-restraint
And an equal lack of English composition

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
And an equal lack of English composition

OK, maybe, if you thing she should write in the traditional mode with no exclamation marks.

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
A total laci of self-restraint

I don't see this at all. By that logic, I am extremely self-restrained if I don't use exclamation marks. Or I'm scatterbrained if I use ellipses, or I lack confidence if I use question marks. If I use lots of exclamation marks I might be trying to sound motivating and exciting, but it has nothing to do with how self-restrained I am.

Note to self: Remember to add "smileys" when applicable.

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:

quote:

So I'd say times have changed for the worse.

Why for the worse, specifically, Richard? Not that I disagree, necessarily ...

That wasn't Richard, it was proofreader, wasn't it?

Note to self: Try not to take everything so seriously.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:

quote:

Asa, who, though not religious, eats homily grits for breakfast.

You have talking grits?

You don't have hominy in England?

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while Sarah Palin's transcript of her resignation has thirteen, plus other grammar faux pas.

I consider the use, or non-use, of exclamation marks to be a choice of style and not a grammar faux pas.

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That wasn't Richard, it was proofreader, wasn't it?

Sorry, yes. Richard's post was the one above.

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You don't have hominy in England?

If we do I have never heard of he, she, it or them.

I found a Southern girl on E-Hominy.

Ah, Proofreader, you've got true grits! Was she Okra Winfrey?

(RE, hominy is a variety of corn that's coarsely ground and served as a breakfast dish)

Hominy in Wikipedia. It's a corn-based (i.e., maize in the UK) food with origins in Central America. Grits are are popular in the South (region of the USA).

quote:

Asa, who, though not religious, eats homily grits for breakfast

Remember, the original quote was this. And a homily is not the same as hominy.

And a homily is not the same as hominy.

It's called a pun (link). It's a form of humo(u)r.

That Southern girl was very resourceful andfond of recycling. She actually made a musical insturment from old corn cobs which she called a "hominaca."

She actually made a musical insturment from old corn cobs which she called a "hominaca."

Better than an okraina, I suppose.

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It's called a pun (link). It's a form of humo(u)r.

I do know what a pun is - we commonly use them in Britain. But for a pun to work it needs to be reasonably obvious.

The original wordplay was between "homely" and "homily" which was reasonably obvious although it was unclear to me what a religious sermon had to do with a breakfast cereal. But the double pun, from homely to homily to hominy (which word I had never previously seen) left me struggling to find meaning.

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:
She actually made a musical insturment from old corn cobs which she called a "hominaca."

Better than an okraina, I suppose.

Did you mean the Russian word for "outpost?"

MacArthur smoked a corncob pipe, and we used to keep corncobs in the outhouse for when we ran out of old Monkey Ward catalogs.

But for a pun to work it needs to be reasonably obvious.

It was patently obvious. Over here on this side of the pond, grits means hominy grits by default. I think it would be the rare USan who did not understand Asa's pun. Besides, homily and hominy only differ by one phoneme, and the i is usually elided in both words. It seemed the perfect pun, but humor is sometimes hard for foreigners to understand.

Did you mean the Russian word for "outpost?"

Yes, that's what I meant. (I see you're turning English today.) For the benefit of people who live outside of most of the anglophone world, okra is a staple vegetable in the US South, and large parts of Africa, and South Asia. For those of you in the UK, an ocarina is a musical instrument. (I do seem to remember one featuring in the famous sex ed scene in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.) I also did not mean the country of Ukraine or either of the two Russian movies.

This is one. And it wasn't invented by Okra Wingrey, either.

Here's an article from the Huffington Post about new words added to the dictionary this year, with the first recorded use of the word. Notice that most words are fairly new.

But check out "earmark." The first recorded usage is from the 15th century. How did that one stay under the radar for so long?

From that article:

quote:

Earmark (15c): a provision in Congressional legislation that allocates a specified amount of money for a specific project, program, or organization.

Huh? Congress didn't exist in the 15th century. We don't have a Congress over here, either, and have been referring to money earmarked for specific purposes for years. I'm surprised, though, that a) MW didn't include it earlier, and b) the word is as old as they say.

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Congress didn't exist in the 15th century

Sexual congress?

The English spoke of congresses before the USA existed. (After all, where did the former British subjects get the term for their national diet?) Not about their parliament, but about a special coming together of plenipotentiaries to determine some solemn event, like a peace. Earmark is more interesting. Originally a mark on the ear of an animal, such as a sheep, to indicate ownership, it was later transfered in meaning to a stamp or other mark on a document to call it out for special attention. Both its use as a noun and a verb are cited from the mid-16th century. Sort of an off by one error. The pre-Norman English had a þing not a parliament.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

In the 15th Century sexual congress oft begat issue. Sounds slightly stilted today, methinks.

An oblivious man from old Groton
Said, "My memory's incredibly rotten.
Name the mothers? No sweat.
But I always forget
What to call all the kids I've begotten.

we spoke of congresses, not Congress.

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It was patently obvious. Over here on this side of the pond, grits means hominy grits by default.

As you say - obvious to Americans - but certainly less obvious to the majority of the English speaking world who happen not to be Americans.

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but certainly less obvious to the majority of the English speaking world who happen not to be Americans.

And we offer our sincere condolences to them.

As you say - obvious to Americans - but certainly less obvious to the majority of the English speaking world who happen not to be Americans.

Tough.

And, as I have pointed out before it hasn't stopped (nor should it) you Britons from using British forms of humour. If you knew what grits were (or looked it up), I belive you'd understand what the pun was, if not, la. There are plenty of jokes and other forms of humor I don't understand or even find funny. You didn't get it, and I tried to give you a context to understand it. If now you want to argue about what's a pun or what is humor, I say "sorry, no, be seeing you" ...

[Fixed a typo.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

quote:

but certainly less obvious to the majority of the English speaking world

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "English speaking world." I heard some very interesting "English" is South Africa!

Not wishing to hijack but...

This idea of an "English speaking world" is a bit bogus in my opinion. Five minutes conversation with someone from one of the other parts of it will show that dialects can be so dissimilar as to be scarcely mutually intelligible but with both of you believing that what you speak is English.
Between English variants there are, certainly stylistic and lexical differences, but also some grammatical ones. For example in the English of the Indian sub-continent the construction "Yesterday, I am going to the shops." is perfectly commonplace but it's a no-no in most other places.
I've had conversational difficulties with many people speaking the same language. Mostly we are able to understand each other well enough but every now and then there will be something that is just, for one of the listeners, meaningless sounds. The puns that started this debate are a fine example. To an Englishman they are meaningless. We don't use the word "grits" (though some who watch a lot of TV may know that they are some kind of food) and we don't use the word "hominy"*. I think I had heard it and assumed it to be a trade name, but I'm not even sure of that.

The idea that there is an "English speaking world" and that we are all speaking one language is a bit of a myth, probably born out of our own arrogant beliefs that if someone doesn't speak English, then it's up to him to learn. English is the greatest, best, most expressive, most perfect system of communication in the world.
That last statement is of course nonsense.

Here are two jokes. I promise you they are in English. They are perfectly understandable by anyone who lives within, say, twenty miles of where I am sitting right now - and almost certainly gibberish to the rest of you. I'll try to give approximate phonetic renderings as there are no accepted spellings for the dialect.

1. Why doe crows fly over Cradley Heath?
'Coz they core.

2. What do yoe call a Chinamon who lives between Dudley and Stourbridge?
Yo min li.

Both have places names but only one requires local geographical knowledge. Both rely in dialectical words or pronunciations. Both are puns. Almost certainly, both are complete gibberish.

To explain.

The first relies on the homophony of "core" (the black country dialect word for "cannot") and "caw" (the sound a crow makes). Cradley Heath is a town in the heart of the region where this dialect is spoken.

The second relies on more detailed knowledge. The town of Lye, is almost halfway between the other two towns mentioned. The black country sentence meaning "You are in Lye" would be "Yo'm in Lye" which is identically pronounced to "Yo min li" which sounds like it is the name of someone from China.

Can you really say that this is part of the same English speaking world that you live in. Well it is, and that's why I think the whole concept falls apart.

Didn't know where to place this so I'll try here.

I recently saw a part of one of the "Planet of The Apes" movies. The apes were speaking what most of us would call standard English, but didn't recognize the term, "English," rather knowing it simply as their language. However, they were in a million-year time warp. Somehow I suspect that the language would have changed so much in that time that the apes' English and the Earthling English would not have been at all similar. I guess the script writer didn't consult a linguist.

quote:

Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
I recently saw a part of one of the "Planet of The Apes" movies. The apes were speaking what most of us would call standard English, but didn't recognize the term, "English," rather knowing it simply as their language. However, they were in a million-year time warp. Somehow I suspect that the language would have changed so much in that time that the apes' English and the Earthling English would not have been at all similar. I guess the script writer didn't consult a linguist.

The great convention of science fiction - everybody in the Universe speaks English.

"English speaking world"

Word. (What Bob said.) There are now as many or more non-native speakers of English in the world as native. On two different occasions in the UK (1976 and 1985) I met and spoke with two Britons who were completely incomprehensible to me. The first was a bus conductor in York and the second a Glaswegian RAF non-com in St Columb Major, near Newquay in Cornwall. The first one answered a question I asked in the local dialect. He choose his words carefully so as to willfully be incomprehensible. And he was. Several of my fellow passengers chuckled and then one of them offered a translation. The corporal, I met in a club, spoke with me, telling a story, and for at least the first few minutes I could only understand one word, an intensifier. Unlike the Yorkshire man, he was not putting on an accent to confuse me, but actually trying to communicate, and the fact that he did not speak Standard British English was a mere fact. There is a concept in socio-linguistics called accommodation (theory). If people are speaking two mutually intelligible languages (dialects)they tend to converge in their accent, usage, etc. to accommodate communication. If , on the other hand, they do not wish to communicate, they move as far apart in their respective dialects, purposively choosing uncommon and difficult to understand idioms etc.

The great convention of science fiction - everybody in the Universe speaks English.

I own and have read several books which discuss the theme of linguistics in science fiction. It is an important part of the genre.

Here's a discussion of Sheckley's "Shall we have a little talk?" a science fiction story all about linguistics.

I read that blog occasionally, though I hadn't read that entry.
This is another good one on a similar theme.

I remember reading that Sheckley story years ago. He was one of my favourite SF authors back when I read a lot of it.