h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The dialect spoken in the North East of Scotland is Doric, fit = how - as in the greeting "Fit like", how are you and far = where - as in "far ye goin". It may be an urban myth but I'd heard Doric is a root of English.

Not really. It's just a variety of Scots English. Its name came about because the Enlightenment figures in 'The Athens of the North' were advocating English as the 'Attic Greek' of the new philosophers. The common Scots speech was, by way of contrast 'Doric Greek'. Unsurprisingly, it has a fair amount of Norse in it. As does English, of course.

English is a really a 'Creole', a mixture of Latinate French, Germanic Anglo-Saxon and Norse (with bits and pieces of Inuit, Algonquin, Hindi, Japanese etc. etc.). It's hard to say what its 'roots' really are.

During the Icelandic Cod War, the Royal Navy believed for a time that they had intercepted the radio communications of the Icelandic fleet. It turned out they were listening to the Doric chatter between the Peterhead boats.

Aye the Bloo Toon fishermen can be pretty incomprehensible but I can remember listening to some farmers in a pub to the South of Aberdeen and only picking up maybe one word in ten. Around Turiff the Doric is quite thick.

Actually, I thought the question, "Who are you trying to provoke this time, Ed?!", might have been 'begging the answer', "You!"

"Begging the question."

Is it time to give up on the original meaning of that phrase?

TRiG.

Just set Recumbentman on him. It's his bête noire.

Myself, I'm far more lax. As the great founder of serious linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussurre, pointed out, words are arbitrary. Their meaning depends on what we understand betwen one another at any given time. Humpty Dumpty was right.

yes = binary bit 1
no = binary bit 0

""Begging the question."

Is it time to give up on the original meaning of that phrase?"

sadly yes probably.Most people no longer understand the original meaning.

That's probably a rather good definition, at the neurological level. But it doesn't quite cover the full range of usage, I fear.

1

0

0?

"0?"

Interference .

Inference you mean?

Negative.

Aye, right!

"Begging the question."

What does it mean, asks Alfredo, from Amsterdam

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=100569&skip=13340&show=20 See post 13353 and beyond in the Brit English thread. turvy