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

Hi all,

i don't know how i missed all this going on under my nose, since my earlier posting. Concentration been erratic. Interesting stuff. hmm.

Right, now that i've got down to single syllables, an idea about rapidity of understanding these Irish affirmatives - is it fair to say that the answer is already clear from the tone of voice, in many cases? ie, you interpret the intonation as much as the words. This would make a terse response, in a brusk, terse tone, quickly spoken, 'Ya do.' can be just as quickly said and understood as a 'No'. just a thought.

on 'umweltfreundlich' i admit i was stumped. In a clinch, I'd have flannelled and gone for 'qui respecte l'environnement'. But the best translation i can offer is 'écologique'. That word is often used in the context you would see 'environmentally friendly', anyhoo.

btw, i think that was my first ever use of the word 'factoid' earlier. Whilst we're at it, what do people here make of it. It just kinda slipped out, but seemed appropriate. It must be a recent one, ida thought.

Kerr Avon, how about *outlaws* to describe the parents of your ex?

Works just as well for the parents of a current de-facto partner... now there's a term in need of an overhaul

Gnomon (5768,5769), I was speaking in general about sexes of words, I didn't claim that english would have them exept he/she, his/her.

And when I referred to useless articles it was against all of them, not just English ones , Swedish for example has even more useless articles than your relatively organized and understandable native language.

'Weekend with the Outlaws'

People often talk about German's wonderful ability to string words together to make 'superwords' like ubermensch and strassenbahnhaltenstelle. But English does this too! We just don't take out the spaces between the words. We can have "nuclear attack", "nuclear attack shelter", "nuclear attack shelter authority" and so on. In German spoken words are separated by a glottal stop (Hi Spiff) so it is obvious to a German speaker that strassenbahnhaltenstelle is a single word. In English, all the words are run together. It is only a matter of written convention that nuclearattackshelterauthority is considered to be four words and not one.

I've dealt with a feature of English that the Irish language lacks. What feature of Irish is totally absent from English? Well, Irish has a very highly developed set of verbs for making wishes, wishing someone well, cursing them etc. There is no exact equivalent in English, but it translates roughly into "let" or "may".

Let the work go well!
May God bless your child!

These sound feeble compared with the equivalents in Irish. Perhaps this lack of an easy way to express such a thing means that English-speaking people are less prone to making such wishes about the future. Consider the following portion of a song in English but by an Irish person who would undoubtedly be familiar with the Irish language. It is a curse on the person who stole Nell Flaherty's drake.

May his spade never dig, may his sow never pig
May each hair in his wig be well trashed with the flail
May his door never latch, may his roof have no thatch
May his turkeys not hatch, may the rats eat his meal
May every old fairy from Cork to Dun Laoghaire
Dip him snug and airy in river or lake
That the eel and the trout they may dine on the snout
Of the monster that murdered Nell Flaherty's drake

May his pig never grunt, may his cat never hunt
May a ghost ever haunt him the dead of the night
May his hens never lay, may his horse never neigh
May his coat fly away like an old paper kite
That the flies and the fleas may the wretch ever tease
May the piercin' March breeze make him shiver and shake
May a lump of the stick raise the bumps fast and quick
On the monster that murdered Nell Flaherty's drake

There's more, but that's enough for the moment.

Outlaws, yep, that works I wasn't being serious with my previous suggestion- made it seem like a good idea

And would ther ebe any explanation of the local tendency to answer a question with a question?

Have you noticed that much?

switching topic for a moment...

UK only question (I think) I saw a programme on the telly last week called something like 'adventures in english' with the bloke from the South Bank Show presenting it. Was dealing with the origins, going back the latin / anglo saxon cross over and who did what, readings from Beowulf and the like. Did anyone else see it? If so, wa sit part of a series and if so when? I thought it was ITV but haven;t managed to track it down yet. Was quite interesting though.

cheers

You didn't imagine it. I watched a video of it the other day. It is a series and should be on again late on sunday night I think.
It looks like Melvin managed to persuade an ITV company to give him the money to make a TV version of his Radio 4 series The Roots Of English rather than it being shown on the BBC.

I'd say articles are useless more than 90% of the time. When every word is essential, like in telexes or newspaper headlines, they're the first words to be crossed out. So can we settle on 'mostly useless'?

Plurals (eg book-books) are useless when you have a number before them. Verb inflections are almost always redundant, and pronouns and the copula are regularly left out it colloquial English anyway.



The most economical language I've ever come across is Chinese. There are no plurals, articles or verb inflections, and pronouns and the copula are omitted unless absolutely necessary.

Chinese is like Irish in not having words for yes or no. The verb is used, either on its own or negated (eg shi or bu shi (is or is not) - shi being confusingly pronounced as an American would say 'sure') in response to a question.

Chinese is also like Finnish - it has one pronoun for 'he, she' or 'it'. But, as I said above, they don't use any pronoun if the context makes it obvious. So I reckon that makes Chinese the most economical language. And oh, it's so much fun to teach Chinese speakers English

Acknowledgement: Frederick Bodmer's 'Loom of Language'

Can anyone think of a verb for "to form a copula"?

Hey! I just got a language joke!

I just noticed in another thread how someone used a former adjective adpated as a noun - 'a cracking good time' has become 'a cracker'.
An example of evolving language or just slang?

Surely that's quite old? What's'isface comedy bloke used the catch phrase 'that's a cracker' or something for his jokes which must surely be an alteration of 'that is a cracking good joke'?

One that has just occurred to me, why has 'wedding' got 2 d's? Presumably it is wedd-ing (although one dictionary had it as wed-ding?) Is this just a case of no one bothered to drop the second d? It doesn't alter pronunciation any does it? Or is it celtic in origin and should therefore be wething?

Bed becomes bedding, (whether both are nouns, or both verbs), and shed becomes shedding, so wedding isn't unique.

So it appears we have lots of redundant 'd' ss floating around in our language? Oh well, another oddity to add to the list.

Oh, and to go back to a previous topic, according the the station announcer at Birmingham New Street Station :-
"All unattended articles will be removed without notice."

You have been warned

Ictoan, you haven't been paying attention!

The normal way of adding -ing to a word is to double the final consonant and to add -ing. So bid becomes bidding and win becomes winning. This ensures that the vowel remains the same. If bid became biding, you wouldn't be able to tell it apart from the past tense of bide (biding). Weding could be pronounced "Weeding" or "wedding". To make it clear, the d is doubled, which forces the first vowel to be short. There is therefore nothing extraneous about the double d in wedding.

knuckles firmly rapped. Although, excuse my pedantiscm, but weed would be weeding, so wed would be weding? So surely it is superfluous? In this case, then, we are following a rule which makes no sense in this instance? Like shed? Shedding has a superflous 'd', no one would pronounce it sheeding would they, it's a nonsense word?

Nah, there's a rule all right, but it's far too late and I've drunk far too much wine to be able to explain it. Perhaps Wand'rin Star would do the honours .. it must be early morning in Hong Kong at the moment.

Goodnight!