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

and presumably a resident thereof would be a 'polypolitanite'?
And that would then mean that if somewhere did polypolitanate it would be polypolitanisation?

Or am I just being silly now?

What if they were all parrots with haemorrhoids?

Then you could have a Polly-polyp polypolitanite.

Speaking of which...

Q. Why can you never find a headache tablet in the jungle?
A. Because the parrots eat 'em all.

Oh dear...

What's orange and sounds like a parrot?








A carrot.

Presumably a large enough conurbation could support many sellers of broadband antenna arrays

a polypolitan polypole polypoly?


or is the parrot dead?

Nah...that would be a polynecropolis.

A dead parrot would be a polygon,I think.

I can see there's more than one side to these parrot allusions.
What does a feathery remarried divorcee have for breakfast?
Cereal Polygamy.
But we get further and further from the thread, I fear.

>>a feathery remarried divorcee

If we were talking about cereal polyandry instead...she'll have had a cockatoo...

>> ...further and further from the thread, I fear. <<>

Not at all! Nay, fear not!

In fact it is the playful nature of the English and their language that makes it 'an' almost unique language. The rise of wit and satire in English is an important part of what makes the British people so playful. Playing with the language is as, perhaps more, important than rules of grammar and syntax.

Scientists recently announced that they 'discovered' that play is a good thing, even for, if not especially for, grown ups. Which, besides begging the question 'why do we even bother with scientists', does raise the opportunity to mention in a topical way that some people, even Brits, have of late, and wherefore I know not, lost much of their mirth.

One only has to watch an old Beatles movie to realise that it weren't ever all about the music. The Nipponese, also an island people, have a great deal of playfulness in their cultural values. They have the highest regard for children and dolls and 'little people'. They breed tiny trees and tiny poems like the Brits breed tiny dogs, horses, faeries and leprechauns. I suspect that Japanese would also be a 'fun' language.

peace
~jwf~

>> ...reason I mention it is this phrase "As the global village conurbates," ... I thought it was a really good turn of phrase... <<

The term Global Village was originally coined by the late great Canadian communications and media guru Marshall McLuhan in the early 1960s.

He wrote: "'Time' has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village... a simultaneous happening."

He was then referring to the apparent shrinking of the earth due to advances in the speed of both travel and communication.

"...electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibilty to an intense degree..."

And this was well before the advent of the personal computer and the wickedwideweb (which he foresaw, as some sort of hybrid mix of telephones, television and telex machines ).

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-74-342-1814/people/mcluhan/clip2

And do see:

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html

which talks more academically about McLuhan's ideas that:
" ..the speed of these electronic media that allow us to act and react to global issues at the same speed as normal face to face verbal communication..."


~jwf~

"As it happens, I have Professor McLuhan right here..."
(Woody Allen in 'Annie Hall')

Changing tack (me hearties)...
How do we pronounce 'buoy'?

To me, it's always been 'boy'. But a while back, I noticed that a Teuchter fisherman friend pronounces it 'boo-ee'. And the other day I heard Denzel Washington say just that in 'Crimson Tide'.

(a quick straw poll, taking in some ex-RN, indicates 'boy').

To me it has always been "boy". I thought it was only "boo-eee" in American. Wikipedia seems to back this up (though not always the most reliable source, I know).

Round here in Nova Scotia, it's boo-eees if you're a fisherman or sailor. Landlubbers and touristas usually say 'boy'.

Curiously when it's a special kind of buoy, where the word 'buoy' is secondary to the word describing its type or function, such as a 'groaner', 'bell' or 'lightbuoy', even the real sailors will sometimes say 'boy'.

Although the fish-buoys, marking nets and lobster traps (and seldom in the same place twice) are usually still called fish-boo-ees.

eg: "Go round that channel boo-ee to port, then bear straight on to the bellboy and watch out for fish-boo-ees."

God, now I'm thinking about it I'm all confuddled. But I know I would say boo-ee most of the time and nobody would blink.


~jwf~

sounds like another of those Saxon/Norman conflicts

the english spelling and "boo-ee" pronunciation could be influenced by the Old French "buie", a word of Germanic origins meaning beacon (M.Du. boeye/OHG bouhhan).

OED however prefers a derivation from O.Fr. "boie" (fetter, chain) that via influence of slave and servant gave us also the modern word "boy". Somewhat surreally, this word has a Greek root,"bous" (ox) / "boeiai dorai" (ox hides)

At one time, Greek was written 'boustrephedron' or as the ox ploughs. They'd write a line, then turn the page around and write the other way.

And isn't that where we get 'bucolic'?

>> ...via influence of slave and servant gave us also the modern word "boy"... <<

Interesting. That puts a whole new slant on the use of that word by racist whites when addressing blacks. It isn't just 'patronising' in suggesting superiority by analogous reference to age but really is distinctively condescending by rank.

And I assume you mean that the word 'boy' - which we now use generally to mean a young male human without being conscious of any attendant assumption of servitude or lesser social rank - is from that same source.

Curiously, in the older local dialects of Atlantic Coastal Canada -being a mix of mostly Cornish with influences from French and the Portugee - the word boy is commonly used to denote a 'fellow' or 'guy' and is pronounced without any 'o' or 'ou' value sounded. It's just 'by'.

A common greeting such as "How's she going, boy?" sounds something like "Hashi goan by?"


~jwf~

A common greeting such as "How's she going, boy?" sounds something like "Hashi goan by?"

I don't know whether or not she's gone by.
That does sound a bit like a man from county Cork in Ireland to me though.

Presuming the word is derived from "buoyant" - how do those who say "boo-ee" pronounce "buoyant"?

could this be owt to do with the great vowel shift? It's within the time frame (word recorded as origin 1425-75) and the o and u sounds did shift quite a bit.

U would have been 'oo' and o would have been 'au' sound I think in the 15th C. (I realise I am well out of my depth here!)

Place I looked also reckoned it was from ME boye, MF boie/boue