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

'Ye': isn't it also a second-person plural pronoun? Scandinavian languages (except Finnish) are North Germanic, aren't they? Replication of 'to': "... to which most modern European languages can be traced back to." Just axe the final 'to'.

War film: ... and those RAF people in Independence Day. Ugh.

B-word: first sentence: another comma after 'expletive' needed.

'Overtake': Use a question mark!

Grandmother's phrases: a footnote for Mr Chips might be in order.

Nail on head: How about "Does a bear s**t in the woods?", meaning 'well, obviously!' [moderated by poster]

Money: the third term shouldn't be a bullet. German 'fünf' - note the umlaut. 'Copper', in Britain at least, is a term encompassing 2p pieces (tuppences?) as well as pennies (they're both made of bronze!). Addendum: 'thrupenny bit', referring to the pre-decimal heptagonal (I think) 3p coins.

In other words: mismatched inverted comma under 'Gubbins'. 'Navvie' - what does it mean *now*? 'Victuals' is just food. From Dickens (this is out of copyright, so don't squack it):

There was an old woman, and what do you think?
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,
And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.
(from 'Hard Times')

'Desuetude' is in the wrong place.

HTH - Eagle-Eye

Also, I'm sure the actor who appeared in "Reach For The Sky" was called Kenneth More, with one "o", not Moore.

Excellent work, Pete - much appreciated. I've made changes to the text now. Cheers

Spot on, I've dropped one of the 'o's, mate

Ta.

Scandinavian languages, with the noted (and notable) exception of Finnish, which is a Finno-Ugric Language, are indeed North Germanic. Generally speaking, North Germanic can be divided into two - Old West Germanic is Old Norse, and Old East Germanic is Old Danish and/or Old Swedish. Old Norse developed into Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese, Old East Germanic developed into Danish and Swedish. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but you can see that all Scandinavian languages except Finnish) are either directly descended from Old Norse, or are sister languages, much as Frisian is to English. The context of that paragraph and introducing Icelandic was that þ is still used in Icelandic - a point lost in the editing. Hope that clears a couple of things up.

It's your turn to be the target of nitpickin' pedantry:
the 'thrupenny' (or threepenny) piece is correctly designated by the abbreviation '3d', not '3p' as it predates decimalisation (as you stated). The 'd' in the old 'Lsd' currency system (not drugs!) comes from the ancient word 'denarius'. The 'p' used today simply means 'penny' or 'pence'

If it's pedantry you want...

'English speaking' should be 'English-speaking'

'Chocs away' should be 'Chocks away'. Incidentally, I haven't watched nearly enough British films to be an authority on this, so was this phrase ever actually used in anything other than its original context? (i.e. telling some cheerfully subservient underling to get those bits of wood out from under the plane's wheels).

'Zany' doesn't seem to fit with the other out-dated neologisms: it's alleged to have been coined by Shakespeare (at any rate it appears in Love's Labour's Lost), whereas the the rest are presumably the creations of beatniks, hippies and sundry other more modern delinquents.

'Poodle faker' and 'poodlefaker' both appear. Logic says one must be wrong, and I say both are: it's 'poodle-faker'.

Whoops! Sorry about the '3d' thing. That was ignorant of me.

I'm sure I mentioned the origins of 'Chocks away' somewhere around here...

Random thoughts: Overtake still means 'catch up with' in the USA. A hootenenny is not the group of musicians alone, but means a songfest of several musicians - that is the musicians must be actually making music (or at least between numbers or about to start playing) - the hootenanny is the songfest itself.
Besides 'Does the bear...' there is 'Is the pope catholic?" and "Is a frog's a*** watertight?" R. Crumb - the cartoonist - did a paly on this idea when a hippy was asked if he wanted a joint, and he replied "Is the bear catholic? Does the Pope *** in the woods?"
I thought cockamamie meant 'contrived and fantastic and idiotic' - usually applied to someone's idea or plan.
Int USA money, a buck is a dollar believed to have come about because the hide of one deer had the value of one dollar when the term was coined.

Terry Pratchett made wonderful parodies of these:

"Is the High Priest an Offlian?"
"Does a dragon explode in the woods?"

About the word 'b*****d', actually, per common sense, verified by OED, it is and always was pejorative, because of the '-ard' suffix (see further on). 'Bast' is an obsolete word for the obsolete 'pack-saddle', often used as a bed by long-dead travellers.

'B*****d' literally means 'pack-saddle child' (per OED). Your suggestion that it was a value-neutral term did not sound likely to me, because in French and English, the '-ard' and '-art' endings are always pejorative. They suggest excess, or indulgence to a fault viz examples:

-Braggart - person who boasts too much
-Drunkard - person who sozzles to excess
-Niggard - person who is miserly beyond reason (*wholly* unrelated to any racial epithet, the first half is from the Dutch, 'nig' meaning something like 'cheapskate')
-Blackguard - (there's a *nice* obsolete word) Extremely villainous person
-Dotard - person who is too old (foolish assumed)
-Sluggard - person who really cannot be bothered to wake up (also my fella's 20 year old son).
-Coward - from the French for 'tail' + '-ard', person whose behind one watches as s/he runs away.

Note these are all masculine endings, and still have some of the French masculine implied as a holdover. The words 'braggart', or 'sluggard' do not make one think of women.

The '-art, -ard' endings would be '-arte, -arde' respectively in the feminine. I can't come up with any, offhand, that are used in English.

That leads nicely to my next point, also on obsolete suffices:

It is a shame that '-aster', used to mean 'self-represented as', 'charlatan', or 'incompetent' has fallen out of use in English.

-Poetaster is the word people think of, but
-Medicaster is equally legitimate and much more useful.
-Adjudicaster is probably the legal equivalent, or 'juricaster'.

That is just an observation on my part, as something of the colour the language has lost. The 'b*****d' bit should probably be corrected, since that is a factual error in this article.

Otherwise (though I could pick nits for weeks) this is a very enjoyable and informative article, which *I* wish were twice its current length, and had more examples.

Obsessive-compulsively yours,

Arpeggio, for LeKZ (the linguistics bxtch from Hell, who was born a b*****d.)

Arpeggio,

Thank you very much for this information - it's really useful. This is the kind of 'extra' information that the entry tendrils (the threads) really thrive on and which give life and dyanamism back to the original entry. Cool.

My pleasure, Sam

How could I pass up a thread called 'Miscellaneous Pedantry and Addenda'?

Arpeggio, for LeKZ

Ha!

Hey - loved the -ard and -aster comment. Did not realize that these were suffixes and had a particular connotation - just thought coward was a word. Cool. Always wondered about the peculiar word (I thought) poetaster. Live and learn. Now I am going get obsessive (till I forget) about finding an example of the feminine -arde, -arte; it just seems like there is an example trembling on the edge of my mind...