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

Or perhaps I should say that it was in use before the crappy crappy Spice Girls

But rearely used with such style & pananche (as Viv, that is, not the Sp*ce G*rls).

Well, he did say the use had *increased* in the past few years...

That'd be the old Quality v Quantity thing, then.

'Shut up you b*stards'. 10 points for the album that turned up on.

Is 'seriousness' a new word? Tony Blair used it yesterday and I couldn't help thinking that 'severity' was the word he was looking for.

WARNING: Sight topic drift follows ...

When did nuclear become nucular?

George Bush continually mispronounces the word.
Can we trust a man to control something he can't even enunciate correctly?

Bwill-yunt?

Ugh!

Something I've noticed recently is that people have been pronouncing huge as "hooge" in a high pitched voice.

Anyone else noticed this?

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before and don't have time to check the backlog ....

I dispair at the disappearing vowel ....

police is increasingly becoming p'lice
medicine is now med'cine
finance - f'nance

It infuriates me - and the fact that it infuriates me infuriates me even further

It occurred to me the other day that not all that long ago telling someone to click on their mouse or to google something wouldn't have made any sense.

Can anyone think of other computer-related 'new verbs'?

Noggin has just mentioned 'access'.


az

I laughed at your post because it occured to me that a few years ago suggesting that someone "reboot" would have also got a strange reaction.

"Oh no, not more spam!"

"Looks like someone's been phishing"

Both would've confuddled folk ten years ago!

Some fruitcakes now want everyone to start calling thing, thursd*y. I ask you?

Yes, both hacking and hacker have quite different meanings now.

And surfing the net.

All of which I think of as language evolving to meet new requirements.


az

Too right!

I have noticed in the UK we use both Americanisms and Australianisms

People say 'wanna, gonna, gotta, gotten, dude, cool etc....' Americanisms

'G-Day, Mate, Barbi, struth' are some of
the Australianisms

"wanna, gonna, gotta, gotten" are not Americanisms - they are just lazy ennunciation and bad grammar

"struth" is, in fact more English than Australian - it comes from the old English oath God's Truth.

Yes, agree with Feisor that 'struth' is definitely English in origin. Though perhaps it is more commonly used now in Australia than in England.

And the other 'Americanisms' mentioned are probably just lazy ennunciation, as Feisor said, with the exception of 'gotten' which is in fact grammatically correct according to North Americans. In Britain the past participle is 'got'.

Again we are talking about spoken English, so not every syllable or consonant is always pronounced. In casual conversation the phrase 'I've got to go' would often probably be heard as 'I gotta go', by both British and North American speakers.


az

Other computer terms . . . upload and download. Wouldn't have made any sense 10-15 years ago.


az

"struth' .......... is more commonly used now in Australia than in England"

That may be the perception in England, but I haven't heard it used here for many years. It is really a little like the English "Pip, pip, old chap" - which may be used in satire but is (probably) hardly ever heard. Or is it?

Well okay lazy speak has evolved