Grammar Police Gazette

[red750]

Melbourne Cup winner Gunsynd was known as the "Gunda-windy Grey".

5 hours ago, old man emu said:

Goonoo Goonoo

Pronounced Gunner Gunoo.

 

Worked with a guy who came from up near there, at Wallabadah (Wolla Budah).

[red750]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

full cost of all the name changes to Aboriginal names

How are they going to translate the aboriginal names to Chinese/Japanese  for all those towns, particularly in Qld, which have dual language signs?

[octave]

3 minutes ago, red750 said:

How are they going to translate the aboriginal names to Chinese/Japanese  for all those towns, particularly in Qld, which have dual language signs?

Do you have to translate place names?    You don't translate Sydney or Wollongong for tourists, they are what they are.

[red750]

Sorry Octave, when I lived in Sydney I didn't see any multi-lingual street signs like, say Townsville has. Again, call me racist if you like, but a lot of Asians refuse to learn English, let alone aboriginal. Just watch Highway Patrol on TV. Our suburbs are becoming about 75-80% Asian now. Our street has 42 houses, of which about 30 have Asian occupants. There are more Asian supermarkets than Australian.

[octave]

9 minutes ago, red750 said:

I didn't see any multi-lingual street signs like, say Townsville

 

I dont think it is being multilingual I think it is just using the new name along with the old name.  When we go to NZ we often take a ferry across Wellington harbour to Matiu/Somes Island.   The double name is not there because Europeans can only understand "Somes Island" and Maoris can only understand Matiu Island.   The name encompasses the island's history in recent times as a scientific reserve and before that a quarantine station and before the Maori history and archeological sites.   We could perhaps drop the Somes and just use the original Maori name, would that be better?

 

How do you feel about Papua New Guinea?   This is a blend of its original name and its new name.  

 

 

 

 

[red750]

Octave, you are always on about the utopia in New Zealand. Have a look at this, from New Zealand radio. Think again about the Voice referendum.

 

 

 

[octave]

I would love to hear the recordings he allegedly made.  I would suggest that this fellow could present evidence to back up his claims.    I am suggesting that these anecdotes need evidence, fair enough inst it.  Julian Batchelor (Iam not sure whether he is the interviewee or interviewer) is a head of an organization called "stop co-governance.

 

Evidence backing stop co-governance campaign labelled 'ill-informed'

 

My experience of NZ is based on yearly visits and the experience of my son who moved himself and his business to NZ 9 years ago.  

 

 

 

[nomadpete]

 I lived in Sydney during the Sydney Olympics, in several different suburbs. Quite a large amount of Sydney has very low numbers of English speaking people. Therefore all signals in these places was in either of the two dominant (Arabic and Asian) languages. So little English was spoken in Blacktown (are we still allowed to call it that?) That in a restaurant I had to order by looking around at other tables and pointing to what I wanted. Nobody there could speak English well enough to understand me, or to interpret the hieroglyphic menu. They did have a good understanding of dollars, though.

 

No, I do not think all is well with multiculturalism when it creates isolated social & cultural groups. I believe Japan has a good policy of requiring a working language skill before allowing a migrant to enter.

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, octave said:

How do you feel about Papua New Guinea?   This is a blend of its original name and its new name.  

It's more accurately a combination of the names of two former territories given when they were joined under one administration. The Papua area of PNG was originally British New Guinea, renamed to the Territory of Papua when Australia took over administration in 1905. The New Guinea region of PNG was German New Guinea until they lost it in WW1. After WW2, Australia joined the two territories, Papua (formerly British New Guinea) and New Guinea (formerly German New Guinea) under one administration under the name of Papua and New Guinea. On independence, it was named Papua New Guinea.

 

It's not clear where the name Papua came from; one school of thought is that it comes from a Malay word 'papuwah' for fuzzy hair. The name New Guinea stems from a Spanish explorer in 1545.

[nomadpete]

Late correction... auto spellchange got me again....

 

Pretty much all signage was not in English, it was in either of the two dominant nationalities.

 

To be clear, I am not objecting to the people, just the fragmentation of our communities and the isolation that must eventuate when large tracts of people do not comprehend information.

 

Not directly a Grammar Policing issue but at least it is language related

 

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by nomadpete

[old man emu]

17 hours ago, red750 said:

Pronounced Gunner Gunoo.

My pronunciation of that is "Gunny Gunoo", which is pretty close and may indicate the effects of a slight difference in how the speaker heard the name whilst learning it. Sort of an accent thing. At least we know it is not "goo-new goo-new". 

[red750]

[old man emu]

English is inflected with a lot of that.

[Bruce Tuncks]

read = "red"  when it is past tense? is that what the kid is saying?

I completely agree with the Japanese idea that the proposed immigrant should be fluent in the local language. And while I dunno for sure, I reckon English would be easier for an arab ( for example ) to learn.

[spacesailor]

But,  The English kids have difficulty in English grammar.

Now looking at F B the English , No longer use Grammar. 

Or 

Punctuation. 

Or capital letters.  

spacesailor

[old man emu]

Punctuation is used with writing to emulate the various pauses we use in speech. The comma indicates a short pause for a breath, while a full stop indicates the end of what we want to say and allows for a longer pause. Exclamation marks show the emotion associated with the words, while a question mark indicates the need for a reply. Things like colons and semicolons are part of the comma group.

 

To me the most important rule of grammar is matching the number of the verb with the noun that is doing the action. I cringe every time I hear a collective noun matched to a plural verb form, or the plural pronoun where the singular should be used. That is rampant in sports reports eg "The Australian team are heading to Leeds after their win at Lords." Team is a collective noun and in that sentence there is only one team. There is a number of similar mistakes, especially when we use the word "number" as a collective noun.

 

Ending a sentence with a preposition was once something up with which grammarians would not put. But usage has changed and now it is something we are happy to put up with. It makes the flow of speech much smoother.

[spacesailor]

Punctuation is not used as much on FB .

astheyritewotevathalike&ucandeciphaitanywayuwant.

Doesn't it make you  cringe .adults talking about holidaying in Europe. When they can't speak English , let alone write it .

spacesailor

PS. Good relatives,  that have gone through the ' education ' system.

[old man emu]

Like anything, you can get used to there being no spaces between words.

 

Expand this image and try separating the words in this Roman inscription. It is written in scriptio continua, a continuous string of characters without spaces to mark word boundaries.

 

 

 

Eventually the Romans got jack of doing that so they put dots in the centre of the lines of text to separate the longer words.

Irish scribes first started to add word spacing to texts in the late 7th century. By the 11th century, scribes in northern Europe were separating Latin text canonically, that is, with spaces between words, just as we do today in standard written text.

 

The Roman inscribers must have convinced everyone that it got too expensive to be chipping out the common words that held the sentences together, so they came up with the idea of abbreviating those common words to just a few letters. Since these inscriptions were mainly telling the people the same story, the people could often infer what Biggus Diccus was bragging about in his inscription because they'd seen similar before. This space-saving device has carried on to the present. You can see it in our coinage. Here's an English penny:

It says, in Latin, reading clockwise from the date "Elizabeth the Second, DEI*GRA (by the Grace of God), *REG* (Queen) *FID*DEF* (Defender of the Faith)." Written in full the inscription would be: ELIZABETH II DEI GRATIA REGINA FIDEI DEFENSATRIX. (Interesting aside: note the feminine 'defensatrix' form of the male 'defensor' which we were discussing earlier.)

 

When the coins of Charles III's reign come out, Elizabeth II will be replaced by Carolus III. I can't see the tradition of the Latin wording being broken. It worked for Charles II

Note the absence of FID*DEF. Charles II was a Catholic until on his deathbed. "Defender of the Faith" was a title granted to Henry VIII by the Pope because Henry wrote a condemnation of Protestantism in his youth. When he switched sides, he decided to retain the title because he was the "Head of the Church in England" and sworn to defend it. 

[Marty_d]

Isn't it reputed to be Julius himself who came up with the dots separating words?

 

(In reality it was probably some lowly scribe - you know how it goes, you stuff up and you take the blame, you do something good and the boss gets the credit).

 

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by Marty_d

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, Marty_d said:

you know how it goes, you stuff up and you take the blame, you do something good and the boss gets the credit).

There's nothing new under the Sun. 

 

The dots were used during the period known as Classical Latin, and JC was emperor then. He might have pushed for the dots (interpuncts) to avoid ambiguity, especially for military battle orders. The lack of spacing also led to some ambiguity because a minor discrepancy in word parsing could give the text a different meaning. For example, a phrase written in scriptio continua as "collectamexiliopubem" may be interpreted as collectam ex Ilio pubem, meaning "a people gathered from Troy", or collectam exilio pubem, "a people gathered for exile".

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Gosh OME, I never knew they were so antique. I thought better of those romans... But I do know about why there are 7 days in a week and why they have Viking god names, well in English they do. The thing that impressed  me the most is how interested most kids are and how we were never told in school.

 

[willedoo]

I only recently found out that on social media (and texting) it's considered rude to end a post with a full stop. It must be a generational thing; the oldies still seem to use them. As far as I know it's ok to use them to separate sentences, but not for the last one. Apparently it's considered as rude as using all capital letters to emphasise a word, which is considered the text version of shouting at someone. I think you'd have to lead a sad life if a full stop bugged you.  ...........

Edited August 10, 2023 by willedoo

[spacesailor]

Never told in school .

Like an ' English pope ' .

spacesailor

 

[red750]

[old man emu]

Straight out of the mouths of the Romans. Praeposterus  literally "before-behind" (compare topsy-turvy,cart before the horse), from prae "before"  + posterus "subsequent, coming after". The literal meaning "reversed in order or arrangement, having that last which ought to be first" (1550s) is now obsolete in English.