Posts by Rob Hosking
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I don't know if this is a very profound insight, Rob, but the Queen also pronounces the days of the week that way..
Ahh,
So its a Kraut thing, then.
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It reminds me of some '80s sitcom when an underachieving student realises he can learn stuff at school when he turns his study notes into hip hop rhymes.
Putting soemthing you have to learn into song is a damn good way of remembering it.
That's how I memorised the Scout Law.
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Now, here's one I'm sure someone here will have insight on:
Mondee, Tuesdee, Wedsdee....etc.
I pronounce it this way myself, never thought about it until recently when someone queried it.
A brief google shows its identified in the US mostly (but not totally) with the South - I'm damn sure I didn't get it from there, I got it from my father's side of the family, who are predominantly Devon/Cornwall English.
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The 'wee' thing doesn't seem geographically based, but I'm fairly sure its a Scottish import.
Not the Glaswegian, street brawling, Billy Connolly-profane type of Scots: more the genteel, Presbyterian cold churches and gingerbread, highland dancing sort of Scot.
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I just keep thinking of Hunter S Thompson's definition of a charismatic political leader: someone who can get out there, whip their followers into an orgiastic frenzy, and then go into the backrooms and do a deal which sells them all down the river for a buck apiece.
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Nice headline on the post....The Economist, in similar mode, headlined its piece on the Guiliani withdrawl 'Goodbye Rudy Tuesday'.
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There's been a bit of talk McCain will pick Huckabee as his running mate.
Apparently Huckabee has been lobbying hard for this.
Electorally it makes sense: the South will, as is usual these days, be crucial (perhaps even more so if the Dems nominate Obama) and more importantly it would keep the Levitican wing of the Republican Party from staying home on election day.
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Ahh, the Scottish influence on NZ diction...
Had an English teacher - himself of Scottish ancestry - who reckoned the pronunciation of the country's name as "New Zillun" was an echo of Scottish pronunciation, although he put a lot of the blame on PM Peter Fraser, who used to pronounce it this way (and who of course was born in Scotland).
Another verbal tic which I've heard suggested is a Scottish thing is the way NZers use the word 'wee' a lot in conversation.
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Just a bit of historical perspective on the tertiary take-up rate: in the early 1980s we had the lowest in the OECD - about 25%, from memory.
There was a concerted push at that time to try to get the rate up. It was, of course, helped by the surge in unemployment which began in the mid-late 1980s.
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Love the clips from Youtube. The clipped RAF accent saying 'that is so disrespecting of your trousers...'
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Aussie bloke I met some years ago reckoned at one point there was graffiti on a bridge in Bondi which said "NZ Sucks".Someone - presumably a Kiwi - had written underneath "Australia nil".
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Tramping trip up Tapaonuku some years ago. German woman in the group. We were talking about the difficulty we were having seeing the cairns which marked the route and she eventually asked who this guy Ken was.