Venus Flytrap

« Fnar! Fnar! Beware my terrifying kirkkovene! »

For those who love languages, studying them is always a rich source of amusement as well as insight to how other cultures think and regard themselves. Slang and euphemism are at the forefront of popular culture which often have meanings that you can understand even without a firm grasp of the language, but defy even the fluent or the native speaker when it comes to translating them into another language while keeping the same meaning. In this gap between meaning and translation, comedy reigns supreme.

Since today is 'National Women's Day' in Finland and we are celebrating 100 years of women having the right to vote, I'll pick one particularly amusing euphemism for the female anatomy that really doesn't translate; kirkkovene. Kirkkovene, when literally translated, means 'church boat' which is a wooden boat along the lines of a rowing scull for eight with oars. OK, so then you start to think, well, what does a cooter have to do with a boat full of pious, rowing guys on their way to church? It doesn't seem like it has a lot to do with gettin' to know a lady much, much more intimately than, say, reading the bible together.

Right, so at this point I ask Jarkko where the connection between a rowboat and a hootchie might be so he gets out a piece of paper and draws a picture that looks like a Keith Haring sketch of a happy coffee bean, looks up at me and says, 'get it?' He saw a coy allusion to a woman's naughty bits and I saw something more like a carnivorous tropical plant with an appetite for flies:

I sure hope my pookie doesn't look like that. Of course, I haven't really spent much quality time staring at it contemplating what it reminds me of. This might explain why Finnish guys seem to complain about not getting laid very often as, damn, I wouldn't get near something that looked like that either as it might chomp my dick off. That wouldn't be much fun, would it? Maybe Finnish guys could think less about wooden boats and more about flowers like Georgia O'Keeffe did to evoke the same image. Boats are supposed to be phallic. :)

Soft, pastel coloured petals suggest an inviting and friendly entity instead of the gnashing teeth of the venus kirkkovene flytrap unlesss, of course, you're into that sort of thing. :)

Pure linguistic comedy gold.

permalink Ω 8 March 2006, Helsinki

Order a Bannugaggu Today!

« Otava on the rocks of the southernmost island of Suomenlinna. »

I finally got around to developing, scanning and putting together a small gallery of the "Hanoi Rocks, Stocmann Shakes!" photos and, since Arabella gave me a bonus flickr pro account and made me promise to use it, I'm going to try to put a few completely random photos on my flickr photostream and see if I get bored with it or not.

And the treat of the day was picking up the April issue of Living which had a feature on pancakes that included a mention about pannukakku which is quoted below. What I didn't expect was the last sentence which made me giggle for about 20 minutes as I imagined throngs of American housewives visiting Helsinki on a Baltic cruise and ordering a 'bannugaggu' while trying to impress their friends with their grasp of Finnish food imparted to them by Martha. Walking home I kept trying to say it and figure out how they came to the conclusion that this was the way it was supposed to be pronounced. It's fun to say bannugaggu, but it sounds like a baby talk or someone with a severe head cold. I suppose there are benefits to being so easily entertained. Perhaps someone was just slipping a joke by the unwitting editors. The recipe looked reasonable, though I'm not sure how the pannukakku in the picture achieved the puff without any leavening agents at all.

Pannukakku - From Finland

Unlike most pancakes, this cardamom-scented version (above) hailing from Finland is baked rather than fried or grilled, giving it a soft, puffed-up interior and a delicately crisp crust. It's particularly versatile: For breakfast, it's delectable with lingonberry jam (or cloudberry, if you can find it); for a more savory, late-day meal, try it with the traditional accompaniment of yellow-split-pea soup. By the way, if you happen to be in Finland and want to order this pancake, the name is pronounced "bannugaggu."

Since one gentle reader wrote to me and, much to my amazement, thought that pannukakku could be easily heard as bannugaggu, I had Jarkko pronounce both pannukakku and bannugaggu to perhaps help illustrate the distinct difference. The p and the b are possible to mistake, but the double-g and the double-k are unmistakably distinct.

permalink Ω 29 April 2005, Helsinki

Nasal Leakage

« An empty coatrack at the end of the evening. The chewing gum stuck to one leg is a nice touch. »

How do you explain to a puppy that you are not personally responsible for the snow melting into a hard and icy substance that he can no longer dive into and it refuses to give when he somersaults himself to the ground and rolls trying to get it to submit? It's awfully adorable as he wriggles around and yaps at the hard snow that denies him fluffy satisfaction. Gale-force winds deposited very wet, fresh snow that he was ecstatic to run around in last night only to find it gone this morning. He seemed quite pouty about the snow being replaced by the grit soup on the sidewalk that we should normally be spared from until April when everything thaws. He was momentarily cheered when he discovered that the pigeons will fly if he runs towards them which he then repeated several times, each time watching them swirl around and land.

We have lost the battle for Mt. Largess as I was too tired to tell him "no" and gently push him away from the sofa for the 50th time Thursday night when he got onto the sofa and came to snuggle up to me. I was in a bit of a mood which vanished as soon as he flopped his head down on my lap and sighed. Of course, this won't be so cute when he's 80 kilos, but he likely won't fit on the sofa when he's that size. Saints don't make very good lap dogs unless you've got a leviathan lap. After a while he got too hot, rolled over and began grunting and trying to make himself comfortable which was awfully adorable as well. Hurrah for sofas with durable, removable and washable coverings. We'll likely go buy him some sort of bed for him and a throw for the sofa.

I stayed at home sick today as I have been fighting a cold for a week or two and finally succumbed. I really do find it tremendously irritating that you can't buy OTC remedies for colds and flu at the local grocery and instead have to find the not-so-nearby pharmacy which makes it terribly unlikely that you're going tromp down there just for some advil. I was sleeping soundly until a certain wet nose was shoved into my face about 1pm to remind me that there was a walk outdoors in my near future. Fortunately, there were puppies in the dog park to wear him out as I didn't have the energy.

It was Fat Tuesday this week and I forgot that I had wanted to explain how English is used to describe the foods that glisten and taste good as I flinch each and every time someone uses the world 'grease' to describe most of the good stuff in food. I don't know if it is a result of the US demonizing foods high in fat or just that grease makes me think of motor oil, but someone asking me if I'd like more grease on my bread remains something of a jolt. English has a lot of different words to describe oleaginous foods but grease is not one of them as it's horribly unappetizing.

English doesn't have any rules that I'm aware of that demand, suggest or even hint at the use of the various words used to describe the oily substances found in food. Grease is never used to describe an ingredient in food, no matter how accurate it might be. Foods can be greasy, "That pizza is really greasy.", or grease can be a by-product of the cooking of meats [a.k.a. rendered] usually in the form of a layer on top of the food that needs to be skimmed off but 'fat' is often preferred even in this context, "Skim the layer of fat off of the soup and simmer for 40 minutes." You can also grease the baking pans with butter before baking. Grease conjures the image of motor oil, lubricants, grease monkeys and lardy french fries. And Olestra. If you aren't familiar with Olestra, it's a fake fat that carries the warning "May cause anal leakage" on the bags of potato chips that are fried in it which means that you can eat them, but just don't sneeze or cough for a day or two afterwards. I once tried isolating Olestra by grinding up some chips at home and adding water. The substance I found was similar to 90W oil that is used for packing wheel bearings and it took quite a bit of acetone to clean the mortar and pestle. That's grease. I have noticed that many recipes in Finland use 'rasva' instead of 'voi' or 'magariini' or other fats so this might account for the strong preference for grease in English.

Butter, margarine, and various oils, such as olive oil, collectively fall into the fats and oils group on the FDA Food Pyramid. All fats and oils are comprised of fatty acids, not greasy acids, which determine the behaviour of the fats. The more saturated the fat, the more solid it is at room temperature, like butter and lard. These are very greasy substances and yet we refer to them as butter, lard, oils or fats. Margarine is a hydrogenated unsaturated vegetable oil which makes it a saturated fat, a.k.a. trans fatty acid, and as bad for you as butter is only without the taste. In the US there are plenty of marketing slogans that extol the benefits of polyunsaturated fats or, my favourite, Omega-3 fatty acids as though any but a very small percentage of the population knows what they are. Even the DINKs who drink Evian, eat only organic foods and forget that Linda McCartney was a health nut vegetarian who died young, rarely have any idea what these fatty acids are and why they're supposed to be so good for you. Hell, even dog food claims to contain the Omega-3 fatty acids anymore when good old lard or canola oil used to be just fine. I love how bags of candy boast, "A 100% Fat-free treat for the whole family!", as though they had been exorcised of all things bad for you just by leaving out the fat. So, the more I think about why grease is such a taboo, unsavoury word in a food context, the more I think it may be a product of decades of marketing effecting the language and public perception rather than any real reason.

permalink Ω 12 February 2005, Helsinki

Turd Ferguson

« One of several art installations around Helsinki for the Helsinki Arts Festival entitled, "The Wailing Wall". The walls were filled with empty film canisters that people were invited to fill with notes written on day-glow coloured papers. It reminded me of the old lite-brites where you'd make a design with coloured pegs although the new models for kids these days seem too molded and modern when compared to the original low-tech box with a bulb inside of it. »

At the height of my inbox madness a few years ago, I think I subscribed to about 45 different mailing lists, some of which had a very high daily volume of spew. When I left the US, I unsubscribed to almost all of them since I was afraid I might be offline for a while and I didn't want the disks to fill. I never re-subscribed and, the few that I did keep I punted last week after moving all my crap off of the old box where I used to read my mail. I can go a few days without looking at my inbox and really not worry as a huge percentage of the mail is spam and the rest is mostly from friends and nice people who take the time to write to me. I surf list archives if and when I bother to care which, I find, isn't very often anymore. People talk about rss feeds for mailing lists in glowing terms but I think they're forgetting that rss doesn't list only the posts with something worth reading in them. I'd be willing to pay for summarizers to wade through the dreck and send me the few worthwhile nuggets of info. Screw rss, I want intelligent agents that won't waste my time.

One of the three lists I remain subscribed to and lurk on is the American Dialect Society mailing list digest which has a very high signal:noise ratio and often has something of interest or amusement. One of the most entertaining posters is Barry Popik whose atom feed of word etymologies and ephemera is excellent. He's an administrative law judge of parking violations in NYC by day and the modern mad professor for the OED the rest of the time, particularly for food words. He's also an editor for the upcoming drool-worthy Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America from OUP. Today's digest had a particularly fun list of college slang from Barry who I presume was looking for "Turd Ferguson" and found an article about a book on college slang. I had to giggle since I know the phrase and I know it's not a food. :) I'm not sure which is more disturbing; that I've actually used Turd Ferguson in a sentence or finding it in a book title. I think it's mostly a mid-westernism, but slang gets around and it's hard to say for sure. Turd Ferguson & the Sausage Party: An Uncensored Guide to College Slang looks like a pretty hilarious book and a way to make my English a little more fresh and hip. I mean, I've not heard or said Turd Ferguson in years! Pure nostalgia. There is a short list of some of the words from the book.

• Bar Scar: All the wristbands and ink left over after making the rounds at the bars.
• Cash Cow: An ATM.
• Greek Freak: A new pledge who is super-absorbed in sorority/fraternity goings-on.
• Hallcest: The dangerous act of getting with someone on your hall.
• Hitting the Snooze Bar: To continue to hook up with someone even though you should really break up. Prolonging the inevitable.
• Kelvin Club: The rare feat of having a GPA that equals absolute zero.
• Liquid Encouragement: Refers to how alcohol can help you be able to talk or attempt to talk to anyone.
• Osmosis: A method of study employed by crammers who fall asleep with their heads on their books. Not very reliable.
• Party Foul: An incident that goes against the rules of the party. For example, spilling your glass of red wine on the Dean's white carpet during an elegant mixer or mistaking the coat closet for a bathroom.
• Pizza Bones: The uneaten crust of a pizza. Often scavenged by cheap friends like Barry down the hall.
• Sausage Party: A gathering of many more men than women.
• Sexiled: When someone is forced to sleep outside his/her room when his/her roomate wants to have sex in the room.
• Tomb of the Dead Soldiers: A trashcan filled with many, many beer cans.
• Turd Ferguson: A social sore who decides things like exposing oneself in public or driving drunk are good ideas.
• Vitamin N: Short for vitamin nicotine. Refers to having a cigarette first thing in the morning.
• Vurp: When you burp but some vomit comes up, too. A very nasty experience.

permalink Ω 8 September 2004, Helsinki

A non-expert explains Finnglish

« "Tex" in a 10-gallon hat and cravat listens to the Peruvians performing in Three Smiths Square. I had to resist the urge to laugh since it seemed as incongruous as wearing a Lappish hat in downtown Dallas. »

The Morning News has an absolutely brilliant article this week, The Non-Expert: Accents, [alternate 125kb pdf] where advice is given on how to cultivate a fake accent when travelling abroad where 90% of the world hates Americans. Some of the descriptions are spot-on and hilarious, especially the Maine accent.

A bit of handy advice for those wishing to be cultural chameleons when leaving the land of 50 states is YOU DON'T NEED TO SHOUT. Four out of five cruise ship passengers visiting Helsinki this year were Americans and after a peaceful winter of not hearing any English out on the sidewalks I suddenly started hearing people like they were speaking through a megaphone. I mean, I never noticed that people talked so loudly when living in the US, but damn, I can hear Americans at least 3 blocks away and chart an evasive course. One of these days I'm even going to muster the cheek to yell "A LANGUAGE BARRIER IS NOT A HEARING IMPAIRMENT" when some Americans lean into me and ask me very loudly if I speak English. It's great sport messing with some of these people by using my Finnglish, especially when I can tell by their accent that they're from somewhere near where I grew up. :) Cheap entertainment.

I do go out of my way at times to make myself sound like I am anything but an American and it works reasonably well. It is very curious how much confusion an unusual accent will cause in people who are desperately trying to place you by your accent since you can see the wheels turning as they talk to you wondering where you could have gotten such a funky way of speaking. I thought I'd add a new accent to the list from the Morning News - Finnglish. :)

Accent: Finnglish***

Scenario: You find yourself in Helsinki and realise that the Finnish phrasebook you bought on Amazon doesn't seem to work at all as the shopkeepers just give you this blank stare or say "Mitä?" You want to get some reindeer kitsch for the family back home but don't have any idea what in the hell these people are saying to you.

Tips & Tricks: First and foremost rule is; don't smile. It's a dead giveaway that you're an American tourist if you smile. Lower the volume of your voice as this puts you at a tactical disadvantage when you can be heard several blocks away. Speak English very slowly with a slight pause between words as though you are considering every word while you stress the first syllable of each word. Be sure to lower the tone of your voice an octave and cultivate a monotone speech pattern. Think of Star Trek's Chekov's "Nuclear Wessles" except do not try to sound Russian. If they give you an odd look, just say how much you love to practice your English around all the American tourists. Drop out any and all of the idioms that you normally fill a conversation with and replace it with something bare and slightly awkward; i.e. Boy, that gulleywasher last night was a real humdinger of a turdfloater!" becomes "The storm, he was not usual last night." [100kb mp3] Confuse he and she randomly in sentences and choose prepositions that are incorrect for the phrase. Don't 'turn on' your TV, 'open' your TV. If you get asked something on the sidewalk, a simple nod and "joo" or "ei" usually suffices. Costume is a consideration, too, as one should not wear cowboy hats, t-shirts with "BUSH! 4 more years" emblazoned on them, anything with the stars and stripes or any other such giveaways.

Response: Skip the tourist market and go to Iittala. Buy a bunch of Moomin mugs and Teema dinnerware and have them mailed home. You've already been busted so just say as little as possible, pay, and leave. :) There's a reason why Mainers and Finns seem a lot alike.

*** Note: This is a parody and all meant in good fun, mostly at my own expense which you get for free as my friends just give me whisky and make fun of the way I talk. :)

permalink Ω 5 September 2004, Helsinki

My first hate email

« A light at the end of a narrow tunnel. »

I have finally received my very first hate mail from some undereducated conservative who declared that "Your a socialist idiot. Your site sucks." I'm positively tickled that one of the more erudite and articulate took the time to send me the very best, especially on a day when I really needed a good giggle. So here's a shout out to Benboul@aol.com. May it bring him all the offers for viagra and nude teen girls he can handle in a glorious shower of inbox capitalism. Also, I might point out for the Americans who don't seem to understand the definition of socialism that Finland isn't a socialist country nor is wanting a good education and affordable healthcare for all citizens socialist, not to mention it would be a better long-term investment than all the oil in Iraq. Well, at least if you aren't in the oil industry.

It does amuse me that somehow being a real moderate interested in what used to be traditional family values of educating children and proper medical care earns me the label of 'socialist'. It reminds me of a brilliant essay in the book, Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Controversial Times, which I read recently that explores the new usage of labels from the McCarthy era. Since it's such a timely topic and the essay is so interesting, I'll quote heavily from it as it's a tightly written piece and encourage anyone who is interested in how words shape the news and views of readers everywhere to purchase a copy.

"Where the Left Commences."

[...]

Leftist was not a word to be used lightly, even by the right. In a 1954 editorial, the Wall Street Journal worried that McCarthy's "slam-bang denunciations of ... 'leftist' influence" were making him a "depreciating asset" to the Republican Party, with the quotation marks around "leftist" hold the word at arm's length.

By all linguistic rights, the leftist label should have disappeared from the lexicon as McCarthyism faded, and as labels like communistic, fellow traveler and Communist sympathizer (or comsymp for short) were going the way of the poodle skirt. But leftist lingered, shifting its reference to antiwar demonstrators. Only after the Vietnam War did the word begin to decline as an epithet, though it was still routinely used in foreign news reports.

Then, in the late 1990s, leftist underwent a sudden revival. The word is 50 percent more frequent in major newspapers and magazines now than it was five years ago, with almost all the increase a result of its use as a label for domestic groups and individuals. Apart from the odd reference to Angela Davis or the Spartacist League, leftist nowadays is almost never used for old-style radicals or Marxists. In fact it was the eclipse of the movement left and the fall of Communism that freed the word to serve as a phantom finger that the right could wave in the culture wars.

[...]

It's getting hard to tell leftists and liberals apart without an agenda. Hence the increasing popularity of liberal-leftist, which merges categories on the model of compounds like toaster-oven and owner-occupier. (Linguists call those compounds "dvandvas," a term invented by the Sanskrit grammarians.) Peggy Noonan has use the double-l word to describe abortion-rights groups, and during Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate race, the conservative commentator John Podhoretz described her as "running as an unapologetic liberal-leftist."

But liberal Democrats never describe themselves as leftists, not even apologetically. (For that matter, there are many who are willing to describe themselves as liberals, either.) That's the fundamental asymmetry of the left-right distinction in American politics. Historically, the left commences where liberalism ends. But conservatives have never demurred from placing themselves on the right, letting qualifiers like mainstream and extremist do the work of sorting out the bow-tied Alsopians from the fatigues-wearing abolish-the-I.R.S. crowd. True, many conservatives are uneasy about the label right wing, and though a few call themselves rightists, the world sounds too exotic for most to put it on their business cards. But no one feels the need for a compound like conservative-rightist - there's no distinction to blur in the first place.

The new uses of leftist exploit that asymmetry. They're aimed at nudging the political center to the right, by portraying social liberals as radicals outside the mainstream. That's a risky semantic maneuver. In any tug of war between a label and the things it's attached to, the label ultimately loses. Sometimes it's simply diluted to the point of meaninglessness. That happened with the fascist label after the American left began to throw it around indiscriminately in the 1970s, and it may very well be the fate of imperialist now. But the leftist label is less likely to be superannuated than drawn back into the center. Describing the Girl Scouts or Arlen Specter as leftist doesn't demonize them so much as make the epithet itself sound less alarming.

[...]

It is very curious how leftist and socialist have experienced a renaissance in the past five years which would suggest it began around the time of Dumbya's presidential campaign. It really is as though we've entered a new age of McCarthyism. The use of compounds to try and fill a gap in the lexicon is also rather pernicious since you'd normaly expect such bunching of words from children taunting each other on the playground, not political commentators who can't decide if someone is one thing or another so they just shove two words together with a hyphen thinking they're accurate but wind up making both meaningless and less insulting. Yow! Have I strayed from the flock, the mainstream, and joined such radicals as the Girl Scouts and their communist cookie campaigns?! If you aren't a bible thumping fundy freak who agrees with everything the president says you must be some sort of extremist freak who hates freedom and America!

It's hard to say what label actually describes my political leanings as I don't know that leftist, liberal, socialist or democrat are very accurate or meaningful. Perhaps this year there needs to be a new label just for the folks like me who tend to vote on the issues rather than the personalities and war records of the candidates, and who feel like something is terribly wrong that Dumbya and the entire cabinet haven't been impeached for lying and even admitting that they lied to get the US to go to war. How about right-left-moderate-cynics?

permalink Ω 3 September 2004, Helsinki

Lingo for leavers

« Mari and Arabella check their look in the funhouse mirrors at Linnanmäki. »

A week or so ago, Vera mentioned the curious difference in usage between expat and immigrant which I thought was very interesting since it's one of those things you don't really notice happening until you do and then you can't really explain why. So, I turned to the OED and a few other dictionaries of authority, none of which proved to be very helpful on determining the current connotation or usage. I asked a few of my linguist friends who also thought it was interesting but couldn't really offer an answer. So, I turned to the perl using editor of the American OED for help while hoping I wasn't asking a really tired question. Writing email to linguists, especially dictionary folks, tends to be fairly stressful since I obsessively check my spelling and punctuation lest my message be dismissed on technicalities. Fortunately, he thought it was an interesting question as well.

It's an interesting question. My first reaction, and that of several people I asked, was that an expat is someone who might be living somewhere else, but is "aligned" with his or her native country--an American in Paris who is American and considers himself so, regardless of whether he plans to return. The intentionality was also prominent in my mind: an expatriate leaves because she wants to, an immigrant because he is forced to.

Historically, this is not that case: expatriates are people who have formally renounced citizenship in their native country.

There's also the point-of-reference distinction: writing in English, most accounts of American or British transplants will be from an American or British perspective, where "immigrant" wouldn't really work (i.e. the scene would have to be so strongly framed in the other country that "immigrant" wouldn't seem jarring).

In the end, I think the First vs. Third World distinction might just be the simplest.

Language is important as it says as much about who we are as a culture and individuals as nearly everything else combined. It is our identity. Why do I refer to myself as an expat instead of emigré or immigrant? Emigré has a taint of the political about it so it falls somewhere between expat and immigrant. It seems strange, even to me, that a country that was created by and populated by immigrants from all over the world would have such disdain for the word immigrant in less than 100 years. Nancy Mitford would be proud to see that U and non-U language lives still.

• emigré
  Orig., a French emigrant, esp. one from the Revolution of 1789-99. Now, any emigrant, esp. a political exile.
• expat(riate)
  Orig., an exile. Now, a person who lives from choice in a foreign country.
• immigrant
  A person who settles as a permanent resident in a different country. Also (esp. in Britain), a descendant of such a person.
  An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another. [Ambrose Bierce]

So, according to the OED, they are all very close in meaning yet the usage distinguishes them. I rarely, if ever, hear or read emigré anymore, probably because few Americans would know the word and, well, you know how popular anything French is nowadays. Anyone leaving the US due to the current political situation could technically refer to themselves as an emigré. I like it as it has a lot more cachet and style than expat. American Emigré of Mystery. Yeah baby! Yeah! I need a tux and a shaguar, too. But I digress.

Expat, our tried and trusty label for those of us who got the hell out of the US and are the envy of all we know back home who are unable to escape. It conjures pictures of embassy row cocktail parties and the international jet set which, I can assure you, is not at all what 99.9% of expats might experience. I'm not even sure if I have a dress and a pair of pumps for cocktails at Fortress America in Kaivopuisto [US Embassy] if they had parties. Even the British Embassy has ceased all social functions here in Finland so the quaint idea of expatriate life being a high society affair has been replaced with armed guards, barbed wire and a grimace. Expat is also an odd sounding word and usually involves a lot of spit since the ex brings up the juice and the p pushes it outward. It's definitely non-U to use words that involve spraying instead of saying. It could even be a slang word for expectorate. I'll guess that expat, given the grim reality vs. the lofty image, will gradually change towards a less romantic notion when used to describe someone who relocates to another country. Besides, I even checked with the U lexicon and there are no words to describe Brits who moved to one of the colonies since people of that class were always British even though noone bothered telling them that no country would have wanted them anyway, even the colonies. [In 1955 Nancy Mitford wrote a famous scathing essay on how the upper classes "are neither cleaner, richer, nor better educated than anybody else," who only distinguish themselves through language and usage. Ironically, U and non-U was first discussed in a paper by Professor Alan Ross in a Finnish philological journal in 1954 which reportedly was received with a big *yawn*. :)]

So then there's immigrant. It evokes the image of the Titanic with Irish peasants jumping around in the hold or a group of Mexicans sneaking across the border into a country where they can get paid $1 an hour so people can buy cheap produce. The romantic age of immigrants in America, or anywhere for that matter, has long since past. When Americans speak of their ancestors, they don't say that Grandpa from Austria was an expat, they say Grandpa was an immigrant. I don't think that people are forced to be immigrants as that would make them refugees. It may just come down to the 1st vs. 3rd world distinction which, ultimately, means having money/means vs. not having money and this is where the real dividing line in the usage lies I suspect which, by American standards, is U vs. non-U.

I don't know that any of them really suit me and my current condition so I may give myself a new label that may catch on by November in the US when the tide of people leaving the US may swell; I am an American escapee. :)

permalink Ω 22 July 2004, Helsinki

Mitä on viisikirjaiminen

When you move to a new place to live there is a myriad of things to get used to; where to shop, where to eat, where to have fun, customs, etc. Moving to a different country adds a decidedly different dimension to this and when that country doesn't have English as a first or second language it becomes a whole different order of adjustment. Everything you once took for granted becomes a challenge. There's nothing like feeling proud of posting a letter at the post office to make you feel 12 again. Perhaps becoming an expat is the real fountain of youth.

Finland has a very small number of foreigners and it certainly isn't because it isn't an attractive place to call home, but it might be largely due to the language. Anyone who claims that Finnish is easy is either a linguistic savant, hasn't tried to learn it or moved here before the age of 18 or so. An American who managed to get into Helsinki University recently, and who asked what Yliopisto meant afterwards, seems to think that he'll be able to manage classes taught in Finnish after attending a month of language instruction before the fall term begins. It's unlikely he's a linguistic genius so we're going to enjoy every drop of schadenfreude we can get when reality sinks in. Learning Finnish is the 'Sisu Test' for foreigners as those who have the sisu to learn it will stay and those who don't will bugger off back from whence they came.

I'm back in Finnish classes for the summer and it's interesting to notice that I'm always one of very few, if any, other native English speakers. People who don't speak English at all have a lot more incentive to learn Finnish quickly, but even then they seem to be having as much trouble with the language as I do. I don't quite understand the English speakers who, after more than 2 years of living here, have never taken a class or manage to read a Finnish menu at a restaurant. I mean, I may suck at Finnish, but I like to eat and the food words were the first ones I learned. It seems like there is a giant gap between those who are fluent and those who can't read a menu and I think I'm starting to understand why as I waver between despair and the edge of hope on my prospects of merely being adequate in a few years.

Finns, of course, usually say that Finnish is easy. I've often thought English, insane language that it is, is easy, too. Native languages are like that since you don't really have a choice when you're a kid and need to learn language so that you can tell your parents to piss off, make friends and heckle the class nerds in school. However, when you arrive in a place where 8 years of Latin classes delivered by a nun with a ruler and the wrath of god doesn't do fuckall for making any sense of Finnish, it makes you want to learn all the swear words first. What compounds the difficulty of learning Finnish is the fact that just about everyone under the age of 35 in Helsinki knows enough English to make it easy to get by without learning Finnish and often Finns will start speaking English automatically if they hear that you're not a native speaker. Unless you're really determined to learn Finnish, you won't. I've even had Finns ask me "Why?" when I've said that I'm studying the language. Well, gee, maybe it's because 95% of everything is written in Finnish here and I doubt that English will supplant the official language anytime soon.

Above all things that make me irate about trying to learn Finnish and finding it difficult is how impossible it is to actually speak the language with actual humans. The courses at the university focus almost wholly on grammar which, while excellent to have, isn't terribly useful for people who actually want to speak and use the language. I never had to speak Latin so I'm very self-conscious about saying the wrong thing or having someone roll their eyes at me in response to a stupid foreigner. I listen a lot and sometimes get the chops to try asking for something without sounding like too much of an idiot. Two steps forward, one step back. I understand a lot of what I hear, if not literally, at least in context so when I get confused looks or the dreaded "Mitä?" I get pretty frustrated. This happens particularly often at cafés and on the telephone.

scene: coffee shop
players: clerk and customer [me]

• clerk - Moi
• customer - Moi. Saanko iso kahvia ja korvapuusti.
• clerk - Mitä?
• customer - Saanko iso kahvia ja korvapuusti.
• clerk - Mitä?
• customer - Saanko iso kahvia ja korvapuusti.
• clerk - Mitä?
• customer - Saanko iso kahvia ja korvapuusti?
• clerk - Mitä?
• customer - Uhhh...a large coffee and korvapuusti?
• clerk - Ah. That will be 3 and 40. Here you are. Hello.
• customer - Kiitos. [with confused look and skulks off into a dark corner trying not to look so much like a idiot.]

Aside from my getting the case wrong, what part of the context of that transaction could be so difficult for the person to understand? I've been told I don't butcher the language pronunciation so horribly to be impossible to understand so what part about being a clerk in a shop that sells coffee and bakery products with someone asking for iso kahvia and korvapuusti makes it so damned difficult to click? Maybe English is simply far more forgiving when Finns apply the phonetic rules of their language to English and it takes me a moment to figure out what they're saying to which I usually repeat the word in the sentence as it should be pronounced without saying, "WHAT?!" I mean, c'mon, I'm in a coffee shop ordering a coffee and a pastry, WORK WITH ME. It's not a random experience, so either the language is a lot more rigid than the difference between the spoken and the written forms would lead one to believe or this is Finland's way of telling foreigners to fuck off to somewhere other than Finland. It's incredibly difficult to go from being pumped full of grammar to actually speaking a language with any kind of confidence, especially when you've never heard the language in question before you set foot in the country. "Mitä?" is a 5-letter word which dashes what small amount of confidence we might have.

So, while there is a wide variance on how quickly and easily people learn Finnish, it seems pretty common for English speakers to be the last group to pick it up since Finns make it easy in some form or another not to bother or to give up in despair. When given the choice between working hard at something and failing versus embracing the sloth within and just speaking English, it's a pretty obvious path of least resistance. I refuse to give up though and I'm going to start fighting back. The next time someone can't figure out in a coffee shop that I'm ordering a large coffee and a korvapuusti and says "Mitä?" more than twice, I'm going to give them something worthy of such confusion: "Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita!" I will practise this phrase in front of the mirror until it is perfect and then I shall deploy it at will. I'll either get another "Mitä?" or a smile from a fellow Douglas Adams fan.

Finland, cut us English speakers some slack as at least a few of us are trying to learn Finnish even though your English sucks less than our Finnish.

permalink Ω 3 June 2004, Helsinki

Nigga Lingua

It started with a discussion on the Wailing Wall about a poster for an anti-racism campaign that the Red Cross is launching in Finland. It should come as no surprise to anyone that racism does in fact exist in Finland just as it does nearly everywhere else on the planet where there are a least 2 humans from different races or cultures. In contrast to the US which prides itself on being the 'melting pot of the world' [which has always brought to my mind an image of homogeneity], Finland is a reasonably homogeneous culture which has only about 2% of its population who are foreigners. Given that many of these foreigners are recent imports, myself included, it is predictable that language as a weapon adapted.

So, this isn't new, but what I take issue with here in Finland is the incorrect usage of a particular racial slur whose origin lies not with Shakespeare, but with slavery in the US. The word is nigger. I strongly dislike the word and its use, but if those who use English in graffiti and in insults feel the need to make English the lingua franca of hate, they should know how to use it properly. [I will note here that I do find it curious that a large percentage of graffiti, including racial slurs, is in English] I will refer to the Dictionary of American Regional English as the authority for the word, and another I'll introduce as it's counterpart, since America is where this word took the form that is being used presently in Finland. The first citation of nigger in the US dates from 1619 by a man who was sold twenty negars by some Dutch slave traders. The Finnish equivalent of nigger is neekeri which came into use via the Swedish word neger which, of course, has the same roots as the the English word negro which evolved from the latin niger for black.

Nigger n. - may also be spelled negger, niggar, niggur, nager, ne(a)ger, neeger, negar, negur, niegor, and niger.

1. A black person.
2. Used in a depreciatory sense by White speakers.
3. Used in a relatively neutral or affectionate sense by White speakers
4. Used in a neutral or favorable sense by Black speakers.
5. Used with a given name as an identifier.
6. Used of any other non-White person, esp. an American Indian.
7. Used of any person perceived as uncouth, immoral, or threatening, regardless of skin color. especially frequent among Black speakers; derog.
8. In combination with big, head or lead - an important, often self-important, person
9. Cheap; inferior; makeshift.
10. Used as a name for a black animal.
11. A steam engine used to operate a capstan, especially on a riverboat.
12. In logging: a device for lifting, turning, and adjusting logs in a sawmill.
13. A detachable length of heavy pipe made and sold as part of a large wrench.
14. et. al

It is a strange word with so many uses, contexts and connotations that even native speakers of American English don't feel comfortable using it, even in a situation where it would be less treacherous to do so. It's not a word to be used lightly or carelessly. I particularly dislike the word being used as a catch-all epithet for any non-white persons given the etymology of the word and since racism is as old as race itself and there are plenty of specific racial slurs to go around. Also, if the graphic artist from the photo above was trying to insult someone, Nigga can be a term of endearment. Nigger : The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word is a book that caused a bit of a stir in the US when it was published and received quite good reviews from the curious and the scholarly.

I haven't heard nigger's white counterpart, cracker, yet. Cracker is a much younger word and isn't recommended for use in the Southern US without a death wish.

Cracker n.

1. A variety of baked good, biscuit.
2. A poor White person. [Probably originated from cracker meaning braggart]
3. White racist.
4. An extreme or outstanding example of its kind.

The first citation is from 1766; "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." It is often used in the form Georgia Cracker, a.k.a. corn-cracker, which was originally a dig at poor white trash. It's an intriguing word since there are few racial slurs specifically for white racists so insulting or incendiary. Cracker could also be easily adapted to Finnish as Krakkeri, but it's already being used as a slang term for a computer 'cracker' so it may need to remain in it's English form.

Both words have an interesting etymology, a wide range of uses, and uses which incorporate boasting in the more derogatory forms. Neither of them seem to have a very clear history of how they evolved into racial slurs. Language is a tool to bring people together and an effective weapon to exclude, belittle and degrade those who are different. Especially with epithets whose meaning depend so much on context and the culture of their origin, they don't always translate well even though movies, music, books and other vehicles of popular culture present them well beyond their native habitat.

permalink Ω 20 March 2004, Helsinki

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs

From the how-did-I-miss-this-book department is an utterly fabulous treat, ella minnow pea: A novel without letters. Considering all the linguists I know and how efficient Amazon is at pushing books in my direction, I am at a loss to explain how or why we all managed to escape reading this book and immediately buying a copy for everyone we know. I got lucky when the editor of the English edition of the local paper suggested I go and get a copy from Akateeminen.

The story is in a similar vein to Thurber's The Wonderful O as it is a lipogram told around the familiar pangram 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'. It is one of the most brilliantly clever books I've read in years as it combines cunning linguistics with political allegory in a epistolary novel. Language lovers must get this book. I need to go find a hardback copy so it can find a proper place next to my old, but dignified, copy of The Wonderful O. :)

permalink Ω 18 January 2004, Helsinki

Punning Wit

I love linguistic punnery and I've been seeing this advertisement around Helsinki for the past few weeks and smiling every time. "Meri" is the Finnish word for "sea" and the advert is for the Viking Line cruise ships. Yeah, it's corny but it's cute. If South Park were on TV here, there could be ads for the Joulupuu [christmas tree - pronounced 'YO-lou-poo'] with a picture of Mr. Hanky draped in tinsel with a star on his head. "Mr. Hanky the joulupuu..." :)

permalink Ω 4 December 2003, Helsinki

The Cunning Linguist

Richard Lederer has 2 new books coming up: A Man of My Words: Reflections on the English Language and The Cunning Linguist: Ribald Riddles, Lascivious Limericks, Carnal Corn, and Other Good, Clean Dirty Fun. Carnal Corn...:)

Another new book from OUP, Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-By-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century should be interesting. Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation appears to be quite popular in the UK. I may have to get a copy of that myself since having had the commas rapped out of my knuckles by nuns because I was a shameless comma splicer as a child has left my punctuation confused and often wrong.

Umberto Eco, the noted semiotician, just published Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation which should prove interesting for translators, people learning languages or language enthusiasts in general.

permalink Ω 26 November 2003, Helsinki

Meat. Bread. Dog.

There comes a point in every person's study of a particular language where you know just enough to be dangerous and I think I have reached that point recently. Learning languages as an adult is a grueling adventure both in humiliation and almost juvenile glee when you manage to say something correctly or post a letter without a quizzical look from the postal clerk behind the desk. We pack into two years what children take 10 years to learn with a far more supple and receptive brain than our older, abused and jaded ones.

I used to think that I was reasonably good at languages having learned English and German at a young age, taken 8 years of Latin in all those joyless years of Catholic schooling and had an adult reading and writing level by the time I was in first grade. I managed to squeeze in 2 years of Russian in University since the masters program I was aiming for required 2 modern languages with a scientific emphasis, but I've forgotten much of that since then. Finnish, I thought, wouldn't be terribly difficult to learn since it would be so utterly foreign and new that I wouldn't mix it up with German as I have with other languages in the past. Wrong-o pal, this language is off the scale in terms of disappearing and reappearing letters and words as wide as this page with more vowels than consonants. You want comedy, just try looking up a word in the dictionary! Hours of laughs there, yessiree. [ I can hear the Finns snickering already :) ] The spoken and the written language are very different, but even read from a page, my eyes glaze over as I listen to the teacher read from our book while trying to grasp for any word or sound that is familiar and word-like. I can read the text but...what in the hell is she saying? Right. The Ents were a flight of wishful fantasy after Tolkien visited Finland.

This is not to say that I don't understand that English is a pain in the ass to learn after a certain age since the entire language is just a pastiche of idioms with few rules to comfort those poor sods who have to learn it the hard way, but 2,000 different forms for a verb? Even English is not so cruel. :) Not to mention, in the US, the import of Finnish films, books, TV programmes, etc. are vastly disproportionate to those of English. Hell, most Yankees don't even know where Finland is much less what currency or language they speak. So, instead of getting to watch all the movies and such to soak up the language at an early age like the Finns do, we aliens are left to learn Finnish with adult expectations but with corny kiddie dialogues in textbooks and videos.

I'm sure the Finnish for Foreigners teachers have a koffee klatsch every week where they swap amusing stories about their student's futile endeavours to crack the code and tormented self-immolation. Finnish is like a cipher with a one-time pad since no key ever works twice. You only thought that was accusative but it's really genitive! Or, well, we change all the letters around, remove a few, add some endings then only speak the first 2 syllables since surely the first few letters should be enough! :) Welcome to the cryptogram. However, this is where the Komedy comes in as you learn just enough to think you have a handle on things only to be reminded that you are still a stupid outlander, please come back in 20 years when you know a thing or two. Two situations when I was out walking HB recently did just that.

HB looks a bit like a dogcow, an urban bovine, so I've heard the jokes before from people saying, "MOO", etc. The other morning I was walking HB to the park and a little boy tagging rather hyperactively alongside his mother with a pram exclaimed, "LIHAVA!", and pointed to HB. In my pre-caffeineated daze I smiled and nodded. When I got around the corner I thought, hey, that jumped-up little kid just called my dog MEAT! I thought it strange since, as far as I knew, Finland doesn't have dogs on the menu and that kid looked pretty well fed to me. Then again, the family didn't have a dog with them so maybe they ate it for dinner the night before. When I got back home I mentioned to Jarkko that some cheeky little fat kid called HB meat, lihava. Jarkko proceeded to explain that while liha=meat, lihava=fat or meaty. Still, what was that kid on about calling my dog fat or meaty. I should think up something to say to him the next time I see him such as, "Hey!, He is awfully meaty isn't he? We're planning to have him for dinner next week!".

HB is old and he has embraced the role of grumpy old fart rather enthusiastically. Often he will decide that he has had quite enough walk and flop down on the sidewalk with a glare in my direction. We usually have a brief stand-off where I stand and glare back at him but, he weighs more than me and he usually wins. This also invites people to look in our direction and squint at me like some ASPCA fugitive on the lam. Two girls walked by during just such a meeting of the wills the other day and one said, "Onko se leipää?". I just smiled and nodded and thought to myself . o 0 { why did she just ask me if he was bread? }. I figured, considering the meat incident, that I would ask Jarkko what the deal with the bread was about. Well, we went through the usual verbal charade where I try to mimic what I hear along with some context and Jarkko tries to figure out what people have said and he came up with "lepää", an unfamiliar form of a word which means "resting" from the root "levätä". The difference to the untrained ear on the street in traffic is so small as to be insignificant. Komedy!

So, tomorrow we're off to English speaking space where I hope I don't explode with conversation after spending most of my time at home trying to avoid the eye-rolling, etc. at the hands of those who find foreigners who don't speak Finnish rather tedious and only venture out to get my humiliation in Finnish class. I'll be like a puppy set free in the park around other puppies. I also need to stop spelling words with 'k' instead of 'c' except for Amerikka which I consider to be an improvement upon the English spelling. :)

permalink Ω 1 October 2003, Helsinki

More weird words and dimwits

Word freaks might be happy to know that there is a new word-a-day mailing list from the author of the new More Weird and Wonderful Words: Erin's Weird Word of the Day list.

Also, Erin is the editor of my favourite journal Verbatim. Apparently the author of The Dimwit's Dictionary is looking for words for a new edition. I may be forced to nominate "Going forward..." and "Action item" though I suspect they may have been on the top of the author's own list. :) The call for submissions is:

Calling All Dimwits! Author collecting lame language for new edition of The Dimwit's Dictionary.

Do you wince when you read clichés, moribund metaphors, needless redundancies and other examples of poor writing? Then dictionary author Robert Hartwell Fiske wants to hear from you!

Fiske, author of The Dimwit's Dictionary: 5,000 Overused Words and Phrases and Alternatives to Them, is collecting more dimwitticisms for the next edition of The Dimwit's Dictionary. He needs all the infantile phrases, inescapable pairs, overworked words, popular prescriptions, torpid terms, and withered words he can find (see http://www.marionstreetpress.com for definitions of dimwitticisms).

Look and listen for dimwitticisms in newspapers, direct mail pieces, books, TV broadcasts, radio shows . . . just about anywhere English is written or spoken. Write down the dimwitticism, together with information about where you found it (publication name, date), and mail it to: Dimwit's Contest, Marion Street Press, Inc., P.O. Box 2249, Oak Park, Il 60303. Or submit it through the publisher's website, http://www.marionstreetpress.com/Dimwitscontest.html. The contest ends Jan. 1, 2004.

The individual submitting the largest number of prime quality dimwitticisms (as judged by Robert Hartwell Fiske) will receive a $250 BookSense gift certificate (redeemable at over 1,000 independent bookstores). First runner-up will receive a $100 gift certificate, and second runner-up will receive a $50 gift certificate. Each individual submitting a dimwitticism will receive an official I Love Dimwits bumper sticker.

permalink Ω 25 September 2003, Helsinki

Supisuomea

YLE has a new 12-part series, Supisuomea, airing this Fall on YLE1 @ 12:05 from 7.9 thru 23.11 or on YLE Teema @ 16:00 & 19:00 from 8.9 thru 24.11. There is a book, Supisuomea and CD from Finn Lectura to accompany the series as well. The web site for the course looks very polished and has some neat exercises in spoken Finnish, but I'm mostly happy that they have reruns during the day on Wednesdays so I can watch them and speak the exercises without Jarkko around to laugh at me. :) On the upside of things, it doesn't seem like I've forgotten everything I learned in Suomi 1&2 last winter which is good since I start Suomi 3 next week.

permalink Ω 10 September 2003, Helsinki

Safire shocks and awes

William Safire's On Language column today has a couple of timely bits on the new war language popping up and I'm not sure if I'm comforted by being reminded that jingoistic renaming of things isn't new and was actually quite popular during WWI.

FREEDOM FRIES

An Order of Fries, Please, but Do Hold the French was the headline in The New York Times over an article about an outbreak of France-bashing at the U.S. Capitol.

Representative Bob Ney, chairman of the committee responsible for House operations, ordered the word French stricken from all of the chamber's menus: henceforth, the potatoes laden with cholesterol were to be labeled freedom fries. The Ohio congressman, who is of French descent and who speaks the language fluently, was immediately assailed by Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts for making Congress look even sillier than it sometimes looks. . . . There is a potential war going on.

(A potential war going on? That's a contradiction in terms: the essence of potentiality, rooted in the Latin for power,is existence only in possibility. It cannot be both a possibility for the future and an event taking place at present. What the congressman meant to say, I think, was that a debate was going on about a potential war.)

The retaliatory nomenclature was instantly spoofed: what was to be next -- freedom toast, freedom dressing? Would orchestras feature a freedom horn? Would lovers, who long ago abandoned the euphemism French letter for the direct word condom, now also turn away from the French kiss? (That locution, also called a soul kiss, involves the insertion of the tongue into the osculatory partner's mouth; both these terms are now considered old-fashioned by teenagers, who -- after a brief flirtation with the odious sucking face -- turned for a time to the puckish tonsil hockey, which has a sporting rather than an international connotation.)

The jingoistic practice of changing the language to ride with current political tides was most prevalent in World War I, when sauerkraut temporarily became liberty cabbage or pickled vegetables, hamburger was referred to as Salisbury steak, Germania Life Insurance became Guardian Life and dachshunds were called liberty pups. (Frankfurters had earlier become known as hot dogs. About the only common phrase with the name of our enemy in it that was left largely intact during that war was German measles.) The English language is resilient, resistant to manipulation; after our irritation with French foreign policy passes, members of the House of Representatives will go back to gorging themselves on French fries.

I think a column I read a few weeks back has a better idea than removing French from the American lexicon;

If chauvinistic warmongers want to start renaming stuff, it should be Iraqi stuff. There's probably not much point in going after Iraqi food such as masgoof (barbecued fish) and pacha (sort of an Iraqi haggis) because Americans don't eat them. A better idea would be to tear out every page in the Bible that features an Iraqi place name, such as Babylon, Babel, the Garden of Eden, Nineveh, and Ur. The Christian right will object, but we all have to make sacrifices during wartime.

permalink Ω 30 March 2003, Helsinki

Food for the Wordy

The wordy set might find the following publication subscription-worthy [ found on the American Dialect Society website ]:

“Allan Metcalf mentions Comments on Etymology, an on-paper newsletter edited by Gerald Cohen. Allan says, "for anyone seriously interested in the origins of American expressions, especially slang ones, CoE is indispensable. For anyone not-so-seriously interested, it's entertaining and engaging." The newsletter includes heavy and regular contributions by Barry Popik. To subscribe, send $13 (if an individual; $17 if an institution), payable to "Comments on Etymology," to Gerald Cohen, Dept of Applied Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, MO 65401.”

Also, the long-awaited 4th volume of Dictionary of American Regional English is scheduled to be released in December by HUP. I hope I can get a copy before leaving the continent since the 3 volumes I have are so well done and so interesting that I'd really like to keep the series going on my bookshelf. :)

permalink Ω 3 November 2002, Helsinki

weird words

Word freaks will probably want to pick up a copy of Weird and Wonderful Words, fresh off the OUP press and written by the editor of Verbatim.

permalink Ω 7 September 2002, Helsinki

Digital Babel

The June issue of Wired has a nifty timeline tracing the roots of computer languages [ caution: 500k file ] from 1954 through 2001. It is interesting to see what has lived and what has not and that Perl sorta stops at Perl4.000 :) A sidebar also mentions Larry as a charismatic leader which is something I don't think has had that much influence on Perl's continued usage and survival as a computational tongue since Larry isn't that active outside of a small developer circle.

One visual effect of the timeline is just how much congestion in the number of languages there is after 1990, a computational Tower of Babel. Diversity isn't a good thing everywhere and, since Microsoft gained much of it's monopoly through Microsoft Office as the standard application which eased file exchanges, I suspect a majority of these languages will die off in the next few years. Speak: A Short History of Language may also provide some insight into survival of the fittest languages. After reading the 5th Apocalypse I have a feeling that Perl6 will need all the help it can get to survive.

permalink Ω 10 June 2002, Helsinki

The Mother Forked Tongue

AskOxford didn't seem to have any information on English being dangerous to your health but it seems to be making the rounds in email these days...I should get working more diligently on my Finnish and lay in a stock of red wine. :)

It Will Kill You!

(a) The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(b) On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(c) The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(d) The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(e) Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

permalink Ω 23 May 2002, Helsinki

You always look cheap

I used to do typesetting and graphic design to supplement my meagre research stipend as I liked paying rent and eating on a regular basis which presented me with frequent opportunity to giggle at Engrish. I often helped the restaurants and other frequent offenders of the Engrish to correct the usage on their menus and whatnot. I don't have to work a 2nd or 3rd job anymore but everytime I pass by the cleaners down the street that has You never looked expensive as the slogan in their window I have to resist the urge to go by and tell them that it doesn't mean what they likely think it means, e.g. You always look cheap rather than You only look expensive. Why didn't the sign painter catch this? Or is this some kind of Chinese laundry code that says, Don't use this shop, take clothes to Mme. Cho's instead. She give good deal and clean clothes.?

permalink Ω 15 April 2002, Helsinki

Rabelaisian delight

McSweeney's Internet tendency weekly List of lists is delightfully amusing. If you loved Gargantua and Pantagruel with its pages upon pages of lists, then you'll like McSweeney's :)

permalink Ω 12 April 2002, Helsinki

AKEZ QFXB EFUL JW

I have been waiting a seeming eternity for Enigma, the movie about Bletchley Park to finally be released after being delayed last Fall [ 3 May for those of us in Cambridge ].

I'm hoping they aren't going to turn it into a vehicle for Kate Winslet and tell the story as it deserves to be told with less focus on sex and Turing and more on the scores of women who did much of the decrypting tedium, the guys from Huts 5 and 6, and the heroic efforts of the Polish to solve and get a working model of the enigma to Bletchley, without which there would be no story. I am likely to be disappointed as there's nothing like a sexy movie star or a popular recipient of myth like Turing to distort history.

Cryptologia is a wonderful journal that often has articles on the Enigma and there's even a Perl module, Crypt::Enigma, though not historically accurate, available to play with.

permalink Ω 2 April 2002, Helsinki

It's so bad...but not bad enough

I had driven by the Bugaboocreek Steakhouse a number of times but was finally coerced into going by someone at work offering to buy lunch. By the looks of the outside and the imagined inside [ above ] I thought it would be a lot like me shopping at K-Mart...very, very improbable while cheap and tacky at the same time. But, other than the talking moose above the bar that startled me and the other animatronic junk scattered throughout the dining room, the food was actually pretty good and thus I experienced the dreaded scheissenbedauern.

scheissenbedauern [SHY-sen-BUH-dowrn] noun - "the disappointment one feels when exposed to something that is not nearly as bad as one hoped it would be." literally translates as "shit regret".

permalink Ω 30 March 2002, Helsinki

My burqa is sexier than your burqa!

Another reason to celebrate adulthood is escaping the new post-911 terrorism slang in schools. While I understand humour is a way to work around grief, it's very unsettling to read about kids tossing these words about so casually.

permalink Ω 19 March 2002, Helsinki

Subjected to SPAM

Recently I received an email with a subject 'Concrete Vibrators' that was actually about concrete vibrators. I immediately imagined a very different product with a slogan like "highest quality, dependable flexible shaft, pneumatic, high cycle" and wondered what kind of batteries were needed. Bummer, concrete gets all the luck :)

The most recent issue of Verbatim Magazine had me giggling as I read the article Bogus E-mail Subject Lines about how spammers try to 'trick' you into reading their email containing, usually, pornographic web site invitations.

I'm especially fond of subject lines relating to "personal finance" since people who use credit cards or have mortgages are apparently, in the worldview of these folks, likely to be heavy users of pornographic web sites.

Well, Jim, if #perl and other geeks are any measure then the porno industry has studied the target demographic well since guys with a mortgage are likely married and seemingly more rabid consumers of porn than their unmarried brethren. There's nothing like the unattainable to fuel demand for the surreptitiousness of on-line porn.

Some of the best picks in the article are;

• Here Are The PICs Of Me Naked That You Wanted
• Guess who, bought a puter.
• Re: Hey
• Did you send this?
• Does it still hurt?
• You are giving me a complex
• hey :#@$
• ...and a number of others...

It is a disturbing trend that spammers are getting more aggressive and more creative. Did you get that email recently with "Sorry I missed Lunch" addressed to "Mike"? It most likely was an email address ping in the guise of a seemingly innocuous message.

Remember when there weren't ads at the beginning of a movie you just paid $9 for? or product placements in the movies? in just about every nook and cranny of available space? The internet will fill up just like the physical world has with a constant barrage of adverts and product placements. Get used to it.

permalink Ω 8 March 2002, Helsinki

Pop, coke or soda?

Take this cool online survey of various regional Americanisms and then view the results when you are done...it may surprise you :)

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

9/11 makes it into the dictionary

While the OED is doubtful that the events of last September will have a lasting effect on American English the 4th Edition of the American Heritage College Dictionary, due out in April, will carry an entry for 9/11 among others. The NYT has a nice article today, 9/11 Words go from Coffee Shops to Dictionaries. I wonder if 'chad' made it in as well.

permalink Ω 24 February 2002, Helsinki

Think Hard™

New Englanders like to think they know how to barbeque but since I'm a transplant here I am often sorely disappointed at the culinary offerings in the name of pilgrim barbeque [ exceptions being East Coast Grill in Inman Sq. and Blue Ribbon BBQ in Arlington ]. I am already salivating at the thought of being back home for YAPC so I can go out and have a beer and pile of real barbequed meat and then have breakfast at Uncle Bill's Pancake House at 4am for a good home cooked heart attack on a platter since it will probably be the last time I'll see such food for a long, long time.

It could have been the subconscious longing for grilled meat smothered in sauce that prompted me to look at a book with a bottle of BBQ sauce on the cover, Secrets of the Wholly Grill: A Novel about cravings, barbecue, and software. The publisher Carroll & Graf have one of the most ecclectic catalogues I've ever seen so after reading the flap I took a risk and bought it. It was an excellent purchase :) It's an amazingly well crafted satire on the current shady practices of the computer/software industry. It's hilarious and sharp, an unexpected find in a sea of rather boring fiction these days. The author is an IP lawyer in the valley so he's got the whole scene pegged and possibly a bit cliche in parts. The first chapter is online which may convince you to go get a copy :)

The February Issue of Harper's this month contains a fun list of new trademark applications since 9-11 on page 25...a few of the funnier ones:

• Bin Laden to Rest™
• Bin There Bombed That™
• Bum Laden™
• Fight Terrorism: Go Shopping™
• High on America™
• Hero Hanky™
• Osama, Yo Mama!™
• Terrorists Suck™
• Trash bin Laden™
• T.U.R.D. Terrorist Under Restrained Discipline™
• We're Our Own Enemy™

and the best one is....God Bless America!™.

I guess it's time I applied for use Perl; get laid();™.

n.b. - I decided to go hunting for who might be trying to register "God Bless America™" and was rewarded with several including GBA Fireworks and America Bless God!™ Ephemera and did you know that Perl& has been trademarked by Perl, Inc.? TESS is sure to give hours of umitigated horror and delight. :)

permalink Ω 28 January 2002, Helsinki

Get your wordrobe on

The NYT had a nice article today about George A. Thompson, a word sleuth who spends his days combing 19th century New York newspapers. This sounds like an awfully interesting and fascinating job. John McWhorter has a new title The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language that explores the history of language in an enjoyable and accessible manner, controversial or not.

The Word Spy has already started collecting newly minted words for the Enronigate debacle that is sure to grow only to be forgotten with occasional historical references in short order. OUP has recently released Dictionary of the Internet which is full of words that you wouldn't find in a mainstream dictionary and may not be in common use in 10 years.

It would be nearly impossible to do but it would be interesting to make a gantt chart of 'words of the times' along with the events and plot the average amount of time the words they gave life to die out from popular usage. So many words, so little time.

permalink Ω 27 January 2002, Helsinki

Just call me Flipper the Syswallah

In these times it is always good to know the lingo to improve communication with your intended audience, e.g. if you write financial applications knowing a little bank slang is helpful. Interestingly enough Schwab has compiled Weird Words of Wall Street, More Weird Words of Wall Street and Son of Weird Words of Wall Street as a casual lexicon of the Wall St. set. I'm certain that Enron will add a few new words to this growing list. :)

And the ADS listed a few of the unlucky contenders in the word of the year vote, a few of them are really funny;

• Assoline -methane used as fuel
• Netwallah - website admin.
• EC - emotionally corrrect, i.e. 911
• desk rage - cube tantrum
• dot-orging - bailing from the .com to go .org
• annoyicon - those stupid network icons on the lower right side of your TV screen
• sneakers-up - yet another way to say dot bomb

This makes me wonder if there are words outside of JAPH, etc. that are unique to Perl. Drop me a line if you think of any and I'll make a little Perl lexicon for grins.

permalink Ω 25 January 2002, Helsinki

Should it be porngrammatist instead?

I have the 'Forgotten English' word-a-day calendar in my cube and yesterdays word was pangrammatist which is someone who writes sentences containing every letter in the alphabet, e.g. "John P. Brady, give me a black-walnut box of quite a small size." This made me think it would be a perfect sort of thing for Lingua::Pangrammatist to check a document for pangrammatism. So, off I went to google to see if anything interesting was out there for pangrammatist and other than a few dictionary entries the rest of the results were porn related. Now I'm left wondering what in the heck pangrammatist has to do with porn...how very odd.

Lingua::Pangram :)

permalink Ω 18 January 2002, Helsinki

Synergy I banish thee

Lake Superior State University has been issuing a List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness every New Years for nearly 30 years. I am brimming with joy that my submission of synergy made the list as well as Nine-eleven and others deserving banishment.

permalink Ω 1 January 2002, Helsinki

2001: A word odyssey

As the year winds down and Christmas is just a speedbump on the way to 2002 it becomes time for all the 'lists' of stuff from 2001. While I don't care much for the celebrity lists and top ten blooper lists I do like the 'words of the year' lists. The BBC is currently taking votes for the best words of the year in their e-cyclopedia and the American Dialect Society lists its rather disappointing selection of words and is taking nominations with the winners being announced on 4 January 2002. Go on and vote for your own favourite word since I think there are far far better words than 'evil doers' and other post 9/11 [11/9] words that lack flair, long term usefulness or creativity.

One of my favourite words of the year is Techlish which is something like Engrish only a marriage of technical jargon and English.

permalink Ω 19 December 2001, Helsinki

Lesdyxics of the World, Untie! :)

Sunday always brings with it my weekly dose of Chiasmus, not to be confused with antimetabole, often making me giggle or think just how often we see and even use this form but seldom notice.

"As they say, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." --Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld

Maybe we should have a Perl Chiasmus contest this year instead of haiku.

permalink Ω 16 December 2001, Helsinki

Don't you know Schitt?

Lurking on mailing lists outside your own profession can be fun sometimes since it gets you out of the airlock....Linguists crack me up when they get corny like the following:

"WHO IS JACK SCHITT???

The lineage is finally revealed. Many people are at a loss for a response when someone says "You don't know Jack Schitt!" Read on and you'll be able to handle the situation intelligently. Jack is the only son of Awe Schitt and O. Schitt. Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married O. Schitt, a partner of Kneedeep & Schitt, Inc. Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt, and the deeply religious couple begat 6 children: Holie Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Giva Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins, Deap Schitt and Dip Schitt. Against her parents' wishes, Deap Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a high school dropout. After 15 years of marriage, Jack & Noe Schitt divorced. Noe Schitt later married a Mr. Sherlock, and out of devotion to her children, decided to hyphenate her last name, and became Noe Schitt-Sherlock. Dip Schitt married a woman named Loda Dung, who became Loda Schitt. The couple produced a nervous son, Chicken Schitt. Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, inseparable throughout childhood subsequently married the Happens brothers. The local newspaper announced the Schitt-Happens wedding, which was quite an event. The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Hoarse. Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He returned from his travels with his Italian bride, Piza Schitt.

So, NOW if someone says "You don't know Jack Schitt," you can beg to differ. You not only know Jack Schitt, but the entire Schitt list!

I wonder if they know Dick :)

permalink Ω 14 December 2001, Helsinki

The Symbol of London under London

Unlike most Londoners I have always loved The Tube, especially the fancy new Jubilee Line which is the only line that connects with all other lines. The Jubilee went into service just in time for the hotly contested Millenium Dome that had fancy urinals [ the ladies room wasn't nearly as interesting ] in addition to a few interesting exhibits. I also have a collection of old underground maps and use the P22 Foundry's Johnston Underground as my default system font. So, I was fairly excited to see a new book released on the history of the Underground, Underground to Everywhere, since most of the previous books on the subject have either disappointed or have gone out of print. The recently published London: The Biography is a delightfully different vignette style history of London that has a few tales about the Underground as well.

And the word of the day is Pinacotheca \Pin`a*co*the"ca\, n. A picture gallery. I asked the guy who has the nice PHP D30 photo album if his code was public since I've just not found anything that I really like as much as his simple and elegant solution...and he is, apparently, going to release it in another week or so. Yes, I'm embracing the dark side but at least I'll have a stylin' photo album :)

permalink Ω 12 December 2001, Helsinki

Fictionary of the future

OpenBSD finally installed on my Sparc with not too much hassle. If you are considering the sparc64 platform be warned that it has spotty driver support for some of the PCI cards and be sure to repartition the boot disk even if the partition utility says it's happy with everything from the formerly solaris labelled disk. Even as a still-in-kinda-beta operating system on sparc64 it does so many things right including the pkg_add ports utility. It is also a treat to run something other than Solaris on a sun4u box for a change.

In spite of my loathing of aptly named Faith Popcorn [ mostly air and nutrient free ], I picked up a copy of Dictionary of the Future this weekend. While most of the book is filled with Junk English, marketspeak and blatant pandering to her Boomer generation there are a few words that have promise;

• Elderotica - erotica for senior citizens. [ I thought erotica was 'ageless' ]
• Abzyme - enzymes that have certain properties of antibodies.
• Genetocracy - the new genetic aristocracy; see also genetrification.
• Free-Range Children - 21st century kids who are raised in the spirit of an earlier era. [ I have no idea what in the hell she means but it's making me hungry :) ]
• Fight Chat - family counselors will soon discover the internet as marriage therapy for feuding couples and have them fight via IM or IRC. [ Yeah, if you can't communicate in person the internet via IRC will make it MUCH better! The first rule of about Fight Chat is that we don't talk about Fight Chat! ]
• National Parent Permits - A movement will emerge to assure [sic] that parents are prepared, educated and capable of bringing up healthy and productive children. Major manufacturers and service providers will give discounts and special benefits to those with permits. [ Not a bad idea but I suspect she's never been in a room full of parents and mentioned this idea...she's still alive. ]
• Telesprawl - Urban sprawl created by telecommuting workers.
• Permalance - the merger of permanent and freelance in the new economy.
• CoHo - short for corporate home office.
• Groligarchy - describes the concentration of agriculture and food-production power in the hands of a few agribusiness giants; see also foodopoly.
• Karaoke Managers - a style of lip-synch management where you mouth the buzzwords and platitudes of your superiors.
• Bachelor Herds - in societies where wealthy older men are allowed to acquire young new wives, the result is herds of angry young single men.
• Authethnic - Cultural expressions of all kinds that are unadulterated and unmodified by the American homogenization process.
• BABOONS - baby boomer. no savings. [ brilliant word :) ]
• Wired to Failure - the unintended result of Internet access in the majority of American Classroom; see also Empty Luggage Syndrome.
• IMB - A coming acronym for "I mean business". When consumers choose the most industrial-strength option when a far more modest solution will do.
• Orthorexia - an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy and avoiding even the slightest bit of fat, preservatives or salt.
• Camoflanguage - language that seeks to hide rather than illuminate.
• Sarchasm - the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn't get it.
• Unobtanium - a combination of 'unobtainable' and 'titanium'. [ cute ]
• Burn - your available cash.
• Stegotext - ordinary looking text carrying encoded information.
• Netlag - dissociation that comes from spending so much time on-line that we expect the rest of life to keep pace.
• Wristicuffs - fighting via email.
• BuySexuals - describes those who cross-shop at status stores and Wal-Mart.
• Infophobia - a psychological problem marked by the fear of being uninformed.
• Carcoon - cars are becoming cocoons of their own.
• SHUV - an accident caused by a SUV.

permalink Ω 10 December 2001, Helsinki

Beaming up the OED

The OED is hunting for the earliest citations of some Science Fiction words. Perl will be in the upcoming new edition of the OED and they publicly admitted to using Perl so I suppose it's the least we could do to return the favour :)

permalink Ω 6 December 2001, Helsinki

Linguistic Profiling

One of the linguistic mailing lists I'm on mentioned that ABC News had a piece about linguistic profiling on tonights news. It is an interesting facet to what we are calling 'Racial Profiling' these days but used to be called 'Discrimination'. It is incredibly pervasive since how you hear someone can alter how you think about them without you consciously noticing it. Take the test and see how you do.

Dr. Clifford Nass studies how people react to voices and has some research on gender stereotyping in computer generated speech.

"Our studies show," reports Dr. Nass, "that directions from a female voice are perceived as less accurate than those from a male voice, even when the voices are reading the exact same directions. Deepness helps, too. It implies size, height, and authority. Deeper voices are more credible."

The abstract is an interesting read and thought provoking for a community who really wants to believe we are completely magnanimous. Perhaps more people who are willing to look at such unpleasant problems underneath the veneer of "Equal" will help eradicate this in a few generations. I'll keep on practising my Darth Vader voice until then....

permalink Ω 6 December 2001, Helsinki

Junk English

Ken Smith has a new book, Junk English that may cause just about anyone with proper knowledge of the English language to squeak with amusement...and shame :) He's the same guy who wrote Mental Hygiene , an amusing look at educational films and Ken's Guide to the Bible that left me worn out from laughing too much. He did not, however write Run Naked, Run Free . Junk English has a wonderful collection of bones it picks on but one I found particularly close to home:

Nonprofit. A common confusion is that a nonprofit or not-for-profit organization is one that exists for the general welfare rather than for private gain. After all, if an organization doesn't exist to make a profit, its purpose--and, by proxy, the intent of the people who work within it--must be noble and altruistic.

Nonprofit or not-for-profit, however, apply only to the accounting methods used by the organization and have no bearing on what positions the organization supports. And while the organization cannot by law make a profit, the individuals within it can. Many nonprofit executives profit handsomely from their work.

In the wake of 9/11 there are more stories every day about how this or that charity has abused, mishandled or otherwise completely bungled the philanthropy of millions of people. It's tragic.

permalink Ω 4 December 2001, Helsinki

L'Anti Noël Avant L'Temps

While enjoying the December issue of Harper's Magazine I noticed a blurb in the "Readings" section that may be of interest to daveorg and others. On page 16, a small box titled "You Better Watch Out" enclosed the following:

"Halloween has ended. Before Halloween it was autumn, and after Halloween autumn continues. Do you agree?

The leaves lie scattered on the soil, the atmosphere is calm and romantic; it is the dead season and many are rejoicing. Right? It is part of a whole season, a beautiful season, and one that does not officially end until the twenty-first of December. Are you listening?

Winter is far off, and Christmas does not exist outside of winter. Christmas=winter. Autumn-tranquillity, peace of mind. You see what we want to say, no?

We are L'A.N.A.L.T. ( L'Anti Noël Avant L'Temps)

We are a group of people who are saddened and frustrated by your ill breeding. We refuse to let you destroy autumn for a reason as prenicious and disgusting as making a little bit of money. Everybody knows that Christmas is coming. You're going to make the same kind of cash! So, if you please, everything has its time.

We demand that you take down all of your Christmas decorations without delay, and not put them back up until the first of December. If not, we are going to strike again.

N.B. Do not take this lightly. We are SERIOUS."

This was a notice sent last November to merchants in Montreal whose stores were decorated for Christmas. This caused a bit of a stir only after they vandalised fourteen business that did not comply with their demands. I couldn't find any news articles or a web page for the group espousing their agenda but sans terrorism I like the idea of the group and their mission; No Christmas Before Its Time.

n.b. - I love the english language, yes, yes I do. Google produced a name for these folks that I will have to have stitched into a sweatshirt or somesuch:

I'm sure this could be applied not only to being afraid of the jolly fat guy who sneaks into houses via the chimney but also to those awful snack cakes called "Ho-Hos". :)

permalink Ω 2 December 2001, Helsinki

Seamlessly Internettled

I snagged William Safire's new book Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella the other day and have found it to be an entertaining read as expected. However, he also reminded me of the Dictionary of American Regional English with it's soon to be published 4th volume. I didn't know that the lead editor, the deus machina behind DARE, Fred Cassidy had died last year leaving the project somewhat in turmoil but still moving 'on to Z'.

If you have a few bucks to burn, go up to AbeBooks and get a copy of vols. 1 - 3 and wallow in the pages of this utterly amazing dictionary or help identify a few terms or donate cold hard cash to DARE. You could also donate to The Dictionary Project which gives 3rd grade children a dictionary of their own since it would seem the US has billions to spend on bombs but not a similar amount to spend on teaching children to read and spell. One of the first presents I ever remember getting for Christmas was a Dictionary and an Encyclopaedia so this particular cause is near and dear. Nothing is quite as unimpressive as a computer nerd who can't find his ass with both hands and a flashlight much less spell or form a complex sentence with polysyllabic words.

You might also be amused to know that the word 'downsizing' has a surprising origin, especially considering the modern SUV:

"The word was born in a happy spirit. The United Auto Workers leader Leonard Woodcock was an early user, reported the quarterly American Speech, speaking of 'the down-sizing, as GM calls it' on Meet the Press on Sept. 5, 1976. A month later, an ad for Ford LTD's in Southern Living asked, 'Will down-sized cars have down-sized prices?' The raising of oil prices by the Shah of Iran in 1974 sped the need to reduce gas consumption, and Newsweek in 1978 reported "the rush to down-size cars to meet tougher fuel-efficiency standards.'"

Downsizing didn't make the lexicon of layoffs until 1990. :)

permalink Ω 26 November 2001, Helsinki

Words of the Times

The English language never fails to rise to the occasion when needed and now is no exception. There are numerous slang dictionaries and other more formal dictionaries filled with modern words invented to fill a gap in the lexicon. Salon had an amusing article, Words no longer fail us containing a few such specimens of our linguistic flexibility;

• Fatuwa - n. Anything fatuous or profoundly silly declared as a religious directive.
• Gaytriotism - n. Improbable devotion of gays in the military who know full well that, if they're lucky enough to survive the war, the reward for their service may be a dishonorable discharge. It is not known -- since no one is telling -- whether this is bravery or just a form of denial.
• Patrioteering - n. Shameless, legal exploitation of national flag fervor for corporate gain. Generally free of direct reference to charitable causes, and may include the words "easy payments" or "postage and handling." As if you want more mail now.
• S.U.V. - abbr. For "Suddenly Undesirable Vehicle." What your SUV will become after hastening the arrival of the next oil shortage.

Now, what I want to know is what is so 'sudden' in the S.U.V.? I think it should be Seriously Undesireable Vehicle :)

permalink Ω 2 November 2001, Helsinki

Idiomatic Lingua Franca

Penguin recently published a new edition of The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms. I'm rather disappointed it doesn't have any etymological information for these idioms but it is still enjoyable to browse through them.

It is amazing how much spoken English is idiomatic as you usually don't begin to appreciate this until you are stuck in a room with non-native or non-fluent English speakers and begin to notice that they are giving you the smile and nod of 'I have no idea what you just said'. Idioms are difficult to nail a definition or a single meaning to very often. The author of this dictionary does a fine job in spite of its incomplete and somewhat superficial treatment of the wide range of idioms in the English language. The index could be much better as well. A few entertaining idioms the Perl crowd might appreciate;

• to swallow a camel and strain at a gnat - to tolerate a great wrong while protesting at a minor lapse.
• like turkeys voting for Christmas - someone planning for his or her own downfall or destruction. "The standards at this school are extremely poor, but no teachers are going to complain. It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas as the school would then be shut down."
• as sick as a parrot - a cliche often used by football managers, meaning 'very disappointed'.
• warts and all - with all its faults and imperfections, a realistic portrayal. The phrase comes from Oliver Cromwell's statement that he wanted his portrait to show him accurately, 'warts and all'.
• there is method in his madness - although he seems to be acting illogically, he has, in fact, a purpose in everything he does.
• to cross one's bridges before one comes to them - to worry unnecessarily about something that may never happen.
• to keep something in purdah - to keep from public view. The idiom derives from the veil or curtain that kept Muslim women from view by separating their living quarters from the rest of the household.
• a mouse potato - someone who spends a lot of time amusing him- or herself by playing computer games, programming, etc.
• to know one's onions - to know one's job. to be extremely capable.
• the pumpkin has not turned into a coach - the early promise has not been fulfilled, and disenchantment has followed.
• to put i