Monday, November 17, 2008
Just heard:
“He lay crookedly in the corner, like an abandoned sack...”
Stephen King would scorn the use of the adverb, but I felt that its
arguable awkwardness fitted the context rather nicely.
Posted by Dej on 17 Nov around 6pm
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Monday, May 19, 2008
"Pick of the Week” last night featured the importance of churai in
‘Senegalese’ marriage, as underscored by musical accompaniment ~
Isatou Somebody: “churai strengthens love...even if your husband is
weak...”
There was also a reference to the belt of beads worn around the woman’s
waist and their aphrodisiac rattle - “we call them weapons of
destruction”!
Out.
Posted by Dej on 19 May around 11am
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Sunday, May 11, 2008
Need to check whether this might have made it onto the relevant BBC
message board…
________________________________
Dear Roger/Feedback Team,
Good to have you back and to hear that your listeners’ quills (actual or
virtual) are still as sharp as ever!
I seem to recall from the final outing of your last series that there
was a heated debate about “pronunciation” (received or otherwise), in
which one contributor after another - including some BBC personnel -
repeatedly pronounced the word as “pronOUnciation”! Classic stuff.
Welcome back!
Dej
Posted by Dej on 11 May around 5am
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
As you will have gathered from my recently mentioning Ms. Coren’s column
on David Beckham’s appearance in a print ad campaign for underwear, I
have become a big fan of the late Alan Coren’s daughter.
She was recently having some good fun at the expense of the former First
Lady Senator, when in mid-flow, she veered off on the following
linguistic tangent:
“An enthralling etymological debate is raging online regarding the
meanings of ‘misspeak’ in its original Old English form (’to grumble’),
in Chaucer’s day (’to speak insultingly’) and in 19th century America
(’to speak unclearly or fail to tell the whole truth’).
But we all know what went on in Hillary’s case, don’t we? I’m not sure
there is a word that specifically means ‘embellishing an anecdote in
order to make oneself sound more interesting’, but we need a word for
that and ‘misspeak’ will do as well as any. (’Embell-self-glamming’
would be more fun, but its construction sounds a little German. And the
Germans probably don’t do it. They’re more likely to need a word which
means ‘down-playing an anecdote in order to make oneself sound slightly
less efficient’ and I expect they’ve got one. Coined years ago, neatly
prepared in case of future-use-requirement’.)”
Posted by Dej on 12 Apr around 6pm
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Friday, March 28, 2008
Cool, young German passenger when asked his impressions of Terminal 5 by
the BBC’s reporter - and delivered in totally dead-pan,
savvy-euro-stylee:
“It’s a nice building...but it would be better with some ‘planes”
Priceless...for everything else, there’s Mastercard!
Posted by Dej on 28 Mar around 6am
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