Comments on: This is nasty.

By: Club Troppo » Missing Link, (Black) Friday 13 July

Club Troppo » Missing Link, (Black) Friday 13 July — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:06:09 +0000

[...] has found a cruel poem designed to put non-native speakers of English back in their [...]

By: Fiasco da Gama

Fiasco da Gama — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:09:19 +0000

It's "Where women go and men chunder". Another meaning entirely. Anyway, before Men At Work, kates, there was Barry McKenzie.

By: Kate Harding

Kate Harding — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:04:35 +0000

Where women glow, and men chunder.

THAT’S what he was saying? All these years, I could never figure that out.

By: kate

kate — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:29:40 +0000

Kate H used ‘barf’, which reminded me that we have, oh, approximately 700,000 slang words for vomit. This is possibly to do with a gruesome love of colourful language, but also, sadly, the heroism associated with drinking far too much and bringing it back up again.

This is, after all, the country that gave music the lyric:
I come from a land downunder,
Where women glow, and men chunder.

By: tigtog

tigtog — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:03:51 +0000

Also, I’m plumb tuckered out after a spot of intensive gardening (it’s green bin night tonight).

By: tigtog

tigtog — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:02:43 +0000

I haven’t been able to find what I would consider an authoritative etymology for “tucker”, but it seems to derive from Middle English “tukken” via Middle German or summat.

Which reminds me:

English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results. – H. Beam Piper

By: Kate Harding

Kate Harding — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:32:13 +0000

Oh, also, I suspect that “arnt” (which sounds exactly like “aren’t” in my head) doesn’t sound too far off from what I think of as “awnt” if one has an accent in which Rs aren’t pronounced distinctly.

By: Kate Harding

Kate Harding — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:24:37 +0000

I found it interesting in the ML thread how many people thought that words (whinge, chuffed) were Australianisms rather than regional Britishisms (which is of course where us Aussies got ‘em from).

Yeah, I tend to assume that most Australianisms are Britishisms, though I’m sure you have a lot of indigenous slang I’ve never heard. I definitely classified “chuffed” as British, though you’re the person on my daily reading list who uses it most frequently, hence my comment to that effect.

(And since everyone’s telling “whinge” stories, I first heard it from my Irish brother-in-law, with regard to my first nephew.)

I was hugely surprised that what I had always considered a quintessential British boarding school word, ‘nosh’, was actually from Yiddish.

That’s funny to me, because I hear “nosh” and immediately think of Jewish deli menus — no British boarding school associations whatsoever.

Eagerly awaiting word on the origins of “tucker.”

By: tigtog

tigtog — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:06:38 +0000

Before I go and look it up, I’m going to plump for one of the ’sets (Dorset, Somerset etc), although another part of me wants to go with Irish.

By: Lauredhel

Lauredhel — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:52:09 +0000

what I had always considered a quintessential British boarding school word, ‘nosh’, was actually from Yiddish.

Where did “tucker” come from? I know, I know, I could look it up, but it’s far more fun to talk about it here.