Idioms and Idiocy

I guess if you're a "branding specialist" you have to be both corny and corporate. However, before actually meeting a "branding specialist," I never considered how that particular combination (corny and corporate) would manifest itself in a human being.

Then, the other day, I attended a presentation about a re-branding or brand-consolidating initiative my company is undertaking, and as I listened, I could not help but be struck by the outrageous number of idioms that crept into the presenter's speech. When I finally regained the presence of mind to write these down (about halfway through the presentation), here is what I came up with:

Where the rubber meets the road

Don't need to recreate the wheel

Everyone's an expert

The sizzle and the steak (I personally have no idea what this one means, but he said it more than once, so someone must know!)

Very finger-wagging

The cart before the horse

Roll it out (This is right up there with my all-time least favorite corporate-speak terms; it should be used in reference to pie baking and nothing else)

Take the learning and bake it into our process (Not an idiom, but it was such a bad metaphor I had to include it)

And perhaps the best of all:

I'm not going to teach my grandmother to suck eggs

This last one I had to look up on Wikipedia when I got back to my desk. I invite you to do so now.

Please consider all of these constituted only half of his presentation, which was maybe a half-hour long at best. I challenge you, reader, to use all of these idioms (and bad metaphors) in a single day. Your achievement earns you . . . my undying admiration. But isn't that worth having?

Word of the Day

Kerfuffle

Pronounced: ker-fuf-ful

Definition: Disturbance, fuss

Example Sentence: I might have caused a kerfuffle over nothing!

Challenge of the day: use this word without anyone in earshot laughing.

*Acknowledgement: thanks to my swimming friend A___ for inspiring this post.

“The Nuisance”

It's really amazing what you find when you clean--when you really clean--your apartment. And there is no better time to really get down to the nitty gritty of what you have stowed away in corners you didn't know existed than when you move. Honestly.

I am finding unopened packets of earplugs, single shoelaces, sample caffeine pills, half-written letters, scribbled story ideas, and other tidbits and scraps I've saved for who-knows-what reason. The most ironic thing is, after examination, I still cannot bear to part with most of it! Oh I see why I saved this, I will think, despite the fact that I clearly did not remember having saved it in the first place. This will come in so useful, should I find the time/want to ____. Right.

Some of these discoveries, though, feel like small treasures: little candies I am uncovering that, as I find them, I pop into my mouth and think, "Aha! this is what I taste like. I always knew I was a good judge of myself!" Below is one such example. It is a poem that back in . . . maybe eleventh grade? So 2002 or 2003, when I was participating in a poetry workshop on Saturdays at the Braddock Library. (This was back when I fancied myself an "all-around" writer, which obviously had to include poetry. I have since absolved myself of that delusion.)

I have never been one to particularly enjoy reading poetry. It always feels to me like the poets are trying too hard, and I prefer narratives to overwrought existentialism or over-described scenery. However, poetry does demonstrate that a few well chosen words can, at times, replace entire paragraphs to convey what you mean, and this is a skill that, as a writer, you should both covet and cultivate as best you can.

I like this whole poem, as a whole, but also in parts. I think it can be read both ways, because each stanza conveys a slightly different tone, a slightly different message. I'm not going to go into the whole English Major Analysis mode here, but I'll just say that the last three lines of this poem are brilliant. Read quickly, you can almost miss what makes them so unusual. When I first read them, they made me think of a dog carrying around his pup by the scruff of the neck, with the pup being the "love," but then that not being enough to fill the dog's mouth. But then I realized that it was that word "like" that had crept past me--I had just assumed the line had read something like, "Around in my teeth." But no, it was "Around with me like teeth." Love for someone is like teeth? And to follow it with the line, "And I am starving," implies hunger for love, but also the act of destruction, because teeth chew, and envisioning "chewing" love.... Well, you get the picture. Hence why this woman does not envision herself to be the ideal lover.

In any event, an excellent poem. Packing is certainly no fun, but at least it leads me to discoveries like this!

"The Nuisance"
by Marge Piercy
Circles on the Water. New York: Alfred A Knopf, Inc, 1982.

I am an inconvenient woman.
I’d be more useful as a pencil sharpener or a cash register.
I do not love you the way I love Mother Jones or the surf
Coming in
Or my pussycats or a good piece of steak.
I love the sun prickly on the black stubble of your cheek.
I love you wandering floppy making scarecrows of despair.
I love you when you are discussing changes in the class structure
And it jams my ears and burns in the tips of my fingers.

I am an inconvenient woman.
You might trade me in on a sheepdog or a llama.
You might trade me in for a yak.
They are faithful and demand only straw.
They make good overcoats.
They never call you up on the telephone.

I love you with my arms and my legs
And my brains and my cunt and my unseemly history.
I want to tell you about when I was ten and it thundered.
I want you to kiss the crosshatched remains of my burn.
I want to read you poems about drowning myself
Laid like eggs without shells at fifteen under Shelly’s wings.
I want you to read my old loverletters.

I want you to want me
As directly and simply and variously
As a cup of hot coffee.
I want to, to have to, to miss what can’t have room to happen.
I carry my love for you
Around with me like teeth
And I am starving.

A little obsessed

So yes, maybe I like this show a little too much. Yes, it is fashioned out of a predictable formula. Yes, the characters are relatively stock. And yes, I am in love with the (okay R___ go ahead and laugh) "old" main character. But you have to admit--a lot of what he says is incredibly brilliant, and I respect brilliant writing. Quotes to prove my point:

• "...the answer...to life itself: Sex."
  
• "...there's no I in 'team'. There is a me, though, if you jumble it up."
  
• "What usually happens when you poke something with a stick? It pokes back."
  
• "Your theory is: I cared, therefore I let her keep her socks on? If that's what love is, I don't want anything to do with it."
  

Truly the Mother Tongue

I taught my roommate two new words last night.

I was standing in the kitchen, heating up some leftover stir-fry in the microwave, when J___, one of my two roommates, came up to me and held out a small black plastic tube.

“You want this?” she asked me. I took it and squinted at the tiny gold writing on it.

“What is it?”

“It is . . . for your eye . . . .” She made a motion toward her eyes with her finger, and at that moment, I found the product label: mascara.

“Oh! Well sure! You don’t want it?”

“No, no. I have many. I don’t need them.”

“Well thanks. Mine’s pretty old anyway, so this is great.”

At this moment, my other roommate, L___, emerged from her room.

“How do you call that?” She motioned to the tube in my hand.

I held it up. “What, mascara?”

She squeezed her eyes, contorting her face in effort. “Mass-sceeeerrrrr—a.”

“Yeah, mas-CARE-a. Like . . . ,” I stopped to think, “like ‘scare.’ Like the word ‘scare?’ Scarey? Ma-SCARE-a.”

She tried pronouncing it again. “And what is the other one?”

“The other one?” I ran through my limited knowledge of beauty products: eyeliner, eye shadow, blush…. I could see her struggling to spit it out as I tried to think of what she could be imagining.

“It’s when everyone get killed.”

“Oh! You mean ‘massacre.’”

She looked at me a expectantly, so I repeated it.

“Massacre. MASS-a-cer. Like . . . with the word ‘mass.’ You know? Like a weight? Mass? MASS-a-cer.”

“Mass-cer,” she tried repeating it. “And what was the other one?”

“Mass-CARE-a.”

“Right. Mascara.” She appeared to be concentrating very deeply. Then she looked up and laughed. “I just don’t want to go to makeup store and ask for . . . for . . . mass-cer.”

“A massacre!” I laughed along with her. “Well, you can remember it . . . I guess if you put too much mascara on, it would look scary. Ma-SCARE-a.”

It was in that moment that I realized: I sounded just like my mother. This was how we had always studied everything, with her offering goofy pneumonics for bits of information I had trouble memorizing. “Mighty mitochondria.” (Their job in the cell was to provide energy.) “Eating too much Pb-and-j would make you leaden.” Such silly ideas, and yet they worked. And here I was offering the exact same sort of thing to my ESL roommate.

Incredible, how much our parents can influence us. And even more incredible, how little instances like this make me wonder if I truly am supposed to be a teacher.

Translation: Italian Soccer Fan

Because 1) I am in publishing and 2) my mother is in publishing (and deals with copyrights no less!), I have no desire to be accused of plagerism. Therefore, let me announce once, loudly, "I did not write the following passage!" It is from the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I could not help but post it here because, while the book is enjoyable all around (although as an inexhaustible critic, I must express my disappointment with its ending), it stood out to me as such a unabashed celebration of language, I felt compelled to share it.

The context is this: the author--Elizabeth--is at a soccer game in Italy. She is sitting in the stands, surrounded by cheering, stomping, cursing fans, one of whom was ranting and raving with particular gusto, directly behind her. This is her rendering of what she heard.

Dai, dai, dai, Albertini, dai . . . va bene, va bene, ragazzo, mio, perfetto, bravo, bravo . . . Dai! Dai! Via! Via! Nella porta! Eccola, eccola, eccola, mio bravo ragazzo, caro mio, eccola, eccola, ecco—AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! VAFFANCULO!!! FIGLIO DI MIGNOTTA!! STRONZO! CAFONE! TRADITORE! Madonna . . . Ah, Dio mio, perche, perche, perche, questo e stupido, e una vergogna, la vergogna . . . Che casino, che bordello . . . NON HAI UN CUORE, ALBERTINI! FAI FINTA Guarda, non e successo niente . . . Dai, dai, ah . . . Molto migliore, Albertini, molto migliore, si si si, eccola, bello, bravo, anima mia, ah, ottimo, eccola adesso . . . nella porta, nella porta, nell—VAFFANCULO!!!!!!!!!

Roughly translated to:

Come on, come on, come on, Albertini, come on . . . OK, OK, my boy, perfect, brilliant, brilliant . . . Come on! Come on! Go! Go! In the goal! There it is, there it is, there it is, my brilliant boy, my dear, there it is there it is, there—AHHHHH! GO FUCK YOURSELF! YOU SON OF A BITCH! SHIT-HEAD! ASSHOLD! TRAITOR! . . . Mother of God . . . Oh my God, why, why, why, this is stupid, this is shameful, the shame of it . . What a mess . . . [Author’s note: Unfortunately there’s no good way to translate into English the fabulous Italian expression che casino and che bordello, which literally means “what a casino,” and “what a whorehouse,” but essentially mean “what a friggin’ mess.”] . . . YOU DON’T HAVE A HEART, ALBERTINI!!!! YOU’RE A FAKER! Look, nothing happened . . . Come on, come on, hey, yes . . . Much better, Albertini, much better, yes yes yes, there it is, beautiful, brilliant, oh, excellent, there it is now . . . in the goal, in the goal, in the—FUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUU!!

A Literary Outrage

The offender: BBC World Service Radio Broadcast Article

This article so enrages me that the English major in me is going to come out and write a point-by-point retort.

The Question: should we relax English spelling rules?

The Short Answer: no.

Why?

Rather than answering this question myself, I am instead going to disassemble—or, perhaps, axe apart—Professor John Wells’ qualms with and “quick fixes” for the English language. I hope this retort proves convincing enough for those of you reading.

• Problem with Wells’ suggestion #1: Simply removing the final e wouldn’t help a student determine what the vowel sound is; leaving the e there would just help them determine what the vowel sound isn’t. Take the word route as an example. Is this word pronounced boot-rhymes-with-route? Or is it pronounced out-rhymes-with-route? The final e clearly makes no difference, as neither word is pronounced rot, which would be the short o vowel sound.
  

  There are simply too many vowel sounds to try and fix pronunciation via spelling or, as in this case, make spelling easier by using pronunciation as a guide. The latter, in fact, could easily become more difficult.
  

• Problem with Wells’ suggestion #2: Does he intend that double consonants should only appear after the first short vowel sound in the word? Because in the given examples “rivver” and “moddel,” the second vowel sounds are also short (although not quite the same, if you say the words aloud and really listen to yourself). Therefore, according to this rule, the words should be spelled “rivverr” and “moddell.”
  

  There are going to be an awful lot of letters trooping across our pages, if this rule is implemented. And again, if you think vowel sounds are restricted to Short and Long and can therefore be sorted out through spelling, see Problem #1 above.
  

• Concerning suggestion #3 . . . this one looks okay to me. Maybe a keener mind will find the loophole.
  
• Problem with Wells’ suggestion #4: Sure, we can add "Americanizations like thru, and then we can prolly add gonna, too, becuz you know the next generation'll be addin' all sorta IM-speak, lol.
  
• Problem with Wells’ suggestion #5: It's most certainly a problem to remove the apostrophe from its, because doing so may not confuse the writer’s meaning, but it will certainly trip up the reader.
  

  Consider this slightly more dramatic but very real-life example: on her paper, one high school student wrote higen for hygiene and beuty for beauty. Now, in the context of her writing, these words were certainly discernable. However, the amount of time necessary to determine what were, exactly, the words she had written and, thus, what was the overall meaning of her prose was considerable.
  

  The same dilemma applies to interchanging its and it’s. The reader will figure out whether the "its" is actually a possessive pronoun or a singular noun-and-verb contraction, only the process of making this determination will take considerably longer.
  

  Of course we all know that the longer it takes a reader to determine anything, the more quickly he/she loses interest and puts down the book/magazine/pamphlet. And then we’ve just defeated our own goal of facilitating language, haven’t we?
  

• Problem with Wells’ suggestion #6: See above explanation. Wells has clearly not read enough public urban middle school English papers to be perturbed by the interchanging of their, they’re, and there. Or maybe he considers himself liberal enough to see past these spelling differences. But we’ll see how liberal he feels when he starts running into bored, board, and bord, shood, IDK, OMG, and impressition. (Any guesses, for the last one? It’s a pretty easy one--I got it right away.)
  

Bottom line: leave English Spelling alone. Or, rather, drill your kids and your neighbors kids, and make them keep reading, since the years of published material aren't likely to suddenly be reprinted because spelling standards have changed. Standard English spelling has done the job thus far, as English is the first language of 375 million people and the second language of another estimated 750 million.* If spelling were that much of an issue, wouldn’t everyone have decided to speak a nice, phonetic language like Spanish—excuse me, Espanol—instead?

*(See http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/esc.html if you don’t believe me, as I am ever the academic and feel I should cite my sources.)

Final Note: A point of further interest may be to research how Standard English Spelling has developed to the state in which it is currently taught/used. Questions to consider: has it evolved due to widespread usage by the masses, or have spelling "rules" been implemented by figures of authority and then slowly been passed between generations until old rules are phased out?

I admit, the academic in me may never die.

Singapore: Where Starbucks is not a coffee shop

In Singapore, Starbucks is not considered a coffee shop. Starbucks is a café. A coffee shop in Singapore is equivalent to our food courts, only it is housed in an outdoor pavilion, and all of the food is very cheap. What we call cafes, they call restaurants. In their “coffee shops,” you order at the particular vendor you want, and instead of standing at the stall waiting for your food (which, admittedly, would just cause more congestion in such a crowded area), you go and sit at a numbered table, which you indicate to the vendor. The vendor then drops off the food to that particularly numbered table. No congestion around the vendor’s booth; no tip required. Quite a smart arrangement, if I do say so.

I am sure American food companies would protest that this system would hurt their pocketbooks, since more employees would be required, but really, each vendor would only need to employ one food runner, two at most. Food courts—excuse me, coffee shops—are not that big, and everyone does not eat from the same vendor at the same time.

So to make this clear, let me illustrate several linguistic conversions. First I will list the term for what the US concept would be. Therefore, when I put the term US coffee shop, imagine a Starbucks. Then, I will list what the equivalent Singaporean (yet still English) term would be:

US coffee shop (e.g. Starbucks) = Sing café

US food court (e.g. outdoor mall food court) = Sing coffee shop

US café (e.g. Panera) = Sing restaurant

Symptoms

Is it a bad sign that I have become such an editor—such a critic—that I even want to revise my professors’ notes?

As I sit here studying (or attempting to study) for my 100-level BCS Development of Brain and Mind course, I am coming up with all sorts of ways that the notes could have been more logically rearranged. I never questioned the ways in which professors organized their material before, but as I try to make connections between the various portions of my notes so that I somehow remember them for the test, I find myself thinking, “If only they had put things together this way….”

I am freelance editing a peer’s book at least seven hours-a-week. I “edit” at Writing Fellows at least twice a week. I am constantly editing my own Honors Thesis work. I think I am becoming obsessed.

A Unique College Essay...finally

If this individual had applied to College Prowler's contest, I may have championed him for the scholarship.
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cjacobso//appess.html

Interesting comments on language

I just finished Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue. While I found this book much drier than his comedic I’m a Stranger Here Myself, there were some notable quotes, particularly because I am so fixated on language, as of late. Here are a few, or rather, several . . . . okay, a bunch of the passages I most enjoyed.

English speakers dread silence. We are all familiar with the uncomfortable feeling that overcomes us when a conversation palls. Studies have shown that when a pause reaches four seconds, one or more of the conversationalists will invariably blurt something—a fatuous comment on the weather, a startled cry of “Gosh, is that the time?”—rather than let the silence extend to a fifth second. (36)

If you have a morbid fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, there is a word for it: arachibutyrophobia. When you are just dropping off to sleep and you experience that sudden that sensation of falling, there is a word for it: it’s a myoclonic jerk. Vellacitydescribes a mild desire, a wish or urge too slight to lead to action. There is even a word for a figure of speech in which two connotative words linked by a conjunction express a complex notion that would normally be conveyed by an adjective and a substantive working together. It is a hendiadys. In English, in short, there are words for almost everything. (67, albeit a bit out of order)

This is of course one of the glories of English—its willingness to take in words from abroad, rather as if they were refugees. We take words from almost anywhere—shampoo from India, chaparral from the Basques, caucus from the Algonquin Indians, ketchup from China, potato from Haiti, sofa from Arabia, boondocks from the Tagalog language of the Philipines, slogan from Gaelic. You can’t get much more eclectic than that. (73)

Garbage, which has had its present meaning of food waste since the Middle Ages, was brought to England by the Normans, who had adapted it from the Italian dialectal word garbuglio (a mess), which ultimately had come from the Latin bullire (to boil or bubble). (73)

We pronounce many words—perhaps most—in ways that are considerably at variance with the ways they are spelled and often even more so with the ways we think we are saying them. We may believe we say “later” but in fact we say “lader.” We may think we say “ladies,” but it’s more probably “laties” or even, in the middle of a busy sentence, “lays.” Handbag comes out as “hambag.” We think we say “butter,” but it’s really “budder” or “buddah” or even “bu’r”…. We think we say “granted,” but really say “grannid.” No one says “looked.” It’s “lookt.” “I’ll just get her” becomes “aldges gedder.” We constantly allow sounds to creep into words where they have no real business. We introduce a “p” between “m” and “t” or “m” and “s” sounds, so that we really say “warmpth” and “something.” We can’t help ourselves. (87)

[Chinese] radicals can stand alone or be combined to form other words…. Mouth and bird make song. Two women mans quarrel and three women means gossip. (117)

When you look into the background of these [grammatical] “rules” there is often little basis for them. Consider the curiously persistent notion that sentences should not end with a preposition. The source of this stricture, and several other equally dubious ones, was one Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century clergyman and amateur grammarian whose A Short Introduction to English Grammar, published in 1762, enjoyed a long and distressingly influential life both in his native England and abroad. It is to Lowth we can trace many a pedant’s most treasured notions: the belief that you must say different from rather than different to or different than, the idea that two negatives make a positive…. Perhaps the most remarkable and curiously enduring of Lowth’s m any beliefs was the conviction that sentences ought not to end with a preposition. But even he was not didactic about it…. He suggested only that he thought it generally better and more graceful, not crucial, to place the preposition before its relative “in solemn and elevated” writing. Within a hundred years this had been converted from a piece of questionable advice into an immutable rule. In a remarkable outburst of literal-mindedness, nineteenth-century academics took it as read that the very name pre-position meant it must come before something—anything. (141)

“I’m hurrying, are I not?” is hopelessly ungrammatical, but “I’m hurrying, aren’t I”—merely a contraction of the same words—is perfect English. Many is almost always a plural (as in “Many people were there”), but not when it is followed by a, as in “Many a man was there.” There’s no inherent reason why these things should be so. They are not defensible in terms of grammar. They are because they are. (143)

It can take years for an American to master the intricacies of British idiom, and vice versa. In Britain homely is a flattering expression (equivalent to homey); in America it means “ugly.” In Britain upstairs is the first floor; in America it is the second…. Presently means “now” in America; in Britain it means “in a little while.” Sometimes these can cause considerable embarrassment, most famously with the British expression “I’ll knock you up in the morning,” which means “I’ll knock on your door in the morning.” (176-177)

Among the Chinese, to be called a turtle is the worst possible taunt…. Among the Xoxa tribe of South Africa the most provocative possible remark is hlebeshako--“your mother’s ears.” In French it is a grave insult to call someone a cow or a camel and the effect is considerably intensified if you precede it with espece de (“kind of”) so that it is worse in French to be called kind of a cow than to be called just a cow. (214)

Some cultures don’t swear at all. The Japanese, Malayans, and most Polynesians and American Indians do not have native swear words. The Finns, lacking the sort of words you need to describe your feelings when you stub your toe getting up to answer a wrong number at 2:00 A.M., rather oddly adopted the word ravintolassa. It means “in the restaurant.” (214)

Cool Anagrams: circumstantial evidence = can ruin a selected victim; a stitch in time saves nine = this is meant as incentive; funeral = real fun; The Morse Code = Here come dots; intoxicate = excitation; mother-in-law = woman Hitler. (230, minus a few)

A holorime is French word game comprised of a two-line poem in which each line is pronounced the same but uses different words. A short exemplary pair of English phrases would be “I love you” and “isle of view.” An old children’s riddle comes as close to an English holorime as any attempt that has been made. It is the one that poses the question “How do you prove in three steps that a sheet of paper is a lazy dog?” The answer: (1) a sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane; (2) an inclined plane is a slop up; (3) a slow pup is a lazy dog. (taken from 231-232)

Incomprehensible

Have you ever noticed how the most important information is almost always communicated in the least comprehensible manner?

I was in NYC, recently, trying to navigate the subway systems. Thus, every time there was an announcement as to which stop was next or which stops would be skipped, I definitely needed to know what they were saying! Now, you would think that, because I am in an English-speaking country this time (unlike many of my prior experiences trying to navigate the transportation systems of a city), I would be at an advantage. Not so; those NYC metro intercom announcements were usually made in a voice sounding something like the teacher from the Peanuts cartoon (i.e. a weird alien dialect comprised of vowels and static, spoken through a mouthful of mushy peas). In short, without prior advice and a good map, I would have been as good as lost.

Another, less mechanically inhibited example of incomprehensible language is the type of language used in the medical field. A good doctor will use the medical term for the condition you have and then explain what it “really mean” and how you are going to treat it, but honestly, if I were a doctor, I don’t know if I would have the patience for all that. Would most of my patients even want to know the “real term?” (For instance, if your baby cries for hours at a time “no matter what you do,” he or she has colic. Who cares what it is called? Just make the kid stop crying!) In effect, I would have to dumb it down for them, but then what was the point of having a term in the first place? Why must we put labels on everything? To sound smart? To feel prestigious? To make sure no one can have access to our “higher knowledge” unless we want to them to? This is a topic I struggle with quite frequently (and therefore spawned last semester’s research paper “The Case of the Missing Agent: and Other Issues of Passive Voice in Scientific Writing”).

Speaking of important yet inaccessible terms, I take serious issue with restaurants that place foreign items on their menus and then fail to explain to the predominantly English-speaking population of America exactly what these food items are. How am I expected to know what an empanada is, or Tzatziki, or how about Orecchiette con Cima di Rape? (In case you are wondering, the first is a savory Spanish/South American pastry, the second is a Greek appetizer dip, and the third is an Italian pasta dish.) As a self-acknowledged picky eater, I want to know what I am spending my money on before it arrives at my plate—much less in my mouth—thank you.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in all three of these cases, I believe this could be true. In the first instance on the NYC metro, I never had a problem navigating when I had the rare opportunity to ride on one of the newer train cars that had marquis above the doorways announcing “Next Stop is….” as well as stop schedules that showed a glowing yellow light beside each stop the train had already passed. I might gripe about technology in many cases (such as what an inconsiderate culture cell phones are making us and who in the world needs over 500 television channels), but I will never claim that it does not have its useful purposes. On these “techno-trains,” I never once missed my stop.

In the second and third instances, also, I also feel that visual aids could do a great deal of good. If I were a doctor, instead of speaking a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo to my patients, I would simply show them a picture, a flash card of sorts, of what will happen to them if they do not follow my instructions to take care of their condition. This way, if my diagnosis is wrong and the treatment does not work, at least the patient will know what symptoms to look for. And if a flash card would not be sufficient, a short two-minute video would work. Likewise, if there were just pictures of every food item on a menu, I would never have to worry about what each thing was called—I could see it! Granted, seeing the dish does not necessarily mean I would know every ingredient used to make it, but what restaurant lists all of that information in its descriptions, anyway? Pictures would simply make life easier.

Maybe I should have been a photographer.

Warm Fuzzies #2: Being a critic

For my Brain and Cognitive Science (BCS) Senior Seminar class this past semester, one of our assignments was to critically review a paper written by another student. We did this by writing our own "response/critique" paper in APA style, pointing out what was good about the paper as well as suggesting what the author may have done better and noting any grammatical/typological errors. Then, we sent this paper to our professor, who graded our critique and then passed it on to the student-author, who would then use it to make revisions to their own paper.

Needless to say, I have quite a bit of practice doing this sort of assignment, since it is more-or-less what I do as a Writing Fellow and is especially akin to what I do for Write-on, the e-mail response-based portion of Writing Fellows. Thus, I was sufficiently confident in my ability to critically review another student's BCS paper. Needless to say, I could not have anticipated this comment, which my professor wrote at the bottom of my critique, above the grade:

[Expletive!] I need your advice on my own papers! Superbly done.

Analysis of the characters in the TV show House

"We’re supposed to like Thirteen. That’s why she’s not called Cutthroat Bitch."
--quoteth my suitemate Hayley

British Expressions

Blimey—the equivalent of the American expression, “Oh my goodness!”
To have a go (at)—1. to make fun of, often in a sarcastic way; 2. to rant at in an angry manner

Smashing—awesome, amazing, superb

To take a piss—to make fun of

Lovely—a multipurpose word used to express genial goodwill and preference for something/someone; often used as an equivalent for the words “nice,” “pleasant,” “enjoyable,” etc.

Knackered—1. tired out; 2. old, worn, raggedy

Cheers—usually used to mean “thank you,” but also capable of standing in for many other common expressions such as “good-bye” or “I agree”


And now, for an imaginary conversation between two British individuals discussing a comedy skit they just watched, which will exemplify the meanings of the afore-listed words:

P1: Blimey! That George Carlin is an awfully angry guy for a comedian.

P2: He just likes to have a go at the American government. I thought his performance was smashing.

P1: He’s too angry for my liking.

P2: Oh come, he was just taking a piss.

P1: Well, thanks for the lovely evening, but I’m knackered. I’m going to bed.

P2: Cheers.

English-isms thus far

bugger : Fluf once told me what this word literally means, but all I remember is the gist of his definition, which is that it deals with a person who has sex. The English have adapted it, much like we have adapted the word “fuck,” to fulfill all linguistic categories and a variety of meanings. To say “bugger” by itself is akin to saying “drat” or “darn it” when frustrated. (Oh, bugger. I forgot get milk at the store.) To call someone a bugger is to insult them mildly, as if you were calling them a “jerk” or a “rascal.” (You bugger!) *I haven’t quite figured out the precise meaning of the verb form of bugger, as it is less common, but I know it is possible to use the word in this manner. (I’ll bugger you!)

plaster: The American equivalent of Band-Aid. I don’t believe they sell that brand here, so if you are bleeding for death, you must ask for a plaster or else no one will offer you any form of adhesive. Do you have a plaster? I’ve just cut myself.

mate: The most common meaning of this word is friend. (I’m going out with my mates tonight.) The word could mean “significant other,” but the English usually use the more specified term “partner” for this sort of relationship. Nevertheless, “mate” can be degraded, in a sense, to a looser relationship between two people, showing one’s gratification or good will toward the other. (Thanks for the tip, mate.

fancy: This can generally mean “to like” or “to appreciate” (Do you fancy that dress?), or it can mean to have a romantic crush on a person (I think you roommate fancies James.)

candy floss: The English name for what Americans refer to as “cotton candy.” Really, we should just compromise and both call it what it is: sugar fluff. (I’m getting candy floss when we go to the carnival tomorrow.)

pants (vs trousers vs knickers): In England, “pants” and “knickers” mean the same thing—what Americans would term “panties” or “underpants.” (He saw me in my knickers!) Alternatively, the word “trousers,” which we would consider old-fashioned, is what they use for the American term “pants.” (That boy’s pants are showing; he should pull up his trousers.)

jumper: I have referred to this one before; it means what Americans would call “sweater.” (It was so cold today, I wore my new jumper.)

toilet: This is how you say “bathroom” or “restroom” in England. (I need to use the toilet.) In reality, it makes a good deal more sense, because when you say this in a restaurant, for instance, you certainly don’t intend to take a bath, nor do you intend to rest. In fact, there is probably no bath inside the room where you will be going. There will, however, be a toilet, and that is probably what you need to use. An acceptable alternative to “toilet” is “loo,” although this form is found less frequently in print (on signs, etc.).

dodgy: If you are from Rochester, you would recognize this word as meaning “sketchy.” Otherwise, if referring to a person, it means “suspicious” or “untrustworthy.” (That man looks awfully dodgy.) If referring to a place or thing, “dodgy” means “seedy” or “run-down” or “broken.” (That club looks dodgy. Let’s find another one.)

jelly: This is the English word for Jell-O. Again, like with Band-Aid, Americans—for some reason—insist upon using the name brand to refer to the noun. Here, they say “jelly” to mean “gelatin dessert” and “jam” to represent the fruit mush that you spread on toast. (I made some jelly today; it’s in the fridge.)

flapjack: Unlike the American definition meaning “pancake,” the English definition of this word refers to a food appears and tastes something like extra-gooey granola bars. To eat it, you simply cut yourself a slice from what looks like one large pan of uncut granola bars. (I think I’ll buy some flapjack from Tesco today for a snack.)

trainers: Americans sometimes argue whether to call this particular style of shoes “sneakers” or “tennis shoes.” The English call them trainers, a rather appropriate term, I think, because these are the shoes you wear when you train athletically. (I need some new trainers before I start running again; my old ones gave me shin splints.)

wicked: This word is akin to calling something “amazing” or “awesome.” (You’re coming to my party? Wicked.) However, it also has another more general use, which is to fill in for the word “very.” (That bag is wicked cool.)

purse: Not to be mistaken for “handbag,” which is how Americans use it, interchangeably. This word specifically means “women’s wallet,” the larger kind usually including a change purse and multiple slots for credit cards, etc. This item can be fit into a handbag, but one term cannot be substituted for the other. (I’m terrified of losing my purse on trips, because I always have to carry so much cash in it.)

uni: Short for “university.” (I’m going to uni today.) Not to be confused with “college,” which for the British is the level of school Americans would equate with high school.

Lost in Translation

We might all speak English here, but some meaning of words still gets lost in translation. I already explained this once, in the jumper/sweater conversation I had with Fluf (see the Little Things: clothing post). However, I come across more and more important ones. Take, for instance, the several nights ago when a bunch of us were hanging out in Fluf’s room, playing Psychiatrist (an exciting game involving a person dubbed “psychiatrist” questioning everyone in order to determine the “condition” of all the “patients” in the room). During this game, I kept having to describe what I was wearing. My response would be “gray pants and a gray T-shirt.” Every time I spoke, all the Brits in the room seemed to get a little smile on their faces. This remained a total mystery to me until finally, the other day, Fluf explained to me that I wear “trousers,” not pants. Now, my initial reaction to calling my jeans or sweatpants “trousers” was one of resistance, particularly because that terms seems so formal and old-fashioned. However, when he proceeded to inform me that “pants” means “underpants,” I quickly revised my mental vocabulary.

This is kind of similar to when I was first told to always call a “fannypack” a “bumbag.” Doesn’t “bumbag” sound like a silly term? It only sounds silly until you find out that “fanny,” in England, means vagina. That discovery gave a whole new meaning to my reading of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. As for “bumbags,” I now just avoid using the term at all.

The same night we played Psychiatrist in Fluf’s room, he offered us all dessert. “Ice cream and jelly,” was what he offered to go get from the kitchen. This sounded a bit odd, but I figured that the jelly must just be a substitute for other toppings like chocolate or caramel sauce, so I accepted the offer. Plus, Sophie and Urvi were terribly excited over eating this concoction, so I assumed it must be a really yummy combination. Then, Fluf brings in a container of ice cream and . . . a bowl of Jello.

Note to self: never ask for jelly for your toast at any restaurant. Weird looks will follow.

Fluf was appalled that we call “jelly” by its commercial name. Meanwhile, I had never noticed. Yet, I do take great pains not to refer to “tissues” as “Kleenex.” Another name-brand label I caught was Band-Aid. They’re called “plasters” here. If you ask for a Band-Aid, as I did at basketball practice one Friday, no one will admit to having one. However, say “plaster,” and all of a sudden, every girl starts rooting around in her bag. It was like magic.

This is not to accuse Americans of being the only ones to use name brands to label common products. Brits actually have their very own verb, generated from a name brand. They do not vaccuum their rooms; they “Hoover” them.