On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 04:52:22PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote: > On 12.05.14 21:28, Mark Filipak wrote: > > I listen to the BBC almost all the time. I think the hosts butcher > > English as thoroughly as the average American. > > True, the modern BBC's English on its website is egregious, with > adjectives morphing to nouns, as in "The abducted Nigeria girls ...", > grating like fingernails on a blackboard. (Any pretence that it is a > special newspaper language (Headline-ish) is entirely unconvincing when > the website does have room for the extra 'n'.) Mind you, our Aussie ABC, > once as pukka as the BBC of yore, also leaves a lot to be desired. > > Apropos quotes, have I lobbed here from a parallel universe, or did we > in the distant past quote film titles and similar text strings, e.g. > "One flew over the cuckoo's nest"? Now they're just capitalised, and so > run into preceding and following capitalisations, resulting in > ambiguity.
Yes! Now that you mention it, I've noticed that too. Even a different font would be good, italic or something. > The American dialect is not too hard to understand if a few translations > are kept in mind. E.g. > > Ah-loo-me-numb = Aluminium (Am. spell. = Aluminum, I kid you not.) Aluminium is a tricky one. http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/06/aluminum-vs-aluminium.html > sodder = solder (But how is "flux" then pronounced?) > offov = from (Maybe it comes from Russian?) You forgot 'eggs it' = exit :) and 'artic' = arctic > Erik > (Scurrying for cover) -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X
