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Pooh-Bah
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Hello, Krzysztof, welcome aBoard. Please keep on reading AND posting - don't worry if you don't always get the grammar or spelling spot-on right, because none of us do (except tsuwm and Faldage, of course!  ) We all look forward to hearing more from you.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Krzysztof: welcome back, my friend. I wondered whether you were gone for good, or not. Please do stay and post, this time, won't you?
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newbie
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Thank you for your interseted in my person. I'm going to write post but It's very difficulty to conqure one's fears (in particular when I'm posting with masters
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You'll find, krzysztof, that we are more interested in ideas than in form. Although we may jump on little typos you'll note that we do so only on those of people who should know better or when it leads to some great wordplay.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Master? HUH! it is an accident of birth that i have "mastered" english.. and since i know zero, zip, nada in Polish, you have it over me by a long shot!
idiom you have it over me by a long shot!translated--You are more skillful than i am, (because you know both Polish and some english, and i know nothing in Polish..)
please contine to post-- fresh eyes will help us focus on idioms and words in a new way..
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Carpal Tunnel
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Krysztof, I always enjoyed reading your posts, and look forward to many more of them. Please continue posting!  I was wondering where you went off to.
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What does "nada in Polish" mean? (czy to jest po rosyjsku)
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Nada is Spanish for "nothing". It's in common use by USns.
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zero can mean nothing.. so can zip, and as faldage points out,nada is the spanish for nothing..
some language double words to intensifiy them --goody-goody is one English example... goody-goody is very good, or gleefully good.. and while there are other examples, this is not the most common way to intensify.
usually we add er or est (fat, fatter, fastest, slow, slower slowest) with er being a comparative term, and est being the superlative term.
but we will sometimes use 2 or 3 words different words with the similar meanings to intensify a statement.
zero, zip, nada-- (three ways of saying i know nothing)--in Polish!
drunkness is a characterist that often is intensified by using several words or idioms..
Lord, he was drunk--three sheets to the wind, blotto, totally soused!
any one of those terms, (three sheets to the wind, blotto, totally soused, means drunk. strung together, they intensify the simple statement "he was drunk", and describe someone who is extremely drunk.
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I'm very sorry but If you be think up a new words continuous I never learn to English.
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What does USns mean. I have never met "ns" abbreviation.
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On this board USns means people from the USA. It's not something you're going to find commonly used in other places.
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Why in American of English you apply so great deal abbreviations. It's obvious that conversation is pleasure but conversation with abbreviations is alike to conversation two robots and it is incomprehensible for the foreigns.
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The weather in Poland is very nice now. In Poland winter entirely finished although Polish proverb says April "plecieñ (in Polish in English it's means a word alike to alternate)" because alternate a little winter a little summer
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A lot of these abbreviations come from chat rooms where you have to type as fast as you can just to stay in one place. USns is a play on a substandard English version of the first person plural pronoun. The word us is the first person plural accusative and dative pronoun. Using it as the first person plural nominative is a sort of self depricating play on the notion that we USA people are ignorant yokels. We used to say merkin in a similar manner (short for American) but some of the non-USns couldn't shake the notion of the female pubic wig and their giggling was a little annoying, so we quit that.
You might want to PM Emanuela about her difficulties in keeping up with us, difficulties that she overcame to a large degree by coming to last summer's symposium we had in central Michigan.
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old hand
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Krzysztof, Faldage has given you an excellent explanation of one reason why USn is used here. There is another. I use it in preference to "American" simply because American literally means someone from the Americas, and that covers anybody from Juneau to Tierra del Fuego. USn appeals to the precisian in me.
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Because I don't know precisely geography US, I would like you to say me where are situated Juneau and Tierra del Fuego
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thanks sjm, your explanation appeals to the precisian (nice word) in me; and I couldn't figure out how to agreeably disagree with F. <g>
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USn appeals to the precisian in me
It is also a pun, a play on words, because it has two almost-appropriate meanings at the same time, and puns are greatly appreciated on AWAD (no matter how much we proclaim we condemn them).
USns is "us" meaning second-person-plural-accusative pronoun, and simultaneously it is US meaning United States [of America].
Then it is combined with the -n ending, meaning [sometimes] coming from, as in "America -> American;" and also a double meaning as an abbreviation of "one:" a "young one" becomes a "young'un" and then gets to be made plural and used (colloquially) in "we'uns" and "they'uns" and further mis-used as "us'ns." The apostrophe and the letter u are dropped, as unnecessary, in USns.
And finally it sounds informal, so there is the pretense of ignorance as justification for the substandard phrasing.
Who would have thought there could be so much involved in three or four innocent-looking little letters! :-)
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Carpal Tunnel
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where are situated Juneau and Tierra del Fuego
got a map? Juneau, Alaska Tierra Del Fuego-southern tip of South America http://www.mapquest.com/maps/
formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Juneau is in Alaska, Krzysztof, and Tierra del Fuego is an island off the coast of Argentina at the extreme Southern end of South America.
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Juneau is a city in Alaska, one of the most northern most cities on North America (but not the most!) because it is a port city, it is generally well know.
Tierra del Fuego is an area (not sure if it is a state, county, island, (group of islands?) at the southern most tip of south America, close to the the straights of Magellin.(part of Chile, i think)
smj could have said "St John's" which is a town in Newfoundland on the East coast of North America--and spanned the continents from east to west as well as north to south!
we have a canadian friend from there, (Hi Bean!)but to my mind, Newfoundland is not nearly as cold -and so i don't think of it as being as northern as any place in alaska-- as for actual latitude, i don't know!
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panie krzysztofie, usns to po prostu skrót na oznaczenie mieszkañców stanów zjednoczonych. z tej prostej przyczyny, ¿e u¿ywany przez nas zwrot amerykanie nie odpowiada dok³adnie rzeczywistoœci, bo okreœla wszystkich mieszkañców ameryk - pó³nocnej, po³udniowej i œrodkowej. ale na polski tego siê raczej nie da przet³umaczyæ :). pozdrawiam
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Wot rav said........(I think!)
I'm fluent in Spanish but Polish is beyond me.
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and i'm fluent in polish but spanish is beyond me ;P
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Pooh-Bah
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If you admit to being lacking in polish, consuelo amigo, then wy not go to finishing school? 
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wy not go to finishing school?
But Polish and Finnish aren't even close to each other, linguistically.
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No hablo Español, but isn't Consuelo our amiga, whose polished nails might avenge insult?
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Now stop it you guys! You'll have poor krzysztofie's head spinning. They've gone off on a tangent, krzysztofie, something that often happens around here. polish means to bring a shine to as in : "Here is a cloth, polish the table." whereas Polish (capital P) is a language. polish can also mean to refine behaviour. Finishing can mean to bring to best conclusion, and can mean a school young women could attend to learn the nicities of etiquette thereby "finishing" the education a lady needed to take her place in society. The schools were private and required a fairly sizeable outlay of money for tuition - so the young ladies who aspired to be finished were generally "well off" financuially. It is an old fashioned idea mostly tied to the days when women hoped for marriage, motherhood, running a home, managing servants, socializing to promote the husband career and/or ambitions. Thankfully, more careers than housewife, schoolteacher or skivvy are open to women today! No longer have to marry to gain a place in "society." Talk about tangents ! Whew ... I may have just set a record!
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What's a skivvy?
I've heard it used in the plural to mean underwear... any connection?
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skivvy= lowly female servant that's what my dictionary says
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Why in American of English you apply so great deal abbreviations. It's obvious that conversation is pleasure but conversation with abbreviations is alike to conversation two robots and it is incomprehensible for the foreigns.Since nobody actually® bothered answering Krzysztof's request for comprehension... y'all asked for *it... Some would disagree with the notion that conversation is an "obvious pleasure" and I, for one, do whatever is necessary to make it not obvious (the pleasure part that is  )... and your analogy with robots, however understandable, would be more appropriately describing what would happen if we all spoke the same language (IMHO). Does this make things incomprehesible for the foreigns... I suppose so, and I would apologize first and then take time to explain. However, I wouldn't give the *native English/American speaker that same courtesy... they're gonna have to LIU or ask for an explaination, but rarely do (ask, that is). Some say it's not worth asking about and I say it's not worth making comprehensible in the first place, which, of course, explains the disparity between our views about conversation being an "obvious pleasure" but says nothing about an intent for understanding. The words people use and what those words mean to them are just as (if not ocasionally more so) intrinsic to commmunication as the information imbedded within them... which shows up nicely in your original inquiry. Now, as to the *real answer... http://ad-free-message-board.com/abbreviations.html
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skivvy= lowly female servant
that's what my dictionary says Thanks, Rav!!  
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old hand
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>skivvy
I had never heard the female servant definition before. Up here, it's normally used to refer to a sweatshirt-type garment thingy.
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Pooh-Bah
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Both, actually, sjm. My mother used to inform us kids that she wasn't our skivvy. We, um, disagreed!
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I collect cartoons about writing and about puns. Somewhere around i have a BC strip from years ago. Clam A says to Clam B, "B, what did the car wax say to the furniture wax?" B replies, "Now stop that, you know we can't do polish jokes here."
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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Ha! I loved the "pillar of truth" series in BC, myself. "Whitey will prevail!". ZOT!
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what did the car wax say to the furniture wax?" ... "Now stop that, you know we can't do polish jokes here."
Reminds me of the comic set in a newsroom... man says into phone "He's not here, he's out waxing poetic." The next frame shows a man polishing a car and the license tag reads "Poetic."
Skivvy :[ according to OED - "(noun and verb) a female domestic servant; a person whose job is regarded menial or poorly paid; (noun) underwear comprising vest and underpants; an undershirt or vest; a thin, high-necked pullover."
In my youth the word skivvy implied that the person (male or fenmale) was uneducated - perhaps only able to write their name - if that - and more probably unable to read or write, often an immigrant who barely spoke English. The skivvy was often taken advantage of by mean employers.
And I mean "mean" in the meanest way!!!!
In some ways, times haven't changed much have they?
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journeyman
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"don't like the weather? wait five minutes, it'll be different!"
I've heard that for Texas. Is it used for other places too?
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