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#1740 05/27/00 04:59 PM
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jmh Offline OP
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> Should we lament the ubiquitious telly?

Actually its quite good to see another nation getting in on the act - we've been Americanised for years - why not a bit of healthy conversion to Antipodean-speak.

Not sure about South African, I always think of Meryl Streep's "When I was in Oeuf-rica".




#1741 05/27/00 05:57 PM
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>>I always think of Meryl Streeps "When I was in Oeuf-rica".<<

...aah yes, but remember that Karen Blixen was Danish, and the action took place much further North

Some of the problems with Sowf Effrikan Inglush is the fact that the Black languages (and there are 11 official languages in Sowf Effrika) have very different vowel sounds, that don't "translate" well to English. "Parking" becomes "Packing", and "work" becomes "wek".

There was a book published in the '60s that offered a guide to the pronounciation of Sowf Effrikan Inglush; it became the sole source of reference by the BBC at the time! The funny thing was that the book was written with tongue firmly in cheek!

But I guess I've gone off-topic...





#1742 05/29/00 11:49 AM
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Hi David:

Just to keep this thread off-topic a little longer.

There was a similar book published in Orstralia in 1965 called ‘Let stalk strine’ by Afferbeck Lauder [say it aloud!] which provided some useful definitions (for stewnce, vistas and New Strines) of phrases such as ‘Gloria Soame’, ‘egg nishner’, ‘tea natures’, ‘sex’; explained such questions as ‘Where cheque etcher londger ray?’; and told the true story of Snow White and the Severed Wharves.



#1743 05/29/00 12:35 PM
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Presumably sex is the answer to seven less one?


#1744 05/30/00 11:40 AM
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jmh: We in Oz would consider that NZ-speak.

In fact, Prof Lauder has this entry -

Sex: Large cloth bags used as containers for such things as potatoes, cement etc. As: sex of manure, corn sex etc. Also known as 'heshing bairgs'.


#1745 05/30/00 09:31 PM
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Jumping to this hemisphere--
I went to school with a guy from our smallest state.
If asked where he was from, he'd say, "Rho D'island".
He did not speak Kentuckian at all well. The poor thing
had never even eaten cornbread, and thought okra was a
Japanese vegetable!


#1746 05/31/00 02:00 AM
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Jackie,

This is a worry! From the subtext I assume that okra is something that one eats. I though that it was used to make rope. Indeed, I even looked it up (!) (Shorter OED) and was no further enlightened, although it did say that one could thicken soup with it.


#1747 05/31/00 06:48 AM
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I thought it was an Indian (Asian) vegetable (bindi?) - a short green sticky pointy thing.


#1748 05/31/00 08:03 AM
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>>I thought that it was used to make rope.>>

lusy,
Aren't you thinking of copra, which is a by-product of coconuts?

Okra is a tall tropical Asian annual plant (Abelmoschus esculentus) widely cultivated in warm regions for its edible, mucilaginous green pods. Also called gumbo

Thanks to http://www.gurunet.com



#1749 05/31/00 12:22 PM
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Okra, as I may have said before, is also called 'ladies' fingers' in India. Bindi, or bhindi, is a close transcription of the word in Hindi (wish I had a Devenagari font to show you how it is spelled in that language).

cheer

the sunshine warrior

ps. Bhindi and karela (from the Kipling/nilghai thread) are amongst my least favorite vegetables, along with, as I said, eggplant/aubergine.


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