Bruce Moore writes: …The phrase the Bradman of is commonly used in Australia to designate someone who is the best in their field or the finest exponent of some skill.
READ MOREMay, 2010
The Broken Record: Australians are too monolingual.
William Steed writes: Tony Abbot says our students aren’t learning enough foreign languages. That’s not news, Tony. We’re well aware that monolingualism is a widespread issue here, and it’s an omnipresent “I’m concerned about our place in the world” political statement. As it happens, I agree with you (perhaps for the first time). Australian students [...]
READ MOREBudget reply: keywords are on the money
Annabelle Lukin writes:… While I have never met Claire Bowern, the deprecating tone of her post on my small study of budget speeches is familiar. It’s what all to often happens when linguists with different ideas about what language is, and how and why it should be studied, rub up against each other. Linguistics, for some reason, is a ‘take-no-prisoners’ kind of discipline.
READ MORE
What is bullshit?
Piers Kelly writes: … Fibs come in many different flavours and some are more palatable to us than others. In what circumstances is dishonesty forgiveable?
READ MORESilly (fuk)
Aidan Wilson, phonetician extraordinaire, investigates the spoonerised title of Crikey’s language blog. But be warned: this post may contain linguistic terminology that could be hazardous to your health.
READ MORE
On fake Asian politeness
Aung Si writes:
“…The people were very polite to me, but you could always tell what they were really thinking…”. I realised he was actually talking about the dreaded “fake Asian politeness”.
Speak your home language but do it in English please!
Greg Dickson writes:…What sort of fool is capable of saying something as ridiculous as this?:”We want people to speak their home language for the first four hours but we want it predominantly done in English.”
READ MORE
A bit off the money for budget ‘keywords’
Claire Bowern writes:… Some busy people at Macquarie have used a “specialised linguistic computer program” to analyse the last five budget speeches. They have discovered the “Top 20″ words in each speech. Michelle Grattan has run with it, prompting one Fully (sic)er to comment that “there may be no ‘I’ in budget, but there’s certainly a big one in gullible…”
READ MORE
Researching your own language from your own remote NT community? Kah-mon!
Greg Dickson writes: …kangu actually means ‘belly’ in Dalabon and wokarrun literally means something like ‘telling yourself a story’. But kangu wokarrun means much more than ‘telling yourself a story in your belly’
READ MORE
Ass vs Arse
Piers Kelly writes: …let me explain why I like ‘arse’. For me it’s all about the ‘r’. It leaps off the page with a meaty trill, evoking at once the hairy bum of a commando-kilted highlander and the war cry of a Cornish pirate.
READ MORE
