Language

I recognise this:

After all, as Chuck Berry noted, rock’n’roll’s not hard: it’s got a backbeat, you can’t lose it, any old time you choose it.

It’s a piece ’bout how no one plays rock and roll any more. But that last line there. I recognise that. It happens sometimes. You know what the last line is going to be. Actually, Miles Kington used to say that once you’ve got the last line the rest of the piece writes itself. So everything just builds to that.

You also erm and ahhh a bit about exactly how it’s going to be put and threaten righteous violence upon any sub who even dreams of changing it and so on. But the nub, the idea is there even as you pitch the concept to an editor. And you hug that line to your chest, it’s proper squeal for piggy stuff. “I know how it’s going to e e end, doo de doo doo” etc as you dance around the keyboard.

OK, perhaps not quite that much outwardly expressed joy but you get the idea.

They smashed glass displays, grabbing the precious jewellery, but as alarms rang out in the museum alerting guards, the robbers quickly left, escaping on motorbikes. The entire caper took less than 10 minutes, according to the French interior minister, Laurent Nunez.

Caper has the “joyous” connotation to it – you can caper about after all. The Italian Job was a caper. So, maybe…

Obviously. As Onan’s Sin is to do it alone, just the one….

The Last Journey review – Sweden’s Ant and Dec hit the road with octogenarian dad

Do they also have a Norwegian* accent?

*That is what Geordie is, really…..

Only talking Italian will do on Venice market stalls
Critics have branded the move racist but councillors insist it is needed to save struggling markets from closure amid chronic population decline

Venetians don’t speak Italian, they speak Veneto.

This being a truth of most of Italy. The only people who really speak Italian are the Florentines – because that’s the variant of the Romance languages which was chosen to be “Italian”.

This is why Italian is so easy to learn as a language. For you don’t need to learn it very well – it’s a second language for pretty much everyone else too.

Almost half of white men are self-censoring at work for fear of causing offence, a poll has found.

In one sense the two are the same thing of course. Not shouting “You crazy fuck!” at the bird tippexing her screen is both manners and self-censorship.

Of course, the meaninghs do change getting toweard the extremes.

The Egyptian language survived the arrival of the Greeks, the Romans and Christianity, but not that of Arabic and Islam in the seventh century AD. No one quite knows why.

Because the Arabs were settler colonialists intent on genocide of the civilisation they conquered.

‘S obvious, innit?

A BBC Arabic journalist who reposted anti-Israel tweets has won more than £14,000 in a race case.

An employment tribunal heard that Safaa Jibara, a colleague, said Ahmed Rouaba’s speech was of a “Bedouin character” after he allegedly shouted at bosses.

Mr Rouaba was awarded the sum after claiming the comments made by Mr Jibara made him appear “uncivilised” and “savage”.

So calling someone “rural” is an offence now, is it?

Still stills tho’ eh?

Miss Lou’s use of Jamaican Creole, called Patois (Patwa), brought new appreciation to the language from the 1940s onwards. Until then, English had been the language of education and art – Patwa was shunned in official settings. The independence era of the 1950s and early 60s coincided with the rise of Patwa in literature and music, and by the 1970s it was firmly embedded in reggae, writing and performance. Miss Lou went on to produce and host a Jamaican children’s TV show called Ring Ding, which broadcast from 1970-82.

Despite this, there has been little national desire or governmental effort to recognise a formalised Jamaican Creole, and English remains the only official language of the island. Though Patwa is the first language of many Jamaicans, there is still a stigma associated with its use. This is unsurprising for a language formed as a medium for enslaved people from different parts of Africa and the Americas to communicate with one another and their enslavers on Caribbean sugar plantations.

But Patwa is not “broken English”. While English was the lexifier (base language), Patwa finds much of its structure and vocabulary in the west and central African languages of the people who formed the majority Black population of the island. Whether or not the government recognises it, Jamaican Creole has consistent grammatical rules as well as generations of native speakers that qualify it as a language.

That’s why it’s a Creole. Because it has those internally consistent rules over its use. It’s more than just a mashup of commonly understood words.

The Caribbean’s packed with ’em as well. Someone once described Papiamento to me as Spanish numbers, English words and West African grammar.

A train driver whose sacking has prompted a 56-day trade union strike fell asleep at the controls and failed to officially report it, it has emerged.

The Aslef union organised the eight-week walkout at Hull Trains from March 31 after one of its members was dismissed.

Mick Whelan, the general secretary, condemned Hull Trains for its “failure to act responsibly” and suggested the driver had been sacked because he had reported a “safety concern”.

But a letter seen by The Telegraph reveals the unnamed driver had experienced “fatigue matters” while at the controls of Hull Trains’ 125mph services on more than one occasion.

Aslef is demanding that the driver be fully reinstated to his job, but Hull Trains bosses believe he poses an unacceptable safety risk to passengers. Martijn Gilbert, the managing director, said the discovery of the fatigue incidents presented “a safety risk that we could not ignore”.

A fun euphemism, don’t you think? As with “the wrong type of snow” how lovely it is that the British railway system enriches our language.

Given that I live in foreign I’ve long wondered what the correct English for that little postprandial is. Now I know, I suffer a “fatigue incident” after lunch.

An EasyJet pilot narrowly missed a mountain range by less than 800ft with 190 passengers on board.

Paul Elsworth, 61, was flying the budget airliner from Manchester to the Egyptian resort of Hurghada last month when he flew too close to a mountain range as he descended to land.

The flight on Feb 2 was travelling at an altitude of 3,100ft, approximately 800ft above the range’s tallest point – when pilots normally fly over it at 6,000ft.

The mountain moved, obviously. Geology, eh?

Crowley, the company which manages Stena Immaculate, said the incident was an “allision”, using an obscure nautical term that refers to a moving ship striking a stationary object or other ship.

As to the actual crash:

Tom Sharpe, a 27-year Royal Navy veteran and captain of a number of warships, said of Solong’s voyage: “It seems that she may have sailed from harbour, disembarked her pilot, set the helm to auto using routing information saved from previous voyages, then maintained the exact same course and speed for about nine hours before driving her bows into the Stena Immaculate’s port side.”

Without looking to see if someone was anchored in the way….

Igot into my one and only physical fight when I was in seventh grade. It was right after school let out, the other boy was called Nathan, and moments before I launched at him, he knocked the books out of my brother Casey’s hands and called him “retarded”. More than 20 years after that scuffle, I still wonder how often Casey, a now 35-year-old autistic man, is called that word. Given the current political landscape, I’m certain he’s going to start hearing it more often.

The R-word is in a new era of prominence in rightwing, chronically online circles – especially on 4chan and X. A favorite of those who currently hold power or stand to gain power under Donald Trump’s second administration, the slur is being used with gleeful relish to belittle and mock ideological enemies.

In the past year, Elon Musk has used the R-word at least 16 times on X. He thought Ben Stiller was one for endorsing Kamala Harris; so was the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz for comparing Tesla to Enron.

Elsewhere, brash, right-leaning personalities such as the political commentator Dave Rubin, and Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan of the podcast Red Scare, frequently throw the word around with provocative irreverence, attempting to discredit those who don’t align with their politics.

And people using the word retard is to bring back eugenics and all that. Hateful.

Except this is to entirely miss how language works. We shaved monekys see something then use a word to describe it. If we get told off for using that word – that’s naughty, hateful etc – then we still see that same thing and will use some other word to describe it.

Therefore the progression through idiot, cretin, moron, retard and short busser. Because the thing exists – differently mentally abled – and therefore a word will be used to describe it. And, as these things work, that word used will become an insult.

Shrug.

People should not use colloquial phrases like “a piece of cake” and “kill two birds with one stone” because they are “very British-English” and may not be understood by foreigners, a university has suggested.

The University of Cardiff has told students that such idioms do not usually translate well with other cultures, “not because people have poor English skills but because this is very British-English”.

You should expect the people around you to be speaking British English.

On the other hand, the Russian, the Swede and the Frog will, if they meet, converse in English and do just fine. It’s only when the Brit turns up with all the weird colloquialisms that there will be difficulties. Advice to use simple, non-colloquial, phrasing when addressing foreigners is very sensible indeed.

Remember everyone, we do not speak more loudly at foreigners because they are deaf. We speak more slowly, simply, at foreigners becaue they are stupid.

A French court has ruled that the seaside city of Biarritz must rename its La Negresse historic district, possibly named after a black woman, after a case brought by activists who argued it was an outdated legacy of colonialism.

The ruling caps a long-running attempt by activists to force authorities in the resort on the Atlantic coast to drop what they say are “racist and sexist” placenames.

The activists want city officials to rename the La Negresse district as well as one of the city’s streets, rue de la Negresse.

La Negresse is the feminine version of the French word for negro (negre), translating into English as “negro woman”.

Of course, I live in a place called Sao Joao de Negrilhos. Which really does translate, directly, as St John of the Little Negroes. Even for the Portuguese this is a little close to the bone so if you press the locals for a translation then it, well, umm, OK, could sorta mean that. I guess. And online there’s a claim that in the Beja dialect – we are in the Beja region – “Negrilho” really means “elm tree”. Well, umm, OK, could sorta mean that. I guess.

And it really could too. The idea that a village out in the boonies of the Alentejo really had much to do with the slave trade would be odd, most odd.

According to the late Japan-based naturalist CW Nicol, the musky scent of the Japanese weasel gave rise to the saying itachi no saigo-pei. That literally translates as “the weasel’s final fart”, but is used to refer to the last word or act of an unpopular or dislikable person.

Enough, at least, to consider adopting this phrasing….

“The weasel’s final fart of the Starmer speech was to….”

A relaxation of official rules around the correct use of apostrophes in German has not only irritated grammar sticklers but triggered existential fears around the pervasive influence of English.

Establishments that feature their owners’ names, with signs like “Rosi’s Bar” or “Kati’s Kiosk” are a common sight around German towns and cities, but strictly speaking they are wrong: unlike English, German does not traditionally use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. The correct spelling, therefore, would be “Rosis Bar”, “Katis Kiosk”, or, as in the title of a recent viral hit, Barbaras Rhabarberbar.

However, guidelines issued by the body regulating the use of Standard High German orthography have clarified that the use of the punctuation mark colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph (“idiot’s apostrophe”) has become so widespread that it is permissible – as long as it separates the genitive ‘s’ within a proper name.

We should ship them some of ours – soon relax that rule again, no?

Crying, once viewed merely as a distress siren, is now viewed as part of the array of pre-speech sounds that pave the way for future communication. “That’s how language comes into the brain of babies,” Wermke said. “They learn the musical features of the surrounding languages. The music is always first, it’s like a scaffold for the words.”

Which is annoying. Because I’m pretty good at accents. Both code switching in English and picking up the sounds of other languages (I’ve only ever learned, other than schoolboy French, by ear).

But can’t carry a tune even if issued with a tin can to do so in.

Workplace diversity programmes have led to middle-class professionals speaking differently to how they did in the 1990s, a study has found.

However, individuals in working-class jobs that have had less influence from equality initiatives still talk in the same way now as they did in the mid-90s.

Linguistic experts have found that people working in middle-class jobs such as managerial roles, in politics or within the university sector have adopted more “resonance” in the way they speak since the advent of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) programmes around the turn of the Millennium.

Resonance is a feature of conversations where people imitate and adopt the words of others in their own language.

It is a well-established aspect of human conversations and more common in some cultures than others. It is also a trait often absent in how autistic people speak.

So, code switching.

It used to be possible to speak to everyone in RP. That was rather the point of RP, it was the reference version of the language that everyone understood even if not spoke.

Now that not everyone does learn RP it’s necessary to code switch into the mubled argot they do understand. This might not be an advance.

Given the vagaries of English spelling:

It was a shock and awe tactic that divided opinions, with some critics branding it a “Gerald Ratner approach”, the British jewellery magnate who called his own company’s products “total c—”.

Given that I have a long memory I remember what he actually said – total crap.

But given what is usually elided that actually reads, to a modern, as “total cunt” which doesn’t really quite work, does it?