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ForwardI am having trouble reading the newspaper with all the images of David and Pauline naked. Desist!
Monday, April 9, 2007
DT Caoimh comments
I am having trouble reading the newspaper with all the images of David and Pauline naked. Desist!
Daliy Telegraph by Caoimh
Your comment has been published:
I am starting a tourist venture to Guantanamo. Tourists may spend their time in Hicks' cell, experiencing good ole American southern hospitality, chained, insulted, tortured.
What a gas!
I am starting a tourist venture to Guantanamo. Tourists may spend their time in Hicks' cell, experiencing good ole American southern hospitality, chained, insulted, tortured.
What a gas!
Daily Telegraph comments by Caoimh
Your comment has been published: The Sheik is an Australian and as far as I am concerned he can say what he likes. Everyone, especially the hard Right of politics, wants to stifle this man's opinion all the time. Hey! What Howard and Downer say on matters political I find to be offensive but I don't call for these two cretins to be ejected from Oz. Nor can I support calls for Hilali to be kicked out of HIS country. |
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| show details | 06:45 (2 hours ago) | ||||||
Your comment has been published:
David Graham is definitely the worst dancer since that bloke who won last year. So David's up there with a big chance. What a laugh! I love it!
- Show quoted text -
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Aussie Teacher Arrested in Torture Capital of China
Recorded a day after my arrest [CHINA]A simple account of an extraordinary event: [Recorded a day after my arrest]Yesterday the school´s principal, head teacher, a member of Fujian´s Public Security Bureau, Zhou Chao, Zhou Ming [the driver] and I travelled to Jiamusi to file documents pertaining to my employment as a teacher of English and to extend my visa while these documents were being processed. We went straight to the Jiamusi PSB for this. Immediately upon entering the PSB building we were ushered into an office and suddenly the others were swept from the office and I was left alone with these two female members of the PSB. One was a translator and the other the chief of police [from what I could understand]. It was clear to me from the start that I was being ´grilled´ for breaking the terms of my tourist visa by teaching at Fujin Bilingual Primary School. I told them that I had been invited to Fujin by the Fujin government and that I was on a tourist visa due to the fact that I had been asked to travel quickly to Fujin to facilitate the September opening ceremony and to be in place for the students when the school began to operate. They asked me who asked me to come to China and I told them many times that it was Zhou Chao and the entire Fujin community.I was then moved from the ´visitors´ chair to a chair in front of the police chief. She exited and another plain clothes policeman began to grill me again. I repeated what I had told the previous policewoman and he, too, exited, to be replaced by a nasty type. This nasty type was nasty. His name is Zhang le and his number is 050150. He had three stars on his shoulder and he did not speak good English. He interrogated me in Chinese for two hours!I told these two police [Zhang Le and the female translator] exactly what had happened to me since my arrival in China. Zhang Le continued to not understand what I was saying and she kept telling me that Chinese people are friendly. The atmosphere inside that office was horrible. I knew what they were up to and I was not in a position to tell other than the truth. I would never lie, anyway, as I am man of principle and lying is not part of my nature. Zhang Le kept asking me questions and every time I tried to correct his misinterpretation he shouted at me and told me to be quiet. It was beginning to become serious. He was writing a statement of interview. I produced a record of my email communication with the government-sponsored agency in Beijing that had initially contacted me to ask me to come to Fujin to teach English. This obviously had no effect as neither of these two police had a good understanding of English. They were intent upon some other purpose. She, the translator [she was uniformed by I could not identify her rank, but she was an older woman] asked me questions such as ´Do you think China is a dirty place?´ and ´Why did you come to China?´ and ´Do you think Chinese people are friendly?´ and ´How old are you?´ and ´How many children do you have?´ ... the questions went on and on and on, repeating and changing course and I knew the techniques of interrogation. I was, of course, a former army intelligence officer and I knew about these techniques. But I had nothing to hide. My demeanour was controlled as their grilling became more ludicrous and insulting. I was asked repeatedly for names of Liu Jie, the agency manager in Beijing; Zhou Chao; the principal of the school, etc., and dates. They kept getting the dates wrong and when I tried to correct them, Zhang Le shouted at me and kept me quiet. He continued to write his statement in Chinese. While he was writing, she asked me other questions that were personal. ´What are the ages of your children. How old are you? Why did you come to China. Do you think the Chinese people are friendly? What is the age of your youngest child? Your oldest child? Have you worked in China before? There were so many questions that it would drain my emotions to write them all here. It would take me hours to repeat the entire interrogation.Then it was finished. I had to be fingerprinted and have my fingerprints stamped on this record of interview. She had read in bad English her interpretation of the statement and although the facts were, as she said them, incoherent and illogically phrased, I was forced to fingerprint many parts of the statement, on each of the four pages, and to sign each page. I had no recourse to legal advice; I had no access to the other members of our party, including Fujin´s PSB representative [who had been in uniform at the opening of our school two days previous]. I was isolated and detained and not free to do anything of my own free will. The ultimate indignity came when, after having signed the statement, I asked to relieve myself at the WC. They ignored me. I have a weak bladder and a nervous disposition when it comes to urination. I can never urinate in public. This has been a medical/psychological condition since I was a young man. In forty seven years I had never been able to urinate in public or in view of another person. Finally after many protests from me I was taken under custody to the WC along the passage. It is a poor toilet in terms of hygiene. The woman´s section was next to the man´s an I was about to enter the woman´s toilet when Zhang Le shouted at me to use the other. These two toilets occupied the same room. So I entered the men´s toilet and tried to close the door to give myself privacy. Zhang Le came inside with me. I protested by waving my arms at him to leave. He ignored my request and instead indicated that he would turn his back. This was no good. I could not pee in his presence. The toilet space was disgusting. Above my head was a sheet of plastic, like a shower curtain, suspended just above my head by a piece of wood. There was a leak from the toilet on the next floor [it was obviously the toilet area of each floor of the building] and this sheet of plastic was there to catch the leaks. It had been there quite a long time as it too leaked on anyone standing under it. The floor of this toilet was being splashed from above and I was ´rained upon´ from above.So we returned to the same office and the interrogation process began again. I was then not in the mood to go along with them. I continued to protest, not about the interview, but about Zhang lLe´s toilet behaviour. I told them I had a shy disposition, that I needed to urinate, and hat I could not urinate in front of Zhang Le. I told them both that I was not a criminal and I needed to urinate in private. She kept telling me that Zhang Le was not preventing me from urinating; that he went with me because I did not know the way. He went with me for my own protection. This was palpably a lie for I repeatedly told her that he stood inside the toilet with me and would not leave. She began to laugh at me. Other police entered the office from time to time and one woman police officer also began to laugh at me. Every time I protested against this unseemly behaviour by the police, Zhang Le moved toward me in a threatening manner. When I stood up to show that I wanted to urinate, he shouted at me to sit. He waved his hands at me and his face was obviously in a dark mood and in English he told me ´stop!´. He knew a few words of English but his comprehension was very poor. After two hours Zhou Chao entered office. He also had been interrogated by the police officer in plain clothes who first interrogated me. I told Zhou Chao about the toilet incident and to his great credit turned to Zhang Le and said hard words in Chinese to him. Apparently while I was being interrogated, Zhou Chao had phoned the Mayor of Fujin about our predicament. The Mayor in turn phoned Fujin´s head of the Public Security Bureau who, coincidentally was in Jiamusi at the time. The Fujin PSB head immediately came to this building and after some time Zhou Chao was released and he in turn came into the office where I was being interrogated and told me that my visa was being extended. The interrogation was over. But I had not finished with Zhang Le. I told him that he had been wrong to deny me my toilet privacy and that the female police were rude and wrong in laughing at my medical condition. The female translator kept telling me that she was only doing her job and she had to do as her leader told her. She said this five times. It was now very apparent to everyone there that this whole unsavoury business had been carried too far; that I was a guest of the Fujin government and that Zhang Le had abused his authority. I was photographed fo my visa extension, and offered no apology from anyone except Zhou Chao. He shouldered the blame.I had been interrogated for two hours and detained against my will. I had been denied fundamental freedom to urinate privately.The after we were released and out on the street again, we learned that the Fujin PSB head had told the PSB Fujin representative [who had accompanied us from Fujin to Jiamusi], to join him in a meeting there at Jiamusi for the following two or three hours. As we had brought her to Jiamusi, we obviously could not leave without her. But I would not sty in Jiamusi longer than was necessary and I said that I needed to return to Fujin because of my worsening medical and psychological condition. I could not eat with my nerves entangled as they were. During the interrogation, the female translator repeatedly told me not to worry. She also repeated told me I had broken Chinese law. She repeated these two contradictory statements for two hours. Although I had never behaved in a subservient mood, nor had I challenged their authority to question me, I had become severely traumatised. I had been told that I could not teach English while in China on a tourist visa. Yet I had been asking for my Z visa since my arrival, I had told the agency manager, Liu Jie, that I always came to China on a Z visa but she had told me that she was a government-sanctioned agent and that the government of Fujin had authorised my being there as a teacher and that the Z visa would be no trouble. So what do I do now? On the one hand I have been asked to continue teaching and on the other I have the dreadful experience of that interrogation and the multiple warnings by the PSB not to teach.My wife does not know about this yet; she has just purchased her ticket to China and is waiting her own tourist visa to travel to China.I know that this experience will deter her from coming. I would not want her to go through what I have endured yesterday.If this were any other country of the world that I know, I would now have recourse to justice and have Zhang Le severely punished for his actions and the PSB of Jiamusi would be under official scrutiny. An De RuiESL Teacher [2006-12-21, 02:50:00][ID: 1794-29208]
Please leave right away. Go to Thailand. You sounds like a wonderful teacher, and they don´t deserve you. Poor kids.There is ONE mistake that you did make. NEVER EVER sign anything under those conditions. You are signing your own death warrant. I am really sorry to hear that. Please leave that place. Go to Taiwan, Thailand, Phillipinese, Japan. They don´t deserve you.Let this be a warning to all who go to China.IT IS COMMUNIST!!! YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS!Peace!Sigh. [2007-01-19, 02:39:00][ID: 1794-31003]
Wow that is an incredible story ,I hope you can find the courage to make the right choice .J-F from Canada [2007-01-19, 04:14:00][ID: 1794-31012]
This is all a mess! It is obvious that the person having made you come to China has done a mistake. In fact, you should come to China with a Z visa before entering the country, all the rest is contrary to Chinese law. Since your employer did not handle the matter correctly for you, irt seems that they tried to get out of that mess on your back!Never trust the Chinese!It is my experience.....Sima Wo [2007-01-22, 01:37:00][ID: 1794-31187]
Please leave right away. Go to Thailand. You sounds like a wonderful teacher, and they don´t deserve you. Poor kids.There is ONE mistake that you did make. NEVER EVER sign anything under those conditions. You are signing your own death warrant. I am really sorry to hear that. Please leave that place. Go to Taiwan, Thailand, Phillipinese, Japan. They don´t deserve you.Let this be a warning to all who go to China.IT IS COMMUNIST!!! YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS!Peace!Sigh. [2007-01-19, 02:39:00][ID: 1794-31003]
Wow that is an incredible story ,I hope you can find the courage to make the right choice .J-F from Canada [2007-01-19, 04:14:00][ID: 1794-31012]
This is all a mess! It is obvious that the person having made you come to China has done a mistake. In fact, you should come to China with a Z visa before entering the country, all the rest is contrary to Chinese law. Since your employer did not handle the matter correctly for you, irt seems that they tried to get out of that mess on your back!Never trust the Chinese!It is my experience.....Sima Wo [2007-01-22, 01:37:00][ID: 1794-31187]
Australians can't speak English
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
--From How to Build A Universe That Won’t Fall Apart in Two Days by Philip K. Dick
Australians can’t speak English
I was brought up to speak English correctly. I could never understand why people spoke poorly. If I could speak well, then why the bloody hell can’t others? This question has vexed me all my life and now I want to explode my desperation onto paper and see if I can rouse the apathy and twist it until it rages …
I began this work many years ago and gave up in frustration. But the agony of listening to morons purporting to be English speakers inspired me to start again; this time my invective shall be explicitly interwoven into my denunciation of the sad fact that our English grammar and spelling have collapsed.
Where are the standards that governed the way we speak?
Don’t answer that! It doesn’t matter two pips about the whys and wherefores of whom is to blame. It is simply a fact of life that any idiot with a squeaky voice and a nice hairdo can walk into any radio or television station and get a job as a speaker of English.
This work is not about other languages. It is about English. It is not an attempt to push the grammar cart back to the Fifties. It is a logical attempt to drive home to imbeciles in the media that whatever nonsense they write, say or spit is heard by a modicum of intelligent people who know how to discern whether or not that which is spake is actually what is meant to be spake.
I read a headline in the SMH that told us readers that Australian troops would be ‘bought’ back home. I wrote to the now unworthy newspaper and asked if they implied some form of ‘pay back’ or ‘buy back’. You hear it every day in the media that something is bought rather than brought, as if the ‘r’ is irrelevant as long as the meaning implied is inferred.
Whoa! Step back from that minefield, sergeant! There are many who cannot differentiate between infer and imply and I think we’ll tackle that one later in the book.
Gareth Evans explained patiently to his audience that what was important was what was implied rather than what was said. That explanation was apt as far as the media were concerned. For decades the media have scorned pedantry and have gone the way of the progressives of the seventies, ignoring grammar and spelling as anachronisms of a dinosaur age.
I wish not to seek explanations for this behaviour. Suffice it is that I express my derision for those persons upon whom, somehow, the onus for our language has been entrusted.
I once called myself the Apostle of Apostrophe as I retaliated against the upsurge in miss-placed apostrophes. There they were, everywhere! None could write a plural without its becoming possessive, as if six boys could possibly become six boy’s.
My original title for the copious amount of venom I wrote about stupid pronunciation and arrogant mis-use of syntax was ‘In Arresting Leah Nuff’. I chose this title after an agonising hour or so of listening to Michael Lynagh commentating on a particular game of Rugby. Eventually I turned off the sound and watched the game with the radio blaring from another room.
Talking of sporting commentators is a bit of a paradox since we have no idea of whether they’re sporting or not. These sport commentators bring to the ears a marvellous concoction of sounds. I can imagine them sometimes, away from the game, in a situation far from sport, and their idiosyncrasies persistent in their speech as they conduct their persuasive gambits with their partners, business colleagues, or people they confront during their daily excursions through life. How do their friends handle the speech patterns? Does Jana Wendt pause after each prepositional ‘to’ while speaking to her children?
Speaking of the word ‘to’ … what a mess Australians have made of this little preposition. Formerly known as the directional preposition because it let the sentence have direction, a form of space that carried from one position to another, a vectorial impulse that connected the speaker to the listener, the word ‘to’ was not the most important in the sentence. The word ‘to’ merely conveyed a sense of direction between the subject and the object, as in ‘the boy went to the shop’. In this sentence the two nouns have relevance because of the verb ‘went’; the preposition ‘to’ is almost superfluous as the sentence really means ‘boy went shop’.
So why do we emphasise the least important word in the sentence? Because the speech people demanded that their pupils eradicate the ‘um’ factor from their speech and the way to do this was to emphasise the prepositions and the articles such as ‘a’ and ‘the’. In this way the articles assumed such prolonged emphasis that the simple ‘uh’ sound turned into the turgid ‘ay’ sound. A plate of cheese suddenly became ‘ay plate of cheese’.
But even this anomaly couldn’t get off the ground without the ums and ahs that it was supposed to eradicate. We began to watch Australians gum out awful sounds such as ‘ay uh’ and ‘ay um’ and the extremely vile ‘ayah’, as in ‘ there was aya …pause…goat in the paddock.
Oaklahoma Ch 9 news 6Mar04
Trialling a new test… ABC News Sophie Scott 10 Mar 04
Rooves
The poor old Aussie roof undergoes lexicological surgery when in company of other roofs. But no wonder; many of the other oofs take on a chemical change when pluralised … they become ooves. But not the roof; it remains an oof. You hear journalists with serious intonations tell us of how the cyclone tore off dozens of rooves from houses. They mean roofs!
Integral
The accent is on the first syllable: IN tegral. But the Yanks have persuaded us to shove the accent onto the second syllable: in TEG ral.
Saddam
You may wonder why I’m bothering about pronunciation of this coot’s name. I suppose it’s because the Iraqi elicited such extreme reactions among us all that our perception of him determined to a large extent our pronunciation of his name.
George Bush called him SA d’m. some others called him Sah DAHM.
Croats
Even the Croats are calling themselves Croatians as the tide of Australianisation with its American undercurrent washes all before it.
Serbs
Same said for the poor Serbs.
I guess
This useless phrase was ushered into Australia via the Media. No doubt about this one. It’s one of my main pillars of antagonism toward how we Aussies now speak. You had the likes of Mike Gibson and Ian Chappell with their ears hooked to America relaying this absurdity to the gullible Aussie listening public. It’s a catchy thing to say, to imitate the Yanks in their movies where I guess is uttered every eleven sentences on average. And that average includes those few who never have need to waste their words with ponderous pompous meaningless words.
To [for all prepositions]
Less fewer
This simple and logical rule has long been discarded by the less discerning of us. Less relates to quantity, such as volume or weight, while few relates to numbers, as in people, things that can be counted and not weighed or measured with a tape.
For example: There are fewer boys in the house; there is less salt in the water.
It is absurd to say that there are less people here today than yesterday. There are fewer people … etc.
More safe
Comparative and superlative adjectives are a contentious lot. It’s hard to set rules for words that sound ludicrous when ‘est’ is attached. It became so quaint that the added qualifiers more and most became required addenda. But lately, again because of American influence, the comparatives and superlatives have acquired tendencies that if continued will further reduce the colour and interest of a galaxy vocabulary.
Wait up
We Aussies certainly didn’t invent this cutey. We simply yelled: WAIT! No direction was needed. Whether up or down or inside out, it mattered not. We demanded that someone heed our plea to wait.
Listen up why not list ten up
Listen up … our kids gobbled this one up in buckets. While we satisfied our isolated Australian vocab with the simple ‘lissen’, the Yank proclivity for prepositions just had to whack on the ‘up’ word …Listen up! While I’m on this anomaly I want to briefly enquire why it is that we Aussies don’t say Liss ten. I mean, the nation is being swamped with the second ugliest word in the Aussie lexicon, off ten; so why not liss ten?
Statters status
Status [the state of one’s being] has shifted ground for statters. Why? Have you ever heard a Yank say status without saying statters or stattus? Oh we do know how to imitate, we Aussies.
Loss of aux verb
A thee
The development of the Australian lexicon owes quite a bit to the laconic nature of Australians. We muttered our words a lot as if the uttering used up more energy than was required. Thus a book was merely a book and vocalising its existence was not a world-shattering event. We would thus say ‘uh book’ and that was it. Now if you notice the way the Yanks yak you will see that they stretch their mouths and draw their voices from somewhere below their throats. You hear the women, especially West Coast women, rasping words through tight throats and muscles brittle along the neck. And they make speech a theatrical event. The Yank woman gears up to say something, tightens her throat, and in order to communicate her perception of the existence of the book emits a sound that is slightly animal, slightly witch-like: Air yeeeeee book …the ‘uh’ has been elongated into an ‘air-yeeee’ for some god-forsaken reason. And Aussie women, typically, are emulating this tight-throated almost warlike noise while replacing the soft gentle almost invisible sound of the unimportant discreet indefinite article.
Often soften
Ongoing
Outcome
Apartheid
Schedule sked dual
Growen grown
Papp pew ah Papua
We were a colonial force in PNG once. We’re still a major force in PNG. It is our nearest neighbour; closer than Kiwiland or Indonesia, and if we want to niggle a bit, even closer than Tassie [hahaha]. But for want of a reason, some of us cannot yet pronounce its name. Listen to Alex Downer will you, or Ray Warren of Nine’s Sport, if you want to know how Not to say Papua New Guinea.
It’s simple, Alex! Listen to how THEY say THEIR name and merely do your level best to copy that sound. After all, the majority of us know how to say PUP WAH NEW GINI. Not PAPP YOU ARE …
Different to [from than]
Take the number ten. Subtract two. The difference is eight. Why? Because I took two FROM ten and I was left with eight. Eight is the DIFFERENCE. There is a logical connection between difference and from. If I wish to add a number I add it TO another number to obtain a SUM. The SUM of numbers is when you add them TO one another. There is a logical connection between sum and to. There is no logical connection between difference and to. Therefore it is absurd to continually allude to differences to instead of differences from.
Present time, particular point in time
… and sundry variations of trying to identify portions of the limitless linear time continuum. We were lucky. Our isolated Australian suburban vocabulary had to be satisfied with the humble but concise word ‘now’.
Spotted saw seen
I hate to rely upon this old shibboleth but leopards and measles are spotted. Humans and animals see things with their eyes. To spot something is to mark it with a spot. A spot can also be a place. But when the past tense of a word melds into the realm of another, in other words, to acquire a distinct meaning from its present tense, then complications emerge along the delicate road of meaning.
Ay nuther
Another example of where the butterfly of etymological change has such chaotic and palpably absurd consequences.
Con stable [1475]
It has nothing to do with keeping conmen in stables. Yet it has, I suppose, in that the constable of police is charged with law and order maintenance. Constable of police [cop] is an old word, 12th century actually, which derived from the French ‘count of the stable’ or chief groom. Since then it has been pronounced ‘kun stubble’ until the Yanks got hold of it and true to their infantile method of training children to speak [ala Sesame Street].
It is NOT Kon stubble … it is Kun stubble.
Accomplish [1485]
The same argument applies to
Orientated oriented
do you wanna talk about it
I’ll be there for you
Serra moanie why not maonie for money
Candy date
Magnate magnet
Gotten
Snuck
Los vegas
Los Angelees
Too morrow
Too day
For tune
Terror tory
Occur rence
ATM machine
PIN number
At the end of the day
The bottom line
From left field
Touch down
Touch base
Kick off [to start]
Rock and hard place
Bought brought
Loan lend
Trialling testing trialling a test
Vulnerable
Mo mentum
Again against agen
Me and the boys
To my husband and I
Hung hanged
Rodeo
You gotta be happy with that
Ya gotta love it
Klu kl;ux klan
Struggle ling
Battle ling
gamble ling gambolling
soo perior
eye rahk
that’s right!
That’s exactly right
Portrait
Sunni sun eye
Mo mentum
Mo mento Pat Elsh Seven sport 8/4/06
Fatigued and tired
Up close and personal
These sort of
To – for – pause and emphasis
Teste moanie
This has to be one of my favourite
Hurry cane
Tactic tactics
Error era
Tay rahn
Formidable
Too close to call
The minister has the call
The parliament
Woo woo
Going on happening
Coming to conclusion ending
Sea change
Liserning
Listening
Excuse me? Say again?
It’s not rocket science
Hi five
Very authentic Movie Show SBS Megan 12/4/06
Quite unique
Panned out happened occurred
Soo dahm Saddam
soo perior
can we talk?
Haitch H
Guys blokes
Boot camp
Relocated moved
So …. Do you?
So… what is?between Eric and I
Gave to Eric and I
Me and Eric went to woods
Two best best two
Between among
Neither nor
Different from to
Farther further
Primate prime ate ape or priest
Kowasaki Kawasaki
He is seriously so …
We are so not having a party Home and Away Cassie 18/4/06
Hunker down bunker down
Hole up in
Fessed up…admitted
Worst nightmare
Ellec tricity
Come clean to reveal to admit
The parliament parliament
Inner rested interested
Assembly assembally
Diss tributed distributed
Autopsy post mortem
It was ay accident
Regular normal
Among between
Freferably prefer ably
National television
Tsunami soo narmy
Free mantle frerr mantle
Bought brought
Assessories accessories
Wake up call
Enviament
Magistret
Plebiscite plebisit
Marathon marath*n
Batter ries
Gotten
Con trove versy Ray Warren
Asbestoss
Amazon Amaz*n
Formidable Downer 26/5/06 E Timor
Militerry militry
On national television
Wander ful wonderful wanderworld
That’s right that’s exactly rightjog
Jakarta Yogyakarta
Slingshot shanghai catapault
Popcorn at movies
Flashlight torch
trialledf in the test Gardening Oz 3/6/06
Can I ask you a question?
Can we talk?
This program brought to you by
So …
Semettic semitic
Nearest you
This I will have you tomorrow [Today Tonight]
Yudey yono Yudhonyono
Wander wonder
Deffinately Einstein factor 2/7/06
Line ball decision
Spotted
Respiratory
Orientated ..oriented
I have returned to this subject again ….ooops! A GAYNE! I can hear Peter Sterling: ‘AGAYNE the ball has slipped out of his hands!’
The remarkable thing about listening to Ray Warren, Gus Gould, Peter Sterling and Andrew Voss on a Friday night is that the word ‘again’ changes pronunciation several times during the football match. AGAYNE becomes AGEN when dear Ray Warren stops listening to himself and speaks automatically, as if in spirited conversation with friends. He used to say AGEN all the time, until the influence of Sterlo …
What amazes me is that the sudden appearance of agayne seems to have been a home-grown something ..the Yanks generally say agen. It’s the Brits who are strongly into agayne … an Angloism that is shared by an eagerly gullible Australian protégé.
I have watched various television personalities change their pronunciation of many words. They who once said agen now say agayne and many seem to say it with a strange gusto. It has to be one of the ugliest words in the Aussie lexicon.
--From How to Build A Universe That Won’t Fall Apart in Two Days by Philip K. Dick
Australians can’t speak English
I was brought up to speak English correctly. I could never understand why people spoke poorly. If I could speak well, then why the bloody hell can’t others? This question has vexed me all my life and now I want to explode my desperation onto paper and see if I can rouse the apathy and twist it until it rages …
I began this work many years ago and gave up in frustration. But the agony of listening to morons purporting to be English speakers inspired me to start again; this time my invective shall be explicitly interwoven into my denunciation of the sad fact that our English grammar and spelling have collapsed.
Where are the standards that governed the way we speak?
Don’t answer that! It doesn’t matter two pips about the whys and wherefores of whom is to blame. It is simply a fact of life that any idiot with a squeaky voice and a nice hairdo can walk into any radio or television station and get a job as a speaker of English.
This work is not about other languages. It is about English. It is not an attempt to push the grammar cart back to the Fifties. It is a logical attempt to drive home to imbeciles in the media that whatever nonsense they write, say or spit is heard by a modicum of intelligent people who know how to discern whether or not that which is spake is actually what is meant to be spake.
I read a headline in the SMH that told us readers that Australian troops would be ‘bought’ back home. I wrote to the now unworthy newspaper and asked if they implied some form of ‘pay back’ or ‘buy back’. You hear it every day in the media that something is bought rather than brought, as if the ‘r’ is irrelevant as long as the meaning implied is inferred.
Whoa! Step back from that minefield, sergeant! There are many who cannot differentiate between infer and imply and I think we’ll tackle that one later in the book.
Gareth Evans explained patiently to his audience that what was important was what was implied rather than what was said. That explanation was apt as far as the media were concerned. For decades the media have scorned pedantry and have gone the way of the progressives of the seventies, ignoring grammar and spelling as anachronisms of a dinosaur age.
I wish not to seek explanations for this behaviour. Suffice it is that I express my derision for those persons upon whom, somehow, the onus for our language has been entrusted.
I once called myself the Apostle of Apostrophe as I retaliated against the upsurge in miss-placed apostrophes. There they were, everywhere! None could write a plural without its becoming possessive, as if six boys could possibly become six boy’s.
My original title for the copious amount of venom I wrote about stupid pronunciation and arrogant mis-use of syntax was ‘In Arresting Leah Nuff’. I chose this title after an agonising hour or so of listening to Michael Lynagh commentating on a particular game of Rugby. Eventually I turned off the sound and watched the game with the radio blaring from another room.
Talking of sporting commentators is a bit of a paradox since we have no idea of whether they’re sporting or not. These sport commentators bring to the ears a marvellous concoction of sounds. I can imagine them sometimes, away from the game, in a situation far from sport, and their idiosyncrasies persistent in their speech as they conduct their persuasive gambits with their partners, business colleagues, or people they confront during their daily excursions through life. How do their friends handle the speech patterns? Does Jana Wendt pause after each prepositional ‘to’ while speaking to her children?
Speaking of the word ‘to’ … what a mess Australians have made of this little preposition. Formerly known as the directional preposition because it let the sentence have direction, a form of space that carried from one position to another, a vectorial impulse that connected the speaker to the listener, the word ‘to’ was not the most important in the sentence. The word ‘to’ merely conveyed a sense of direction between the subject and the object, as in ‘the boy went to the shop’. In this sentence the two nouns have relevance because of the verb ‘went’; the preposition ‘to’ is almost superfluous as the sentence really means ‘boy went shop’.
So why do we emphasise the least important word in the sentence? Because the speech people demanded that their pupils eradicate the ‘um’ factor from their speech and the way to do this was to emphasise the prepositions and the articles such as ‘a’ and ‘the’. In this way the articles assumed such prolonged emphasis that the simple ‘uh’ sound turned into the turgid ‘ay’ sound. A plate of cheese suddenly became ‘ay plate of cheese’.
But even this anomaly couldn’t get off the ground without the ums and ahs that it was supposed to eradicate. We began to watch Australians gum out awful sounds such as ‘ay uh’ and ‘ay um’ and the extremely vile ‘ayah’, as in ‘ there was aya …pause…goat in the paddock.
Oaklahoma Ch 9 news 6Mar04
Trialling a new test… ABC News Sophie Scott 10 Mar 04
Rooves
The poor old Aussie roof undergoes lexicological surgery when in company of other roofs. But no wonder; many of the other oofs take on a chemical change when pluralised … they become ooves. But not the roof; it remains an oof. You hear journalists with serious intonations tell us of how the cyclone tore off dozens of rooves from houses. They mean roofs!
Integral
The accent is on the first syllable: IN tegral. But the Yanks have persuaded us to shove the accent onto the second syllable: in TEG ral.
Saddam
You may wonder why I’m bothering about pronunciation of this coot’s name. I suppose it’s because the Iraqi elicited such extreme reactions among us all that our perception of him determined to a large extent our pronunciation of his name.
George Bush called him SA d’m. some others called him Sah DAHM.
Croats
Even the Croats are calling themselves Croatians as the tide of Australianisation with its American undercurrent washes all before it.
Serbs
Same said for the poor Serbs.
I guess
This useless phrase was ushered into Australia via the Media. No doubt about this one. It’s one of my main pillars of antagonism toward how we Aussies now speak. You had the likes of Mike Gibson and Ian Chappell with their ears hooked to America relaying this absurdity to the gullible Aussie listening public. It’s a catchy thing to say, to imitate the Yanks in their movies where I guess is uttered every eleven sentences on average. And that average includes those few who never have need to waste their words with ponderous pompous meaningless words.
To [for all prepositions]
Less fewer
This simple and logical rule has long been discarded by the less discerning of us. Less relates to quantity, such as volume or weight, while few relates to numbers, as in people, things that can be counted and not weighed or measured with a tape.
For example: There are fewer boys in the house; there is less salt in the water.
It is absurd to say that there are less people here today than yesterday. There are fewer people … etc.
More safe
Comparative and superlative adjectives are a contentious lot. It’s hard to set rules for words that sound ludicrous when ‘est’ is attached. It became so quaint that the added qualifiers more and most became required addenda. But lately, again because of American influence, the comparatives and superlatives have acquired tendencies that if continued will further reduce the colour and interest of a galaxy vocabulary.
Wait up
We Aussies certainly didn’t invent this cutey. We simply yelled: WAIT! No direction was needed. Whether up or down or inside out, it mattered not. We demanded that someone heed our plea to wait.
Listen up why not list ten up
Listen up … our kids gobbled this one up in buckets. While we satisfied our isolated Australian vocab with the simple ‘lissen’, the Yank proclivity for prepositions just had to whack on the ‘up’ word …Listen up! While I’m on this anomaly I want to briefly enquire why it is that we Aussies don’t say Liss ten. I mean, the nation is being swamped with the second ugliest word in the Aussie lexicon, off ten; so why not liss ten?
Statters status
Status [the state of one’s being] has shifted ground for statters. Why? Have you ever heard a Yank say status without saying statters or stattus? Oh we do know how to imitate, we Aussies.
Loss of aux verb
A thee
The development of the Australian lexicon owes quite a bit to the laconic nature of Australians. We muttered our words a lot as if the uttering used up more energy than was required. Thus a book was merely a book and vocalising its existence was not a world-shattering event. We would thus say ‘uh book’ and that was it. Now if you notice the way the Yanks yak you will see that they stretch their mouths and draw their voices from somewhere below their throats. You hear the women, especially West Coast women, rasping words through tight throats and muscles brittle along the neck. And they make speech a theatrical event. The Yank woman gears up to say something, tightens her throat, and in order to communicate her perception of the existence of the book emits a sound that is slightly animal, slightly witch-like: Air yeeeeee book …the ‘uh’ has been elongated into an ‘air-yeeee’ for some god-forsaken reason. And Aussie women, typically, are emulating this tight-throated almost warlike noise while replacing the soft gentle almost invisible sound of the unimportant discreet indefinite article.
Often soften
Ongoing
Outcome
Apartheid
Schedule sked dual
Growen grown
Papp pew ah Papua
We were a colonial force in PNG once. We’re still a major force in PNG. It is our nearest neighbour; closer than Kiwiland or Indonesia, and if we want to niggle a bit, even closer than Tassie [hahaha]. But for want of a reason, some of us cannot yet pronounce its name. Listen to Alex Downer will you, or Ray Warren of Nine’s Sport, if you want to know how Not to say Papua New Guinea.
It’s simple, Alex! Listen to how THEY say THEIR name and merely do your level best to copy that sound. After all, the majority of us know how to say PUP WAH NEW GINI. Not PAPP YOU ARE …
Different to [from than]
Take the number ten. Subtract two. The difference is eight. Why? Because I took two FROM ten and I was left with eight. Eight is the DIFFERENCE. There is a logical connection between difference and from. If I wish to add a number I add it TO another number to obtain a SUM. The SUM of numbers is when you add them TO one another. There is a logical connection between sum and to. There is no logical connection between difference and to. Therefore it is absurd to continually allude to differences to instead of differences from.
Present time, particular point in time
… and sundry variations of trying to identify portions of the limitless linear time continuum. We were lucky. Our isolated Australian suburban vocabulary had to be satisfied with the humble but concise word ‘now’.
Spotted saw seen
I hate to rely upon this old shibboleth but leopards and measles are spotted. Humans and animals see things with their eyes. To spot something is to mark it with a spot. A spot can also be a place. But when the past tense of a word melds into the realm of another, in other words, to acquire a distinct meaning from its present tense, then complications emerge along the delicate road of meaning.
Ay nuther
Another example of where the butterfly of etymological change has such chaotic and palpably absurd consequences.
Con stable [1475]
It has nothing to do with keeping conmen in stables. Yet it has, I suppose, in that the constable of police is charged with law and order maintenance. Constable of police [cop] is an old word, 12th century actually, which derived from the French ‘count of the stable’ or chief groom. Since then it has been pronounced ‘kun stubble’ until the Yanks got hold of it and true to their infantile method of training children to speak [ala Sesame Street].
It is NOT Kon stubble … it is Kun stubble.
Accomplish [1485]
The same argument applies to
Orientated oriented
do you wanna talk about it
I’ll be there for you
Serra moanie why not maonie for money
Candy date
Magnate magnet
Gotten
Snuck
Los vegas
Los Angelees
Too morrow
Too day
For tune
Terror tory
Occur rence
ATM machine
PIN number
At the end of the day
The bottom line
From left field
Touch down
Touch base
Kick off [to start]
Rock and hard place
Bought brought
Loan lend
Trialling testing trialling a test
Vulnerable
Mo mentum
Again against agen
Me and the boys
To my husband and I
Hung hanged
Rodeo
You gotta be happy with that
Ya gotta love it
Klu kl;ux klan
Struggle ling
Battle ling
gamble ling gambolling
soo perior
eye rahk
that’s right!
That’s exactly right
Portrait
Sunni sun eye
Mo mentum
Mo mento Pat Elsh Seven sport 8/4/06
Fatigued and tired
Up close and personal
These sort of
To – for – pause and emphasis
Teste moanie
This has to be one of my favourite
Hurry cane
Tactic tactics
Error era
Tay rahn
Formidable
Too close to call
The minister has the call
The parliament
Woo woo
Going on happening
Coming to conclusion ending
Sea change
Liserning
Listening
Excuse me? Say again?
It’s not rocket science
Hi five
Very authentic Movie Show SBS Megan 12/4/06
Quite unique
Panned out happened occurred
Soo dahm Saddam
soo perior
can we talk?
Haitch H
Guys blokes
Boot camp
Relocated moved
So …. Do you?
So… what is?between Eric and I
Gave to Eric and I
Me and Eric went to woods
Two best best two
Between among
Neither nor
Different from to
Farther further
Primate prime ate ape or priest
Kowasaki Kawasaki
He is seriously so …
We are so not having a party Home and Away Cassie 18/4/06
Hunker down bunker down
Hole up in
Fessed up…admitted
Worst nightmare
Ellec tricity
Come clean to reveal to admit
The parliament parliament
Inner rested interested
Assembly assembally
Diss tributed distributed
Autopsy post mortem
It was ay accident
Regular normal
Among between
Freferably prefer ably
National television
Tsunami soo narmy
Free mantle frerr mantle
Bought brought
Assessories accessories
Wake up call
Enviament
Magistret
Plebiscite plebisit
Marathon marath*n
Batter ries
Gotten
Con trove versy Ray Warren
Asbestoss
Amazon Amaz*n
Formidable Downer 26/5/06 E Timor
Militerry militry
On national television
Wander ful wonderful wanderworld
That’s right that’s exactly rightjog
Jakarta Yogyakarta
Slingshot shanghai catapault
Popcorn at movies
Flashlight torch
trialledf in the test Gardening Oz 3/6/06
Can I ask you a question?
Can we talk?
This program brought to you by
So …
Semettic semitic
Nearest you
This I will have you tomorrow [Today Tonight]
Yudey yono Yudhonyono
Wander wonder
Deffinately Einstein factor 2/7/06
Line ball decision
Spotted
Respiratory
Orientated ..oriented
I have returned to this subject again ….ooops! A GAYNE! I can hear Peter Sterling: ‘AGAYNE the ball has slipped out of his hands!’
The remarkable thing about listening to Ray Warren, Gus Gould, Peter Sterling and Andrew Voss on a Friday night is that the word ‘again’ changes pronunciation several times during the football match. AGAYNE becomes AGEN when dear Ray Warren stops listening to himself and speaks automatically, as if in spirited conversation with friends. He used to say AGEN all the time, until the influence of Sterlo …
What amazes me is that the sudden appearance of agayne seems to have been a home-grown something ..the Yanks generally say agen. It’s the Brits who are strongly into agayne … an Angloism that is shared by an eagerly gullible Australian protégé.
I have watched various television personalities change their pronunciation of many words. They who once said agen now say agayne and many seem to say it with a strange gusto. It has to be one of the ugliest words in the Aussie lexicon.
1954
1954
The revolution began in 1954. Eisenhower and Menzies and the Queen ruled the world. People wore hats. And walked on the left side of the footpath, at least they did in Australia. We were still playing games in the streets of Sydney and the chant of ‘We won the war, in 1944’ rang out joyfully even though three of us were kids of German migrants.
Stalin had grabbed his ruthless hammer and sickle and cynically scythed through the hopes of post-war pacifists. Nasser and the Arabs were fomenting trouble for the empire and apartheid was bearing the legacy of Hitler’s eugenics.
Reds under the beds. A plethora of new nations and a forum of United Nations symbolised a newer world community that was being polarised and communalised simultaneously. The Cold War sat as an ugly bogey upon the world’s consciousness.
Free milk at school and every poor kid got there early to fill the empty gut. We’d take along a couple of Weet Bix and have our breakfast in the shade of the school building. Then we’d shove off down the yard to play cricket in the dust until the school bell.
They still talked of Bradman and all of us were him on the streets with our planks for bats and anything you could grab for the ball. The sheilas all wore dresses that spun out on miles of petticoats and Bobby socks and flat soles and pigtails and I think I fell in love with Eva Marie Saint that year.
That brings me back to the revolution of 1954. Lots of people declare with outrageous pomposity that the sixties was the decade that did all the things it was supposed to have done, like change the world, and I like that one with images of nappies and turds and John Harker and Nappi San, and introduce drugs and anti-social behaviour, and free love.
I don’t think so.
It wasn’t like that.
It was this way.
We sat nervously in the school hall. Our seats had been carried from the classrooms and arranged in rows facing the proud new screen hoisted in front of the stage. Row by row filled up and cigarette smoke cast a smelly and noxious cloud above our heads.
A few minutes before start time we heard them. They were still some distance away but the portent of Doppler told us they were coming our way. The bloke who had been ushering us into our seats got all panicky and tried to close the hall door at the back. There were people out there who’d paid their tickets and now were being blocked from entering. It was this way when the bikes arrived and stopped us all in our tracks.
There were about twenty bikes and about forty people. They all were hidden behind a dangerous black outfit. Leather and chains and caps and all the trappings of Bodgies. And Widgies. The Bodgies and Widgies were the badge of early Rock ‘n Roll in Australia. They carried the emblem in dark defiance of all that was good and decent in 1954 Australia.
Their bikes were aligned in military arrogance across the neatly mown lawn. A hooded sentinel in dark glasses stood alone and pitched his place there. We squinted through the leadlight. They were nearly here and we slipped away back to our seats and waited.
The first arrived and occupied the space at the back door. He was wearing his cap at a ridiculous angle. Others in leather joined him and stood there and watched us watching them. A scrape of metal against the floor and a young woman made for safer parts at the front of the hall.
The revolution began in 1954. Eisenhower and Menzies and the Queen ruled the world. People wore hats. And walked on the left side of the footpath, at least they did in Australia. We were still playing games in the streets of Sydney and the chant of ‘We won the war, in 1944’ rang out joyfully even though three of us were kids of German migrants.
Stalin had grabbed his ruthless hammer and sickle and cynically scythed through the hopes of post-war pacifists. Nasser and the Arabs were fomenting trouble for the empire and apartheid was bearing the legacy of Hitler’s eugenics.
Reds under the beds. A plethora of new nations and a forum of United Nations symbolised a newer world community that was being polarised and communalised simultaneously. The Cold War sat as an ugly bogey upon the world’s consciousness.
Free milk at school and every poor kid got there early to fill the empty gut. We’d take along a couple of Weet Bix and have our breakfast in the shade of the school building. Then we’d shove off down the yard to play cricket in the dust until the school bell.
They still talked of Bradman and all of us were him on the streets with our planks for bats and anything you could grab for the ball. The sheilas all wore dresses that spun out on miles of petticoats and Bobby socks and flat soles and pigtails and I think I fell in love with Eva Marie Saint that year.
That brings me back to the revolution of 1954. Lots of people declare with outrageous pomposity that the sixties was the decade that did all the things it was supposed to have done, like change the world, and I like that one with images of nappies and turds and John Harker and Nappi San, and introduce drugs and anti-social behaviour, and free love.
I don’t think so.
It wasn’t like that.
It was this way.
We sat nervously in the school hall. Our seats had been carried from the classrooms and arranged in rows facing the proud new screen hoisted in front of the stage. Row by row filled up and cigarette smoke cast a smelly and noxious cloud above our heads.
A few minutes before start time we heard them. They were still some distance away but the portent of Doppler told us they were coming our way. The bloke who had been ushering us into our seats got all panicky and tried to close the hall door at the back. There were people out there who’d paid their tickets and now were being blocked from entering. It was this way when the bikes arrived and stopped us all in our tracks.
There were about twenty bikes and about forty people. They all were hidden behind a dangerous black outfit. Leather and chains and caps and all the trappings of Bodgies. And Widgies. The Bodgies and Widgies were the badge of early Rock ‘n Roll in Australia. They carried the emblem in dark defiance of all that was good and decent in 1954 Australia.
Their bikes were aligned in military arrogance across the neatly mown lawn. A hooded sentinel in dark glasses stood alone and pitched his place there. We squinted through the leadlight. They were nearly here and we slipped away back to our seats and waited.
The first arrived and occupied the space at the back door. He was wearing his cap at a ridiculous angle. Others in leather joined him and stood there and watched us watching them. A scrape of metal against the floor and a young woman made for safer parts at the front of the hall.
We seem to construct ourselves around our memories
We seem to construct ourselves around our memories; those things that stick in the mind and constantly remind us who we are and where we came from and how long we’ve been here. If you took me out into the desert for forty days and forty nights I think I would be a bit disconnected because I wouldn’t have been constructing memories during that time. I would only have been experiencing memory and for forty days and nights it would have been those memories that held me together. How can you have a memory of having a memory? It’s absurd. That’s what!
‘Oh! I had such a good time, sitting there doing nothing but thinking. Oh but I will remember those remembered memories forever.’
It is the experience that is remembered and once you’ve put your feet up in retirement, you might as well pull the plug and let the water out, for all the good your life is to be.
Having realised the strength of that ripe old banana I stripped my life of its barnacles and established momentum toward an adrenalin and action-packed world. I was enjoying the heaped metaphors and rudely constructed sentence that was to govern the rest of my life.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be guiding; it vexes me to choose another guide.
So Charlotte Bronte bragged once during her restricted life in literature. My own nature, be buggered! We all are dissolved in the humanity brew. Our imagination is to conquer and to escape the cauldron, to be independent of the stew, to head off in another direction, to escape the dreadful sameness of humanity. So dear Charlotte escaped via her pen and paper and that imagination that guided her away from the mundane.
‘Oh! I had such a good time, sitting there doing nothing but thinking. Oh but I will remember those remembered memories forever.’
It is the experience that is remembered and once you’ve put your feet up in retirement, you might as well pull the plug and let the water out, for all the good your life is to be.
Having realised the strength of that ripe old banana I stripped my life of its barnacles and established momentum toward an adrenalin and action-packed world. I was enjoying the heaped metaphors and rudely constructed sentence that was to govern the rest of my life.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be guiding; it vexes me to choose another guide.
So Charlotte Bronte bragged once during her restricted life in literature. My own nature, be buggered! We all are dissolved in the humanity brew. Our imagination is to conquer and to escape the cauldron, to be independent of the stew, to head off in another direction, to escape the dreadful sameness of humanity. So dear Charlotte escaped via her pen and paper and that imagination that guided her away from the mundane.
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