I always had the impression it resembled the bit in the Python sketch (about ) that's usually transcribed "Woah" - at least the same vowel sound and similar volume and intonation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1728_uptodate/page12.shtml
Outside the pages of tabloid newspapers, I don't think "Phwoooar" has ever been used non-ironically. Ever. Since before the Romans came to Rye.
I'd say OFE's right, also, Help! I didn't realise my email address would be visible on the web, any chance you could delete it?
That BBC thing is hilaripus. As is the CT post.
Outside the pages of tabloid newspapers, I don't think "Phwoooar" has ever been used non-ironically.
Aha, our American equivalent would be "hubba hubba".
People from the British Isles (that's right for the UK plus Ireland, right?), have an onomatopoedic spelling of a noise that indicates something like "OMG, that's so hot": "Phwoooar"
I was not aware that this was a British Isles thing. I believe I have done it myself.
I'm no expert, but "British Isles" doesn't seem like an appropriate term if Ireland, the Republic of, is being included. What with much of Ireland being adamantly not British.
8. I agree, but I believe the consensus among geographers is nonetheless that that is what the archipelago is called. I've never actually heard it called anything else, have you?
I'm fairly sure that the island which contains the Republic of Ireland is one of the British Isles. But unsure enough to flag it.
It's correct, but sometimes deprecated in Ireland.
Sociologists today use "SEI", short for Sceptred/Emerald Isles.
The term British Isles is controversial in relation to Ireland,[7][11][12] where there are objections to its usage due to the association of the word "British" with Ireland. The Government of Ireland discourages its use,[13][14] and in relations with the United Kingdom the words "these islands" are used.[15][16] Although still used as a geographic term, the controversy means that alternative terms such as "Britain and Ireland" are increasingly preferred.[17][18]
The Irish attitude strike me - tentatively - like a little ridiculous.
The currently politically correct term is `Atlantic Isles', I think. (Yes that term is so daft it invites reference to the British Isles.)
(I think that Ireland is a British Isle, same as I think Scotland involves British Isles apart from the big one and will continue to no matter when we declare independence, but I wouldn't use it if I thought there was an Irish audience paying attention and I didn't want to make a point.)
See also this utterly insane article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_British_Isles
British and Irish Isles is how National Geographic now refers to them.
At first I thought Kieran's stack of books was all Ancient Greece oriented and thought he was making a clever metacomment on the phallocentricity of Chatroulette. But it seems I got ahead of myself.
in relations with the United Kingdom the words "these islands" are used.
"your man the islands".
Worst alternative I've come across: the West Euros.
The currently politically correct term is `Atlantic Isles', I think.
I await the avalanche of outrage from Iceland, the Faroes, the Azores, the Canaries, Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and the Falklands. (Have I missed anybody? Oh, sorry, and Bermuda.)
OUR KID THE ISLANDS ALSO INCLUDE ST PIERRE AND MIQUELON YOU BAHSTADS
AND BIOKO
22: That's why nobody uses them, pretty much. I cannot think why anybody though they were a good idea. (You missed South Georgia and the South Sandwiches, btw.)
18: That is just daft. I mean, honestly, you may as well start calling them the British, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, Manx and assorted others' Isles.
Well, I'm off to drink Guinness, watch some dancing, and listen to some rebel songs, so (and in loving memory of my Grammy) for today I will lodge my protest of continuing to call them the British Isles.
You missed South Georgia and the South Sandwiches, btw.
But does anybody actually live there? Protests from penguins I will dismiss out of hand, synapsid chauvinist that I am.
I mean, honestly, you may as well start calling them the British, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, Manx and assorted others' Isles.
Or, you know, not refer to them collectively at all. Is there a term that lumps Australia and New Zealand together?
Bouvet* (and many others).
*Beloved of Traveler IQ players on Facebook.
Anzac, Antipodes (although there are an actual Antipodes Islands south of New Zealand which are antipodal of the Channel Islands).
The Argentinians will be outraged on the penguins' behalf, I think.
27: Well yes: ANZAC. It is one of the most sanctified words in our language.
(More prosaically, trans-tasman is used in political/economic terms. However, unlike the British Isles, New Zealand and Australia don't form a ecological, geographic, or political unit or lie on the same plate, so different ideas are expressed differently.)
'Antipodes' doesn't mean Australia and/or NZ to us in that part of the world.
31: Yes, very hemispherist of me.
And by the way, if there are any Aussies around I would like to remind you that underarm bowling isn't cricket, and handballs aren't football.
27: Australasia ( although that sometimes includes new guinea). There is still provision in the Australian constitution for adding New Zealand as a state.
My fiancée suggests the Celtic Isles.
"Gargamel took them all" keeps cracking me up.
17: I'm surprised to learn that the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are not part of the UK. It seems completely absurd.
36 -- Like how the Virgin Islands aren't part of the United States?
People make fun of the US for calling handegg football, but from what I can gather Australia has three different varieties of handegg.
36. Why does this surprise you? The Channel Islands are geographically part of France, historically part of the Duchy of Normandy and have never had any political connection with Wales, Ireland, Scotland or England except for having the same feudal overlord (and currently being in a position to be bullied by the British government to conform their laws to Britain's).
The Isle of Man is more closely linked, especially to Scotland and Ireland, but it had a separate language until the late 18th century.
None of them are in the EU either.
37: I considered that my sense of absurdity here might be parochial. But I think the cases are different; U.S. territories acquired late in the nation's history, and far from the mainland, seem distinct from the U.S. in a way that islands 50 miles from Britain that have been governed by it for half a millennium don't seem to be distinct from the UK.
39: Fair enough. Clearly I'm ignorant of the culture of those islands. It just seems like they've been governed by English rulers for so many centuries that it's odd that they wouldn't have become politically entangled with England in the same way Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland did.
I kind of liked that BBC series about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. Island at War? Something like that.
The Channel Islands are geographically part of France, historically part of the Duchy of Normandy and have never had any political connection with Wales, Ireland, Scotland or England except for having the same feudal overlord (and currently being in a position to be bullied by the British government to conform their laws to Britain's).
Well, if they have the same feudal overlord, how are they not part of the same kingdom?
They're far too valuable as offshore tax havens to be integrated even if they wanted to be, which they don't. Go learn some Jerriais.
43. Much as England and Scotland were not the same kingdom between 1603 and 1707. A king can have many kingdoms, just as an inferior lord can have many manors. Feudalism was complicated like that. Go back far enough, and the King of England was a vassal of the King of France in Anjou and Aquitaine, too, which never affected his sovereignty in England.
43 -- You mean like England and Scotland from 1603 to 1707? Or England and Ireland from 1542 to 1800?
U.S. territories acquired late in the nation's history, and far from the mainland, seem distinct from the U.S. in a way that islands 50 miles from Britain that have been governed by it for half a millennium don't seem to be distinct from the UK.
Half a millennium is late in British history. And 50 miles is a long way. Nowhere's more than 70 miles from the sea in the UK.
But it's a UNITED kingdom. That's the whole point! Any lesser kingdoms that commingle with the united kingdom become assimilated.
And the King of England was vassal to the King of France in Normandy for a long time.
(And was then King of France hisself for a long, long time. Without ever being King of France at all. But still.)
More exactly, consider Hanover.
48: I think I underestimated. The Channel Islands at least were governed by the same person as England after 1066, right? Although they didn't become severed from the rest of the Duchy of Normandy until, Wikipedia tells me, 1204. So call it 800 years if you like. 39's "historically part of the Duchy of Normandy", then, refers to a historical fact that was true for three centuries but hasn't been true for the last 800 years, as far as I can tell.
49. Not so. Any unification that has taken place has been by specific act of parliament in both countries concerned (except for the Laws of Wales Acts in the 16th century, which were a straightforward annexation). But the Act of Union between England and Scotland was passed in both countries after considerable debate, and likewise the Act of Union between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland (although the Irish Parliament was placed under intolerable pressure to pass it).
The default is that they remain separate. If Britain wanted to unify with the Isle of Man, it would have to pass a new Act of Union, which would also have to be passed by the Tynwald, setting out the terms of that union, and the steps that would bring it about. (It won't, see 44 above.)
51. Nevertheless, the old girl still "rules" the channel islands as Duke of Normandy. The loyal toast in official circles there is, "The Queen, our Duke."
The Falklands Malvinas are not British Isles.
I missed this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_naming_dispute#Alternative_terms
Wikipedia produces strange results.
51. Nevertheless, the old girl still "rules" the channel islands as Duke of Normandy. The loyal toast in official circles there is, "The Queen, our Duke."
That's great.
The channel islands and Isle of Man aren't represented in the UK parliament, so the terminology shouldn't be surprising. That they're not is a bit remarkable, I think. Most other countries would have at some point wanted to incorporate dependencies that were so geographically close, but the British are different.
Somebody commented on my Danishness the other day by saying "The Virgin Islands were Danish, right?" Yeah, but, what does that have to do with the price of pork rinds in Beijing?
All of this post-feudal stuff is pretty recent, after all. The Meiji restoration was less than 150 years ago! An eyeblink! It's only in a country like the US where the white people don't have any proper history that 1800 seems like a really long time ago.
57: the British are different
Quite.
It does seem a little odd to think that the English crown spent hundreds of years, millions of lives, and untold amounts of money and other resources securing an imperial presence on every continent, and yet couldn't be arsed to formally annex these tiny little defenseless islands on their very doorstep. One has to feel that they were letting the side down a bit, what?
53: Especially cute because from what I can tell, the Duchy of Normandy has neither existed nor even been pretended to by the English crown for at least 200 years - they rule the Channel Islands "as successor to the Dukes of Normandy" (says royal.gov.uk).
60. True., they gave up pretending to the bits of France they didn't rule during the Napoleonic Wars, IIRC. Because it was a little embarrassing to be fighting a world war to restore the King of France to his dominions when you claimed half of them yourself. (It might have been some slightly earlier occasion, but that was the reason.)
It does seem a little odd to think that the English crown spent hundreds of years, millions of lives, and untold amounts of money and other resources securing an imperial presence on every continent
The point you need to grasp is that the British Empire, from its inception in the 17th century to its sale to the Americans liberation in the 1960s was fundamentally cheapskate. Pride of possession was never a motivation, and was only even a propaganda issue for a generation between 1880 and 1945 (-ish). Profit was all. All imperial possessions were ruled with the minimum possible outlay of resources, and if they could get away with ruling them indirectly, which was even cheaper, they did.
Meanwhile, they squeezed every last possible penny out of everywhere (Ireland, America, India, South Africa...). Except that often, especially in the 20th century, it didn't work and they found themselves operating at a loss; and searching questions were asked in Parliament and elsewhere.
So given that mindset, and that the smaller local islands were quite happy with the arrangement, why would they spend unnecessary moolah on setting up a new governmental structure where they were trucking along quite happily as they were.
Of course, the odd political position of the Channel Islands relative to Britain itself didn't keep the British from naming other colonies after them.
29: A little tidbit I just learned about the Antipodes Islands--they were originally called the Penantipodes because they were located "next to" the antipodes of London. And they have half the world's population of Erect-crested Penguins.
THE BRITISH ISLES ENCOMPASS THE AMERICAS
Sounds like ol' George is off his meds again.
ALL YOUR DOMINION ARE BELONG TO US, WHAT WHAT
hm re op, dr house says this a lot, but he doesn't sound like a redcoat so i didn't ever occur to me that its a real government-run socialized phrase, not just an individual thing
oh and that antipodes page has a map where you can see what is your antipode. i didn't know there was a place (in s america, it turns out) hwere you really can dig through to china.
that BBC guy sounds like a real sad sack though. ought to spend a week in ibiza and get his vitamin D up to spec
68: Of course, the actor is a Brit.
And thanks, ptl - the BBC page is just what I wanted.
I think OFE's wrong about this. Sex was invented in the UK in 1963, with the Beatles and Lady Chatterley; censorship of films, TV and theatre was significantly lifted in 1968; the feminist chill effect arrived in 1978 (give or take). I think there was a 70s window in which laddish appreciation of the female form was unguardedly expressed in certain fora in just this form. Robin Askwith in the Confessions films and Trevor Bannister in the sitcom Are You Being Served? are the kinds of character who was using the noise unselfconsciously.
Obviously these are comedies ("comedies") about ("about") sex ("sex"), so there's a sense in which the context isn't serious -- but the joke surely only makes sense if it reflects actual flirtatious usage and practise in that brief er shining moment.
69: hwere
Wikipedia rules on:
The historical pronunciation of this digraph is in most cases /hw/, but in many dialects of English it has merged with /w/, a process known as the "wine-whine merger". In dialects which maintain the distinction, it is generally transcribed [ʍ], and is equivalent to a voiceless [w̥] or [hw̥].
and on "[ʍ]":
The voiceless labiovelar approximant (traditionally called a voiceless labiovelar fricative) ... Doubly articulated fricatives are very difficult to pronounce, and none has been confirmed of any language.
Apparently the "wine-whine merger" has won out in almost all English-speaking areas other than Scotland and Ireland (excepting Dublin) and parts of the SE US.
lizardbreath, glad the bbc thing helped, and thank you for deleting my email address.
€74: The guy that wrote that middle paragraph never met my grandmother. (Also: "Traditionally"?)
€ s/b @: the Eurocrats ruin everything...
74. I heard this happen in my lifetime in standard Brit. I was raised to believe that "hw" was the 'correct' pronunciation of "wh" in the 1950s, but I can't think of anybody who still uses it. I don't, except to take the piss for effect.
76: (Also: "Traditionally"?)
I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says:
"It's so. You can do it. You correctly pronounced a voiceless labiovelar fricative. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son."
78:
It was not until the 1960s that virtually every major dictionary publisher in the U.S. acknowledged the increasing use of "w" in these words by showing both pronunciations. They are still doing so. However, many current British dictionaries, including the "New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" (1993) and the "Collins English Dictionary" (1986), have dropped the "hw" entirely, showing only "w."
23 is funny.
(And I also like Opinionated George III, though he's clearly a bit of a nutter).
I was taught 'hw' by my parents, but selfconsciously - they didn't use it spontaneously. I'll find myself using it occasionally, but not usually.
I don't remember ever having heard whine (etc) NOT pronounced the same as wine. Perhaps more recently, in Wales, but certainly not ever as a child in London.
LB's ancestors surely ruled the veldt with an iron fist due to the superior expressive power of their vocalizations*.
*Based mostly on some earlier comment of hers on vowel mergers (or in her case lack of same) before intervocalic "r"s.
Of course, it's not a very noticeable distinction - the kind of thing you could miss pretty easily if you weren't thinking about it.
To me, they're pronounced differently. "Whine" isn't "hwine" but the "w" is definitely tighter than "w" in "wine."
In my K and 1 classrooms, the little letter pronunciation pictures on the wall distinguished between W and WH. I can't remember the W picture, but the WH picture was of someone blowing out a candle -- in any event, these were taught as two different sounds as late as the mid/late 70s.
I think the distinction I learned in singing is that "wine" is sung with a subtle "oo-ine" diphthong, and "whine" is sung with something more like a consonant.
I've never heard any English people having this conversation either.
I remember seeing "w" and "wh" listed as different sounds in my teaching material, but that was totally ignored as none of the teachers or students pronounced them differently. A vestigial orthography.
As I say, my Scots grandmother was quite strict about it. But she would be 108 if she were around to post on unfogged, so we'll probably get away with it.
OT: Hwat is up ooith this ooind, NYC? Stuff is flying around in the air and crashing.
To the OP: Holy crap, I think I know the guy in the second result.
Like most Irish people I pronounce "wh" as "hw". Oddly enough it's clear that the Irish originally had difficulty with this weird Anglo-Norman noise and tended to pronounce it as "fw".
As for the term "British Isles", I do find it a bit irritating but generally wouldn't pipe up and complain about it.
(20 is really funny.)
"BOOKS I said" is so funny that I can't help wondering if he planted that one in there.
!) I absolutely pronounce it HWine because I'm pretentious like that. (Maybe it has to do with my yokelly Canadian dad? He's got all kinds of archaic pronunciations.)
2) Opinionated George III makes me so very happy.
3) Chatroulette sounds just horrible.
99: Humping a Frenchy will do that to a phoneme...
togolosh, dftt.
As a matter of fact the "HW" phoneme is solid Anglo-Saxon, as in the scholar Ealhwine, whose name was interpreted at Charlemagne's court as Alcuin.
My mom was an anglo-saxon nerd; she used to read Beowulf to us in OE.
My mom was an anglo-saxon nerd; she used to read Beowulf to us in OE.
Fantastic!
How old were you? Until I was about 15 I'd have had no idea if she was really reading Beowulf or just making plausible sounding noises she made up as she went along. Even then I'd have been guessing.
Under 10, certainly. She'd translate as she went along. She probably would have used a modern-English version, but I think her old college copy was the only one lying around the house.
I was one of those readers who was happy as long as I got the general drift of a text and didn't get hung up on individual words or sentences. That is how I accidentally read the original version of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight at around 8 years ago.
"BOOKS I said" is so funny that I can't help wondering if he planted that one in there.
No photoshopping or other trickery was used in production. I admit I kinda couldn't believe I got the opportunity to make this joke, though.
That is how I accidentally read the original version of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight at around 8 years ago.
This is probably the best sentence I've read this month. "I didn't mean to do it, officer, honestly. Something snapped and suddenly I found I'd read this long middle English poem."
Eight years old, I meant. I was young enough that I didn't realize it was "hard" because it was dialect ME.
At the age of 8 I think I'd have thought it was hard because it was full of words I didn't understand. But you're much cleverer than me.
Nu, the point was that there are different kinds of readers, some who want to understand each individual word and others who are happy to drift along in a muzzily understood narrative.
others who are happy to drift along in a muzzily understood narrative.
This is how I live my everyday life.
110: Neither of my children are happy drifters. Reading with them often means spending as much time talking about the story as it is actually reading it.
happy to drift along in a muzzily understood narrative.
I'm sure this is the better way, but I'm far too much of a control freak for it to come naturally. I've tried to teach myself to do it, with mixed success.
To the OP: Holy crap, I think I know the guy in the second result.
Missed this earlier. It's Ogged, isn't it?
I'm a happy drifter, and back when I was reading a lot of Middle English in college, I found Gawain&tGK easier than Chaucer as well. I know it's not supposed to work like that, but there were big patches of the Canterbury Tales where I wouldn't have been reading at all without the notes, while G&tGK I could fake my way through.
I found Gawain&tGK easier than Chaucer as well.
I just purchased John Steinbeck's re-telling of the Arthurian legends. I didn't even know it existed before I saw it in a used book store.
I'm able to read it without any notes.
Not fully read the comment thread, but in my accent, "whine" and "wine" are completely different. The phonemes at the start are different; as I'm not phonemically challenged like you lot.
I was one of those readers who was happy as long as I got the general drift of a text and didn't get hung up on individual words or sentences. That is how I accidentally read the original version of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight at around 8 years ago.
Gawain is a lot easier for a modern reader to understand than Beowulf. It's several hundred years later, of course (well, as far as we can tell), and while it shares much the same metrical pattern and alliteration as OE poetry like Beowulf (and not Chaucer), the vocabulary is much closer to modern English.
Well, yeah. Middle English is basically Modern English with a lot of weird vocabulary and the spelling all messed up. Old English might as well be German. I'm horrible with languages, and faked my way through my one semester of OE mostly because most of the texts we used were Biblical, so I knew what happened next.
most of the texts we used were Biblical, so I knew what happened next.
"And then Habukkuk found five shekels."
||
Have to do some "play" team building thing in a few minutes on my "retreat"/training. Favorite color and all that. God, I hate this stuff.
|>
Do people really have favorite colors? I thought it was something people had to pretend to have in elementary school or beginning language classes.
I certainly did not learn Old English in any way that stuck during my one semester of it, but I enjoyed it, perhaps because we mostly did not use Biblical texts, aside from the lively tale of Judith and Holofernes. The poem "The Seafarer" is really great and moving. Recommended!
There is probably some crazy physics thing that predicts what someone's fav color is.
Really, I blame that sort of thing for why I don't speak any other languages very well.
"Meine Lieblingsfarbe ist blau. Ihre Lieblingsfarbe ist gelb. Deine Lieblingsfarbe ist... how do you say 'god, this shit is so boring'?"
"Gott, ist diese Scheiße so langweilig" says Google. I'm sure it's wrong.
Yeah, the Seafarer is great (as is The Wanderer). Incredibly melancholic. I remember being particularly struck by 'hwælweg' as a poetic synonym for 'sea'.
I started listening to random poems on YouTube. I just discovered basically no one reads Ginsberg's "Howl" (part 1) the way I read it in my head. I read each line in one long breathless rush, which gives it (I thought) it's distinctive feel.
131: it's
Please remove that tick.
M/tch, you fell into the trap I set for nosflow! Sorry, you're going to have to gnaw off your own leg to get out of it.
133: Please add a tick, slanted to the right, over the "e".
134: You idiot! Traps one falls into aren't the type of traps that can be escaped from via leg-gnawing.
Please remove that tick,
being careful not to separate its head from its body.
What, you don't put bear traps at the bottom of pits? Clearly you've never played D&D. Lucky for you I left out the mind flayer.
Please add a tick, slanted to the right, over the "e".
Hmm, this is actually kind of interesting, if pedantic.
That's quite an upset, for something other than "Apostrophe" to be "the preferred character to use for apostrophe". And quite an insult to "Apostrophe".
136: Somebody hasn't watched the Saw movies.
131: Ginsberg himself sounds like an android insect from space when he reads it. I know he thinks he's making it sound like medieval chant, but really it sounds like an android insect from space.
An android insect from space dot com.
Okay, which of you bastards broke M/tch?
That's quite an upset, for something other than "Apostrophe" to be "the preferred character to use for apostrophe".
I know, I know. And isn't it nice that somebody is willing to explain the reasons for that decision in such detail.
Maybe the "add dot com" craze just doesn't translate well to a written medium.
And truth be told, one of the twelve year olds present at the discovery of this linguistic marvel did say something along the lines of "can you stop saying dot com after everything? It's getting annoying". But what do kids know about humor?
You idiot!
For some reason, I'm getting great pleasure out of imagining myself saying this out loud someday. No one in particular in mind, just want to. For a long time my fantasy asshole thing to say was "Listen, lady," but now that I have lived in Brooklyn so long its novelty has worn off.
I had not before realized that the Old English and Middle English nerds were of course colonizing YouTube.
For a long time my fantasy asshole thing to say was "Listen, lady"
I have said this! To an annoying woman at the Co-op, even! I was shocked by myself for days.
148: It's even more fun to say if you use a ridiculous French accent: "EEEEEDDdiote!"
151: No, that's the Ren and Stimpy way.
If I want to be an asshole I just call people "toots" or "pal", depending on gender.
I overheard a rather tense discussion about etiquette of playing music from one's phone on the subway that involved one of the men calling the other "Buddy." Sinister.
I use the Brooklyn "lady" on my wife all the time. (My daughter gets "ladybug".)
In large parts of Britain and Ireland, calling somebody 'pal' means 'I'm going to hit you now.' Is this also the case in Cryptic town?
Whenever Barack Obama starts a sentence with "Listen," I mentally add a "lady" or "buddy" to it.
One day I hope to call an annoying stranger "Spanky." I suppose I have a blog for that, so I can do it all cowardly-like.
152.1: Right. I was trying to remember where I'd picked that up. But of course it's from Ren.
152.2: "Bub" is pretty nice too.
My little linguistic fantasy has been to address all women as "sister." I never go through with it. Some fantasies are best left in the mind.
You can probably address all human beings as either "old timer", "young fella", "soul sister" or "princess".
160: For a moment I was wondering which one to use with men of my approximate age, but I guess "princess" will suffice.
I like the Chinese custom of addressing all strangers older than oneself as aunt or uncle, and all strangers roughly the same age or younger as brother or sister, although as a whitey doing so with Chinese people, there was always the mutual feeling that it wasn't quite right, but what else was there to call each other?
One cute Japanese thing is for an adult to address a very young child (to whom they are not related) as "older brother" or "older sister."
161: "Sport", of course. "Ace" will also work.
155: I don't know about Cryptic town, but IME it's more like, "If you want to start a fight with me, I'm not gonna stop you."
I just thought of a great game: Cock-A-Mole!
"Cockamole" also sounds like a good Elizabethan insult.
168: Also "Chief", "Boss". "Slick", and "my good man".
I don't think I've ever heard someone in the midwest use "Pal" as a form of address, and IME "Buddy" is for people who are annoying you very slightly -- the guy on the street corner who won't believe that you don't have a cigarette he can buy for $.25 for instance. Pace that guy who writes PHC-style humor about Maine, if you're Downeast and somebody addresses you as "Mister Man", it's time to put up your dukes.
And, of course, there's always "Mac", but that would seem to have limited utility outside the confines of a taxi cab.
One of the real perks of courtroom practice is getting to refer to the other lawyer as "Counsel". It's a perfectly polite, ordinary thing to do, but if you're feeling it you can get that "Buddy/Pal/Sport/Ace" tone into it.
175: "Mister Man"? Wow, I've only encountered that in short stories from the twenties, where it's restricted to lower-middle-class women being kittenishly flirtatious.
BUT WHAT ELSE ARE THEY GOING TO CALL ME IF WE'RE NOT ON A FIRST NAME BASIS?
Wasn't this about half the plot of "Men in Black"?
Oh, there's also "Chum", also only in Maine nowadays I think. And probably only amongst the older generation at that.
Being in the left, there's a lot of guys who have picked up the annoying habit of addressing other men as "Brother". Which always makes me feel kinda squick.
Back in the olden days, I had a friend who liked to screw around with conventions on the left. He decided to start addressing people as "ra/dc/om" (i.e. "co/mr/ade" backwards). It never really caught on, and some people were actually a little bit offended. Most were simply confused.
"Buckaroo" is one I use half seriously.
175: The marvellous, superfab Lester/Pinkney retelling of the Uncle Remus stories, uses "Mr. Man" for the Farmer. As in (my favorite line):
Mr. Man's garden was too delicious-looking for Brer Rabbit to leave alone. And anyway, it wasn't right for Mr. Man to have all them pretty vegetables to himself. Obviously, he didn't believe in sharing. Being worried about Mr. Man's soul, Brer Rabbit decided he'd make Mr. Man share.
Makin' Mr. Man share!
addressing other men as "Brother". Which always makes me feel kinda squick.
Faux-blaxploitation 'brother', or old-old-old school labor movement/socialist 'brother'?
182: Aaaand hilarious (no, really!) Ben Affleck clip on the perils of being addressed as "Brother" in Southie. And on the different Boston accents.
I actually picked up the habit of addressing women as "Sister" from helpy-chalk, but I only do it when I am annoyed at someone, Cary Grant style -- as in, "Listen, sister!" This was not so good, when I hollered, "Listen, sister! Back of the line!" at a woman who was jumping a block-long queue for taxis at Penn Station. After addressing her thusly, I realized she was African-American and then was like, Oh. Hmm. That may not come across as intended. But of course nothing came of it, as she was at that point getting essentially pulled out of a taxi by other angry line-waiters.
186: old-old-old school labor movement/socialist 'brother"
Definitely this. Frankly, I'd rather they said "Comrade" or "Companero" or something, though those would each have their own issues. I'm not totally sure why "Brother" weirds me out. Partly the chummy/in-group aspect of it. And no one refers to female comrades as "Sister"*. And of course there's a lot more sensitivity to pronouns in the younger segment of the scene nowadays, and so the gendered form of address is a little jarring.
*Closest I've ever seen to that was a friend, who is very nice, but also a bit of a flake sometimes, offer her last piece of chocolate, during a radical meeting, to any of the other couple of women there who might "be in their Moon Time". It wasn't so much the TMI aspect as the ridiculous New Age euphemism part that set me a quiver with chagrin.
BR calls women "sister" in an affectionate way.
She also says "shut the front door!" to express excitement.
And no one refers to female comrades as "Sister"*.
Hrmph. I've probably griped about this before, but Supreme Court Justices used to, rather charmingly, refer to each other as "Brother". They quit in unison the day O'Connor joined the Court. Would calling her their "Sister" have broken any bones?
183: "Don't tase me, buckaroo!"
Companero
I had a Mexican dude call me "carnal" one time.
I've had occasion to use sister, or "sista," when living in West Africa, but mostly went with the slightly more formal "madame." "Auntie" or "mother" were also options.
I can live with brother/sister a lot more easily than comrade, I think.
(I do hate people signing off `in solidarity', especially when it's over some weird careerist bureaucratic missive.)
197: I do hate people signing off `in solidarity'
Uh-oh. I do that sometimes. But only when it's someone with radical politics, and we're discussing something political. Are there a lot of ex-radical bureaucrats in the antipodes?
"Hey, fucknuts!" "Hey, sweetits!"
198: I get generic updates from my union about, say, changes to 401k reimbursement of whatever, signed "In solidarity."
`in solidarity'
I've been signing things off as "In liquid-arity", but I'm pretty sure it's just a phase.
My family calls each other "buddy" and "dude. I thought this was highly individual and charming of us, until I realized one of my professors also does it with her husband and kids, and she's from Minnesota. So now I worry that it's highly midwestern of us, and I'm from Montana, and I try hard not to code midwest because it encourages people who already didn't know where Montana was to think it is somewhere around Minnesota and/or Michigan.
Anyway I think it's hilarious to call little tiny girls "dude". "Hey, c'mere, dude, let me zip your jacket up".
Helpy-chalk is a gay hairdresser?
In his fantasies, anyway.
I like signing my emails "your friend, [Firstname Lastname]". In case someone forgot who I was, or that I was their friend.
Also I liked on The Wire when Stringer and Avon called everyone "baby".
Mainly it's people involved in the youth wing of the big left-wing party in NZ -- ``many members to go on to a career in politics'' which is to say, crawling with careerists.
I don't mind it when it's actually in solidarity -- a union, or a close collective, or whatever, but when it is someone bitching that the deadline for constitutional amendments ought be extended, or the proxy vote rules ought be revised, or whatever, it just annoys me.
(I use it too occasionally.)
202: Anyway I think it's hilarious to call little tiny girls "dude"
Oh! One of the artistic/bohemian types I know from work has a 2 year old daughter, whom she addresses as "my friend", as in "No, you don't need any treats, my friend, we just had dinner half an hour ago." It is very cute.
206- it'll be even better when the 2-year-old starts doing it back to adults.
208: I used to confide in adults that whatever I was telling them was "for your information". That got a few chuckles.
I just this afternoon received shipment of a very large object that came in even larger packaging. Which means that right now at home, I have two clean 8ft x 10ft sheets of cardboard. The possibilities are endless, but without you (or Ali), I am not likely to make anything of them. I thought of you right away, of course.
this box used to be 5' by 5' by 1', and it was delivered to the house of some friends several blocks away. At the end of January. The box sat in their house while we waited for me to be healthy enough to drive the truck and there to be no snow in the air or burying the truck, all at the same time.
As soon as we finally got it here, my roommate asked me "does it have to stay in our house forever?" and the roommate of the friend who was the source of it said hurriedly that wherever it went, it could not go back to THEIR house, that was for sure.
No one understands how great it is to have giant boxes in your living room. Stupid DC philistines.
Anyway I'm gonna cover it with duct tape (did you know they make pink and turquoise duct tape? they do) and nail it to the railing on my porch. Summer fort!
also: Megan, what did you order?!?
I have not exactly read this thread, but I hope someone has pointed out to M/tch that Jethro Tull got there ahead of him. And it was even ahead-of-the-trendy-curve for, like, two and a half minutes after it was released.
Jethro Tull existed in the internet era? Wait... it still exists? My mind is blown.
This bed. Now I need a mattress. A very handsome fellow delivered the bed and gallantly helped me unload it. If only there were some way to thank him.
@192: That is the cutest expression I've ever heard. Shut the front door!
She also says "shut the front door!" to express excitement.
Shut that door, I'd have said. If I were a camp TV presenter of the 1970s.
This is cute (bit of NSFW language).
I call people older than me "kids".
I call people older than me, laydeez.
223: me too. But I call anybody "kids" regardless of age. Even actual children! And also adults. Most often referencing people within about 10 years of my age, I think, but sometimes to much older people.
Also, did someone already link this?
Re the Wire, I was rather charmed that Ziggy and Nick addressed each other as "cuz", which I don't think anyone over here has done since the reign of George I.
228: Nice. Where did you find that one, neb?
She also says "shut the front door!" to express excitement.
Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!
214: For your information, my friend, the esteemed Jethro Tull was doing something completely different there.com.
And 218 gets it exactly right.com.
No one understands how great it is to have giant boxes in your living room.
I understand!
At the lab we regularly make little improvized fixtures out of cardboardium alloy. It's an underrated engineering material, IMO.
No one understands how great it is to have giant boxes in your living room.
Oh, some of us do! My parents moved last year, and have been buying loads of new stuff, and it seems like whenever we go there there is a new box to sit in.
