zompist bboard

Waddle - As in "I'm just waddling down to the shops, do you want anything?". It's replaced "mosey" as my favourite verb of motion.

Praise-God Barebone and his son Nicholas Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebon Paracelsus' real name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim I was really trying to think of some of those massive God-Be-Vengeful names, but couldn't find any. Excelle...

Octavia Hill

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

There's a politician here called Lord Adonis, which sounds like a drag king.

As other people have said, IPA is generally only used for "near enough" phonemic transcriptions. It is used for phonetic transcription as well, but that tends to get quite unwieldy: [ˈkʰæʔt͡s] (8 symbols) vs /kæts/ (4 symbols), and that's a relatively broad phonetic transcription. Make that seven, ...

There are a lot of different text-to-speech programs out there for different languages and such, but surely someone's made one where you put in the IPA and it says the word out loud? Surely that'd be simpler than programming for a specific language even! A program like that would be invaluable for ...

ol bofosh wrote:Throzen Frones. XD

Been there, done that

I'm going to a wedding vow renewal this afternoon and I have to dress more formal than drunken tramp but less than formal wedding regalia and I don't know what to wear. It also sucks balls that I'm going on my own because my partner went back to see his dad who's just badly injured himself. I hate w...

right, yeah, but you don't call the game "it"... fucking london... Fucking Souf East England, please - don't lump me in with that city. and there's a version of hide and seek called sardines where one person hides, and everyone else tries to find them, but when they do, they have to hide with them ...

you call that "it"? it's called tig in the uk and tag in america. It's called tig in some parts of the UK; at my primary school, it was called it . Stuck in the mud was called sticky toffee (which is the one where someone has to crawl through your legs to release you, inevitably headbutting you in ...

Hallow XIII wrote:If you wear what everyone else wears you're a sad imitant anyway and I have no desire to speak with you further.

Or you just like going with the flow and don't need to be a special snowflake.

Roll or bap . A bun is sweet unless it's a burger bun but that is really just a roll playing an elaborate ruse. A bap is flatter than a roll. A burger bap is a nice floury white thing with just the barest suggestion of a crust, whereas a burger bun is a moulded wheat-based sponge with sesame seeds ...

If I was getting mega-dialecty, that's almost a twitten, but twittens don't exist outside of Lewes and environs. From the Straight Dope link above: "In the UK it seems that every town has its own name for this space. Some examples are :- Alley , jitty, jennel, jetty,ginnel, twitchel, twitten, bacsk...

If I was getting mega-dialecty, that's almost a twitten, but twittens don't exist outside of Lewes and environs.

I've been having a think about books I'd recommend, and the following have floated up to the top of the file. Teach Yourself Linguistics (Jean Aitchinson, 1999) is a good starting point. It's not at all in depth but it's a pleasant enough read and covers a lot of basics. On UK Amazon it costs 1p, so...

Oh, and ask questions! Asking "can someone please explain BLAH to me" is almost certain to get a response, even if it's just pointing you in the direction of a Wikipedia page with an unlikely name that has really useful information halfway down.

But saying that is technically different from just saying "don't make mistakes", which I still think is bad advice. As do I. One of the things I regret about my language-learning is waiting until I think I have things perfect and not just charging in waving my metaphorical arms about blundering awa...

The more you read, the more you learn. Whether it be in formal education or just reading a lot of Wikipedia, building up a familiarity with any topic will allow you to understand more and more bits. I am studying linguistics at MA level, and I believe there are a few PhD people around. I think the Z...

"I don't like going to the [outdoor pool] in town any more, there's always a load of teenagers getting off round the edges" does not mean the same thing in English English as American English, it transpires. So what does it mean in the dirty version? Both could be interpreted in a "dirty" way actua...

"I don't like going to the [outdoor pool] in town any more, there's always a load of teenagers getting off round the edges" does not mean the same thing in English English as American English, it transpires.

I just heard a BBC newsreader mispronounce the fairly small village of Chiddingly /ˈtʃɪdɪŋlaɪ/ as the more obvious /ˈtʃɪdɪŋli:/. This is a disgrace! Who do I write to about getting my licence fee back?

I think you're supposed to use coconut milk with Thai curry paste. I don't like coconut paste, so I use yoghurt, or cream, in both case with great results. (Probably not very Thai results, but quite good.) But I don't like coconut fucking milk. Nor yoghurt or cream. Then try silken tofu, rice yoghu...

@ Dewrad (or any other of the resident Brits): How much is a yard of ale in liters? I looks like quite a lot. I think it's about two pints, so a bit over a litre? Wikipedia says about 1.4 litres or two and a half pints, which sounds about right to me. I don't think it's a standard measure, really. ...

ol bofoshnae wrote:Offham /ˈɒ.fəm/

Offham in East Sussex (near Lewes) or West Sussex (near Arundel /ˈæ.rən.ˌdʊl/)? Cos the one in East Sussex is definitely /ˈoʊ.fəm/.

I just made wild garlic and almond pesto and it is bloody marvellous. Foraging is fun!

I grew up in Lewes, which I've heard pronounced /ljuːz/ but it actually pronounced /ˈluːɨs/.

There's an area of Brighton called the Steine /stiːn/.

There are two Gillingham like /ˈɡɪlɪŋəm/ and one Gillingham like /ˈdʒɪlɪŋəm/ in England.