Football fan sites are proving the best, or at least most consistant, source of BritishSpeak for me so far. Here is some more from our friends over at Magpies. Anyone?
If Cashley is just a chancer then he’ll off ski.
Matchdays are shite. (But, then he might have simply meant to type plain old "shit." That would make sense.)
Emre and Viduka I respect, they have just thought fuck this for a game of soilders, but Taylor and Butt and Given and Duff and Owen and many many others. Fecking great!
(I am still waiting for someone to explain that soldier thing to me. Is it really that unspeakably dirty that none of you can bear to do it?)
CHRIST IT JUST HIT ME! It's not soldiers, it's soilders. Feckin' bloomin' idiot, I am! (Still don't understand it, though. Sigh.)
xxxxxxxxxx
And then there are some things I think I understand, that don't need translating, but which are just so poetic they need to be aired and enjoyed, like 'Liza's father speaking in "My Fair Lady", if you know what I mean (in fact, I think Cockney poetry is going to be the next category added to this blog):
I laugh in the face of humiliation…
the slow dim-witted flabby old beast that is…
(I just now remembered what the elipse key combo is on my mac, so stand back!)
A number of poisons will be lanced and boy do they need lancing!
The crowd are old and bitter and beyond spontaneity or wit.
(This does bring up another question, however. Why do all of you always use use the plural infinitive--in this case "are" instead of "is"--for a singular subject/noun? I've noticed that. You do it all the time. Even Canadians do that. So, obviously it is taught in the British school systems. An American would never write "crowd are." [And here we must digress one step even further and note that Americans are taught, as you probably just noticed, to put their periods and commas inside the quotations marks instead of simply doing it logically like you do.] I realize that a crowd is composed of many people, but we are not talking about about people, we are talking about crowd. One crowd. Singular. As in "not two" crowds. It is not the most important thing any of you will do today, but I am still curious if anyone would care to explain the logic. I may as well learn to write BritSpeak at the same time as I am trying to learn to speak it. That may be one for Catherine. Thanks.)
Again, these are all extracted from today's post at magpieszone.com
I've been hanging out there a lot lately, but it isn't helping much. There's not a single post that I've been able to understand from beginning to end. God, it is just great!
It's definitely SOLDIERS, Max. So it's pronounced SOH-jurs.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to write directions for pronunciation when I'm an Australian, you're an American and everyone else is British. SOH-jurs makes sense to me but it probably sounds all wrong to everyone else.
Thanks, Trish. This must be a pretty indelicate one, as I have yet to get a definition from anyone, so I think I will leave you ladies alone and go ask Magpieszone what it means. I appreciate your input. By the way, how did your latest riding lesson turn out? Are you still all in one piece?
ReplyDeleteMax, That's definetely soldiers, my friend who write the article is in a very bad mood, and he probably type it wrong ;)
ReplyDelete@magpies zone.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clearing that up! (Still wish I knew what it means.)
Your blog cracks me up! Keep up the good work. Don't let them get to you!
I appreciate your loyal visits to our baby blog.
Can I see one of your matches on TV here? If so, tell me the date and I'll try and watch. Probably not, huh?
It's not reallly an indelicate one (or perhaps I'm indelicate, who knows?).
ReplyDeleteMy personal preference is "sod that for a game of soldiers", but all of them are much the same - too much like hard work, no way I'm going on with this. A more refined version could be, "Blow this for a lark".
The game of soldiers refers to a child's game of soldiers I believe.
Shite is exactly the same as shit.
Off ski would more usually be written offski. It means leaving, going.
To A:
ReplyDeleteFinally. Thankyouthankyouthankyou! That wasn't so bad. I have a feeling it is the American equivalent that would be the bad one. And thank you also for the other two. I am starting to make some progress here!
I am so happy you stopped by our little blog here. I hope you don't think my little project is silly. Although we are having fun with it, it is secretly quite important to me. I find these expressions fascinating.
I did not spend enough time on your blog-- I am so glad you caught my drop and found us. I went back to your blog and now I see how important what you are doing really is. I will be back to take some time to read. I will leave you my comments.
Please DO come back and see us whenever you need to talk to a friend! (Or even sooner. : )
I've come back sooner!!!
ReplyDeleteI caught your post on the Entrecard forum, was interested and then couldn't find it again.
I love language and languages. I'll be back :)
Dear a.:
ReplyDeleteHow nice to see you again so soon. I'm glad you are back. I really look forward to your giving me some pointers on my little project here. It's going to be just great.
By the way, there's no need for you to go back to that other post where you had left some comments a little while ago. Some hacker has apparently broken into our site and impersonated me by responding to your comments. It has happened before, I'm afraid. So you needn't bother with that.
You sound like a very tolerant and UNDERSTANDING person. Am I right? (Just curious. No reason for asking.)
a. is spot on and I've always used, "Sod this for a game of soldiers" myself. It just seems to be more common.
ReplyDeleteThe easiest way of putting it would be just like saying, "Fuck this," but of course, our nation is awkward, innit? :)
Qelqoth:
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm up and about now. Sorry it has taken me so long to repond but it was 1:25 am here when you commented and I was in bed belching up my Irish corned beef and cabbage. (We celebrated yesterday, so I wouldn't have to eat that shit on a workday.)
Well, that is interesting that you confirm that soldier thing meaning. I was pretty thick about it for a long time and I'm pretty sure I understand it now. Makes sense. Still not sure why y'all would bother to actually go to the trouble of saying something so complicted when a simple American "Fuck this shit" would do the trick. But I'm not complaining. After all, it was your manner of speaking that first attracted me to you limey bastards in the first place. (Boy, am I ever getting an education, too!)
Thanks for stopping by. I'm flattered you've actually taken the time to read my blog comments this far down. They get worse.
SORRY QUEQUOTH!
ReplyDeleteI meant sunny NEWPORT.
Sheesh! After all that trouble of luring you over to my blog, now I've gone and pissed you off!
Please accept my apologies. Hell, it's probably not even sunny, either.
Shite, pronounced shy-te.
ReplyDeleteGives greater emphasis to the word, much like 'shee-it' and is just a tad more polite.
As in 'the comments box on Blogger blogs are shite because they don't expand or scroll properly so I can only see half of what I'm typing.
;-)
Thanks Chris. Now it makes a little more sense. I was sort of wondering why there would be two words, if they both sounded exactly the same. I guess I missed the point they were trying to explain to me. I see it now. I appreciate you stopping by our little blog.
ReplyDeletePS- Chris, have you ever noticed that little thingy in the bottom right-had corner of a Blogspot (it isn't called Blogger anymore since Google bought it) comment box? Scroll down as if you were going to make a comment and you'll see what I am talking about. So I am not getting your comment about the size of the comment box. I personally have always been able to make the comment box as large as I care to make it, quite effortlessly. Oh, well--not important. The important thing is you were good enough to stop by here today. Thanks again!
I used to be able to re-size my box (!) but Google have changed something recently, and now I can't grab the corner :-(
ReplyDeleteHi Chris. That is really strange, isn't it? I mean, I can see it ok--I'm looking at it right now. But I guess not everybody can see it. Like you said, good old Google has probably been messing around with things again. I wonder if they did something that made it so the browser you are using doesn't pick everything up anymore after they made the changes? I am not a real technical person, but sometimes I have noticed that if a page looks funny, sometimes if I use a different browser (like Firefox instead of Explorer for example) that will sometimes make it look right. I guess some browsers just don't play right with certain websites.
ReplyDeleteIf you happen to have another browser on your computer, you might try using that different one and see what one of the Google blogs looks like. But probably not, right? That's probably too simple. I wish I knew more about this stuff and knew how to help you better, 'cause I want you to keep coming back to my blog. Let me know if you get it figured out so I'll know how to fix it, ok?