Reminds me of George Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdPy5Ikn7dw
English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#12The announcers at my station bafflingly repeat the automated announcements word-for-word!
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#13Genteelisms are a curse in Italy, where bureaucracy reaches levels unknown in the UK. One of my favourites, because of its utter, revealing stupidity, is the sporadic usage by some overzealous bureaucrat of the verb "to implement" (recently brought to Italian from English) with the wrong meaning of "increment". As in:
"We're working to implement the number of bus rides from A to B".
It's fun because you can clearly see the mechanism in action: the person who wrote the sentence decided to replace the too understandable verb "to increment" with something so obscure he himself didn't know what it really means.
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#14Genteelisms are a curse in Italy, where bureaucracy reaches levels unknown in the UK. One of my favourites, because of its utter, revealing stupidity, is the sporadic usage by some overzealous bureaucrat of the verb "to implement" (recently brought to Italian from English) with the wrong meaning of "increment". As in: "We're working to implement the number of bus rides from A to B". It's fun because you can clearly s…
I would like to bring to your attention (as an Italian) the recorded voice message now in use on highways when you pay the toll via credit card/bancomat (they are changing the readers from reading the magnetic band to reading the chip, so you have to insert the card in the reader and keep it inserted a few seconds until the flashing yellow leds become green) while a (very serious and authoritative sounding) female voice says:
"Attendere, validazione in corso."
[english]Wait, validation is under way.[/english]
Soon followed, as soon as the leds become green, by a (much higher pitch and happy sounding) different (still female) voice:
"Ritirare la tessera"
[english]Pick up the card[/english]
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#15While reading this article it gradually appeared to me that it just HAD to be about UK English, not US English.
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#16> And I simply don’t know what this means: “This is a booked four-coach service”.
Does it mean that the service only has four coaches and that each seat has already been pre-booked? (That is to say, good luck, you'll probably be standing.)
Any other possible meaning I'm having a hard time divining.
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#17"This train is no longer in passenger service" may be long-winded, but at least it's reasonably clear. Much better than the military equivalent, "the train has suffered an engineering casualty".
Oh I dunno - I kinda like the engineering casualty turn of phrase :-)
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#18I'm reminded of the word de-plane, which replaced the perfectly serviceable disembark as the term of choice for telling passengers to get out. This happened shortly after the TSA took over and is a depressing reminder of such.
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#19I'm reminded of the word de-plane, which replaced the perfectly serviceable disembark as the term of choice for telling passengers to get out. This happened shortly after the TSA took over and is a depressing reminder of such.
The OED says "deplane" goes back to 1923.
Re: English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4)
#20> And I simply don’t know what this means: “This is a booked four-coach service”. Does it mean that the service only has four coaches and that each seat has already been pre-booked? (That is to say, good luck, you'll probably be standing.) Any other possible meaning I'm having a hard time divining.
I think it means it's the four coaches that they intended to have. Rather than three because there's a problem with one of them, for example.