> The former prisoner of war and U.S. Navy seaman Doug Hegdahl reports fellow U.S. captives in the Vietnam War would authenticate a new prisoner's U.S. identity by using "Shave and a Haircut" as a shibboleth, tapping the first five notes against a cell wall and waiting for the appropriate response. With the mass export of western culture, I wonder if there are any songs, tunes, or patterns like this that would still…
“Not happy…” (“Jan”) would probably work for most Aussies, as one of the most well-known but still local catchphrases.
During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans infiltrated the American lines with ersatz officers sowing confusion by giving conflicting orders in perfect English. The GIs hit on the idea of asking them baseball questions. Failing to answer them correctly got the fake officers shot on the spot. My dad (WW2 vet) told me I would have been shot on the spot. My utter disinterest in baseball distressed him.
American love of baseball is absolutely a trope in WWII films. It was part of a recent "Masters Of The Air" episode where a German interrogator tried to establish rapport with a captured American flier by discussing the most recent World Series. It's like baseball was the only American sport during the 1930s and '40s.
I've been enjoying MotA. My only gripe is the crews laughing, talking and cheering about the target during the briefing. They didn't do that. They were terrified.
Wow, so "two bits" is what Roger says in response to Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I can hear it now, but I never actually knew what was said.
I never understood that either. It only took me about 30 years to get the joke.
If you’re a Seinfeld fan, listen to how George knocks on the door in “The Butter Shave”. :)
I imagine they would have to be hyper-local at this point. You could authenticate someone from a major metropolis, maybe, but not likely the whole of the US.
I once interviewed a candidate for an engineering position in Seattle. It quickly turned out that he had fabricated his entire work history and education. My first clue was that he claimed two years of work experience at Costco HQ in Issaquah, Washington but he pronounced it as "Is-ACK" (the local pronounciation is "IS-uh-kwah"). No one who spent two years in Issaquah would ever pronounce it that way, regardless of t…
Louisiana has a long list of place names like this. New Orleans street names alone have standard pronunciations, many of which are not obvious especially if you've seen the name in other contexts. Then there are the city names like Plaquemines, Natchitoches, and even New Orleans itself (if you say "new or-LEENZ" like Chuck Berry you will be immediately flagged as an outsider). I reminded my wife of Natchitoches every…
I grew up in New Orleans and now live in Seattle, and all of my intuition for pronunciation is just totally broken. In many places, if you see a "weird" (as in non-English-seeming) place name, a reasonable pronunciation guess is to just assume it's from a Romance language and pronounce it vaguely Spanish/French-ish. This works because so many foreign names that are common in the US that aren't obviously Anglo/Germani…
Oh, I forgot Puyallup, good one. Without the state fair radio commercials I’d be lost. I DID pronounce it as “Muh-KILL-tey-o” on the first day that we moved there 20 years ago, but never again. And Sekiu being pronounced “C Q” seems like it may violate your pronunciation schema. :)