The English Language

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Wilson , the boss of Kingunion Light of Shenzhen, China.

LOL!! The boss of Kingunion...

Yeah - I was shopping for porcelain tile......I write online, and when I'm not doing that, I'm surfing or here or researching...I adore having a library at my fingertips...

also have training about websites and online marketing, evaluating websites, working with themes, etc. Some sites are just crap. They're really funny in a sad sort of way.

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
LOL!! The boss of Kingunion...

Which when pronounced sounds like 'King Onion'.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

LOL!!! Oh, how funny. We always called it "Fun with Foreigners" in college - we had friends from India, Pakistan, Egypt, etc.
Language is a really important thing to me.




Here's the image they had for the wood-look tiles:



HAPPY LIFE!



Gus, you could totally do that when you're on the phone...."Happy Life!" It even sounds Chinese....or would they say Happy Rife?
aw....of course, it's meant to be all in fun - the world is so connected now that exposure to non-native speakers will happen for every language!

I think it's really cool. But then again, I'm a pedant.

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
Gus, you could totally do that when you're on the phone...."Happy Life!" It even sounds Chinese....or would they say Happy Rife?

I already do. I tell the China team we need to have a more rellow (yellow) light output from our fixtures.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus



How funny. It's so charming when people try so earnestly. I taught Spanish to professional people - and I also worked with a staff of 75 who all spoke Spanish. It's just so much fun. I think.

HAPPY LIFE

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
I taught Spanish to professional people - and I also worked with a staff of 75 who all spoke Spanish. It's just so much fun. I think.

I 'Spanish-ize' words too. I ask the wife if she wants a Spanish meal, she says 'yes' and I give her esoup and esandwich.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs
Does the greeting "What's good?" strike you as the translation of a Spanish idiom?
I'm looking for clues about the origin of a poster who also, on a different occasion, used the greeting "Good day" (Buenos dias?).

a reply to: DISRAELI

Yep. What's good....

Que Onda

Que Pasa
Que Buena
Digame Lo Bueno

or just "Digame" (DEE gah meh)
All acceptable as a greeting.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs
Thank you. It is pleasing to have a guess confirmed.
(In fact I think the greeting may have been "Tell me what's good")

a reply to: DISRAELI

And yes, "Buenos Dias" is good day, the regular formal sort of way.

Familiars shorten it to "buen dia"

because they see each other every day....it means "good day" - buenos dias is more like "hope you have great good days for ever and ever".

a reply to: DISRAELI

"What's good?"

Yeah, that is just so cute.

Anyway, they mean to say "what's up?" .... I had a boyfriend for a while who when people would arrive at his door he'd hold his arm toward the interior and say, very enthusiastically, "Get in!"

LOL!!!!!

Fun with foreigners

a reply to: BuzzyWigs
It puzzled the poster he was addressing (not me), who took it as a real question.

a reply to: DISRAELI

mmm....pizza! Oh and death-by-chocolate cake!

a reply to: BuzzyWigs
When did this become a food thread?
OK, steak-and-kidney pudding followed by spotted dick. Mmm, suet!

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Do words matter to you? Do you think they are important?

Yes and yes.

most intriguing or obscurely understood (inscrutable) idioms, etc.

Here's some idioms that mean "everything" pretty much.

Lock, stock, and barrel:
I pretty much figured out early that it had to do with merchandising. (barrel?-pickle barrel?). Then when I became a gunsmith, that's when I found out. So if you see a sign reading "Lock Stock and Barrel" that's the one stop shop for all your gun building needs. I suppose it would have taken too much space to write "Lock Stock Barrel and Furniture".

Whole kit and caboodle:
I pretty much knew what a kit was, the stuff in a soldier's pack, looked at Civil War photos, saw the Confederate horseshoe tied blanket. (Caboodle?) No, caboodle is a redundancy, just means collection.

Whole nine yards:
Uh, football? Better look it up. Crying out loud! Nobody knows!

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

I'm fairly certain that my oldest sister is the person responsible for the word Doofus.

I suspected it for a long time. She was saying things like "don't be a doofus" years before I ever heard anyone else use the word. Look it up, first known usage 1960 according to Merriam-Webster.

I coined the word Ralstedious(adj. derived from the proper noun Ralsted Monster) in the early 70s. Pretty much means chaotically grotesque amalgam. Never really caught on. My older brother reported hearing it used once on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean. He did one of those takes like Harry Potter in the train station, "Muggles?", (tried to find a youtube clip but couldn't).

So my brother's like, "Hey! How do you know that word?" And other guy's like, "My younger brother says it. Got it from this really freaky guy he knows." Same-small-hometown people meet in the big World - all thanks to the ralstedious nature of things.

a reply to: DISRAELI

No!! nono...it didn't become a food thread. It's still a words and language thread.

I was just responding like I would if someone asked me "what's good?", ya know.

Pretty summer days. Pretty summer days are good.

a reply to: DISRAELI

spotted dick

Yeah - spotted dick....not a very easily interpreted phrase.

If you walked into some country-boy's house who'd made Christmas dinner and said, "Let me see your spotted dick!"

You'd wake up in a hospital.

a reply to: pthena

RE: Lock, stock, and barrel

I was always told it came from England and the inventions of fire arms manufacturing. The 'lock' being the flint lock (now known as the trigger, as there is no flint needed to ignite powder as they are now encapsulated 'primers'--caps); the stock, the part you put against your shoulder, and the barrel is the barrel of the rifle (flint-lock rifle). So instead of buying just parts you order the whole kit and caboodle!

Speaking of guns and metallurgy...

Today's word of the day at the coffee shop: Case harden

In metallurgy, it is to make the surface harder than the inside.

As a word, it means, "to make callous or insensible" (Webster's 9th)

This a new on me! I have probably read it (most likely have) but politely elided over it.