Now don’t worry; I may have dealt out homework this morning. HOMEWORK? Yes, homework: you see at the beginning of a brand new term I have these flights of fancy that I might be able to actually teach people something new. But give me three or four weeks, it’ll pass.
If you’d like to listen to the radio feature again you’ll find it here. It was episode 7, Cultural Differences that we heard.
And at the risk of sounding like a commercial, I’d just like to point out that the British Days and Country Fair is on at Burg Linn this coming weekend, with some of those peculiarly British activities like welly wanging – what? Welly is short for Wellington boot, meaning rubber boot, and to wang – well, maybe a picture tells a thousand words:
There’s also tossing the caber, chucking straw bales, throwing weights: all in all, you might get the impression that British people spend most of their free time propelling strange objects through the air. Mind you, we’re not the only ones, I’ve seen a report on TV about a competition in Finnland where they see who can throw a mobile phone the furthest. I’d enjoy that. Especially if you were allowed to aim the phone at certain users.
By the way, for a bit of a laugh, go to the British Days website, go to the ‘Eventprogramm’ page and click on the Union Jack – you get an appallingly bad English translation. We could have a competition of our own, see who spots the most mistakes – and no throwing involved. I even found a mistake on the German version of the page inviting companies and organisations to register quickly in order to secure a stand in a ‘pool position’ (sic). Since it’s at the castle, they might mean a moat position, but whichever way, it doesn’t seem like a particularly attractive proposition somehow. A bit squelchy. Stallholders should hang on to those wellies, not wang them away. Maybe they were grappling for the expression from formula one racing?
4 Comments
September 10, 2009 at 3:28 pm
What, “crash at the first corner?”
September 10, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Or: “And they’re away!” (yawn)
September 10, 2009 at 3:32 pm
One other thought you might appreciate is that fencing invariably operates what should be a group, or “pool” stage at the start of tournaments, but in an effort to sound french it usually becomes “poule”.
As the nearest french-english dictionary tells us, this means they are in fact operating a chicken stage.
September 10, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Ooooh yes, I do appreciate that kind of faux posh, trying to look cosmopolitan and turning out disastrous: there’s a German author here who enjoys looking at attempts to give products international flair with unfortunate results. My favourite was the shop that was selling those trendy bags that are worn diagonally across the body, and advertised them as body bags. Hmmm, body bags on special offer – there must have been some terrible epidemic.