August 25, 2004

• ok, really meant to hit "preview" but ...oops.
• "Could any well-informed antipodeans explain?" Yeah. Mr Lane is a fuckin' idiot.
• When are they going to bring in English ability tests for UK citizens? And what will they do when vast sections of the population fail, send them back to where they came from (Birmingham,Bradford, Lewisham, Catford)? This fucked-up legislation is yet another example of bureaucracy that aims only to please the bureaucrats. Arseholes, all of them (present company excluded, of course).
• Some of my favorite expressions: Dark as the inside of a cow. Dumb as toast. Like swimming in peanut butter (a difficult task) That looks like a bucket of stupid to me. Cold as a witch's tittie. Slicker than owl shit. Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. And of course: Crazy as a sack of bees.
• Local expressions from BC (Canada) Half Sack - six pack Mickey - small flask shaped bottle of alcohol, ie mickey of rum, mickey of scotch etc. Molson Muscle - beer gut Skookum - strong - from the native term skookumchuck or strong water. Hence also; Chuck or Salt Chuck - the ocean - as in "Out on the chuck" - going boating. So in a sentence, "I'd have a half sack while I'm out on the chuck, but it would only make my Molson muscle get bigger. So, I'd better stick to a mickey of gin. Hey, can we go to Tim's after?
• some more Canadian expressions/words - Two-Four (case of 24 beers, also inspiring May Two-Four, when you celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday by drinking a Two-Four) Washroom (a shiboleth of Canadians vs Americans, who would say Restroom or Bathroom instead) The funny thing about this whole affair is that they apparently aren't letting the Anglophones (another Canuck word, from the Quebequois) take the same English test everyone else does, which is holding up the citizenship proceedings for a bunch of people.
• I is Ainglish gud. Lett me inner Lundun.
• It's spelled "fossick", not"fossik". Please do try to keep up, Mr BBC. Further to the above, Terry Lane is making the joke. Yes? Yes?
• There's half a justification for this: while we know Australia prefers it's immigrants to sink somewhere offshore, many English-speaking Commonwealth nations have significant minorities with piss-poor English skills. Hell, here in New Zealand, where we're not exactly linguistically diverse, there's been a study in the news noting that only 1/3 of refugees are holding down jobs after 5 years here, and the main barrier is apparently language skills. (I find it pretty hard to believe that you can't aquire a good enough grasp of a language in a new country to hold down a job after 5 years, but never having tried it myself, perhaps it's a lot harder than I realise). 5 years is actually long enough to be getting New Zealand citizenship. If the UK is paranoid about the English-language qualification then, yeah, I guess it makes sense to test Somalian or Afghani New Zealanders. And if you just test the non-white New Zealanders, the howls would be much louder (and you'd miss all the Seth Efrican Kiwis with their accents that make a Glasgwegian cringe).
• Will there be a backlash? Can Brits in future expect to be made to undergo humiliating exams/tests/questions in order to enter other Commonwealth countries? Aye, there's the chub: whether 'tis nobler in the airport to suffer the cods and carp-ings of an outrageous custom, or cry herring and let strip the dogfish of their exploding shoes tomorrow and tomorrow falling as the gentle rain of fishes upon the plaice beneath.
• Don't worry, Poms who move to Australia or New Zealand already get humiliation a-plenty. Especially Australia. (Need we mention the annual flogging that is the Ashes?)
• the annual flogging Which only happens every two years.
• bees, that made me laugh right out loud. In a library no less! (I'm getting dirty looks from the librarians now, how fun...)
• I hatesss it. Had to scramble about proving that I could speak and write English, to avoid having to run to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to sit for a bloody English proficiency test. I graduated with a Bachelors with Honors in English Literature and they still wanted a letter stating that I was taught in English! /fume
• But nothing beats the time this jerk from Pennsylvania tried to explain to me what he meant by "Light at the end of the tunnel." I almost wished he had been tied to those tracks in the tunnel.
• There's no language requirement in NZ, as far as I know, unless you're here as a student. And the various national/ethnic groups generally live in a fairly tight area - the suburb of Christchurch that I live in is jokingly known as "Asianhead", not Avonhead, because there really are a lot of people from Korea, Japan and China in this part of town. All four of the local dairies (corner shops) are run by Korean couples who speak minimal English, because the majority of their customers speak their language. There's also a decent-sized Somali community over on the other side of town - they run a flea market on the weekend and have their own "society" which promotes solidarity. It seems to be quite easily to remain insular here as a non-kiwi, and I wonder how much we New Zealanders do to help isolate immigrants and prevent them from integrating more into English-speaking society. "Light at the end of the tunnel," eh? I tried, very badly, to explain to a lovely Korean neighbour the other day what polyurethane was and why you'd apply it to a wooden magazine rack. She ended up walking away and asking someone else. :)
• Universities are funny about what they require. My university would accept that anyone who graduated from an English language university was proficient, but another American university a friend applied to was insisting that he take an English test. This friend was born and raised in the UK.
• There's a language test uni entrants are supposed to take in France, but I got a dispensation from my supervisor on the basis of previous correspondence and submission of a 14 000 word essay to same. Easy, yes?
• There's no English proficiency test in Norway (nor Norwegian, although you are offered a free Norwegian course on arrival). Fuck the UK, come to a non-EU country (but please leave enough room for the quota refugees).
• Naturally, at the same time, a different department of our Government is dropping the requirement for school pupils to have to take at least one compulsory foreign language at GCSE level (first major set of qualifications, taken aged 15/16). Frankly, I don't see why we're limiting this to people wanting to come into Britain - why can't we just go back to the good old days where it was a requirement for everybody in the world to speak English? That would make life a lot easier for us. the annual flogging that is the Ashes Ooooohhhh.*Rubs hands in anticipation of great-again, invincible England giving the Aussies a pasting next summer.* The wrath of the Flintoff is mighty.
• Well, the day's arrived, and I'm betting those hands have developed some mighty callouses. In my view, you'd be wise to keep them.
• We'll never beat Australia carrying dead wood and Ashley Giles and Geraint Jones are dead wood - but I wouldn't drop them. -- Derek Pringle WTF?
• It's fucking menacing, isn't it?