Paul
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Posts posted by Paul
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I'd like to add that I really don't know what I'm talking about.
Me neither. I was just trying to cram as much blather in as possible.
That's a sweet paragraph btw.
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I think that one of the reasons you encounter so many run-on sentences in amateur writing is that the authors are listening to their words in their heads and unconsciously "hearing" the various pauses and full stops that occur in natural speech without realizing that these demarcations do not automatically exist in written text and must therefore be specifically indicated by means of commas, semi-colons and periods, though in all fairness, the inability to realize this principle may be beyond their inherent capabilities and in truth reflects a lack of education in the fundamentals of written prose, though on the other hand I suspect in many cases it's a willful and deliberate attempt to represent oneself as an iconoclast, a free spirit unwilling to have their creativity straight-jacketed by obsolete and arbitrary rules, similar to the practice of other individuals to so posture themselves by gratuitous employment of sentences that, though punctuated, run on nevertheless.
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Another variation of the verbal shrug of indifference is "Meh." Here, though, we're getting close to word formation.
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I don't think "argh" is actually supposed to be pronounced, unless you're trying to be cute. It's really the verbal approximation of a guttural sound - mouth parts not involved.
"Eh" also has another meaning: the auditory version of a dismissive shrug.
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You'll see Brits using "Erm... " a lot. Usually the context is one in which the speaker is somewhat taken aback by something the other person said, perhaps accompanied by a soup?on of embarrassment.
"Nigel, you seemed to be staring at that young man quite a bit."
"Erm..."
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This conversation happened often. "Mr. Buzzard, you're my friend. We can?--"
"Don't be prudent." The old man?s voice struck through me. "You've done it for me before."
"I'm not going to do it again; and I don't care how much you offer me."
He's had sex with him before, and this time has decided not to. So surely that is being prudent? It sounds like 'sound judgement' to me. Anyway, impudent in my book is interchangeable with cheeky, and he's definitely not trying to cheek him...
That use of "prudent" brought me up short too when I read it. Thinking about it a moment, I figured out what the author probably actually intended, that the old man was chiding him for what he (the old man) thought was, in light of their past history together, an unwarranted and not-too-believable display of scruples. But simply saying "prudent" isn't the way you'd expect someone to express that. Missing is the sense of skepticism and scorn. If he was going to use the word and still get the meaning across (to us the readers as well as to the character), it should be phrased sarcastically, like "Now don't go getting all prudent with me all of a sudden."
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Is it just me, or are all the blogs not available right now?
Yeah, I just got a "You don't have permission to view the blogs" message. Probably still being worked on or something.
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I think EleCivil should try to work this into one of his stories, but in the meantime, the rest of you can have a ball watching it.
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Just recently I got this weird idea of taking the plot from an opera, Verdi's Rigoletto (which is itself based on the 1832 play "Le roi s'amuse" by Victor "Hunchback of Notre Dame" Hugo), and making the central characters gay. I'd be up front about what I was doing; f'rinstance, I figured on calling the title character "Rick Letto." His boss, The Duke of Mantua in the opera, almost begged to be called Duke Mantee, but Humphrey Bogart beat me to it with that name 70 years ago. I wasn't sure whether to make it an outright parody or to maintain the tragedy of the story. It has possibilities - in the opera, Rigoletto, a physically deformed court jester, keeps the existence of his beautiful virginal daughter a secret, especially from his womanizing boss. In the gay version, his motivation would be to avoid outing his secret son to protect him from gay-bashers. Or, if I made the kid young enough, from pedophiles, and turn his boss into one.
What finally kept the project from coming to anything remotely resembling fruition was the realization that I'd have to turn into a real writer to pull it off, with all the effort and dedication that entails. I am, in essence, a lazy person.
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I found this picture on Flikr
Link gave me a blank page.
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yeah looks like something a cowboy with a speech impediment would say.
Yeah, well, my knight can beat up your cowboy, so there. :D
Language evolves; maybe that's what we're seeing here.
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Yea instead of yeah.
This one seems to be so common it's almost as if it's become a convention of net fiction. Whenever I see a character saying "yea" I feel myself being thrust back into time, when knighthood was in flower and damsels were being rescued from dragons. I expect the conversation to proceed with "verilys" and "forsooths" abounding.
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Yahoo!
Lessee... dance-floor mayhem, juggling, mismatched socks... What's next? You're going to tell us you have ants in your pants?
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'ello, 'ello, 'ello! What's all this then?
Git I 've been familiar with for ages, thanks to Monty Python.
Gor Blimey, for USA ears, was for years the quintessential stereotypical British exclamation. Movies depicting ordinary British blokes had them spouting it right and left. Apparently it's a corruption of God blind me. I hadn't come across the Cor vartiation, though.
Another one that's subject to misunderstanding these days is blow me, in the sense of "I'll be damned," or more directly, "Well blow me down." If you read P.G. Wodehouse, you'll often hear Bertie Wooster exclaiming, "I'll be blowed."
Bollix seems to derivation of bollocks. Here in the USA, you can say of someone who messed up some project, "He really bollixed that up," and few, if any, will realize the original reference.
You lot is one of my favorite Britishisms, in particular when spoken in an affectionate, mock-derisive sense, as when Mum calls out to the family, "You lot get cleaned up now, tea's about on."
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She can't kill him off. Imagine what it'd do to the movie franchise.
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Other forms for gob- have to do with the mouth, eating, or talking: to gobble, gobbler, to gab;
My printed dictionary omits "gobsmacked," but has several other gob- words. A gob, in those words, can also have the meaning, "something chewed or spit."
OK, that was way more than you wanted to know.
I bet you're gobsmacked!
Initially, I had divined my own (and as it turned out, correct) sense of the term from the context in which I found it, but until I checked up on the derivations (gob=face), that's exactly what I had imagined; someone hocking up a good one and spitting it right in your kisser.
Funny the memories that stay with you long-term. I wasn't exactly gobsmacked that day, nearly 55 years ago, as all us little tykes were lined up on the stairs waiting to file back into kindergarten after recess. Suddenly I felt a cool, slimy sensation on the back of my neck. Some little shithead behind me had smacked his gob on me. Unlike a lot of childhood memories, which tend to be hazy mood-pictures, with this one I have a definite sense of location and circumstance. Maybe it's because it might have been the first experience I'd had of another kid my age deliberately being mean to me. Funny, though, I don't remember who it was. Maybe I blocked that out.
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Chapter 5: Some questions answered, but a whole lot more remain.
I had to wonder, were I in Tibor's shoes, if I'd be as sanguine about another encounter with Maxfield.
Would I? Hell, no.
I honestly did wonder, but I also couldn't resist using sanguine in this particular context.
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Chapter 5: Some questions answered, but a whole lot more remain.
I had to wonder, were I in Tibor's shoes, if I'd be as sanguine about another encounter with Maxfield.
But this is a story in which not everyone is exactly what they seem to be, isn't it? Note this sentence vis-?-vis Tibor in chapter one:
"The trouble was, like most teens, what you saw on the outside wasn't necessarily related to what was happening on the inside."
Eager to read more.
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Here's an interesting link on the possible derivation of "gobsmacked."
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whatdoesitmean?
Taken by surprise; uttlerly astounded.
"When I finally came out to Clive, my best friend since kindergarten, he told me he'd known for years and had been wondering when I was finally going to get around to it.
I was gobsmacked."
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No doubt about it, my all-time, number one, nonpareil, top of the heap, the ultimate, the ne plus ultra....
Gobsmacked.
I've been aching for the perfect opportunity to slip it into my everyday parlance, but alas, my life seems sorely lacking in the element of surprise.
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His "The Quantum" was one of the more enjoyable reads I've had, and I was looking forward to updates, infrequent as they were.
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OK, so I just read "Robert's Day" and been tantalized by the (temporarily I hope) withdrawn "Albert's Day or Sex on the 6:29" over on GA, and I'm looking forward to reading more of your stuff!
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However, what is a "Pashes are common..." Pashes?
I sort of assumed it derived from "passion," and after Googling pash + British slang, found I was right. "Infatuation" or "crush" would be equivalents.
Very nice story, I agree.
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Speech hesitations and other exclamations
in Writers' Workshop
Posted
Well, I've been speaking for 8 or so years longer than that, but it's only relatively recently that I've heard "meh" enter the language. In fact, I guess I'm something of an early adopter, since I've been using it myself for several years. Where I first picked it up, I don't know. I'm not one to fling around neologisms and jargon just to sound cool or hep (there; I thought I'd throw in a paleologism to lend credence to my profession of advanced age); I started using it because it neatly filled a need. As I enjoy posing as smartass on occasion (though some no doubt would quarrel that it's merely an affectation), I liked the verbal equivalent of an indifferent or dismissive shrug.
The Urban Dictionary makes note of it, and I have seen it in print, including some online fiction. For a close to home example, the boys in Forever on a Tree, listed on The Best of Nifty, are heavy users. For me, at any rate, this aids in establishing the somewhat overly-precocious, smart-alecky nature of their personalities.
But again, I don't think "meh" in this sense fits in the noises-of-hesitation category, as it expresses a specific concept or attitude rather than being a mere pothole in the conversational roadbed.