Passed tense

There’s a way to to work out where a grieving person is in their journey: Language. Tense, pronouns, and titles are all indicators of where someone is in their journey. The same thing applies to the seriousness with which they deal with language. It’s all part of the process.

After Nigel died, I had a lot of problems with language, especially things like tense and pronouns. For months, maybe most of the first year, I was likely to say, for example, something like, “we have a vacuum cleaner,” using the present tense and collective pronoun. The accurate way to say either would have been, “we had a vacuum cleaner,” or “I have a vacuum cleaner.” Saying things correctly like that is such a simple thing, but so difficult to manage during grief—it seems so final, so absolute.

This isn’t a new revelation for me, of course. I talked about the background reality back in April of last year, when I said:

Over the past several weeks, I’ve realised that the question for me isn’t what will I do in my new life, but the more simple, “who am I?” After 24 years of being half of a WE, now I have to find out how to be just a ME. This is a much bigger deal than I could ever have guessed.

As I said on our seventh marriage anniversary back in October, there were several “days marking us becoming an us”, and in a separate post later that day I said:

I often still say us, our, and we, in the present tense, which is mostly out of a decades-long habit. Sometimes I remember to use the past tense, or use the pronouns for me alone. That much is evolving, but it’s still part of the fact that, in my mind, I think of us as an us, even though we’re no longer together physically.

That right there is the heart of the whole thing: It’s not easy to transition from being half of a couple. And yet, that was slowly happening for me, as those posts in April and October—six months apart—demonstrate.

These days, I refer to a thing as “my’, where not long ago I’d have said “our”, and that includes not just things that were once ours, but even some things that I thought of as being Nigel’s. The shift happened in part because I got tired of tripping over my words, especially when “our” no longer made much sense. It felt awkward at first, almost as if I was using words I’d just learned for the first time and wasn’t entirely sure I was using correctly. But I used them anyway.

The one thing I sometimes still struggle with is labels. I’m a widower and Nigel is my late husband, and, while both things are true, I’m very inconsistent about saying that. The subject of labels came up recently in one of the gay widower Facebook Groups I’m part of. People weighed in on whether they had/would change their Facebook relationship status to “Widowed” rather than, say, “Married”. That’s something I’ve never done—mine still says “married”—but it’s something that pops into my head from time to time when I see it on my About page. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter to me because it’s social media, not real life, and that means it’s thoroughly unimportant.

Some gay men in this situation point out that we fought too long and too hard for marriage equality to give up the label too quickly or easily, and I think they have a point. Many of them also say that they still consider themselves married, and I still consider myself married, too. Yet neither of those things prevent me from changing my relationship status on Facebook: Mere inertia does that.

One thing I hadn’t considered is that using “widowed” can open one up to scammers and users who prey on those they think are vulnerable, easy targets. I’m not at risk, for a lot of reasons, but it does give me pause when I think about any of my other, public descriptions. Again, it’s not enough to make me avoid changing the status, but when I think about it for a moment or two every now and then, I do stop for a second. Then, I think about something else, something more important to me.

And all of that demonstrates what I was talking about at the start of this post: “Tense, pronouns, and titles are all indicators of where someone is in their journey.” When I began my journey, I didn’t change pronouns or tense, and ended up saying things like “we have one of those” meaning I have it, but I could easily also say “had” in that same example for something I still have. It was a confusing time, so it’s no surprise that my word choice and tense was often confused and confusing.

Over time, things settled down, and I began to use pronouns referring to me (unless “we” was relevant, of course), and I talked about Nigel and our life in the past tense. It’s been an evolutionary change as I became more accustomed to my new reality. I (usually) get the tense “correct” now when I’m speaking because I’ve passed the point where I still cared about it.

So, too, the seriousness with which I took all that has also diminished over time. Where once I might fret over which pronoun or tense I used, now I take very little notice. The reason the whole label thing isn’t actually resolved is also because of this reality: I don’t really care about labels—actually, I don’t think I ever really did.

The grief process is a journey with some visible and identifiable markers along the way. In my experience, and that of many others, it seems, language, tense, pronouns, and titles are all indicators of where someone is in their journey, and the seriousness with which they deal with language can be, too.

It’s all part of the process.

Predictable responses

Last week was Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week), and there were the usual grumbles. This year, one thing that happened after the week made some people unhappy. That’s not new, but the context certainly was.

Every year New Zealand observes Māori Language Week as a way of building awareness of, and familiarity with, the Māori language. Typically this includes TV presenters using more of the language, and TV commercials are often subtitled with the language, or have a new spoken track entirely. There are often grizzles about it being mere tokenism because everything reverts back to English the following week, and, of course, there are grumpy cranks who complain about the language being used at all.

Once Māori Language Week was over, mobile phone (etc) company Vodafone NZ changed its carrier identifier to “VF Aotearoa”. In the past it was “Voda NZ”, and during Covid Vodafone changed it to say “Voda NZ – Stay Safe” and then when we moved down levels, it changed to “Voda NZ – Stay Kind”.

Then this week it changed to “VF Aotearoa”. I noticed it right away (let’s just say I check my phone a few times during the day and leave it at that), but I didn’t think much about it, actually. They’d already changed it several times, after all.

Naturally, someone didn’t like it (but one competitor's response was awesome). Interestingly, it seems as if the objection was mostly on a technicality, and not, as one might assume, about open racism (that’s usually reserved for those who oppose any use of the language by public institutions). However, the issue of what the country and the places within it are named is an ongoing topic of discussion, debate, and, of course, arguments.

Recently, the Māori Party used Māori Language Week to announce it would change the country’s name to Aotearoa by 2026. Right now, that’s a non-starter, not the least because the Māori Party is unlikely to be in Parliament, let alone in a position to influence public policy. Even so, the general idea is unlikely to go away.

Last June, as part of a global phenomenon following the murder of George Floyd, the Hamilton City Council took down the statue of the English soldier the town was named after, a man who is accused of participating in atrocities, and who also never set foot in the city that would be named after him. That rekindled discussion on whether the city’s name should revert to its original name, Kirikiriroa (which apparently means “long stretch of gravel”). A poll taken at the time said that only 27.4% wanted to see the name changed, 14.9% didn’t know/wouldn’t say, and a whopping—though unsurprising—57.6% opposed a name change.

Hamilton is a conservative place, but there’s also a large influence from Māori. The removal of the statue was pushed by local Māori, for example, but there are already many names of streets and suburbs that are Māori (including the street and area where I live). I think it’s inevitable that Hamilton’s name will change—some day—as will the names of other places. Personally, I think it’s more likely that the country’s name will one day become “Aotearoa New Zealand”, something that an increasing number of people—young people in particular—already call it. This would be a way to honour the country’s origins and the European influence in shaping it, too.

In the meantime, there will be occasional flashes of anger from the grumpy brigade, racists, and assorted complainers. This also means that folks with an impish side may deliberately stir the pot: People like, oh, me, for example.

Online, and on Facebook in particular, I sometimes refer to “Kirikiriroa-Hamilton”, and sometimes just “Kirikiriroa”, mostly because I think the name should change. However, if I’m truly honest, it’s also because I know it pisses off “certain people”. I'm well aware that this particular impishness sometimes veers close to being ordinary trolling, but it also serves a useful purpose: Over time, the use of names like Kirikiriroa and Aotearoa desensitises opponents to their use. It won’t change anyone’s view overnight, and possibly not at all for some people, but making the names more commonly seen and heard will also make adopting them more likely to happen, and sooner rather than later.

There is, however, also a danger that we could go too quickly. Only a small percentage of New Zealanders can speak Māori, and only a minority of Māori are fluent. Pushing the adoption of Te Reo Māori too hard, too fast, and/or too aggressively could cause a backlash from non-Māori in particular. That’s not a reason to not push for change, just an acknowledgement that we need to bring everyone along. Fortunately, most advocates for the language, Māori and Pākehā alike, are doing exactly that.

Right now, though, there will be times when people will get way too bent out of shape over tiny things like a cellphone company’s network identifiers. In other words, people will have predictable responses when they feel threatened in some way by even the smallest use of the Māori language. We just need to work to make such reactions less common. And even tiny changes, like the one to “VF Aotearoa”, are good examples of ways we can do that.

See also: "New Zealand firms switch to using nation's Māori name, Aotearoa" – The Guardian

So, I got curious about something

There’s a small word that infuriates some people, but it’s also quite common: The word so has become ubiquitous, and not just for its normal function as a conjunction. Lately, it seems some speakers use it a lot. So, what’s that all about?

I recently listened to a podcast and the interview subject began every answer with so. Since then, I’ve become aware of how often people do that. Not surprising, probably, I noticed that most of the people who do that don’t answer questions as part of the normal lives. However, even politicians, who ought to be good at being interviewed, do it a lot, too.

The word is usually referred to as a coordinating_conjunction, that is, words that, as Wikipedia puts it, “join, or coordinate, two or more items (such as words, main clauses, or sentences) of equal syntactic importance.” They point out that the words can be remembered as the acronym FANBOYS: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So.

That’s what the word is, but doesn’t even touch on why it ends up in as a “sentence opener”. Wikipedia says that the use of so as a sentence opener is VERY old, dating back (at least) to Chaucer in the 14th Century. They also list several theories as to why the word is used this way, each with its own merits:

As a coordinating conjunctive to refer backwards to something previously mentioned. This is common enough, and one I use the most. In my case, I could substitute something like “to sum up” at the start of a sentence, though that’s more stilted than my natural speech pattern.

As a discourse marker. This is the usage I hear the most often, and is rhetorically similar to people saying “you know”—that is, it doesn’t change the meaning of anything being said, but provides a verbal link. I sometimes use it this way in spoken speech, but very rarely in anything written.

To signal that the following words are chosen for their relevance to the listener. This usage infuriates some people. For example, back in 2014 Fast Company published a piece called “How A Popular Two-Letter Word Is Undermining Your Credibility” by Hunter Thurman. In it, he declares that using the word to open a sentence “insults your audience”, it “undermines your credibility”, and that it “demonstrates that you’re not 100% comfortable with what you’re saying”. So, that seems a bit harsh.

To provide a small amount of extra thinking time. To me, this seems like the best explanation most of the time. It’s very similar to a discourse marker, but completely devoid of any actual meaning. This usage is actually most similar to saying “um”—a mere sound, giving the speaker a brief time to get their thoughts in order, to remember the answer to a question, and so on. This can be as annoying as when people say “um” a lot, but it’s pretty harmless.

All of that explains what the word so is and how it’s used, however, none of that really answers why people seem to be using it more these days. Back in 2015, npr offered a possible explanation:

So, why the recent hue and cry about those sentences beginning with "so"? In part, you could blame the quirk of perception I think of as the Andy Rooney effect, where you suddenly become keenly aware of a common word that's always been part of the conversational wallpaper. Somebody says, "Have you noticed how everybody's saying 'OK' before they hang up the phone?" and all at once the word starts jumping out at you, even though people have been using it that way forever.

The npr piece talks about other explanations for the origins of the current usage, and ways in which it’s typically used.

Overall, I tend to agree that it’s not really new or used being used more extensively now than in the past, and that we just sometimes notice things more frequently than we used to—like I did when an interviewee on a podcast began every answer with so.

So, to sum up, I now know a lot more about so than I need to, but my curiosity has been satisfied. Isn’t that one of the main reasons for having the Internet?

So, that’s it for this look at so.

So is also the name of a hit 1986 album by Peter Gabriel. The album cover is up above.

Internet Wading for June 2019

Pop music and culture, history, interesting (or just odd) stories in the news, science, art—those are the things that get into these Internet Wading posts. And since I share a lot of pop music, why not start there?

“Hit Charade”, a 2016 story from The Atlantic talks about “the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts”. The article says: “ If you flip on the radio, odds are that you will hear one of their songs.” And most of us would never know that.

When Dr. John (the stage name of Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack died earlier this month, I read the obituary on the NBC News site and was surprised to learn that he sang the Popeyes Chicken jingle ("Love That Chicken From Popeyes"). That was one of those things I never knew, but also something that was so obvious once I knew. But, then, I seldom pay attention to music used in commercials, unless it’s a current pop song, so there’s that. Like most people, I probably know him best for his biggest hit, “Right Place, Wrong Time” [Listen to the official audio on YouTube], a 1973 song that seemed impossible to avoid—or bop along to—in its day.

What about Movies? “Remake My Day” compares movies with their remake(s). There are many ways of looking at it: What critics thought, what audiences thought, and their profitability. They also compare rankings and then divergence in opinions.

On to history! Runner’s World (appropriately enough…) published “The Surprising History of Streaking (Yes, the Naked Kind)". Because we should know our history, right?

Similarly little known history is that of Joan Jett Blakk, the story of a performer and activist who ran for Chicago Mayor and US President. A new play, Ms. Blakk for President, has opened in Chicago and tells one of the many LGBT+ stories not often remembered these days—though I do because I was still in Chicago during the first two campaigns. As the Windy City Times review puts it:

“Whether the effort was performative or real, Chicago witnessed history in the early 1990s when Joan Jett Blakk, an African American drag queen who was the creation of activist Terence Smith, ran not just for Chicago Mayor, but in 1992 ran for president of the United States.”

“The Extraordinary ‘Cookbooks’ Left Behind by Prisoners of War and Concentration Camp Victims” is about what the title suggests. It’s also fascinating.

Similarly interesting is "40 Years of New York City Captured Through a Taxi Driver's Photos”, which combines history and photography. Can’t go wrong with that.

Interesting, sure, but also kind of alarming is “When 20,000 American Nazis Descended Upon New York City”, a 2017 story from The Atlantic, about a short film (up top), about that evening. I knew about that night, and about the American “bundists”, but it’s still disturbing to see so many Americans gleefully embracing Nazism. These days it seems it could happen again.

Some science, history, and pop culture all in one! “The English Word That Hasn’t Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years", which is both not what I expected, and fascinating all at the same time. Obscure history, science, and pop culture all rolled into one—what’s not to like?

Speaking of pop culture and history, The Atlantic’s 2016 story, “The Hot New Millennial Housing Trend Is a Repeat of the Middle Ages”, seems likely to have overstated its case a bit, but there are millennials who do similar things—just most don’t not necessarily due it to the extent or in precisely the way the article suggests. On the other hand, it’s been suggested as something that would be good for senior citizens. They might actually be more likely to embrace it.

About older people, sort of, how about ”The rise of granny panties”? “High-waisted underpants made a huge comeback”. We all needed to know that.

“Forget fast fashion: slow style pioneers on the clothes they've worn for decades” from The Guardian. There was even a Kiwi in the mix. There’s nothing I’ve had for decades (apart from a couple things from my childhood that I keep for sentimental reasons), but I do have some shirts I’ve had for maybe 15 years. They’ve lasted because they’re seasonal (I only wear them over the course of a few months), and because I take care of them. There’s an advantage in this: Clothes that one buys from a big retailer are everywhere when first purchased, but unique a year or two later when everyone else has moved on to The Next Fad. Being thrifty has fashion advantages, it turns out.

Fads are something that come and go all over the place, including, these days, in health and food. “There’s no such thing as ‘bad food.’ Four terms that make dietitians cringe”. This Washington Post story covers terms that I can’t stand, either. Don’t be get started on “detox”!

Technology is sometimes hard for people to wrap their heads around, especially if science isn't their "thing". Lately I’ve seen a lot of utter nonsense about the upcoming 5G cellphone spectrum and its supposed harm to people. Yeah, social media helping to spread disinformation and misinformation yet again. Surprise! Well, it turns out that there was one story that was actually worth reading: “Debate rages over 5G impact on US weather forecasting” from Physics World.

On another technological note, “The Catch-22 That Broke The Internet” from Wired. In early June, “Google couldn’t fix its cloud, because Google’s cloud was broken.” Oops.

Space’s final frontier—madness! I always thought it was a joke, often perpetuated by satirists, but apparently believers in “lizard people aliens” are real: “It looked like a simple domestic murder. Then police learned about the alien reptile cult.” It's from The Washington Post, so it’s apparently for real—though for a story like that, I wish it was real “fake news”. It’s kind of disturbing to know that people who believe in that are real and walking among us.

Well, maybe a real story about actual space instead: “Views From Above: The Past Eight Months in Orbit”. Earth is pretty awesome, really.

• • •

That’s it for this wading adventure. Time to get back to winter and hibernating—I mean, um, wading around.

Internet Wading for April 2019

President William Henry Harrison (ca 1841)

So, after an unplanned break, and some not-very-interesting technical problems, Internet Wading is back, and it’s a mixed bag, as usual. First up, some pop music.

A piece in The Guardian, “Giorgio Moroder – his 20 greatest songs, ranked” has pretty obvious subject. I don’t actually know a lot of the songs the article talks about, and I think that calling the soundtrack to Metropolis “overblown” is somewhat unfair, but “Arthur’s Law”, and all that.

Another article talking about music that was more peripheral for me was “Deciphering the Mystery of Joy Division” in The Atlantic. I had only one Joy Division song, on a compilation of songs from MTV’s 120 Minutes, which was one of my favourite TV shows back in the 1980s. The song was “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, which was released in June 1980. Wikipedia describes it very matter of factly: “Its lyrics were inspired by lead singer Ian Curtis's marriage problems and frame of mind before his suicide in May 1980.”

I was much more familiar with, and a fan of, Joy Division’s successor band, New Order. I bought several of their albums—and later re-bought them through iTunes.

Speaking of pop culture, and consumerism, I was intrigued by “Welcome to my high-fashion, trash shopping mall”, a story about “a stylish shopping mall in Sweden, where everything is second-hand.” That concept is intriguing—and a way to close the final loop in reusing stuff rather than burying it in a landfill. Here in New Zealand, we have much lower-key shops around the country located at a few tips (“dumps” in Americanese), and technically called “waste transfer stations”. One such example is “Tipping Point”, the shop at Waitakere (West Auckland). It was only re-named that last year, and is a pun. It’s also a good example of what can be done.

Language and food? Why not? “Foreign Foods You Might Be Pronouncing Wrong”. And, just by the way, mostly I’m not. Well, not the ones I know, anyway, but maybe a couple others that have different local pronunciation here.

Speaking of language, “Did German almost become America’s official language in 1795?” I couldn’t possibly spoil the story, but we all know what language “won”.

Speaking of US history, “’His Accidency’: The first president to die in office and the Constitutional confusion that followed” tells the story of President William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, who died a month after his inauguration, and the man who succeed him,Vice President John Tyler. I grew up hearing my mother talking about their 1840 presidential campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too”, so I was pre-disposed to learn the story. These days I bet most Americans don’t know it.

And finally, a little science: “Snapshot of extinction: Fossils show day of killer asteroid”, though we all know that, er, um, certain people will dismiss this story out of hand. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, of course. And, sharing stuff that certain people will dismiss out of hand is just part of the service I provide. You're welcome.

That's enough wading for now. Water's getting cold.

The photo of President William Henry Harrison is by Albert Sands Southworth (American, 1811–1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (American, 1808–1901). Edited by: Fallschirmjäger [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Internet Wading: A bit of it

I missed sharing links last month, for whatever reason, but the links keep piling up no matter what. So, time to share the things I’ve been paying attention to over the past couple months.

First up, the video above, “Why we say ‘OK’”. Because, really, who doesn’t want to know why we say okay?!

Another topic I like, but seldom (?) share on this blog, is photography. There have been a couple things I saw recently that captured my attention. First, “Jack Delano's Color Photos of Chicago's Rail Yards in the 1940s”. The photos are amazing as art, but even more so as a record of a city/state/country that is long gone.

Photography, like all art, can make us look at things in new ways, and one way to do that is to reimagine things. A good example is “Male Photographer Reverses Gender Roles In Sexist Vintage Ads, And Some Men Don’t Like Them”. I thought this was a really good effort, though it was far too challenging for some people. As always.

And then, just recently, we saw “Trump Hangs ‘Tacky’ Fantasy Painting of Himself With GOP Presidents in White House” and the comments have been fierce and partisan. The painter is Australian-born, and has made similar paintings of Democrats. Indeed, his work is clearly bi-partisan, and his motivation, if it can be called that, seems to be to make money. Is that not The American Way™? I think the painting is nauseating, but I’d actually say that for all his works. Despite that, I can admire his focusing his work on what would sell to the USA’s hyperpartisan market. Yes, the picture is utter crap, but full credit to the creator for working out how to market to, and take advantage of, the USA’s hyperpartisan reality.

Mind you, not everyone is happy about that hyperpartisan reality: “I’m Convinced There’s No Hope for America. Please Talk Me Out of It,” by Paul Fidalgo. I can’t contradict him.

Of course—as we all know—part of the reason the USA is so hopeless and helpless is social media, the place without rationality or reason, where discourse goes to die. And, we’re ALL things to be bought and sold, whether we know it—or agree to it—or not. For example: “Anti-social media: Facebook and surveillance capitalism”. True, dat.

Well, screw reality!! How about what we really care about?!! “WishbookWeb Catalog” has various US catalogues from days gone by (are any of them still alive?), and they’re the stuff of my younger days. The men’s underwear ads. Nuff said.

Screw politics, too, and all that junk, let’s—well, not do that. How about we consider: “Sail Away: How Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’ Went From a Hit to a Punch Line to a Pop Culture Anthem”. Back in the “New Age” era, I was living in Chicago, and I really did listen to a radio station, WNUA, that had as its tagline, “Music for a New Age”. One of my favourite albums from that time was a “New Age” Christmas album, and though I haven’t heard it for more than 20 years, I still remember how it made me feel. Enya, well, maybe not so much, but sometimes, sure.

And that’s it for this month’s (or is it months’?) Internet Wading. More—well, next time.

Getting the slang of it

There’s no better way for a newcomer in a community—or country—to begin to fit in than to master the local slang. This can be a difficult process under the best of circumstances, but the Internet makes it easier than in the old days, and these videos are good examples.

The video above is from Jordon Watson for his “How to DAD” YouTube Channel, and in it he present Kiwi slang in his usual laid-back, often very dry, humour. Nevertheless, what he says is all true, and some of that stuff took me years to fully "get". I think the humorous style makes the slang easier to absorb, even if his style night seem confusing because he acts so haphazard.

Related: “The difference between Australia and New Zealand”, the first of Jordon’s videos I shared.

The video below, “Old Gays Try New Gay Slang” is quite different—and for a few people some of the language may be inappropriate for work:



I’ve known older gay men just like these guys—and before I know it I’ll be in their age grouping. I know a lot of the slang terms, even though many of the young guys using them weren’t even born until I was already living in New Zealand. Moving on…

I agreed with the guy who said that young gay guys watch too much RuPaul, which is an older gay guy’s way of saying, “you kids get off my lawn!” However, I’d only think that, not say it out loud—yet.

Both these videos are meant as lighthearted and fun, but the truth within them is that slang varies from place to place as well as over time. To truly understand a place and time we need to understand the slang used, whether we use it or not.

But I do use slang, and videos like the one on top would have been VERY helpful when I first arrived in New Zealand. I’m not sure the other one will be very helpful to me, since I’m unlikely to need to understand the slang of young gay Americans. But, you just never know.

Tip o' the Hat to my fellow American Expat, Dawn, who shared these videos.

Incomplete adaptation

Found these at Countdown. They’re incredibly close to what my mother used to make, though hers were smaller and sometimes, um, somewhat over-baked. Incredibly, I can easily limit myself to one—or none—per day, though no idea how that happened. Let’s just say, when I was a kid I could get rid of quite a few of the cookies my mother made. 😉

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Dec 19, 2017 at 1:22am PST

The Instagram photo above was about a find, some food, junk food, really, and not important. And yet, it’s actually about something else: How even after all these years I still find ways of recapturing what I don’t have in New Zealand. This is a useful thing and, I think, a good thing.

In this case, it was about cookies that are very much like what my mother used to make. I’ve said similar things about the chilli from Wendy’s. Apart from that, I’ve sometimes described some cafe’s pizza as being “the most like American pizza I’ve had”, until Sal’s came along, serving New York-style pizza.

I’ve also written several times about trying to find subsitutes for things I couldn’t get in New Zealand. Recently, I also wrote about some of the problems associated with trying to adapt my American recipies. Sometimes, this is the only solution because there is no store-bought product that is similar enough to whatever I had in America.

But, of course, it’s not all about food. For example, there’s also language, another topic I’ve written about several times, including just last Friday as part of this year’s Ask Arthur series. Language can actually be the hardest thing of all.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I was writing about coming up with organising solutions for our kitchen drawers. The specific context was that about the same time I was actually working on the project there also just happened to be several Kiwis writing “draws” on Facebook posts when they meant “drawers”. This is because in the New Zealand accent, the two words are homophones—words that sound alike but that have different meanings, and often different spelling (“bare” and “bear” are more good examples).

I’ve run into this same thing for as long as I’ve been in New Zealand. The most common is when Kiwis write “sort” when they mean “sought”. Again, they sound alike in the Kiwi accent.

The version of HGTV in New Zealand is running a commercial for House Hunters International in which a perky young American woman says she was searching for overseas job opportunities “and New Zealand popped up on the list”. Later in the ad she says, “although the accent will take some getting used to”. It’s the homophones that can make it hard even for me, not because I can’t tell what they mean (context usually tells you that), but because it hints at how vowels and stresses can be very different from other English speakers. Every once in awhile even I get caught out—and it’s usually kind of funny when I do.

Taken together, what all this means is that even after 22 years in New Zealand, I’m not totally assimilated, and that means my adaptation to New Zealand is incomplete. I tend to think this will always be true in some way, no matter how long I live here, and I bet I’m not the only English-speaker this is true for.

This probably doesn’t matter—it doesn’t affect the quality of my life, and it doesn’t cause any problems. But it’s something that most people would never even think about when beginning an expartiate journey, and that IS important because it implies that at least in small ways, being an expat never ends.

But, I’ve only been here 22 years so far. Ask me about it in 2039.

Arthur Answers 2017, Part 3: Easy answers

Roger Green has always been a great source of questions for all the Ask Arthur series over the years, and this year’s Ask Arthur series is no different. Because it’s Friday evening, a time when I usually take things easy as the weekend begins, so I thought I’d take on what were actually his first and last questions.

Here’s Roger’s first question:

Will you get to 365 posts in 2017? Is AAA an opportunity to get there?

I could be glib and answer “no and yes”, but, as always, there’s more to it than that.

I will “almost certainly” not make my annual goal of 365 posts. The reason it’s unlikely is that, even including this post, I still need 61 posts to make the target. When this month began, I needed 81 posts. The most posts I’ve ever published in a December is 68, back in 2014. The fact it’s only 13 more posts needed this year may sound promising, but it means an average of 3.81 posts per day, and if I keep posting 3 or fewer posts per day, it won’t be long before I need four—or more—per day.

This year’s Ask Arthur series will certainly help with whatever number I do end up with, but I’m not sure how many it will add (it depends on how many questions I combine in one post). Still, every post counts, so…

Interestingly, I haven’t yet posted anything that I wouldn’t post even if I wasn’t trying to get a decent total for December (now always among my most heavily-blogged month). While there have been a few things I wanted to post earlier but couldn’t get to, a lot of the posts over the past few days have been ones that—like usual—I wrote shortly before posting, and they’ve been about things I saw that day or within a few days before I wrote the post. Fresh, in other words.

And yet there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t had a chance to get to yet. There’s stuff about our recent trip to Australia, which I’ve already mentioned doing, and I have several others I just didn’t get a chance to get to earlier. And then there are a couple waiting for some final bits and pieces, and whether they ever make this blog has nothing to do with me because it’s waiting for things beyond my control.

So, maybe the real answer is “no and yes and maybe for both”.

Roger’s last question (so far—and there’s still plenty of time for anyone else to join in the fun; see below) was:

Why don't you have a Kiwi accent? Does Nigel? And how good are you in deciphering the Kiwi accent? Also, how much of the language of the Māori do you know?

I have no idea why I don’t have a Kiwi accent, although, to be fair, the family here—all of whom, including Nigel, have NZ accents—says I have a “mongrel accent”, in the sense of a mixed-breed dog. Of course Roger knows what I sound like—as indeed anyone can—from my podcast.

From time to time I see American-born New Zealanders on TV (and I’ve met a few), and they all seem to have their original accents, more or less. Among the explanations for that is that while we’re born able to make all sounds used in all human languages, our ability to make sounds not used in the language around us begins to drop off at six months. In addition, there’s what some people call the “musicality” of speech, which has to do with sound, yes, but specifically the rhythm, stress, and emphasis, along with vowel positions, and everything that goes into the way speech sounds. It’s very difficult for most people to hear and adapt to that musicality.

So, the odds are stacked against anyone changing their accent to match the place they live. Even so, some things have changed.

I say a great many words the way New Zealanders do—such as, “tomAHtoe” instead of my native “toMAYtoe”. I also soften the R in my own name, so it’s more like “Ah-thuh”. I do all this so I’m understood. If I spoke with my native Illinois accent, Kiwis would have trouble understanding some of what I say.

This is kind of ironic because I’m quite good at understanding New Zealanders and their accents (plural because there are variations). There are some individuals I have trouble understanding, of course, but that was true sometimes where I grew up, too. But, in general, I understand it as clearly as someone from my homeland. A side effect is that I can imitate the Kiwi accent—always privately because I don’t mock Kiwis, and because I don’t think I do it very well. Another side effect is that I can now hear the accent of people in my native Illinois whenever I hear them, and I could never do that when I lived there. Mongrel, indeed.

I don’t speak Te Reo Māori beyond a handful of words and phrases, most of them the most obvious ones. Last September, when I was planning to post my Election Day selfie, I asked our niece, who is fluent in Te Reo Māori, for an appropriate phrase to use (I also consulted her and her mother on an appropriate sign-off for my podcast, which I started using several months ago).

Not all that long ago, I accepted that I almost certainly have no hope of ever learning Te Reo Māori, and I’ll almost certainly never be fluent. That’s because I came to understand that I have no aptitude for any language other than English. I tried to learn the language of my ancestors (German) and failed after years of trying—a couple decades, actually. And yet, just like whether I’ll meet this year’s blog post goal, I’m too stubborn to ever give up completely. So, you just never know.

Thanks to Roger for these questions—more to come!

It’s still not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though some people may want to keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. If you’re on Facebook, you can send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Page.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-17”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:
Let the 2017 asking begin The first post in this series
Arthur Answers 2017, Part One: NZ Example
Arthur Answers 2017, Part Two: Addiction and song

The change we don’t notice

The video above is an ad currently in rotation on New Zealand television. The ad is significant not for what it sells, but for the change it represents. It’s also a reminder that we sometimes don’t realise how far this country has come.

I watched the very beginning of the recent test match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the British and Irish Lions. While I watched, I noticed something when they played the New Zealand national anthem: Participation.

Nowadays it’s customary to sing the first verse of the national anthem first in Māori, then in English. This is something that’s been done at netball matches for a very long time, but with rugby test matches, it was always English only.

In 1999, Hinewehi Mohi sang the anthem in Māori only at the test match at Twickenham. The outcry was palpable. The debate was useful, however, because it led to the current tradition of singing the first verses of both the Māori and English versions of the national anthem.

In 2014, TV3 (now called newshub) brought on a new weather presenter, Kanoa Lloyd. She frequently used Māori placenames in her reports, and referred to the country as Aotearoa. People complained. “I've never really encountered people who take offence to Maori being used," she said at the time.

By 2016, TVNZ had introduced its new lineup for its Breakfast morning programme. From the beginning, the presenters have routinely used Māori placenames and greetings, and one commenter on Facebook was not having it: “I watched this week and hated the maori [sic] greeting nonsense and the maori [sic] place name nonsense.” He said that on Facebook. Where everyone can see a person’s real name and, more likely than not, quite a bit about them. Well, points for owning one’s racism, I suppose.

The thing is, there are always racists and monoculturalists in New Zealand as elsewhere, and there probably always will be. Despite common belief, they’re not all foreign-born, either, but they do seem to make up an extraordinarily large segment of listeners of talkback radio.

Be that as it may, the people who become apoplectic at the use of, say, Tāmaki Makaurau instead of Auckland are becoming fewer and fewer as the use of Te Reo Māori becomes more common.

Which brings me back to the test match. The cameras panned across the faces of the All Blacks, and most were visibly singing along to the Māori version. So were the people in the stands—and the fact they were was obvious in the audio. They all also sang the English version—which was, admittedly, louder, no doubt because so many people still don’t know the Māori version.

But it struck me how far this country has come since the national controversy in 1999, and how clearly the Māori version of the national anthem was being embraced, especially by proud younger New Zealanders, but by all age groups at the rugby match.

Then, a day or two later I saw the ad up above, and noticed how strongly everyone sang the anthem in Māori. 20 years ago, such an ad would never have been made, let alone broadcast, and not just because the anthem at rugby matches was English-only 20 years ago: The idea of everyday Kiwis embracing Te Reo Māori, even if only a bit, was still little more than a dream.

So, sure, we have our very own racists and bigots, and we have people who resist change just because it’s change. But we also have millions who embrace New Zealand’s unique identity that merges Māori and European cultures in a way not like anywhere else, and more and more these days that means embracing, at the very least, Maori words and phrases—and a verse of the national anthem.

We ought to take stock of how far we’ve come. Sometimes a mere ad can drive that point home.

The lyrics of the New Zealand national anthem:

E Ihowā Atua,
O ngā iwi mātou rā
Āta whakarangona;
Me aroha noa
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau tō atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa

God of Nations at Thy feet,
In the bonds of love we meet,
Hear our voices, we entreat,
God defend our free land.
Guard Pacific's triple star
From the shafts of strife and war,
Make her praises heard afar,
God defend New Zealand.

Complete lyrics are on the website of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which is the arbiter of everything related to use of the national anthem.

Don’t say

The English language evolves wherever it exists. New words are coined, old words are ignored or take on new meanings, fads and fashions come and go, taking their slang with them—all that and more. But sometimes words cans shift within a culture because of the influence of another culture. I’ve seen that happen here in New Zealand over the past two decades.

Most of the change I’ve seen has been predictable: The ordinary rise and fall of words as fashions change. For example, when I first arrived in 1995, many Kiwis used the word “heaps” to mean “a lot”, as in, “I saw heaps of stars last night”. Use of that word has become rarer over time, but it’s still around. Less so the phrase “shout out” to mean special greeting, as in, “I’d like to give a shout out to all the mums visiting from Palmerston North” or whatever. That phrase was already largely gone by the time Americans started using it.

But a lot of the change to New Zealand English has gone the other way: Americanisms replace Kiwi words and phrases. Critics often call this “creeping Americanisation”, and it’s used to criticise everything from American slang, the attempts to impose Halloween on Kiwis, and what is perceived as US-style politics. The list is seemingly endless.

I have two examples. The first was a more recent one: Talk radio replacing the Kiwi talkback radio. I actually only noticed this a couple weeks ago in a piece in a NZ newspaper about online commentary I shared on Facebook. I don’t listen to that sort of radio, so I don’t read about it, either, and that means that I didn’t really have any reason to notice the shift.

When I shared the article on Facebook, I commented on that shift, and wondered whether the change happened “before or after the common Kiwi words 'toilet' and even 'loo' were replaced with the banal American word 'bathroom'". This is the other main change I’ve noticed over the past year or two.

When I first started work in New Zealand and my workmates would say something like “Be right back. Just going to the toilet”, my American ears were surprised. I quickly learned that the word was common, and so was the more delicate (to American ears) British word loo. But nowadays, I often hear radio and TV presenters refer to “the bathroom” when they mean the toilet (as in “public bathroom”, as well as the phrase I first heard more than 20 years ago). But the use of the banal “bathroom” is most common, I think, among younger New Zealanders. Critics would argue that they’re immersed in American culture, from movies and TV shows to music to YouTube videos, but, apart from that last one, that’s been true for decades. What’s so different now? I don’t have an answer to that—maybe it simply has to do with speech that’s acceptable within their peer groups. If so, that would make it similar to a fad, and it might go away, much as the Kiwi slang I encountered when I arrived here has faded.

Whether Kiwi-isms prevail or not isn’t something that anyone can guess. If I were to bet, however, I’d be inclined to wager on the side of “bathroom” taking root here because it’s constantly reinforced in NZ popular media. The “talk radio” v. “talkback radio” thing, however, is probably one that nobody much cares about.

But for me, the worst part of this shifting of language is that I’ve become so used to the adoption of Americanisms that I don’t even remember that the words used to be different. I can sometimes notice it if I read something published before the shift and see the old word or phrase, a bit like reading a novel from the past and noticing all the odd phrases or slang—except in this case it’s noticing what used to be not so very long ago.

It’s worth noting that sometimes Americans’ adopt of words or phrases that originated in this part of the world, like the phrase, “at the end of the day” (which was popularised by NZ rugby commentary and is still commonly used here). There have actually been many times when a friend has made a comment on Facebook and I have to stop and think where I first heard the particular word or phrase they’re using (because at first I think it’s Kiwi).

I don’t think most New Zealanders ever think about this sort of stuff. Americans don’t, either (unless it’s to complain about Spanish words entering common use…). I think the fact that I notice at all is probably because I’m an immigrant and it’s words and phrases from my homeland I see being adopted. So, I may have a sensitivity to change that someone born here just wouldn’t normally have.

The one thing we know for certain is that the English language evolves wherever it exists, in New Zealand, in the USA, everywhere. Occasional petty annoyances with some adoptions aside, I think this is a really good thing, overall. It keeps the language alive and fresh and always moving toward the future. I do wonder, though, if we’ll still understand each other when we get there.

Internet Wading for August 2016

This month’s collection is about language and pop culture, two of my favourite things that aren’t politics. At least, not usually. As usual, a little history, science and creativity makes the mix, too.

When we talk about the evolution of the English language, Latin is an important part of the story. The video above tells us “What Latin Sounded Like – and how we know”. Decoding the evolution of languages is always a bit of a detective story, and the story in this video is no different.

“Proportional Pie Chart of the World’s Most Spoken Languages” tells us a bit about the state of languages on the planet, while “20 misused English words that make smart people look silly” shows that even native speakers can mess up (fewer v. less is one of my own pet peeves). And, while we’re trying to fix that, “Can’t quit saying ‘um’ and ‘ah’? Just learn how to use them better”. Sounds reasonable.

Speaking of Rome, “Pompeii: Incredible images, unprecedented detail laying bare their bones and have perfect teeth” tells us about discoveries made in examining the remains of some of the victims. The story includes this:

“So far, only around 100 of the victims have been captured in plaster. The total number of bodies to be found is approximately 1,150, and that’s with a third of the city left untouched by archaeologists.”

Also from the distant past, “10 Insane Stories That Didn’t Make It Into The Bible” shares stories that I’d mostly heard. Mind you, many of the stories that did make it into the bible are pretty “insane”…

Not related, exactly, “21 Signs That Story You're About To Share Is Secretly B.S.” can help people avoid sharing so much nonsense on social media—and what a wonderful thing that would be.

“Jack Davis, 'MAD' Magazine Cartoonist, Dies at 91”. Davis, who died July 27, was one of my favourite artists at MAD. Roger Green included him in one of his July “Rambling” posts, which are remarkably similar to these Internet Wading posts, almost as if I stole borrowed the idea or something.

Speaking of Roger Green, he wrote about visiting the Lucy Desi Museum in Jamestown, New York. He and the family did not, however, get to visit the statue of “Scary Lucy”. And, of course, “Lucille Ball's 'Scary Lucy' replacement statue unveiled”. And in the comments people criticised the new statue, too. Of course.

And finally this month, for no particular reason except it’s related to my profession, “7 Graphic Design Documentary You Should Be Watching”. Even I haven’t gotten through all of them yet.

• • •

That’s some of what caught my eye over the past month, things that didn’t make it into blog posts—and most wouldn’t have, of course. But that doesn’t make them any less interesting to me.

Expats and accents

Accents are another part of the expat experience for adults, and it’s the main way people in our new country can identify us: We open our mouths and they know where we’re from, more or less. It turns out, there are reasons this is true.

In the ASAP Science video above, they explain that after age 12, accents don’t really change. From what I’ve seen here in New Zealand in others and myself, I’d say that’s true. I’m aware of this because we all speak English (more or less…), so it’s more obvious for me to hear the differences, and even to be able to notice an American’s accent when the person is speaking New Zealand English.

A lot of this is about vowels, and sometimes it’s necessary for immigrants to change their vowels in order to be understood. For example, while plenty of Americans pronounce tomato as New Zealanders do, “tomAHto”, I didn’t, so I changed my pronunciation to be better understood. In this case, they’d probably know what I meant if I said my native “toMAYto”, but it would be jarring.

However, when it comes to my own name, changing pronunciation was important. If I said “Arthur” as I normally would, with both R’s, people would often stop and ask me to repeat it, or to spell it. That’s because, except for a particular part of the South Island, Kiwis don’t have an “R” following vowels (well, actually, they do, but it’s far too subtle for most Americans to pick up). So, I started pronouncing my name something like “AH-thuh” (that’s an approximation, because I, too, use the subtle R’s). When I did that, people understood me and got my name right.

Unrelated to accent specifically, it helps if expats adopt Kiwi slang, too. Some of this is easy enough—chips for French fries, tomato sauce for ketchup, for example—but some of that is affected by accent, too.

The best example of Kiwi slang being affected by accent is the word “mate”, which is used similarly to the way some people might say “dude” or “bro”. To this day, when I hear an American say “mate”, I cringe, because it just sounds so wrong to me. I have no idea what Kiwis think when they hear it (because I’ve never asked), but if the accent is obvious to me, it is to them, too, and it may be every bit as jarring to them, too. Or, maybe not.

Over the years, I’ve picked up enough Kiwi slang, and deliberately changed enough vowels and such, that I sometimes confuse people, and they think I’m Canadian (which was kind of helpful in the days of Bush/Cheney, who were NOT popular among ordinary New Zealanders). I have no idea whether this is also true for Americans trying to speak non-English languages.

I came to realise a few years ago that I apparently don’t have the capacity to learn a foreign language (beyond a few words and simple phrases). I spent all four years in high school studying German, and several times afterward I studied it on my own. Despite that, I still can’t understand a simple conversation in German nor read even a children’s story with any real comprehension.

But the video explains another reason why people like me have so much difficultly in learning some languages, like Te Reo Māori: It uses vowels, phonemes, and diphthongs that aren’t used in English, and so, we have trouble hearing them properly, let alone replicating the sound. Add that and my inability to learn and remember the vocabulary and grammar of another, non-English language, and my chances of ever learning Te Reo—or any other language—are slim to none.

One might say that just because I’ve failed to learn even the most basic German after more than four decades of on-and-off effort doesn’t positively mean I can’t learn some other language. But, it kinda suggests it’s highly improbable.

Accent is the one thing that continues to mark expats as foreigners, which makes it another part of the expat experience. So to speak.

The Greatest Words and Phrases of 2015

What’s your word or phrase of the year? Do any stand out? Or, are they pretty much non-events?

The video above is Anglophenia Episode 45 and deals with some of the top words and phrases from 2015. While I might quibble with whether Kate is, in fact, a YouTuber, she is nevertheless as perky as the best YouTubers are, which is part of why she’s good at presenting these videos.

When a word or phrase makes a list of biggest of the year, it’s because it’s popular, of course. It doesn’t usually make it into dictionaries until some time later, after it’s clearly in common use and proven its staying power. However, it’s often quite some time after that before it becomes acceptable for Scrabble and the like, and by that time the word may already be passing out of usage.

I love language, and how it adapts and evolves over time. As much as I can seem pedantic about correct usage (like apostrophes, for example), I’m actually quite relaxed about it all: Language will become whatever we need it to become, which is why attempts to police it are ultimately futile.

At any rate, Kate does do some good videos, whether she’s a YouTuber or not. LOLZ.

Steven Adams, part 2

Above is the second commercial for an Oklahoma bank fronted by New Zealand-born professional basketball player, Steven Adams. Like the first commercial, this one, too, features Adams using Kiwi slang with American English subtitles. I think this one’s cute, too.

As I said about the first commercial, “Some of the text isn’t exactly what a Kiwi would say in real life, at least, not in that context, but they’re real expressions nonetheless.” On the other hand, this commercial seemed more “natural” to me than the first one did. Not that it matters—professional athletes aren’t actors, after all. And, Adams is only 21.

The bank hasn’t said whether there are any more commercials with Adams; maybe it depends on how the public responds to the first two. But it’s all a bit of fun—well, advertising with some fun—so whether there are any more or not doesn’t really matter.

At least some Oklahomans are getting a little tastes of what New Zealanders are like. That’s a good thing.

Oh, and I haven’t mentioned this before, but, yes, I understand every word of both commercials. Maybe that’s why I see the sometimes subtle humour in the subtitles.

A Kiwi selling an Oklahoma bank

It’s safe to say it’s not every day that New Zealanders see a commercial for an Oklahoma bank on their televisions, yet this week we did. News reports talked about an ad (video above) featuring Steven Adams, the 21 year old from Rotorua who now plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA team.

The ad’s premise is “Speak Kiwi with Steven Adams”, and has Adams talking about the bank while subtitles are shown onscreen translating NZ slang into English Americans can understand. It’s a cute ad, playing off the “exoticness” of New Zealand and New Zealanders. Some of the text isn’t exactly what a Kiwi would say in real life, at least, not in that context, but they’re real expressions nonetheless. And, anyway, it's just a bit of fun—to sell a bank, of course.

There’s apparently a “Part 2” coming soon. I bet that it’ll be the second time we see a commercial for an Oklahoma bank on our TVs here in New Zealand…

J is for, well, nothing

ABC Wednesday posts normally talk about what a letter is. Well, how about one talking about what a letter ISN’T? This is that sort of post.

The letter J doesn't exist in Te Reo Māori, the language of the indigenous Māori people of New Zealand. The Māori alphabet has only fifteen letters: h, k, m, n, p, r, t, w, a, e, i, o, u, wh, and ng. You’ll note there’s no J there.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I never actually realised that until recently, partly because I don’t speak Te Reo, and that factoid just doesn’t come up in everyday conversation.

The reality is that people who speak a certain language are used to that language and don’t even notice things that stand out for non-speakers. In English, for example the word fish might be spelled ghoti, but we never think about such things.

So, the absence of a letter like J in Māori is interesting only to those who, like me, don’t speak the language. How many other linguistic quirks exist in our planet’s many languages, and how many have any of us ever heard of?

Now you know one thing J isn’t. I think it make a nice change of pace.

Related: Back in Round 10, I talked about wh and its use in Māori.

Click the badge above to visit other bloggers taking part in ABC Wednesday—there are a lot of interesting and very diverse blog posts!

Word resurrection

Today I read an article about some academics trying to highlight “some of the English language's most expressive — yet regrettably neglected — words” so that they might be used more often. As is so often the case, more than a few people don’t quite get it.

The list of Wayne State University’s “Word Warriors' 2015 top 10” includes a few obscure words (such as, concinnity, opsimath, and others), along with a few that are in general use, like caterwaul, melange, and knavery. And that’s where the misunderstanding arose.

The Wayne State list is of words that “deserve to be used more often in conversation and prose,” not just ones that are “dead”. In the article, British author Mark Forsyth, a fan of reviving useful “dead” English words, pointed out, as I did, that some of the words are still in use, and then asked, “Are they really forgotten?”

Obviously not. Maybe he didn’t get a chance to read what the Wayne State academics actually said about the list, so he was instead reacting out of, let’s say, incomplete information, because at no point did the academics claim the words were “lost”.

Pop culture can revive words that are seldom used. For example, I’ve heard Monty Burns on The Simpsons use old words like flapdoodle (one of my personal favourites, by the way) and rapscallion, both of which are on the list. Repeated enough, such words can take off all over again.

But Forsyth is right about one thing: The “lost” words most worthy of revival are ones that have no modern equivalent. English is an incredibly expressive language, thanks to its mergers and acquisitions over the millennia. But having a few more precise words—neologisms or “lost” words—enter common use has got to be a good thing.

But who’s championing the case of the words we should lose?

The photo at top of this post is my own.

Cursing around the world

As harsh as I can be about BuzzFeed’s issues-oriented videos, they have some that I think are really good, and the one above is one of them (language probably NSFW). I like it because it helps to show how, despite nationality and language, we’re both different and the same.

I’m a potty mouth, no two ways about it. While I can censor myself when decorum demands it, more often than not, the “F-word” is among my favourites. I come by this naturally, since both my parents swore—though, admittedly, far more chastely than I do. This means that I can’t condemn folks who swear when I do it all the time.

The thing is, I think people getting all worked up about swearing is just plain stupid: They’re words, nothing more, nothing less, and fashion will change their appeal and end many of them. After all, we no longer say “zounds”, and “gadzooks” sounds downright antique (because it is). Words change, meanings change, propriety changes and so does morality (no matter what the tut-tutting far–right American christianist group One Dozen Moms may think).

So, I don’t really care if anyone swears or not. But I do think it’s interesting how other cultures swear (the subject of the video) as well as the reaction of some rightwingers in Western culture—is it really worth getting so upset about? Clearly, I don’t think so.

So, swear or don’t—all are welcome here—and you don’t have to watch your mouth. As it fucking should be.

How To Speak British (and some Kiwi)

This video popped up in my social media over the past few days. It presents and explains some British colloquialisms. Because early New Zealand was overwhelmingly British, and that influence continued into modern times, some Kiwi slang is still closely related to what’s in this video. Up to a point.

At around 3:36, when she talks about “To Have A Butcher’s”, she talks about things that I’ve never heard before. It's coincidence that I've never heard of the rest.

On the other hand, she includes “Up The Wooden Hill To Bedfordshire”, and my mother used to say what must be a version: “Time to climb the wooden hill”. I have no idea whether her usage was descended from her English ancestors, or whether she, a keen Anglophile, read it somewhere.

This particular video is “Anglophenia Episode 7”, part of a series hosted by Siobhan Thompson for BBC America. I quite like the style and presentation, though I’d expect nothing less when it’s from a media organisation. I think she's quite engaging as a presenter.

The video below is Siobhan doing 17 British accents. I thought it was very entertaining, though I have no way of knowing how accurate she is.

At any rate, I do love videos like these: They’re like fast-paced mini-documentaries. That’s a good thing in my book