Job Discussion Forums

[george61]

donfan..spot-on mate.....................eeeeeeeeeeeeeZAKLY!!!!!
Roger,we know you can speak French...but some of us are pig-ignorant.
John slat.....a COCKTAIL piano????? How intriguing...now let me see.....
COCKPIT....where the pilot sits.
COCK-a-hoop......excited.
COCKFIGHT....two roosters going at it.
ride a COCK horse..........to Banbury Cross.
COCKRobin...shot by a sparrow.
COCKNEY...person of London.
PEACOCK......Mr Peahen.
COCKED hat.....type of hat
COCKEYED....cross-eyed.
COCKLES......shellfish.
COCKALEEKIE.....soup
COCK-UP.......a bloody mess.
SHUTTLECOCK.....used in Badminton
COCK-AND-BULL.....utter rubbish.
COCK A SNOOK.....be impudent.
Any others???????
How about CUNT-SPLICE, and *beep* file.

[george61]

American English is not the only form of English to change,so we can't for once blame it on the Yanks! Flowery,well-constructed,over-long,and wordy, sentences have been in decline for many years. Indeed,since well before the 60s. My theory is that it was caused by modern technology. The need for speed........and economy.Since the invention of the telegraph,communication has sped up.Telegrams,postage stamps have been the inventors of economy. Why pay for twenty words,when you can get the message across in ten? Why write ten pages when you can say it all in two?....and this was the beginning...two-way radio...sound in movies...television.........all demanded a paring-down of the language.This spread to other forms of communication...books .. newspapers...even art!
Compare the paintings of the early 19000s with modern art. The same cutting down is apparent.
Society has always had several versions of the same language..teenagers are not an invention of the 60s.....lower,uneducated classes have always been around,speaking in their own version of English. (probably other languages have the same things happening). Education has to take a share of the blame too....I remember in High School having to "precis" a piece of writing,quite regularly.....No,not the same piece! I believe The Readers Digest started long before the 60s.
Now, we are going several steps further,with email,chat,text messages on mobiles.
On the other hand,invented by brainless politicians(not always the best-educated of our citizens), and bureaucrats with too much time on their hands,we get the Politically-correct form of language,where several words are seen to be beter than one or two. No more "garbos". We now have "certificated waste disposal expediters"....or some such rubbish! Restaurant reviewers,wine critics,and the like,also seem immune to the shortening of the language.
So, that's my two-bobs worth!
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOooooooooooooo!

[dduck]

I've been reading Bill Bryson's Made in America. In it he describes the Gettysburg address, which is an example of fine English. However, Bryson also describes that this 268 word speech was regarded as quite poor at the time, only lasting a couple of minutes and using simple language that everyone could understand. The speaker before Lincoln droned on for two hours using the most pretentious language he could manage - this is what Americans understood as a good speech. Somehow, not many people seem to recall what he was whittering about.

Iain