Wine Chevver Cole Share?

In 1965, in a noble attempt to help the rest of us understand Australians, Alistair Morrison published Let Stalk Strine, a glossary of terms used Down Under:

AIR FRIDGE: average
BANDRY: boundary
BAKED NECKS: bacon and eggs
DISMAL GUERNSEY: decimal currency
EGG NISHNER: air conditioner
GARBLER MINCE: a couple of minutes
MARMON DEAD: Mom and Dad
RISE UP LIDES: razor blades
SAG RAPES: sour grapes
SPLIT NAIR DYKE: splitting headache
STEWNCE: students
TIGER LOOK: take a look

“Aorta mica laura genst all these cars cummer ninner Sinny. Aorta have more buses. An aorta put more seats innem so you doan tefter stan aller toym — you carn tardly move innem air so crairded.”

The book went through 17 impressions in one year, a sign the problem had gotten completely out of hand. Just a few months before it appeared, the English author Monica Dickens had been signing copies of her latest book in a Sydney shop when a woman handed her a copy and said, “Emma Chisit.” Dickens inscribed the volume “To Emma Chisit” and handed it back. “No,” said the woman, leaning forward: “Emma Chisit?”

| Language

Stops and Starts

Charade sentences devised by Howard Bergerson:

FLAMINGO: PALE, SCENTING A LATENT SHARK! =
FLAMING, OPALESCENT IN GALA TENTS — HARK!

NO! UNCLE-AND-AUNTLESS BE, AS TIES DENY OUR END.
NO UNCLEAN, DAUNTLESS BEASTIES’ DEN YOU REND.

HISS, CARESS PURSUIT, OR ASTOUND, O ROC, O COBRAS!
HIS SCARES SPUR SUITOR, AS TO UNDO ROCOCO BRAS.

HA! THOU TRAGEDY INGRATE, DWELL ON, SUPERB OLD STAG IN GLOOM =
HATH OUTRAGE, DYING, RATED WELL? ON SUPER-BOLD STAGING LOOM!

In the same spirit: 1! 10! 22! 1! = 11! 0! 2! 21!

| Language · Science & Math

Gold Into Lead

Concerned that the men of 1768 no longer read the Bible, Edward Harwood decided to translate the New Testament into modern language. The result has been called “turgid,” “absurd,” “ridiculous,” and “one of the most discussed and insulted” Bibles of the 18th century. Samples of his work:

Before: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”

After: “Since therefore you are now in a state of lukewarmness, a disagreeable medium between the two extremes, I will in no long time eject you from my heart with fastidious contempt.”

Before: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

After: “As thou hast hitherto most mercifully supplied our wants, deny us not the necessaries and conveniences of life, while thou art pleased to continue us in it.”

Before: “We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed.”

After: “We shall not all pay the common debt of nature, but we shall by a soft transition be changed from mortality to immortality.”

And here’s the Lord’s Prayer:

O thou great governor and parent of universal nature (God) who manifestest thy glory to the blessed inhabitants of heaven–may all thy rational creatures in all the parts of thy boundless dominion be happy in the knowledge of thy existence and providence, and celebrate thy perfections in a manner most worthy of thy nature and perfective of their own! May the glory of thy moral development be advanced and the great laws of it be more generally obeyed. May the inhabitants of this world pay as cheerful a submission and as constant an obedience to Thy will, as the happy spirits do in the regions of immortality.

Harwood said his translation “left the most exacting velleity without ground for quiritation.”

| Language · Religion

Do-Gooders

In 1978, as part of an initiative to adopt gender-neutral language, the city council of Woonsocket, R.I., dubbed its manholes “personholes.”

After two weeks of nationwide derision, they changed their minds.

Time reported, “The council members voted to go back to manholes, indicating that it will be a long time before a person-person delivers Woonsocket’s mail.”

| Language · Society

A Hidden Message

Print our alphabet on a series of dials, like a combination lock, and you can arrange them to spell I GOT UP TO FAINT:

I GOT UP TO FAINT lettershift

In a sense this sentence is latent in our alphabet; it’s an artifact of the customary order in which we list the letters.

Further hidden messages, for what they’re worth:

  • AH ME, I AM A SERBIAN BOY!
  • I AM A FRENCH VET; I RAP MY TIN BOX.
  • OH, MY LAX FUR PEW! AS IF SHE LET ME BY A CROATIAN DAM.

In Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact, an astronomer discovers that if pi is expressed in base 11, a field of 1s and 0s appears 1020 digits from the decimal point. If carriage returns are inserted at certain intervals, this field produces the image of a circle — apparently the signature of a designer who devised our mathematics itself. But even in the book, no one knows what this means.

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