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Heaven: 2021 Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

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  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    In Welsh we say rhad ac yn ddim, which means "cheap and for nothing".

    'Rhad' also means 'free', presumably cognate with 'rhydd' - so we're back to 'free and for nothing' yn Gymraeg, hefyd.

    Make the point twice so even the English can grasp it...
  • :-)
  • Gill HGill H Shipmate
    And here I thought the line was "cheques for free". As in not working.

    The use of the word "faggot" reminds me of people using the word "gay" to describe something they want to denigrate. Neither being appropriate. I also didn't pick up on that piece of lyric. We used to sing this to students at skits nights when I was university teaching: "I want my PhD": "look at them profs, that's the way you do it, working those students, get your grants for free", etc.

    The song is written from the perspective of an ignorant bigot - but I gather they have changed the lyric now.
  • Pangolin GuerrePangolin Guerre Shipmate
    edited July 2021
    I'm left wondering which dialect of English has 'homour' rather than 'humour' or 'humor'.

    Tartare sauce is for use with fish. It may go with other things but it makes the Baby Jesus cry.
    :naughty: Tangent:
    What is wrong with making Baby Jesus cry? I don't recall anything about Jesus crying ever.
    /Tangent

    John 11: 35, albeit not as an infant.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    "Free and gratis" sounds very much like one of those things that comes from the period of history where things were regularly said twice, once in an English form and once in a French/Latin form, in legal settings because the kingdom of England hadn't quite decided which language was the proper one.
  • From https://forums.shipoffools.com/discussion/comment/435070/#Comment_435070
    "BAME". I forget what it stands for in UK. I hear talk of "brown people" and First Nations indigenous people. The term "visible minority" is older language.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    BAME can be black and minority ethnic or black, Asian and minority ethnic.
  • I remember a BBC Radio 4 mick-take of the truly dire Dire Straits song referenced here.

    A Sting sound-alike warbled, 'I want my ... I want my ... I want my Ovaltine ...'

    For Shipmates away from these shores, Ovaltine is an old-fashioned British night-time drink which claims to have soporific effects - rather like most of Dire Straits's output.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    I’m sorry you don’t like Dire Straits GG, and I will pray for your healing. :tongue:
  • I am too far gone. First album ... well, ok. Second? Hmmm ... after that... nah. They should have stayed a pub band.
  • For Shipmates away from these shores, Ovaltine is an old-fashioned British night-time drink which claims to have soporific effects - rather like most of Dire Straits's output.
    Ovaltine, originally a Swiss drink (where it is called Ovomaltine), was very popular and well-known in the US, where it was the sponsor of Little Orphan Annie (1931–40) and Captain Midnight (1938–49) on the radio and the subsequent Captain Midnight series on TV (1954–56). Many younger Americans know of Ovaltine because of the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, where an excited but soon-to-be-disappointed Ralphie uses his new Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring to decode the message “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.”

    I am too far gone. First album ... well, ok. Second? Hmmm ... after that... nah. They should have stayed a pub band.
    I guess there is no hope for you, then. No hope at all. :tongue:

  • There is always hope. I hadn't realised Ovaltine was Swiss nor known in the US. I always associate it with the very quaint and terribly, terribly English 1950s advertising jingle, 'We are the Ovaltinies'.

    They don't write them like that any more. Worth a Google.

    Thanks to BBC Radio 4's 'Weekending' programme from yesteryear I also associate it with one of the dullest and most soporific soft rock albums of all time.

    Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.
  • Brothers in Arms is one of my all-time favorite albums, and the title track is one of my all-time favorite songs. Given that The Wiki says it was the first album certified ten-times platinum in the UK (nine times in the US) and is the eighth-best-selling album in UK chart history and one of the top 30 best selling albums in the world, I have to assume I’m not alone in my appreciation for the album.

    But we digress from the topic of this thread.

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    There is always hope. I hadn't realised Ovaltine was Swiss nor known in the US. I always associate it with the very quaint and terribly, terribly English 1950s advertising jingle, 'We are the Ovaltinies'.

    They don't write them like that any more. Worth a Google. ...
    I'm fairly certain the song is older than that, that it came from Radio Luxembourg in the 1930s and that its appearance in the 1950s was a revival.

  • Gill HGill H Shipmate
    BroJames wrote: »
    BAME can be black and minority ethnic or black, Asian and minority ethnic.

    Already being phased out in the Civil Service in favour of DEM - Diverse Ethnic Minority.
  • Gill H wrote: »
    Already being phased out in the Civil Service in favour of DEM - Diverse Ethnic Minority.

    Which strikes me as an absurd phrase, and rather akin to the American habit of calling female students "coeds*". A group of people is diverse if it contains people from a range of origins, with a range of opinions and experience, and so on. An individual cannot be diverse. The black lesbian who uses a wheelchair so beloved of the tabloids is no more diverse than a white man - each is a single individual. (And a group consisting entirely of black lesbians who use wheelchairs is probably no more diverse than a group consisting entirely of white men.)


    *I trust I don't have to explain to readers here the problem with referring to female students at a co-educational establishment as "coeds" and male students at the same institution as just "students".
  • I don’t think we’ve done that for years. “Coeds” as a reference to people went out before my time IME, and I’m in my fifties.
  • I don’t think we’ve done that for years. “Coeds” as a reference to people went out before my time IME, and I’m in my fifties.

    I've seen it in news headlines (on CNN etc.) in the last decade (presumably because "Coed" is a compact word that's easy to fit into a headline).
  • I don’t think we’ve done that for years. “Coeds” as a reference to people went out before my time IME, and I’m in my fifties.

    I've seen it in news headlines (on CNN etc.) in the last decade (presumably because "Coed" is a compact word that's easy to fit into a headline).
    Interesting. I haven’t heard “co-ed” used in real life as a reference to female students in decades. It wasn’t in common use when I went to college, and that was in the early 80s.

    I do still hear it used in reference to a school that has both male and female students or in a phrase like “the college went co-ed in 1967.”

  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    remember my parents had a 1930 record of a song:
    'Betty co-ed has lips as red as rosebuds,
    Betty co-ed had eyes of mazy blue . . .' etc. Otherwise, I've never heard the expression this (eastern) side f the pond - probably because in those years c0education was a weird and outlandish concept.]
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    I don't think 'coeds' has ever been a normal expression here (UK) to describe a person, rather than an abbreviation for 'co-educational'.

    When I was growing up, most schools for children over 11 were boys or girls only. Universities by then weren't but accommodation wasn't normally mixed. What may surprise transatlantic shipmates is that 'segregated' and 'unsegregated' here was normal usage and assumed to refer to whether the sexes were mixed or segregated. I'd still normally assume that usage unless the reference was to a US or South African context.

  • Co-ed is used occasionally to something, usually an event or facility, combining both sexes. It implies younger agesdparticipants.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Brothers in Arms is one of my all-time favorite albums, and the title track is one of my all-time favorite songs. Given that The Wiki says it was the first album certified ten-times platinum in the UK (nine times in the US) and is the eighth-best-selling album in UK chart history and one of the top 30 best selling albums in the world, I have to assume I’m not alone in my appreciation for the album.

    But we digress from the topic of this thread.

    Well, plenty of people drink Foster's lager. That's no recommendation.

    Perhaps my aversion to that truly dreck album is that I had it inflicted on me by a housemate back in the day and never, ever, ever wanted to hear it again.

    But as you say, we digress and yes, there is no accounting for tastes.

    One man's fish is another man's poisson.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    Co-ed is used in Canada to denote mixed sports teams. ex. Co-ed slopitch
  • Just a quickie ... Gamma Gamaliel detects a tendency to return to bad habits ... must ... re ... sist. Consequently he apologises for the Dire Straits digression, other than its reminder of the Ovaltinies jingle, whether in its original 1930s Radio Luxembourg form or its revamped jolly hockey-sticks 1950s English version.

    Let us remain Brothers in Arms and not fall out over albums, bestselling or otherwise.

    Peace be to all.

    Now, tartare sauce on anything but fish ... that's a different matter ... :)

    Has anyone made reference yet to Lord Cardigan and the 1840 'Black Bottle' incident in the officers' mess of the 11th Hussars?

    Not that I am challenging any Shipmates to a duel ...

    'Pistols at dawn!'
    'No, it's handguns at dawn ...'
    'You say to-mate-oh ...'
    'You say to-mart-oh ...'
    'Let's call the whole thing off ...'
    'Swords? Rapiers?'
    'You're on ...'
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited July 2021
    Let us remain Brothers in Arms and not fall out over albums, bestselling or otherwise.

    Peace be to all.
    And also with you. :wink:

  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    I never liked that song and now it's stuck in my head. Thanks a lot.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    One man's fish is another man's poisson.

    One man's fish is another man's poisson/My favourite car is an Avions Voisin.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Going back to the term "Co-ed," a interesting app I use sometimes is Google Ngram which tracks the use of a word in literature. Coed seems to have been used in the mid 1600s and stays at a low level until the 1950s. It reached its peak in the early 2000s and then fell off dramatically.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    Coed seems to have been used in the mid 1600s and stays at a low level until the 1950s. It reached its peak in the early 2000s and then fell off dramatically.

    If you search for "Coeds" instead, which probably isolates coed used as a noun, rather than an adjective, you don't get quite the same picture.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    Looking in more detail at the Google results ‘Coed’ is a Welsh place name and accounts for many of the early entries, there was also a report of a hearing before a Select Committee in 1791 where ‘co-ed’ and ‘non co-ed’ are clearly used as verbs, although I don’t know what it meant - something to go with an election a Trinity College, Dublin. Later it appears frequently in listings of educational institutions which are described as ‘men’, ‘women’ or ‘coed’ where it is clearly simply an abbreviation for ‘coeducational’. Merriam Webster puts its first use for a female student in the late 1870s.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    I have a College Omnibus in my office published in the US in 1936. One of the articles is "The Co-eds: God Bless 'em!"
  • We usually say "mixed" for coed/co-ed.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    We usually say "mixed" for coed/co-ed.

    Ah yes, I remember beginning my school career as a Mixed Infant.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    edited July 2021
    To be honest, I'm still trying to wrap my head around mixed gender schools being sufficiently novel that you need a special word for them.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    To be honest, I'm still trying to wrap my head around mixed gender schools being sufficiently novel that you need a special word for them.

    Doesn't "school" mean "university" in this context?
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    KarlLB wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    To be honest, I'm still trying to wrap my head around mixed gender schools being sufficiently novel that you need a special word for them.

    Doesn't "school" mean "university" in this context?

    That would just make it weirder to me.
  • It never applied to schools in my world. Phys ed class perhaps. But mostly events or activities.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    During my lifetime, there were two single sex high schools in our city. One was still single sex when I was in high school; the other had gone co-ed in 1975.
  • FWIW, Walter Ong has an interesting theory of why and how schools went co-ed in his theories on orality and literacy, effects on the mind, etc. He says that there was a pretty universal belief that in order to learn Latin, you had to have it more or less beaten into you (physically, I mean)--and since Latin was the foundation of the whole educational experience, that meant beating people was a commonplace and necessary (in their eyes) experience, and apparently they didn't think that would mix with having gurrrrrrllls present (and beaten). Insert arguments about constitutions here...
  • When were women first admitted to Oxford as coequals to men?
  • Can't give those numbers off the top of my head for Oxford, but for Cambridge women were studying there in the late 1800s, but weren't awarded degrees until 1948. Checking, 7 October 1920 the first degrees were awarded. Similarily women had been studying there for some decades.
  • Leorning CnihtLeorning Cniht Shipmate
    edited July 2021
    ]
    Can't give those numbers off the top of my head for Oxford, but for Cambridge women were studying there in the late 1800s, but weren't awarded degrees until 1948. Checking, 7 October 1920 the first degrees were awarded. Similarily women had been studying there for some decades.

    As @Curiosity killed says, the first women matriculated at Oxford, and were granted degrees, in October 1920. The women's colleges didn't receive royal charters until 1926 (Somerville was first, followed by LMH, St Hugh's and St Hilda's). In 1927, the maximum number of female students was capped at less than 25% of the number of male students. The quota was increased in 1948, but not abolished until 1957. The abolition of the quota was only symbolic, because the fact that there were only 5 women's colleges meant that there weren't enough places to meet the quota anyway.

    In 1959, women's colleges were granted full college status by the university. In 1974, the first men's colleges admitted women. In 1979, St. Anne's and LMH became the first women's colleges to admit men.

    The fraction of students that were women increased from around 20% in the mid-70s (when there were just 5 colleges open to women) to 40% by the early 80s, it rose to almost 50% in the early 2000s, but 2019 was the first year there were more female undergraduates than male.

    So it depends what @mousethief calls "equals" - you can make a case for the answer being any of 1920, 1926, or 1974, and perhaps for other dates as well.

    ETA: I think all Oxford Colleges are now mixed. The last male-only holdout was St Benet's Hall (technically a PPH rather than a college, but that's mostly semantics) which went mixed in 2016. St Hilda's was the last all-female college: they went mixed in 2008.
  • gustavagustava Shipmate Posts: 35
    Single sex high schools are still alive and well in New Zealand. My younger son attends a single sex high school where "brotherhood" is frequently and enthusiastically endorsed (brotherhood wouldn't have been seen as a positive at the co-ed high school his brother attended).
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    Don’t get me wrong, single sex schools do exist here. It’s just that I would never think of them as the default such that a mixed school would need a special label. It’s a single sex school that would need to be labelled to indicate it wasn’t a ‘normal’ school.
  • gustavagustava Shipmate Posts: 35
    Oh okay. Still used for schools but just for schools here, can't think of it being used in other contexts.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    Don’t get me wrong, single sex schools do exist here. It’s just that I would never think of them as the default such that a mixed school would need a special label. It’s a single sex school that would need to be labelled to indicate it wasn’t a ‘normal’ school.

    Times have changed. Speaking only of my State, until the mid- to late-50s, single sex public secondary schools were the norm in the Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong areas, and perhaps outside those areas for schools going through to the Leaving Certificate rather than just the Intermediate. There was then a move to co-ed public schools, which continued on to the Leaving (and later Higher School) level.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I have mentioned my crush on Hardy Kruger, as seen in the film "Bachelor of Hearts", 1958. When I recently watched it again, I was struck by the person who set the prank tasks for the idiotic student society showing his total disgust at the admission of women to Cambridge (as token of this he sent the men to invade Girton). It was referred to as a recent event. I see above it wasn't.
  • FWIW, Walter Ong has an interesting theory of why and how schools went co-ed in his theories on orality and literacy, effects on the mind, etc. He says that there was a pretty universal belief that in order to learn Latin, you had to have it more or less beaten into you (physically, I mean)--and since Latin was the foundation of the whole educational experience, that meant beating people was a commonplace and necessary (in their eyes) experience, and apparently they didn't think that would mix with having gurrrrrrllls present (and beaten). Insert arguments about constitutions here...

    I'd say it's a pretty shitty teacher who can't teach a subject without beating people.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    That idea, though, goes back as far as Ancient Egypt. Where it did not apply to Latin, of course.
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