Questions

[cosmolinguist]

I think all I've done since I got here is ask Andrew questions.

Some are easy. How do I get to the cybercafe from here? I used to know Manchester only by the tram stops I used, but I'm getting better now. I know it's lame of me to be so excited about seeing how Piccadilly Gardens and Market Street and Victoria all fit together, but I was anyway.

Yesterday I finally got around to asking him why the license (or 'number' in the local vernacular) plates on cars are sometimes yellow and sometimes white, something I'd always wondered about. "They're white in the front and yellow in the back!" he said, and I felt really dumb. "Obviously!"

They are. I recovered and asked, "But why?" I thought that was a good question.

"So you can tell which end is the front and which is the back!" he said. So that's how I learned that British people need the fronts and backs of cars to be color-coded. Only I suppose it'd be colour-coded, wouldn't it?

Andrew's looking for new jobs, and one of them is in Salford, a place (a Manchester-ish place, but still its own separate thing, sorta) I've heard of because Andrew's told me he used to go to school there and sometimes when we're walking around he'll point at something and say "over there, that's Salford." Anyway, this time he said the job is in "Salford Keys." That's what it sounded like, anyway. But then I looked it up on my map, because I like to know where things are, and in the index the only thing I could find written after Salford was "Salford Quays."

So I asked him "Is Salford Keys spelled like Quays?"

"Yeah," he said. "But it's spelled like Keys!"

"No it isn't! Keys are spelled like keys! Like, what gets you into your house!"

"Sure," he said. "Next thing you'll be telling me that ... some thing that I think has to do with the word 'Oxford' [okay, so I can't remember what he said! sue me] isn't pronounced like 'keys' either!"

"How do you spell that?" I asked.

"C-A-I-U-S," he said.

"Caius!" I said. "The Roman name. You think that's 'keys'?!"

Also, there's a song that's invited the asking of many questions. It's one that miss_newham put on her fantastically good CD of British music for me. I know I'd heard it before, because I remembered that I'd liked it, but I'd never been able to figure out what the guy was saying most of the time.

"Goats?" I asked once. He nodded. "Many goats?" That's what it sounded like.

"Nanny goats!" he said. And I guessed that did make a little more sense.

"The whole thing makes sense!" Andrew said. "Like, Bantu Stephen Biko, he was [oh, I forgot this part again, he's some African guy who did cool things but then he died of cancer or something and that's not cool]. Listenin' to Rico, Rico was the trombone player for the Specials. Harpo Groucho Chico, I don't think I have to explain that to you." Sometimes he just has to tell me what the words are, when I can't decipher them, and sometimes he has to translate them into English, like "being in my nuddy," which, now that it makes sense, is a phrase I like.

But there's still so much I want to know, because there's still so much I don't know. I'm always working on it, though, as you can see.

Comments

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

I'll name that tune! 'Reasons to be cheerful'! I hope you are.

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks, and I hope you are too. I didn't intentionally leave out the name of hte song, but it's not as if it's a big secret. I totally love that CD, and now that I'm reading a book about John Peel I keep coming across things that I know from there. Of course I'd already heard of the Fall and Belle & Sebastian, but "Uptown Top Ranking" got me excited when I saw it (confusingly so for a moment, before I remembered where I recognized the name from) and the Slits and things like that. Also, I love both of the Free French songs on there and thus wish I had more of theirs.

[innerbrat]

1. There's a Gonville and Caius college in Cambridge (formerly attended by ultramatt) but not in Oxford, according to the website

2. How the frell do you people pronouce Quay and Caius?

3. My dad's from Salford! He went to Salford Grammar School (same year as Mike Leigh, or maybe the year below).

[cosmolinguist]

1. Oh, I probably got that wrong, then. It's possible that Andrew misspoke, but much more likely that it's me.

2. Which people? Andrew says them both 'Keys'. I would say 'kwaz', probably, and 'kie (to rhyme with 'tie') us' respectively. I think Quays is a silly looking word, no matter how you spell it. I wonder what it means ... I haven't gotten around to figuring that out yet.

[innerbrat]

1. No, no no. Don't let him win before he even sees the conversation. He's wrong sometimes too, you know. It's highly more likely he knew there was a college somewhere in Oxbridge, and selected Oxford.

2. American people, is what I meant. A key is a dock. For ships and crap.

[cosmolinguist]

I don't think American people have reason to say Quay or Caius.

[innerbrat]

Fair enough. Then you're completely forgiven for not knowing the pronounciation.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

No she's not. We can't have her going round being all merkin at us -we have to have *some* standards you know...

[innerbrat]

We had a ongoing injoke about merkins as undergraduates. To hear the word used to decribe a person makes my brain explode.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

It's a usage I picked up from alt.fan.pratchett and have since spread to several other online fora...

[innerbrat]

Don't care. Sex toy.

[cosmolinguist]

I am not "all merkin"; I am only slightly American. You tell me so yourself--don't try to deny it now!

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Nope. I knew it was Cambridge - in fact I think my University Challenge team beat Gonville & Caius in 1999... but if nothing else I would remember it from the bit in Making History by Stephen Fry where the English bloke asks how the main character knows the pronunciation of that.

[hexar-le-saipe.livejournal.com]

2. American people, is what I meant. A key is a dock. For ships and crap.

Americans have a perfectly servicable word for that; we call it a dock.

[innerbrat]

The meanings are slightly different, but as I take after my father's urbanite fanily more than my mother's Sea Scout routes, I have to say I don't use either much.

[hexar-le-saipe.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh, a wharf! Why didn't you say so?

I guess that quay is just one of those words that didn't make the transatlantic trip...

[innerbrat]

Because that's a) a character on Star Trek, and/or b) a Neopet petpet.

[cosmolinguist]

I'd be more likely to confuse a quay with a key than a wharf with a Worf.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Steve Biko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biko)

[cosmolinguist]

I need to show you The Princess Bride so I can say "Yes, yes, you're very clever. Now shut up," and you'll recognise it as Peter Falk's line and not think I'm trying to sound so mean.

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

This has almost no bearing on your post, but as an added bonus of being on the other side of the pond, you can actually watch Doctor Who without the internet. :) Saturday evenings, I believe...

[cosmolinguist]

I know! It's excellent. (Especially as watching it on the Internet really isn't a possibility for me at this time.) And I even got to see the first episode, the one from before I got here, because miss_newham had taped it, so Andrew and I watched it while we were staying at her house. I knew almost nothing of Dr. Who before this, but with Andrew's elaborate lectures on the subject and the seemingly fun and decent examples of the show I've seen so far, I think I'm in love.

[sporksoma.livejournal.com]

Sometimes English is a language unto itself...

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Caius is a college at Oxford.

And how else would you pronounce Quay?

[cosmolinguist]

I didn't know if I had it right or not and I don't really care. Andrew told me to tell you it really is Cambridge.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes it is. Doh.