Cold Ale - The Blokes' Thread!

[Scheherazade]

What is a bodger?

Can somebody explain to me why the French need so many freaking vowels to represent just one sound?

Same reason as the English has so many different "sounds" for the same letters probably:

cough

dough

plough

enough

ought

through

[Sancho]

Good point, Scher. Ya gotta like a language with a sense of humor, eh? Or is it Humour? I don’t know, but it gives the language a certain flavor, eh? Or is it flavour? It can also make for some colorful expressions. Doh! Or perhaps it’s all just a shade of gray. I realize this could be cause for confusion.

Also, I'm glad you asked because I’ve got no clue what a bodger is either, but contextually I’m going to guess it’s a handyman. BTW, 6 months ago El Sancho stepped through his ceiling too, and La Senora was pissed (not drunk - angry).

[prendrelemick]

Well, some say bodger, some say practical genius.

The original bodger would make a wood turning laithe in the forest using a bit of string and a bendy sapling. Nowadays it's about mending stuff with what's to hand.

[MarkBastable]

Well, some say bodger, some say practical genius.

The original bodger would make a wood turning laithe in the forest using a bit of string and a bendy sapling. Nowadays it's about mending stuff with what's to hand.

I think 'bodger' has a perjorative overtone - and a 'bodged job' is improvised, ugly and, whether intended to be or not, temporary.

So a third-class bodger - such as yourself, Mick - might either be not very good even at bodging (which which would mean very very crap at DIY), or might be unable to countenance bodging (which would mean very very good at DIY).

I am proud to say I have never bodged any DIY task in any of the houses I've lived in. Not one. Ever.

[prendrelemick]

I tend to bodge things for a temporary fix, then do it properly when Mrs P threatens to get a professional in. The one thing I cannot do is plastering - the harder I try the worse it gets. I leave that to the Father-in-law.

[Sancho]

Nice explanation, guys.

Well, some say bodger, some say practical genius.

I’m going to put the Sancho clan squarely in the bodger camp. On a road trip, my dad was one of those guys who wouldn’t stop for anything, no way, no how. He was focused. But the kids in the back of the station wagon had other ideas:

“Hey, Dad, we gotta go pee.”
“You can hold it.”
“No we can’t”
“Yes you can. Just think of something else.”
“Hmm, it ain’t working. WE GOTTA GO.”
“Oh, Christ.”

So, after the trip, Pop was out in the garage with a power drill, a couple of feet of surgical tubing, and one of mom’s funnels from the kitchen. Our family wagon became the first one on the block to have a relief tube.

[Scheherazade]

Good point, Scher. Ya gotta like a language with a sense of humor, eh? Or is it Humour? I don’t know, but it gives the language a certain flavor, eh? Or is it flavour? It can also make for some colorful expressions. Doh! Or perhaps it’s all just a shade of gray. I realize this could be cause for confusion.

Oh, don't start me on that.

Some teachers had a good chuckle at my expense because when I started to learn English, I thought you could Americanise any "-ou-" word by simply removing the "-u-" from them.

Seriosly.

I am proud to say I have never bodged any DIY task in any of the houses I've lived in. Not one. Ever.

Could that be because you have never any DIY tasks? Not one. Ever.

[MarkBastable]

Could that be because you have never any DIY tasks? Not one. Ever.

Well, yeah.

My mate says DIY stands for Don't Involve Yourself.

My attitude here is that there are people who make a living doing this stuff well, and it would be misguided and arrogant to think I can do it to a professional standard with no training, no experience and no interest. Of course, some non-professionals can do this stuff - my dad, for one. But, me, I've never completely mastered the use of scissors, and I assume that if you don't put a light bulb in, electricity will leak out all over the floor.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

I think 'bodger' has a perjorative overtone - and a 'bodged job' is improvised, ugly and, whether intended to be or not, temporary....

I tend to bodge things for a temporary fix,...

Ahh, you mean botcher, botched as in "That's a botched job".
By the way how is "garage" pronounced?

...So, after the trip, Pop was out in the garage with a power drill, a couple of feet of surgical tubing, and one of mom’s funnels from the kitchen. Our family wagon became the first one on the block to have a relief tube.

Haha, I like that.
Since we had the one son, all we required was an empty Gatorade bottle and a marker to label the contents.

.

[MANICHAEAN]

At this juncture, might I introduce other Lit Netters to the word "tosher."

[MarkBastable]

Ahh, you mean botcher, botched as in "That's a botched job".

Yeah, in my part of England, we use that variant too.

The variations of accent and dialect in England (never mind the rest of the UK) are so many and so fine, that you can actually map the use of some words geographically, like strains of DNA.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/so...cal-variation/

You can also, I've noticed, map these lexical variations to areas of the US, which'll give you some idea which part of the UK the early British settlers of different bits of the US came from.

By the way how is "garage" pronounced?

Interesting one - I think that in British English, the convention on this has shifted in my lifetime. When I was a kid, the more acceptable pronunciation - at least in the south of England - was 'guh-RARZH', with a soft g, in imitation of the French. These days that sounds a bit pretentious and practically everyone I know says 'GA-ridge'.


An American pretension that drives me absolutely nuckin futs is the use of the French word 'homage', pronounced 'om-ARZH' or 'om-ARGE'. There's a perfectly good English word for that, and it's been part of the English language for a thousand years, and it's 'homage', pronounced 'HOM - idge'.

[prendrelemick]

^ I love this sort of stuff.

How would you describe your accents? Mine is Yorkshire, but not deep Yorkshire like they speak round Barnsley. Think Ted Hughes with a hint of Coronation Street. I certianly use 'appen for "perhaps" but "praps" is acceptable too.

[MarkBastable]

My accent's variable, sometime within a sentence. It comes from being working-class by birth - Sarf Londen boy; Wansworf, to be precise - and middle-class by education - Emanuel Grammar School, prefects, quadrangles, Latin, the whole bit.

So I can sound like this, or I can sound like this - but generally I sound like both at once.

[Paulclem]

I was more like Keith Lemon - he comes from Morley near Wakefield. I must have spoken like this though I don't remember the oo sounds being so prtracted when I said them. I think I was a bit gruffer - less perky - if you see what I mean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F3LnQckyDo

Now I'm more muted. I work in the Midlands with second language speakers, and the accent - while still there - is more muted... unless I'm with my brothers.

[Sancho]

At this juncture, might I introduce other Lit Netters to the word "tosher."

I give up. What’s a “tosher”?

…The variations of accent and dialect in England (never mind the rest of the UK) are so many and so fine, that you can actually map the use of some words geographically, like strains of DNA.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/so...cal-variation/

You can also, I've noticed, map these lexical variations to areas of the US, which'll give you some idea which part of the UK the early British settlers of different bits of the US came from.

Somebody told me the pronunciation of the word "four" will closely nail down where in the U.S. the speaker grew up. In NYC it’s foa; up in Boston it morphs into fo-wah; out in the middle west it’s far, which is funny to me because Interstate Farty-Far runs through St. Louis. Down south we just say four.

And that’s cutting it with a broad axe. There are a lot finer distinctions, say between Brooklyn and The Bronx in NYC or between The North End and Southie in Boston.

An American pretension that drives me absolutely nuckin futs is the use of the French word 'homage', pronounced 'om-ARZH' or 'om-ARGE'. There's a perfectly good English word for that, and it's been part of the English language for a thousand years, and it's 'homage', pronounced 'HOM - idge'.

Not sure why that’d drive you nuts. Languages live and breathe and evolve. Besides I’m pretty sure if that word entered the English language a thousand years ago, it probably came across the channel with The Normans. Two thirds of modern English comes from Norman French. And I’m willing to bet that even around the year 1066, Parisians thought the Normans were butchering their language - The Normans, or North-Men, having arrived in Normandy a couple of hundred years earlier from Scandinavia.