Speaker 1: Soundly and now on Night's Words with Cal Richards. Yes
Speaker 1: here he is the great man Kel Richards. Of course,
Speaker 1: lyrics and words is what you're about. And of course
Speaker 1: we were just talking about this is I think he
Speaker 1: said it was his favorite song, Yes he did.
Speaker 2: There was an interview clip I saw as part of
Speaker 2: one of the obituaries, and the interviewer said, what's your
Speaker 2: favorite beach boy song? And he said, California Girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we have a winner yet. Trish, Hello,
Speaker 1: Trish Hello, what was it?
Speaker 3: It's the way they.
Speaker 1: Kids, It's the way they kiss, they keep their boyfriends
Speaker 1: warm at night. Trish. You hang on there because you
Speaker 1: have got yourself the fantastic price my friends at Miselle
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, he owned, often more affordable than foreign substitutes.
Speaker 1: Whatever's on the menu at your place. Remember flavor starts
Speaker 1: with Miselle quality. You can taste get the John Stanley
Speaker 1: mister McGoo mug as well. And I think we might
Speaker 1: just just a little bit of this though, because it's
Speaker 1: a beautifully cray song.
Speaker 2: Yes please.
Speaker 1: Mike Love sings the first part and then Brian comes
Speaker 1: in with the chorus.
Speaker 4: Here it is well these girls are here by really
Speaker 4: those Stars be Aware and the Sun Girls with the
Speaker 4: We they knocked me out when I'm where spotters filling
Speaker 4: make you feel off, and the nother Girls.
Speaker 1: With the Way is thinking the same. What a good song,
Speaker 1: Just a magnificent song.
Speaker 2: It is a great song. I mean, I speak for
Speaker 2: the baby boomers, but that was when songs were really
Speaker 2: fabulous in the sixties. We had people like Brian Wilson working,
Speaker 2: and we had Paul Simon, and we had Lennon and McCartney.
Speaker 2: It was a great era for those songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think he's up there with mates, so
Speaker 1: I think it's going to last anyway. That's just my view.
Speaker 1: One three one eight seven three is the number words
Speaker 1: and language Now. Kell's website is oswordsoz words dot com
Speaker 1: dot au. You can go to that website. It's got
Speaker 1: fantastic links to Kell's books, all of the wonderful publications
Speaker 1: he often references here. Plus you can subscribe to his
Speaker 1: daily newsletter as well. And if you've got a question
Speaker 1: for Kell, you can do it on the line one
Speaker 1: three one eight seven three and talk with him directly,
Speaker 1: or you can get on the text line zero for
Speaker 1: six zero eight seven three eight seven three so one
Speaker 1: mystery unregistered entry from the Eastern Suburbs is one one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar powerball jackpot tonight in the Eastern Suburbs
Speaker 1: of Sydney.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So.
Speaker 1: Look, you're not you don't buy lottery tickets to you.
Speaker 2: I know I can tell no, no, no no. If
Speaker 2: I had, that would have been the one I've made.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying, so if you if you you're
Speaker 1: going to a newsagent whatever, and you can buy a
Speaker 1: ticket and it's not registered, you put it in your wallet,
Speaker 1: and if you're not registered as a player or doing
Speaker 1: it online, that ticket is sitting somewhere and it's worth
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: So you've got to be very very careful of that
Speaker 2: physical thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's always intrigued me that if because I used
Speaker 1: to buy the tickets just like that and put them
Speaker 1: in the wallet and check them later on. And I've
Speaker 1: always wondered if you had a win like that, you'd
Speaker 1: probably carefully put it in tissue paper, put it inside
Speaker 1: a book and then carefully go to the car, drive
Speaker 1: it about thirty k's an hour to wherever you've got
Speaker 1: to take.
Speaker 2: It, wouldn't you, Well, you'd certainly make sure you didn't
Speaker 2: put it in the jacket going to the dry cleaners.
Speaker 1: Well exactly now seven three. I've got any questions for
Speaker 1: kel at all. But your word of the week, it's
Speaker 1: often more than one word, and it is this week.
Speaker 2: Yes, fifth column. So if you've got a group of people,
Speaker 2: maybe a secret group of people inside an organization, so
Speaker 2: while you're attacking it from the outside, there white adding
Speaker 2: it away, it's called having a fifth column. It's quite
Speaker 2: a common expression these days. And I wondered why five
Speaker 2: I mean, why fifth column? I discovered it comes from
Speaker 2: the Spanish Civil War. One of General Franco's generals, General
Speaker 2: Emil Mohler, had Madrid surrounded by four columns of infantry
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty six, and he boasted he had a
Speaker 2: fifth column of citizens inside the city who would rise
Speaker 2: up and support him when he attacks, hence the expression
Speaker 2: fifth column. So I was puzzled.
Speaker 1: Now I found out, you've found out. Now we had
Speaker 1: a really interesting one last week, which we put into
Speaker 1: the mixers. Often comes through with potentially one of those
Speaker 1: made up expressions in a specific family. You've looked into
Speaker 1: this one, have you yes?
Speaker 2: For crying down the sink. Someone said her mother used
Speaker 2: to say for crying down the sink, and I hadn't
Speaker 2: heard it before, so I've had to do some digging.
Speaker 2: It turns out it is yet another of those softened blasphemies.
Speaker 2: You know how often we come across these things. The
Speaker 2: first half of the twentieth century was very sensitive to
Speaker 2: this sort of thing. This comes from early in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. Now, I'll tell you what the blasphemy is,
Speaker 2: which I think is quite offensive. So I'm saying it
Speaker 2: just to.
Speaker 1: Explain to you.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm going to say the words even though they're offensive.
Speaker 2: The words are for Christ's sake, and to soften that,
Speaker 2: they made it for crying down the sink. Really, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's where it came from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because a lot of people say for Christ's sake,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people do find the defensive. So
Speaker 1: that's for crying down the sink is a variation of.
Speaker 2: It's wanting to say that without saying.
Speaker 1: It right, because we can actually go through a few
Speaker 1: of those, and part of it, though, it does mean
Speaker 1: you've then got a reference what they actually are. Yes, yes, right,
Speaker 1: So with any of those, you've got to try and
Speaker 1: work out whether there's some terrible blasphony that matches it,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's the clue. Yep.
Speaker 2: And as you and I have discussed quite often on
Speaker 2: this program, there was a period where people were really
Speaker 2: sensitive to that, and so it happened a lot, quite
Speaker 2: a lot of familiar expressions started that way, and then
Speaker 2: we forgot that's where they came from. They simply became
Speaker 2: familiar daily idioms.
Speaker 1: Fascinating, all right, So for crying down the sink, wonderful, right,
Speaker 1: very good, And I hope our listener who brought that
Speaker 1: up last week, we did say we'd look into it. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is terrific.
Speaker 2: So if you're listening, we promised. We've kept our promise.
Speaker 1: Now in terms of your mouth gob, you're talking about
Speaker 1: someone sent it here, you know, I yeah, shut your gob.
Speaker 1: Your mouth is a gob.
Speaker 2: My memory is this is quite old. This goes back
Speaker 2: a long way. I'm not sure exactly how many years.
Speaker 2: I think it goes back to like thirteen fourteen hundred's
Speaker 2: a long way of fifteen hundred something like that. It
Speaker 2: originally accord into the Oxford database. It goes back to
Speaker 2: Scottish Gaelic and in Irish. It started off meaning either
Speaker 2: the mouth or the beak of a bird.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And it's simply the Gaelic word for mouth. So it
Speaker 2: turned up in Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic, and particularly
Speaker 2: from Scottish Gaelic, it came south of the border and
Speaker 2: became part of the English language.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now I'm going to ask you. You said thirteen
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen hundred. Yes, So you go back and
Speaker 1: have a look at the original books where this stuff's written,
Speaker 1: where it originally comes from. You see where it comes from. Yes,
Speaker 1: Now do those books give you an idea of how
Speaker 1: they are pronounced to what the Because this is why
Speaker 1: I've always been curious about about what accents would have
Speaker 1: been used, what those people would have sounded like when
Speaker 1: they were using the language.
Speaker 2: It's a very good question. Before the days of sound recording,
Speaker 2: so that's before the eighteen nineties, we can't say for
Speaker 2: certain what people sounded like, but there are a number
Speaker 2: of clues that just written language will give us. For example,
Speaker 2: if you look at poetry, if one thing rhymes with another,
Speaker 2: then it's clear that that gives you a guide to
Speaker 2: how the pronunciation was. And people sometimes would write about
Speaker 2: or report on the way people sounded. When there were
Speaker 2: some English people who came out to Australia in the
Speaker 2: first half around the middle of the eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 2: they commented on what they heard as the Australian accent.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing is what they said was it's the
Speaker 2: purest form of English on earth, and the reason was
Speaker 2: it had no elements of English regional dialect in it.
Speaker 2: They had all been flattened out because people had come
Speaker 2: from every part of England, all the dialects had come
Speaker 2: here and to be understood to each other. People consciously
Speaker 2: very early in the piece started flattening them, and with
Speaker 2: their children that process went on further, so the dialects
Speaker 2: got flattened out. And in fact, my own guess is
Speaker 2: probably if you talked to an Australian in the eighteen
Speaker 2: forties eighteen fifties, they would have sounded very much the
Speaker 2: way you and I sound now.
Speaker 1: So I always had this intrigue, and I talk about
Speaker 1: if we get a Dolori back to the future and
Speaker 1: go back somewhere, and you could go back and go
Speaker 1: back to night in eighty until John Lennon to Duck
Speaker 1: and we'd still had him. Stuff like that but I'd
Speaker 1: love I reckon the joy of going all the way
Speaker 1: back and listening to what people were talking about in
Speaker 1: those years. You'll rise at light up. You'd love it.
Speaker 2: Yes, we've only got these clues, as I say, but
Speaker 2: when you're going back to certain periods, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of clues. So there's a Welsh born linguist, a
Speaker 2: Manday David Crystal. Professor David Crystal is a very very
Speaker 2: clever man. And in Shakespeare's day, if you'd listen to
Speaker 2: them speaking English, it would have sounded a bit german
Speaker 2: So the prop and he actually taught the Shakespearean company
Speaker 2: that plays in the Globe Theater in London how to
Speaker 2: do one of Shakespeare's plays in his pronunciation, and they
Speaker 2: did a whole play. Now, I am told by the
Speaker 2: reviewers he went to see it. I wasn't there. I
Speaker 2: didn't say it. I have been there to see plays,
Speaker 2: but not that one that when you started hearing it
Speaker 2: it sounded really odd. But after you've been listening for
Speaker 2: about ten minutes it started to make sense to you.
Speaker 2: But it did sound more Germanic than modern English does.
Speaker 1: Wow. Very interesting really.
Speaker 2: So they can work out a lot about the sounds
Speaker 2: from the past.
Speaker 1: People online will get to your calls, texts, emails with
Speaker 1: kel Richards. It's our word clinic here at twenty three
Speaker 1: minutes past ten. It has been a busy night and
Speaker 1: we are keeping across all the breaking news happening around
Speaker 1: the world. We have been talking camping and off roading.
Speaker 1: Our sponsor ozof Road. One thing that we did learn
Speaker 1: about then there are one hundred percent Australian built, tested
Speaker 1: and tough and ready to explore Australia. But what we
Speaker 1: did learn is they make him in Melbourne, which I
Speaker 1: think in any time anything's being made here, we just
Speaker 1: need to say that's fantastic and encourage it. They've got
Speaker 1: a whole range for ultimate off grid touring and comfort.
Speaker 1: You can design your own. They've got multiple layout designs
Speaker 1: and lots of colors as well. And then OZ off
Speaker 1: Road has a four wheel drive fitting center sets your
Speaker 1: vehicle up for towing with Tabar's electric breaks Anderson plugs,
Speaker 1: airbags sorted by a team of qualified fitters. So if
Speaker 1: you want the four wheel drive set up for tough
Speaker 1: tracks or touring, they can do that. Bull bar suspension,
Speaker 1: driving lights, winches, recovery year rooftop tens which are great
Speaker 1: awnings electoral UHF radios as well one stop adventure shop.
Speaker 1: It's called oz oz oz off Road Caravan's camping Store,
Speaker 1: four wheel drive accessory fitting os off Road Penrith in
Speaker 1: Western Sydney. They are at Port mcquarie on the New
Speaker 1: South past Mid North Coast and now at Kippering in Queensland.
Speaker 1: So you've got one near you. Most of you call
Speaker 1: one three hundred and seven six zero one three run
Speaker 1: all that website oz ozoff road dot com dot au. Look,
Speaker 1: the news coming through from this dreadful plane crash in
Speaker 1: India are Madabad. This is a big city in India
Speaker 1: and this Air India plane it's a seven eight to
Speaker 1: seven Dreamliner, so it's a very it's a big plane.
Speaker 1: It's used right around the world and it was heading
Speaker 1: to Gatwick in the UK. Now they are saying that
Speaker 1: all the people on board have died. Now, just after
Speaker 1: this happened, we described what we saw on the people
Speaker 1: have taken images. The plane was up in the air
Speaker 1: for about eight minutes. It took off, didn't get very
Speaker 1: high and you could see it was struggling to get
Speaker 1: any height. And as you look at it. You can
Speaker 1: only imagine the pilots struggling to try and get the
Speaker 1: nose up. It kept going down and down. They didn't
Speaker 1: show the No one shown the images of the actual crash,
Speaker 1: but you then see this massive plume of smoke, and
Speaker 1: the conclusion I think when you pull that together, would
Speaker 1: be it would be very, very difficult for anyone to
Speaker 1: have survived that. They're also talking though, of what they're
Speaker 1: describing of some sort of either medical hostel or college
Speaker 1: where there were medical staff, doctors that may have been
Speaker 1: living there. Whether they were in there, they're trying to
Speaker 1: work it out. It's a disaster, but they are saying
Speaker 1: at this stage that they haven't found any survivors, whether
Speaker 1: they're got people on the ground they're trying to There
Speaker 1: are people who are missing from that area where the
Speaker 1: doctors were as well. It's a dreadful, dreadful tragedy. And
Speaker 1: there are one hundred and sixty nine Indian citizens. Is
Speaker 1: talking about more than fifty British citizens that was going
Speaker 1: to Gatwick airports and people from Portugal Canada. So we'll
Speaker 1: let you know what's happening there. But that's the latest.
Speaker 1: They are now saying no survivors.
Speaker 2: It's pretty sad, it's pretty awful, and no surprise, I.
Speaker 1: Think seven three is our number. Let's just get to
Speaker 1: a couple of callers here. We're talking words and language
Speaker 1: with Kel Richards. Robin's with us. Hello, Robin, Yes.
Speaker 3: I can John and Kel. I don't know if you've
Speaker 3: seen this man on TV. He polls a sign up
Speaker 3: with Jesus and is the Way the Truth and alife
Speaker 3: and down the opera house and the police come along
Speaker 3: and everything, and they're laying down the law to him
Speaker 3: that he's done allowed to do it. And he said,
Speaker 3: now I'm going to stand on my dig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's not going to move. I'm standing here,
Speaker 1: you're not going to move me. And and the term
Speaker 1: he years was I'm going to stand on my dig?
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right? And they couldn't understand that they could
Speaker 3: stand on what?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, I you know what I think. I
Speaker 2: think he was using his own abbreviation of stand on
Speaker 2: my dignity. That's my guess.
Speaker 1: I understand what that means. If you said that to.
Speaker 2: Me, I'm going to stand on my dig In Australia,
Speaker 2: dig I don't think it actually applies to a piece
Speaker 2: of land. Maybe you did in the gold Fields during
Speaker 2: the gold Rushes. But my best guess is I think
Speaker 2: he was actually saying I've seen the clip you're talking about,
Speaker 2: I know what you're talking about, and I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: he's saying, I'm going to stand on my dignity. That's
Speaker 2: what he means, and that's his own abbreviation of that.
Speaker 1: I think I'll say that you knew exactly what he
Speaker 1: was saying that. Yeah, thank you, Robin. That's an interesting one.
Speaker 2: That's a good one.
Speaker 1: Make a note of that, Kelch You never know, they
Speaker 1: could be good. Follow up with those ones now, George.
Speaker 6: Hello, George Today, John gaikl tragic news there in India,
Speaker 6: very sad. But he's a topical one, John. I know
Speaker 6: you keep on top of all the international sporting news,
Speaker 6: and you know that Australian manager Ange Costa Coogo has
Speaker 6: been sacked by Tottenham Hotspar in the UK and the
Speaker 6: UK press have so the two years that Andrew's been
Speaker 6: in charge of Tottenham, they've been having a field day
Speaker 6: with the way he expresses himself and Ange uses the
Speaker 6: word mate more than your average Australian does these days,
Speaker 6: and they've been focusing on that endlessly, the fact that
Speaker 6: he uses the word mate mate all the time, and
Speaker 6: I don't know both of you have dealt with this
Speaker 6: over the years. It's a pretty obvious one. But I
Speaker 6: was wondering whether the word mate in the Australian vernacular
Speaker 6: has come from the naval term, you know, the naval
Speaker 6: ranking of first mate, second mate, boss mate. Is that
Speaker 6: where it comes from.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think. So it goes back to the
Speaker 2: old idea that mate means a friend, a companion, which
Speaker 2: is which is older than the navy that's recorded from
Speaker 2: thirteen eighty, So back in thirteen eight eighty, mate was
Speaker 2: being used to mean a companion and a friend. So
Speaker 2: it's that's the oldest version of meaning of the word,
Speaker 2: and it's had that meaning in the English language for
Speaker 2: a long time for a range of historical reasons. That word,
Speaker 2: which is definitely English, I mean, it's very old English,
Speaker 2: and we didn't invent it, was used here a lot,
Speaker 2: and certainly by the end of the eighteen hundreds it
Speaker 2: was being used by Henry Henry Lawson and we've we've
Speaker 2: appropriated it. And part of the reason for that is
Speaker 2: because this was seen as being a hostile environment. So
Speaker 2: you didn't go anywhere on your own because it was dangerous.
Speaker 2: You didn't do a job on your own because it
Speaker 2: was dangerous. You needed a mate, right that. And diggers
Speaker 2: on the goldfields needed a mate. So in the bush
Speaker 2: on the gold fields you needed a mate, You needed
Speaker 2: a friend, a companion. That was the word we adopted,
Speaker 2: and it's become our word, and we had we we
Speaker 2: we've found lots of ways to use it. For example,
Speaker 2: John and I keep saying, when you forget someone's name,
Speaker 2: it's really easy to say mate, mate, it's so good
Speaker 2: to see you again.
Speaker 1: Yes, Georgie, you think we think it's it's We kind
Speaker 1: of think it's an Australian word, don't we.
Speaker 6: We do, But but the British actually use it a lot.
Speaker 1: Mate.
Speaker 6: They don't actually emphasize it like we do. We go
Speaker 6: may we stretch it out?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there's there was a period probably in the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties when Labor Party factionalism and the right
Speaker 1: wing of the Labor Party. Remember there's a book called
Speaker 1: Mates Yes, and that was you'd say may. It was
Speaker 1: like a that was almost like they send themselves up.
Speaker 2: So there are two things. One is the pronunciation, and yes,
Speaker 2: our pronunciation is just The other thing is frequency what
Speaker 2: a lot. What linguists do when they're doing research, they
Speaker 2: research the frequency of the word, how often in ten
Speaker 2: thousand words this one turns up and or one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand words or whatever. I would think the frequency in
Speaker 2: Australia would be much higher. So if the frequency in
Speaker 2: Britain would say three hundred per per one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: words in Australia would be double that, I would think
Speaker 2: that would be. I haven't seen the frequency studies. It's
Speaker 2: just me guessing based on what I know about the
Speaker 2: way the English speak and the way we speak.
Speaker 1: Very interesting, all right, thank you, George. Very good. That
Speaker 1: one kritz is softened blasphemy.
Speaker 2: John says it is, and yes, if you'll go back.
Speaker 1: In time, he tell last year Ferdinand not to drive
Speaker 1: to the hospital in Sarajevo in nineteen fourteen. Then Gothic
Speaker 1: comes from German that.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. The word Gothic refers originally to
Speaker 2: the Goths, and the Goths were a savage people who
Speaker 2: raided from the north, so that in fact, the Goths
Speaker 2: were Germanic people, and Gothic has been applied to lots
Speaker 2: of things. Why the word has spread so widely, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. But you know there's a style of architecture
Speaker 2: which is Gothic.
Speaker 1: Okay, now one of our people here and I think
Speaker 1: he's not being smart. There's a few people try to
Speaker 1: be smart on the text line not sorry to hear
Speaker 1: about you. Drag us tonight always wanted to wine. Rugby
Speaker 1: and rugby league they call a try a try.
Speaker 2: It started out because by getting the ball over the
Speaker 2: line that allowed you to kick for goal. It didn't
Speaker 2: actually in the very early days of rugby played at
Speaker 2: the school rugby before it became a big game, the
Speaker 2: rule was you got the ball over the line that
Speaker 2: gave you the right to kick for goal. So what
Speaker 2: you were trying, what you were doing is you were
Speaker 2: you were going to try to kick for goal. You've
Speaker 2: won a try. You've won the right to kick for goal.
Speaker 1: You've won a try try. That's right.
Speaker 2: So you've won a try, which is the right to
Speaker 2: try and kick a goal.
Speaker 1: And the irony of all that, if we talk about
Speaker 1: different codes, is that if a try, you've got to
Speaker 1: get the ball on the ground, yes, over the line,
Speaker 1: that's right. In American football, You've just got to break
Speaker 1: that line above the line. So if you break that line.
Speaker 2: So they don't have to touch the ground.
Speaker 1: And it's called a touchdown.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: Anyway, now let me go here we go? Oh, Cole says,
Speaker 1: what's happened to the word? Who? Even supposedly educated people
Speaker 1: on the media now use that. So I think he's saying,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of the context here.
Speaker 2: If you talk about all the people that were at
Speaker 2: the event as an incorrect and look, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: That applies to things. Who applies to people? It's a
Speaker 2: very simple rule. But you have to remember that for
Speaker 2: forty years, our education system failed to teach grammar to stick.
Speaker 2: I'm told they've gone back to teaching, and I certainly
Speaker 2: hope that's the case, but for forty years they did not.
Speaker 2: So there's a whole generation who were failed by the
Speaker 2: education system. Someone deserves to be punished for this. It's
Speaker 2: a really terrible thing they did. So when you're hearing
Speaker 2: people use that when referring to people rather than things,
Speaker 2: what you are hearing is ignorance, sheer ignorance.
Speaker 1: Right, he's busting a puffoo valve here is I Well,
Speaker 1: I love thee. Is that the puff foo valve? Is
Speaker 1: that the old expression.
Speaker 2: Puffl valve yes, a pooful valve yes.
Speaker 1: Expression that one like that one. Well, let's take a break,
Speaker 1: come back in the moment, because look, you're going to
Speaker 1: be away for a couple of weeks. Kel you're getting,
Speaker 1: you're getting.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to tell people, Yes, I'm having a total
Speaker 2: knee replacement. So my right knee is not going to
Speaker 2: be a knee anymore. It's going to be a little machine.
Speaker 2: And you've prepared, You've been preparing for weeks.
Speaker 1: You've told me. There's getting yourself ready, preparing, getting yourself
Speaker 1: you know, doing exercises, getting the muscles around it ready.
Speaker 2: Going to physiotherapy and doing a lot of work because
Speaker 2: you've got to and the muscles around where the surgery is.
Speaker 2: And they'll take out my decrepit ney that doesn't work
Speaker 2: properly anymore and causes a lot of pain, and they
Speaker 2: will put in something made of titanium. So when I
Speaker 2: come back next, I will be titanium.
Speaker 1: Man, titanium man, and I expect.
Speaker 2: My own Marvel comic.
Speaker 1: Before the way. If you, of course, in some cases
Speaker 1: you might be this. You might literally be the six
Speaker 1: million dollar man depend because these things do cost oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but anyway, that's something ahead of us. And that's why
Speaker 1: you won't be here for the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: because you'll be recovering from your surgery. Indeed, so if
Speaker 1: you've got a question for Kel, you've got about twenty
Speaker 1: two minutes left and you'll or you'll have to wad
Speaker 1: another three weeks. Yes, seven three is the number now,
Speaker 1: twenty two minutes to eleven, sixteen to eleven. We're talking
Speaker 1: words in language here with mister Kel Richards. Don't forget
Speaker 1: his website oswords dot com dot au. Some of the
Speaker 1: questions that have come in these are emails. And I
Speaker 1: remember we used to have Nevill Ran would say, let
Speaker 1: me just say this Barrier. Farrell would often say, look,
Speaker 1: the reality is so they'd say something yes, yeah, while
Speaker 1: they were getting themselves together in terms of their thoughts.
Speaker 1: So this is one that never sent in. I would say,
Speaker 1: while they get what they're going to say, and he says,
Speaker 1: Penny Wong.
Speaker 2: Says a lot, and I understand his irritation. It is,
Speaker 2: as you said, a padding phrase, so that they're just
Speaker 2: throwing out words while their brain works on what's coming next.
Speaker 2: And his real irritation is, why would you say I
Speaker 2: would say, just say it, don't say I would say
Speaker 2: this is a good idea. Just say this is a
Speaker 2: good idea. That's why it's irritating himself. All the padded
Speaker 2: padding phrases around. He's right, it is one of the
Speaker 2: most irritating. And if you ever come across a politician
Speaker 2: who doesn't use padding phrases, I think it makes them
Speaker 2: very effective. Then I was thinking about the speech of
Speaker 2: just into namper Juper Price. One of the things that
Speaker 2: makes her so effective is what they call a retail
Speaker 2: politician is she doesn't use a lot of those padding phrases. Interesting,
Speaker 2: she just gets into it.
Speaker 1: Because I thought about see I think or mister rand
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, he got, well, let me just say this,
Speaker 1: that's right. And Barry Farrell used to say, look, the
Speaker 1: reality is at the end of the day, and that
Speaker 1: gives you about three seconds to formulate what you are
Speaker 1: going to say, because.
Speaker 2: Some politicians will even say things like, look, that's a
Speaker 2: good question, and that is a padding phrase. And Joe
Speaker 2: Bio Competition used to say, don't you worry about that,
Speaker 2: don't you worry about that? And it was basically again
Speaker 2: padding until he got to where he wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier about Answpasta Cogla getting the sack. I
Speaker 1: think we have done this before, but the termolology of
Speaker 1: someone getting the.
Speaker 2: Sack goes back to the days when workers tradesmen would
Speaker 2: take their tools to work in a bag in a sack,
Speaker 2: and they would leave them there at the factory or
Speaker 2: the job worksite, whatever, And if the tradesman got the sack,
Speaker 2: he picked up his sack of tools and took it. Basically,
Speaker 2: the boss walked over and said, there you are, there's
Speaker 2: your tools, off you go. He gave him the sack.
Speaker 2: My grandmother used to say with my grandfather Fred, because
Speaker 2: he was a very argumentative man, and he was a tradesman.
Speaker 2: He cast in cast iron. He used to make the
Speaker 2: sand moles for cast iron. He was very good at
Speaker 2: it apparently, but he lost a lot of jobs because
Speaker 2: he was so argumentative and difficulty. She said, I used
Speaker 2: to dread it when your grandfather walked down the street
Speaker 2: with his tools, because I knew he'd got the sack.
Speaker 1: He got the sack very good one of my friends.
Speaker 1: One of my friends exclude, and this person's raising the
Speaker 1: term disclude as wanting to talk to someone as opposed
Speaker 1: to exclude. What's his The well, I haven't heard it before.
Speaker 2: It's new on me. I went to the Oxford Dictionary
Speaker 2: database and disclude is there. It's a very old word,
Speaker 2: comes from a Latin source word, and it means basically
Speaker 2: to separate. So if you're discluding this from that, this
Speaker 2: is discluded from our collection. It means to set apart,
Speaker 2: to separate.
Speaker 1: Exclude my is putting something me.
Speaker 2: It exclude means to remove and it suggests removing completely
Speaker 2: X out of the place. But if you're keeping things
Speaker 2: but separating them, it is disclude. But it is such
Speaker 2: an unfamiliar word. If you use it, no one we'll
Speaker 2: understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Paul asked about time immemorial, time immemorial.
Speaker 2: Time immemorial is actually interesting. The phrase had to be
Speaker 2: coined at some point, and it turns out time immemorial
Speaker 2: refers to a particular time in English history. It refused
Speaker 2: to it refers we know to very distant time, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing that no one has any knowledge or
Speaker 2: memory of. But it came into custom in the English
Speaker 2: language in the Statute of Westminster of twelve seventy five.
Speaker 2: And in that statute it gives a date anything before
Speaker 2: the sixth of June eleven eighty nine, which was the
Speaker 2: accession of Richard the First. There is no legal memory
Speaker 2: of what common law was before that date.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, look abdall is on the line of
Speaker 1: the question for you on the on the open lane.
Speaker 5: Hello, Abdol, Yeah, Hi, I's got a question regarding you
Speaker 5: a dollar sign. So it's like a for example, he's
Speaker 5: saying ten dollars.
Speaker 2: So that dollar sign is like s of the dollar sign?
Speaker 5: Yep, yeah, the dollar side. So why is not the
Speaker 5: key like a two?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Time?
Speaker 2: Can I tell you that I did actually look this
Speaker 2: up and research it about twenty five years ago, and
Speaker 2: I haven't written about it for twenty five years, and
Speaker 2: I can't remember. So when I come back first night,
Speaker 2: back three weeks from tonight, will I will give you
Speaker 2: the history of the dollar sign.
Speaker 1: We'll just let's take a break, because with that line
Speaker 1: through the is was that one stage we did one?
Speaker 1: In America?
Speaker 2: Did America? America always started off doing two, but quite often,
Speaker 2: particularly in advertising, reduced it to one. So they have
Speaker 2: either one or two.
Speaker 1: They either one or two, but we've always had the two.
Speaker 1: All right, come back in a moment. Ten minutes to eleven.
Speaker 1: We're talking words in language with Kel Richards. At seven
Speaker 1: minutes to eleven, just a few minutes left. Reminded to you,
Speaker 1: Kel Richards won't be with us for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: But Kel, what have you got?
Speaker 2: I had a quick look through what I've got in
Speaker 2: my computer. There are about eight different theories as to
Speaker 2: where the dollar sign came from. The one that is
Speaker 2: most preferred by most experts. It started out as a
Speaker 2: Spanish peso, so the S was for Spanish and the
Speaker 2: line through it was originally a P for peso. The
Speaker 2: Americans had a thing called the Coinage Act, and the
Speaker 2: coiny jack said the value of a Spanish milled dollar
Speaker 2: will be the value of our currency. So it was
Speaker 2: a Spanish peso which the value of the American currency
Speaker 2: was set on back in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Now it's most interesting because I do remember one little
Speaker 1: bit of trivia I remember from the early nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: was that the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies he wanted
Speaker 1: to call when we went when we went, decimal changed
Speaker 1: from the pound. He wanted to call the dollar the royal.
Speaker 1: Right now, I've always remembered that because it was obviously
Speaker 1: didn't fly, and they went with dollar. But was it
Speaker 1: going to be what was the symbol for the royal
Speaker 1: going to be?
Speaker 2: Well, they never got around to coming up a crown
Speaker 2: or something or well, who knows, but they never got
Speaker 2: around to that. And once don'tber calling it an ostral
Speaker 2: a U S t ra l. But everyone pointed out
Speaker 2: that when you put the indefinite article in front of it,
Speaker 2: it becomes a nostril, which I've got a good name
Speaker 2: for a currency, So they dropped that one. At the time,
Speaker 2: there was a quite famous an answer working at the
Speaker 2: ABC named Martin Royal, and he was he was presenting
Speaker 2: a program and they mentioned the fact that there was
Speaker 2: this push to call the currency a royal, and he said,
Speaker 2: that's very kind of them. Why couldn't they have called
Speaker 2: it a dibble?
Speaker 1: Dibble, that's right, Martin Royal, James Dibble, very very good. Look.
Speaker 1: Someone sent me this meg a packet of.
Speaker 2: Poo tickets, pack a packa pow ticket.
Speaker 1: Packa poo tickets talking about when everything's gone to custoards.
Speaker 2: An old expression, a pack of Pooh ticket is used
Speaker 2: to describe anything which is really untidy, like scribbled writing.
Speaker 2: I can remember my teacher standing over my desk and saying,
Speaker 2: Richard's that book looks like a packa Pooh ticket. And
Speaker 2: the reason is it comes from a Chinese gambling game.
Speaker 2: And in this Chinese gambling game there were slips of
Speaker 2: paper with Chinese characters on them, and of course Australians
Speaker 2: couldn't read the Chinese characters. They just looked like scribble.
Speaker 2: So that's what a packapoo tick could look like. And
Speaker 2: if your place was really untidy and messy and scribbly,
Speaker 2: then there was like a packupoo ticket, all right? Well,
Speaker 2: and can I just say the original Cantonese name for
Speaker 2: a packapoo ticket means something like white dove choice. And
Speaker 2: they had a trained no white pigeon choice. They had
Speaker 2: a trained white pigeon which would pick a number out
Speaker 2: of a bowl to find the winner.
Speaker 1: Isn't that good? All right? So look, we learned something
Speaker 1: here every night tonight. We learned quite a few things. Oswords,
Speaker 1: that's oz words, dot com, dot a USY website. You
Speaker 1: can keep in touch with the Kel via his website.
Speaker 1: Next week we'll be doing the CEO sleep out from outdoors.
Speaker 1: You won't be here Kell because you're getting your knee done.
Speaker 1: You'll be away for a couple of weeks yep.
Speaker 2: But I'll still have my laptop on my lap when
Speaker 2: I'm laid up, so you can still get in touch.
Speaker 1: With me through the website. We'll see you, then thank you,
Speaker 1: then bye.