He Said What?

One of our local radio stations has been asking listeners to phone in with their favourite expressions during the week, and there have been some doozies! I know that every culture has its own special way of describing those universal concerns we all meet in our everyday comings and goings, but we have some especially colourful ones Down Under ...

"Don't come the raw prawn, with me, Sonny Jim!" is an expression oft heard when someone is attempting to deceive (a person) or to misrepresent a situation. (And I'm not sure why it's always Sonny Jim on the receiving end. When my daughter visited Scotland, she was amused by the way so many men called each other 'Jimmy,' because she'd grown up hearing the name 'Sonny Jim' applied to a variety of males of our acquaintance -- regardless of their given names.)

"She'll be apples, Mate!" is the sort of phrase you do want to hear here ... it means everything will be all right.

And if someone claps you on the back and exclaims, "Your blood's worth bottling!" it's not the signal to run for cover. It means you're a person of great heart, someone to be admired. This expression originated during the dreadful days of the First World War, when Aussie soldiers received their baptism by fire ...

However, if you hear people describing you as a bludger, it may be time to leave, or at least put a few bob in the kitty for your share of the groceries. 'Bludger' comes from 'bludgeoner' who was someone who carried a bludgeon ('a short stout stick or club'). In the late 1880s, it came to mean 'a thief who will use his bludgeon and lives on the gains of immoral women.' But now anyone who likes to take the easy way or who makes little effort in general is referred to as a bludger. It's not very flattering.

The 'few bob' refers to cash. In the old days of shillings and pence, a shilling was called a 'bob.' And the 'kitty' is the communal purse common to shared accommodation and the cause of many arguments -- "Who pinched last week's milk money from the kitty?"

When someone tells you, "You've got Buckley's, Mate," the best option is to retire from whatever you were contemplating, because it means you have no chance of success. It's similar to the snowflake's chance ... The same sentiment is sometimes expressed as, "You've got two chances, Mate, yours and Buckley's."

And if things start going bad, you'll probably find that the telly will go bung, the washing machine will cark it and the missus will tell you she's crook and just wants a cup of tea, a Bex and a nice lie down-- all these expressions mean that the object or person has broken down, stopped working or become ill.

Other idioms are more widespread in their application and origins ...

"It's enough to make your hair stand on end!" says the man listening to the news about the his favourite sporting team's latest snafu.

To make your hair stand on end comes from the way the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you're afraid, and was even mentioned in the Book of Job, "Fear came upon me and trembling and the hair of my flesh stood up."

It's from this that we also get the slang term "hairy" to describe something frightening ... "She's just learning to drive, and that was a hairy ride home!"

And as we all know snafu is an acronym for "situation normal all fouled up" or words to that effect ...

"Oh, for crying out loud," says the exasperated father, as his son and heir whines and whinges, "put a sock in it, will you?"

This useful expression dates back to the early days of gramophones, when the music came out of the speaker horn and there were only two controls: On and Off. To adjust the volume, you could stuff a cloth (or sock) into the horn.

Idioms can add colour to your writing, provided you do a bit of research and get them right.

Can you imagine how difficult it must be for people learning English as their second language Down Under who are trying to make sense out of idioms like these:

"Will you just look at Johnno in that new suit -- he's flash as a rat with a gold tooth!"

He pranged his dad's new car and was off like a bride's nightie before the coppers arrived.

Hmmm ... almost as difficult as it is for us trying to learn a completely new language.

But science tells us that it's good for the brain to learn a new language ... and for those of us in Our Prime, it's a pro-active way to stave off some of those nasties that can afflict us if we let our little grey cells lie idle.

The following illustrate the point I was making earlier, about getting expressions right ...

I can see through you like a book.

He came through the experience smelling like a knight in shining armour.

He fell for it like a ton of books.

I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

Don't put all your chickens in one basket.

From now on I'm watching your every move with a fine-toothed comb.

Never let a gift horse in the house.

Rome wasn't burned in a day.

She grabbed the bull by the tail and faced the problem squarely.

The writers of these little gems obviously need more than a little help, which they could get if they had access to this nifty self-help guide here.

1. To bite the dust
2. Nip in the bud
3. In hot water
4. To throw a spanner in the works
5. Cool as a cucumber
6. To run with the hare and hunt with the hounds
7. A feather in one's cap
8. To bury the hatchet
9. Hands down
10.Bring home the bacon

A Chihuahua, a Doberman and a Bulldog are in a bar having a drink when a great looking female Collie comes up to them and says, "Whoever can say 'liver' and 'cheese' in a sentence can have me."

So the Doberman says, "I love liver and cheese."

The Collie replies, "That's not good enough."

The Bulldog says, "I hate liver and cheese."

She says, "That's not creative enough."

Finally, the Chihuahua says, "Liver alone . . . cheese mine."

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The teacher gave her class an assignment to get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories.

Kathy said, "My father's a farmer and we have a lot of egg-laying hens. One time we were taking our eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the pickup when we hit a bump in the road and all the eggs went flying and broke and made a mess."

"And what's the moral of the story?" asked the teacher.

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket!"

"Very good," said the teacher. "Now, Lucy?"

"Our family are farmers too. But we raise chickens for the meat market. We had a dozen eggs one time, but when they hatched we only got ten live chicks. And the moral to this story is, don't count your chickens until they're hatched."

"That was a fine story Lucy. Johnny do you have a story to share?"

"Yes, ma'am, my daddy told me this story about my Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob was a pilot in Vietnam and his plane got hit. He had to bail out over enemy territory and all he had was a bottle of whiskey, a machine gun and a machete. He drank the whiskey on the way down so it wouldn't break and then he landed right in the middle of 100 enemy troops. He killed seventy of them with the machine gun until he ran out of bullets, then he killed twenty more with the machete till the blade broke and then he killed the last ten with his bare hands."

"Good heavens," said the horrified teacher, " What kind of moral did your daddy tell you from that horrible story?"

"Don't mess with Uncle Bob when he's been drinking."

Get your little grey cells working at their full potential with this free CD here.

If you're going to learn a second language, Mandarin is a great choice for lots of reasons ...

For those learning for work-related reasons, you only have to consider some of the economic facts of life to realise that China is very much the Sleeping Giant in world affairs. China now has a mind-boggling $3 trillion in hard currency reserves! That's a nice little piggy-bank to have to invest in business activities, and last year, China accounted for approximately 25% of the world's economic growth.

Then consider that around 20% of our little blue planet's people call China home -- and all these people are potential markets and/or partners for businesses around the world. How many people do you know who can speak Mandarin?

Getting a fabulous job (one of those that makes you wake up each morning and thing, "Wow! Work!" and not one that makes you wake up each morning and think, "Ugh! Work!") is all about having skills others don't have and offering extra value to your employer. Can you imagine the extra Brownie points you could earn when looking for a job if you spoke Mandarin these days?

Because it's so different from English, Mandarin is also an excellent way to stimulate your brain. Apparently both music and languages exercise your little grey cells ... and you know what they say, don't you? Use it or lose it, Kiddo!

It's been a lot easier than I ever thought it would be -- and that's coming from someone whose schoolgirl French would drive a real Frenchman to drink!

The trick, as I've discovered, is not to even attempt the written language -- that way madness lies -- but to begin with the sounds of individual letters. One comforting and reassuring aspect is that (using the method I'm using) by speaking English, you already know and can pronounce most of the sounds. But there are 9 different sounds that have to be learnt in Mandarin, and these take a bit of practice. (OK ... a lot of practice!)

My family has stopped looking askance as I suddenly erupt into a series of TZs and ZZs as I prance around the house practising my Mandarin ... I wouldn't recommend doing this outside the privacy of your own home. (And yes, prancing is part of the process for me. We all learn in different ways -- some need to write things down, others need to listen, some to see, some to speak and others to move. I find the more senses I can involve in learning, the quicker I learn.)

The other thing that takes a bit of getting used to is the importance of tones in Mandarin. These tones are what gives Mandarin that wonderful musical quality when you hear people speaking it. To understand what I mean, turn off the subtitles the next time you hire a Tiger and Dragons movie, then fast forward to a scene with a woman speaking and just listen. It's lovely.

There are four of them and each has a different lilt (for want of a better word). One tone remains level, one falls at the end of the word, another falls then rises and another rises at the end. One trick I've developed to help me with the tones is to raise and lower my eyebrows as I raise and lower each tone ... Yes, not a habit I'd recommend taking out into the real world, especially not as I also find myself going up on my tippy-toes and then bending my knees as I say the words ... but it is helping me remember the tones!

Each tone can completely change the meaning of a word as this example shows: fei (fly); fei (obese); Fei (African); fei (expense).

Not that I'm anywhere near to having a conversation yet ... I think I could probably greet someone in Mandarin and respond to a greeting, and that's about it. But that's not a bad start.

I'm using a method developed by a member of our Merry Band's extended family, George Wu, and the best thing about it is that it's so simple to follow. Rather than burden us with the admittedly beautiful, but also maddeningly obscure written language, George has opted to present a course designed to have non-Chinese natives speaking Mandarin that can be understood by native speakers. See more here.

This has been dubbed a "passive oxymoron," because "wow" has no capital or exclamation mark.

Word of the week: Idiom (n) an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as "kick the bucket" or "hang one's head," or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as "the table round" for "the round table," and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics.

The word comes from Latin idioma meaning 'a peculiarity in language, from the Greek word idioma 'a peculiarity, peculiar phraseology, from the expression idioumai 'I make my own,' from idios 'personal, private.'

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