Teach me English

[TheLeen]

There’s something that I can’t work out…

I know that “Baz” is short for Barry – which I personally find, well, a little odd. Then I saw “soz” for “sorry” and thought, ah, the Baz oddity.

Now I’m reading “tomoz” (tomorry, obviously) – so if this is a common way to deal with words, I probably should know how, when, and most important: fucking why.

Please clarify :x

Topic

[JamesTC]

Words like “tomoz” and “soz” are known as the language retarded.

[ChrisM]

It’s not really all that common really. I suppose ‘Baz’ sounds better than ‘Bar’ for Barry, (this is just me guessing.) ‘Soz’ and tomoz…’… I’m not sure when that came about. It’s not spoken English though (not that I’ve heard.) just people saving on letters in their typing. Like Txt speech, I suppose.

Carry on writing the way you do. You’re English is very good. Certainly amongst the best I’ve seen for someone who doesn’t speak it as a first language. (That looks patronising, but I mean it.)

I’ve been to some sites where the English makes me wince*. Not that it’s their fault. I don’t have much room to criticize, as the only other language I can speak is the first page of Polish I memorized from a Linguaphone book years ago. And that’s mostly phonetic.

*And some of the people are actually English.

[TheLeen]

Thanks for the clarification! (And the compliment.)

So I’ll caz on like before and not woz about any confusing occuznces of zs. Uhm, lol.

[ChrisM]

I feel a spanky mode coming on. Must resist… Gnnnnn!

[Ian Symes]

You?re English is very good.

It’s better than yours, clearly.

[JamesTC]

You are English is very good, it sounds dirty.

[Dave]

>Teach me English

You regularly trounce me at Scrabble in your second language. You don’t need know help from the likes of us’n.

[TheLeen]

Scrabble is a different matter. It’s more like a puzzle.

It’s memorising Scrabble-successful words. Like… I know that BEZ and MOZ are valid words, but I have no idea what they mean. Sometimes I look them up. Sometimes I don’t. Actually I’d prefer to play long, beautiful, clever words like EQUINE or SQUIRE or ROCKET or CHEATER, but those don’t win you any games. ZA ZO XI XU QI do… :\

[TheLeen]

PS: didn’t know “trounce”! Ta!

[Dave]

>It?s more like a puzzle

Did you mean purrle?

[Ian Symes]

Like? I know that BEZ and MOZ are valid words, but I have no idea what they mean.

BEZ (n): Ecstasy-munching Mancunian dancer.

MOZ (n): Non-ecstasy-munching Mancunian singer.

[TheLeen]

>> It?s more like a puzzle
> Did you mean purrle?

Purryrryle!

[ChrisM]

>You?re English is very good.

It?s better than yours, clearly.

Smeg. Right under the radar.
Fickle fingers.

I do actually know when each form is supposed to be used. (E.g. I know they’re over there and it was their round. Now you’re here it’s yours…. etc.) but every now and again the wrong word will slip through. Especially if I’m typing fast.

[ChrisM]

And you’re right Symes. Often Marleen’s English IS better than mine. She actually used a word on another thread the other day I didn’t know. And she didn’t make it up either.

[Dave]

>Fickle fingers.

http://www.ganymede.tv/forum/2009/03/great-chicken-fingers

[James]

Dave’s got no hands, how does he type? He uses a tool tip.

[si]

Or his knob.

[Tanya Jones]

You ought to watch Filthy, Rich and Catflap, Marleen; there’s some fun abbreviations which never made it into popular parlance, such as ‘trub’ for trouble, and ‘priz’ for prison.

[TheLeen]

And again! Jeremy is “Jez”, apparently… why oh why oh why? Why, of all letters, does a “z” replace any number of “r”s? Argh!

[Dave]

We could start calling you Maz

[TheLeen]

Hahaha… right.

I don’t think I’d like that very much. Interesting idea anyway.

[Jo]

I have a friend called Mariam who we call Maz.

[JamesTC]

I feel sorry for Jimmy, I just realised that doesn’t work, hmm, Jirair is a name.

[pfm]

Jizz.

And yet Daniel is never ‘Daz’, thank god.

[J_Spaced]

>And yet Daniel is never ?Daz?, thank god.

That would be Darren.

[pfm]

> That would be Darren.

Thankyou for that revelation.

[Carlito]

‘Gaz’ can be Gareth or Garry.

Or Gascoigne….

[Carlito]

Of course, “Shaz” is Sharon.

From here on, things get a little bit confusing…

[Dave]

“Waz” doesn’t mean Warry

[Carlito]

Could be short for Warren though.

[Seb Patrick]

And then there’s “Jaz”, for “Jailbait”.

[Seb Patrick]

(incidentally, this clearly isn’t that difficult a concept – the letter “r” after a vowel often gets turned into a “z” with the rest of the name chopped off. EASY.)

[Pete Part Three]

He speaketh the truth.

[Ian Symes]

And then there?s ?Jaz?, for ?Jailbait?.

*applauds*

[Dave]

>Could be short for Warren though.

My bladder’s full to bursting, I’m gonna go behind that tree for a warren

[TheLeen]

(incidentally, this clearly isn?t that difficult a concept – the letter ?r? after a vowel often gets turned into a ?z? with the rest of the name chopped off. EASY.)

Yeah, well.

The initial question from post 1 remains. Why? What’s the correlation between “r” and “z” (of all the letters of the alphabet)?

[Andrew]

It’s a spoken thing, really – at least initially – so it’s not about replacing a letter so much as changing the sound. Shortening a name – Barry, Gareth, Darren, Sharon – kinda needs a hard sound at the end. (Andrew becomes Andy for the same reason. The R becomes a Y.)

‘Bar’, ‘Gar’, ‘Dar’ and ‘Shar’ don’t work well when spoken (though some Barrys use it, rhyming with ‘bare’) – you need something that’ll keep keep the ‘A’ short (‘Gah’ not ‘Gar’), along with a strong concluding sound. The Z achieves this, but because it’s ‘S-like’ it also doesn’t seem to be ‘adjusting’ the name as much as, say, a T or a K. We’re used to that S sound being thrown on the ends of words, so there’s less sense of the name being aggressive altered for truncation.

(Again, the Y for Andy is a ‘smooth’ adjustment; people chuck Ys on the end of names to be chummy, so it doesn’t feel especially contorted. But then it’s also a practical problem, since you need to keep the D and then need a vowel sound – which the Y provides. ‘Andz or Anz’ just don’t work.)

[TheLeen]

Thanks. Or, as the Eperantinos would say, bonan dankon.

[pfm]

I know someone called Andrew who gets ‘And’ and that’s partly because (I swear to god this is true) his surname’s Dover. Though he calls himself ‘Andy’, which sounds funny enough anyway (in case you’re a bit slow, in a northern accent this sounds like ‘hand it over’)!

He gets ‘Ben’ sometimes too, for the obvious reason. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as when, years ago, we were round at his and his mum asked us, completely innocently, why we kept calling him ‘Ben’. Me and my other mate were rolling on the sofa crying.

[peas_and_corn]

And of course you have the Australian versions of these words- Dazza, Gazza, Shazza… But only Bogans use those nicknames.

[Wilbur]

The rest of us just use the suffix ‘o’ whenever we feel like it.

“This arvo Davo and I went to the servo, stopped off at the bottleo and loaded up with a slab of piss”

[peas_and_corn]

Ahh yes, there’s that as well. It’s a little less bogan.

[TheLeen]

> He gets ?Ben? sometimes too, for the obvious reason.

Took me 12 hours, but…

Ah, ok. I get it. Hehe.

[Author]

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