Lingua Intrigue

To me, the more interesting clashes of culture are linguistic. That is to say, the nuances of regional differences of dialect are more intriguing to me than prominent differences such as used-panty vending machines and a tedious fascination with boing.

These differences turned up a lot in University, as it was the time where I met a group of people from varying locations, but generally within the English speaking world. It’s just that the English we spoke often differentiated oddly.

There is a “game” where someone is lying on the floor, and another person shouts something, and a group of people jump onto the person on the floor. Where I’m from, this “game” (it hurts) is called ‘Pile On!’ (with an exclamation mark). This is the name, what the person shouts, and it is also an explicit instruction to join in. It is forceful, commanding, assured. It is the sort of command you can imagine coming from the mouth of Leonidas, and I know that despite never having seen 300.

Elsewhere in the UK, this game is called ‘Bundle’. Now, I am about to use the word ‘gay’ and I would like to preface that by saying I am not using it in a derogatory way. ‘Bundle’ is the name of the game, it is what the person shouts, and it is pretty gay. As I stated before, my aim isn’t to use that term derogatorily, I don’t think gayness is bad, in this instance it is simply a misplaced gayness. There is nothing gay about a group of young boys jumping on top of…

Damn you, context.

‘Pile on’ is also a homophone for ‘Pylon’ which is a strong, firm, jutting, phallic... huff sake (my childhood snuck in some homoeroticism and I wasn’t even aware of it).

Carbonated beverages; around here they are ‘pop’. Elsewhere, they are ‘fizz’. As much as that pains me, having strong, illogical emotional attachment to it being called pop, I must admit that makes more sense. You open a bottle or a can, it fizzes. It does not pop, unless somewhere in our past we mistook liquidised Pringles for a fizzy drink.

There is a renovated music venue local to me called ‘The Pop Factory’. It is called that because it used to be the factory where they bottled pop. +10 Imagination EXP. Similarly, a restaurant opened up in the building which used to be the old post office. It is now called ‘The Old Post Office’. The mind boggles as to how any new build gets a name.

Builder 1: That’s a nice new building we’ve made here, what do you think we should call it?

Builder 2: What was here before?

Builder 1: Just an empty space.

Builder 2: Then this building shall be henceforth known as ‘The Empty Space”.

Builder 1: What’s it going to be?

Builder 2: A planetarium.

In that example, they luck out.

But if pop was called fizz around here, the music venue would become The Fizz Factory. Which is monumentally naff. Even more so than The Pop Factory. And because of rules of rhyming nicknames, it’s naffness would get it dubbed The Jizz Factory, which, well, is gay. And again, that would be inappropriate because it’s not a gay bar, it’s a non-sexuality-specific naff music venue.

Actually it’s mostly frequented by excitable teenagers, so calling it the Jizz Factory would be inappropriate for another set of reasons.

Where was I going with this?

I am going to call it The Jizz Factory from now on.

…

I think this blog entry is done now, I can’t be certain.

Like Hammerton Pobst always said; “if you can’t guarantee the safety of your soufflé, stop cooking.”