Vickiepedia

Ingredients: YouTube, cookingwithdog channel’s earlier videos, Transcribe Audio^BETA (English), free time.

Friendly warning: Do not attempt while eating or drinking, or literal death may result.

Steps: Remove the best grabbed onto that daddy proud

It’s making me meet jeff on racism (read more…)

(read more…)

I just realised that I’ve been in Australia for over 3 years now. Time sure flies and time for reflection. So, random things I notice #1: words and phrases Aussies (or at least Sydneysiders (or at least young Sydneysiders (or at least those around me))) particularly love to say:

1. I reckon
2. heaps (of?), e.g. thanks heaps, heaps cool
3. mate
4. hey? (used at the end of a statement)

Combining all of the above may or may not sound extremely Australian.

Also, the Middle Eastern people I meet outside Uni are very hostile.
A lot of Caucasians here are also closet and not-so-closet racists.
Australia is also not known for its flies for nothing.

I’m also sweating profusely at the moment but I still can’t help but love this place. What’s up with that?

So every now and then I hear this on the TV:

This [programme / break], brought to you by [company name], [tagline / awesome service / things they sell].

e.g. This programme, brought to you by Vickiepedia, delicious yoghurt you won’t forget.

(And by “every now and then” I of course mean every single advertisement break.)
(And of course this is false advertisement.)

But what I’m trying to say is… I thought the subject was “this programme”?

Shouldn’t it be either This programme, brought to you by [company name], [something awesome about [programme]]; or This programme is / was brought to you by [company name], [something awesome about [company name]]?

Someone please enlighten me? English fails me / My English fails me / They fail at English.

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UPDATE: This entry has lost a lot of people so here’s a non-moronic version of it:

The (Australian) TV likes to say the following during advertisement breaks:

This programme, brought to you by Google (or whoever the sponsor is), the best search engine in the world (or whatever the company is supposed to sell).

Is that grammatically correct? Why did they say it the way they did? Shouldn’t it be one of these instead?

1. This programme, brought to you by Google, will be back in 5 seconds.
2. This programme was brought to you by Google, the best search engine in the world.

Do I make more sense now? Or is it still just me?

I’ve recently decided that one of my lifelong goals is to be near-native fluent in as many languages as possible before I finally pass on for good, which, on closer inspection, is a rather ill-defined goal. Just how many is “as many as possible”? Have I failed already because my Mum wouldn’t let me learn French when I had the chance 10 years ago? Does “Here lies Vickie Diablos / Who spoke a dozen languages / But still died anyway” really make a cooler epitaph?

Anyhow, when I learn a new language, I like to make myself think in that language before I allow myself to do anything fun. You want to eat? Say it in the new language first. You want to play? Say it in the new language first. You want to pee? … Oh screw it, just go pee.

Yes, I talk to myself a lot.

That night, I’d wanted to watch TV. Easy! They always teach you how to say “watch TV”. Should I spice it up a bit? Yes I should. Adjectives, adverbs, time clause, reason clause… And so I said the full sentences in that mysterious new language. It was grammatically correct and I sounded exactly like an awkward native speaker who had to justify watching TV. Damn am I talented.

“And with that, Vickie,” I thought to myself in English, “you may now open the TV*.”

Wait. No. No. No no no. Noooooooooo.

Perhaps I should work on my sipping seeping sleeping slipping English first…

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