54 posts tagged “english”

Oprah Winfrey was named for Orpah in the Hebrew Bible, but a spelling mistake led to her unique name, one which is in the global consciousness today. (Search for Orpah and Google asks if you are searching for Oprah.) I’m sure she’d be thrilled to find out that the spelling has been fixed by ABC News:

Action Concept, the crowd that makes Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, has an English trailer for the show on its site. I am surprised no English channel has ever picked up the long-running series. Sure, it’s devoid of real plot and there are inconsistencies the size of Düsseldorf itself, but my gosh, is it fun.
   The budget has been cut since its heyday and the ratings are down, but from what I have read in the German press, it still outperforms everything else in its time slot.
   One problem is that the trailer is ancient. The German accent on the American English (why do announcers in Germany all sound the same—is this the same guy as on DW-TV?) might make it too foreign for some English-speaking countries, but who cares?

   As fans can see, Semir’s partners end with Tom Kranich (played by Réné Steinke). Since then, Chris Ritter (Gedeon Burkhard) has joined and been killed off in the course of duty, and Ben Jäger (Tom Beck) has been fielding the sidekick position since. The intro is pre-Chris, though this is still the only one I can recite with my extremely limited German.
   This is the sort of show that might start off at a bad time slot on an English channel and steadily work its way to prime-time. Even if it was dubbed, I am sure it would get plenty of fans.

PS.: I have tried Vox at another office, and I have used it with another ISP. The compose screen either fails to come up or takes several hours. Something is afoot.

Can someone please explain this first paragraph on the Think Spain site?

Clocks go back an hour this weekend, in the early hours of Sunday morning, as Europe says goodbye to British Summer Time and adopts daylight saving time (Greenwich Mean Time).

   This makes no sense.
   1. Only the UK is on British Summer Time in Europe, I thought.
   2. British Summer Time and daylight saving time are the same thing, aren’t they?
   3. Daylight saving time and Greenwich Mean Time are not the same thing.
   Or has the usage of these terms changed since I learned them?

Remember last year when I took the mickey out of these in the City Life newspaper?

   The first one is obvious: Melbourne is misspelt. The second one is also obvious: Circle is misspelt, there’s a missing apostrophe for the possessive, and capitalizing a definite article is technically incorrect. I remember we had a bit of fun with this as they were in huge letters, the former across the top of a tabloid-sized page.
   The question one has to pose is: did they get it right in 2009? Let’s see: Well, that’s a good start. Someone hired a proofreader at long last. Or turned the spellcheck on.
   Let’s see how the second one went: One fewer error, but still two to go. Note the prize money has reduced to a recessionary $150 this time around. The text, which also has a few issues (based around consistency of English usage), remains the same as last year.
   Any bets on the 2010 edition? Will the apostrophe for Winners’ be there? Or is there only one winner, in which case it’s Winner’s? I remain none the wiser.

A pity that John Hillerman is still putting on his English accent and Magnum, PI Higgins persona in this 1989 TVC. I expected to hear his original Texan drawl.

We were chatting about non-US actors adopting American accents on Jaklumen’s blog and I thought of several American actors who do pretty good English accents.
   First up, Rénée Zellweger as Bridget Jones:

   Secondly, James Cromwell as HRH the Duke of Edinburgh in The Queen:

This is as disturbing as when I began to see American publications capitalize after colons in 2001 (which is generally incorrect, according to US publishing professionals I asked, though there are exceptions; it is certainly incorrect in English).
   Carbon dioxide is written out in full or with CO, followed by a subscript 2. Technically, it is incorrect to write CO2. Normally in modern typesetting, if we do not have a subscript font, we would use the superior two (²) and move it down a few points. However, surfing today, I noticed a very disturbing C02 (C-zero-two) at both Reuter and the Los Angeles Times.
   I have no idea how this came about. There is no zero in carbon dioxide. This is as bad as those weather pages that insist that the temperature is measured in coulombs (C) and not degrees Celsius (°C).

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Carrying on from a post that Jaklumen made on his blog, I went to look for the Lucy Lawless-headed Greenpeace campaign to reduce emissions. This is Lucy Lawless as Lucy Lawless, and her accent has changed a great deal since I saw her in the Shark in the Park episode ‘Double or Quits’. It has Americanized slightly, which is no surprise since she is married to an American and has a home in LA.

Linda-Joy pointed me to this article about John Simm in The Independent:

Who on earth is John Simms? A bit embarrassing to have a typo in the headline.
   I assume he is also known to the fictional New Zealand locksmith–prime minister, ‘John Keys’, whom Dr Pita Sharples of the Māori Party has referred to from time to time.

Remember how a few weeks back, I chided Examiner.com for a poorly written review of District 9? The writer of the review told us how a chap called ‘Neill Blomcamp’ directed the film, and invented new words such as gansters, prolifigate, demonstate and permissiable. I still wonder if a prolifigate is where pro-lifers meet up.
   It looks like the site never really checks things. Its latest review is a bit better when it comes to spelling and word usage, but it still has some mistakes, such as ‘the Nazi’s outlined treatment of the Jews during WWII’ (which Nazi?). Less forgiveable, however, are the first two words which begin the review. There, I see that Neill Blomkamp’s name is now ‘Neil Bomkamp’:

Examiner writers and editors: repeat after me. Neill Blomkamp. Neill Blomkamp. Neill Blomkamp. Now, write that out 50 times on the blackboard till you get it right.