Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley for November 06, 2012

I’m with Wilcoe on this one….M3 lost me there at the turn…Pants? clarification Urgently requested!

After a bit or research: The full expression is “Pull the other one, it’s got pants on!” i.e. “You’re pulling my leg!”And “pants!” is like saying, “that sucks!”

Calling something “pants” became current among children in the UK in the 90s. In the UK, “pants” does not mean jeans or slacks. It means boy’s underwear (girl’s underwear are “knickers.”) So if something is “total pants” it’s really bad. You can embellish the phrase as much as you like. My personal favourite is from a BBC Radio 4 panel game in which someone described a film as “a pile of pink, frilly pants.”

Not really grasping humor the past few days. I’m sure or me.

I believe we’re all barking up a dead horse….

I love M3 and all his comments : ) he makes my day! And a toast to all of you translators and researchers – you’re all cheeky monkeys!

I second the salute to the translators. Hope to learn to speak English some day.

Yes, thanks to the translators. Without it, it would just be gibberish

English english is much more fun than ours

There was a British series set in Glasgow. The main character’s dialect was so incomprehensible that it was run with subtitles IN ENGLAND!

Love M3’s eyeballs in the 3rd panel.

I could go on and on about the English language and it’s continuing evolution. Mac Manc McManx’s dialect makes for fun reading, though. That, I believe, is the point of the character.

When Mac shows up, I often find http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/ useful…when I can’t find it in Partridge. Or enter ‘manchester slang’ or ‘mancunian slang’ into your search engine.

When my family moved to the Deep South from the Midwest, we needed subtitles. I still remember asking my mom about a bank once and she said, “Oh when we moved here I called them but I couldn’t understand a word the woman on the other end spoke, so I just hung up.” I went to college in Texas, and one of the girls there was from Boston. That was… interesting.

An example of “one people divided by a common language”: An American woman who went to the University of St. Andrews once told me that not long after her arrival she had a dinner date with a Scotsman. The food was abundant and she was a small woman so after the meal she leaned back and said, “Boy, am I stuffed!” The reply was swift: “Not yet, lassie!”

When we were in Maine, we took a tourist trip on a little lobster boat with a family from Quebec. Now , my French is Extremely limited, almost non existent, but I could tell that some of their pronunciation was unlike anything I had been taught. We talked together in English for a while, and I never batted an eye at their accented English. But then, I committed the unforgivable sin of saying Au revoir as we parted. I guess, whether Canadian or French, the disdain remains the same.