Earlier this morning a delivery lorry for cake manufacturer Mr Kipling got stuck under the railway bridge on Stoke Road, Stoke-on-Trent, as shown below and as reported by The Sentinel.
Mr Kipling still uses the advertising slogan – as seen on the side of the trailer – “Exceedingly good…“. That phrase presumably does not extend to (one of) its drivers. 😉
New technology is unlocking the key to the biggest problem that has been bedevilling the education world for years – the poor performance of white working-class boys in reading, The Independent reports.
The Early Years Literacy Survey shows the role touch-screen devices play in the home and pre-school learning environments.
Figures show that a higher number of children from low income groups (DE households) are more likely to read stories on touch-screen devices for longer and use them for educational activities than those from high income groups (AB households). Findings show that:
The survey also found that 91.7% of children aged 3-5 have access to touch-screen technology at home and access to touch-screen technology in early years settings has doubled since last year. Moreover, the majority of pre-school teachers and practitioners said they would like to see more touch-screen technology in use in early years environments.
Alright me babber? Have you heard that hotel chain Travelodge has produced a guide to the West Country accent? The Gloucestershire Echo has.
The Echo article has a brief list of common phrases – presumably from Travelodge’s publication – to help visitors get by in the West:
One noticeable omission from the glossary above is ‘daps‘, Bristolian dialect for those shoes used for PE in schools, otherwise known as plimsolls or pumps. Bristolians also use the term to describe trainers.
The research also found that people who speak in West Country accents are less likely to be able to understand the accents of other people from elsewhere in Britain than they could understand Spanish or Italian. Curious (Blige! As one would say in Bristol. Ed.).
My copy of the Oxford Companion to the English Language, published 20 years ago, says the following about West Country accents:
The range of accents in the West Country extends from broad in the working-class and in rural areas through accents modified towards RP in the town and the lower middle class to RP proper in the middle and upper classes. Local speech is rhotic, with a retroflex /r/ in such words as rap, trip and r-coloured vowels in words such as car/cart. Postvocalic /r/ is widely retained in such cities as Bristol and Exeter, despite the influence of RP, which is non-rhotic. In other cities, such as Plymouth and Bournemouth, rhoticity varies. Traces of variable r-pronunciation are found as close to London as Reading and Berkshire.
The entry then goes on to deal extensively with local grammar, vocabulary and the literary West Country.
Hat tip: Yelena McCafferty.
Selby District Council’s website is not one of your correspondent’s regular online haunts. However, last week’s news section of the site carries a report with exclusive spectacular news: a Mr Steve Wadsworth has won a competition to name the new Selby Leisure Centre, which is due to open in 2015, by naming it, erm, Selby Leisure Centre!
There was even someone armed with a camera to record this historic event, whose like has probably not been equalled in that part of Yorkshire since the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. 😉
Hat tip: MJ Lee.
The newest version 2.9 of Calibre, the cross-platform ebook management software, recognises footnotes and shows them in a separate window section, heise reports. Scrolling with the mouse wheel in the cover browser has also been improved.
Calibre 2.9 displays footnotes separately. Shortly after the update to version 2.8, which provided a driver for the Tolino-2-Vision e-reader, Kovid Goyal released a new version of his e-book manager. Calibre 2.9 recognises footnotes and displays these in a separate window section if they are clicked on in the preview. Calibre is thus using both the footnote label of the EPUB 3.0 format and heuristics too.
In addition, mouse scrolling in the program window’s cover browser has also been improved. An additional shop for e-books has been added with Portugal’s Bubok. Calibre will now load large libraries which use user-defined columns from templates more quickly.
Calibre 2.9 also corrects a number of errors, e.g. those involving the global menu in the Linux Unity desktop and Imagemagick. The changelog on the Calibre website lists all the new features of Calibre 2.9, where the new version can also be downloaded for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Earlier this week Bristol University announced the opening in Bristol of Europe’s first speech laboratory designed to break down communication barriers faced by those who speak English as a second language.
In a linguistically diverse society, with many people speaking English as their second language, researchers at Bristol University are pioneering a new approach to help understand how factors such as accent influence communication.
The speech lab, which is funded by the European Commission through a four-year €100,000 Marie Curie grant, uses state-of-the-art audio technology to capture and analyse second language speech samples and to train people to assess the speech in a purpose-built environment.
The insights gained will then be used to train those who speak English as a second language and also to improve the teaching of English by targeting the elements of speech most likely to achieve successful communication.
Dr. Talia Isaacs, Director of the Second Language Speech Lab, conducts research at the lab as part of a research programme with international collaborators to identify aspects of speech that are most important for engaging in effective communication when English is not the speaker’s primary language.
She said: “Reducing language barriers is a pressing social and educational challenge, especially in countries like the UK where the linguistic palette is very rich.
“Improving oral communication skills for non-native English speakers will help with many aspects of everyday life – from success in the workplace and in education to improving social integration and accessing vital services.
“Although accents are very noticeable to listeners and may lead to social stereotyping, someone who sounds different is not necessarily communicating ineffectively. In fact, a whole host of factors, such as pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, contribute to the successful transmission of a message. So we often need to listen beyond the accent.
“Research conducted at the lab will enable us to study the linguistic factors that contribute to breakdowns in communication in greater depth and identify ways to mitigate these.”
By way of an example, future research could collect data from GP consultations, where either the doctor or the patient is speaking English as a second language. This could help to ensure such consultations are conducted with greater clarity.
Furthermore, there could be instances where engineers from various countries are collaborating on a joint project and there’s a need to ensure that everyone fully understands each another and can communicate their findings effectively.
I’m a great lover of no-frills, working-class pubs. They’re what I grew up with and frequented when I first started drinking. Indeed I still give them my custom and can often be found at the Little Russell in Barton Hill, Bristol (posts passim).
One worrying development in recent years is the rise of the ‘gastropub‘.
My Bristol Wireless colleague Rich has devised the verb ‘to gastrate‘ to describe the phenomenon of converting boozers to gastropubs. I would define the verb as follows:
gastrate (v.) – to ruin a perfectly good pub by converting it to sell small, overpriced portions of food.
See also: gastration (n).
The process of gastration is also being actively encouraged by the media, as shown in a piece last week on the Bristol Post website.
Will traditional drinkers soon be struggling to find traditional boozers if this trend continues?
If you are male, speak Welsh and have problems with your love life, particularly those related to erectile dysfunction, then maybe the new Aberystwyth store opened by Tesco (motto: every little helps) can come to your rescue.
The Daily Post reports that the cash machine installed at Tesco’s new outlet in Aberystwyth is offering a “free erection” (codiad am ddim) to Welsh speakers whilst Anglophones have to be content with withdrawing cash free of charge.
According to the Post, a Tesco spokesperson is reported to have said: “We’ve taken down the sign and will replace it with the correct translation. We appreciate this is a sensitive area.”
Here’s a little help for Tesco: next time use a professional translator! 😉
Hat tip: M J Lee.
Language is dynamic, constantly mutating and changing. One sign of this dynamism is the appearance of neologisms, i.e. newly coined word, or phrases or familiar words used in a new sense.
There are plenty of neologisms in evidence in this year’s Chambers Dictionary annual search for its word of the year, many prompted by or associated with information technology.
Chambers has this week announced that overshare is its word of the year for 2014, The Guardian reports.
“Overshare” topped a shortlist compiled by the Chambers editorial board, which included “bashtag”, defined as “a hashtag used for critical or abusive comments”, and “digital native” – “a person who has learned to use computers as a child”.
And the meaning of overshare? To reveal an inappropriate amount of detail about one’s personal life.
Opensource.com reports that Linux purveyor Red Hat is now accepting nominations for the Women in Open Source Award. Created to highlight the achievements women making major contributions to an open source project, to the open source community or through the use of open source methodology, this award is the first of its kind.
The award celebrates all different kinds of contributions to open source, including:
Nominees can qualify for one of two tracks:
The Women in Open Source Academic Award winner will receive:
The Women in Open Source Community Award winner will receive:
Nominations are open until 21st November. Judges from Red Hat will whittle down the nominees to a subset of finalists for both the Academic and Community awards, from whom the public will decide the winners. The winners will be announced in June during an awards ceremony at the 2015 Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts.