language

  • Sausages!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    pack shot of sausagesToday for breakfast I indulged in some sausages; not just any sausages, but Sainbury’s Outdoor Bred Pork Sausages. They were delicious and disappeared off the plate in double-quick time.

    However, there was one thing that stuck in my throat: the product name.

    Can inanimate objects – even ones made of once living matter – breed?

    If so, I should congratulate Sainbury’s on this fine achievement in the field of al fresco coitus? If not, should I condemn their marketing department for coming up with an idiotic product name that’s a complete physical impossibility?

    Digging further into this term, it is apparent that Sainsbury’s are not the only sinners here, as a quick image search for “outdoor bred” sausages will reveal. Moreover, if I had my way, Tesco, Waitrose, Rankin, Morrison’s, Marks & Spencer, Asda and many more suppliers should all be standing in the corner of the room with Sainsbury’s trying on the dunce’s hat for size. 🙂

    Nevertheless, my suggesting that all these corporate grocers are a bunch of illiterates is perhaps being a bit hasty and an over-reaction. Time for some final research.

    Consulting the Good Housekeeping Institute’s site, I find that outdoor bred actually has a specific meaning in food labelling terms, as follows:

    As with Outdoor Reared, this tends to apply to pork and means the pigs are born outside. However, after a few weeks they’re brought inside for fattening.

    So, outdoor bred is a proper food labelling term, although I do wish people would think more clearly about the connotations of naming products.

  • Spring’s golden heralds

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language

    It’s a bright, sunny day in Bristol and there’s a hint of spring in the air. In addition, the daffodils are out in their brazen glory, like these fine examples planted by Bristol City Council in Castle Park.

    daffodils in Castle Park

    Along with the blossom of the cherry, in honour of which A.E. Housman wrote “Loveliest of Trees” (posts passim), daffodils are another spring favourite celebrated in poetry, in this case William Wordsworth‘s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”.

    I wandered lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
    When all at once I saw a crowd,
    A host, of golden daffodils;
    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
    Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

    Continuous as the stars that shine
    And twinkle on the milky way,
    They stretched in never-ending line
    Along the margin of a bay:
    Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
    Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

    The waves beside them danced; but they
    Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
    A poet could not but be gay,
    In such a jocund company:
    I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
    What wealth the show to me had brought:

    For oft, when on my couch I lie
    In vacant or in pensive mood,
    They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude;
    And then my heart with pleasure fills,
    And dances with the daffodils.

  • How to make pancakes, 16th century style

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    The Good Huswifes Jewell was an English recipe book written by Thomas Dawson which appeared in the late 16th century, of which the British Library has helpfully provided a transcript of the page covering pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known in secular Britain as Pancake Day.

    pancake

    The transcript of the pancake recipe is as follows:

    To make Pancakes

    Take new thicke Creame a pine, foure or five yolks of egs, a good handful of flower and two or three spoonefuls of ale, strain them together into a faire platter, and season it with a good handfull of sugar, a spooneful of synamon, and a little Ginger: then take a friing pan, and put in a litle peece of Butter, as big as your thumbe, and when it is molten brown, cast it out of your pan, and with a ladle put to the further side of your pan some of your stuffe, and hold your pan …, so that your stuffe may run abroad over all the pan as thin as may be: then set it to the fire, and let the fyre be verie soft, and when the one side is baked, then turn the other, and bake them as dry as ye can without burning.

    This is the first time I’ve ever come across a pancake recipe featuring ale. 🙂

    As regards the author, Thomas Dawson wrote a number of popular and influential recipe books including The Good Huswifes Jewell (1585), The good Hus-wifes handmaid for the kitchen (1594) and The Booke of Carving and Sewing (1597). These books covered a broad range of subjects, including general cookery, sweet waters, preserves, animal husbandry, carving, sewing and the duties of servants.

  • Cambridgeshire Police spends nothing on linguists

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    When work restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants were relaxed at the start of the year, the usual xenophobic elements of the British media stoked fears that every criminal in eastern Europe would make a beeline for the UK and crime would soar.

    Emotive language was (ab)used, with the nation being told Bulgarians and Romanians would ‘flood’ into the country and dear old Blighty would be ‘swamped’ and similar such tosh.

    If crime had increased due to Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, this would have resulted in a massive rise in the criminal justice system’s use of linguists, as suspects and defendants are entitled to understand and follow the proceedings in their mother tongue.

    However, this surge in the use of East European linguists hasn’t actually happened.

    Indeed in response to Freedom of Information (FoI) Act queries, Cambridgeshire Police has revealed its spending on services for Bulgarian and Romanian linguists has actually declined, as revealed by the Cambridge News:

    Data has revealed the force spent just £9.10 on Bulgarian and £1,357.84 on Romanian translators in January last year when the restrictions were in place.

    But after they were lifted at the start of the year, the force spent zero pence on translators for the two languages.

    Read the full article.

    Hat tip: Katya Ford

  • No further development of Sigil e-book editor

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Tech

    Sigil logoSigil, the open source editor for epub files, is not be developed any more, German IT news site Heise reports. John Schember, who has been Sigil’s maintainer since 2011, is taking stock after a few months: he had been hoping for a revival in the cross-platform editor’s development after moving Sigil’s code to Github in September 2013. However, there have only been a few commits which also mostly concerned minor matters. However, the most recent version of Sigil – 0.7.4 of October 2013 – can still continue to be used as long as it still works.

    screenshot of Sigil
    Sigil in use on Windows. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    As an alternative to Sigil Schember is recommending the open source Calibre e-book manager, which has also incorporated an e-book editor in the meantime. Calibre is stable and already comprises many, but not all of the functions provided by Sigil. Calibre’s editor is also being actively developed. Although Calibre’s e-book editor is not using any of Sigil’s code, Schember nevertheless views it as Sigil’s spiritual successor.

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