My manager used to say things like, “I am not very interesting” when talking about some topic. He meant he was not interested, of course. You would think this would not come up often, but somehow he found reasons to say “I am not very interesting” a lot. I always agreed “Yes I know”, or nodded sagely, looking my other foreign colleague in the eyes.
My British brother-in-law told my Canadian girlfriend a joke about a rowing slave on a galley who died and was tossed overboard.
The overseer furiously lashed the other galley-slaves while they pulled aside their loincloths and urinated into the air. When asked by the dead rower’s replacement what was going on, an older slave replied “We always have a whip-round and a piss-up when somebody leaves.”
She didn’t get it.
Diminutive names, or pet names. The first time I heard the doubling up in a language was in Cook Islands Maori, which, as everybody knows, is a descendant of Taiwan aboriginal. What I noticed in Chinese is the way that two syllable phrases are doubled up, for example 乾乾淨淨.
All of which is extremely off-topic, so I should perhaps mention that I usually react and let off steam in English when encountering unexpected driving behavior. I’ve recently caught myself doing a silly thing where I loudly sing a sarcastic song after witnessing dangerous violations, for example “I don’t care 'cause there’s no camera, so I’ll do what I damn well like, yay!” And then I’ll quickly find myself needing to add something like “Well, that’s what you think isn’t it? Unbelievable!” just in case of the unlikely event that someone is listening and thinks that I’m actually singing about myself and not mocking someone else.
Off topic, there may be someone listening. Has anyone in your family asked you to buy them an OTG card reader for their phone or or wants to go to your car to “Watch TV” while you’re stuck at a boring family event or meeting?
I found out the dash cam that came with our car had a microphone.
I wanted to play back a particular unique example of traffic ballet I lived through and discovered that it came with a commentary track.
I killed my PC speakers real fast.
Now, you can play back your greatest hits .
On topic, the first time I was consciously aware of the repeated word for emphasis was when I was living in Taiwan and started to learn Chinese…
“Try this” “Taste this”
And when I “formally” studied Chinese @night school in the elementary school the instructions of the elementary school books use “and” between repeated words like “read aloud and read aloud” or “think and think”. I found that cute.
“The diminutive”, such a big word, I somehow made it through fifty plus years without using that word much. I just usually though of it as a suffix we added to words to show endearment or cuteness.
Now, I’m going to download or by some books on “The Art of the Diminutive: How It Can Work for You”
Thanks