Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • October 12, 2019 6:06 AM

@ David,

Ah, some revenge finally for all the ridiculous US manipulations of good language Australians have been forced to endure for, well, forever

Well… What about English english?

I have relatives on my side of the family who emigrated. They were not “Five pound Poms” but later.

The problem word caused the lady of the household some embarrassment. Being more of a horticulturalist than a gardener, she decided to grow food plants rather than flowers, thus had taken the usual weapons of mass destruction horticulturalists use to their large urban lot.

So far so good. Now one thing horticulturalists do that gardeners don’t is “propagate cuttings”. That is from a mature plant you cut off a young leaf node and turn it into a viable plant. Some plants you only need to put in water and a little shaded light and you can see the transformation in just a few days. Others you need to add chemicals to the water.

Any way at some point you need to transfer the cuttings to something aproximating soil, this can be very hit or miss unless you use some chemicals to assist the plant.

There are several mixes of such chemicals and they have trade names etc. Anyway the lady of the house being a horticulturalist needed more than a little of these chemicals. So after looking up trade suppliers off she went to get the chemicals.

After looking around she could not see what she was looking for and she went upto the counter which had a croud of serious looking Aussie types. Horticulture being a mans hobby/trade those “of a rum drinking male redneck variety”[1] you refered to abounded. Thus feeling both new and slightly intimidated she spoke both clearly and perhaps to loudly when asking if they had “Any 10lb bags of Johnson’s rooting powder?”,

Apparently they let her down good naturedly but she said she did still feel her ears go red just thinking about it several years later.

Apparently there is a problem for young australians coming to the UK to study and such like, if they ask for sticky tape by trade name apparently Australian’s don’t call it “Sellotape”,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellotape

Apparently untill fairly recently it was a 3M brand under their “DUrability, Reliability, and EXcellence” range,

https://www.wordnik.com/words/Durex

Perhaps I should note that 3M is a US Corporation, so your original claim of “ridiculous US manipulations of good language” still stands 😉

[1] Though she said “beer” not “rum” in her description.