atw: Re: vagaries of Australian english
- From: Stuart Burnfield <sburnf@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 16:08:29 +0800
Allan Charlton said:
> It's because sports commentators teach us to do it. Let me invent an
> example:
Why invent pretentious, ridiculous sports commentary? Here's
Wally Foreman, calling the footy on ABC radio a few weeks ago:
"Coming through that pack, it looked as though XXX was a little retarded."
Some tennis commentators seem to see the players as disembodied parts
and attributes--the Sampras serve, the Connors backhand. The silliest
example of this I've heard was a lob that was described as going "over
the Lendl head".
Footy commentators are in on it too. There's a current fad in AFL for
saying, "ZZZ delivers by hand to AAA and AAA delivers by foot to BBB."
This means that ZZZ kicked the ball to AAA who then handballed to BBB.
Perhaps it's meant to help those of us who might otherwise guess
wrongly that the ball was delivered by some other unusual means such
as bicycle courier, or telekinesis.
Heard the other day: "YYY has lovely foot speed." Meaning, I expect,
that YYY could run fast.
Stuart
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