Soundly and now on Night's Words with Cal Richards. Yes here he is the great man Kel Richards. Of course, lyrics and words is what you're about. And of course we were just talking about this is I think he said it was his favorite song, Yes he did.
There was an interview clip I saw as part of one of the obituaries, and the interviewer said, what's your favorite beach boy song? And he said, California Girls.
Yeah, I think we have a winner yet. Trish, Hello, Trish Hello, what was it?
It's the way they.
Kids, It's the way they kiss, they keep their boyfriends warm at night. Trish. You hang on there because you have got yourself the fantastic price my friends at Miselle one hundred percent, he owned, often more affordable than foreign substitutes. Whatever's on the menu at your place. Remember flavor starts with Miselle quality. You can taste get the John Stanley mister McGoo mug as well. And I think we might just just a little bit of this though, because it's a beautifully cray song.
Yes please.
Mike Love sings the first part and then Brian comes in with the chorus.
Here it is well these girls are here by really those Stars be Aware and the Sun Girls with the We they knocked me out when I'm where spotters filling make you feel off, and the nother Girls.
With the Way is thinking the same. What a good song, Just a magnificent song.
It is a great song. I mean, I speak for the baby boomers, but that was when songs were really fabulous in the sixties. We had people like Brian Wilson working, and we had Paul Simon, and we had Lennon and McCartney. It was a great era for those songs.
Yeah. Well, I think he's up there with mates, so I think it's going to last anyway. That's just my view. One three one eight seven three is the number words and language Now. Kell's website is oswordsoz words dot com dot au. You can go to that website. It's got fantastic links to Kell's books, all of the wonderful publications he often references here. Plus you can subscribe to his
daily newsletter as well. And if you've got a question for Kell, you can do it on the line one three one eight seven three and talk with him directly, or you can get on the text line zero for six zero eight seven three eight seven three so one mystery unregistered entry from the Eastern Suburbs is one one hundred million dollar powerball jackpot tonight in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.
Right, Okay, So.
Look, you're not you don't buy lottery tickets to you.
I know I can tell no, no, no no. If I had, that would have been the one I've made.
But what I'm saying, so if you if you you're going to a newsagent whatever, and you can buy a ticket and it's not registered, you put it in your wallet, and if you're not registered as a player or doing it online, that ticket is sitting somewhere and it's worth one hundred million dollars.
So you've got to be very very careful of that physical thing.
Yes, it's always intrigued me that if because I used to buy the tickets just like that and put them in the wallet and check them later on. And I've always wondered if you had a win like that, you'd probably carefully put it in tissue paper, put it inside a book and then carefully go to the car, drive it about thirty k's an hour to wherever you've got to take.
It, wouldn't you, Well, you'd certainly make sure you didn't put it in the jacket going to the dry cleaners.
Well exactly now seven three. I've got any questions for kel at all. But your word of the week, it's often more than one word, and it is this week.
Yes, fifth column. So if you've got a group of people, maybe a secret group of people inside an organization, so while you're attacking it from the outside, there white adding it away, it's called having a fifth column. It's quite a common expression these days. And I wondered why five I mean, why fifth column? I discovered it comes from
the Spanish Civil War. One of General Franco's generals, General Emil Mohler, had Madrid surrounded by four columns of infantry in nineteen thirty six, and he boasted he had a fifth column of citizens inside the city who would rise up and support him when he attacks, hence the expression fifth column. So I was puzzled.
Now I found out, you've found out. Now we had a really interesting one last week, which we put into the mixers. Often comes through with potentially one of those made up expressions in a specific family. You've looked into this one, have you yes?
For crying down the sink. Someone said her mother used to say for crying down the sink, and I hadn't heard it before, so I've had to do some digging. It turns out it is yet another of those softened blasphemies. You know how often we come across these things. The first half of the twentieth century was very sensitive to this sort of thing. This comes from early in the twentieth century. Now, I'll tell you what the blasphemy is, which I think is quite offensive. So I'm saying it just to.
Explain to you.
Yes, I'm going to say the words even though they're offensive. The words are for Christ's sake, and to soften that, they made it for crying down the sink. Really, Okay, that's where it came from.
Yeah, because a lot of people say for Christ's sake, but a lot of people do find the defensive. So that's for crying down the sink is a variation of.
It's wanting to say that without saying.
It right, because we can actually go through a few of those, and part of it, though, it does mean you've then got a reference what they actually are. Yes, yes, right, So with any of those, you've got to try and work out whether there's some terrible blasphony that matches it, and maybe that's the clue. Yep.
And as you and I have discussed quite often on this program, there was a period where people were really sensitive to that, and so it happened a lot, quite a lot of familiar expressions started that way, and then we forgot that's where they came from. They simply became familiar daily idioms.
Fascinating, all right, So for crying down the sink, wonderful, right, very good, And I hope our listener who brought that up last week, we did say we'd look into it. Yes, that is terrific.
So if you're listening, we promised. We've kept our promise.
Now in terms of your mouth gob, you're talking about someone sent it here, you know, I yeah, shut your gob. Your mouth is a gob.
My memory is this is quite old. This goes back a long way. I'm not sure exactly how many years. I think it goes back to like thirteen fourteen hundred's a long way of fifteen hundred something like that. It originally accord into the Oxford database. It goes back to Scottish Gaelic and in Irish. It started off meaning either the mouth or the beak of a bird.
Wow.
And it's simply the Gaelic word for mouth. So it turned up in Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic, and particularly from Scottish Gaelic, it came south of the border and became part of the English language.
Yeah. Now I'm going to ask you. You said thirteen hundred and fourteen hundred. Yes, So you go back and have a look at the original books where this stuff's written, where it originally comes from. You see where it comes from. Yes, Now do those books give you an idea of how they are pronounced to what the Because this is why I've always been curious about about what accents would have been used, what those people would have sounded like when they were using the language.
It's a very good question. Before the days of sound recording, so that's before the eighteen nineties, we can't say for certain what people sounded like, but there are a number of clues that just written language will give us. For example, if you look at poetry, if one thing rhymes with another, then it's clear that that gives you a guide to how the pronunciation was. And people sometimes would write about
or report on the way people sounded. When there were some English people who came out to Australia in the first half around the middle of the eighteen hundreds, and they commented on what they heard as the Australian accent. The interesting thing is what they said was it's the purest form of English on earth, and the reason was it had no elements of English regional dialect in it. They had all been flattened out because people had come from every part of England, all the dialects had come
here and to be understood to each other. People consciously very early in the piece started flattening them, and with their children that process went on further, so the dialects got flattened out. And in fact, my own guess is probably if you talked to an Australian in the eighteen forties eighteen fifties, they would have sounded very much the way you and I sound now.
So I always had this intrigue, and I talk about if we get a Dolori back to the future and go back somewhere, and you could go back and go back to night in eighty until John Lennon to Duck and we'd still had him. Stuff like that but I'd love I reckon the joy of going all the way back and listening to what people were talking about in those years. You'll rise at light up. You'd love it.
Yes, we've only got these clues, as I say, but when you're going back to certain periods, there are a lot of clues. So there's a Welsh born linguist, a Manday David Crystal. Professor David Crystal is a very very clever man. And in Shakespeare's day, if you'd listen to them speaking English, it would have sounded a bit german So the prop and he actually taught the Shakespearean company that plays in the Globe Theater in London how to do one of Shakespeare's plays in his pronunciation, and they
did a whole play. Now, I am told by the reviewers he went to see it. I wasn't there. I didn't say it. I have been there to see plays, but not that one that when you started hearing it it sounded really odd. But after you've been listening for about ten minutes it started to make sense to you. But it did sound more Germanic than modern English does.
Wow. Very interesting really.
So they can work out a lot about the sounds from the past.
People online will get to your calls, texts, emails with kel Richards. It's our word clinic here at twenty three minutes past ten. It has been a busy night and we are keeping across all the breaking news happening around the world. We have been talking camping and off roading. Our sponsor ozof Road. One thing that we did learn about then there are one hundred percent Australian built, tested
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Western Sydney. They are at Port mcquarie on the New South past Mid North Coast and now at Kippering in Queensland. So you've got one near you. Most of you call one three hundred and seven six zero one three run all that website oz ozoff road dot com dot au. Look, the news coming through from this dreadful plane crash in India are Madabad. This is a big city in India and this Air India plane it's a seven eight to seven Dreamliner, so it's a very it's a big plane.
It's used right around the world and it was heading to Gatwick in the UK. Now they are saying that all the people on board have died. Now, just after this happened, we described what we saw on the people have taken images. The plane was up in the air for about eight minutes. It took off, didn't get very high and you could see it was struggling to get any height. And as you look at it. You can only imagine the pilots struggling to try and get the
nose up. It kept going down and down. They didn't show the No one shown the images of the actual crash, but you then see this massive plume of smoke, and the conclusion I think when you pull that together, would be it would be very, very difficult for anyone to have survived that. They're also talking though, of what they're describing of some sort of either medical hostel or college where there were medical staff, doctors that may have been
living there. Whether they were in there, they're trying to work it out. It's a disaster, but they are saying at this stage that they haven't found any survivors, whether they're got people on the ground they're trying to There are people who are missing from that area where the doctors were as well. It's a dreadful, dreadful tragedy. And there are one hundred and sixty nine Indian citizens. Is talking about more than fifty British citizens that was going
to Gatwick airports and people from Portugal Canada. So we'll let you know what's happening there. But that's the latest. They are now saying no survivors.
It's pretty sad, it's pretty awful, and no surprise, I.
Think seven three is our number. Let's just get to a couple of callers here. We're talking words and language with Kel Richards. Robin's with us. Hello, Robin, Yes.
I can John and Kel. I don't know if you've seen this man on TV. He polls a sign up with Jesus and is the Way the Truth and alife and down the opera house and the police come along and everything, and they're laying down the law to him that he's done allowed to do it. And he said, now I'm going to stand on my dig.
Yeah, so he's not going to move. I'm standing here, you're not going to move me. And and the term he years was I'm going to stand on my dig? Is that right?
Yeah?
Yeah, all right? And they couldn't understand that they could stand on what?
Yeah? I mean, I you know what I think. I think he was using his own abbreviation of stand on my dignity. That's my guess.
I understand what that means. If you said that to.
Me, I'm going to stand on my dig In Australia, dig I don't think it actually applies to a piece of land. Maybe you did in the gold Fields during the gold Rushes. But my best guess is I think he was actually saying I've seen the clip you're talking about, I know what you're talking about, and I'm pretty sure he's saying, I'm going to stand on my dignity. That's what he means, and that's his own abbreviation of that.
I think I'll say that you knew exactly what he was saying that. Yeah, thank you, Robin. That's an interesting one.
That's a good one.
Make a note of that, Kelch You never know, they could be good. Follow up with those ones now, George.
Hello, George Today, John gaikl tragic news there in India,
very sad. But he's a topical one, John. I know you keep on top of all the international sporting news, and you know that Australian manager Ange Costa Coogo has been sacked by Tottenham Hotspar in the UK and the UK press have so the two years that Andrew's been in charge of Tottenham, they've been having a field day with the way he expresses himself and Ange uses the word mate more than your average Australian does these days, and they've been focusing on that endlessly, the fact that
he uses the word mate mate all the time, and I don't know both of you have dealt with this over the years. It's a pretty obvious one. But I was wondering whether the word mate in the Australian vernacular has come from the naval term, you know, the naval ranking of first mate, second mate, boss mate. Is that where it comes from.
No, I don't think. So it goes back to the old idea that mate means a friend, a companion, which is which is older than the navy that's recorded from thirteen eighty, So back in thirteen eight eighty, mate was being used to mean a companion and a friend. So it's that's the oldest version of meaning of the word, and it's had that meaning in the English language for
a long time for a range of historical reasons. That word, which is definitely English, I mean, it's very old English, and we didn't invent it, was used here a lot, and certainly by the end of the eighteen hundreds it was being used by Henry Henry Lawson and we've we've appropriated it. And part of the reason for that is because this was seen as being a hostile environment. So you didn't go anywhere on your own because it was dangerous. You didn't do a job on your own because it
was dangerous. You needed a mate, right that. And diggers on the goldfields needed a mate. So in the bush on the gold fields you needed a mate, You needed a friend, a companion. That was the word we adopted, and it's become our word, and we had we we we've found lots of ways to use it. For example, John and I keep saying, when you forget someone's name, it's really easy to say mate, mate, it's so good to see you again.
Yes, Georgie, you think we think it's it's We kind of think it's an Australian word, don't we.
We do, But but the British actually use it a lot.
Mate.
They don't actually emphasize it like we do. We go may we stretch it out?
Well, yeah, there's there was a period probably in the eighties and nineties when Labor Party factionalism and the right wing of the Labor Party. Remember there's a book called Mates Yes, and that was you'd say may. It was like a that was almost like they send themselves up.
So there are two things. One is the pronunciation, and yes, our pronunciation is just The other thing is frequency what a lot. What linguists do when they're doing research, they research the frequency of the word, how often in ten thousand words this one turns up and or one hundred thousand words or whatever. I would think the frequency in
Australia would be much higher. So if the frequency in Britain would say three hundred per per one hundred thousand words in Australia would be double that, I would think that would be. I haven't seen the frequency studies. It's just me guessing based on what I know about the way the English speak and the way we speak.
Very interesting, all right, thank you, George. Very good. That one kritz is softened blasphemy.
John says it is, and yes, if you'll go back.
In time, he tell last year Ferdinand not to drive to the hospital in Sarajevo in nineteen fourteen. Then Gothic comes from German that.
Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. The word Gothic refers originally to the Goths, and the Goths were a savage people who raided from the north, so that in fact, the Goths were Germanic people, and Gothic has been applied to lots of things. Why the word has spread so widely, I'm not sure. But you know there's a style of architecture which is Gothic.
Okay, now one of our people here and I think he's not being smart. There's a few people try to be smart on the text line not sorry to hear about you. Drag us tonight always wanted to wine. Rugby and rugby league they call a try a try.
It started out because by getting the ball over the line that allowed you to kick for goal. It didn't actually in the very early days of rugby played at the school rugby before it became a big game, the rule was you got the ball over the line that gave you the right to kick for goal. So what you were trying, what you were doing is you were you were going to try to kick for goal. You've won a try. You've won the right to kick for goal.
You've won a try try. That's right.
So you've won a try, which is the right to try and kick a goal.
And the irony of all that, if we talk about different codes, is that if a try, you've got to get the ball on the ground, yes, over the line, that's right. In American football, You've just got to break that line above the line. So if you break that line.
So they don't have to touch the ground.
And it's called a touchdown.
Yes, yes, it's incredible.
Anyway, now let me go here we go? Oh, Cole says, what's happened to the word? Who? Even supposedly educated people on the media now use that. So I think he's saying, I'm trying to think of the context here.
If you talk about all the people that were at the event as an incorrect and look, you're absolutely right. That applies to things. Who applies to people? It's a very simple rule. But you have to remember that for forty years, our education system failed to teach grammar to stick. I'm told they've gone back to teaching, and I certainly hope that's the case, but for forty years they did not. So there's a whole generation who were failed by the
education system. Someone deserves to be punished for this. It's a really terrible thing they did. So when you're hearing people use that when referring to people rather than things, what you are hearing is ignorance, sheer ignorance.
Right, he's busting a puffoo valve here is I Well, I love thee. Is that the puff foo valve? Is that the old expression.
Puffl valve yes, a pooful valve yes.
Expression that one like that one. Well, let's take a break, come back in the moment, because look, you're going to be away for a couple of weeks. Kel you're getting, you're getting.
I'm happy to tell people, Yes, I'm having a total knee replacement. So my right knee is not going to be a knee anymore. It's going to be a little machine. And you've prepared, You've been preparing for weeks.
You've told me. There's getting yourself ready, preparing, getting yourself you know, doing exercises, getting the muscles around it ready.
Going to physiotherapy and doing a lot of work because you've got to and the muscles around where the surgery is. And they'll take out my decrepit ney that doesn't work properly anymore and causes a lot of pain, and they will put in something made of titanium. So when I come back next, I will be titanium.
Man, titanium man, and I expect.
My own Marvel comic.
Before the way. If you, of course, in some cases you might be this. You might literally be the six million dollar man depend because these things do cost oh yeah, but anyway, that's something ahead of us. And that's why you won't be here for the next couple of weeks, because you'll be recovering from your surgery. Indeed, so if you've got a question for Kel, you've got about twenty two minutes left and you'll or you'll have to wad another three weeks. Yes, seven three is the number now,
twenty two minutes to eleven, sixteen to eleven. We're talking words in language here with mister Kel Richards. Don't forget his website oswords dot com dot au. Some of the questions that have come in these are emails. And I remember we used to have Nevill Ran would say, let me just say this Barrier. Farrell would often say, look, the reality is so they'd say something yes, yeah, while they were getting themselves together in terms of their thoughts.
So this is one that never sent in. I would say, while they get what they're going to say, and he says, Penny Wong.
Says a lot, and I understand his irritation. It is, as you said, a padding phrase, so that they're just throwing out words while their brain works on what's coming next. And his real irritation is, why would you say I would say, just say it, don't say I would say this is a good idea. Just say this is a good idea. That's why it's irritating himself. All the padded padding phrases around. He's right, it is one of the
most irritating. And if you ever come across a politician who doesn't use padding phrases, I think it makes them very effective. Then I was thinking about the speech of just into namper Juper Price. One of the things that makes her so effective is what they call a retail politician is she doesn't use a lot of those padding phrases. Interesting, she just gets into it.
Because I thought about see I think or mister rand blah blah blah, he got, well, let me just say this, that's right. And Barry Farrell used to say, look, the reality is at the end of the day, and that gives you about three seconds to formulate what you are going to say, because.
Some politicians will even say things like, look, that's a good question, and that is a padding phrase. And Joe Bio Competition used to say, don't you worry about that, don't you worry about that? And it was basically again padding until he got to where he wanted to talk about.
We mentioned earlier about Answpasta Cogla getting the sack. I think we have done this before, but the termolology of someone getting the.
Sack goes back to the days when workers tradesmen would take their tools to work in a bag in a sack, and they would leave them there at the factory or the job worksite, whatever, And if the tradesman got the sack, he picked up his sack of tools and took it. Basically, the boss walked over and said, there you are, there's your tools, off you go. He gave him the sack. My grandmother used to say with my grandfather Fred, because he was a very argumentative man, and he was a tradesman.
He cast in cast iron. He used to make the sand moles for cast iron. He was very good at it apparently, but he lost a lot of jobs because he was so argumentative and difficulty. She said, I used to dread it when your grandfather walked down the street with his tools, because I knew he'd got the sack.
He got the sack very good one of my friends. One of my friends exclude, and this person's raising the term disclude as wanting to talk to someone as opposed to exclude. What's his The well, I haven't heard it before.
It's new on me. I went to the Oxford Dictionary database and disclude is there. It's a very old word, comes from a Latin source word, and it means basically to separate. So if you're discluding this from that, this is discluded from our collection. It means to set apart, to separate.
Exclude my is putting something me.
It exclude means to remove and it suggests removing completely X out of the place. But if you're keeping things but separating them, it is disclude. But it is such an unfamiliar word. If you use it, no one we'll understand what you're saying.
Paul asked about time immemorial, time immemorial.
Time immemorial is actually interesting. The phrase had to be coined at some point, and it turns out time immemorial refers to a particular time in English history. It refused to it refers we know to very distant time, that sort of thing that no one has any knowledge or memory of. But it came into custom in the English language in the Statute of Westminster of twelve seventy five. And in that statute it gives a date anything before the sixth of June eleven eighty nine, which was the
accession of Richard the First. There is no legal memory of what common law was before that date.
Okay, all right, look abdall is on the line of the question for you on the on the open lane.
Hello, Abdol, Yeah, Hi, I's got a question regarding you a dollar sign. So it's like a for example, he's saying ten dollars.
So that dollar sign is like s of the dollar sign?
Yep, yeah, the dollar side. So why is not the key like a two?
Yeah?
Time?
Can I tell you that I did actually look this up and research it about twenty five years ago, and I haven't written about it for twenty five years, and I can't remember. So when I come back first night, back three weeks from tonight, will I will give you the history of the dollar sign.
We'll just let's take a break, because with that line through the is was that one stage we did one? In America?
Did America? America always started off doing two, but quite often, particularly in advertising, reduced it to one. So they have either one or two.
They either one or two, but we've always had the two. All right, come back in a moment. Ten minutes to eleven. We're talking words in language with Kel Richards. At seven minutes to eleven, just a few minutes left. Reminded to you, Kel Richards won't be with us for a couple of weeks. But Kel, what have you got?
I had a quick look through what I've got in my computer. There are about eight different theories as to where the dollar sign came from. The one that is most preferred by most experts. It started out as a Spanish peso, so the S was for Spanish and the line through it was originally a P for peso. The Americans had a thing called the Coinage Act, and the coiny jack said the value of a Spanish milled dollar
will be the value of our currency. So it was a Spanish peso which the value of the American currency was set on back in the seventeen hundreds.
Now it's most interesting because I do remember one little bit of trivia I remember from the early nineteen sixties was that the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies he wanted to call when we went when we went, decimal changed from the pound. He wanted to call the dollar the royal. Right now, I've always remembered that because it was obviously didn't fly, and they went with dollar. But was it going to be what was the symbol for the royal going to be?
Well, they never got around to coming up a crown or something or well, who knows, but they never got around to that. And once don'tber calling it an ostral a U S t ra l. But everyone pointed out that when you put the indefinite article in front of it, it becomes a nostril, which I've got a good name
for a currency, So they dropped that one. At the time, there was a quite famous an answer working at the ABC named Martin Royal, and he was he was presenting a program and they mentioned the fact that there was this push to call the currency a royal, and he said, that's very kind of them. Why couldn't they have called it a dibble?
Dibble, that's right, Martin Royal, James Dibble, very very good. Look. Someone sent me this meg a packet of.
Poo tickets, pack a packa pow ticket.
Packa poo tickets talking about when everything's gone to custoards.
An old expression, a pack of Pooh ticket is used to describe anything which is really untidy, like scribbled writing. I can remember my teacher standing over my desk and saying, Richard's that book looks like a packa Pooh ticket. And the reason is it comes from a Chinese gambling game. And in this Chinese gambling game there were slips of paper with Chinese characters on them, and of course Australians couldn't read the Chinese characters. They just looked like scribble.
So that's what a packapoo tick could look like. And if your place was really untidy and messy and scribbly, then there was like a packupoo ticket, all right? Well, and can I just say the original Cantonese name for a packapoo ticket means something like white dove choice. And they had a trained no white pigeon choice. They had a trained white pigeon which would pick a number out of a bowl to find the winner.
Isn't that good? All right? So look, we learned something here every night tonight. We learned quite a few things. Oswords, that's oz words, dot com, dot a USY website. You can keep in touch with the Kel via his website. Next week we'll be doing the CEO sleep out from outdoors. You won't be here Kell because you're getting your knee done. You'll be away for a couple of weeks yep.
But I'll still have my laptop on my lap when I'm laid up, so you can still get in touch.
With me through the website. We'll see you, then thank you, then bye.