At what age would someone who grew up speaking Afrikaans begin learning English while going to an Afrikaans-language school in South Africa during the time that Theron was in school? Be more specific than “at an early age.” How well would they speak English when they leave school?
7 0r 8 depending what half of the year they’re born in.
Pretty poorly, they’d have a thick Afrikaans accent and probably limited vocab, if school learning was all they had to go on.
If, however, they were also constantly exposed to English-language TV & movies, and lived in a bilingual city…
I was watching this on Netflix today on my computer, which somehow seemed to allow closer scrutiny of details (compared to watching on TV).
The opening scene has Waldo Lydecker being interviewed by Lt. McPherson while sitting in his bathtub, with a little desk and typewriter across the tub. Later in the scene he pushes away the desk, stands up (off camera) and asks McPherson to hand him his robe. While doing so, McPherson looks at him and gives a small snicker.
I always assumed that Waldo was supposed to be nude in the bath, and that McPherson was snickering either at his body or at his lack of modesty.
Today I noticed on two separate shots that Waldo was clearly wearing either shorts or a bathing suit in the bathtub. You can see the waistband. So now I have to wonder what McPherson was snickering at.
First guess, he was snickering at Lydecker’s over-abundance of modesty. Same joke, better told.
And hours later, you’re still wondering what she was looking at, a bit like later in the film when she and her date apparently stare up at something although there’s nothing there, and ages later pass by again and there are still people looking up to see what it was… 
I’m not familiar with the film, but I’d guess that’s a blooper. He was, in-story, naked but didn’t actually film while naked. The camera accidentally caught a glimpse of his costume. I guess that in 1944 they didn’t foresee people watching at home with freeze-frame capabilities.
IMDBlists it as a revealing mistake.
For Don McLean to have been around in the 1960’s and not know the Black Power Salute is impossible.
I don’t see where JSexton was suggesting McLean didn’t know what the salute was, just that he wasn’t referencing it in that line.
I must say, I don’t know why “hands clenched in fists of rage” wouldn’t be just that – a salute’s generally with only one hand, if nothing else.
Of course he knew what it was. I just don’t think he had it in mind when he wrote that verse, because nothing else in that verse seems to point to it, whereas it’s allvery consistent with Altamont.
OK, this isn’t about a creative work, unless a trademark is creative, and I guess the guys that come up with them think so, but here goes. For around the last five years I’ve been shopping at a little grocery store that caters to a significant Spanish speaking clientele. There’s a brand of beef they sell called SuKarne.
I don’t buy it often, because I get most of my beef from Costco, but for five years I’ve been seeing and occasionally purchasing that brand and until last week I never made the connection. SuKarne - Su carne. Your meat. What a maroon.
My entry, realized today, was going to be about the song “Free” by Sarah Bareilles, but in Googling to figure out the song’s full title, I discovered that it’s actually “Brave”, and the titular lyric is not “I want to see you be free” but “I want to see you be brave”. That is not the obvious thing I realized about it, because A) I didn’t realize it and B) it is not remotely obvious, as evidenced by the fact that the first Google suggestion for the lyric as I typed was “I want to see you be free,” and the word “free” fits the meaning and rhyme scheme.
Anyway.
As shown a thousand times in this thread, when you hear a song in passing, you tend to take your first interpretation of the lyrics and stick with it. The first time I heard it, I took the chorus of the song (ignoring the free/brave thing, which is irrelevant to the meaning) as:
Say what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly, I want to see you be free
…and I thought, well, I get what you’re getting at, but that’s kind of a weird way to say it. And then proceeded to not think about it again the next umpteen times I ran across the song, as you do.
Well, today as I was eating lunch by myself, the song came on, so I was forced to pay attention to it for its full duration…and so I thought, “Okay, WHAT THE SHIT. What’s with the ‘honestly’? Is she concerned that whoever she’s singing this to is going to think she’s lying about wanting them to be free? And ‘let the words fall out’ is such a bizarre clause to leave on its own. I get the point, but you’d either want a modifier on the front like ‘just let the words fall out’, or else an adverb on the back, like ‘let the words fall out naturally’ or…”
:smack:
Say what you want to say
And let the words fall out honestly
I want to see you be free
In my defense, four out of the five lyrics listings I looked at (because I didn’t quite believe the “brave” thing) had the line parsed the way I originally took it, because that’s what the song’s meter suggests. The latter was confirmed by the lyrics on the official video, though, and it’s pretty obvious once you see it.
If we can go brands, I just recently realized that Chips Ahoy are supposed to make you think of Ship Ahoy.
Understandable delay though, as really I don’t encounter Ships Ahoy! that often.
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I knew someone who was colorblind. He was blown away when someone pointed out to him that part of the B and the R in the Baskin-Robbins logo made the number 31.
I was just listening to “Midnight at the Oasis” on Internet radio. For the first time in more than 40 years, I caught the significance of lines like
You won’t need no camel, honey, when I take you for a ride!
Ew! :eek: :smack:
(I’m reminded of the joke in which the new commander of a Foreign Legion post struggles with his conscience before “mounting” his camel. When he asks his aide if all the men do this when they’re in the mood, the latter answers “Mais non, mon Colonel! Zey simply saddle zeir camels and ride into ze village on ze ozer side of ze sand dune!”)
I don’t believe this…
The same station just played a Reggae song whose chorus included (I swear to God!)
Seamen, seamen are we!
Again: EW! :eek: :smack:
(Okay, I have a dirty mind. So sue me! :mad: )
Would that be one hump or two?
I was born in 1955, but it wasn’t until I was in, oh, maybe my late 30s when it finally dawned on me why Paladin had that chess piece (a freakin’ KNIGHT) on his holster! **DUH! ** :smack:
… And about ten years earlier, I had suddenly realized why there were all those rooms at the top of the stairs in the Longbranch Saloon on Gunsmoke. 
One more:
I’m editing an article on carbon nanotubes. Apparently, the favored abbreviation is CNTs. :o