In my local broadsheet this morning, I chanced upon an article about how the Melbourne Zoo has lucked well with one of the female elephants, Dokkoon (recently gifted from Thailand) becoming pregnant.
There was a lovely photo of Dokkoon (obviously before elephantine morning sickness has set in!), but the caption underneath the pic really took my breath away:
GoodonyaDave! Now that’s a story to tell all yer’ mates at the pub eh…not only do you conquer human women, you can seduce an elephant with your sexual prowess as well.
It doesn’t read that way to me. If it said “trumpets her approval at being two months pregnant BY Melbourne Zoo handler.” Break it down and it reads “trumpets to handler.”
Maybe it’s a slight linguistic/cultural difference, but when I read the story initially I burst into tears of laughter. On showing the article to my workmates, they too were impressed by the journalistic faux-pas.
Here, when you are pregnant it’s to your blokey partner. When Shazza gets up the duff, it’s to Wazza, not by Waz.
Oh well, stuff is always lost in translation…never mind!
I got the humor, but had to reparse it. It’s like the British use of ‘knocked her up’ means something completely different from the American use, usually resulting in Americans going “He what? :eek:”
It really is a classic example of the sloppy grammar being seen throughout the more-or-less English-speaking world. If one simply moves the prepositional phrase "to Melbourne Zoo handler Dave McKelson " to its correct place in front of the verb “trumpets”, the sentence makes sense and is easily understandable. The schlubs at the newspaper deserve to be laughed at. Send that thing in to whatever late night talk show does stupid newspaper mistakes on nationwide TV because all of Australia should laugh at these clowns.
One of the neat things about the internet is how much you can learn about the differences in language around the world. Because yeah, as an American I’ve never heard someone say they were pregnant “to” someone else… and would probably be confused about what they meant if I did hear it.
The local paper started off the article with picture with Ye Olde. It was a recreation of fur trader camps which were all French, not English. Duh! :smack:
Maybe, but I can’t think of any Brits who would find anything odd about saying “I’m stuffed” after a meal to mean they were full.
We do also use “stuffed” the way Americans use “screwed” - not in the sexual sense but in the “out of luck” sense: “The last train has left so I’m afraid you’re stuffed”, that sort of thing. But the context means it would never be taken the wrong way if you said it at the dinner table.
It’s not the sort of thing you’d say if having tea with the Queen, but it wouldn’t cause offence in normal situations.
My Aussie coworker found it amusing. She didn’t know about the “by” vs “to” thing either. So we both learned something about our respective language today.