Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

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  • Eirenist wrote: »
    As I said earlier, I think some of these collective nouns are made up, not unlike some of the Cockney rhyming slang one sometimes hears used in banter. 'Brahms and Liszt' springs to mind.
    That's one I've never encountered. Please explain?

  • Brahms and Liszt - pissed - so drunk

    a bit like Ruby Murray and some other Cockney-isms.
  • Pissed.
  • Nemesis is the purported companion star to the sun.

    I've heard that politicians and teenagers may come in "annoyances", though the former might be a crow-like "murder" oft times
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I thought any collective of anything in Australia was a mob.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    Certainly a mob of sheep, I'm told.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Saw a film about an aboriginal policeman in which one of the elders in the town he was doing a sort of Bad Day at Black Rock episode told him that the local group was his mob. I wouldn't expect a white person would get away with that, though.
  • On 'bunch', I remember seeing the Pythons talking about flying over the Great Lakes with genius animator, Terry Gilliam who glanced out of the aeroplane window and exclaimed, 'There's a bunch of water down there ...'

    On Cockney rhyming slang, one of my scatalogical favourites is 'Richards' as in 'Richard the Thirds'.

    I don't think I've ever heard it in real life though. Like much Cockney rhyming slang come to think of it ...
  • Nemesis is the purported companion star to the sun.

    Companion star to the sun? How have I missed this?
  • Alleged. Purported. Theoretical. Wouldn't-it-be-cool-if. Unlikely (sob).
  • Penny S wrote: »
    Saw a film about an aboriginal policeman in which one of the elders in the town he was doing a sort of Bad Day at Black Rock episode told him that the local group was his mob. I wouldn't expect a white person would get away with that, though.

    One of the iconic satirical novels from Australia is called They're a Weird Mob. Also filmed, it deals with an Italian migrant trying to cope with the Australian idiom.
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    A murder of crows I'd use, but I've never seen one - crows are usually solitary.
    I’ve frequently seen murders of crows, including a few times in my front yard. I have to admit, when there are a bunch of them (see what I did there?), they do look rather ominous.

    Apparently a group of unicorns is called a blessing. Which is a jolly useful thing to know!
    I would think it should be a miracle of unicorns, or a hallucination. Though maybe a vision of unicorns sounds a little more poetic.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    I wonder where the "troop" came from. Never heard it used, always a mob.
  • Place I used to work, about 25 miles north of here, at evening twilight, hundreds of crows swerve and swoop and land and take off again like starlings, cawing all the while. Very Hitchcock.
  • Troop of monkeys is common in our literature, it would come to mind - possibly Kipling? Barbar the Elephant, Gerald Durrell or other books of my childhood. I haven't heard it for kangaroos.

    @Nick Tamen we have a number of corvids here, commonly jackdaws and rooks are gregarious, crows are usually solitary. There's an old saw: if you see one rook it's almost certainly a crow, a number of crows they are rooks. Ravens, although found in colonies, are unlikely locally other than in the Tower of London. Choughs and Hooded Crows are found in Wales and Cornwall or Scotland, I'd see a gang of hoodies as a murder, with a rhotic r, rolled with relish. (One of the folk groups I like has a Scots singer and love their murder ballads.)

    Magpies are different again with a rhyme about numbers. This time of year, I see families of magpies: the local breeding pair raised four chicks last year. It's currently a bit quieter as they are only dealing with two noisy youngsters.

    Since the rookery disappeared a few years ago, jackdaws have been congregating in big groups and nest in all the nearby chimneys and some trees, but they don't feel as sinister as rooks or crows. I think it's the friendly way they communicate.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I like rookeries. When I stayed with my grandparents, there was one at the foot of the garden, and the sound in the evening was soothing. I think rooks tend to go for grain rather than carrion - might be wrong - so less sinister.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    mousethief wrote: »
    Place I used to work, about 25 miles north of here, at evening twilight, hundreds of crows swerve and swoop and land and take off again like starlings, cawing all the while. Very Hitchcock.

    In my blurry-eyed, pre-caffeine morning state, I read that as 'cows'.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Cows do behave like that from time to time, a protest against milking conditions.
  • A point about ravens, they used to be scarce in most of England, but began to spread. For example, there is a pair nesting on the white cliffs of Dover. Also breeding in Suffolk for the first time since 1880.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Cavalry are in troops. One can talk about a troop of horse (sic) but they have people sitting on them.

    On corvids, Ravens are more widespread in the UK than they used to be but they do not nest in colonies. They have quite large territories which limits their numbers. A pair build a large nest on a cliff, in the top of a high tree or even on pylons. They've a particular liking for cedar trees. There's a Raven's nest a few miles from here in one which is now about 4' across. They're commoner on the west side of the country than the east.

    On mainland Britain, Hoodies are mostly north and west of the Great Glen. The crows in Wales are black ones, as they are in England and southern Scotland. The crows in Ireland and on the Isle of Man are usually Hoodies. Hoodies and Carrion Crows are different versions of the same species and hybridise.

    Rooks are good to have around. They don't eat grain so much as weevils, sheep parasites etc. Their caws have a slightly different timbre from crows.

    All the regular British corvids are fairly noisy. Rookeries are noisy. So are Jackdaws and Ravens have a particular distinctive sound, but I reckon Magpies are the noisiest.

    Bill Oddie has a maxim that if a non-birdwatcher tells you they've seen a mystery bird and asks you what it might be, once they describe it, it's almost always a Jay.

  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    Saw a film about an aboriginal policeman in which one of the elders in the town he was doing a sort of Bad Day at Black Rock episode told him that the local group was his mob. I wouldn't expect a white person would get away with that, though.

    'Mob' is indeed very common for Indigenous people to refer to themselves. My guess is it wouldn't be particularly remarkable or offensive for a white person to use 'your mob' when talking to an Indigenous person... though that's a guess and might be context dependent.
  • @Nick Tamen we have a number of corvids here, commonly jackdaws and rooks are gregarious, crows are usually solitary. There's an old saw: if you see one rook it's almost certainly a crow, a number of crows they are rooks. Ravens, although found in colonies, are unlikely locally other than in the Tower of London. Choughs and Hooded Crows are found in Wales and Cornwall or Scotland, I'd see a gang of hoodies as a murder, with a rhotic r, rolled with relish. (One of the folk groups I like has a Scots singer and love their murder ballads.)
    The Wiki tells me that American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are similar to yet distinct species from the carrion crow (Corvus corone) and the hooded crow (Corvus cornix) of Europe. Audubon says that "[American] crows are highly sociable and will hang out in murders and communal roosts." (The website All About Birds says that "American Crows congregate in large numbers in winter to sleep in communal roosts. These roosts can be of a few hundred up to two million crows," and that they "maintain[] a territory year round in which the entire extended family lives and forages together. But during much of the year, individual crows leave the home territory to join large flocks at dumps and agricultural fields.")

    Sorry for getting carried away. My son has always been fascinated with corvids, crows in particular, and so I've picked up lots of usually useless information over the years.

  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    I just feel like quoting this facebook meme I've seen:

    "It's Covid 19, not Corvid 19. Nineteen crows are not coming to kill you.
    And if they are, its a murder."
  • NicoleMR wrote: »
    I just feel like quoting this facebook meme I've seen:

    "It's Covid 19, not Corvid 19. Nineteen crows are not coming to kill you.
    And if they are, its a murder."

    I love that!
    :lol:
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    @Nick Tamen we have a number of corvids here, commonly jackdaws and rooks are gregarious, crows are usually solitary. There's an old saw: if you see one rook it's almost certainly a crow, a number of crows they are rooks. Ravens, although found in colonies, are unlikely locally other than in the Tower of London. Choughs and Hooded Crows are found in Wales and Cornwall or Scotland, I'd see a gang of hoodies as a murder, with a rhotic r, rolled with relish. (One of the folk groups I like has a Scots singer and love their murder ballads.)
    The Wiki tells me that American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are similar to yet distinct species from the carrion crow (Corvus corone) and the hooded crow (Corvus cornix) of Europe. Audubon says that "[American] crows are highly sociable and will hang out in murders and communal roosts." (The website All About Birds says that "American Crows congregate in large numbers in winter to sleep in communal roosts. These roosts can be of a few hundred up to two million crows," and that they "maintain[] a territory year round in which the entire extended family lives and forages together. But during much of the year, individual crows leave the home territory to join large flocks at dumps and agricultural fields.")

    Sorry for getting carried away. My son has always been fascinated with corvids, crows in particular, and so I've picked up lots of usually useless information over the years.

    In Portland, OR there is a unique phenomena during the fall and winter where about an hour before sunset, all the crows in the city will come together to roost in downtown Portland. It is estimated up to 15,000 birds come together to roost. Story here r

    When I was in my freshman year of college, we all gathered to watch Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The next morning, going to class the females were confronted with a large colony of seagulls across the street from their dorm on our football field. Some of them got freaked out.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Cows do behave like that from time to time, a protest against milking conditions.

    Yep. And it's worse when they shit from on high.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Cows do behave like that from time to time, a protest against milking conditions.

    Yep. And it's worse when they shit from on high.

    Birdie birdie in the sky
    Dropped a turdy in my eye
    I'm a big boy, I don't cry
    Sure am glad that cows don't fly.
  • They don't so much fly as plummet.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    One jumped over the moon.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    I used to read that ravens were not found east of a line from the Isle of Wight to either the Wash or the Humber. Nice to hear of some at Dover - wish they'd gone there when I lived there!
    Also nice mythologically. Malory possibly plagiarised the Mabinogion when he told of Gawaine's head being placed in the castle at Dover as a magical defence of the realm - this head being on display when he visited the place*. Since there is a connection between Bran whose head was similarly placed at the Tower of London, and the Tower's ravens, to have ravens close by Gawaine would be interesting!
    I once saw a mob of jays in the chalk pit by the Bluewater mall, gathered around the body of one which had obviously fallen foul of the traffic. They were looking bothered, not as if they were considering it as carrion.
    *I used to fantasise of having a visitor to Dover waving Malory about and demanding to see Gawaine's head - not in evidence recently. This imaginary visitor was always, in my mind, for some reason, American.
  • There are ravens in the South Downs - I saw some a few years ago when walking near Chanctonbury Ring.
  • I often see bunches of crows at our local bird reserve, probably 100. But in rural areas the solitary corvid = crow formula tends to work.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    Cows do behave like that from time to time, a protest against milking conditions.

    I now have in my head a fabulous poem (turned into a song by American composer Samuel Barber) called "A Green Lowland of Pianos".

    Text here: https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/4748
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    This raven information is useful.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Orfeo thanks, a new discovery for us and we liked it.
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    A Shadow Above by Joe Shute is a good book about ravens. It explores some of the mythology and history, and he visits nests and meets a lady who keeps them.
  • They don't so much fly as plummet.

    Cows can be catapulted...
    :wink:

  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    A murder of crows I'd use, but I've never seen one - crows are usually solitary.
    David used to reckon that the way to tell the difference between rooks and crows was that if there were several, they were rooks, and if there was only one it was a crow.
  • Wrong.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    A murder of crows I'd use, but I've never seen one - crows are usually solitary.
    David used to reckon that the way to tell the difference between rooks and crows was that if there were several, they were rooks, and if there was only one it was a crow.

    Apparently rooks are European and Asian, not in the Americas. All are in the same family of birds: https://www.animalwised.com/differences-between-crows-ravens-and-rooks-1196.html
  • Rooks if you see them properly, have grey beaks and are smaller than crows, which are completely black, until you get into hoodie country.
  • What is "hoodie country"?
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    Crows come in "murders" in SoCal. We sometimes get groups of a dozen or more to cool off in our sprinklers. And they work in concert to protect their territories. You should see them roughing up a red tailed hawk!
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    What is "hoodie country"?

    Thanks for asking. I don't know either, but I was afraid to ask.
  • Enoch wrote: »

    On mainland Britain, Hoodies are mostly north and west of the Great Glen. The crows in Wales are black ones, as they are in England and southern Scotland. The crows in Ireland and on the Isle of Man are usually Hoodies. Hoodies and Carrion Crows are different versions of the same species and hybridise

    Hoodies - Hooded crow (wikipedia)
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Having not seen any crows in years, there were two on the lawn this evening.
  • Wet Kipper wrote: »
    Enoch wrote: »

    On mainland Britain, Hoodies are mostly north and west of the Great Glen. The crows in Wales are black ones, as they are in England and southern Scotland. The crows in Ireland and on the Isle of Man are usually Hoodies. Hoodies and Carrion Crows are different versions of the same species and hybridise

    Hoodies - Hooded crow (wikipedia)

    Not allowed in certain shopping centres.
  • Uncle on the crow tangent.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Lyda wrote: »
    Crows come in "murders" in SoCal. We sometimes get groups of a dozen or more to cool off in our sprinklers. And they work in concert to protect their territories. You should see them roughing up a red tailed hawk!
    Yebbut, @Lyda do people commonly refer to them as grouped in "murders" in ordinary speech in SoCal? That's the real question here. What would be the normal word a local person would use to describe them in a group?

  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    Nah. They are just a bunch of crows. Hawks would probably call them a murder, though. :wink:
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