BBC english and maths quizes

[jack]

Go and see. The quizzes had surprisingly few bits we took issue with.

English: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4246472.stm

18/20 :( I am teh[1] bad speller. One was a complete spelling mistake because I'm bad.

The other was the hyphen question. OK, it should have been obvious, but I thought hyphen compound modifiers were only necessary when confusion would result. When *necessary* I even use n-dashes and m-dashes to denote levels of binding, but he'd hardly likely lost a long brother, had he?

Also, the simile question. It was obvious what they meant, but dictionary.com says "A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared". If "hands cold as ice" means literally below freezing at one atmosphere, does that count? Obviously "eyes cold as ice" would, but is "he was as tall as a lampost" a simile??

And the Jane's question. As someone who habitually and correctly says Jens' house, I thought their example was bad. If they'd said 'more likely to be correct' ok, but they said 'correct'. The same problem often applies to headlines -- sometimes scientists do do something amusing to a hononym; but these were ok as far as I can see.

Maths: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4263590.stm

See http://www.livejournal.com/users/ewx/313391.html for discussion of flaws, etc. Do use a calculator or google or at least paper if you want to. (I think google would be good at these. IT IS BECOMING ALIVE! :))

He said "20/20 or I'd have fallen on my sword" but I prefer 19 because one of their questions was wrong :) Not that I did.

[1] Irony.

Comments

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

The complete OED just defines simile as a "comparison of one thing with another, esp. as an ornament in poetry or rhetoric", and that's how I've always understood the term.

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

And I was always taught that as/like where good indicators of it being a simile

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

In English, yes, I think they are. But the definition of simile needs to apply to other languages too, which will represent comparisons in different ways. Old Irish, delightfully enough, has a special form of the adjective - the equative - which means "as (adjective) as". So there are descriptions of things being dubithir druimne daele "as black as a beetle's back", where dubithir is the equative form of the adjective dub! Middle Welsh has a few equatives too...

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

Modern Welsh still has equatives, such as cystal `as/so good'.

But I was thinking in terms of spotting similes in English for the purposes of tests like the BBC one rather than being cross-linguistic!

Old Irish, delightfully enough,

[grins] People do not usually use Old Irish and delightfully in the same sentence! For some reason they think it is scary and difficult not delightful!

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

[grins] People do not usually use Old Irish and delightfully in the same sentence! For some reason they think it is scary and difficult not delightful!

It was always my favourite medieval language as an undergraduate. (Most of my year thought I was mad then too.) The literature is fantastic too, despite (or perhaps because of) being largely incomprehensible. In fact, that reminds me of a charming Old Irish gloss on a biblical manuscript, containing a ridiculously long word: .i. ataat mesai Dae nephchomthetarrachtai "i.e. the commandments of God are incomprehensible".

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember that gloss too!

I like Old Irish too. Though I've not touched it for a while now. I'm trying to work out whether I ought to know you. Are/were you a fellow ASNC?

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I was indeed an ASNaC, from 1992-6. Then I moved to Linguistics for my PhD.

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

Long before my time! (Even had I been an undergrad here, it'd've been before my time!)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'm pinching that for english!

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

What, the concept of equatives, or the beetle simile? It is great, isn't it, how the translation manages to alliterate and have internal rhyme, just like the original!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I meant equatives. I'll stick with sloe black fishing boat as my specific example :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

See previous rant[1] on "they took my oed away" :) It does seem superfluous to describe non-(descriptive/poetic/rhetoric) comparisons as similes...