Hi all. After a month on hiatus, the Wednesday HodgePodge is back and I’m joining in. Here are Joyce’s questions.
1. Tell us anything you want about your January.
It was such a looong month. Oh, that’s a cliche, but who cares? I shared my monthly reflections yesterday.
2. Lake Superior State University posts a list each year of words they think should be banished from the Queen’s English for misuse, overuse, and/or general uselessness. The 2023 list includes GOAT, inflection point, quiet quitting, gaslighting, moving forward, amazing, Does that make sense?, irregardless, absolutely, and it is what it is.
Which of these words/phrases do you use regularly? Which of these words would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word/phrase not on the list you’d like to add?
I use “absolutely” and “amazing” a lot. I also have a lot of other words I use way too frequently. It’s probably because my written English isn’t as good as I’d like it to be. As for a word or phrase I’d like to see banished most out of this list, it’d be “it is what it is”. That’s just such a useless statement. By the way, I have an inkling “GOAT” when spelled in all-caps means something other than the animal, but I have absolutely (see, here I go again) no idea what it means.
I don’t know which words or phrases I’d add to the list in general, but I’d erase “obviously” and “definitely” from my own personal vocabulary if I could (and replace them with a dozen synonyms). Oh wait, I could do that, but I’m too lazy to use my thesaurus.
3. February 2nd is Groundhog Day. What’s something that feels repeated in your life right now?
Wow, this HodgePodge is a true English lesson! After all, I had no idea what groundhogs even were or what they had to do with repetition. That being said, my days at this point in my life are one giant string of repetition, truthfully. In a way, they’re very unpredictable, but since there is no rhyme or reason to my weeks, the days all roll into each other.
4. What’s a food you love that’s named after a place?
I really don’t know all that many foods named after places. I was going to say “mexicano”, which is a type of rectangular mince snack, but that would be named after the ethnic group. Besides, the mexicano has nothing whatsoever to do with Mexico or Mexican food.
5. What’s the best season of the year to visit your part of the country? Tell us why.
Spring or summer. I live in a part of the Netherlands where the summers can get hotter than, say, in the coastal provinces. However, there’s a lake quite near where I live now, which is good for swimming (we used to go there when my family still lived in Apeldoorn). Spring would also be a good time to take walks around here, I guess, but I haven’t tried that yet as I moved here in the fall.
I wouldn’t recommend visiting the Netherlands during winter at all, as we hardly get snow and, even if we do, we don’t have mountains so it’s no use for skiing.
6. Insert your own random thought here.
My care home’s kitchen renovations are done! They were actually finished nearly a week early. I’m so happy about it, as it means I can finally cure my polymer clay creations in the oven. It also means the living room furniture will be moved back to the actual living room soon rather than all of my fellow clients gathering in the hallway right across from my room. That’s been quite disastrous. Honestly though, I still do want to leave this care home, as the real problems aren’t temporary.
GOAT = greatest of all time, and people are using it for everything, so it’s lost meaning and become annoying. I guess that is also the issue with amazing and absolutely…
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Oh yeah, I see. Thanks for explaining. That makes sense.
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Groundhog Day is a very American thing I guess. Supposedly if ‘the groundhog’ (yes his name is Puxatawny Phil) sees his shadow that morning it means six more weeks of winter. If not spring is coming early. It’s just a fun little tradition that goes way back, but the news covers the story and everyone kind of gets on board. There was a film called Groundhog Day where a not so nice newscaster lived the same day over and over and over until he changed his behavior and I thought it was really cute.
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Ah, thanks for explaining. I did see that film mentioned when I googled the meaning of Groundhog Day indeed.
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I use absolutely and definitely all the time. But then; why not?
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Well, using a variety of words shows the width of our vocabulary. Also, “absolutely” and “definitely” are probably (at least when I use them) more like fillers that have no added meaning. Then again, who said that fillers or the use of the same words is necessarily bad? Some literary critics, I guess. Your writing is quite good regardless.
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Thanks Astrid. I think our English is better then some who were born to it.
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You mean English isn’t your native language? Oh wait, no, of course not, since you are from Pakistan right? What’s your native language? Anyway your English is great!
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Mine is Urdu. But we grew up studying everything in English so it’s sort of ingrained in us
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Oh that’s so cool! In school, our English lessons here in the Netherlands back in my day weren’t too advanced. I mean, I could write a blog post at the end of high school, but it still contained tons of errors. Even today, my vocab still isn’t all that extensive after 20+ years of having read books in English (and I mean actual books, not the ESL adaptations).
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I think your English is very good. Haven’t found any errors or mistakes in your writing
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Thanks for the compliment! 🙂
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You’re welcome
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Hi,
https://www.mariekegouda.com/
I thought you would enjoy reading about Marieke Gouda. 🙂 I do think you are correct, Wisconsin and your country tie in cheese making.
Happy February to you!
Carla 🙂
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Ah, thanks for sharing. That’s so interesting! Have a happy February.
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