Thursday, May 10, 2007

Green Collect in Big Issue


Green Collect (where I work Thursdays) is on the back cover of Big Issue.

10 comments:

Achi Myachi said...

wow they're affliated with Australia Post. I used to work for auspost. Maybe I should get a job with green collect!

Christop said...

Nah, Australia Post just buys the back cover of Big Issue, and gives the space to different charities and not-for-profits.
(There's a guy who sells Big Issue in Bendigo, at the mall.)

Achi Myachi said...

you mean the mal

Christop said...

Yeah, I'm fully aware of how yous mispronounce it.

Achi Myachi said...

Hey don't look at me! As a teacher I fully believe that that is the most stupid thing. Also, I'm told at uni not to say "yous"

Christop said...

That is because most educational institutions teach as though language is static rather than continuously changing.
Yous is actually a very useful work. It means you can differentiate between when you're speaking to one person (you) or more than one (yous).

Steff said...

Exactly my feelings on language, Christop! Language never has and never will be static, and sometimes I wish people would just get over it. On the other hand, I'm a bit of a grammar stickler, so I can't really complain. As for 'yous', that's a pet hate of mine because the context of the utterance already makes clear how many people you are addressing. :P

Christop said...

The context of the utterance doesn't always make clear how many people you're talking about. For example, if I was arranging to meet you and Sammy at the mall, and asked you, 'Are you okay to meet at the mall?' it would be unclear if I was asking about just you or if I was asking about you and Sammy.
Also, when the scriptures are translated into English this is often a problem, because 'you' often refers to Christ's followers as a body, but often when we read it it comes across to us as though it's talking to us as individuals. My friend Chris (he hung out with Urban Seed last year when he was in Melbourne) has written about that a bit here.

Steff said...

'You all' and 'you both' can be used for the plural 'you' in ambiguous situations, which should be clear anyway due to the use of paralinguistics in communication (lacking in informal modes of communication like msn, however).

As for the translations, that just goes to show poor translation! You should never translate 'word for word' across languages because this is precisely the kind of problems one encounters. You can't do a direct translation because languages consist of very distinct thought patterns and ways of expressing concepts, not merely different words for the same thing, and different sentence structures.

But anyway, I didn't mean my comment to cause a rant, I was just poking fun because the 'yous' thing is a pet hate of mine. It just screams 'grammatically uneducated' to me, but really - who needs grammar in this day and age, seriously? ...I must confess to using 'yas' myself in informal conversation :$

Christop said...

Yeah, I know. I wasn't (very) serious either.