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Question for Brits concerning Harry Potter (1 Viewer)

Cees Alons

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We very commonly say how we were able to synchronize our watches to trains leaving the station - in the past, but no longer so.

However, I must admit to you, that I arrived 15 secs late on a train platform last week (after not even using trains for at least two or three years) and could only see the one I had planned to board accelerating while just slowly leaving the station.


Cees
 

andrew markworthy

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It's about twenty or so years since I last used Dutch trains (on a conference trip to Groningen, where I met a very agreeable bored wife of a professor, but perhaps this is not the forum for such reminiscences :b ). On the return journey the train broke down and we had to do the rest of the journey by coach. The railway officials were practically licking the pavement in apology when we arrived in Amsterdam because we were late - by ten minutes. I tried explaining to a Dutch passenger that this was within acceptable bounds in the UK and she was incredulous.
 

Cees Alons

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Oh, but ten minutes... that's unbelievable indeed. And a shame!



;)


BTW, my father was a student in Groningen, and now my daughter is too. She's living there and accuses me of trying to mimick the very typical Groningen accent (copied from my grandfather) whenever we cross that provincy's (named Groningen too) border by car.



Cees
 

george kaplan

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Here's another question for Brits:

What's a shipper? It's used in an interview with Rowling, and I think I get it in context, but I'm not sure.
 

Kevin Hewell

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The only "shipper" I know is what I read online. It's a person who wants two characters in fiction together. It's short for "relationshipper."

Of course it could have an entirely different meaning in the UK.
 

Cees Alons

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A Friesland accent?? An accent?
Man, it's a different language! It doesn't resemble anything else in our country. No one can understand it, except born Frisians. And if a non-Frisian can, he wouldn't dare to admit it.

OK, when a Frisian speaks Dutch (outside the area) (s)he does have an accent that could be called a "Frisian accent". But never insult them by calling their language an accent. Mind you, they have a National Anthem of their own!

And a Flag:





You wouldn't want to insult a Frisian anyway, because they're among the toughest (and tallest) of men. Luckily, most of them are very nice people, although strict.

From their names alone, I can identify some members of this board as of Frisian descent (e.g. when ending in -stra).

Here's a Wikipedia article about Frisia (in English).



Cees
 

Marko Berg

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I've been visiting the HTF on an almost daily basis for the last six years, how could I have missed this one?!

*Heads off to use the search function to dig up questionable threads* :D
 

TheoGB

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I'd just like to point out: Grammes not grams and metres not meters - it comes from the French. ;)

Most people my age (30ish) can use Imperial and Metric interchangeably. Heights are normally thought of on Feet and Inches.

Weights (well mass, as Cees pointed out) in Stones and Pounds. I've never understood why the Americans don't use stones as they don't talk about someone being 65" tall instead of 5'5"

Temperature in the suspect (due to the 0 and 100 marks being non-constant) Farenheit scale have thankfully dwindled to almost nothing and we have glorius Celsius now.
 

TheoGB

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This sort of thing makes me laugh? :D Clearly one would refer to a fivea-and-a-half metre and sixteen-and-a-half metre box.

Who is converting this, though? If a commentator says 25 yards out as an estimate surely someone else would just say 23 metres out and be just as 'right'...
 

george kaplan

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That's clearly it, and having never heard it before, I was assuming it was a British thing. I had no idea it was some sort of on-line slang.
 

Cees Alons

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Same here.
When I was a kid, we would express the room temperature in Fahrenheit (73 used to be "about right"). Now it's Celsius everywhere.

(It's not very difficult to translate, though: subtract 37 from Fahrenheit value, divide by 9 and multiply by five to get the temperature in Celsius; the other way around, of course: divide by 5, multiply by 9 and add 37; Fahrenheit took 37 degrees Celsius for the "average" human body temperature).


Cees
 

TheoGB

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A 'shipper' to my mind would be someone who ships something. When I order from Amazon they are my shipper or maybe Royal Mail is?
 

RobertR

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That should be 32, not 37, Cees. Of course, if the temperature's -40, it's the same either way. :)
 

andrew markworthy

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So this is what I'm going to be remembered for ...

I think that judging from the tone of Cee's post and the fact that I haven't been banned from HTF that I didn't bed a member of his family during my visit to Groningen, so I can breathe easy. The story in brief was that I was there as a postgraduate and I gave my talk on the first day of an academic conference. The second day of the conference had absolutely no interest for me, and idling away time in a cafe I met up with what was then called a well-preserved middle aged woman and would now be called a MILF. The rest you can use your lurid imaginations to guess, but suffice to say it was more educational than the conference. :b :D :b :D :b :D So much so that we met up the following day as well. I endured the wrath for missing my doctoral supervisor's big talk but it was worth it. :D

Okay, back on topic - a 'shipper' is someone who is responsible for sending goods to you. It's often a different company from the one who actually sells the goods - common examples would be the Royal Mail (exact equivalent of the US post office), DHL, etc.
 

Holadem

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You do realize that average joe is incapable of doing this in his head, right?

--
H
 

BrianB

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From the context you've given, it's some sort of Potter fandom thing rather than a general term.
 

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