What is your favourite British saying?
#802
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Well, there you are, if you haven't seen or heard the programmes in question, it's a hidden code.
TTFN = Ta Ta For Now (comes a character from a hit radio show of the 1940s, who was always talking in strange acronyms - perhaps because there were suddenly a lot of new ones around in wartime).
"I'll fetch me coat" = from The Fast Show, a sketch show where one character was always killing a conversation dead with some irrelevant/inappropriate comment and filled the silence by volunteering to leave.
TTFN = Ta Ta For Now (comes a character from a hit radio show of the 1940s, who was always talking in strange acronyms - perhaps because there were suddenly a lot of new ones around in wartime).
"I'll fetch me coat" = from The Fast Show, a sketch show where one character was always killing a conversation dead with some irrelevant/inappropriate comment and filled the silence by volunteering to leave.
#809
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"You mean the Brits invented texting in the 1940s?"
NORWICH, HOLLAND, EGYPT, POLO, LONDON
The decrypts vary, but Google is, as always, your friend. None, normally, are meant to be reprinted on a family website
The general explanation is that soldiers writing home during WW2 sealed the back of the envelope with the acronym. This both got the girl excited, and revealed whether the censors had gone through the letter.
There were more innocuous versions (like SWALK). But using them, I'm told, was for wooses.
NORWICH, HOLLAND, EGYPT, POLO, LONDON
The decrypts vary, but Google is, as always, your friend. None, normally, are meant to be reprinted on a family website
The general explanation is that soldiers writing home during WW2 sealed the back of the envelope with the acronym. This both got the girl excited, and revealed whether the censors had gone through the letter.
There were more innocuous versions (like SWALK). But using them, I'm told, was for wooses.
#810
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"talking in strange acronyms - perhaps because there were suddenly a lot of new ones around in wartime"
In fact, I don't think Britain bothered much with acronyms before 1939 (except, oddly, for the USA and USSR. I'm not sure even the BBC was often referred to: it was usually the Home Service or Daventry). WW2 got them sprouting everywhere: we'd never referred to a branch of the military as an acronym till the RAF became national heroes, and until 1939, WW1 was always The War.
In a funny sort of way, the ITMA and NORWICH things (which seem - well, quaint - these days) were subversive or at least satirical in 1940.
I wonder , though, how many of those odd national acronyms (google BURMA and SIAM) were ever really used in lust, as opposed to becoming running jokes which no-one ever really wrote. Surely they'd just encourage the girlfriend's stern father to suppress the letter, or the wife's inquisitive brats to ask embarrassing questions?
In fact, I don't think Britain bothered much with acronyms before 1939 (except, oddly, for the USA and USSR. I'm not sure even the BBC was often referred to: it was usually the Home Service or Daventry). WW2 got them sprouting everywhere: we'd never referred to a branch of the military as an acronym till the RAF became national heroes, and until 1939, WW1 was always The War.
In a funny sort of way, the ITMA and NORWICH things (which seem - well, quaint - these days) were subversive or at least satirical in 1940.
I wonder , though, how many of those odd national acronyms (google BURMA and SIAM) were ever really used in lust, as opposed to becoming running jokes which no-one ever really wrote. Surely they'd just encourage the girlfriend's stern father to suppress the letter, or the wife's inquisitive brats to ask embarrassing questions?
#814
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WE BRITONS...
said with the pride of the empire. i fill my lungs with smoky air i lift my hand in pride look you straight in the eye and remove my spectacles with a dramatic air. and i annunciate in my still perfect english honed at the king's school something that sounds like....
WE BAHHRRITONSSAH... (then i proceed to say something clever and inciteful that gets up the noses of my countrymen)
said with the pride of the empire. i fill my lungs with smoky air i lift my hand in pride look you straight in the eye and remove my spectacles with a dramatic air. and i annunciate in my still perfect english honed at the king's school something that sounds like....
WE BAHHRRITONSSAH... (then i proceed to say something clever and inciteful that gets up the noses of my countrymen)