Oh you northerners and your curious ways and sayings!
Help me translating Black Adder Page 5
Quote: Aaron @ April 20 2012, 8:43 PM BSTOh you northerners and your curious ways and sayings!
I don't know which episode it is from but it roughly translates as ..'nowt as queer as folk.'
Stand back and let Bill's mothers dog see the manky black rabbit...
Quote: WrongTale @ April 19 2012, 8:36 AM BSTOh joy. Here comes more fun. I started with Christmas Carol.
Thankfully, there is but one sentence that troubles me.Prince George asks for a Christmas story:
"Absolutely, as long as it's not that terribly depressing one about the chap who gets born on Christmas Day, shoots his mouth off about everything under the sun, and then comes a cropper with a couple of rum coves on top of a hill in Johnny Arab land.
BA: You mean, Jesus?"The problematic part is this: "comes a cropper with a couple of rum coves on top of a hill in Johnny Arab land." When dissecting it:
comes a cropper = fail totally? Or - die?
Johnny Arab land = any land in that Near East area?
"Come a cropper" could mean to die or to fail totally. Belief is that he died rather than "failed totally". Johnny Arab is just a variation on the more common Johnny foreigner.
It doesn't particularly gel for most English speakers. I think we're meant to say "shut up George and stop talking in posho!"
Quote: Tim Azure @ April 22 2012, 10:33 AM BST"shut up George and stop talking in posho!"
Thanks to all of you.
This George fellow uses some interesting shortened versions of words - and I was not familiar with these particular ones. For example,
In Nob and Nobility:
"My tummy's playing up a bit. Wish, wish I could come, but just not poss with this turn."
in Goodbyeee:
"I might get a bit mis if it wasn't for the thought of going over the top tomorrow."
In Christmas Carol:
"Keep him out of it - he always spoils the X-mas atmos."
I'm sure there are more, I just don't remember them from the top of my head. So, where do such versions come from?
And BTW - I remembered. The scene in Sense and Senility, where the Prince applauds to the actors in the beginning, just before Ben Elton springs onstage:
Keanrick: Blast! The prince likes it.
Mossop: Shit! We'll close tonight.
I'm not sure what exactly will close that night. The theater itself? Or the play will stop its run?
The play will stop its run.
As to the origins of the phrases, they're just shorthand terms used by - or rather, imagine to be used by, by Elton et al - posh people. They're not anything you'd hear in everyday conversation.
Miranda is the sort of person we are led to believe would say "That wine bar has a v good atmos" rather than a very good atmosphere.
Hi. What do you know, it's me again.
When Flashheart says goodbye to the group in dugout in Private Plane, he shouts:
"Tally-ho, then, back to the bar."
Is that simply the bar for drinks? Implying that he's done his share of flying for today, and it's all partying from then on? 
Yep.