Missing a word

General discussion about learning languages
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Adrianslont
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Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Learning Indonesian and French
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Re: Missing a word

Postby Adrianslont » Wed May 10, 2017 12:51 am

Hey Sophia. I knew I was being a bit abstruse when I posted my original comment but I was pretty sure smallwhite and some others would get it - and abstruse seemed a good fit for smallwhite's subtle and playful humour.

The two drum beats (tom toms or snare as opposed to bass drum) and a cymbal crash "sting" is pretty similar but I think often carries sarcasm that I don't detect in the "boom boom". Interestingly the joke video you linked to doesn't seem at all sarcastic or condescending.

I grew up on British comedians Morecombe and Wise who used the expression "boom boom" and I think The Two Ronnies did too. I was totally unaware of those definitions you listed from the urban dictionary. Sex with prostitutes? Soiled nappies? I guess it was at least obvious I wasn't referring to those things. And probably not to the other definitions you listed. All of this points to the dangerous differences between American, British, Australian and other englishes - I suspect those urban dictionary definitions are American in origin. If you ever travel to Australia, be sure to avoid the word "fanny".

Apologies to smallwhite for going off topic. My actual contribution to the topic? Like others I blame mobile phone keyboards. Or, if using a computer keyboard, sloppy use of the cut and paste function of word processing software is often to blame for missing words - though that is often more than one missing word or just a Frankenstein sentence with no words actually missing.
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aaleks
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Languages: Russian (N)
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Re: Missing a word

Postby aaleks » Wed May 10, 2017 10:13 am

In the posts above here was mention autocorrect. Probably in English it works fine, but in Russian the things are different. For some reason, the autocorrect tends to replace a correct written word with another one that doesn’t fit the context or is completely out of place. Sometimes the change in spelling is very subtle and even native speaker won’t notice that the word is changed a little.
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