Sideswipe: I'll take a socks pack

Fresh World in Mt Roskill sells root beer ... with a hint of leather.

Lost in translation #1

"The one that got me was 'furry limity tie', from a TV ad," a reader writes. After much brain sweat I realised it was supposed to mean 'for a limited time'. And then there was Ben Couch's famous reply when someone asked what was his opinion on euthanasia. He said we had to look after our own kiddies first."

Lost in translation #2

Victoria was in HR, involved in the recruitment of legal professionals for an immigration charity. "In my early days I was stumped by the prevalence of 'Fionas' under discussion. In hindsight this was more due to my ignorance of the lingo of the legal industry, rather than any accent issues - I soon learned that 'fee earners' are key to most law firms."

Insulting on so many levels

Robin received this email from Team McMillan BMW: "Sunday 3rd April marks the end of Daylight saving and the need to put your clocks back one hour. This also means changing the clock in your BMW. We invite you to visit our sales or service departments to have your clock updated and while you are here we will check and adjust your tyre pressures. You can relax in our cafe with the newspaper, enjoy a quality coffee or catch up with the latest news on CNN ..." An engineer, Robin was insulted. "Clearly they think their customers are cretins who cannot perform the simplest tasks," he says. "Or alternately, that they are so simple-minded that they can be enticed on premises for a sales pitch on this pretext ..."

Ambassadors of the language

Your contributor misses the point, says the original pronunciation pedant. "As I said, I don't expect everyone on TV to speak like they do on the BBC, but given English is our first language (unlike 'our foreign visitors'), those whose jobs revolve around communication (e.g. newsreaders) should be able to speak it at a comprehensible level. The irony is, we expect our newsreaders to bend over backwards to pronounce Maori properly. Newsreaders put 10 times more effort into saying 'Aotearoa' than they do saying 'Noo-Zillun'. And when Maori complain about the spelling or pronunciation of a name you wouldn't dare accuse them of 'accent snobbery'."

Spayke Unglush, for putty's sake

Martin writes: "I thunk utts fare inuff toe cruttasoise the weigh some Neow Zallindas talk ... ind sorry toe say utts quoite offen (but not ollwise) wughmmun under the age of, say, forty hoy dough thus. Hev yoy notussed thus? Utts a fect in fect ... en utts troe thet female exents change faster then male. You ken ask the experts. I thunk if weigh doan fux thus sone, weigh could ole bay talking thus weigh ... then where would weigh bay?"