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Do You Speak Strine?

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 11:25 am
by Slava
Here's a nice piece on dialects from The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero ... l-dialects

Does anyone know what a "dog's breakfast" means?

Re: Do You Speak Strine?

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 7:33 pm
by David Myer
I'm afraid my Pommy background precludes any pretensions to talking Strine. But after years of practice I can be mistaken for an Australian by the English. But I had been here in Australia only six weeks when my Mother on the telephone from England exclaimed "Really David, you sound like an Australian!" And she wasn't pleased.

My dog's breakfast is an ugly mess, if that is anything to go by.

Excellent article from the Economist, by the way.

Re: Do You Speak Strine?

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 2:59 am
by Philip Hudson
Dr. Heibel, my old German professor, was from Munich. He went to university somewhere in northern Germany and stayed there for four years. When he returned, his mother cried in anguish at his speech. " Fritz, has become a PRUSSIAN!" she wailed in her best Hochdeutsch.

Re: Do You Speak Strine?

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 2:35 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Shucks, y'all, I ain't got no idee whut y'all is tawkin' about heer. We' uns don' no much 'bout fancy tawk.

Re: Do You Speak Strine?

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:12 am
by bnjtokyo
I support Mr. Meyer's definition above. If we enter "dog's breakfast" into the lookup box on the top page of this website, the resulting definition is "a poor job; a mess"
The link to the Phrase Finder gets
"This is a 20th century phrase. Eric Partridge, in the 1937 edition of his A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English lists it as "a mess: low Glasgow"."
The link to Dictonarydotcom says
"Chiefly Canadian Slang. a disorderly mixture; hodgepodge. 1935-40"
Wikipedia says there was a Canadian movie with this title in 2006
The Free Dictionary says "dog's breakfast" and "dog's dinner" are synonyms and speculates on the concept underlying the phrase:
"Meaning a mess or muddle, a dog's breakfast or dog's dinner originally may have referred to a cooking mishap with results fit only for a dog's consumption."
Finally, if the phrase exists in Strine, it would be something like "bitzer's brekkie" (nice alliteration, eh?)

Re: Do You Speak Strine?

Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 3:39 pm
by Philip Hudson
With phrases like "bitzer's brekkie", Strine gives red-neckisms a run for the money.

Re: Do You Speak Strine?

Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 3:58 pm
by Slava
It is interesting that one source says "dog's breakfast" is Glaswegian, and the other says it's Canadian. Hmm. :?

Here's the IMDb page for the movie.