“Diving down rabbit holes on the internet, I came across a paper by John Bradley on the male and female dialects of the Yanyuwa people from the western Gulf of Carpentaria,” writes the learned Stein Boddington of St Clair. “A short list of Yanyuwa words is given, including ‘t’ en’ na’ (male dialect) and ‘t’ et’ (female dialect) which, surprisingly, means ‘grizzly bear’! Now, why would a remote tribe in the Gulf of Carpentaria have a word for ‘grizzly bear’? Is there an unexplained gap in our knowledge of Australian mammals? I throw it open to Column 8 denizens to explain, or perhaps track down John Bradley, last seen at Monash University’s William Cooper Institute.”
Worried about Christmas carbon footprints? Victor Marshall of Meander (Tas) can help: “This Christmas it was my sister Cindy’s turn to receive a Christmas card from me that we have been exchanging with each other, often to the other side of the planet, for 50 years! We’ve definitely got our money’s worth out of it.”
According to the Fedora Lounge forum (don’t ask), putting a lampshade on your head became a universal symbol of drunkenness around the 1910s or 1920s, so, after drowning one’s sorrows following the loss of a family heirloom, Josephine Piper of Miranda has joined the club: “After 23 years, my Vera hat (C8) has been replaced by something that looks like a lampshade, but very effective in shading my weather beaten face. A Christmas gift from a friend.”
“The recent talk of chokes and handbags (C8) calls to mind the early CD-ROM drives on personal computers,” writes Richard Murnane of Hornsby. “Many were prone to breakage due to being (allegedly) mistaken for retractable drink holders.”
Incidentally, this is the last you’ll hear of chokes and handbags. According to Seppo Ranki of Glenhaven “even one story about this is too many. They have done the rounds for decades. In these automatic days, can we please give any more a miss?” The equally temperate Paul Duncan of Leura thinks it just goes to show that “good urban myths never die. They just keep getting recycled.”
We’ve been framed! “On Christmas Day, my son and his wife gifted me a beautifully framed Herald page of my first Column 8 contribution from October this year,” says Agostino Chiarella of Summer Hill. “I aim to fill my study walls with many more. Granny, will you help?”
Column8@smh.com.au
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