Better on them than on ceremony.

Godd lad yer don half talk funny!

I fully agree, I had the same impression lately.

I personally believe they have always been out there, so the question must be: what does attract them to the EF lately? The lack of sarcasm and bashing that potentially kept them away in the past? Or is there another factor we "outsiders" do not see?

The best theory I can provide is: The worst cases are rather new members who all live locally, so they cannot be mixed up with one of the random overseas-trolls we face here regularly. This time it is a completely differnet scale.
Is it a coincidence that Bluewin has lately closed down its very popular "Jass chat", which used to be a magnet for users I do not need/want to see on the EF? Have other forums been closed for continuous pedantry? Do they swarm through the internets like locusts leaving dead carcasses of once thriving online communities behind?

For those who will ask the obvious pedantic question: Yes, it is an 2004 "Eaglehawk" Cabernet from South Eastern Australia. Very nice.

I disagree. When I was seven, I used to get bullied a lot at school. I observed that all of the kids with big brothers did NOT get bullied so I wrote a single wish on my Christmas list that year - I wanted a big brother.

In the following spring, my brother was born. I was not impressed with the result at first, I was no longer an only child and THIS THING was not much use with my bullying issues. However, the boy grew and grew and, roughly around his sixteenth birthday, went past my own 5'10", finally ending up at 6'3".

Pedants would say that makes him my bigger brother but the terms of my order to Santa were completed - it's my own fault for not having specified a delivery date.

My li'l bro is not only six years younger, which he will never be able to catch up with, he also is a good inch shorter than me, which would need major surgery to correct. Otherwise he's ok. I couldn't ask for a better one.

Now that we are talking about him -- wait a minute. He has been doing a lot of karate the past few decades, much more than I anyway. Maybe I should ask him to knock Dougal off his dictionary all the same. He might be to busy right now, though. Ok, let's forget it.

I think we are turning Swiss...

Iu, owtsäid näou, oder?

Ermm... English please, I havent quite got there yet

^It was an attempt at a Swiss accented "oy, you, outside, now!", followed by the inevitable "oder?". Clearly a fail.

Dont worry your pretty little head about it... humour is usually lost on me

But hey.. now I see it!! Eureka! (not running naked)

Iu (You), owtsäid(outside) näou(now), oder (or)

Seems like Swiss German is derived from English, but be-grudgingly

Only about 40 % of modern Swiss German is derived from English. Handy, Support, Hotline, Internet Provider, Hard Disk, Pick-up, CEO, Share Holder Value, Do It Yourself (often shortened to Do-it, which makes it particularly funny) etc. etc..

Nope, kindergarten goes the other way round, just like zeitgeist, angst etc. .

I thought the link between the two was due to the fact that both English and Swiss German originated from a Low German dialect.

*pedant* and maybe mistaken !!

Doppelganger is my favourite German-borrowed word. Next to blitzkrieg.

Don't worry; he did.

In loco parentheses, DB?
.

To the top! To the top!

Ok, here comes the pedantic part (again! After all I have to defend my reputation): Quite the opposite is true. Compared to English, Swiss German is pretty close to the other end of the spectrum of Germanic Languages. It's High Alemannic, and Alemannic is one of the three main groups of dialects of the Upper German branch of High German. So, linguistically speaking, Swiss German is something like High Upper High German.

In my previous post I wrote, "Only about 40 % of modern Swiss German is derived from English. Handy, Support, Hotline, Internet Provider, Hard Disk, Pick-up, CEO, Share Holder Value, Do It Yourself (often shortened to Do-it, which makes it particularly funny) etc. etc.." Needless to say those 40 % were very much blown up and meant as a joke, but it's still bad enough. Apart from that exaggeration, the rest of the sentence applies to Standard German (often wrongly called "High German" -- Argus, do you hear me?) just as much as to Swiss German.

Most fake English terms you hear in Switzerland got imported from Germany, although there are some very creative folks also here. A British friend of mine, linguist in Munich, called the phenomenon "reversed Englineering." Sometimes he calls it "Angloid." I love both terms!

Nope I believe that linguistically Swiss German derives from a low german dialect. It's also a quite pure language as it wasn't influenced and relatively isolated for centuries.

Sorry Sky, but every bit of linguistic evidence says the opposite, and every encyclopedia, even Wikipedia, agrees with me (or rather, I agree with them, to be honest). It's all a matter of sound shifts, with the whole gamut mainly from north to south, and every step in between can be proved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German

It's not only Wikipedia. There's no scientific source that questions the pattern.

Ok, so no we seem to be back to the topic of the thread -- pedantry. Ha ha... You challenged me .

A spider isn't an insect.

I saw a spider with seven legs in my bathroom (and I don't mean he stood with one leg outside, or maybe he did lose the loose leg outside) -- does that mean if he lost another leg, he'd be an insect? Or just a wannabee?

(Don't aks me how I no it's a boy.)