As English is not my mothertongue I have learned a lot of vocabulary through blogging. I have always worked with languages during my working career, but when you work for a fabric producer you learn specific words and not necessarily every day words and the abbreviations in messages and blog language not at all. I had to ask what it meant !
Now I am again in this situation. I read the prompt list for January, and first didn't know why the word prompt is used, but Google explains everything. So I decided to participate but was confronted with another obstacle, the word (??) SoCS prompt for January 5. I have no idea what SoCS means and when I googled I got so senseless answers like SOCS = Security Operation Center solutions, System on a chip, Supressor or cytokine signalling which refers to family genes or "Socials" as meant in "The Outsiders". Socials, are as stated in the book and movie, "White trash with Mustangs and Madras shirts" or in our case, the rich kids. The opposition of the socs are the greasers".
I am quite sure that I don't have to write about anything which is listed above, anyway I don't know Security solutions, supressors or cytokine in family genes etc etc. I could write about rich kids, but this has certainly nothing to do with the prompt either.
Then I thought if I don't know a thing, I just can knit a story about the lack of knowledge due to my language skills.
One language of English origin is very hard to understand for me, the "Lol cat bible", even described in Wikipedia !
A book version of the website was released in 2010, containing selected extracts such as the stories of the creation of the earth, Adam and Eve, and Noah.
In the process of adaptation, various changes are being made to the source material, for example, changing the main characters to cats – e.g., Jesus Christ becomes "Happy Cat," God the "Ceiling Cat," and Satan the "Basement Cat" – while the "gifts" and "blessings" of God have become "cheezburgerz", and people in general have become "kittehs".
For example :
In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs n stuffs
Giv us dis day our dalee cheezburger
and furgiv us for makin yu a cookie but eateding it.
and we furgiv wen cats steel our cookie
Now I wonder if there would be more people reading the bible if they would buy this version.
That is funny Gattina. I have no idea what that prompt is either. Maybe it is an American idiom? I live in Australia and also have difficulty with some of the phraseology used. We learn over time, I think.
ReplyDeleteI love the terms ceiling cat and basement cat. Much more fun than the traditional versions.
I don't know it either, actually.
ReplyDeleteI do think of a meme- the ancient Egyptians wrote on walls and worshiped cats, and now we're doing the same thing.
"SoCS" stands for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, the weekly blog hop that Linda runs that's also part of Just Jot It January.
ReplyDeleteSoCS? Absolutely no idea. I always like those cute cat photos with captions.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I'm no native speaker of english. I often find myself checking with google the meaning or spelling of this or that word I encounter on blogs. I don't, however, participate in any language prompts.
ReplyDeleteI’ve heard of Ceiling Cat but didn’t know Basement Cat :-) SoCS...absolutely no idea!
ReplyDeleteThe things they will do with cats in them. Sometimes I think the internet was invented by cats, just to give them a platform!
ReplyDeleteEnglish is my first and only language (a fact about which I am not proud) .... but I have never heard of that abbreviation ... never ever. Reading your comments here, I guess it has a special meaning for readers of that Link Party! The Cat Bible sounds like it is written in silly words as if a cat would speak them -- with misspellings and silliness. Definitely not written for easy translation (for you or probably for me... obviously I have trouble enuough with my own language, never mind trying to translate it into "catspeak".
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