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Comment by yesenadam | Hacker News Reader

Australian here. I just watched the curry and bolognese videos. Although I'm vegan and hate recipes with meat, I laughed out loud, a lot. Loved it. Can't wait to play them for my household. Just yesterday I was planning to make a home cooking series featuring the housemates, dammit! Too late..

As for whether he's a typical Aussie.. I have met people who talk pretty much like this. Probably none who are good cooks though.

I had a German friend here who had a very fat book of Australian colloquialisms he was learning, but I hadn't heard 95% of them. Full of stuff like "dry as a dead dingo's donger". You hear them much more in country Australia I think.

About 10 years ago our Prime Minister was widely mocked for saying "fair shake of the sauce bottle", when everyone knows it's a fair suck – a failed attempt to talk like an average Australian.

https://www.google.com/search?q=rudd+fair+shake+sauce

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Your post reminded me of a story I have, I was the CTO for a company that exited to a Spanish owned company. When that happened we had a lot of Spaniards that would come over and work for a while.

Anyways somehow there became this competition among them to learn and use the most obscure American English colloquialisms and use them in meetings. One of them the CTO for Spain became a very good friend of mine and we decided to start teaching him some words so he could win in these competitions.

With that said I am from a rural town in the US southeast (Florida to be specific). Needless to say he learned a lot of obscure US country colloquialisms. I can still remember the look of wordsmithed defeat by the other executives when he declared, in a meeting, that they where carpetbagging hornswogglers for deciding something without him. I have to say I nearly fell out of my chair with laughter in seeing how impressed with himself he was. The meeting quickly devolved into defining what was a carpetbagger and what was being hornswoggled, as well as requests for other words in which my friend declared that they need to get their own US mentor and not steal his. I was all good fun.

I also learned some Spaniard ones. My favorite which I could not spell out here to save my life, was one that amounts to the equivalent of monkey business.

Speaking of Floridian, long ago, I worked with a developer from a rural area in that state. My favorites were, "Shittin' in high cotton!" when a program finally ran correctly and when the network connection finally came up, "We're swappin' spit now!" .

Heard and used it many times, an equivalent to high cotton would be "Eating high on the hog". Which comes from the higher cuts being the better cuts of pork.

My absolute favorite was the one my grandfather used to tell me, he would say "Boy if your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough and you are, by far, the toughest kid I know" I love the back-handedness of the insult.

The other one that I think is funny is due to Tombstone most people think it is: "Im your huckleberry" when in fact the correct term is "I'll be your huckle bearer" which is the equivalent of a pall bearer, in the south we call the casket handles huckles. The term basically means keep it up and you are going to get the fight you are looking for.

I love this, it makes so much more sense now.

The other one he uses is "Your a daisy if you do", which may be rather apparent but it references another colloquialism of "pushing up daises" in other words being dead and therefore plant food. Both of which, at least in the south, pretty much mean that the person is done talking and are serious warnings, that they are done talking. I would assume that they where also used in the American west at a time given that a lot of Confederate Civil War soldiers went west after the war.

The movies use of them was actually well played as Holiday was from Georgia and would have shared many of the colloquialisms that where in use in the deep south of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.

It's "huckleberry". The phrase is documented back to the 19th century and taken straight from the 1920s Tombstone historical novel.

I am not disputing the fact that, the movie, the script or novels state huckleberry, nor am I disputing that historically someone not from the south quoted Doc Holiday as saying it, what I am saying is that the term is still used today, as it was back then and in the South where Doc was from the term is "I'll be your huckle bearer". It was almost assuredly a misquote from a person not from the deep south. My great grandfather used to use the term and was a child during the late wild west era. This was why I said it was funny that Tombstone popularized it, because outside of the south people think it is huckleberry due to the fact that, that is what he said in the movie.

> the term is still used today

Not the term, a term. They're different idioms with completely different meanings, both well-attested historically. "Huckleberry" is not a corruption of "huckle bearer" here or anywhere else.

Doc Holliday isn't quoted as having ever said the phrase, by the way. It's taken from historical fiction, in a context where "I'm your huckleberry" -- "I'm game", "I'm up for it", "I'm your guy" -- makes far more sense.

"They say you're the gamest man in the Earp crowd, Doc," Ringo said. "I don't need but three feet to do my fighting. Here's my handkerchief. Take hold." Holliday took a quick step toward him. "I'm your huckleberry, Ringo," replied the cheerful doctor. "That's just my game."

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Tombstone/4PnFRfNtyhYC?...

Yes I understand that, but Burns was also one of the first to use huckleberry, before that it only showed up in one other historical writing (in which is is clear what Huckleberry is interpreted as) that does not predate his Tombstone work by much (about 30 years IIRC). I also know that there is no direct quote of someone saying Doc Holiday said this, but Burns interviewed Earp as well as a lot of the residents of Cochise County. I was simply stating that I don't dispute that someone in those interviews may have quoted Holiday as saying it as huckleberry, The point is it is too coincidental that a man from an area where an expression was and still is, used liberally is "fictionally" quotes as using a term that is almost identical to one that he would almost assuredly be familiar with and used. If it was quoted and Holiday did use it, it would have been huckle bearer. I am not disputing your point that the movie, the book both say huckleberry and I acknowledge that there may even have been someone from the era that quoted him as saying it as huckleberry.

> before that it only showed up in one other historical writing (in which is is clear what Huckleberry is interpreted as) that does not predate his Tombstone work by much (about 30 years IIRC)

This simply isn't true. It was a common phrase and is widely attested in texts from Holliday's lifetime.

You originally said:

> due to Tombstone most people think it is: "Im your huckleberry" when in fact the correct term is "I'll be your huckle bearer"

I'm not arguing that "huckle bearer" wasn't also a common phrase. It's just not the "correct term" here. There's no basis for the idea that "huckleberry" was either a misquote or a corruption of "huckle bearer". Both the immediate textual context of the novel and the broader historical evidence for the phrase clearly establish otherwise.

The cook in a pizza joint in small town West Virginia:

"Faster'n a pack o' dogs on a three-legged cat"

It's funny my wife is from West N Carolina, it's a totally different type of country slang in WV, Virgina, North Carolina and South Carolina. What is funny is they all think I have a country accent, because the old Florida accent is similar to a Texas draw and I think they all have one. The norther south is a totally different pronunciation and accent from the deep south. I can understand the Cajuns better than someone from WV or the western Carolina's. Then you get to Tennessee and it's like a blend of the deep south / Texas accent and the upper south.

The equivalent deep south colloquialism for that would be: faster than a raped ape. I don't exactly understand why apes are so fast when they are raped but apparently they are fast. The other one I hear, but not as much, is faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.

One of my other favorites that is tangentially related is:

Ya'll cover your ass faster than the new guy on D'block.

That's hilarious. It reminds me about the insults and alliterations they throw around on Letterkenny Problems.

https://youtu.be/Z0sq3T5fErQ

> My favorite which I could not spell out here

Ironic, considering the highly phonemic orthography of Castilian.

I know, I can take a stab at it but I don't know if it is correct so I would not want to steer anyone wrong on it but it was basically: "que esta tehe mehanies" the last two words are what I am not sure of, that is how they would sound but I am not sure if it is correct in written form.

I have heard something like that in Colombia. Un teje maneje (think sewing and handling). https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/spanish-english...

Yeah that is it, it was explained to me that it would be similar to our saying of: "What is this monkey business". Which would loosely translate to something like child play or a commotion.

You guys/gals/tweeps need to spend a month in "Cordoba Capital", Argentina. You'll hear one of the weirder, funniest, impossible to imitate dialects of spanish. Basically we adore them, but it's very far from what most "argentinean spanish" is, which is pretty distinctive itself amongst the latin american variants of spanish.

A close friend of my S.O. is a German woman, who moved here about 15-20 years ago to marry an Aussie bloke who speaks with a very strong "Strine" accent (which is not so common here in Melbourne).

It's one of our greatest delights to hear her use, in her still-strong German accent, the Australian slang words/phrases she's picked up from him. Like the time we dropped into their house, and she greeted us, ushered us in, and said (if you can imagine this being said in a thick German accent) "Mark will be with us soon, he is just on ze blower".

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=On%20the%20b...

Actually my grandfather had friends who spoke of the telephone as 'the blower' and I'm from Michigan. These would be guys mostly born in the 1880-1900 range.

Yeah interesting. As I searched for references I found it originates from Britain.

This Quora thread has some interesting info: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-call-their-telephon...

He seems funny but I can't stand the Youtube-style "ADHD" editing with cuts every 3 femtoseconds. I feel like I'm holding by breath watching it. There's no gap to process what you've just seen or heard.

I get that it's effectively the point: you overwhelm your audience without giving them the time to consider switching to a different video, but I find it frankly unpleasant.

> I get that it's effectively the point: you overwhelm your audience

Equally, you could argue reading a recipe in a book takes less than a minute; stretching the same recipe out to five minutes is already pretty leisurely.

If a video maker wants a shot for 'rinse the rice before you boil it' anything over 3 seconds is filler.

Yes. Still, I thought the comment you responded to made a refreshing change from 100 successive HN comments saying they have to watch youtube videos at 1.5x speed cause they're boring and a waste of time otherwise! Can't please everyone I guess.

I can understand tight editing and skipping over redundant parts but this goes way beyond that. Take this video from the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uBDNhe6Gkk

It starts with "Guess what's for dinner everyone <cut> shitty mall curry in a jar <cut> [puts bin on table] <cut> he shoots he scores <cut> almost... [intro] What's going on <cut> we're back in the kitchen saying <cut> no to jar sauce [cut to filtered dramatic zoom] neveee <cut>" etc... They should add an epilepsy warning at this point.

Many of these cuts don't actually cut anything, they're just changing the crop to make the video more dynamic. I find it headache inducing. You never have a continuous shot that lasts for more than 5 seconds or so. Everytime he naturally takes a breath while talking he cuts. Every time a shot lasts for more than 5 seconds he changes the crop to make a dramatic zoom on his face or something.

It's a very popular type of editing on Youtube as far as I can tell, but I find it unbearable to watch.

I think this “YouTube style” started as a way to work around having only one camera, and often no-one behind it, even, but also not being good enough to get compelling long, static shots with no cuts needed in the edit (which is quite difficult)

It's probably part of it but cutting away all the breaths and making the video as dense as possible reminds me of TV ads. You want to pack as much as much as possible in a short timeframe and sound super dynamic and not give the audience the opportunity to think about what they're watching. Trim all the fat. It looks like an infomercial almost.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Bingo, yes! You put the words to it... This YouTube style is exactly like those irritating ShamWow and OxiClean commercials that feature pitchmen filling every millisecond with their voice, without any break in the dialog. But instead of 30 seconds of it, they go on like that for 10 minutes. I tried to watch that video and couldn't take it for more than about 30 seconds. Totally exhausting.

Honestly it's just amateurish editing combined with single-camera footage. Lot of modern TV shows and movies also cut every 1-2 seconds, and reality/contest TV is worse than YouTube with cut frequency. But, they do things like overlapping the audio through the cut, switching camera angles on the same, "continuous" scene of events, using good cinematography to make the cuts feel natural, like you're just turning your head as someone else starts speaking, or to respond to some new event happening "over there."

The criticism of simply the frequency of cuts seems weak to me, it's been like that forever with most types of video entertainment content.

If you're making a video of a recipe, it seems to me like a unique opportunity to focus in more detail on what it looks like when each step is done properly.

The one that always comes to mind is when I'm baking and the instructions say to whip egg whites until soft peaks form. When exactly is it "soft"?! Sure, I know now, but I definitely didn't know back then, and as it turns out a video is a great way to get the point across.

p.s. Damn, the housemates had already seen them and love them too.

I have to share Michael Cusack's animations[0], they're very funny, appalling, and super-Australian. I've met many Australians who talk exactly like this. It's the most Australian stuff on youtube I've seen.

[0] particularly the Damo & Darren series and the YOLO series, but pretty much all his videos since the first YOLO are amazingly good. (The very short Chuck Her In The Ute is genius.)

https://www.youtube.com/user/aekime/videos

Damo & Darren pt 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmL72sgVdAQ (ha, I just noticed most of the comments are from Australians confirming that it's very realistic)

It's worth adding that for foreign viewers that no respectable Australian speaks like this, haha. The train station in the animation is supposed to represent Dapto, which is a lower socio-economic area located a few hours south of Sydney. In my experience, the animation captures the area pretty well.

You're not gonna hear any American news anchor or enterprise sales rep speaking in appalachian or black english yet there are no shortage of people who speak either.

Just because the well to do don't do something doesn't mean that isn't part of a place's culture.

I'm in my 30s and I grew up in Sydney. I have never ever heard the phrase "fair suck of..." until your post. Mind you, the first time I had ever heard any phrase involving sauce bottles was Rudd's famous usage. Which I feel brought it back into common parlance. With people mostly using it as an ironic exaggeration of country slang, and in tribute to Rudd.

It's worth noting, that Rudd was an actual country kid. While certainly not representative the average Australian, he would definitely have been exposed to more authentic bush slang than most.

I can't get my Australian friends 'dry as a nun's nasty', metaphor out of my head when talking in polite company.

That business with a "sauce bottle" has just filled 20 mins for me before I dive into the helpdesk at work, here at home (in the UK.)

...

Sauce is alcohol, not ketchup - now it makes sense! That's why you would suck and not shake the thing. We use the term sauce in the same way but not the term sauce bottle.

I just watched the curry recipe. It's funny but far from being anything close to authentic (bell peppers was the first sign).

Sure, but then again chilly/paprika/capsicums were none existent in India before the 15th century, so what is ever authentic and original except a continuous change?

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