It is easier for a person who studies behavioral biology to get this. Colnsider Big Men in cultures that have formal Big Men. There are of course big men (small b, small m) in all soceities, in some way, but the role of a man as a Big Man is especially clear in societes that have a word for it, and a social and political position so defined. One of the great and classic ethnographic examples Ongka, a New Guinea big man from a tradition region, the star of a documentary called Ongka’s Big Moka. Ongka is a Big Man, a leader among men, seen as the Big Man for a large community which is in bellicose relationship with neighboring groups. In the documentary, Ongka devises an attack on his neighbors, in which he will attempt to defeat their Big Man. The attack requires the accumulation of a huge store of valuable goods, which includes Australian cash, a Land Rover, many bushels of Yams, and large numbers of rare forest bird feathers and domestic pigs. During the course of accumulating this wealth, Oka talks, and talks, talks. Ongka incessantly shows up ina aprt of the villafge, and talks about how he is the Big Man, and how he with the help of the villagers will defeat the neighboring Big Man¹. Ongka shows up, gives his speech, and leaves with some pigs to add to his larder, and some yams, which will be used to feed the pigs. He may get a feather or two. And, over the months of time during which this happening, the polygenous Ongka adds a wife or two a well.

Eventually Ongka is ready to defeat his neighbor, and a ceremony is arranged. The two men face off. This is not a symmetrical battle, this is Ongka on the offense, and the man he is going after absorbs the attack, survives or loses, but has the option of attcking back at a later time. Ongka gives the biggest and baddest speech of them all, but the speech is not to ask for help, but to accompany what has been laid out. The feathers, pigs, yams, money, and Land Rover have all been arranged to look quite impressive. No marketing rep at Target could do a better job at making the goods look so good. This is the a largest Moka (that is what the ceremony is called) anyone can remember. Ongka’s Bit Moka has defeated his enemy, and Ongka tells him so in the last chapter of this round of his Big Man narrative.

This may look like a man being great at what men are great at, giving speeches that get him goods, mates, fame, and power. That would be the more naive or amateur evolutionary view of the thing. But if we add one level of theoretical sophistication to the model, we might see that this is actualy a man being good at what men are handicapped at. Linguistic skill is more easily come by in women than in men. Traditionally, remedial reading programs are frequented by boys, not girls. Typically, UN simultaneous translators are more often women than men. In many societies, women move at marriage between groups, and in places where language areas are small and heterogeneously mixed up, many young girls are expected to quickly learn, if not already have, high proficiency with a language that was not her birth language.² In mammals, all males are females that have become masculinized to varying degrees in development, and in the brain, this masculinization can not be done by adding structure, function, or features, but only by literally wiping out brain tissue. It is thought that this process goes a bit farther in some boys, ultimately causing modest language related deficits. The details and degree to which this happens is not well understood, but it is generally agreed that it happens. Baby girls have better hearing discrimination of language phonemes than do boys. Average starting age for linguistic (verbal and reading) milestones are earlier for girls than boys. And so on.

So from a behavioral biological point of view, Ongka is handicapped, and is overcoming his handicap by being very very good at a behavior in which men tend to be limited relative to women. There is a great deal of theory and study surrounding the “handicap principle” (look up Zahavi’s Handicap Principle). If he can do that mentally, he must be an exceptional male, at the high end of the bell curve for the men in his society. No wonder he gets the extra yams.

I know I’ve been a little disdainful in this essay of amateur evolutionary thinkers. Let me be clear: I love amateur evolutionary thinkers. The non-specialists who take on evolutionary biology as an interest are in many areas more important, and their activities more impactful, than actual evolutionary biologists when it comes to preserving and sometimes even saving science from religiously or politically driven attacks. That is very much appreciated. The average actual biologist is a lab rat or a field drone, collecting data, running it through the peer review process, usually ignoring and maybe being unaware of the “war on science” carried out by the right win in congress, right wing parents in vulnerable school districts, and all those yahoos on the Internet. If it weren’t for the non-scientists who happen to love science, we would be doomed. But at the same time, people want to know the details, understand the nuances, and enjoy learning more things about the thing you know about already. So that’s what this is.

Here’s Ongka’s Big Moka:

And of course, many of us watch the show to see the crashes.

Without further ado, a glossary. Add more to the comments if you’ve got em.

These bits of advice often do more damage then good. They are potentially sharp knives, or meaty mallets, or highly useful duct tape, in the tool kit of novices, but just as likely to cut or pound a finger or gum something up as to help. These bits of advice are like the tricks surgeons used to close off a bleeder or work around a key nerve without harming it. They are nice to know if you are a trained surgeon, but really not that useful if you are not. They serve mainly to make people think they are suddenly good communicators.

My advice is to either let other people do it, or to ramp it up. By ramp it up I mean don’t attend one seminar on how to communicate, but ten. Not three or four, but ten. Don’t read the first four paragraphs of a commentary on communication in The Atlantic, but read five books. Not one or two books, but five books. Or seven,even.

You need to do enough study of the matter to go through the phase when you realize you know way less than you thought.

Pursuant to this effort, I hereby recommend a few items. These are not new, but they are current. Newness is not the key to success. One of the best references in how we communicate with words is well over 2,000 years old.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath*. Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.”

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits.

How To Go Viral and Reach Millions: Top Persuasion Secrets from Social Media Superstars, Jesus, Shakespeare, Oprah, and Even Donald Trump by Joe Romm*. How To Go Viral And Reach Millions is the first book to reveal all the latest secrets for consistently generating viral online content—words, images, or videos that are seen and shared by hundreds of thousands and eventually even millions of people, something Romm and his colleagues in three different organizations achieve routinely.

The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff.* Ten years after writing the definitive, international bestselling book on political debate and messaging, George Lakoff returns with new strategies about how to frame today’s essential issues.

In this updated and expanded edition, Lakoff, urges progressives to go beyond the typical laundry list of facts, policies, and programs and present a clear moral vision to the country?one that is traditionally American and can become a guidepost for developing compassionate, effective policy that upholds citizens’ well-being and freedom. (NB: “All New” here does not mean all new now. It was all new a few years ago.)

** Pronoiunced “meem-ish” not “mem ish”.

I mention Karen’s book not because it is new (is was published in 2014) but because a) it will be of interest to most of my readers and b) Mike Haubrich and I plan to interview Karen for Ikonokast in the near future, thus lending currency to the volume and topic. (Our interview will be about Karen’s work in skepticism as much as linguistics.)

Note: This book appears to be out of print, so it is hard to get at a reasonable price, but if you look around it can be acquired used for about $15. You can find it on Kindle if you go to the provided link and look laterally on Amazon, and there are used versions.

I have yet to see a review of Language Myths that is satisfying. Most reviewers claim that Stollznow is debunking the idea that language has magic powers. She does not. Rather, she explains the magic power that language actually does have. This does not require belief in anything supernatural. In fact, a careful look at each of the myriad examples of magic and mythical mysterious language the author carefully and richly documents, will leave even the most spiritual or religious reader convinced that natural explanations cover all of the phenomena that have any explanation at all The remaining unexplained things are comfortably rare and do not require an unnatural cause.

Yet, language is magic. As my friend Mark Pagel is fond of noting, language is the powerful magic that allows me to use sound waves to alter the growth and connections of neural cells inside your skull. Stollznow’s exploration is more detailed, of course, and richly culture bound. It is a detailed exploration of actual examples from across a wide range of current and historical story, literature, common usage, and rhetoric.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in language itself, communication, folklore, skepticism, or writing and literary analysis. (Notice how that last sentence LOOKS like it has no Oxford comma, but actually does.)

Karen Stollznow is also the author of God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States, and a book that I have a chapter in, Would You Believe It?: Mysterious Tales From People You’d Least Expect. Karen podcasts here.

Do you know the phrase “The furnace is broken, call Earl the oilman!” Which, in certain American English dialects sound like “… Oil the earlman.”

And you know “Paak the caa in Haavaaad yaaad” form the dialect that the “r’s” except the ones that aren’t there. When I lived in that region, I need to learn the specific dialect of Somerville Mass, otherwise it was impossible to do certain things like get off the bus. If you are in the back of the bus, you yell out “rear door” so the driver will open the back door for you. But if it doesn’t sound like “Reaa dohaaa” you will miss your stop.

I’m told I have a thick dialect. Amanda and I were at a restaurant the other day, and for reasons I can’t remember, the region of birth of the waiter and everyone else came up. He said to me, “you’re from New York, right?” and I said, “Yes, how did you know?” and Amanda and the waiter broke out laughing. I checked to see if I was wearing a hat or T-shirt that said something on it, but I wasn’t.

OK here’s another one:

I’ll tell you two Minnesota dialect stories. First, I’ll mention that Minnesota itself has multiple dialects, and at least one of them runs well into Wisconsin, but not Milwaukee or the cities down near Chicago.

When I first moved to Minnesota, I got a local friend who ended up showing me around the Twin Cities (mainly Minneapolis), showing me the ropes and all that. I noticed she had certain mannerisms of speech other than the usual Minnesota accent. I didn’t hear these things from anyone else, so I figured it was just her.

Then, I met my wife, years later, and got to know a lot of people in the western Suburbs. Eventually I realized that my wife and my friend had the same mannerisms. Turns out this was a eastern Plymouth/Golden Valley accent, pretty much developed in the Robinsdale school district (Neil Armstrong High).

One of my first times out state (the increasingly considered no-no-term for “rural Minnesota”) and which is roughly like “up state” in New York, this happened. We had been up to Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi (and no, “Itasca” is meant to sound a little Indian but it is actually derived clumsily from the Latin, something about a head). Up there, you don’t meet too many local people, and in fact, I didn’t. But on the way back, we stopped for a brat at a local S.A. (all hardware stores, grocery stores, and gas stations in Minnesota are also little restaurants, or at least, were when I first moved here, but many have dropped that tradition with the arrival of fast food). Anyway, I ordered the brats, gave the young girl (maybe 15) the money, and she returned my change. Then, she said as I was leaving, “Gudatcha!”

I said, “what?”

She said, “Gudatcha!”

That happened a few times. Finally I smiled and said, “you too” and left.

Eventually, I figured out what it meant. Can you?

I’ll end with this one. It is a classic. NOT WORK SAFE MAY BE OFFENSIVE

She was a bit shocked by that statement. We discussed it further, and then she was amused. Yes, we were speaking the same language, but our dialects were from regions well over 1,000 miles apart and across two countries. I had said, in my own dialect, “The price on this thing strikes me as a bit high.” Which, in her dialect, meant that I was viciously attacked by the hominid key chain.

Apparently, there is a way to say “Good Morning” in Arabic that translates into Hebrew as “Aiieeeeeeeee!!! Kill them all, attack!!!!!” or words to that effect.

A Palistinian man used his own version of the phrase “good morning” in a facebook postt, and the Israel police, for some reason watching his facebook page, used Facebook’s automatic translation system to produce a misleading translation. I exaggerate slightly above. An idiom for “good morning” was translated into “Hurt them” in Hebrew, and “Attack them” in English. The comment, “good morning,” was associated with a posted pic of the man leaning against his bulldozer at a construction site in the West Bank.

From Haaretz:

The automatic translation service offered by Facebook uses its own proprietary algorithms. It translated “good morning” as “attack them” in Hebrew and “hurt them” in English.
Arabic speakers explained that English transliteration used by Facebook is not an actual word in Arabic but could look like the verb “to hurt” – even though any Arabic speaker could clearly see the transliteration did not match the translation.

But because of the mistaken translation the Judea and Samaria District police were notified of the post. The police officers were suspicious because the translation accompanied a picture of the man alongside the bulldozer, a vehicle that has been used in the past in hit-and-run terrorist attacks. They suspected he was threatening to carry out such an attack and the police arrested him. After he was questioned, the police realized their mistake and released the man after a few hours.

Let’s see if we can replicate this with Google translate.

Good morning in English is

in Arabic.

which in turn is

in Hebrew.

Either one translates to “good morning” in English.

Clearly, Facebook should start using Google Translate.

Added:

You all know about this: It is being said that the OK sign is used to indicated “White Power” and this use has been spotted among politicians and celebrities everywhere. Is this real? I don’t know. Is it a valid symbol for “White Power”? Certainly not.

The problem with the white power symbol is that it is not a symbol. Or, if it is a symbol, it is a baby symbol that doesn’t know how to be a symbol yet, so don’t expect much from it.

Try this.

Move your hands in front of you as though you were grasping a steering wheel, and pump your right foot while you say, somewhat loudly and using a touch of Vocal Fry if you can manage it, the words “Vroom Vrooom.”

Maybe snap your head back on the second “Vroom.”

You have signified rapid acceleration, but you did not really do it using full blown language. Well, you did, because you have full blown language, and so do the other people in the room wondering what the heck you are doing (I’m hoping you are reading this in a busy coffee shop). But the fact that they get that you are talking about rapid acceleration is because you made sounds like a car and play-tended that you are sitting in a car and reacting to forward rapid acceleration. That’s not really language. From a semiotic point of view, you signified the sound of an accelerating engine by imitating it, and you signified other aspects of rapid acceleration by imitating it. This is not symbolic. You were not doing a symbolic representation of rapid acceleration. You may be thinking, “yes, I was, or what the heck was that that if I wasn’t?” Just trust me, you weren’t.

(Except that since your intentional communication is essentially linguistic even when not and everyone around you is a human, you were, but that’s another matter for another time. Functionally, you were not, pragmatically you were.)

Now, do the following. Wipe that puzzled or snarky expression off your face and speak the following words, enunciating clearly.

nopea kiihtyvyys

Unless you are in a Finnish coffee shop, when you said those words out loud you were uttering a symbol, but unfortunately, a symbol with no meaning, because no one in the room, including yourself, speaks that language (if you are a Fin or among Fins, substitute some other language, please.)

Now, say, with no body movements or other fanfare:

rapid acceleration

In an English-speaking coffee shop, that was a symbolic act. There is no onomatopoeia. There is no imitation. There is no clue to the meaning of those words built into their utterance or the framework in which they are uttered (like an accompanying gesture or facial expression). However, you have made and conveyed meaning, and done so symbolically.

The very fact that these words mean what they mean in an utterly arbitrary way, a way unembellished with direct reflection of reality, is what makes them symbolic, and the fact that language works this way is what makes language very powerful.

There are many reasons for this. For example, if your words were strictly tied to imitation or direct representation, it would be harder to extend or shift meanings. It would be harder for there to be a rapid acceleration of a political policy, or a state of war, or a child’s understanding of subtraction and addition, as well as a vehicle with a steering wheel. Also, you made this meaning using two words, each of which can be used as countless meaning making tools. There is an infinity of meanings that can be generated with the word “rapid” and a few other words, in various combinations uttered in a variety of contexts, and there is an infinity of meanings that can be generated with the word “acceleration” and a few other words, in various combinations uttered in a variety of contexts, and the two infinities are potentially non overlapping.

The warning sign above is like a lot of other signs (using the term “sign” like one might say “placard”). It has a triangle which, in this case, signifies semiotics. Why does a triangle signify semiotics? Because in one of the dominant theories of semiotics, which is the study of meaning making, symbolism, and sign making (the other kind of sign), meaning making has three parts (the meaning maker, the meaning receiver, and the other thing). But the triangle is not really a semiotic triangle because there are no labels. This could be a triangle of some other kind, linked to some other meaning. Indeed, the triangular shape is linked to warning signs generally, while the rhombus is for “stuff ahead” so this could be a sign signifying, by looking like something else (a danger sign), danger ahead, or pedestrian crossing ahead, or some other thing.

Cleverly, the warning sign above is both an index to semiotics and a reference to danger, placed on a sign shape usually used to warn of danger ahead (like a deer crossing).

Briefly, a thing that looks like a thing is an icon. Like the thing on your computer screen that looks like a floppy disk, indicating that this is where you click to put the document on the floppy disk. A thing that has a physical feature linked to a thing or meaning, but not exactly looking like it, is an index. We can arbitrarily link a representation to an index (like an index card in a library to a book, linked by the call number which appears on each item) or a representation can evolve from icon to index because of change. For example, the thing on your computer screen that looks like a floppy disk, indicating that this is where you click to put the document in the cloud, in a world with no floppy disks where most computer users don’t have a clue what a floppy disk is or was, but they do know that that particular representation will save their document.

(See: Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce)

A symbol can evolve from the index when the physicality of the link is utterly broken. The vast majority of words do not look, sound, in any way resemble, what they mean. Words are understood because the speakers and hearers already know what they mean. New meaning is not generated in the speaker and then decoded in the listener. Rather, new meaning is generated in the listener when the speaker makes sounds that cause the listener’s brain to interact with that third thing I mentioned above, which is shared by both.

And, of course, meaning can be generated in someone’s mind when all that happens inside your head. It is advised that, when doing so, try to not move your lips.

The point of all this: having a representation of something linked by the way it looks to some kind of meaning is asking for trouble. A totally arbitrary association between intended meaning and how something looks (or sounds, like a word) is impossible to understand for anyone not in on the symbolic system. But, such an arbitrary association allows, if the meaning making is done thoughtfully and there is no deficit in the process, for an unambiguous meaning making event. At the same time, the arbitrary nature of the symbol allows for subsequent “linguistic” (as in “symbolizing) manipulation of the arbitrary thing itself. And, the fact that the symbolizing requires that third thing, the common understanding of meaning, is what allows us to avoid meaning making that is spurious, as happens when a sign is not a pure symbol, but instead, iconic or indexical of something. And this is where the White Power symbol everyone is talking about, made up of the common “OK” sign, falls into the abyss.

Do this and show it to all the people in the coffee shop:

If you are in the US you may have just told everyone that all is “OK” (or is it “Okay”?).

Among SCUBA divers it specifically means “no problem” which is subtly different than just “OK” because the problems being discussed are on a specific list of important issues to SCUBA divers, like “my air is good” etc.

In the above cases, the gesture means what it means because it is making an “O” for the beginning of OK/Okay. The gesture is an icon of the term “OK.” It is not a full blown proper symbol.

If you are in Argentina or several other South American areas, and possibly parts of Europe, you may have just called everyone in the room an asshole. In this case, the gesture refers to that anatomy, and the anatomy is metaphorical for a state of mind or behavioral syndrome. The symbol itself is an icon or index to the sphincter region.

In other contexts (mainly in Europe), the symbol is also an insult in a different way, in that the “0” part of the gesture implies “you are nothing, a zero.”

In Arabic speaking cultures, the symbols sometimes refers to the evil eye, because it looks like an eye. So it is used, along with a mix of phrases, as a curse.

If you put the ring formed by the gesture over the nose, you are telling someone they are drunk, in Europe. Or, you may place the “O” near your mouth to indicate drinking.

In Japan, if the hand is facing down, that “o” shape is a coin, so it can mean money or something related.

In parts of china, while the symbol can mean “three” the zero part tends not to. To say “zero” one simply makes a closed fist.

In basketball, the “o” part of the gesture is just there to get the index finger out of the way. The key part of it is the three fingers sticking up, which means that the player who just threw the ball into the hoop got three points.

Meanwhile, among some Buddhists, the three fingers part is not the point. The circle part is where the meaning is, but not as the letter “o” but rather the number “0”. Moving across the religious spectrum a ways, in another South Asian religion, it is the three fingers symbolize the three “gunas” which you want to have in harmony, while the “o” part represents union of consciousness. But again, all of these meanings have to do with the actual physical configuration of the fingers.

Rarely, the symbol means “666” and, increasingly, is linked to the Illuminati. To the extent that the Illuminati exists, and I’m not going to confirm or deny. The symbol is also found in western Christian allegoric art. I don’t know what it means there.

There are places in this world where there are both negative and positive meanings implied by the iconic nature of the symbol, which can lead to both confusion and intended ambiguity. I worked on a crew with people who were either Argentinian or who lived in Argentina for a long time, and others who had never been to Argentina. It was always great fun to watch the boss give kudos to a worker at the same time as calling him an asshole. We need more gestures like that.

The Anti-defamation league identifies a version of the White Power symbol, where you use one hand to make a W (start with a “live long and prosper” then move the two middle fingers together) and an upside down OK to make the P. It is not clear that the ADL is convinced this is real; they may just suspect it. But generally, the symbol is found in a small cluster of mainly twiterati, who have produced a few pictures of possible or certain white supremacists or racists using the symbol. But in all cases, they may just be saying “OK” in the usual benign sense. The best case I’ve seen for the one handed WP=White Power OK symbol is its apparent use on a sign being held at a white supremacist group march, but that could be a singular case, or fake.

Since I originally wrote this post, in 2017 (this is a 2021 edit you are reading right here) I’ve noticed that actual white supremacists who want to make it clear they are using the OK White Power symbol do so vigorously or obviously in some way to reduce ambiguity. That does not make it more of a symbol, but it does make it easy to spot the assholes. Which is not what the OK sign is being used to represent, except in an ironic way it really is. But I digress….

Of course, now that the cat is out of the bag, the OK symbol IS a sign for “White Power” or could be, or at least is an ambiguous one, so anything can happen from here on out. I’m just not sure this use was there before a few days ago when Twitter invented it.

And, the reason for this is that the OK hand gesture looks like something, or more importantly, looks like a lot of things. A bottle coming to the mouth, a bottle on the nose because you are so drunk, an eye (evil or otherwise), a zero, a three, an “O” or a “P”. A coin or an asshole. Probably more.

So, yes, a “black power” gesture looks to someone in Hong Kong like a declaration of “Zero!” That sign isn’t in as much trouble as “OK” because the meaning “black power” is regional, and the use of the fist is regional. But it is another example of something indexical (a fist meaning power is very indexical, maybe even partly iconic) and thus, not truly symbolic, and thus, limited as a fully powered linguistic thing.

Don’t get me started on this one:

So here, I’m going to invite you to do something a little strange. I’ve got here an audio recording of Adolf Hitler having a normal conversation (about extraordinary things) with a fancy dude by the name of Mannerheim, during a visit to Mannerheim at the time of his birthday. Wikipedia has the story on the audio recording. Here, it is presented as a YouTube video so you can follow who is speaking, and what is being said.

The reason to listen to this for a few minutes (no need to listen to the whole thing, though if you know anything about WW II, it may become captivating after a while) is because Hitler almost always screamed at his audience, and this is him speaking in a normal voice. I want to pair this audio experience with a linguistic but read experience. After listening to the audio recording with Mannerheim, read through the transcript of Hitler’s only other known “conversational” bit of significance.

There is a recording of that as well. It is a speech but one in which he speaks normally for much of the time. The point here, though, is not to listen to it to get the voice experience (but that is interesting) but to read his words. To hear how he formulates his statements, how he describes his situation. How he aggrandizes himself in the face of failure, how he belittles his enemy. How he schizophrenically moves between the gigantic and the modest, how he moves around his own goal posts as needed to make himself look big league smart.

Below you’ll find the two videos and the text. If either video vanishes (they do sometimes) you can easily relocate one on YouTube

The Mannerheim Recording:

The text of Hitler’s Stalingrad Speech:

If we follow our enemies’ propaganda, then I must say that is to be compared with “Rejoicing towards Heaven, depressed until Death”‘ The slightest success anywhere, and they literally turn somersaults in joy. They have already destroyed us, and then the page turns and again they are cast down and depressed. I did not want to attack in the center, not only because Stalin knew I would. I provide one such example. If you read the Russian telegrams every day since June 22nd, they say the following each day: “Fighting of unimportant character”. Or maybe of important character. “We have shot down three times as many German planes. The amount of sunken tonnage is already greater than the entire naval tonnage, of all the German tonnage from before.” They have so many of us missing that this amounts to more divisions than we can ever muster. But, above all, they are always fighting in the same place. “Here and there”, they say modestly, “after fourteen days we have evacuated the city.” But, in general, since June 22nd they have been fighting in the same place. Always successful, we are constantly being beaten back. And in this continued retreat we have slowly come to the Caucasus.

I should say that for our enemies, and not for your soldiers, that the speed at which our soldiers have now traversed territory is gigantic. And what has transcribed this past year is vast and historically unique. Now, I do not always do things just as others want them done. I consider what the other probably believe and then do the opposite on principle. So, if I did not want to attack in the center, not only because Mr. Stalin probably believed I would, but because I didn’t care about it at all. But I wanted to come to the Volga, to a specific place and a specific city. it happened to have Stalin’s name, but that’s not why I went there. It could have had another name.

But, now this is a very important point. Because from here comes 30 millions tons of traffic, including about nine millions tons of oil shipments. From there the wheat pours in from these enormous territories of the Ukraine and from the Kuban region then to be transported north. From here comes magnesium ore. A gigantic terminal is there and I wanted to take it. But, as you know, we are modest. That is to say that we have it now. Only a few small pockets of resistance are left. Some would say “Why not fight onwards?” Because I don’t want a second Verdun! I would rather hold this with small combat patrols! Time does not matter, no ships are coming up the Volga! That is the important point.

Hitler’s Speech, 8 November, 1942:

Probably not. But it turns out that the reason, if the following video is accurate, is interesting.

I have two questions for the historical linguists in the room. First, is there a name for this rhymification effect? Is is common? Is it confined to certain regions or cultures? Is it linked to Cockney in some way?

OK, that was a lot of questions, but really, all the same question. My second one is simpler: Where does the phrase “Swinging dick” come in? It is a Britishism for, I think, Square Mile money managers and investors. According to something I saw on TV once.