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Bus driver fights with a kid

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Mr. Tom  +  923738 Wed, 30 Sep 09 09:11 PM

 My sincere thanks to all of you.

 

Could you please also explain what the speaker means by a lardy sweat-bucket of a bus driver ?

 

Tom
Mr. Tom
Joined on Sun, Feb 4 2007
Regular Member 710
Tom
spaced_man  +  923862 Wed, 30 Sep 09 11:06 PM
Hi,


'a lardy sweat-bucket of a bus driver'


It's a not-so-polite comment on the bus driver's 'surplus' weight.  (He's calling the driver fat)


spaced
spaced_man
Joined on Thu, Sep 24 2009
Edinburgh, Scotland
New Member 19
A recovering prescriptivist
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Mr. Tom  +  924397 Thu, 01 Oct 09 02:43 PM

 Once again my thanks, Spaced-Man.

 

For anyone who is interested.

 

 

Tom
Mr. Tom
Mr. Tom  +  924423 Thu, 01 Oct 09 03:03 PM
 

 If you decide to listen to this, then do help me with these lines.

 

This guy is a burglar—a roman *** in the heart of Brazil

  The job ****.

 Unfortunately it’s the first bit of this half dressed, half way crook.

Getting stuck in the bars*****

 

Thanks,

Tom

 

 
Mr. Tom
Kooyeen  +  924713 Thu, 01 Oct 09 09:28 PM
Hey, MrTom, LOL!

You know I don't understand everything either (and especially if it's not the dialect I'm used to), so I just understand from the context. I tried listening to these pieces several times as an excercise, and here are my comments:


This guy is a burglar! A ??? in pants in the heart of Brasil.

I don't think he says "roman". Why roman? And then it doesn't sound exactly like that to me. The closest thing that makes sense I can imagine is "A rogue one", but again, I don't hear the w-sound and the g-sound, so I have no idea what it actually is. Phonemically, I think I hear "uh-row-ng-un" /ə rowŋ ən/ which makes no sense, LOL.


Unfortunately, it's the first bit that ??? this half-dressed, half ??? crook.

The first word, phonemically, sounded like "fox", and I thought it made no sense until I looked it up, and it seems it can also be a verb in BrE, which means "to confuse or deceive someone", so I guess it might make sense.

The second word sounds like it could be "half bait" or "half baked" to me, but I have no idea what they were trying to say.


Getting stuck in the bars on the way in.

Oh, this was easy (if I'm not wrong, LOL).


SUGGESTION: These kinds of excercises are actually pretty useful, I think they can help train our ears and improve listening skills, so I think it might be useful to post more of these in the future, but in a different section. Maybe in theaudio-and-pronunciation section?

Kooyeen
Joined on Thu, Dec 22 2005
Italy
Senior Member 4,969
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Mr. Tom  +  924722 Thu, 01 Oct 09 09:50 PM

Oh, thanks, Kooyeen for the effort. How about sharing more videos/clips in the same thread? It would be easier to follow?


Tom


PS: Where is Mr. Spaced Man?
Mr. Tom
Kooyeen  +  924739 Thu, 01 Oct 09 10:17 PM
Wait, LOL, this is ALREADY the right section! I though this was in the grammar section. Hehe.
Kooyeen
spaced_man  +  924946 Fri, 02 Oct 09 12:37 PM
Hello again.


Sorry for the delay. I was distracted by a horrendously written online encyclopedia. But, anyway . . .



"This guy is a burglar! A wrong 'un in pants in the heart of Brazil."


Wrong 'un means a person of bad character (although, it can also be used to describe a bad situation). It's a contraction of wrong one.



"The job's not astrophysics; you break in, you steal, you leave."


It's not astrophysics is a way of saying it's not difficult. More precisely, it's not as difficult as that attempt would appear to suggest.



"Unfortunately, it's the first bit that faults this half-dressed, half-baked crook."


Half-baked means foolish/stupid. Fox could be used in this sentence without changing the meaning, though it would be as foxes:


"Unfortunately, it's the first bit that foxes this half-dressed, half-baked crook."



Kooyeen was totally on the ball with the last one. Just incase I've thrown out another unknown colloquialism there, on the ball means correct. 



spaced
spaced_man
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Kooyeen  +  924988 Fri, 02 Oct 09 01:56 PM
Very interesting. Phonemes helped me a lot, but if I had known the expression "un" I might have understood correctly. From Longman: (BrE spoken) a short form of 'one', used to say that someone or something is good, bad etc.


As for "faults", I thought of that at first, but I discarded it for two reasons:

1) Longman didn't help me much and so it seemed the verb "fault" wasn't good there.

2) It might sound like "faults" in American English, but I was expecting a different vowel in that accent (a higher one, like the one in "thought" here: http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=thought&submit=Submit) And so I discarded this option too.


So are words like "not" and "nought" pronounced the same in that dialect? (Which I guess was from around London) Are those vowels merged?
Kooyeen
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