It is nice to see that Jocelynne, although adhering to her incoherent and confused style, has written about something of no importance.

The danger of her writing about a matter of any consequence is that someone may take her seriously.

There was some amusement in seeing her take fraudulent spam as an example of genuine communication.

Houellebecq, you are behind the times: it is now 'Shtraya'. We shed the 'L', add an 'H', which also appears in 'shtudent', 'shtreet' and 'shtraight'. Lara Bingle should come out of retirement to ask 'Where's the bl**dy L?' Its vanished from dubbayew, meeyonair, and the end of words like medal, and sometimes the middle of words too, as in 'gowd medaww'. And its not just occurring in Australia: if you listen to the theme song from the latest James Bond film you will hear the incomparable Adele singing 'Skyfawww'.

>>Houellebecq, you are behind the times: it is now 'Shtraya'. We shed the 'L', add an 'H', which also appears in 'shtudent', 'shtreet' and 'shtraight'.<<

Are you sure you're not just hearing impaired? Or associating too much with drunkards? Because I for one haven't noticed a common tendency for sober people to slur like this.

Cheers,

Tony

I suspect the author is so bored by the legal jargon she's obliged to digest, her only outlet is to become a pedant. Though frankly, Orwell she ain't.
The problem with this kind of pedantic critique, apart from it's being the province of conservative men (Orwell wasn't the radical he thought he was), is it suggests that all's well with the world--apart from common parlance. I'd advise the author to read Nabokov, who was a master at gilding the realist lily. The way to write a great contemporary novel is to keep the dialogue puerile (realistic) and the scene setting sophisticated. To be honest, that's our modern reality: idiots waxing lyrical within transcendent situations.
What is it about our society that breeds maleloquence? that's the question.
Jocelynne would have us all pontificate shrewdly, as if that's all that was wanting.
Nothing like keeping up appearances.

Not drunkards, Tony, though they sound like it, and I've definitely heard 'Shtraya' more times than I care to. Mostly from the young, many seem to work for the ABC, which seems to have thrown in the towel when it comes to spoken Australian English if the sloppy enunciation, pronunciation and grammar in current affairs reports and the radio news are anything to go by. The standard of spoken English on the TV news is better, probably because they're going head to head with other stations in the evening. And I'm not hearing impaired although sometimes I wish I couldn't hear the mauling of the language.

My favourites with their ABC is on the weather forcast, they always tell us about Non Tisa. I think it is a large town in western Qld.

The other is when they start telling us there is less ice in the Ant-Tart-tic. I believe that is further south.