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 A very good afternoon to you Roly.
 Good afternoon sir.
 Mm good to have you on board. Now Roly.
 I was I was listening with pleasure to to Tasmania taking things to W A in the cricket. That's heading in the right direction.
 Yeah well we're on top of the table at the moment. We've we had two outright victories so far which is  a great start although um they've certainly uh got a battle on their hands in this particular match.
 Yeah  but but there is I mean Americans call cricket baseball on valium and just don't understand it.
 Nah baseball's pretty slow. I've been to the baseball in America and it's it's not a fast game it can be pretty slow and you might only get three or four runs in the in an  entire game so.
 Whereas cricket has a certain measured elegance and then you get names like remember John Arlott and   and Alan McGilvray and the great commentators of the past uh I think uh allows one to appreciate things over several days which is not the sort of thing that you would find in any other sport nowadays.
 No there's certainly uh well al although cricket's losing that a little too but there's  certainly that gentile um factor that uh that that  comes into play there mm.
 Tea and cucumber sandwiches in the tent behind the village hall.
 Absolutely lovely  don't mind if  I do. Alright have you got a teaser for us.
 Yeah you'll like got you a stack of them actually. Some of these are quite easy but they're interesting if you don't happen to know them. What is the link between your salary and salt.
 Mm okay salary and salt alright the link   mkay m  mine's worth about a pound of it I think that's  the link in my case.
 Depends on the value of salt which  actually is part of the story as well.
 Okay.
 Ah last week someone asked about a Scouse phrase okeone or O K E O N E. Absolutely no trace of that I'm afraid I had drew a complete blank.
 Oh that's right O K E uh O N E.
 That's right  and it just didn't come up anywhere. Um on the other hand Jeff wanted to know about having a lend of someone or pulling someone's leg.  To have a lend of someone is recorded from the nineteen-tens uh Jonathan Green has it in the Cassells Dictionary of Slang and it means to treat someone like a fool. Um the pulling someone's leg is a nineteenth century story   and there are all sorts of variants. Apparently if you were a pickpocket and you wanted to um to   disrupt someone so that you could get at their pocket you might grab them by the leg and bring them down uh y'know alley thieves tripping people up so that they could rifle through their pockets.
 Sure.
 But this is is plausible it is it is not scientific fact and no one is entirely certain so I'm a I'm afraid I've got a an inconclusive answer there as well but that's how it came about   they reckon . I now have a question about tillies.
 Tillies.
 Mm uh the British in the fifties uh had a the army had a need for some cut down cars that could carry things from A to B so Austin Hillman and Singer there are names from the past for  you um made a sort of heavy duty pickup version of their of their sedans and these were called tillies from utility. Bit unusual because you take the s middle syllable of the word and put ies on the end   um but I have reports of tilly being used instead of ute in Australia and there are three pockets of tilly one of them is at Rockhampton Central Queensland second one is on the Darling Downs west of here from about Warwick Allora Dalby over the border down into Lismore   and there's another pocket of tillies in Hobart.
 Really.
 What I want to know is   do any of the listeners use tilly or have they used tilly in the past for utility do they still do so and can they give us place and time because this looks like an odd distribution. Certainly ute is winning hands down nowadays  but the tilly has been around in the past.
 You wonder how these little pockets emerge don't you I guess uh very strong uh English uh migration population .
 Possibly but I n I've got some references to tilly from Dalby in the thirties which is well before the Brits started. So maybe they picked up the term from Australian servicemen who were in Britain   and then proceeded to make their tillies   uh as while we were chopping off the backs of Holdens 'n' things and making utes.
 Could be.
 Right golf.
 Mm.
 You a golfer sir.
 Ah i ish yes I have played yes I I not regularly but I have yes.
 On a scale of one to ten that sounds like about two point seven.
 Yes it's  about that too. It's more for the  social aspect it's more for the beer afterwards I like what it leads to.
 Oh I see  you're a you're a nineteenth green person.
 Oh definitely yes.
 Okay well the name golf uh originally and often pronounced in Scottish English gowf G O W F   there�s even a n club in Ayrshire which calls itself a gowfclub G O W F   but uh one of the listeners got hold of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews   and uh asked them about golf 'n' when it was first ah noted   the there�s a Dutch word   cowf C O W F meaning club and so they think that that was where the the name from. In fourteen-fifty-seven James the Second banned golf 'n' football because people weren't doing their archery practice  please I like that.
 Yes.
 But some of the words from golf have odd histories. Link was the strip of land between the sea and agricultural land. So I suppose that was something that you could use for sporting purposes without disrupting either the fishermen or the farmers. Uh bogey comes from a mythical amateur golfer who was supposed to bogey things. Par   uh French and Latin word for average ah came into use round about eighteen-ninety-one. Birdies eagles and albatrosses. In the US who which took up golf with avidity   there was a phrase in the late nineteenth century a bird of a shot meaning a very good one and that's where they got birdie from and once you had one avian representative you also got eagles and albatrosses.
 Mm.
 A fore   is probably from the word forecaddie   who was someone who went ahead to mark the lie of the ball where the lord of the manor had uh mishit as it were.
 So he would yell  you would yell fore to the caddy to warn him.
 Well that's what happened later. But the forecaddie was someone who went fore   and um caddy is from French cadet C A D E T meaning young   the younger son joined the army and many caddies were ex army people looking for a job. So the caddy is someone who is younger and went around looking for the lie of the ball or later on carrying the clubs of milord. So golf has has a a a rather interesting and very well focused group of words which uh grew up over the years and uh the Royal and Ancient Club   St Andrews is now the home of golf as you know.
 Very rich heritage. Barry from Sandy Bay g'day Barry.
 Ah good afternoon gentlemen. Uh Roly a few weeks ago you were talking about the derivation of Australian nicknames uh  there's one common name that you don't  much these days but uh ih in when I was a youngster lots of men were called spoog or sproggy and they used to refer  to their children as their their sprogs uh   I think that it's parti uh peculiarly Australian it's as I I haven't uh come across it despite inquiry in uh Britain or or the States but I I had a couple of friends at school called sproggy.
 Yeah I remember that too   um there is a dialectal word sprag I think which means lively young man sort of something like that uh but I haven't heard that for y for a long time. Wh where did you go to school Barry.
 In Melbourne
 Melbourne okay so did I. So   Trevor did they use sprog in  New South Wales.
 Not in my time no not sproggy no or s uh sprog yes I heard sprogs but not sproggy no.
 Okay and to and to sprog was a verb oh you know someone sprogging means they're getti giving birth to.
 Oh okay okay.
 So yeah thank you for reminding me Barry I'll see if I can find a bit more but the dictionary last time I checked said orig uncert  which means they don't know where it came from.
 Ok Barry  thank you for your call  Barry's gone obviously. Anne from Garden River g'day Anne.
 Um good afternoon gentlemen um tilly.
 Yes.
 Uh I was in the Wrens oh a long time ago and if ever we were to go out uh uh to sort of see something special you know just a a small group of us  we would get in a tilly van.
 Uh it was called a tilly van.
 Tilly van yes.
 Okay date roughly when.
 Oh date um I�ll have to do some mathematics hang on um forty years ago.
 Okay mm minus forty this is interesting and what can you tell us what a tilly van was like.
 Well it was just like a small bus really um  I think it seats about   oh twenty people  twentyish people maybe thirty but it was like a small bus.
 And this was in England.
 In England yes.
 Mm which part of.
 Uh uh   w w w what where I was in the navy was in the south.
 Mhm okay  because sometimes these things are fairly local this sounds as if they've picked up the word tilly from the earlier use in the fifties   and then extended it to apply to a particular sort of ah additional type of vehicle like a van.
 Mm it was a Naval  airbase I remember that.
 Naval airbase . South Hampton or someplace .
 H M S Gamecock I remember that much but I I just truly can't remember where it was I wasn't really happy at the time um  so memories didn't s sort of cling.
 I'll be able to find out about the Gamecock because there's a very nice Royal Navy website which has all of these things on it.
 Uhuh well Gamecock  was the was the ah name of the place and sprog that comes from England I think too because it was like a uh uh um   not a very nice name for s for a child you know  a derogatory sort of uh uh title for a child.
 Yes we used to use it in Melbourne I I heard it when I was living in New Zealand and  I've also I'm certain heard it in London . It was s slightly disreputable you know it sort of.
 That's right that's right .
 If there was actually .
 You know someone might be giving birth in an upper-class hospital but they were sprogging away  if they had a midwife or something yeah.
 Yeah yeah.
 Thank you Anne.
 Thank you.
 Of course you were never referred to as a sprog were you Roly.
 Uh probably  I was referred to as lots of things.
 Sixteen minutes to three on nine-three-six A B C Hobart Trevor Jackson with Roly Sussex this afternoon Lance from West Hobart g'day Lance.
 Hello Trevor hello Roly.
 Hello there.
 Hello.
 Uh Roly I come from a generation where salt was still put into the cellars the s and the little spoons and one of my jobs to get pocket money was once a week I had to roll the ah heavy salt with a glass rolling pin and they added corn flour  to it  in those days somebody worked their bloody guts out was called worth their salt which I think  could be from the old word salarium meaning salary eh.
 You got the whole thing.
 Nah.
.
 With one small little bit left out the Roman soldiers used to be paid in salt  and that was   that's right 'n' that was where the uh the orig word the word originally came from and salt was a commodity which was very expensive and worthwhile.
 Yeah that's why you  sat be you sat below or above the salt  if you were worth the money you were above the salt and uh but I can remember once that uh   at the Governor General's residence seeing salt cellar and little s uh I'm sorry uh  uh what's the word cru cruet sets for every  person in front of them so there'd be no ab absolutely no way that anybody feel out of uh according.
 Out of place  because if you were above the salt the salt was in the middle of the table 'n' milord and so were sat on one side and the and the underlings to the other. But you're dead right about salt and it w wasn't I think until the nineteenth century when they found out ways of making salt in large quantities cheaply that it became less valuable than it had been before.
 I I I've got this funny idea but we had to earn our X amount per week. It was sixpence to go to the pictures then you had to have your money for your bubblegum and your pence  for the icecream but one of the other things I had to do was to mix up the whiting and do the front stairs.
 Oh okay.
 Oh yes . Now that's another  another task that has now sinh  long since gone.
 There's other people who more than likely have better stories  than that .
 Oh no this ih this is good stuff.
 Thank you very much.
 No its great Lance  thank you Lance. Thirteen-hundred-thirty-six-seventeen-hundred is the number. Yes young people don't know how good they've got it today Roly do they.
 They don't they don't. Trevor I've another one. What is the connection between pollution and malaria.
 Pollution and malaria  okay. Pollution and malaria. That's Roly's second teasier teaser for this afternoon. If you think you know it thirteen-hundred-thirty-six-seventeen-hundred. Pauline from Kingston hello Pauline.
 Oh good afternoon gentlemen. Um it was just you talking about sprogs. My husband was in the Royal Navy in the late fifties and early sixties about the time that Queen Elizabeth was having her second family and they used it slightly derogatory when they sort of spliced the main brace after   um she gave birth they got extra tots of rum but they weren't very you know polite about the sprog but that's what they said you know  they used .
 Okay thank you  sprog in the navy.
 You know navy from  they were down the South Coast they were based down at Portsmouth or Plymouth  mm   okay.
 Thank you for sprog.
 Alright Pauline. No thank you very much . John John from Mornington hello John.
 Hello. Um sproggy. Um  I heard it used in the late forties early fifties uh by a person from South Australia referring to a sparrow uh sorry a starling.
 Oh   mm alright we don't have starlings up here. I shall have to do a little bit of work on this one.
 Starlings  everywhere except for Western Australia.
 Yeah well they may be but not not where I live . Um starling spadger sparrow mm alright thank you f I I've going to have to do a bit of homework on that one.
 Mm.
 Alright John. Thrown a bit of a spanner in Roly's works that's good to see .
 Okay.
 Thank you Trevor.
 Keep the man on his toes  thirteen-hundred-thirty-six-seventeen-hundred for language talkback Alan from Midway Point. G'day Alan.
 Uh the malaria means bad air whi which they thought it might be caused by bad air before they found out what caused it.
 That's before anopheles was discovered yep you're dead right particularly the swamps of ancient Rome and such places which were apparently very good   as uh   places where malaria would grow so mal aria is Latin or in Italian actually .
 Bad air.
 Bad air.
 Well done. Thank you Alan.
 That was a bit of of medical bad diagnosis.
 Thanks Alan thanks for the call. Have you got a another teaser Roly.
 Alright what's a link . This one is a bit more obscure. The link between typhoid and smoking.
 Typhoid and smoking alright.
 Mhm.
 Okay. This is fun I like this. Thirteen-hundred-thirty-six-seventeen-hundred  is the number if you've got uh an inkling of what uh Roly's teaser might be the link between typhoid and smoking.


 Trevor Jackson with Roly Sussex this afternoon on nine-three-six A B C Hobart thirteen-hundred-thirty-six-seventeen-hundred is the number. Roly a scholar and a gentleman.
 Yes and my thanks to Neil Kurtz from Rose Bay in Tasmania   who sent me some very interesting information. Um Burns had it round the other way a gentleman and scholar and his poem The Twa Dogs two dogs   Wordsworth in The Prelude had scholars and gentlemen and Partridge in his Dictionary of Catchphrases   has this lovely phrase a gentleman and a scholar and a fine judge of whiskey.  A good man.  And C C Colton a man I didn't know about in a um poem called Lacon uh has the phrase a gentleman by nature and a scholar by education   and one of my listeners has sent me a a lovely story from Punch the alas defunct magazine a uh officer turns up at a hotel   announces himself at the reception desk and the receptionist rings up to a young lady   and says there's a scholar and a gentleman for you madam and she says send them both up.
 Fair enough. Colin from Lauderdale. G'day Colin.
 Yeah good afternoon uh both of you. Uh the word  sprog recalls some distant memories. Um in the late fifties middle late fifties I was doing National Service in the in the R A F in Britain  and sprog was commonly used then to mean someone who'd just arrived to start their service in other words they hadn't done very much at this point they were very green and uh the new guys were sprogs.
 Okay that one I didn't know and this was the R A F.
 The R A F yes National Service  Britain late fifties.
 Seems to be very common the armed services doesn't it.
 But n yeah but nev.
 It does indeed.
 I never I've never heard sproggy. It was always a sprog a new sprog.
 Yeah the sproggy bit mm unless it means starling which I'm going to have to find out about. Um do you happen to know whether it was used in the other services.
 No I don't   no  I can only comment it from my own experience which was Royal Airforce Britain  late fifties.
 Gradually getting a picture of it though thank you  very much.
 Thank you Colin.
 Good-o .
 Okay.
 Bye.
 Now Roly you want to talk about hyphens today as well.
 I'm I'm absolutely burning up to talk about hyphens  yes . Um a  a listener in South Australia said look we've got antemeridian which is one word but post-meridian which is hyphenated and you've got anti-establishment which is hyphenated but antidisestablishmentarianism which is not. What's going on. Ah in times like this turn to Pam Peters's lovely book Australian English Style Guide   and what follows is is largely taken from her. There are three levels of combining words you can have them totally separate you can have them hyphenated or they can be joined. And on the whole the Americans join things and on the whole the Brits tend not to and half-way house is a hyphen. Generally speaking if a word oh sorry if two words come together and create something which now has a new meaning like runoff as of rain   then it will be written as one word. But lots of others   are hyphenated and the question is when. Well first of all if you get to the end of a line and there's no room for what you want to write you do a hyphen   and the rule is generally break before one consonant between two and after   one and before the next two I think that's right. I have to think about that one. Occasionally   you need a hyphen to separate meanings like re-cover and recover   right you wouldn't want to get those two mixed up so the hyphen actually emphasises that the re is to be added to the meaning of cover  rather than to form a new word recover which is now a meaning on its own. You can have prefixes and roots like counter-terrorist hyphenated you can have root plus root doorjamb and you can have roots joined up which don't actually stand on their own like agri doesn't stand by its own but agribusiness one word   is okay. There are a couple of odd things um   if you've got a word which includes some different typography in other words something like um F B T for Fringe Benefit Tax uh then if you are anti-F B T you'd be anti hyphen F B T you wouldn't  want to mix lower case and upper case in the one word.
 Mm
 But then you got co and ex. If the C O words are old like coexist they're one word. If they're newer like co-author they tend to be hyphenated. This is getting worse 'n' worse 'n' worse. And if you have a verb like to babysit that tends to be one word   but sometimes hyphenated but if you've got a babysitter that's almost always one word. Not baby hyphen sitter but babysitter.
 So do you think the newer words uh have the hyphens simply because or or  the older words don't simply because we've been writing them so long we get a little bit lazy and we just end up joining them.
 It's not so much lazy as I think they've established themselves as having a particular meaning which is not just the joining of the two bits   but for example amoral is not just non moral but it suggests some certain sorts of behaviour which cluster together   and so amoral is taken as a piece and you don't think of it as being compositional or made up of two separate bits . And uh whereas uh more recent words which have been coined and are sitting there like gift-wrap for example   that's fairly recent and so that is hyphenated   barefoot has been around for a long long time and so that's one word  um open-door policy open hyphen door policy I would've thought um and sometimes if you get a phrase which is used always in the same way like an equal opportunity employer you just write the words separately. So there are a   there are some regularities for example editor-in-chief that would always be hyphens mother-in-law is always hyphens but notice that the modifiers the in chief and in law actually follow. So I do recommend either the A G P S Style Guide that's the Australian Government Publishing Service   or Pam Peters uh on the um uh Australian English Usage or if you like dear old Fowler. Now they all talk about this and the answer to the question is no when not when do I use a hyphen is um there are some cases which are two le two words there are some which are one word 'n' there are lots which are vacillating in between with hyphens.
 Indeed.
 Sorry to be indecisive . In hyphen decisive.
 Roger from Lindisfarne. G'day Roger.
 G'day. Just to fill you in on the sprogs   the British army nineteen-fifties early sixties certainly used  that term for ru recruits.
 New recruits yes.
 Yep so  that  helps to pad out the picture for you.
 Indeed so we now have army and airforce navy people please pick up the phone.
 Okay.
 Okay goodbye.
 Alright thank you Roger  yes and uh Carol's just given me a message uh Roly that someone else from the armed forces has uh phoned the A B C switchboard ah from Portsmouth to say that yeah  sprog same thing. Leon from uh.
 Portsmouth England or Portsmouth Tasmania.
 Portsmouth Tasmania . England . There you go. I've just got a nod of the head there. Okay Leon good afternoon. Leon who's not from Portsmouth hello Leon are you there. No we don't seem to have Leon Carol you might try 'n' see if we can get Leon back. Uh yes it's gunna be very interesting you've started something with sprog now haven't you.
 Well yes it wasn't entirely me either. And off we go. Uh tillies people. Surely someone must use tilly in Tasmania.
 Yes um we haven't had uh we only had uh from the the lady who was in stationed in in England at the time .
 That's right and forget not typhoid and smoke  I want to know about the link.
 You're a you're absolutely certain that tillies was used here.
 Oh yeah  and uh I I listeners being absolutely certain and collaborating each sh corroborating each other uh are these three little pockets Rockhampton the Darling Downs and Hobart.
 Mm okay thirteen-hundred-thirty-six-seventeen-hundred is our number you wanna be quick 'cos we've only got a little bit of time left on the program this afternoon uh any more homework Roly.
 Uh not really I think the there there oh yeah I've got a couple of bits. Um Osheania  Oseania  Osheana  um there's a word foliage which tends to come out as folage  not with Peter Cundell but then he's A B C and Tasmania so he'd get it right but Oseania  has been coming out as Oseana this is the soccer stuff recently. Um yeah it seems to be hard to say and there are a few other   other examples of it as well. Ah another little bit that I picked up the the term master and slave which is used in computer um speak for a particular type of typology of networks is now no longer kosher in Tasmania. Uh the words uh have unfortunate associations and the computer geeks have gotta find something else.
 Fair enough. Jim from Glenorchy.
 Oh g well . I'm ringing up about the Tilley. It's not  not the ute but we used to use Tilley lanterns when we went camping.
 Ah yeah that's a different Tilley that's a a maker's name for those kerosene pressure lanterns.
 Oh right yeah yeah  oh well yeah I just thought they might've been you know like in the old days where you went   out on manoeuvres in the in the little ute or  whatever the tilly ute and used a Tilley lamp.
 Uh right uh it's a good idea but I'm afraid  in this case  it doesn't work.
 I'm off the track.
 Alright Jim.
 Rightio .
 Yes .
 Okay  uh thirteen-hundred-thirty-six-seventeen-hundred is our number. Tilly well no takers on that perhaps by the program next week we might hear from that. Uh if you've missed any s any particular aspect of the program today W W W dot A B C dot net dot A U uh slash uh Hobart tt and uh just check the links through the afternoon program and you will find uh today's language talkback session. Now Roly you do have a last word for us today before we go.
 Yes there was a piece in the Brisbane Courier Mail which said the emotion over the decision that's giving Sachin Tendulkar out will louden the call for further technology . And one of the listeners has sent me a poem.


 Thanks to Ray Kelly .
. And thanks y thank you Roly Sussex.