eNZed -- more unknown unknowns

eNZed -- more unknown unknowns (things you didn’t know you didn’t know) There are no “official” dates for seasons, but most developed countries use the solstices and equinoxes as starting dates. New Zealand’s news media have dumbed-down the season starts to the beginning of the months. Summer should begin on December 22nd but was heralded as beginning on December 1st. That three-week shift can make quite a difference to the temperatures in some years. Still the old joke applies that “We don’t have a climate, we just have weather.” Even though the seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth on its axis, it happens that the Earth is closest to the sun in January and farthest in June. Our spring and summer are nine days shorter than the northern hemisphere’s, but we are 4% closer to the sun in January so we get 7% more sunlight! and more -- Some New Zealanders go to their bach (occasionally batch) during the holidays, others to their crib. Southerners are more likely to call it a crib, but to the rest of New Zealand it is a bach. It all depends on your age and where you’re from. If a child got caught skipping school, their parents would tell them off for “wagging”, but teenagers would say they got in trouble for “bunking”. For the place you go to watch a film, some people 40 and over said they go to ‘the pictures. But younger people said they went to ‘the movies’ -- 80% of people aged 30 or younger. ‘Movie’ might look like an Americanism, but some respondents made a distinction between a movie as a thing to watch and a cinema as the place to watch them, so it may be that cinema will be around for a while yet. As for ‘French fries’ and ‘potato chips’, I throw up my hands. In the phrase ‘fush ‘n chups’, we all know what is meant. It looks as if older speakers use ‘crisps’ and, to some extent, ‘potato chips’ (for potato chips) -- but ‘chips’ is winning out with the younger speakers over ‘chippies’ and ‘potato chips’. (culled from The New Zealand Herald and the Otago Daily Times) (???) (BUT, how do you signify ‘French fries’ … hot chips? fries?) other news: 1) my new New Zealand passport has now visited the mother country (UK), Brussels, Singapore and Paris and 2) I can now say “Happy Christmas” (for “Merry … “) without it feeling as if I am speaking a foreign language