Antarctic English

["PRADERIO, LAURA" <PRADERLA -dot- MCMURDO -at- MCMURDO -dot- GOV>]

okay-i like what george hayhoe says about dialects.

i recall from a linguistics class at northeastern university that there
are 27 (around there) distinct dialects in the american english language.
so the language varies (we are lucky for that)--who cares if it varies in
the spoken medium? if we are so concerned with proper english-then we
fail down here in antarctica too. here are some of the proper english
words used down here:

a herbie=a big storm coming from "herbie alley" which is a valley in the
transantarctic mountains. when someone tells you that a herbie is coming,
you have about two hours to get inside. (fyi-last year or the year
before, one of the other bases lost a guy 30 yards from his building
during a similar-type storm.)

skua'd=any article left behind from previous summer or winter-over
workers to be passed onto the next group. you have to get there first to
get the good stuff.

cheech=christchurch, new zealand. i believe we got this from the navy.

toasty=the mental state of a winter-over before leaving the ice.

siffle=a mild version of the mcmurdo crud (a nasty virus that gets passed
around and around).

ice marriages & sidewalk divorces=married on the ice, divorced upon
hitting the sidewalk in cheech.

so-in some cases, you have to learn the new language or you could be in
trouble.
learning a new vocabulary,
laura praderio

mcmurdo station, antarctica
praderla -dot- mcmurdo -at- mcmurdo -dot- gov