This probably came from a country with transliterations that don't line up very well in English. Like Japanese doesn't have an English r, so one of the ways they do it is to elongate a vowel and alarm would become alaamu. But sometimes they have a long vowel with no r, like smoke is sumo-oku.
When they go to write in English it's not clear whether that long vowel represents an r or not, and they chose to add it in smoke and drop it in alarm. I still run across a smorking room from time to time.
Someone in Hull told me that they had a door-to-door salesman selling "smirk alarms".
6
fakeman_pretendname @feddit.uk - 17hr
Some years back, there was a "toad trail" in Hull - one of those things where there's 100 sculptures installed around the city, each painted by a different artist, school or group.
Anyway, the vowel shift in Hull that turns "smoke" into "smirk" gave us the joyous sentence:
"I'm off into town to go and see all the brightly coloured turds"
4
elephantium @lemmy.world - 15hr
Ehrmagerd!
4
Sundray - 16hr
"Relax, they're not talking about us. It's a false alarm."
ickplant in lemmyshitpost @lemmy.world
I'm definitely giggling
Whoa-oh black Betty
alamdalam
smorks your alarm
You know what? Screw you!
Unsmorks your alam
This probably came from a country with transliterations that don't line up very well in English. Like Japanese doesn't have an English r, so one of the ways they do it is to elongate a vowel and alarm would become alaamu. But sometimes they have a long vowel with no r, like smoke is sumo-oku.
When they go to write in English it's not clear whether that long vowel represents an r or not, and they chose to add it in smoke and drop it in alarm. I still run across a smorking room from time to time.
https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages-cdn.9gag.com%2Fphoto%2Fav0n8xb_700b.jpg
Why is this so funny?
Engrish
This makes perfect sense in Leeds
Someone in Hull told me that they had a door-to-door salesman selling "smirk alarms".
Some years back, there was a "toad trail" in Hull - one of those things where there's 100 sculptures installed around the city, each painted by a different artist, school or group.
Anyway, the vowel shift in Hull that turns "smoke" into "smirk" gave us the joyous sentence:
Ehrmagerd!
"Relax, they're not talking about us. It's a false alarm."
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTIwNzMyZDktNGZjMy00OTNkLWE0NGUtZTVkOGQ2MmE0OTAxXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,48,500,281_.jpg
I saw a “NO SMORKING” sign on Engrish dot com circa 2001 or so
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ca73c12f-1ea7-4c36-b28a-bc1e05f8815c.webp
This is the picture that randomly pops into my head and makes me start cry laughing no matter what I’m doing. It just gets me.
That isn't smork it's stream, stream from the streamed clams we're having
Alam go face
i just wanna put a useless switch in there