UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

My word -- the queen's English is slipping

LONDON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A university study of English phonetics has determined Queen Elizabeth's spoken English has gradually lost its upper class tone since 1952.

Jonathan Harrington, professor of phonetics at the University of Munich and author of the study, told The Telegraph he used the queen's annual Christmas addresses to map out the gradual changes in spoken style.

"In 1952 she would have been heard referring to 'thet men in the bleck het.' Now it would be 'that man in the black hat,'" Harrington said. "Similarly, she would have spoken of the 'citay' and 'dutay,' rather than 'citee' and 'dutee,' and 'hame' rather than 'home.' In the 1950s she would have been 'lorst' but by the 1970s 'lost.'"

Royal biographer Kenneth Rose agreed the queen's accent had changed.

"She has become definitely less upper class -- dropping an octave and coming nearer to her own 'Queen's English,' by which I mean nearer to standard English," Rose said.

China mulls ditching dragon as symbol

SHANGHAI, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A professor of public relations in Shanghai is working on a new national symbol for China, as he says the dragon is offensive to some cultures.

Wu Youfu, deputy president of the Shanghai Public Relations Association, told the Shanghai Morning Post said dragons can be seen as a symbol of "arbitrariness or offensiveness," which could lead to a negative effect on China.

He is leading the project is at the Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Shanghai, but would not say when a new symbol will be ready, nor would he hint at what it might be, the newspaper said.

Wu said it should portray the Chinese people's wishes for harmony and happiness, as well as the country's geographic and cultural variety.

However, some postings on Chinese Internet sites show unhappiness with the thought of replacing the dragon, with one of them saying "the dragon is a kind of mysterious and saintly animal, not a monster presenting arbitrariness."

Traditional Christmas cards still popular

CHICAGO, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Figures reported by Washington's Greeting Card Association indicate it's too early to sound the death knell for traditional Christmas cards.

Not long ago Internet pundits predicted electronic greeting cards would put paper ones out to pasture but that hasn't proved to be the case, The Chicago Tribune reported.

The Greeting Card Association says the novelty of e-cards is waning with only one e-card sent for every 20 traditional ones.

Hallmark Cards Inc. reports a decline in the number of free e-cards sent from its site while the number of paper cards purchased has remained stable at 1.9 billion for the past five years.

"Try putting an e-card on your mantel. Try pulling it out a year from now," Sue Lindstrom, founder of a chain of specialty paper and stationary stores based in Chicago, said to the Tribune.

French chefs create cuisine for space

PARIS, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency has engaged a team of France's leading chefs to create haute cuisine suitable for space.

Quails, swordfish and duck are among the delicacies that were put together at the catering school in southwest France run by top chef Alain Ducasse, The Times of London reports.

Ducasse, who has earned 14 Michelin stars, was asked to produce outstanding examples of French cuisine that could be canned and then reheated in the International Space Station's oven.

His team came up with a three-course menu that included quails in Madeira wine, sand carrots in orange and coriander and semolina cake with dried apricots.

Their creations were transported to the space station by an unmanned Russian cargo ship and sampled by the astronauts last week.

A spokesman for the space agency explained that taste buds are dulled in space, making even standard fare less tasty than it would be on Earth.

Your first name tells a lot about you

BALTIMORE, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Records kept by the U.S. Social Security Administration reveal that knowing someone's first name is a great clue to learning what decade they were born.

Popular names in the 1940s and 1950s were Mary, Linda and Lisa for girls and James, Robert and Michael for boys, The Baltimore Sun reports.

Those names didn't even make the Top 10 list last year when popular names for girls were Emily, Olivia and Madison and for boys were Jacob, Christopher and Ethan.

Susan Bartolini, a school nurse in Baltimore, says she meets a lot of children with names that could be either male or female such as Taylor, Alex and Sydney.

Since the 1970s, picking unusual names has been a trend in black communities, especially for girls.

Researcher Steven Levitt writes in Freakonomics that nearly 30 percent of black infant girls are given a name that is unique among every baby born that year in California.