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What a palaver!

The other day my website and blog were both down. I wrote to the guys at Kazix (who have very English names when they write back, but who are clearly not native English speakers, and obviously use false names), and they got my website up and running again.

There were still problems with my blog, however. To cut a long story short, I eventually — after about a whole day of trying to sort it out — managed to get it up and running again by reinstalling WordPress and importing a backup copy.

Two problems: my most recent posts had disappeared, and all accented characters were in bizarre code. After at least an hour reading about all sorts of very complicated solutions, I eventually found this wonderful, easy-to-use plugin, which sorted everything out except the names of my categories, which was quick enough to sort out manually.

My only remaining problem were the missing posts, but I managed to sort this out by finding the posts in Google’s cache, which meant I was even able to recover all the comments made.

Hopefully my blog is now back in order. If anyone spots any remaining anomalies, please let me know, and I’ll try and sort them out.

Finally, I would love to hear proposed translations of “palaver”. Off the cuff, the best I can come up with in Catalan and Spanish are “embolic” and “rollo” respectively, though I’m sure some natives can come up with something better. Also, according to my dictionary, it means something completely different in American English (see below), so what would you say in America?

OALD
pa•la•ver noun (informal)
1 [U, sing.] (BrE) a lot of unnecessary activity, excitement or trouble, especially caused by sth that is unimportant. Syn: fuss. What’s all the palaver about? What a palaver it is, trying to get a new visa!
2 [U] (NAmE) talk that does not have any meaning; nonsense: He’s talking palaver.

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2 thoughts on “What a palaver!

  1. In Spanish, I’d probably call the “British palaver” a “follón” or something similar. The North American usage cited above is a definition I’ve always associated more with British Polari than with American English, but apparently the term had its day here in the States as well. According to the 1977 edition of the Funk & Wagnall’s Standard College Dictionary, “palaver” means:

    n.
    1. Empty talk, especially that intended to flatter or deceive.
    2. A public discussion or conference.
    3. Originally, a parley with native or aboriginal inhabitants, as by explorers.

    v.t.
    1. To flatter; cajole.

    v.i.
    2. To talk idly and at length.

    Related form: palaverer (n.)

    Ya larn somethin every day. :)

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