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Robocup Junior Australia – NSW Open 2012
On monday and Tuesday 20 and 21
August, four teams of boys set out for
the university of New South Wales to
take on the best the State has to offer in the
rescue and Premier rescue categories.
On monday, competing in the rescue Team
‘Caecilius & Co’, Harry Hart, David lowey,
matt Worden and louis Shapiro, and Team
‘Dumb, Dumber & Dumbezt’, Ben Clarke,
Toby royds and Charlie Bradford, put up a
strong performance, overcoming this year’s
short preparation period and patchy lighting
conditions to finish in the top half of the
leaderboard, to place 20th and 23rd from a
field of 53 teams.
On Tuesday team, ‘Heart racers’, Tom Gibbs,
Andrew malpass and richard frost, and
‘The Gruesome Twosome’, Alex Cunio and
Jacob Davis, contested the Premier rescue
category.
The ‘Gruesome Twosome’ suffered real
difficulties with their program which did not
seem to be able to cope with the conditions
in the Scientia building at all well. Nonthe
-less they persevered with last minute
tweaks and finished a creditable 10th.
The real stars of the show however were
the ‘Heart racers’. running a not fullydeveloped
program, they put in a rock-solid
performance. In round after round their
rono’s rave
Gotten
Suddenly ‘gotten’, for long considered
an Americanism and therefore un-
Australian, has become acceptable,
indeed common usage.
Thus ABC reporters, students at Cranbrook,
even members of my own immediate family
are saying ‘gotten’, as in ‘when I’d gotten to
Sydney’. until recently everyone said, ‘when
I’d got to Sydney.’ When I asked one of the
top academic Year 12 students about his use
of the word, he said he’d no idea it was an
Americanism. He hadn’t even noticed he was
using it.
‘for God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life’ (John 3:16).
five times this phrase, ‘only begotten’, is used
in the king James Bible version of the Gospel
of St John. In the old Book of Common
Prayer, the Nicene Creed refers to Christ as
‘begotten of the father before all worlds
14 Term 3 Week 7
HeArT rACerS PreSeNTATION
robot was faultless, scoring top marks for
the sections of the course it was able to
complete. They entered the knock-out
stage of the competition placed 3rd in a
group of eight.
Winning their quarter final round they
progressed to the semi-finals but lost in that
round and therefore went into the 3rd place
play off, which they won convincingly.
… begotten, not made’. This emphasises
the doctrine that God fathered rather than
created Jesus, being of ‘one substance with
the father, by whom all things were made’.
Perhaps in deference to this archaic usage,
or perhaps because it seems cognate with
the worldwide english ‘forgotten’, the word
‘gotten’ survived in American usage. recently
it has snuck (another almost universally
common Americanism, for ‘sneaked’) into
Australian usage.
The fourth edition (2004) of the Australian
Concise Oxford Dictionary says that ‘except
in the adjective ill-gotten, the past participle
gotten is non-standard in Australian english’.
I fear that this is no longer the case.
Our language is dissolving in a transnational
metalanguage largely derived from
American english, and we neither notice nor
care.
Traditionally in British and Australian english
‘wrath’ rhymes with ‘Goth’ but in Chapel
the boys sing ‘wrath of God’ using the short
‘a’ as in ‘tax’. You even hear people use the
Americanism ‘dove’ (to rhyme with ‘rove’) as
Then the losing team appealed.
A re-run was judged to be necessary, the
tension was palpable, robots were placed
on the courses, the hall was silent, ‘Start’
was called … and the ‘Heart racers’ won in
devastating fashion!!
Didn’t they do all well!
Charles Ford
the past tense of ‘dive’, ‘pled’ for ‘pleaded’ and
‘off of’ for ‘off’.
You could argue that we are simply going
from being a subset of British english to a
subset of American.
It was interesting to hear our new
Headmaster, mr Sampson, explain to english
enrichment students that in england those
at school are not referred to as students.
‘What do they call them?’ a boy asked.
‘Pupils,’ he replied.
I remember learning as a small child that
‘students’ were those who went to university.
In Australia, the Americanism ‘student’
for school pupils has long since been
naturalised. People even seem to think that
‘pupil’ is belittling.
Does this matter? Tradition is not fashionable
but most Australians would claim they
cherish their traditional slang and colloquial
expressions. They seem to have forgotten
about that misbegotten word ‘gotten’.
Mr Ronaldson
Head of English (Special Programs)