We must know if we are regenerate

"We are going to be judged one day and as everything hangs on the hinge of new birth we must be absolutely clear about whether we have been born again or not."

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 117

Regeneration - the knowledge factor

"This fact must not be abused, but out of ignorance a person may live contrary to certain Christian teachings and practices and may appear not to be born again when in fact he is. Of course, if he is genuinely reborn that will show itself when his errors are pointed out.
Far from arguing against religious instruction and faithful teaching prior to conversion, this observation argues rather in its favour. The better instructed people are, the better they will be able to discern their standing before God and benefit from being reborn."

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 110, 111

Born again - date unknown

"On occasions, I have met people who cannot tell you accurately when they were born. I remember a Vietnamese fellow who was picked up on the streets of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) as an orphaned toddler, and was eventually brought up in the UK. He only knew more or less how old he was. Many abandoned children share the same sort of ignorance. In certain parts of rural Nigeria, it is common not to know the exact day you were born as records are not kept too strictly. In a similar way, many Christians do not know exactly when they were born again. As Archibald Alexander points out, even those who claim that they do know may well be wrong. ... 
A characteristic of regeneration is that it is mysterious and secret so we should not be surprised that it can be difficult to know exactly when it has occurred."

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 103, 104

NB  There are apparently some 51 million people  wordwide with no birth certificate [63% of them in SubSaharan Africa].

Vɑːz, veɪz or vɔːz

My grandfather would never simply say vase. He was aware of the different pronunciations and so always said vɑːz, veɪz or vɔːz (ie vaas, vaze or vause). My dad would often do it too.

The Century dictionary says

According to the French pron. (väz), and to the time when the word vase appears to have been taken into English (between 1660 and 1700), the reg. E. pron. would be vāz, with a tendency to make it conform to the apparent analogy of base, case, etc. - that is, to pronounce it vās. At the same time, the recency of the word, and its association with art, have tended to encourage the attempts to pronounce it as F., namely väz, in the 18th century absurdly rendered also as vâs, the word being found accordingly in the spelling vause.
If you check this clip on Youtube you will hear Tom Hanks make a referneece tO this about a minute and a half in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmNmFpJM3qQ

See'd 'em

My grandfather was boorn in Bilston and spent most of his adult life after the Great War working in Lysaght's Steelworks in Newport, South Wales. A tall man with bright blue eyes he was not good at withstanding the heat but thankfully as a checker he was not too near the furnace. My father told me that after he had checked sheets of steal he would mark the top one with chalk - See'd 'em (not quite sure on the spelling, the point is that he had seen them).

George Carlin- "Everyday Expressions"

George Carlin - Euphemisms

Square round

As I was growing up my mother would use a weird phrase to encourage us to tidy the house up. She would say (quite oblivious to the phrase's oxymoronic nature) to square round.

(I did blog this before back in 2011 so I've deleted it)

The original post said

Square Round 1

My mother would often ask us to "square round" in the living room.

This involved "plumping up the cushions" among other things.

Always struck me as a rather oxymornonic phrase.

10 Unk words

1. Bunk - narrow bed, rubbish, play truant
2. Chunk - thick, solid piece
3. Clunk - dull sound
4. Dunk - dip into a drink
5. Funk - fear, avoid, coward
6. Flunk - fall below standard
7. Gunk - unplradant sticky, messy stuff
8. Hunk - large piece of something, handsome dude
9. Junk - old or discarded material
10. Punk - aggressive form of rock
(Prompted by nothing at all really)

Fat bread

At home we always had a fry up or mixed grill on Saturdays. Our version included egg, beans, bacon, sausage, black pudding and  - wait for it - what my mother called fried bread and what my father called fat bread. In my head fried bread is the hard version also known as fried toast and fat bread is the soft version, dipped in the bacon fat only for a few moments. That distinction did not really exist in my parents minds it was just that dad used this phrase that I have not been able to locate anywhere on the Internet in this connection.