Recent Transgressions

Or, just to start something on this quiet thread...

Sign on an abandoned building - ADULT BOOK'S

First, the next word seems to be missing, leaving quite a mystery as to what belongs to the book, and
Second, it seems the sign is in reference to a single book?

O! Postrophe!

Maybe it's something like the way the French sometimes use the name of the thing sold in the singular in pretentious shop-names: "La maison du livre adulte". (It would work in German as well: "Haus des erwachsenen Buches"...).

why do you find that pretentious? It's just the normal French way of doing it: La Maison du Pélerin, la maison du livre, la maison du tourisme, la maison du monde, la maison du sport, la maison du gâteau, maison de la presse etc. Adulte is the singular adjective; one could also say La maison du livre pour adultes... but as a title it's clumsier.

>3 thorold: Nor does the German mean the same thing as we usually mean in English by 'adult book'.

>5 MarthaJeanne: I've always taken the English term as referring to books that have reached reproductive age and are liable to sudden population increases unless strictly supervised :-)

>6 thorold: In that case my children's books are adult books.

>6 thorold:

That explains my overflowing bookshelves.

Not really a language error, but a marketing scheme that wasn't thought through: I got a mail from my mobile phone provider with the subject line (translated): "Which gift will you choose with your 0 Extra Points?"
Do they really think that's going to motivate me to start doing whatever it is you have to do to get some of their points?

>9 thorold: Maybe they used the 0 because they don't have an infinity sign on their keypads.

In the latest paperback I read - in relation to marriage "Ms Harwood to Mrs Fox-Gifford the Younger" Perhaps not quite so controversial these days. Just a type-o the latter should have been Mr unless hunky Alex was female!

>12 Crypto-Willobie: Oh Dear! that was a bad one.

I belong to a book web site, and spend a lot of time there. Today I realized that one of the subsections of Talk is called 'Topics from groups you administrate'. Ouch!

orientate vs orient(vb.)?

From an email about a house for sale: "As someone who's grown up in the area, these pages do a good job portraying what it's actually like. "

>16 lilithcat: Maybe they're referring to a couple page boys?

>15 Crypto-Willobie: They administrate a website that helps orientate job seekers.

>16 lilithcat: Yes, if it was a capital on page it might just about make sense.

>19 justmum: 'these Pages' (i.e. Elmer, Betty, Chelsea, and Baby Page, you know, that family in the house on the corner with the funny doorknob and the noisy baby, oh I *know* you know them, their Chelsea is the Chelsea with the tattoo of a goldfish on her neck and you know what I think Betty drinks) still aren't 'someone'.

>14 MarthaJeanne: According to the OED, the "administer" vs. "administrate" mix-up has been going on for more than 400 years. It's probably a lost cause.

>16 lilithcat: I'm visualising them as pavement artists in Little Lord Fauntleroy suits. Sounds like an interesting neighbourhood, anyway...

>20 bluepiano: Have you been taking drugs or something? I have no idea what you're on about- sorry!

I'm reading, and generally enjoying, A. E. Housman: A Single Life by Martin Blocksidge - but I'm constantly being irritated by the way that what should be dashes are printed as hyphens. And the typesetter should have been told when to place spaces between verses of Housman's poetry. Errors like that distract me from the content of the book.

>23 EricJT:
I can't imagine that there was an actual typesetter involved, especially not if they get basic things like that wrong. More likely the publisher just gave the author a style-sheet and let him get on with it. It looks as though it's published by an academic press as an e-book also available as POD, so the available budget for design was probably not far off zero.

From an email I received this morning, from a member of an institution where they could reasonably be expected to know better:

.... At the end of Hilary Term, myself and fifteen other students will be contacting alumni as part of our annual telephone campaign...

>25 thorold: Are they thinking of moving to the States in anticipation of her takeover from Trump?!

>26 justmum: Possibly - but it was the "myself" I was worried about, not the "Hilary". That particular one-L Hilary was a (male) French saint whose feast-day (14 January) gives its name to the spring academic term, even though I've never heard of him in any other context.

>25 thorold: That hardly makes you think it is an educational institution worth supporting.

>27 thorold: How quaint.

>28 MarthaJeanne: Unless I thought they were going to spend the money on teaching grammar...

>29 justmum: "I and fifteen other students will be contacting..." would be technically correct, but it gets you into the awkwardness of breaking the "name yourself last" convention. There are a lot of other ways you could say it that avoid the difficulty altogether, e.g. "I am one of a team of sixteen students who will be...".

>30 thorold: Fifteen other students and I; Sixteen of us; I will be leading a group of students who will;

My mother and the other English teachers at her school used to insist on correcting anything that would be sent home to the parents. "How can we convince the kids to learn grammar if they see that you can be a school principal without it?"

> 27

He was Hilarius to his friends.

January 13 is the feast day of St. Hilary of Poitiers, one of several canonized Hilaries, with one L apiece.

>30 thorold: Just noticed MarthaJeanne has posted what I thought - My fellow students and I / my friends and I etc.

>32 Muscogulus: Do you think he'll be available for red nose day?

>27 thorold: >28 MarthaJeanne:
Apart from being used in Academia Hilary term is also used in UK's legal system along with Trinity and Michaelmas. I'm rather fond of these little quirks that remind us of a former age. How the names are used in the legal connection can be found at
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/the-justice-system/term-dates-a...

>35 PossMan:
And of course the legal and academic conventions are very similar, but not quite the same, because that would make it all far too simple...

>36 thorold: And perhaps because it would be too simple and comprehensible is why the legal term concept applies only in the High Court and Court of Appeal. The county courts and magistrates courts manage OK without this historical lumber.

From Billboard's obituary for Chuck Berry: "Berry fought a number of legal situations that arised in his life."

Oh, dear.

Double oh, dear: Chuck Berry died today.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7728700/chuck-berry-dead

On the subject of abusing 'myself'...

I get a kick out of folks who, when adopting a formal speaking voice, will say something like "If anyone has any questions regarding this presentation, please telephone myself or Mr. Barnaby."

I keep telling people that only you can telephone yourself, but why would you want to?

Some folks just seem to think they sound smarter if they use 'myself' more.

Due, I imagine, to typesetting issues, today's print New York Times referred to a Tudor monarch with whom I was unfamiliar: Henry VI-II. (No, it was not a reference to Mr. Shakespeare's play.)

>39 Osbaldistone: Yes, self-telephoning is a lot more difficult than self-abuse...

The line I've been using (far too often) lately is "If you still have questions after this presentation, don't hesitate to ask your boss, who will certainly tell you to ask me." It usually gets a laugh from the audience and a wry smile from the boss in question.

I have been known to phone myself. I used my cell phone to leave myself a message on my home phone.

From Casablanca:

"Who did you bribe for your visa? Renault or yourself?

Myself. I found myself much more reasonable."

>39 Osbaldistone: The first sentence in your post is an outstandingly good example of the importance of inverted commas.

(Sorry, couldn't resist saying that even though I've no more patience with adolescent humour than I have with the notion that masturbation = abuse of one's body because (?) it lowers the odds of procreating.)

I watched 'Grand Designs' tonight and was taken aback to hear Kevin McCloud--a designer for freak's sake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_McCloud)--pronounce 'patina' as 'pateena'. Like hearing a farmer pronounce 'milo' as 'meelo' I suppose.

>45 bluepiano: "pateena" was the pronunciation I heard in art school.

I had a pollster call the other day to ask my opinion about the local healthcare group, Regence Blue Cross. The young man pronounce it as reg-ah-nence, with a hard "g" as in regulate.

>46 PhaedraB: Goodness, I'm surprised. I never heard it pronounced that way in art history classes & I'd rather thought of the word's pronunciation a sort of shibboleth. Thanks, as it's interesting to know that

http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/patina

British vs American English. So the interesting aspect is a British designer using the American pronunciation.

>45 bluepiano: "pat-EE-nuh" is a reasonable English approximation to the Italian pronunciation, so it's the most likely one to be current in art-schools. I think it's also the way I would pronounce it, if I ever had occasion to use it.

The dictionary consensus is PAT-in-nuh (UK) or puht-IN-nuh (US) - that's probably the way that English-speakers who use it a lot in their daily conversation (secondhand furniture dealers?) would use it.

I have occasionally heard "pat-EYE-nuh" as well - that's probably the one to go for if you want to demonstrate that you know it's an exotic term but you're not going to let yourself be influenced by any funny foreign ways of pronouncing vowels - maybe this one is only suitable for rather camp antique dealers of a cetain age...

They only make a few cents per copy selling that way, but it adds up over time.
"So times that by the number of Da Vinci Codes we've had over the years and probably we've made a lot of money off of Dan Brown," Broadhurst said.

This one, from an article cecrow linked to in another thread (http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4117300/this-charity-bookstore-is-drowning-in-copies-of-the-da-vinci-code-1.4117304) has an odd clash of transgressive styles. You don't expect to get "times" as a verb (=multiply) in the same sentence as "off of", because there's an ocean between their normal ranges. But if you listen to the interview, the speaker - who is from Swansea but sounds English, possibly with a slight northern accent - actually says "out of", and the "off of" has been put in by the Canadian transcriber, who obviously didn't expect "out of" at that point.

A trivial difference, but it possibly shifts the meaning slightly - to me, making money "off of Dan Brown" implies that you're talking about Brown the person, whilst making money "out of Dan Brown" only makes sense if you're using "Dan Brown" as a metonym for "DB's books".

I was browsing my books, and found this in the CK for one author: "At his death he continued his fantastic work both as a writer and as an editor." Watch those pronouns, folks!

What on earth was that supposed to mean?

Is it that person x continued person y's work after person y's death? if so, whose work was fantastic – x, y, or both of them?

>52 lilithcat: >53 dtw42:
I was thinking this must be a variant on the classic double-edged comment "death could not diminish his ability to entertain an audience".

BTW - on a completely different note, has anyone else noticed the recent rise of "reached out to" (as in "I reached out to her and she agreed to arrange a song for my choir")?

Fair enough, if they were using it to refer to someone who saved them from drowning or addiction, but as a synonym for "called" it feels a teensy bit too theatrical.

I think 'reached out to' comes from watching too many cop shows.

>53 dtw42:

I think what he meant was that Author A continued to promote the work of Author B, after Author B's death, by writing about and editing the other man's work.

>55 thorold: Good lord, no--I haven't yet heard 'reach out to' to mean 'called'. Interesting that the phrase used in catchlines for both worthy and 'worthy' causes (Reaching out to the homeless, Reaching out to victims whoops survivors of ear cancer, Reaching out to all those bullied by wedding planners) is now being used in so banal a sense.

I heard 'outreach', often, as a good-cause tag word long before I did 'reaching out'. (The equivalent of a back-formation of a back-formation, in a way.) I seem to remember though first hearing a variation of it used metaphorically years ago in a US telly ad, urging people to 'Reach out and touch somebody', by sending flowers by wire or Hallmark cards, I think.

Re: reach out, maybe folks are remembering this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c56Sj7kMbLk

More generally, I don't have any problem with "reach out" being used to mean to approach someone for help and/or advice.

>58 bluepiano: I don't think the "worthy causes" use is so bad - the image of reaching out to bridge a gap between someone with an emotional need and someone who can help makes sense. When it jars is when the phrase is used in an emotionally neutral situation, in corporate communications or journalism ("we reached out to X for a comment on this story"; "we reached out to Y to work for us/promote our product/collaborate on this venture"...). Most of the time you could easily replace it with "asked", "called", "discussed with", etc.

>59 rocketjk: Quite possibly - the author of this article https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/candlepwr/does-reach-out-overreach/ puts the blame for US corporate use of "reach out" jointly on the Four Tops and an AT&T advertising campaign of the 70s, probably the one bluepiano remembers.

That article also makes the interesting point that it isn't so long ago that people were objecting to the use of "contact" for "communicate with"!

60> That article also makes the interesting point that it isn't so long ago that people were objecting to the use of "contact" for "communicate with"!

Well, when it comes to language, you just never know what's going to eventuate!

" ‘Any girl should be able to have their own fairytale’ "

LMFAO! One could make this shit up but, as we have The Guardian (London), one doesn't have to!
__________________

Thus, the moronic use of "their" as a supposedly "gender-neutral" singular possessive personal pronoun reaches its logical conclusion:

"their" used in a sentence in which its antecedant noun is expressly limited, consisting only of females!

>62 proximity1: Excellent point--bothered by 'their' though I might have been I'd not have noticed that--though you've let the side down a bit by spelling Guardian correctly and though in this instance I'm even more annoyed by the implied prejudice than the usage in that sentence.

" ‘Any girl should be able to have their own fairytale’ "

>63 bluepiano:

I'm not sure I quite understand the point you want to make in writing,

..."I'm even more annoyed by the implied prejudice than the usage in that sentence."

Of course, the moronic use of "their" as in the example above reeks of prejudice--which, by the way, its proponents are too fucking stupid and lacking in insight to grasp-- and it's deplorable for this reason alone.

However, prejudice is an ordinary feature of our human psychological make up. It has always existed and unless and until our kind evolves away from it--something which might never occur since prejudice is so ubiquitous that it is completely reasonable to suppose that it is positively selected for in the processes of Darwinian natural selection, that is, it was once, even if no longer (which is doubtful), a survival-enhancing trait--then it may be something which we'll continue to have as long as we're recognizably "human"-like creatures.

What's not absolutely necessary is the idiotic degradation of our common language just to serve this moronic notion of "gender justice." And so, for me, it's that which constitutes the gross insult here, not the fact--quite true--that these idiots can't see their own glaring gender prejudices at work.

In the process of degrading the capacity of the language to communicate effectively, they're also lending important aid to the linguistic stultification, stupefication, of the public.

Be very careful with punctuation. This was seen on a protest poster:

NO! MORE RAPE

>65 Tid:

In a similar vein, I've always found races, walks, etc. for a disease to be a bit problematic.

>66 lilithcat:

Yes, I can see that would seem weird!

From a recent NY Times article about a jazz/funk CD produced as a tribute to Allen Toussaint:

"When Toussaint died unexpectedly in 2015, during a career resurgence, it took New Orleans’s music world by surprise."

Passive/Fail?

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=34098

Those hyphens will get you every time, even on the radio...

The current political crisis in Ireland revolves around what happened to an officer who came out with allegations of corruption and malpractice in the Garda.

Or, as the newsreader on BBC Radio 3 read it out in all innocence this morning "...a scandal involving a police-whistle blower"

Very good. I've been sat here waiting for coffee to cool saying 'police whistle blower' over and over though trying to discern whether POLICE whistle blower might be a reasonable way to say police WHISTLE blower, which isn't really a very good thing.

On reflection, I wonder if there’s an age-limit below which your brain wouldn’t try to link the words “police” and “whistle”?

>72 thorold: The minister has just resigned avoiding a general election before Christmas.

>75 pgmcc: Yes, I just saw that. Linguistically-irrelevant, but good news in every other way.

This reminds me of the traffic reports on BBC Radio 5, where they are prone to say that some route or other involves delays because of a "SHED load".

I always want to ask "a shed load of what?" (UK idiom : shedload = a large quantity). They should of course be indicating that a lorry has shed its load, i.e. a "shed LOAD".

(Bit subtle, huh? Soz.)

>77 Tid: US idiom : shitload = a large quantity

A recent advertiser on NPR states that they have software to help your company manage social.

>76 thorold: Linguistically-irrelevant

That is a great phrase. I cannot wait to tell someone they are linguistically irrelevant. I want to see the contortion of their features. :-)

>80 pgmcc: :-)
Actually, I meant the event, not the person. I don’t know enough about Irish politics to be able to rule out the possibility that she has contributed something to the language, as ministers often do, though rarely in a good way...

>81 thorold: Your meaning was clear but I just thought that "linguistically irrelevant" would sound very cool as an insult.

As it happens the person in question is an elected representative in my constituency and I have had several conversations with her over the years. She is with a party that would not be by favourite but I believe her to be honourable and have no problems with her as an individual. It appears the revealing of e-mails that triggered this recent debacle, and ultimately her political downfall, was more to do with internal party politics within the constituency.

This one is new to me, although I see that it’s been used by other advertisers before and people have been arguing about it on the web since at least 2012. I’m not sure if it is really a transgression or not, but it sounds wrong to me:

A big Scotch whisky manufacturer is running a poster campaign on bus stops here, using the English slogan “The world’s most awarded”

My immediate thought was “do they mean it’s the whisky you’re most likely to get as a prize?” - obviously they don’t(*), but the reading they want you to make seems very artificial.

It also raises the question in which category it’s “the world’s most” - beverages, whiskies, whiskies of that particular type...? And the thorny little point that English is not the local language in the Netherlands, and it’s rather arrogant to assume that people will respond better to an ad for a luxury product if it’s written in foreign...

(*) If you’re going to get that one as a prize anyway, you might as well buy a different make for yourself!

Simon Armitage on Weldon Kees' poetry: 'A hot potato, but a hard one to get hold of'. As opposed to all other hot potatoes that are held comfortably? 'But' undermines the metaphorical meaning, I think.

>83 thorold: For years Tesco has been using the slogan 'Every little helps'. Presumably it = 'every little bit helps'. Drives me wild. (Or is this simply a UK usage that Tesco picked up on?)

>84 bluepiano: Tsk, tsk. It's not like a poet and a Yorkshireman to overlook the literal like that!

In British usage "every little helps" is unremarkable - the OED records it as going back to the mid-18th century (quoting the old and rather weak joke "Every little helps," as the old woman said when she did something in the sea). It's using "little" as a noun to mean small amount of something, just like "a little goes a long way" or "many a little makes a mickle".

(BTW - non-recent transgression: since the late 18th century, non-Scots have been garbling the last of these into the completely bogus but very Scots-sounding "mony a mickle maks a muckle" - mickle and muckle are just alternative forms of the same word, so this means nothing at all. The OED rather mischievously takes George Washington as its example for this one!).

At work we got a new canteen supplier, and they seemed to have thrown a whole bag of apostrophes at the menu this week *roll eyes*:

toastie's
frie's
panini's

The temptation to get a pen out looms large!

At least the main dish of the day is singular ;)

>86 ScarletBea: At least the main dish of the day is singular

Are they sure? If they're capable of treating "panini" as a singular, presumably they will also be offering spaghetti's, ravioli's, etc.

You'd probably get eye rolls if you asked for a panino, or ordered two pizze.

I went to a choir practice a few weeks ago and was surprised when the pianist called out to the soprani and the alti, but now I can't think of them in any other way.

>88 overthemoon:

Good. After all, the data show what each datum helped to indicate.

Of course there's always the "American plan" : Don't give a damn about language use. What's done from ignorance is just as good as what comes from knowledge.

>88 overthemoon: Yes, there's a fine line between pedantry and pretentiousness, cf. Fowler's wonderful article on how to mispronounce French words just the right amount in English.
I suppose "soprani" from a musician might be OK, since that's probably what it says on the score, but you don't want to end up like the inevitable two or three idiots in the audience at the opera (in Holland, Germany, the UK, and probably the US as well), who make a point of shouting "Brava!" when applauding female singers. If they think it's a solecism to shout "Bravo" at a lady, they could simply keep their mouths shut...

maybe they are Italians in the audience! My pianist at choir practice was Italian. But I live in a country with four national languages so hear all sorts...

>91 overthemoon: I was involved in systems implementations in the 1990s and I recall the package supplier struggling to come up with a solution for presenting four languages on the screen for Switzerland.

international companies generally opt for German, and within Switzerland, all big companies communicate in English (or what they think is English). It has made me more tolerant, but I still squirm when I see advertisements proclaiming things like "Fishermen's Friend effects you".

Most packaging in Switzerland, as I recall, is only German, French and Italian. We used to do most of our shopping in France, but the first time I needed something I would buy it in Swizerland, as I usually knew the German. On of my friends did English tutoring, and she used to complain about the 'English' ads. Using poor English in ads is not doing kids a favour, as they tend to remember the wrong form because they have heard it so often.

In Austria several years ago there was a hit where the boy askes the girl to 'be my lady of the night.' I have often wondered how many young men picked that up and tried to use it on English-speaking girls only to get their faces slapped.

Yes, packaging is generally in German, French and Italian. We have the four languages on banknotes.

>84 bluepiano: Not coined by Tesco ad writers, then. But still, a little *what*? I know what the old woman offered Neptune a little of and it seems that given the context when one says 'a little goes a long way' it's clear that it's a little (bit of) ___. I suppose the 'mickle' phrase is more vague though even it must surely be used in reference to a little something-or-other.

The George Washington attribution is wonderful. Don't suppose it's generally known either that Thos Jefferson's customary expostulation was 'Hoot, mon!'

Whoops, that was >85 thorold:.

>95 overthemoon: etc. - It doesn’t end there, does it? Romansch comes in nearly as many dialects as it has speakers, and Swiss-Germans are also forever explaining to you that they can barely understand the dialect spoken in the next valley (not that they ever talk to the people from the next valley, anyway...). But they read and write something that looks almost like normal German, and has no obvious connection with the language they speak. Endless fun!

To be precise, Romansch has five regional dialects, whereas Schweizerdeutsch/Schwyzerdütsch/Schwiizertüütsch/Schwizertitsch (and other variants) has countless dialects and a spelling that doesn't much resemble the Standard German that's in normal use - for instance the letter k is written as ch and vowels are lengthened. I can understand Standard German but Swiss German is all Double Dutch to me.

Back when I was a freelance copy writer, I wrote website content for a nightclub (in the U.S.) that was co-owned by a Swiss German fellow. I would write new copy for the site, only to look the next day to find he'd capitalized all the nouns! It happened several times. I told him, "Maybe that how nouns are handled in your home, but here in the U.S. that just looks like a bunch of typos." It took some time for this to finally sink in. Is that, in fact, standard in Swiss German or was my client simply being odd?

In other news, the NYTimes website today has a teaser link to a story about an MSNBC "contributor" who was fired and then quickly rehired. Here is the text:

"MSNBC rehired Sam Seder days after firing him for his 2009 tweet mocking supporters of Roman Polanski that was resurfaced by a right-wing activist."

It is standard in German to capitalize all nouns, and it is necessary to avoid confusion with other parts of speech with the same spelling.

>100 overthemoon:

"It is standard in German to capitalize all nouns, and it is necessary to avoid confusion with other parts of speech with the same spelling."

You mean like potential, ornament, lament, adopted, ferment, effect, present, etc etc, in English?

no, it isn't quite the same. Somewhere I read examples of confusion but I can't remember where it was, probably on facebook. If I can find it I'll post it.

Well, this isn't it, but there are some examples if you scroll down the page to the part with yellow highlighting.
https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/172/what-is-the-origin-of-the-rules-a...

One might wonder why, in English, we capitalize I but not you or we.

>102 overthemoon:

Thanks for that - yes I can see why now, where German has identical words that mean completely different things depending whether they're a noun or different part of speech. Of my list above in English, only present (gift/now) and ferment (become alcohol/agitated state) would qualify, and the few we have would probably be obvious not only from context but also pronunciation (PREZunt vs preZENT, and FURment vs ferMENT).

As for 'I', could it be that the use of i ii iii iv etc for Roman numerals might cause confusion?

>104 Tid: I would have used foment to mean instigate or stir up. I wonder if the use of ferment for that meaning was a mistake that was repeated often enough that it became part of the language.

>105 jjwilson61:

I wonder if the use of ferment for that meaning was a mistake that was repeated often enough that it became part of the language.

"Ferment" in that sense is not particularly new. The OED has citations back to 1672. If you think about it, it makes sense. When a substance ferments, it bubbles up. So it's an apt metaphor for agitation and tumult.

No love for the idea of a tweet getting "resurfaced"? (Post 99)

>102 overthemoon:

One other thing - English doesn't capitalise nouns, therefore on Christmas Day someone could say (with a twinkle in their eye) "It's the present moment". That would be appreciated - to a greater or lesser extent! - as a pun. Perhaps Germans don't use puns or wordplay to the same extent as English speakers?

>105 jjwilson61:

Perhaps another difference between Brits and Yanks?

https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/ferment-foment/

That's an American article, but it doesn't allow for the British usage of - e.g. - "he was in a state of mental ferment".

>108 Tid: I doubt it; German is a very precise language. I find they tend to take things very literally. For instance, a German colleague once asked if we could meet up one day for lunch, and I said fine, just give me a few days' warning so I can be sure I'm free - and she jumped on the word warning, taking it very negatively. In fact she never spoke to me again.

But then, I'm not very good at German so can't be sure.

>110 overthemoon:

I think that reinforces what I said!

>110 overthemoon: Or your colleague might have been on one of those intercultural communication courses where they teach you that “we must have lunch sometime” is the polite way to say “I never want to see you again” in British English...!

Punning definitely does exist in German. I should think it’s just as common as a way of constructing jokes, advertising slogans, names of student organisations, businesses, etc., as it is in English.

Germans love interlingual jokes, especially groaningly bad ones, like the German who goes into a restaurant in London and asks the waiter “Can I become a beefsteak?”, or the Kölner spending the holidays abroad who is asked by the Christmas-tree dealer what he wants - “A Tännchen, please!” (both of these are at least 50 years old...)

>112 thorold:

Isn't JFK's one of the most infamous? He said "Ich bin ein Berliner" which apparently translated locally as "I am a hamburger"!

>113 Tid: Yes, but that seems to be open to interpretation too. A Berliner (-Pfannkuchen or -Ballen) is a ball-type, jam-filled doughnut more or less everywhere in north Germany, but in the East, including Berlin, they just call it a Pfannkuchen (which is a pancake elsewhere...). And in the south they say Krapfen. So Kennedy’s audience in Berlin would have understood him as he intended, but people in (say) Düsseldorf would have found it funny.

I think they knew he meant well. I've always found German cartoons of themselves to be pretty funny. I stayed in a hotel in Berlin once that had an evacuation cartoon with a tossle haired sleepy German man in striped pajamas navigating the way out.

>112 thorold: Or your colleague might have been on one of those intercultural communication courses where they teach you that “we must have lunch sometime” is the polite way to say “I never want to see you again” in British English...!

no, she was a friend who I worked with for several years, then she moved away, and wanted to meet up.

Kennedy's sentence, Ich bin ein Berliner, wasn't actually wrong. It could mean a doughnut (which incidentally in French-speaking Switzerland are called boules de Berlin), but if he meant something like "I am one of you", he said it the right way.

>116 overthemoon: In any case, the joke only exists in hindsight: no-one in West Berlin or the rest of West Germany at the time would have been much in a mood to find it funny.

It reminds me of the equally terrible pun in Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco where de Gaulle visits Martinique and no-one is quite sure afterwards whether his speech was celebrating the Frenchness of the islanders ("Mon dieu, mon dieu, comme vous êtes français!") or expressing surprise at how black they were ("Mon dieu, mon dieu, comme vous êtes foncés!").

Getting back on topic - I came across a new version of the greengrocer's apostrophe the other day. In our local bio-supermarket (the "bio-" "eco-" and "organic" terminology opens up a whole other area of transgressions, but lets not do that now...) the vegetables are labelled and priced on little cards in an elegant script, white on black, but the illusion is rather shattered when you see that the text on most of the cards ends with something like "’s" - they've attempted to put in apostrophes - in places where they would actually be correct in Dutch - but failed for technical reasons, and undermined the whole effect of the fake handwriting. I wish I'd taken a photo!

>118 thorold: I wish I'd taken a photo!

So do I/--&""1310...{{{//#~~~

Oh I remembered another one that really bugs me!

Yesterday on the news there was an image of a guy (let's call him A) standing next to another (B), while another person (C) took their photo.
The reporter said "A asked C for a selfie with B". Hello! If someone else is taking a photo it is NOT a selfie!

(and 'selfie' is probably one of my most hated words, to be honest, hehe....)

>120 ScarletBea:: (and 'selfie' is probably one of my most hated words, to be honest, hehe....)

Not quite as bad as "belfie" which is for pictures of one's bottom. Fortunately hasn't taken off to the same extent.

>120 ScarletBea: ...and why is it "selfie" and not "selfy"?

>122 pgmcc: Why is it 'hippie' and not 'hippy'? The mystery deepens.

>123 PhaedraB: according to the OED under “-y/ie suffix 6”: -y and -ie are equally common in proper names, but “... in general hypocoristic forms -ie is the favourite spelling after Scottish usage, as dearie, mousie.”

Which doesn’t really answer the question, just pushes it one stage further back.

With “hippie” vs. “hippy” I suppose you could argue that using -ie makes it clear that you’re using it as the hypocoristic (*) form of “hipster”, not an adjective meaning “having hips”

—-
(*) you can’t expect me to resist using a new, obscure technical term the first time I meet it!

120> "(and 'selfie' is probably one of my most hated words, to be honest, hehe....)"

The whole phenomenon has always been a bit irritating to me. I don't really get the fascination with them. They seem so ephemeral. Which leads me to ask . . .

What's it all about, selfie? Is it just for the moment we live?

Selfie people are suffering:
https://news.sky.com/story/selfitis-people-obsessed-with-taking-selfies-may-have...

In the UK at the time "hippy" and "hippie" were equally common. "Hippie" has become more usual since. You could also argue that "hippy" is also an adjective meaning something rather different.

>127 Tid:

Mama Cass was a hip hippy hippie.

>128 lilithcat:

I think it was Mort Sahl who had a joke about a man who was so out of touch that he slipped and broke his hep.

Thanks #129> I had almost forgotten about "Mort Sahl"?
You made my day. Notice NO emoticons.

Guido.

>123 PhaedraB: It isn't "hippie" (singular) rather than "hippy".

"One hippy" was, however, practically a contradiction in terms. No one ever saw or heard of just one "hippy". It should have been like a rock 'n roll record-collection containing only one album. This was never other than a merely theoretical possibility. Even when people had to steal their pop-record albums, they stole more than one at a time. No one would have dared admitting to having just one rock 'n roll album.

So, "hippies" was de facto the nearly inevitable usage. But not because people weren't aware then--as they are today--that such singular "y"-ending nouns are rendered "ies" in their plural forms.

_________________

Now this, from The New Yorker ! No kidding! from the New Yorker magazine, no "less"! LOL!

"The polarization and tribalization in today’s politics may exacerbate this loss of confidence or contribute to it, or both." (Sic)

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-distrust-that-trump-relies-upon
LOL!

Or both, for God's sake! Oh!, the hoomanitie!

>123 PhaedraB: but talking about an individual, you could say "he was a hippy", or the hippy era... I would also tend towards the -y ending for the singular.

Having been there, I can attest that "hippy" was not the usage at the time.

>133 PhaedraB: Me, too. Hippy looks funny in that connection. One hippie, two hippies.

>133 PhaedraB: & >134 MarthaJeanne:

I was around during those times, too, although a little younger (I was 13 in 1968) and remember it both ways. I got curious and went to the NY Times and ran a search for "Hippy movement" to see what would come up. I found this fascinating piece by none other than Hunter S. Thompson that ran in 1967 under the headline "The 'Hashbury' is the Capital of the Hippies."
He is of course referring to the Haight Asbury (which, during all my days living in San Francisco {1986-2008} I never heard referred to as the Hashbury, but maybe that was current during the 60s).

At any rate, Thompson uses "hippy," for whatever that's worth. As in, "The other half of the hippy population is too young to identify with Jack Kerouac, or even with Mario Savio." Maybe that was just the Times' off-kilter style decision, though.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9D04E7DC1F38E133A25757C1A9639C94669...

Anyhow, I don't want to disagree with anyone's specific memories, certainly. That's just the first thing I found.

So try looking up 'hippy' on Wikipedia.

Or Google Ngram

>136 MarthaJeanne: So try looking up 'hippy' on Wikipedia.

"A hippie (sometimes misspelled hippy12) is . . . "

On the other hand, the Oxford English Dictionary online says, "hippy (also hippie)" :)

And there was the occasional pronunciation as 'hip-eye'. I'd thought this was used only as a way of mocking rednecks but not long ago I heard an interview with a man in Alabama who consistently said 'PREverts' and now I'm not so sure--perhaps it was said in earnest.

It isn't even in my Collins dictionary but that's hardly surprising as it dates from 1964.

Online, the urban dictionary gives hippy.
And don't forget that the searches for hippie will also include all the hippies.
Hippy hippy shake!

>137 PhaedraB:

That is interesting. So, most usages are wrong.

;-)

>141 pgmcc: ;^)

And this just about settles it:

"A hippie (sometimes misspelled hippy12) " from Wikipe-shitty-a's pages. So you know it was "hippy".

Also, I checked a 1968 Italian dictionary. No form of "hippy" or "hippie" had made it into usage such that the dictionary's editors took note. But, a major large italian dictionary had, by 1984, included "hippy" and the American counter-culture movement---with "hippie" as a secondary, alternative spelling.

Who has copies of Rolling Stone (the weekly pop-music newspaper) from the later 1960s? 1967--1973? Their usage would I think be hard to dispute.

I say it's "hippie," at least in the U.S. End of story. I was 10 in 1966.

hippie / hippy

A long-haired 60s flower child was a “hippie.” “Hippy” is an adjective describing someone with wide hips. The IE is not caused by a Y changing to IE in the plural as in “puppy” and “puppies.” It is rather a dismissive diminutive, invented by older, more sophisticated hipsters looking down on the new kids as mere “hippies.” Confusing these two is definitely unhip.
https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/19/hippie-hippy/

There's also yuppie.

>144 Taphophile13: and Yippie.

But not trippie.

>143 krazy4katz:

So you have no experiences of your own from the 1960s.

People arguing the issue ought to post the earliest pop music album which they acquired new-- that is, acquired --purchased, received as a gift or "other"-- within the 12-month period from the date the album was first released/published:



(Released: (U.S.) October 1964)

found under the Christmas tree, 1964. (thanks, Dad!)

"Hippy"--- contemporary print-press usage is what counts.

"Numerous theories abound as to the origin of this word. One of the most credible involves the beatniks, who abandoned North Beach, San Francisco, to flee commercialism in the early 1960s. Many of them moved to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, where they were idolized and emulated by the young university students who lived in the neighborhood. The beats (the hip people) started calling these students "hippies", or younger versions of themselves. Actually, the counterculture seldom called itself hippies; it was the media and straight society who popularized the term. More often, we called ourselves freaks or heads. Not until later did we begin calling ourselves hippies, and by then we were "aging hippies". An alternate spelling seldom used in the United States by people in the know was hippy, but it was spelled that way in England." my italics Quote lifted from wiki, by John Bassett McCleary

8 December, 1967: (p. 60)

Life Magazine ad:

"The Hippies

Cause for alarm ?

Or approval?

Before you answer, read "The Hippies," a searching examonation of America's bizarre new subculture by the correspondents of Time magazine. This is the first of a significant news series, TIME FILE Books, which will report on the important and controversial issues of our day. "The Hippies," 240 pages, including 13 pages of color photography. Available now for $1.95 in soft cover wherever books and magazines are sold. ($3.95 in hardcover.)

>147 proximity1: My first album. Thanks, Dad.

>147 proximity1: Regardless of my experiences, hallucinatory or not, the word is properly spelled "trippy".



My first hippie album was "Jesus Christ Superstar" given to me (Jewish) by a friend from Israel (also Jewish) when I was about 12. My parents didn't approve, but since we were best friends with their family they couldn't say anything. I just noticed a lot of rattling of newspapers when I sang certain words (the meanings of which, I did not know).

Since the hippies only OFFICIALLY existed between a point in 1966 and their "funeral" in 1967 (after which they became 'yippies', thus politicising what had been simply a "peace and love fashion during the Summer of Love"), then I guess the usage between 1966 and 1967 counts for more than later spellings.

Also, I believe the term originated in the US and therefore the UK preference may be academic and incorrect?

Recently in our local council adult education brochure "Excellent way to spent a Saturday. Very positive, constructive and enjoyable."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-45136508

A local head of education and learning needs to learn how to spell.

>154 MarthaJeanne:

My local council. You gotta love 'em! (not...)

Back when my mother taught English to 7th and 8th graders the English teachers ganged up on the principal to insist that they got to check anything he sent to parents because, 'How can we convince 12 and 13 year olds that they need to know proper spelling and grammar if they see that their principal doesn't?' But that was back in the days before spell check. I really don't see what new printing software has to do with not spell checking a document.

It's quite possible that the person who wrote the software was also given the job of writing template letters. Just because a person is good at a programming language doesn't necessarily mean they're good at any other language.

>154 MarthaJeanne: Oh, come on. Don’t encourage this - it’s just the BBC milking resentment from middle-class parents against schools who don’t like them taking the kids on cheap holidays during termtime. If this kind of letter were actually written or proofread by someone with a teaching qualification, the same journalist would be full of indignation about diversion of resources away from actual teaching...

And it’s absurd to talk about “spelling mistakes” - this isn’t about illiteracy but purely and simply administrative incompetence: a text being transferred from draft to production status without being checked first. The person who wrote it obviously knows that “hte” is not the right way to spell “the”, but didn’t read what they had typed.

>158 thorold:: ".......... taking the kids on cheap holidays during termtime". Some of these holidays are far from cheap. Quite a few schools are taking children to exotic destinations such as Peru and China. Quite a financial burden and many pupils will not be able to go.

>159 PossMan: This isn’t about organised school trips - the letter full of errors referred to in the article MarthaJeanne linked to was a penalty notice issued to a parent whose child had been absent without permission because the parents had taken it on holiday during school term. Schools are probably right to take steps against this, because it must be disruptive, but there’s also a perception in the UK that some hard-pressed councils are cynically using these fines as a way to raise extra cash.

(But I agree completely that those expensive trips are a bad thing when not all kids can afford them.)

I have to say that there have been many times when I've typed "hte" for "the" and missed a space between words.

That said, I also proofread.

And speaking of misspellings: https://capitolfax.com/2018/08/09/lets-hope-the-butter-cow-typo-isnt-an-omen/

Oh, my, the Illinois State Fair is just a bonanza!

They don't know what year it is and every day is Friday: https://capitolfax.com/2018/08/10/every-day-will-be-friday-at-the-2108-illinois-...

And Lincoln said anything you want him to have said: https://capitolfax.com/2018/08/10/administration-doubles-down-on-fake-lincoln-qu...

And yet more!

https://capitolfax.com/2018/08/13/more-illinois-state-fair-facepalms/

I’m almost tempted to put a visit to Illinois on the agenda for next summer...!

>163 lilithcat: How wonderful. Thanks for posting that link.

>164 thorold: If you'll be going to the state fair I've a couple travel tips:

DO: Say 'Elluhnoy', not 'Illinoy'. DO pronounce the 's' though and insist that this is the correct pronunciation in a rural bar on a Saturday night and DO post here to let us know the result.

DO: Sing the praises of sorghum.

DON'T: Sing the praises of Chicago or any of any other city in the state. But especially not Chicago.

DON'T: Forget that East St. Louis is really in Missouri no matter what those damn mapmakers in Washington say and DON'T be a smartarse who carries on about land that belongs to Illinois only because the fickle Mississippi River changed course.

And think twice before you try that double-dipped deep-fried cotton candy at the fair.

>165 bluepiano: "The noise that annoys is Ill-n-noise"

Not quite a transgression, but a severe case of the editor of an alumni magazine trying too hard to pretend that s/he doesn't see the inevitable joke coming:

"Universities Minister opens Schrödinger Building" http://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/news/universities-minister-opens-schrodinger-building/

>165 bluepiano: >166 PhaedraB: Thanks for the travel advice :-)
I see from Wikipedia that there's a plausible case to be made for "Ill-in-weh"!

>167 thorold:

“This work in turn has and hasn't made much of the research that is and isn't performed here at the Oxford Science Park possible. We are and aren't sure that the occupiers of this exciting new building will and won't make a significant contribution to the vibrant science and technology ecosystem we have here, or not.”

Where's the cat?

HA! https://www.woot.com/offers/schrdingers-cat-carrier

https://www.flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07/8132455446

The Illinois State Fair - the gift that keeps on giving: https://capitolfax.com/2018/08/14/yet-another-state-fair-facepalm/

>170 lilithcat: None but the brave...

>170 lilithcat: Ooh yes, please do keep them coming.

Overheard today: "I'm going to nip that in the butt."

I once got written up for telling a co-worker to 'bite my ass'...

>174 Crypto-Willobie: Once listened to an interview with a man who immigrated to US where he coached a school sports team and was subjected to parents' outrage over obscenity because he'd told a lad 'nice try, but you weren't within an ass's roar of making the goal'.

Ha!

Hoo, boy: https://capitolfax.com/2018/08/15/what-would-a-day-be-without-yet-another-illino...

(For those unfamiliar with American unions: AFUCIO should be AFL-CIO)

And another: https://capitolfax.com/2018/08/16/thursdays-state-fair-facepalm/

A veritable negative-fest in the Guardian, although admittedly they are quoting a Twitter user - “She’s not saying nobody from Jamaica shouldn’t eat Jamaican food...”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/20/jamie-olivers-jerk-rice-dish-a-m...

'She's not saying nobody from Jamaica shouldn't eat no Jamaican food . . . '

Fixed that for you. Went on to google source of 'not no way, not no how'.

I just got a mail at work about the "stationary cupboard".

I would very much hope that all cupboards are stationary, I wouldn't want them moving around when I'm not looking ;)

I'm having to sit on my hands to avoid replying, hehe

>181 ScarletBea:

I would very much hope that all cupboards are stationary, I wouldn't want them moving around when I'm not looking ;)

On the other hand, you wouldn't need to get up from your desk to get what you wanted. The cupboard would just bring it to you.

>181 ScarletBea: & >182 lilithcat:

I am confused. I thought ScarletBea was sitting on both hands. lilithcat is talking about, “on the other hand”. Does ScarletBea have three hands?

>183 pgmcc: you made me literally (in the literal sense of the word ;)) laugh out loud!

>184 ScarletBea: That does not clarify the situation.

>185 pgmcc: I can confirm that I only have 2 hands, and the third hand is purely metaphorical (although potentially quite useful) ;)

And I solved the problem by simply deleting the mail: I won't ever have to look at that again and get cold shivers...

>186 ScarletBea:
Thank you for the clarification. I can now start work on erasing the image of a three-handed LTer, sitting on two hands and surrounded by advancing cupboards, from my mind. This will not be an easy task.

😄

This is a new one - in a book about Scotland which I am currently reading - "In recognition of the winner's achievement, a silver ball inscribed with his name was attached to the club. To this day, as a mark of respect, newly elected R&A members at their inaugural dinner are required to kiss the captain's balls."

>189 justmum:

If, as I think, that was intentional, it's not a transgression. Just a bad joke.

>190 lilithcat: Indeed!

Oh, lord. We are suffering through a gubernatorial election here in Illinois. One of the candidates has an ad in which the "s" in a possessive was missing, and, in the same ad, his opponent's name was misspelled. He will not get the pedant vote.

Don't candidates and their teams actually look at their ads?

When we lived in Geneva there was a big billboard several places in town showing the candidate's picture in front of a panorama of the city, and it always gave me the creeps. Finally I stared at it long enough to recognize that it had been photoshopped not from a panorama and his head, but from two panoramas with his head over the seam. But the two pictures were different views that really didn't belong together. Enough to make people uneasy about the ad, and therefore about the candidate without knowing why.

It reminds me of all the authors who insist on posting poorly written spam. Well, if that's a sample of their work I know what I don't want to read. It seems to me that advertising should be more carefully written, not less.

>192 lilithcat: This candidate--was he in any way associated with the Illinois State Fair?

>193 MarthaJeanne: One of the design groups on reddit is devoted to deliberately bad design as sabotage or thumb to the nose and I can't help wondering if that billboard might be an example. It's not easy to see how that could have passed all the way through to completion otherwise.

>194 bluepiano:

Considering it was the current governor, I'd say "yes".

Copy editors cost money. Now everyone with a word processing program thinks their an author.

Seriously, though, I imagine a fair amount of the egregious stuff is the result of foisting the job off on an unpaid intern because why spend money when the laptop has Word and Photoshop on it already.

>196 PhaedraB: they're

>197 MarthaJeanne: Oops! I don't know what I'd do without Edit Your Post.

>196 PhaedraB: & >197 MarthaJeanne:

MarthaJeanne, I thought PhaedraB was making a point about poor quality copy editing. :-)

>199 pgmcc:

Or over-reliance on spellcheck.

>200 lilithcat: No, errors of that nature have been slipping into my typing for some time now, ever since I had chemotherapy. Chemo brain is a thing. That last word was hard to type because for the last few years I regularly type "think" instead of "thing" and vice versa. I'm a bit embarrassed by it. Often I catch the mistake while I'm typing, but just as often I don't see it until I hit Post message.

One would think being in one's 60s is pretty late for dyslexia or similar things to assert themselves, but no. I imagine I've always done it, but below a noticeable threshold. My typing has always been better than my longhand.

>210 thorold:

Chemo brain is a thing.

It is, indeed.

Often I catch the mistake while I'm typing, but just as often I don't see it until I hit Post message.

Me, too. Which is why I like the "edit" function! Another site I'm on didn't have it for quite a while, and it got terribly annoying (not to mention embarrassing) to have to post again saying things like, "I really do know how to spell {x}!"

I have a son with dyslexia, and when he was in junior high his English teacher insisted on 'first drafts' being handed in in pencil. Final copy was OK on the computer. Since he could either write with his brain or with his fingers there were tears until I told him to write the piece on his computer, then copy it in pencil to hand in. By the time our next son had the teacher two years later she had learned something about computers. I just wish the boys had had her in the other order.

>201 PhaedraB: for the last few years I regularly type "think" instead of "thing" and vice versa.

A similar thing has been happening me for the past few years. I find that when I am typing Geraldine or Christine, I end up typing Geralding and Christing.

>203 MarthaJeanne: One of my sons also has dyslexia. He struggled through secondary school but when he got to college he found staff very supporting and he was even provided with some support.

When I make a typo I blame it on my lysdexic fingers. ;-)

>200 lilithcat: Watt's wrong with you-sing spell cheque? Eye never seam two have any problems with it.

A recently noticed transgression rather than a recent one: A famous poster with text in which subject doesn't agree with verb and with inverted commas that are not only unnecessary but oddly placed. Image on top right of page here: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28642846.

No, there is subject/verb agreement. The subject is Kitchener, using the image rather than spelling out the name. So it's "Kitchener wants you".

The inverted commas are, I agree, wrong.

Presumably it was produced as a variant on the one top left, where the quotation marks DO make sense, because it's supposedly quoting what he's saying. It's the change from "here's what Kitchener says" to "here's what Kitchener wants" that renders them illogical.

Yes, it occurred to me that it was meant to be read as a quasi-rebus; that why I specified that the lack of agreement was in the text. Was & still am too lazy to try to find out how widely-known the London Opinion image was; article implies that perhaps it wasn't but if it were that would account for an assumption that people seeing the poster would be bound to think of the newspaper photo/text.--It seems to me that quite rarely I've seen the double inverted commas, i.e. American quotation marks, used in other British writing from that general period but why & when they were is something else I'm too lazy to look up.

The BBC article doesn't refer to it, but I wonder if it might have been the film version of Oh what a lovely war (1969) that established the Kitchener finger image so strongly in popular memory?

E.S. Turner's The shocking history of advertising, published in 1952, doesn't even mention that image, and talks about the "Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?" poster and the posters addressed to employers of servants ("Have you a man serving at table who could be serving a gun?") as the defining images of the recruitment campaign. He does mention in general terms that Kitchener was rather shocked by the directness of the methods the advertisers running the recruitment campaign were using.

This, from an article I saved to my own computer (apologies: I therefore don't have a link to the original article)...

" The picture is credited with encouraging millions of men to sign up to fight in the trenches, many of them never to return.
But new research has found that no such poster was actually produced during the war and that the image was never used for official recruitment purposes. In fact, it only became popular and widely-used after the conflict ended.
James Taylor, who has researched the history of recruitment posters, said the popular understanding of the design and the impact it had was almost entirely mistaken.

“It’s widely believed to have been the most popular design of First World War, instrumental in recruiting millions of men. But the truth is: that simply wasn’t the case. It’s an urban myth,” he added.

As part of his research, he studied the official records of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, the body responsible for recruitment posters, in the National Archives at Kew.

These documents provided details of the production of almost 200 official recruitment posters produced during the war and indicated which ones were deemed popular. The so-called ‘Your Country Needs You’ poster is absent. He also analysed thousands of photographs of street scenes and recruitment offices from the period in search of the image, again, without finding it.
In his new book, Your Country Needs You, Mr Taylor traced the picture back to its origins, on 5th September 1914, barely a month after the start of the war.

On that day, the image was used on the front cover of the popular magazine London Opinion, beneath the masthead, and alongside two promotional offers: “This paper insures you for £1,000” and “50 photographs of YOU for a shilling”.
It had been designed by Alfred Leete, a graphic artist, who had adapted a portrait of Kitchener to give him the distinctive pointing finger. The slogan was adapted from the official call to arms, which said: “Your King and Country Need You”.
In a subsequent edition, a week later, the magazine, which had a circulation of almost 300,000, said readers would be able to buy postcards of the image for 1s. 4d for 100.

Despite this, Mr Taylor has not been able to track down any surviving examples in public or private collections. He is now offering a £100 reward for anyone who can find the first.

Mr Taylor, who will present his research at an event at the National Army Museum, west London, next month, found that the original artwork for the magazine was acquired by the Imperial War Museum in 1917 and was mistakenly catalogued as part of the poster collection, contributing to later misunderstanding about its use.

“There has been a mass, collective misrecollection. The image’s influence now is absolutely out of all kilter with the reality of its initial impact. It has taken on a new kind of life. It is such a good image and saying that it was later seized upon. Some many historians and books have used it and kept repeating how influential it was, that people have come to accept it.”

This “myth” surrounding the poster echoes that around the “Keep Calm and Carry On” sign, which has been widely reproduced in recent years. That poster, designed in 1939, had limited distribution and no public display.

Mr Taylor’s book shows how the Kitchener image did inspire similar posters, which were used, including one, which was produced by LO, with the word BRITONS, above the same picture of the Field Marshal pointing, with the words “wants YOU – Join Your Country’s Army!”, beneath, and the words ‘God Save The King’ printed along the bottom.

However, Mr Taylor said there was no evidence the poster was particularly popular or a dominant design of the war, as some historians have claimed.

The only occasion in which the image and the wording did appear in poster form was an elaborate design, when the words and picture appear, in a smaller scale, below five flags and surrounded by details or rates of pay and other information, including the additional slogan – “Your Country is Still Calling. Fighting Men! Fall In!!”. The effect is very different from the image of popular imagination and again, Mr Taylor found no evidence it was particularly widespread or popular at the time.

He found that the most popular poster of the era, in terms of numbers produced, did feature Kitchener, but without the pointing finger and featuring a 30-word extract from a speech he had made. "

(A bit of Googling, and now I do have a link:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/your-country-needs-you-the-myth-of-the-mos... )

I found a nice ad today:

How to right a book - Get Ahead With Your Own Book - Your Professional Bestseller

The World’s Best Ghostwritten Books - As Seen On ABC’s Shark Tank. Start Now!
Services: Ghostwriting, Book Proposals, Book Production, Publishing, Distribution

>212 MarthaJeanne: Sometimes books fall over. They have to be righted.

>212 MarthaJeanne: Oh, lordy. There are so many errors in that advert. Don't want to seem a pendant but better might have been:

How to right a book - Get A Head With Your Own Book Youre Professional Bestseller

The Worlds Best Ghostwritten Book's - As Seen On ABCs' Shark Tank, Start Now!
Services: Ghost Writing, Book Proposals, 'Book Production', Publishing, Distribution!

I see that the advertiser doesn't offer a Proofreading Service.

Was there already another program with a name something like 'Dragons' Den' in the US? I'm wondering why the title was changed when exported.

>214 bluepiano: Don't want to seem a pendant ... Just hangin' around, eh?

>215 PhaedraB: Yeah, hangin' around, neckin' a beer.

Damian Hinds is the (British) Secretary of State for Education

"There are about half a dozen different options going around, and all of them has their strong supporters, but none of them has a majority in favour, whether you're talking about
Norway or Canada or second referendum, leaving without a deal or whatever it may be. What we need is a balanced deal."

—Damian Hinds, (British) Secretary of State for Education

________________________________

"No. 10 denies making plans for second referendum" (The Guardian (London) )

>217 proximity1: What do you want? Four verbs out of five agree correctly. I'm sure that would be enough for a GCSE Grade 1 pass. :-)
On the other hand, he apparently has a First in PPE from Oxford. I suspect that they would have been a bit more demanding.

(Perhaps the underlying issue is that it's not very clear whether the realistic options for a way out of the British government's current mess ought to be treated as grammatically countable...)

"half a dozen" 'have', not 'has', surely?

all of them have, none of them has.

It drives me nuts when people write "per say" rather than "per se".

>221 lilithcat: or percé

>222 thorold:

I've never seen that! Thank goodness.

>223 lilithcat: Quite. I don't know if it was autocorrect or dictation software, but it used to pop up quite frequently in French documents.

I spent years trying to persuade colleagues that this was one bit of legal Latin that was totally unnecessary, as it could always be replaced by a simple phrase native to the language they were writing in (as such, an sich, en tant que tel, etc.) without loss of meaning. But it was a losing battle. I just checked - it still appears 30 times in the latest edition of the main working handbook they use, although it's only used once in the underlying law.

- And anyway, when you have to distinguish between a thing and a thing per se, you're likely to be making a fairly dodgy argument...

>224 thorold: 'And anyway, when you have to distinguish between a thing and a thing per se, you're likely to be making a fairly dodgy argument...' This set me thinking about difference in connotation, though whether denotation I'm not certain, between 'as such' & 'in itself'; in fact, the former feels at the moment a fuzzy variation of the latter. I might say, X is no bad thing in itself but it's led to a serious problem. (I doubt I'd use 'as such' there, never mind 'per se'.)

And assuming there is a clear distinction, how would one distinguish 'as such' fr. 'in itself' in French?

>225 bluepiano: Hmmm. Not straightforward.
Maybe something like:
- this class as such vs. this instance of the class
- this item in itself vs. some attribute of the item

Fr. maybe “en tant que tel” vs. “en soi” ?

Most of the time, it doesn’t really seem to add meaning, either way, it just acts as a kind of more emphatic semicolon to bridge into the next half of the sentence. Missing it out altogether often works just as well.

>225 bluepiano:

I think there is a very slight difference between "as such" and "in itself". The latter refers to the essential nature of the thing - e.g. "Islam in itself is not a violent religion" - where "as such" seems to indicate a non-permanent attribute; e.g. "Christmas Day falls on a Sunday and as such will cause less disruption than usual".

"Islam in itself is not a violent religion" is grammatically and logically gibberish, nonsense.

"Islam in itself is not a violent religion" ≠ "Islam is not necessarily a violent religion", which, as meaningful, sense-making statements go, is just barely inside the bounds of arguably valid.

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Elijah Cummings, prize fool, has graced us with this gem:

Steve Kroft: And you only have two years.

Rep. Elijah Cummings: Less than that. Actually, less than that. The Congress doesn't meet but so many days in a year. And all I'm saying is that we've gotta hit the ground, not running, but flying."

... he’ll have to hit the ground “flying” with majority power to investigate the Trump administration...

which, as I understand it, means that he intends to "fly into the ground." And, come to think of it, I'm hoping his efforts amount to doing just that.

You go!, Elijah! You "hit the ground flying!", a.k.a. 'crash.'

"Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. We're about to make our final approach for hitting the ground flying."

I'm continuing this in another thread as it's getting very long.

I always tell visitors that I'm sure my books just breed in the night :-)

Please do NOT use this thread. Use the continuation: http://www.librarything.com/topic/302445