And a little Zippy
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After Bizarro and Zits, here's a little Zippy. (Click on a cartoon to get an enlarged image.) First, on languages (though, this being Zippy, it wanders):
(I'm reminded of Mel Brooks' astonished complaint about his time in the Army, stationed in France: everyone spoke French!)
And then a riff on the idea that expressions mean different things to different people:
marie-lucie said,
May 30, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
"in France, everyone spoke French!"
I think that anglophones whose only exposure to another living language was being taught it in the same manner as Latin, through the grammar-translation method, probably thought that knowing this other language was a similar accomplishment having little to do with ordinary speech. So perhaps French people were thought to be familiar with the French language and to pepper their talk with French expressions, but of course daily life would be conducted in the "normal" language, English. Perhaps the comment meant not so much that French people spoke FRENCH, but that they actually SPOKE French, and French alone.
In an English novel whose name I have forgotten, an elderly lady is talking about a young relative's stay in a French family: it was awkward for the girl because "those people couldn't speak. – What do you mean, were they deaf and dumb? – Oh no, but they just couldn't speak!" (meaning, they could not speak English).
Ryan Denzer-King said,
May 30, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
Fun fact: according to Ethnologue, Inuktitut speakers outnumber Danish speakers 6 to 1 in Greenland.
Joshua Zucker said,
May 30, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
"Epcot City" is a bit of an awkward phrase, since originally EPCoT comes from Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
So "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow City"?
Jonathan Lundell said,
May 30, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
Steve Martin on the French: "They have a different word for everything!"
Paul Wilkins said,
May 30, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
Excuse me while I whip this out:
Perhaps you should have linked Mel Brooks. From personal experience in the global marketplace across all age groups, Mel Brooks is not near a ubiquitous as one might thingk.
May the Schwartz be with you.
dr pepper said,
June 2, 2008 @ 12:15 am
Is Shawayla Lundigan invoking "pyramid energy" to keep her donut fresh?