Language Log

Those TED audiences expect to be entertained

April 27, 2017 @ 2:03 pm · Filed by Mark Liberman under Language and the media

And tickets are expensive, so they can be brutal if you offend them — "Pope warns powerful to act humbly or risk ruin in TED talk", ABC News, 4/26/2017:

[h/t Michael Leddy]

April 27, 2017 @ 2:03 pm · Filed by Mark Liberman under Language and the media

Keith said,

April 28, 2017 @ 2:31 am

I'm more interested in knowing what the original Spanish is for the Argentinian saying, quoted in the article.

[Pope Francis] cited a saying from his native Argentina about the effects of drinking gin on an empty stomach: "You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you if you don't connect your power with humility and tenderness."
John Swindle said,

April 28, 2017 @ 4:04 am

@Keith: The Pope spoke in Italian. The text and video are available online with translations into various languages. In Spanish it came out "como tomar ginebra en ayunas". But that's a translation, you say? According to a 2013 blog article by Leopoldo Abadía, the future Pope had already compared money and power to "la ginebra en ayunas" when he was bishop of Buenos Aires.
John Swindle said,

April 29, 2017 @ 1:58 pm

Abadía, writing from Spain in 2013, quoted the Argentine bishop and future pope as having at some point said "el dinero y el poder son como la ginebra en ayunas. Inmediatamente marean, hacen perder el piso", and added that in Latin America "perder el piso" meant not keeping the feet on the ground.