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December 27, 2024 @ 10:42 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Linguistics in the comics
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That's a pun on "Boxing Day", ICYMI…
December 27, 2024 @ 10:42 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Linguistics in the comics
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S Frankel said,
December 27, 2024 @ 11:15 am
Unfortunately Bach, a Lutheran, never had occasion to write an Officium Defunctorum a.k.a. Bach's Office for the Dead.
Kate Bunting said,
December 27, 2024 @ 11:36 am
Boxing Day being a British thing, but the pun on 'baroque' doesn't work in British English!
Nick Z said,
December 27, 2024 @ 1:02 pm
It works much better than Bach thing for Boxing. The completely different vowels (in British English, at any rate), and sibilant – dental fricative alternation made it utterly opaque to me until I was told what that was meant to represent.
Philip Taylor said,
December 27, 2024 @ 1:47 pm
Like Nick (above) "Bach thing day" went straight over the head of this Briton, whilst "I baroque it" was immediately obvious. But I winced at the use of "shoot", where most Britons would say "shit".
Roscoe said,
December 27, 2024 @ 2:09 pm
If you performed “Und es waren Hirten in derselben Gegend,” BWV 248 (Part 2 of the Christmas Oratorio) on its assigned date of December 26, would it be a Bach sing day?
Geoff M said,
December 27, 2024 @ 2:56 pm
While J.S. Bach never composed a requiem, his youngest son wrote a partial one!
Chas Belov said,
December 27, 2024 @ 3:26 pm
@Philip Taylor: Actually, "shoot" is a common American euphemism for "shit" and one I would expect to see in a newspaper strip, which Frazz is.
Philip Taylor said,
December 27, 2024 @ 5:19 pm
OK, understood Chas. But it does surprise me how prudish Americans can appear to be, using "darn" where I would say "damn", "shoot" where I would say"shit", and so on — it somehow seems incongruous in a society that (for example) allows for the open carrying of loaded firearms in a public place, in some cases without even requiring the issue of a permit.
HS said,
December 27, 2024 @ 6:25 pm
"Bach" has a completely unique meaning in New Zealand English – it refers to a small holiday cottage, usually located by the sea. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_(New_Zealand) . It is pronounced "batch" and is derived from "bachelor hut" (and not from "bachelor pad" as that Wikipedia article claims – the name goes back to huts used by single workers on major public works projects in New Zealand a century ago, well before anybody in New Zealand would have heard of a "bachelor pad"). As a result, New Zealanders have a tendency to pronounce the name of the great German composer as "batch".
So a "bach day" is in fact a real thing in New Zealand, and a particularly enjoyable one in nice sunny summer weather around Christmas time….
Andrew Usher said,
December 27, 2024 @ 7:07 pm
Philip Taylor:
Americans say shit, damn, etc. with a similar frequency to you. They're just not generally printed in the papers. So when Chas said he 'would expect to see' it in a comic strip, that's mainly why.
It's true that 'shoot' and 'darn' are more familiar to Americans, also (I assume) 'heck' – on the other hand I think substitutes for the F word are common everywhere.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
RfP said,
December 27, 2024 @ 8:38 pm
And then there are the Bach Flower essences, developed by Dr. Edward Bach, and available in pharmacies or natural grocery stores—or chemists shops—in many countries.
Dr. Bach happened to be Welsh, and pronounced his name like “batch.”
But perhaps not surprisingly, they’re pronounced by most people as if they were developed by a famous German composer.
Peter Grubtal said,
December 28, 2024 @ 2:26 am
In England the euphemism for s*** is "sugar".
The asterisks appeared when I spoke the text in without euphemism.