Re: OT: For information only !

--- John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
> Philippe Caquant scripsit:
>
> > strangely enough, we don't really care to be
> regularly treated like
> > dirt by tabloids from "the perfid Albion", but
> many of us strongly
> > object to the idea of having to
> > speak the same language as our American friends).
>
> This took some decoding.  This is one of those
> places where getting
> the idiom wrong reverses the meaning:  "don't care
> to be X" means
> "strongly object to being X", whereas "don't care
> about being X"
> means "are indifferent to being X".  You plainly (in
> hindsight)
> wrote the first and meant the second.
Quite so. I could have noticed it myself if I had
re-read my message carefully. Have to work more if I
want to try the TOEFL :-(

>
> (BTW, why is the cliche for the English
> "perfidious"?  From
> the Hundred Years War till 1914, France and England
> were just
> straight-up enemies.  Where does the element of
> betrayal come in?)
Well, I searched on Google and found 1,870 pages (in
French) mentioning the expression "perfide Albion",
but couldn't really find any convincing origin. It
just seems this expression has always existed... which
is probably not the case. England is the perfidious
Albion just as Japan is the country of the Rising Sun,
there can't be any discussion about that :-) . Of
course, one could mention the 100 Years War, Jeanne
d'Arc, Canada, India, Napoleon, Fachoda, Mers-el-Kebir
and the mad cow, but who did use this expression for
the first time, I don't know. I suspect it was at the
time of French Revolution, anyway, probably XVIIIth
century.

(...)
>
> > English is not endangered yet. The proof of it is
> that
> > I'am writing this message in (broken) English.
>
> Pretty good non-native English (as opposed to
> perfect non-native
> English, which some of our members manage to write,
> Ghu only knows how).
> Certainly not "broken".
>
Thanks for encouragement...
>

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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