Re: OT: Mildy OT: "Freedom kiss"?
From: | Tristan <kesuari@...> |
Date: | Friday, March 14, 2003, 7:52 |
Peter Clark wrote:
> It's nice to know that in an age where there are so many important things to
> be concerned about, the U.S. House of Representatives is busy making a fool
> of itself:
>
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/sprj.irq.fries/index.html
> For you history buffs, you will remember that back during WWI, lots of
> German-sounding things were renamed; sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage,"
> frankfurter became "liberty sausage," hamburger became "liberty meat," etc.
> Now, apparently, the French are the New Germans; we cannot have "french"
> fries or "french" toast (both, IIRC, have been discussed on this list
> before); nay, dear friends, we must have "freedom fries" and "freedom toast."
> My response: if it was stupid then, it's no less stupid now. Nevertheless,
> the games that politicians play with language can be...amusing...at times.
On a related note, apparently a sausage that was named German sausage
before WWI has a different name in basically all the Australian states:
here in Victoria, it's stras (/str&z/, short for strasburg), in South
Australia it's 'Fritz', Queenslanders call it 'Windsor', in NSW it's
'Devon', in WA it's 'Polony' and in Tasmania 'Belgium' or 'Belgian
sausage'. I didn't know that before today and thought beyond a doubt
that stras/strasbu(o)rg was the standard English for it. Now I look it
up in an American dictionary, and it's not there.
(What do they call this sausage in Germany? Or the rest of the world,
for that matter. For clarification, it's 'a spiced sausage of pork, veal
etc.' or 'a large smooth, bland sausage, usually sliced thinly and eaten
cold'.)
On a note related to my related note which is now quite divergent from
the original thread, apparently 'People weren't involved in trade during
the war' or 'The cost structure is making it very difficult for
businesses to establish there' are perculiarly Australian phrasings. Are
they? Would they be understood? (Just to clarify, the first doesn't
refer to a slave-trade, but to people trading *other* things.)
Tristan.
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