Re: First report on Conm

Nik Taylor scripsit:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > This right-handed European would consider using the fork with your right hand
> > to be a left-handed thing to do, _even_ if you ate with only a fork.
>
> Why left-handed?  Why would you use your weaker hand to eat?
He's making a bilingual pun, which I had alluded to but not actually made.
I said it was gauche to eat like a European in America (unless you are one),
and in French *gauche* is "left".

Most of the words for "left" have, or have acquired, some negative sense:
gauche, sinister (Latin), awkward (i.e., backhanded, as I explained in an
earlier posting), etc.  In Russian, I am told, black-market dealings are
"trading on the left".  Christophe would rightly say that this is more
evidence of the persecution of sinistrals, so I'll say it for him.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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