Re: Aspects of English Grammar

When we invented the Departements in France (after the
Revolution), they were some not very lucky ideas:
- Seine-Inferieure
- Loire-Inferieure
- Basses-Pyrenees (Lower Pyrenees)
- Basses-Alpes (Lower Alps)...

The people living in such Departements were feeling
unhappy and despised (in fact, the problem was that
the agricultural products exported from those
Departements had a chance to be ill-considered by
foreigners not understanding French geographic names).
So nearly all those names were changed:
- Seine-Maritime
- Loire-Atlantique
- Pyrenees-Atlantiques
- Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (clever, isn't it ?)...

Only poor Bas-Rhin (Lower Rhine) wasn't renamed yet,
although there is some good wine there.

But that unfortunately gave ideas to people from other
Departements:
- while should the Cotes-du-Nord (Northern Coasts) be
given such an infamous name ? "North" refers to cold,
and that Departement is not in the North of France,
but in the North of Brittany, and it expects much from
tourism... OK, we renamed it Cotes-d'Armor (Armor
meaning the Sea in breton, this looks a little
pleonastic)
- then some people from Creuse and from Cher also came
complaining: "Creuse" can be understood as "Hollow" (-
rather depressing - in fact, it's from a river), and
"Cher" as "Expensive"... (a river too). But the
Administration said, hey, wait a minute, we won't
change names every five minutes if there isn't a good
reason for it, so for the moment Cher is still Cher,
and Creuse, Creuse.

But the city of Chalons-sur-Marne managed to be
renamed Chalons-en-Champagne, officially not to be
confused with Chalon-sur-Saone, but in my opinion
taking advantage from the prestigious name of
"Champagne" (and although champagne vineyards are
further, around Reims).

--- "Ph. D." <phild@...> wrote:
>
> Back in the 1970s, there was a minor movement to get
> the upper
> peninsula made into a separate state, to be called
> "Superior."
> Never went very far, but one used to see people with
> a fake
> "Superior" license plate in their car window.


=====
Philippe Caquant

"He thought he saw a Rattlesnake / That questioned him in Greek: / He looked
again, and found it was / The Middle of Next Week. / "The one thing I regret',
he said, / "Is that it cannot speak !' " (Lewis Carroll)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
http://mail.yahoo.com

Reply