February 13th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Adam Gopnik to Hendrik Hertzberg:
“Interesting thing, to me at least. If you Google Obama’s wonderful line “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” it’s credited right and left, and going back to the nineties, as a bit of Hopi Indian wisdom. I haven’t (a) read this anywhere or (b) seen anything made of the silent borrowing from the Eldest Peoples, etc. Also, frankly, I doubt that it can be a true Hopi aphorism, unless in some very different form, since I suspect the grammar works only in English. (You couldn’t say it in French, for instance, so far as I can figure.) I wonder who really did invent it, and where B.O. (ah! a difference! You can’t initialize him à la a Kennedy!) found it?”
Tags: barack obama,languages,politics,semantics,usa
January 31st, 2008 · Comments Off
Der Spiegel, From ‘Anschluss’ to ‘Zyklon B’. New Dictionary Highlights Nazi Words to Avoid:
“But there is another, more subtle, linguistic trap which both Germans and non-Germans can easily fall into — and which is far worse a faux pas than a mere slip of the article. Mention that you’ve found the “Endlösung” (”final solution”) to a problem you’ve been grappling with, or that you’ve made a “Selektion” (”selection”) from a number of possible alternatives, and you will quickly find yourself the target of disapproving stares.
The reason is simple — the aforementioned words are so tainted by their use by the Nazis that they are now completely taboo. To modern German ears, “Endlösung” will forever be associated with Hitler’s genocidal “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” while “Selektion” is now verbum non grata due to its use to refer to the death camp practice of “selecting” inmates to be executed.”
Eitz, Thorsten, Stötzel, Georg - Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheitsbewältigung”
Tags: germany,linguistics,semantics,wo2
October 3rd, 2006 · Comments Off
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“An Australian computer programmer says he found the missing “a” from Armstrong’s famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard the phrase, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”"
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“Is there anyone more qualified to create healthy and delicious meals for marathoners than a chef who runs?”
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“The third and most compelling reason to believe that the designer era is over lies in the cultural landscape. “
Tags: brand,design,fashion,food,marathon,moon landing,neil armstrong,quotes,recipe,running,semantics,space,wining and dining
