Glad to see the French are bemoaning the death of Cockney. There’s a lovely bit in George Borrow’s Romany Rye where he has moved into an inn in which there was a barber and hair-dresser, who had been at Paris, and talked French with a cockney accent; the French sounding all the better, as no…
Holidays amidst grossly obese and peaceful Brits, whose beer doesn’t come with a free hangover, whose Big Macs cost less in nominal terms than those in Barcelona (£1.88 vs €2.89), and whose heavens never cease to tell the exceeding dampness of him upstairs. The firmament proclaims no love, alas, but Messrs Macaulay and Borrow are…
Re Mark Liberman’s post, I don’t know of any prior examples–the nearest I can think of are C16th Dutch usages like Poortegaal for the smallest room (but speaking Portuguese isn’t, unfortunately, mean speaking crap) and Scythen/Schijten = Scythians/shitting–and Thomas Watson’s “A perjured person is the devil’s excrement” is attractive but too late. Saint Augustine doesn’t…
Here. They visit Postman’s Park, where I used on occasion to have lunch, and which commemorates among others a DTP slave martyred for using Motter Tektura in Seattle. (Would anyone still try to save someone else from a dangerous attack of weed?) (Off topic: When will we have a monument to the unknown minister?)
Xavier (check his crazy blog, Le dicon) in an interesting comment has introduced me to Jean-Pierre Brisset. Brisset is interesting because he anticipates Derrida (différance) by taking a a lexical trick that works only in French and using it as the basis for universal theory, despite most of us not having been blessed with an…
From the mid-fifteenth century translation into Spanish of Peter Apian‘s Cosmography: The towns of the Duchy of Saxony. – Wittemberg, Witenberga. 30.30/51.50. – Halberstat, Halberstadium, 28.38/52.11. – Lunenborg, Luneburgum, 27.50/54.0. – Braunsvick, Brunsuicum, 28.0/52.34. – Embeck, Embica, In this region they make very good beer. 27.32/52.6. – Lebenberg, Leoburgum, 28.2/54.10. – Hal, Hallis Saxoniae, 26.49/51.41.…
Not as dramatic as this gentleman but probably better company, Steve Vaught (“The fat man walking”) is walking across the States to try to lose weight. Two local guys (“Dos en un burro”) are cheating and have a donkey pulling them. I hope it gets more Three men in a boat-ish, because there’s promise in…