"Jennings was delighted with her gratitude, and only wondered that after hearing such a sentence, the Colonel should be able to take leave of them, as he immediately did, with the utmost sang-froid, and go away without making her any reply...."
Excerpt from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
I love the humour in the Asterix comics. Their language, while oh-so-literary has a brand of humour thats hard to find elsewhere. Asterix comics is where I was exposed to a lot of Latin phrases like "quid pro quo" or "quo vadis" and since, at that time, the internet was not as prolific as it is now, wiki and google not bedside companions as it is now, the only way to figure out the meaning of these phrases was to use the dictionary, the hardbound book of phrases and quotations or the walking dictionary cum thesaurus otherwise known as Amma.
Reading classics like Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer exposed one words like bourgeois or maitre' d and other such french derivatives. Perry Mason novels had a decent smattering of legalese such as pro bono, rigor mortis and haebius corpus. So where am I headed with all this? Well just to the point that I have a strange nervousness around these words. To this day, when I hear such Latin or French derivative phrases a strange process kicks off at the back of my mind that wonders if I've understood it right or have hopelessly jumbled them up.
Ever heard of Miss Malaprop or malapropisms? Yes, thats one of my fears. I dread using one of these phrases at the risk of turning into Miss Malaprop. The ones that throw me in a tizzy are these scholarly ones such as magna/summa cum laude or sang-froid, avant-garde, carte-blanche,fait accompli............so on and so forth.
So if you're around me and throw one of these or some other such in a conversation, that'll be one way to get my head spinning. Now alright alright, dont tell me "You have a latin domain, what IS your problem?". The reason I found myself one of these is because by chance I was on the wiki for Latin phrases and picked this one because it fit the description well. Happy? Doesnt mean I am a Latin pundit. And the reason I've been shirking from planning that trip to France is the same fear. I need to be in a French class, and soon!
Greek, Latin and everything in between
Tuesday, May 06, 2008Posted by Altoid at 6:28 AM
Labels: Everything in between
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5 mint(s) of wisdom:
Is there a term for the fear of being a malapropist? For that matter, it doesn't have to be latin or french or greek, even in English, I sometimes search for the right word. And ever since I saw 'u, me aur hum', I am convinced that I will end up that way too :-)
I bought an audio french tutor and it works well for quick trips to gay paaree. Now to save enough for the trip, is a different matter altogether.
Count on me for not throwing anything at you.
I find it tough to find 'big english' words for simple adjectives like sad or happy. I run to online dictionary and pick out synonyms :))
@ home my father was the walking talking dict for the scary words you quoted. And every time he tells me a meaning that I NEED to start reading the newspaper :)
And that's why, nearing my final year in my English Lit. BA, I'm still very wary of using French/Latin phrases!
Other than "e.g" and "i.e" - it's all Hebrew to me.
You go Emo! Learn French and teach us some too!! :--))
There are some other authors who use foreign languages left and right, Chrichton does I think.
What's going on?Having some fun at our expense?I am one who is tongue tied when someone speaks the fluent form of any language.The Hinglish,Taminglish forms can be handled better.
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