atw: Re: Article: In Defense of Common English AND the FAN

Stuart Burnfield:
You wrote:
> http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=1200zq259py5hw6r0xs6h43x9jzd2gf3

And interesting article / multiple book review.

Oh hell.  At the risk of another Pullum thingy, dare I point out one 
interesting issue, given the title of the article, "In Defence of Common 
English"?

The reviewer, Ben Yogada, says of one book:

"> Hitchings ...... offers the odd and valuable fact that the seemingly 
euphemistic
> "poppycock" is actually a direct translation of a vulgar expression that 
> means "doll's
> excrement".
.....
Then Yagoda adds later:

> Hitchings cites the 1605 text A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, in 
> Antiquities by
> Richard Verstegan, who "vigorously promoted Anglo-Saxon words and customs, and
> complained that his countrymen had lately borrowed so many terms from Latin, 
> French and
> other tongues that English was 'of itselfe no language at all, but the scum 
> of many
> languages.
>
> Well, it may be scum, but it's our scum.

But if it were really our entirely our scum as Yagoda claims, why would he not 
use the common old term for translation of the original meaning of "poppycock" 
as "doll's shit",  which means the same, but is of Anglo-Saxon origin?    
Methinks he's missed some of the point
of the argument...     And can't actually use all of "our scum" in the journal 
publishing his article.

Or maybe  there's scum and there are floating impurities ....





-PeterM  
peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
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