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Post by Kawaii Kaiju on Mar 6, 2009 17:52:25 GMT -6
Okay, so it isn't "Literature" but "language" discussion. I thought it was pretty cool and certainly worth a mention. Map of Mutual Incomprehension“When an English speaker doesn’t understand a word of what someone says, he or she states that it’s ‘Greek to me’. When a Hebrew speaker encounters this difficulty, it ’sounds like Chinese’. I’ve been told the Korean equivalent is ’sounds like Hebrew’,” says Yuval Pinter.
Which begs the question: “Has there been a study of this phrase phenomenon, relating different languages on some kind of Directed Graph?” Well apparently there has, even if only perfunctorily, and the result is this cartogram.Zilla (who has a friend who had a similar thought about syphilis, since English people called it the French Pox, whilst the French called it the English disease)
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Post by Christinko on Mar 6, 2009 22:27:46 GMT -6
Cool link--thanks, Zilla!
In a like vein, I look at Illinois...it citizenry laughs at the Cheeseheads (Wisconsin) and Hoosiers (Indiana), but pretty much leaves other states near it alone. Everyone picks on West Virginia (humming "Dueling Banjos" as I think about it). I'm sure there are other state by state insults going on across the nation. How do you determine who is laughable and who you are indifferent to by state?
And we always say "it's big as Texas" but Alaska is way bigger...do we just not care? Or is the saying because Texas has/had the motto of something like "Everything is bigger in Texas"?
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Post by Dan on Mar 7, 2009 0:32:17 GMT -6
Or is the saying because Texas has/had the motto of something like "Everything is bigger in Texas"? Things really ARE bigger in Texas. Especially around the age that your reading glasses magnification hits around 2.75. Yeah!! THAT'S what I'm talking about! ;D Now if I could only get Genelle to wear my glasses.... dan
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