It’s a well-known adage that Britain and the United States are 2 countries divided by a common language.
However, that doesn’t seem to stop constant encroachment from over the other side of the Atlantic, as illustrated by the following letter from yesterday’s The Grauniad (dead tree edition).
Today is St George’s Day, the saint’s day of England’s patron saint and the purported day of Shakespeare’s birth (as well as being the day of his actual death in 1616. Ed.).
George was first adopted as England’s patron saint in the 14th century, when he was given the job and his predecessor St Edmund the Martyr, the 9th century king of East Anglia, was given the medieval equivalent of his P45. Nevertheless, traces of a cult of St George in England are discernible from the 9th century onwards in the form of a liturgy used at that time at Durham Cathedral, a 10th century Anglo-Saxon martyrology and in dedications to Saint George at Fordington in Dorset, Thetford in Norfolk, Southwark and Doncaster.
According to legend, George was a Roman soldier of Greek origin and officer in the guard of the Roman emperor Diocletian, who ordered his death for George failing to recant his Christian faith.
Looking at patronage, George is much more than the patron saint of England. Four other countries also have him as their patron saint, i.e.:
Furthermore, George is also the patron saint of Spain’s autonomous communities of Aragon and Catalonia.
The best known feat about St George is his alleged dragon slaying. Just like his being a member of Diocletian’s guard, this is also legend. In the medieval romances, the lance with which Saint George is said to have slain the dragon was called Ascalon after the Levantine city of Ashkelon, which is in the modern state of Israel. As regards any factual basis for the legend, some evidence links the legend back to very old Egyptian and Phoenician sources in a late antique statue of Horus fighting a “dragon”. This links the legendary George – who should not be confused with the historical George – to various ancient sources of mythology around the eastern Mediterranean.
Speaking of dragons, the Old English Wordhord Twitter account came up with “ligdraca” – a fire-drake or dragon vomiting flames – for St George’s Day.
Celebrating St George’s Day has been more common in the past in England, although there have been times when it was celebrated less or not at all.
Indeed, Keith Flett informs us that its celebration was popular until the Reformation, but it was still marked. Under the Commonwealth, its celebration was banned in 1645 under the Long Parliament which sat from 1640 to 1660. When the English in their folly decided to invite Charles Stuart back in 1660 after the death of Cromwell, celebrating St George’s Day was restored.
Unlike St Andrew’s Day in Scotland, St George’s Day is not a public holiday (confusingly called a bank holiday in British English. Ed.). Indeed the countries of the United Kingdom have amongst the lowest numbers of public holidays in the developed world, whilst the UK as a whole has the the fewest of any G20 country or EU member state.
Whether to respond to this shortcoming or not, it’s been reported today that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will announce that Labour will introduce four new bank holidays – one for each of the patron saints of the countries making up the United Kingdom – if the party wins the forthcoming general election. This will be sold on the doorstep as a measure “to give workers the break they deserve“: and that’s definitely something for which I can vote.
Today’s Daily Mail front page is in full censorious mode following the announcement yesterday morning of a snap election by the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister.
As can be seen, those who voted remain in last year’s EU referendum have now been reclassified by the Mail. We’re no longer Remoaners, but Saboteurs.
Indeed the Mail headline has been greatly exercising the Twittersphere this morning, with its wording being compared with both extreme wings of politics (the phrase “Crush the Saboteurs” was first used by Lenin in January 1919. Ed.), with several reminders of the Mail’s infamous Hurrah for the Blackshirts headline from January 1934.
Since this morning Mrs May has defended the Mail’s intemperate stance and headline, pleading “freedom of the press”. Some would argue freedom comes with a sense of responsibility attached, Mrs May.
As someone who voted remain in the referendum and still regards the course towards a so-called hard Brexit favoured by the Prime Minister and entailing leaving the Single Market, the course of action she is advocating looks to me like the ultimate sabotage.
As a person whose life is built around words, the definition and etymology of the word sabotage interests me.
According to Dictionary.com, sabotage has the following meanings as a noun:
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Sabotage can also be used as a verb, meaning to injure or attack by sabotage.
As regards the origins of sabotage, it came into use in English in the late 19th/early 20th century, emanating from the French, equivalent to sabot(er) to botch, orig., to strike, shake up, harry, derivative of sabot, which dates back to the 13th century and denotes a clog or wooden shoe. Sabot originates from an unidentified source that also produced similar words in Old Provençal, Portuguese, Spanish (zapata), Italian (ciabatta), Arabic (sabbat) and Basque (zapata).
As regards sabotage in the context of the UK’s relationship with the European Union/EEC, it must be remembered that the Europhobes (later called Eurosceptics. Ed.) were moaning even before the ink was dry on the signatures of Edward Heath, Alec Douglas-Home and Geoffrey Rippon on the 1972 Treaty of Accession.
The Europhobes have consistently sabotaged Britain’s relationship with Europe ever since and, as someone who is diametrically opposed to their plans, I am therefore proud to declare: “Je suis saboteur!”
On Twitter, the ITI has kindly pointed out a terminological error in last week’s Guardian. I appeared in the text of the article shown below, taken on the occasion of the UK’s not at all unelected prime minister Theresa May’s visit to those nice people in Saudi Arabia who are kind enough to buy lots of weapons off the British for use in Yemen.
The person identified as Person 2 is described as “the most important person in the room, the translator”.
I’m afraid you are wrong there, Grauniad. He may be the most important person in the room, but alas he is no translator.
The error of the Grauniad’s ways was helpfully pointed out in a letter on Tuesday by fellow linguist Jane Straker and her letter is reproduced in full below.
The big picture (5 April) was good and the numbered captions helpful. It was a boost for our profession to have the man below the late King Abdullah’s portrait described as “perhaps the most important person in the room”. However, translators are not normally people who listen and speak (sometimes simultaneously) in meetings: that is the job of interpreters. Some translators are trained to interpret, but they usually excel at writing, keyboard skills and carefully honing text. Speech is not writing; transfer of meaning between languages and cultures requires not only accuracy, speed and clarity, but impartiality. Interpreters should have no vested interest in the outcome of a meeting. It would be useful to know whether Theresa May had a British Arabic-English interpreter in her delegation.
To avoid future blunders and save interpreters from putting pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – passing Grauniad (& other) journalists are advised to consult my handy illustrated guide to translators and interpreters.
Some linguists have remarked that the two sides of the profession should stop being so pedantic about terminology. However, I believe terminological exactitude is a crucial skill for both translators and interpreters. Give your thoughts in the comments below.
Standards of English in the media continue to plumb new depths as per the tweet below.
Why a crocodile would want to impress a British backpacker is unclear. In the immortal words of Private Eye, I think we should be told. 😀
Hat tip: Harriet Johnson.
Yet more proof emerged this weekend of the complete lack of suitability for any public office of disgraced former Defence Minister Dr. Liam Fox MP, the allegedly right honourable member of Parliament for North Somerset (aka the Clevedon Conman. Ed.).
Foolishly appointed as Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade by Theresa May, the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister, Fox was appearing this weekend (and taking time off from golf. Ed.) on Sophy Ridge’s Sunday morning current affairs show on Sky.
During the course of the interview, the small matter arose of a very inaccurate tweet sent in March 2016 arose. This is of current relevance because of the current UK government notion of a post-Brexit replacement of EU markets by enhanced access to African Commonwealth countries, an idea reportedly scorned by sceptical civil servants and thus dubbed “Empire 2.0“.
Fox’s tweet reads as follows:
“The United Kingdom, is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history” #scc16
Even when it was displayed on a big screen in the studio behind him, Fox, in a masterful display of brass neck, denied ever sending the tweet in the first place, claiming it was The Guardian that was the perpetrator, a textbook example of the “a big boy did it and ran away” defence.
If the sentiment in his denied tweet is to be believed, Fox has a very selective view of British colonial history, a story of theft, plunder and conquest stretching back many centuries. Referring solely to the 20th century as per Fox’s tweet, Britain wasn’t exactly a benign imperial power, as the following list of incidents will reveal.
As regards the non-imperial history of Britain in the 20th century, incidents of which the country should not be proud include the Balfour Declaration and Sykes-Picot Agreement (from both of which much of the conflict in the Middle East since the end of World War 2 originally stemmed. Ed.), plus wartime blunders such as the Gallipoli Campaign (posts passim) and the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, as well as atrocities such as the fire-bombing of Dresden.
Your correspondent is well aware that history does not feature much in the curriculum of the medical course of Glasgow University, but Fox’s sweeping of so much incriminating historical dirt under the carpet in fewer than the 140 characters permitted by Twitter is breathtaking in both its audacity and stupidity.
As with the Adam Werritty affair while he was Defence Secretary, Fox has once again proved by both his naivety and lack of ability to tell the truth that he his totally unfit for any public office
At least once a week, the Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of warped record, comes up with an exclusive, although this might not be immediately apparent to the casual reader.
Today is no exception as, buried in this report on the recall of dodgy products is the revelation that some people are allergic to written records of discrete events organised by date, as revealed by the following screenshot.
No illiteracy or lack of proof-reading skills should be inferred concerning the alleged “journalist” involved. 🙂
There’s a skill to writing an intriguing headline that invites the reader to engage with an article.
Besides the above that skill also involves the ability to make the headline make sense.
It’s an ability that seems to be lacking down at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth, headquarters of the Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record, as shown by the screenshot below of the head of this article.
Comments on the piece accuse the Post’s headline of not making sense, but to your correspondent it does make perfect sense… as long as nurses can get struck off posthumously.
Update 07/03/17: Perhaps prompted by the mocking nature of the comments, the headline has now been amended to reflect the gist of what actually happened.
Besides his less endearing qualities of bullying, sexism and xenophobia, the 45th President of the United States of America is believed by some not to be very bright either, an opinion which is reinforced by the presence of a glaring typographical error in the text on his official inauguration portrait, which must at some time have passed across his desk for approval (or even been written by him. Ed.).
Proof readers and the eagle-eyed will no doubt spot it immediately, unlike POTUS did.
However, orthography and proof reading may be the least of President Typo’s worries at present. 🙂
The “th” sound, which had its own letter – thorn (Þ, þ) in Old and Middle English – could disappear from spoken British English, today’s Daily Telegraph reports.
By 2066, linguists are predicting that the “th” sound will vanish completely in london because there are so many foreigners who struggle to pronounce interdental consonants – the term for a sound created by pushing the tongue against the upper teeth.
In the wider South East of England Estuary English – a hybrid of Cockney and received pronunciation (RP)– is already being replaced by Multicultural London English (MLE), which is heavily influenced by Caribbean, West African and Asian Communities.
The Telegraph is reporting on the release of the Sounds of The Future report produced by Dr. Dominic Watt and Dr. Brendan Gunn from the University of York.
Other predictions from the authors include:
Commenting on the same report, the Newcastle Chronicle leads with the headline “The Geordie accent is on the way out say language experts“, remarking that language experts say that by 2066 the distinctive Geordie accent will sound like a southern one.
The Sound of 2016 report was commissioned by bankers HSBC, to mark the “voice biometric” technology which the bank is rolling out to 15 million customers, so perhaps it’s worth mentioning here the usual disclaimer about not trusting information from someone trying to sell you something. 😀