DIARY
One
hundred Norwegian words for ‘reindeer’
by
Robert LaFrance
Comedian Derek Edwards, one of my
favourites, has a routine during which he dwells on the fact that the Norwegian
language has one hundred words for reindeer. He makes it funny, but sometimes
language differences cause people to get very annoyed.
Example: New Brunswick’s Language
Commissioner Katherine d’Entremont clearly intends to antagonize every
Anglophone in the province with her pronouncements and musings.
In another part of Canada, the
Northwest Territories, there are eleven official languages, most of them First
Nation of course, but federal government bureaucrats can only seem to see two.
A recent CBC Radio interview with an Inuit lady from (I think) Sachs Harbour
where I used to live, brought forth the information that her baby’s birth
certificate could only be issued in English or French.
This is a perfect example of
bureaucrats antagonizing people for no reason except to bully. What possible reason
could there be for not printing a birth certificate in Inuktitut or Cree or any
of the other official languages? Has Katherine d’Entremont been up there in
Yellowknife advising the bureaucrats on the best way to annoy people?
**************************
I learned many years ago that a
‘flibbertigibbet’ was ‘a frivolous, flighty or excessively talkative person’.
Do we know anyone like that?
Half asleep (so what else is new?),
I was watching a TV commercial advertising a new pill made by a company that
had spent years and millions of dollars devising a pill to cure ‘Languorism’.
The biggest expense was, of course,
advertising it once they had passed all the government tests. That was easy;
the pill is made up of very very mild aspirin and filler. In the old days, we
called them placebos, from the Latin word meaning ‘I will please’.
Here’s my point: Languorism doesn’t
exist, or it didn’t before the company invented the word that actually means
the state of being calm and relaxed. Mustn’t have that, must we? Of course I
could be lying about all this.
**************************
I’m always amazed when I hear the
word ‘euthanize’. People use it as if it doesn’t mean the same as ‘kill’. That
seems to be a hard one for people to say. I remember back in the 1960s when
there were thousands of CIA types running around Vietnam and they didn’t like
to use the word either.
Writer David Halberstam was the
first one who made public the information that the CIA, like the Norwegians
with their reindeer, had many euphemisms for the word. My favourite, and his,
was the phrase “eliminate with extreme prejudice”. When you execute a Viet Cong
‘spy’ such a phrase is much better than kill, don’t you think?
Not to get tied down to one subject,
and I would prefer the CIA didn’t notice me any more than they already have,
let’s go on to gardening.
My peas are blossomed, my bush beans
are looking around hopefully, my tomatoes look healthy, and my carrots are
almost ready to harvest in a couple of months, so my garden is looking good –
except for my beets.
Year after year I walk hopefully
into my garden and plant beets, but all I ever get for my trouble is pain and
frustration. Last year I harvested seven beets, each about the size of a golf
ball and that gave me hope. This year I planted twice as many and my hopes were
high, but like Flug’s third wife Fifi, they have flown the coop. He tracked her
down in Minto where she was living with a weightlifter, or as he would call
himself, bodybuilder. And here I thought we were born with our bodies already
built. By the way, ironically (referring to gardening), his name is Pete Maus.
As the faithful and long-suffering
readers of this column know, I often listen to CBC and MPBN radio stations.
There are many thoughtful programs on CBC and on that American PBS station. On
CBC last Saturday evening I was listening to a show called ‘Vinyl Tap’ whose
announcer, Randy Bachman, relates stories from the history of rock music of
which he was a great part. He was in The Guess Who and in Bachman-Turner
Overdrive.
Last Saturday evening I almost fell
off my chair when he, referring to a 1980s rocker, said he had been “originally
born in Winnipeg”.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of
a ‘gender-neutral’ cabinet and am wondering if that should be a criterion for
selecting people who will have power over the rest of us plebes. Of course the
main danger would be that, sooner or later, women will be in the majority and
then we males will have to fight for equality as I have to in this very
household. How I’ve suffered.
-end-
No comments:
Post a Comment