Tag: Language

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David Bruce: Language Anecdotes

John Stuart Mill learned Greek and Latin at a very young age. In his Autobiography, he recounted his reading in Greek: “I had read, under my father’s tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, among whom I remember the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Memorials of Socrates; some of the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and Isocrates’ ad Demonicum and ad Nicoclem. I also read, in 1813, the first six dialogues (in the common arrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theaetetus inclusive: which last dialogue, I venture to think, would have been better omitted, as it was totally impossible I should understand it.” (Mr. Mill was seven years old at the time.)

During World War I, opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink was requested to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” for the American troops. Because she was so eager to help, she agreed, although she did not know the words. (She sang the tune, rather than the words, of the song.) Later, she read this comment in a newspaper article: “The voice of Schumann-Heink is a great inspiration when she sings ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ but we would be very obliged if she would tell us in what language she sings it.” (Quickly thereafter, she learned the words.)

British journalist Henry Porter wrote a weekly column in the Sunday Times. In May of 1986, he announced in a column that he had deliberately made five grammatical mistakes, and he offered a bottle of champagne to anyone who could point out those mistakes. The following Sunday, Mr. Porter wrote in his column that no one had identified the five errors that he had made intentionally, but that the numerous letters he had received had identified 23 errors that he had made unintentionally!

At the age of twenty-four, Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpted the masterpiece known as the Pietà, which depicts the dead body of Jesus held in his mother Mary’s arms. People did not believe that a twenty-four-old man could have carved such a masterpiece, so Michelangelo carved into Mary’s sash these words: “Michel Angelus Bonarotus Florent Faciebat.” The Latin means, “Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence made it.” This is the only artwork signed by Michelangelo.

Conductor Arturo Toscanini was having difficulty — musically and linguistically — with a star tenor in a Swedish opera house, and finally he asked a friend who spoke Swedish, “Ask that man if he knows who I am, and tell him to get the hell off the stage.” The tenor listened to the two requests, then replied, “Yes and no.” After hearing the translation of the tenor’s reply, Mr. Toscanini laughed and went on with the rehearsal.

Eddie Cantor and Georgie Jessel performed an act together in vaudeville. In one town, Mr. Jessel noticed that the billing read, “Eddie Cantor with Georgie Jessel.” This upset him, and he complained to their manager, Irving Mansfield, “What kind of conjunction is that? Eddie Cantor with Georgie Jessel?” Mr. Irving promised to fix the wording, and the next day the billing read, “Eddie Cantor but Georgie Jessel.”

Opera singer Grace Moore often answered her own telephone; however, being a celebrity, she disguised her voice with a French accent until she learned who the caller was. Sometimes, she was unable to identify important callers and so would not speak to them. Discovering the truth later, they were not amused at the precaution she had taken to preserve her privacy.

Early in his career, E.B. White wrote a short story about a man seeing his wife’s body in a morgue, then submitted it to the newspaper where he worked: the Seattle Times. The editor’s response made him quit his job — the editor wanted him to change “My God! It’s her!” to the grammatically correct but unrealistic “My God! It is she!”

A teacher wanted a student to learn how to pronounce the “j” sound that can be heard in words such as “giant.” Therefore, he stood on a desk and told the student, “You are a little person, and I am a great big ….” As requested, the very young student finished the sentence for the teacher: “JERK.”

Early in his career, Russian bass Feodor Chaliapine once knew an Italian ballerina named Tornaghi who danced in his country but was homesick for Italy. To comfort her, he used to say all the Italian words he knew at that time: Allegro andante religioso moderato.” (Later, he married her.)

Some people have excellent memories. During a trip, Francis Edgeworth, a Fellow of All Souls College Cambridge, passed the time by trying to remember Homer’s Iliad. He did very well, remembering about half of the epic poem — not in an English translation, but in ancient Greek!

After ballerina Marie Taglioni became pregnant after her marriage, she tried to keep her pregnancy secret by telling other dancers that she had a sore knee. The lie didn’t work. The dancers even began to use the term “mal au genou” as a synonym for being pregnant.

Following the Russian Revolution, Marc Chagall started the Free Academy for artists. Students at the school frequently stated this slogan: “God grant that everyone may chagalle like Marc Chagall.” The Russian word chagalle is translated as “march forward.”)

As a cartoonist, Matt Groening, creator of Life in Hell, The Simpsons, and Futurama, is subversive. He says that his work has an underlying message: “The authorities don’t always have your best interests in mind. No matter what they say.”

Jerome Kern was working with an actress who had the annoying habit of rolling her r’s. She asked, “You want me to crrrross the stage. How can I get acrrrross?” Mr. Kern replied, “Why don’t you roll on your r’s?”

“People will be rewarded for what they say; they will be rewarded by how they speak. What you say can mean life or death. Those who speak with care will be rewarded.” — Proverbs 18:20-21.

Learning phonics has its advantages. An elementary schoolchild in Springfield, Oregon, once told his teacher: “There’s a dirty word on the bathroom wall. I know. I sounded it out.”

“Remember — a developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already owns a house in the woods.” — Dennis Miller, The Rants.

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David Bruce: Language Anecdotes

British actress Emily Mortimer studied Russian while attending Oxford University, and she has spent much time in Russia. Her knowledge of Russian comes in handy when she is riding in a taxi driven by a Ukrainian. She says that she has “always managed to sort of charm Ukrainian taxi drivers in New York by suddenly swearing in Russia in the back of the cab.” Unfortunately, while making part of the movie Transsiberian in Lithuania, no one seemed impressed by her knowledge of Russian. Soon she discovered why: “Then someone pointed out about a week into it that in Lithuania they’d been brutally oppressed and persecuted by the Soviet Union for 30 years, and the least cool thing to do in Lithuania is to speak Russian.” By the way, her father is Sir John Mortimer QC, about whom she says, “He was a criminal defense lawyer for much of his life, and he defended murderers a lot. And he said that murderers were by far the nicest criminals he’s ever had to defend. And they’d inevitably gotten rid of the one person on earth that was really bugging them. So he’s always kept me very open-minded about murderers.”

Journalist and author Andrew Mueller takes spelling, punctuation, and grammar seriously. He once discovered that a possible romantic companion did not know—or care—about the difference between your and you’re. She ceased to be a possible romantic companion for him. He once shouted an obscenity at people whose stall had a sign for toiletrie’s. And he routinely went four blocks out of his way to purchase groceries because the store across the street had a sign for tomatoe’s. All of us can applaud Mr. Mueller’s campaign for correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. (Oh, wait. He’s a Brit—his book I Wouldn’t Start From Here: The 21st Century and Where It All Went Wrong is published in Britain—who wants Americans to use the spelling neighbours. In the opinion of this American writer, that makes him a radical who has gone too far.)

Singer-songwriters need many talents, including the ability to give good interviews. Of course, as songwriters and singers, they tend to have a facility in creating and presenting language. For example, Charlotte Sometimes made a splash with her 2008 debut album, the pop-with-attitude Waves and the Both of Us. And no wonder—this is a sample lyric: “Do you think of her / Hands on my waist / And do you think of me when she screams your name?” David Medsker of Bullz-eye.com asked her in an interview, “What is the hardest thing about being a woman rocker that people outside the biz would never understand?” Ms. Sometimes replied, “Having PMS. I think I should get those days off!”

Colin Hay, front man for the Australian group Men at Work (and currently a solo artist), used to be multilingual: He can speak English with a Scottish accent. And he used to be able to speak English with an Australian accent. He was born and raised in Scotland, but when he was a teenager, his family moved to Australia. Mr. Hays says, “I used to have two accents. There’s the Scottish accent I’ve always had. But I developed an Australian accent just to assimilate. I would talk Australian out on the street, and at home with my parents, I would speak Scottish.”

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who is Danish, starred as an immortal New York police officer in Fox’s TV series New Amsterdam. He is multilingual and has acted using many languages, but of course he does not have equal facility in all of the languages he speaks. For example, his French can be lacking. Mr. Coster-Waldau remembers one particular movie: “The script was in French, and I learned all my lines. I was working with this actress who was great, but she wanted to improvise. All I could do is look at her with great depth in my eyes.”

At age 14, Canadian ballet dancer Olympia Dowd was given the opportunity to study and perform—in an international tour to Asia and Europe!—with the Moscow City Ballet. Also given the invitation was her fellow Canadian ballet dancer, 17-year-old Rebecca Blaney. Of course, precautions were taken. The men in the Moscow City Ballet were given a strict warning—if you flirt with the Canadian girls, you will be fired. Also, of course, the girls learned a few things they perhaps should not have learned—such as Russian swear words.

Actor Will Smith started out as a well-respected Philadelphia rapper. He wrote his own lyrics, and sometimes he used profanity in those lyrics. However, one day his grandmother read a page of lyrics he had written, and across the top of the page she wrote, “Dear Willard, intelligent people do not use these words to express themselves.” After that experience, he wrote lyrics without swear words.

When the triangular Fuller Building, aka the Flatiron Building, was built in New York in 1902, it created an occasional breeze on Twenty-Third Street that was enough to raise ladies’ skirts and reveal an ankle or two—something of interest to many men. Occasionally, police officers would have to tell gawking men, “Twenty-three skidoo,” a phrase that means, “Get away from Twenty-third Street.”

When Fay Kanin started writing for the movies, she told her boss, Sam Marx, the story editor at MGM, “Mr. Marx, I know you own Gone with the Wind. I’ve read it, and I would be a wonderful writer for it.” He smiled at her brashness and said, “I think they have in mind a more expensive writer for it.” Ms. Kanin always appreciated that he used the word “expensive” instead of the word “talented.”

The term “Jim Crow” had its origin when Thomas “Daddy” Rice, a white man who wore blackface and played an African-American in minstrel shows, saw a black boy in ragged clothing singing “Jump, Jim Crow.” Mr. Rice copied the boy’s movements and used them in minstrel shows, and after a while “Jim Crow” began to be used to denote legal segregation between whites and blacks.

When comedian Sid Caesar and his wife dined out, Mr. Caesar would sometimes baffle waiters by using a mixture of French and Italian doubletalk when ordering from the menu.

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David Bruce: Language Anecdotes

Sometimes Arnold Schwarzenegger says exactly the wrong thing; sometimes he says exactly the right thing. When he met Dino De Laurentiis, who produced the Schwarzenegger movie Conan the Barbarian, Mr. Schwarzenegger was shocked that Mr. De Laurentiis was such a small man, so he asked, “Why does such a little man like you need such a huge desk?” His agent later told him, “That was the worst thing I ever heard anybody say when he’s trying to get a job.” One time when Mr. Schwarzenegger said exactly the right thing was when he was hit with an egg while he was campaigning for governor of California. He said, “That guy owes me bacon.”

Movie actor Ewan McGregor’s wife is a French woman named Eve (pronounced Ev) Mavrakis. One result of this is that their daughter’s first words were in French, not English. Therefore, Mr. McGregor decided to learn more French; otherwise, when his daughter grew up and argued with him, he might not understand some of the words she used. By the way, when Mr. McGregor got married in France, one of the few French words he knew was “oui,” which he spoke when prompted. Also by the way, Mr. McGregor, who played a younger Obi-Wan Kanobi in the prequel Star Warsmovies, slept on Star Wars sheets when he was a kid.

Guardian journalist Oliver Burkeman once asked his 85-year-old grandmother whether her old age had brought her happiness in any way. She replied that her old age had made it easier to get rid of telemarketers. For example, if a telemarketer started telling her about “broadband internet,” she simply told the telemarketer, “I’m in my 80’s!” The telemarketer would assume that she was too old to understand or care about the definition of broadband internet and so the telemarketer would hang up the telephone. (Actually, she understands perfectly well what broadband internet is.)

Elaine L. Chow, who has been Director of the Peace Corps, Secretary of Labor, and President and CEO of the United Way, came to the United States to be with her father, who had emigrated from Taiwan three years previously. She did not know a word of English, but in the third grade she wrote down everything that the teacher wrote on the chalkboard. Her father, who worked at three jobs, would come home from work, look at her notes, and then explain the lessons to her. In that way, she learned English.

The family of comedian Mike Myers, star of the Wayne’s World and Austin Powers movies, came from Liverpool, England, although he was born and raised in Canada. Because the Beatles, who came from Liverpool, sounded so much like his parents, when Mike was very young, he thought that he was related to the Beatles. By the way, after Mike married Robin Ruzan, they had three dogs, but Mike declined to reveal the dogs’ names to the media—out of fear that the dogs would be dognapped.

John Dexter used to produce operas in Paris, although he spoke English and a young woman would translate his comments so that other people could understand them. Occasionally, Mr. Dexter would become really angry and curse people in English, and the young woman would diplomatically translate his comments. However, Mr. Dexter knew enough French to be aware of what the young woman was doing, so he would order her, “Tell them what I really said.”

Philadelphia Phillie Dick Sisler stuttered, and he took a lot of good-natured ribbing from opposing players. Since he had been a Navy chief petty officer, players often asked him, “Whatta ya say, “Ch-ch-ch-ch-Chief?” Mr. Sisler always replied, “Fa-fa-fa-fa-fine, thanks.” One day, a lost stranger asked for directions, saying, “Hey, bu-bu-bu-bu-buddy, where’s fo-fo-fo-fo-forty-second street?” Mr. Sisler says, “I was af-af-af-af-afraid to answer.”

Italian is rich in invective, and conductor Arturo Toscanini made rich use of it when he wanted to criticize a musician or a singer. Once, he was heaping Italian invective upon a musician when he realized that the musician did not understand Italian and so did not understand what he was saying. Because his knowledge of English was limited, Mr. Toscanini was forced to tell the musician, “You bad, bad man.”

The TV crime drama series Dragnet is known for the phrase, “Just the facts, ma’am.” Actually, those words were not said all that often in the early days of the series. However, satirist Stan Freberg recorded a parody of the show (“St. George and the Dragonet”), in which he used the phrase. Dragnet creator, writer, and star Jack Webb liked the parody so much that he began to write that phrase more often into the script.

Noble Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen and of course grew up speaking Danish. When he decided to learn English, he got a copy of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and read it, looking up each word he did not already know in a red dictionary even when he could guess its meaning from its context. He used his red dictionary for the rest of his life.

The use of the word “cell” to describe certain structures in nature that can be seen only with a microscope was invented by the 17^th-century scientist Robert Hooke. He used a microscope to look at a thin slice of cork, and he observed that the cork was divided into many, many small boxes that reminded him of the cells that monks live in.

The Great Society, a rock ’n’ roll band out of San Francisco, wrote a song about comedian Lenny Bruce called “Father Bruce.” It included these lines: “The word to kill ain’t dirty, but you use a word for lovin’, and you end up doin’ time.”

Comedian Phyllis Diller was a frequent visitor to the Playboy Mansion in Chicago, The door to the Playboy Mansion bears a brass plate with this Latin inscription: “Si Non Oscillas, Non Tintinnare.” (“If You Don’t Swing, Don’t Ring.”)

Jeff Stone, an outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, once played for a while in Latin America, and when he returned to the United States, he left his TV behind. Why? He explained, “All the programs were in Spanish.”

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