- Queen Elizabeth II greets accession day crowds outside St Peter and St Paul Church in West Newton, Norfolk. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
Royal gun salutes are usually fired around the country on accession day. This year, they will be fired at noon tomorrow because accession day has fallen on a Sunday.
I read this in the Observer. “Accession day”? Apparently it’s 59 years today since the queen seized power. My latest plan is leave the royal family in place. Everyone loves all the tradition, after all.
When the queen dies, what’s going to happen? It’s going to be a terrible anticlimax. I haven’t heard anyone say they can’t wait for the reign of King Charles III. I suggest that on the death of the current monarch we phase out the Windsors and replace them with a royal family of pandas. Everyone loves pandas, I know I do.
A link with China is what Britain needs.
A Bad Guide 
Don’t hurry that much. I can tell you for sure from our historical experience that once the royal family will be phased out they will be replaced not by lovely pandas but by disgusting thievish monkeys.
That’s a good argument, Studiolum (although I quite like real monkeys, and you could argue that a good deal of trouble could have been avoided if the Hapsburg monarchy had been removed from Hungary earlier). But in theory at least, a royal family of pandas ought to be quite as secure as a royal family of humans. I expect that the British royal family will be kicked out in the next fifty years; the current concept is anachronistic and they’re much more unpopular among young people in Britain than when I was young. The biggest stumbling block is that no one wants a grey, retired politician as head of state (this is a symbolic position), so it’s important to find the right kind of replacement and it must be someone with no dirty laundry. I think that pandas are the answer.
All right, now I see your point. Preserving the monarchy but substituting the present royal family with pandas, that is a winner combination, with all the advantages of the symbolic power without the disadvantages of the persons currently representing it. The only necessary job is to find a suitable myth of origin for the God-appointedness of the pandas, which is not so difficult: if by no other means then then by an appropriate mistake of translation from an obscure Chinese original.
Suddenly I thought: was Ascension Day already and on a Sunday ? Well, it was “Accession”; again I’m wrong.
Studiolum, thank you for explaining it well; yes, that’s it. I’m a bit wary of ambiguous translations, one likes these things to be seen to be rational, but an obscure Chinese imprimatur might help this cause. Is there a “year of the panda” and if so, how long before it comes round again?
Jesús, I’ve never heard this term “accession day” before. They were probably counting on the similarity making it sound acceptable when they (who ever they are) thought it up.
Oh. Accession!
I kept reading Ascension.
They’re trying to fool you, Sili. I bet Dronning Margrethe doesn’t have a tiltrædelsesdag every year, does she?
>A. J. P. Crown
Have you chosen the pandas because its main food is bamboo and this plant flower only each 60 years so these animals can die? Remember the Queen seized power (sic) 59 years ago.
Apart from that, can be a panda Head of the Anglican Church? Don’t forget I’m republican so I agree with the idea of a panda as king.
I feel confident that there could be a panda as head of the Church of England, they had Henry VIII, after all. I’m not sure about the bamboo shoots, I’ll have to look into that, but there have been pandas at the London zoo, I remember there was some discussion about it mating with a Russian (panda).
Going to church: that’s boring. You want an accession day tilt.
Sorry to be so fussy, but the queen did not “seize power” in some kind of coup d’état. The transfer from deceased father to heiress daughter was totally orderly, without even the scandal that marked the previous transition from Edward VIII to George VI. She had been brought up to become queen some day, and had no real say in the matter.
I think that the coronation of Queen Elizabeth was the first time I saw television (black and white, not very sharp images). Our grandparents’ neighbours had a TV (still quite rare in France at the time, and only available in the Paris area) and they invited us kids to come and watch the coronation ceremony. The “coronation” was the formal ceremony, the “accession” must have been the date she was proclaimed queen, shortly after her father’s death.
No “tilt” for her though.
Mating with a Russian (and discussions about it even more) is nowadays a sure sign of belonging to the high class as the Chapman story has taught us, so the panda seems to be absolutely thronfähig.
Ø, thank you for the piece on the accession day tilt. I’d no idea (obviously) that this thing existed, let alone that it had been celebrated for so long. Why doesn’t it get capital A+D? To me, tilting is something you do with an Icelandic horse. We will continue accession day once the pandas get in.
m-l, I never said the queen seized power in “some kind of coup d’état”, of course she and some others felt it was her “destiny” to be head of state. And yet for those who believe that no one has (or ought to have) a hereditary right to boss everyone else around – the French believe this, for instance, for their own nation – then she did seize power.
I was unable to watch the coronation. We had a television, but I wasn’t born for another six days.
I’m glad I’ve convinced you, Studiolum. I was worried for a moment. I’m not sure what Chapman story you’re talking about, though – oh, it’s Anna Chapman, the Russian spy. She seems very sleazy, but all I know is what I’ve read in the gutter press (the Guardian, that is).
¡jajajaja! I love your idea, AJP.
Another advantage is that Pandas look great topless.
Topless, bottomless; at the same time, they look ready for anything ceremonial.
But everyone (?) looks to the younger members of the Royal Family for fashion guidance…will people be wanting panda-fur coats?
Scary.
“And yet for those who believe that no one has (or ought to have) a hereditary right to boss everyone else around … then she did seize power.”
She has no right to boss everyone around; she has a right to reign, not to rule, and the right is established by an Act of Parliament.
I’d no idea anyone looked to the younger members of the royal family for anything. But fashion guidance? There’s probably nothing wrong with imitation panda (black & white striped carpet).
Dearie, how did you celebrate accession day?
dearieme is right, the queen doesn’t boss anyone around, she is just there! Those royals or imperials who tried to continue to boss people around into the modern age were removed long ago, and the ones that survive do so precisely because they don’t exercise any power. Even expressing opinions is largely forbidden to them. They do have a role though: they provide some continuity at the top, and they relieve the politicians from ceremonial duties like visiting hospitals.
The idea of loving a royal, and in particular a Windsor, being more or less inconceivable, I would concur that a panda is a great deal easier to love, Artur.
One that I was several times taken to visit in early childhood particularly infatuated me.
Not one royal that is — but one panda.
At last, some sanity. A WPA panda!
will people be wanting panda-fur coats?
Scary.
imitation panda
Pandalons
I agree with Marie-lucie about “seize power”; for that I had written “(sic)”. Normally the well-known proverb: “the king reigns but does not govern” is true. Even our Constitution says (+ or -): People who endorse the acts of the king are responsible.
On the other hand and related with monarchy and pandas, you can see our queen get reading for the future:
http://www.hola.com/casasreales/2007/06/29/reina-sofia/
!Gracias por el articulo, Jesús!
The panda in Queen Sofia’s arms is a baby, a child panda rather, not even one year old, and it looks bigger than her already! (It must be grown up now). She looks like she is having great fun. I can’t really see Queen Elizabeth holding a baby panda, at least not on official pictures.
So none of you believes in the divine right of kings. The queen is just there, and were she to have any power goodness knows what might happen. The head of state must be powerless, otherwise it’s back to Charles I. But wait, what about France and the United States? They’re not absolutist; their heads of state not only rule, they’re elected every four or five years! Whereas the queen is just “there”, doing a terrific job of not doing anything, for fifty-nine years and counting, at a cost of well over £10million, or $US 16m., a year. Pandas are cheaper and give you more for your money. Just look at Prince Charles and then look at a couple of pandas.
>A. J. P. Crown
OK. Why do you think I’m a republican?
Anyway, our king costs € 8.43 million; actually the Portugal’s president, for example, is more expensive (>18) and his job is similar. Money is not the problem.
You could have pandas.
actually the Portugal’s president, for example, is more expensive (>18) and his job is similar.
Yes, I think I missed a large chunk of the cost. They’ve deliberately split it all up into smaller pieces that are hard to find. It’s being reorganised, starting next year.
One good thing about pandas is they don’t have lots of children. The British royal family is huge and lots of them get money from the state.
“Dearie, how did you celebrate accession day?” I’d never heard of accession day, and if I had heard of it I wouldn’t have celebrated it. Not even if it had involved goats.
“So none of you believes in the divine right of kings.” I certainly don’t:
the identity of our monarchs is determined by an algorithm incorporated into the Act of Settlement and the Acts of Union. Parliament can change the act whenever it feels like it. As it happens, I prefer our system of a crowned republic to the American system of an elective monarchy, though no doubt each has its advantages.
Mark you, only if Her Majesty gave up Corgis and took up Irish Wheaten Terriers could I imagine becoming a royalist.
That’s a good point, but although they look awful I recently found that corgis are nice little dogs. Still, I could never imagine one as head of state. Terriers like ours are a bit too volatile for state occasions, they are so pleased to see everyone and they have to jump up and lick them all over.
What about porpoises instead of pandas? They are considered attractive, and they are reputed to be highly intelligent (though come to think of it that’s probably not relevant to the job), and they are already in some sense royal fish.
Queue up to be the next Dodie Smith.
I Capture The Castle has my mother’s favourite first line*.
I had ruled out marine creatures as impractical, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong. You can make a pretty good case for a whale too if you don’t mind getting into all sorts of complications with the Japanese and Norwegians (Britain’s always at war with Iceland over something, so that wouldn’t change).
* I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
Do you know the doggie joke attributed to Her Majesty (or perhaps to her sister)?
On of the corgi bitches bore a litter of pups by a dachshund sire. What, it was asked, will the puppies’ variety be called?
“Dorgi”.
The biggest stumbling block is that no one wants a grey, retired politician as head of state (this is a symbolic position)..
Exactly, AJP. And the royal family is still immensely popular at grass-roots level, as any local event where one of them in involved proves. Not perhaps among some Hampstead “intellectuals” or the odd politician on the left of the Labour Party, but they are a tiny minority.
And pandas don’t wave their hands nicely ….
>Canehan
And a panda never will tell a female panda: “I’d like to live inside your trousers…as a tampon”.
the royal family is still immensely popular at grass-roots level
Well, we know that’s not true after the attack on Prince Charles’s Rolls Royce in Regent Street by a crowd of students protesting something completely different. And before you say that the attack was perpetrated by Hampstead intellectuals, you should take a look at the videos. An event like that would never have occurred even thirty years ago. The point is that it is young people who want to dispose of the hereditary system and old people who want to retain it.
a tiny minority
In that case, you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you?
Hampstead “intellectuals”
I’m interested this phrase is still current, reading the obituaries I thought they’d pretty much all gone. I grew up with some of their children in the 1960s & 70s; your quotes are wrongly used here, they were indeed intellectuals: well-known writers, academics and politicians, with a Fabian background and or socialist beliefs.
I’m encouraged to see you haven’t found any arguments against the pandas (the royal family are notoriously bad wavers).
Royal waving reminds me that many people think Princesse Mette-Marit, the wife of Norway’s crown prince, claps like a seal. See here, at about 1:12.
AJP: The cost of the royal family is a drop in the bucket against the absolutely scandalous £9 billion being spent for a three-week orgy of beach volleyball and synchronised swimming at the 2012 Olympics. Venues costing millions being torn down after three weeks use (shooting, for example) when it could be at Bisley, desecration of historic Greenwich Park because Seb Coe insists the riding events must be there, when there are venues like Hickstead which exist, have much greater capacity and would benefit from the investment. He doesn’t insist the sailing be in the Thames – it’s at Weymouth on the south Coast so that argument’s out the window.
It’s a £9 billion ego trip of, as I say, scandalous proportions.
As to the attack on Price Charles’s car, I would argue that the attackers were more anarchists out to attack anything, than republicans. There is a hard core of them now involved in any protest in London.
Surely anyone who lived (in Blighty) through both the silver jubilee of 77 and the golden jubilee of whenever-it-was would struggle to deny AJP’s basic point?
(Full disclaimer: I don’t really mind royalties in general, but I do draw the line at the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas.)
Surely anyone who lived (in Blighty) through both the silver jubilee of 77 and the golden jubilee of whenever-it-was would struggle to deny AJP’s basic point?
Why? The vast majority of people seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. There were thousands of street parties which were spontaneously organized by local people, which surely must prove the positive.
There are three arguments for the royals. Political (independent head of state giving, as Marie-Lucie said, continuity). Public service (the extraordinary number of functions the Queen still attends at 84, Princess Anne attends more than 600 a year, similarly the rest of the family – they wouldn’t do doing that if people didn’t really want them present), and simply emotional – the Queen is very widely loved.
Prince Charles has his faults, but his charity work should be highlighted, the Prince’s Trust is excellent and very widespread i9n places of great need, and (AJP will hate this) he has managed to stop a number of outlandish buildings which would have blighted London being built !
And Princes William and Harry are exceptional young men. You don’t earn your fixed-wing wings in the RAF and then go on to become a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot just because you have a title. Nor do you become a forward air controller in Afghanistan. I greatly regret that it was an unscrupulous Australian publication that ended Harry’s tour there when the press had been specifically asked to keep quiet so he could do the job he wanted to do. Probably republicans, too …
Why? The vast majority of people seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. There were thousands of street parties which were spontaneously organized by local people, which surely must prove the positive.
In 1977, yes. In whatever-it-was, the waves of enthusiasm comprehensively failed to wave over me, my whereabouts, or my hearsays.
But a poll for the BBC suggests support for the institution is indeed strong.
(I no longer live in Blighty, and my life is now far too short to care very much about the prospects British monarchy or the moral character of its putative future incumbents.)
No, I don’t hate it at all. I’m all in favour of Prince Charles’s stopping ugly buildings being put up, though there are much worse ones than the Richard Rogers one he wrote to the arab royal developer about recently. I like Prince Charles’s garden, his Aston Martin that runs on home-grown red wine, etc., I just don’t want him to be king of England.
This “vast majority” & “tiny minority” thing is wishful thinking, you’ve nothing to back it up. The number of republicans is probably going to remain a minority while the present queen is still “working”. I predict it will become a majority as soon as Charles takes over.
I agree that £190 billion for beach volleyball is disgraceful.
I used to be a supporter of the Scandinavian royal families, but I’ve decided the hereditary principle is immoral. I think the Scandinavians should get pandas too, so that they can all intermarry.
So 18% according to the BBC’s pollers. That’s hardly a “tiny minority”. When I was young, a figure like that would have been inconceivable.
Yes, your panda idea is cute, but in the real world, the only alternative to royalty would be, as you yourself pointed out, a politician of some sort. John Major? Neil Kinnock? Or even younger people of the same ilk? Is that really want you would want? And I don’t think they’d come that cheap either.
I don’t buy your premise about the real world. However, even if, for the sake of argument, an animal weren’t chosen, there ought to be nothing to stop John Cleese or Michael Palin being the next king. They’re much more popular than Prince Charles or John Major both in Britain and abroad. Why on earth choose John Major or Neil Kinnock? That’s absurd.
>Bruessel
Here, people have said that our king Juan Carlos could be a very good president. Anyway, there was almost one case: Simeon of Bulgaria who also was a prime minister.
I’m still thinking that the panda’s idea is brilliant. But we (you, Brits, in fact) have to think if there will be a royal family of pandas or, if not, how the king/queen will be chosen. All pandas are going to have the same opportunities?
Thank you, Julia! I’m very glad to hear you like it. Yes, I agree this is important. One of the problems of monarchy has been the inbreeding, so it seems a pity to repeat that. My original idea was to have something like the Chinese, Year of the Rabbit and so on – not necessarily one year, but maybe to change animals after the one that’s king or queen dies. I’d be grateful for any suggestions, though; I’d like to know what you think is best.
Oh, I see… This is getting better and better!
We (you) have to study animals very well to find out which species are the best for royal duties.
It will be wonderful when a great number of gossip magazines, political journalists, etc. become specialists in ethology.
If a royal duty is to wave the hands I propose a millipede although it really doesn’t have 250 pairs of hands.
Actually I think the millipede is better to be crossed with the pig.
Yes, I wouldn’t want to rule out insects, though some of them don’t live very long. Queen Victoria looked a bit like a pig.
Talking about animals and kings I remembered the name of the weirdest thing in the world; do you know the rare phenomenon called “Rat king”?:
http://www.weird-encyclopedia.com/rat-king.php
Well, I know it because I read a detective story called Ratking, quite a good one by Michael Dibdin, where the name was explained. But I’ve never seen a picture before.
In this moment, H. MubaRAT says he’ll carry on until September.
If I was Mubarak I’d get out before they kill him – or worse, take all his money away.
Is this thing real? I mean, the rat king…
I’m glad you are not Mubarak. Even though, Egyptians would have been lucky if they had you as their president for 30 years… Goats and dogs, and hens and parrots would have been secure. No cats, unfortunately.
(correct my verbs -if you can understand what I’m saying-, please)
– I did one, ajp.
don’t exercise any power
How about Mswati III? Or does some kind of GDP multiplier discount those remaining absolute monarchs?
Like a lot of other people, I’ve been reading about 1848 this week and am amused by the scene of Frederick VII greeting the republican mob with, “jeg allerede har forekommet det, hvorom De her bede mig.”
“I just don’t want him to be king of England.” There’s not the remotest chance of that: the post was abolished in 1707.
“the royal family is still immensely popular at grass-roots level”
That’s risible. And to suggest that it’s only in Hampstead opponents are found… Well, I’ve never been to Hampstead.
I’m 38 years old, raised in working-class areas, and with the exception of the WWII generation, who had their own reasons for honouring the monarchy, the general reaction I’ve encountered is one of hostility, with the preferred term being parasites. The only nuance is to let the Queen and her immediate family contine to receive money, but to abolish the rest of the Civil List, where minor royals nobody has heard of receive money for nothing, and lots of it. The only defence I’ve heard of the royals is an instrumental one, that they encourage investment via trade missions, and that if they were abolished, tourism would suffer a blow.
It’s worth repeating – I’ve never been to Hampstead. Now run along.
Danish hvorom, for “why”, which I didn’t know, is like a cross between Norwegian hvorfor and German warum. Maybe Trond will explain how that happened.
Except for the marriages Frederick VII and Mswati III are a good contrast in late-model absolutes. It’s too bad nobody taught Mswati about the Enlightenment, he could have been quite effective.
« I’m president, not king » Obama said. He also believes all monarchies are absolute.
http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/obama-im-president-not-king-10-28-2010
>Julia
I’ve always seen the same picture so that is suspicious for me; anyway I have also read this case in a scientific book.
On the other hand, as you know, the cats were sacred animals in the ancient Egypt so A. J. P. couldn’t be a pharaoh.
Dearie, it’s a funny thing, but nobody uses the term “queen of Britain” or “queen of the UK”. Is there a reason? I don’t know much about the Act of Union, but why didn’t anyone think to create a Prince of Scotland to appease the Scots as the Prince of Wales is meant to appease the whales? You would have thought that someone would have come up with a Prince of Scotland at the time when they were inventing the tartans and other myths that Trevor-Roper talks about in the Scottish chapter of Eric Hobsbawm’s The Invention Of Tradition.
(p.s. I don’t mean this to sound snide about Scotland at all.)
« I’m president, not king » Obama said. He also believes all monarchies are absolute.
Fox (right-wing television news) showed a focus group of Republican voters. It turned out they all believed that Obama is a Muslim.
Except that you & I couldn’t afford to live there, Pin, there’s nothing wrong with Hampstead except that estate agents have a very hazy explanation of where and what it is.
Julia: I’m glad you’re not Mubarak.
I’m thankful I’m not Mubarak. But if I was, I would stop dying my hair.
Highgate is as posh as I’ve been to (posher than Hampstead?)
The invention of the tartans is fascinating, as is how fast the fact has been forgotten (I had numerous conversations about it during my time in the US)
During the Conquest, Guatemala (and perhaps other parts of New Spain) experienced the same thing re: textiles, with many of the so-called ‘traditional’ parts of present day indigenous communities actually resulting from Spanish encouragement to diversify when establishing new towns, along with each pueblo choosing a particular saint to venerate etc.
Love those Hobsbawm books, a delight.
I think the closer you get to Hampstead Heath the more expensive. That Bishop’s Avenue used to be called “millionaire’s row” and I’d say it’s more Highgate. The two largest private houses in London are both in Highgate. One (Beechwood) was for sale a few years ago for £60 million.
In 1707 they styled themselves monarchs of Great Britain. (They’d tried styling themselves by that title earlier, but neither Parliament would go along with it.) As you know the UK didn’t come into being until 1801. The problem is, I think, that many Englishmen lack whatever is necessary to understand correctly anything to do with the British constitution. Whether the deficiency is educational or genetic I do not know.
The equivalent of Prince of Wales, in the sense of being Dauphin, Infante etc, is Duke Of Rothesay.
It’s certainly educational, but it may also be genetic.
I didn’t know that about Highgate. The thing is, I don’t have enough knowledge of stuff to do with being rich to appreciate it. I don’t even have any idea what it would be like, apart from having sat in a Mercedes car a few times. I concluded that it would be great to just have a rich friend, so there was an occasional immersion in luxury, but it came with no major responsibilities.
I saw somebody rich and beautiful on Harley Street this year, it must’ve been a pop star – she was sat in a brand new pink Porsche, wearing surgical gloves and subjecting her newly tweaked lips to an incredibly objective inspection in the rear-view mirror. Like something out of JG Ballard.
That’s a great image. To me, the big advantage of being rich would be not having to worry about money all the time. Mercedes can’t match that luxury.
“I’m thankful I’m not Mubarak. But if I was, I would stop dying my hair.”
Oh, yes, please! A man that dyes his hair like this, must never be trusted. This despicable act involves not only treachery but tremendous bad taste (in a level that is absolutely unforgivable)
Unless you’re appearing in a gothic horror movie, then it’s okay. But Mubarak, Rupert Murdoch, Bryan Ferry, they all do it so badly. They need streaks.
I think Murdoch may have stopped (dyeing, not having bad taste).
Bryan Ferry? I have to look for a recent picture of him. I’ve no idea… What a world!
Oh, I was able to stop worrying about money when I was in Guatemala. That was a great feeling, definitely. I had 8000 pounds in the bank at one point.
Then I lost my job and the savings soon dwindled to less than zero. I reached Taiwan by using the last of the balance on my credit card and have now had to start all over again. I have even fallen prey to the fantasy of meeting some rich divorcee who could look after me, that’s the only way I am ever going to sit in a car regularly, or not be living in a rented place.
I don’t suppose the Queen worries about this stuff. What I find rather annoying is that the Royal Family receives the benefits of their continued status, yet no longer has to run the risks that throughout history came with it. On that level, the whole PR management of Prince Harry’s military career has been a species of giant practical joke, an exercise in trying to maintain a proud tradition without placing oneself in the line of fire, and offering the pat explanation that despite a tremendous urge to fight, Prince Harry has to consider how he endangers his commoner companions by his very presence, and, sadden, but not shame-faced, he is obliged to quit the field.
I would love Shakespeare to return and resume his royal plays, they’d be fascinating in today’s world.
You’re right! Puaj!
His a handsome man. With gray hair he would still look perfect.
Oh, why, God why!
I love Roxy Music. Ferry’s son’s a prat, though. Not seen Bryan’s pelo lately.
I told you. But he’s a Dorian grey, not so nice inside.
I like the Shakespeare idea. He’d probably be writing about the USA nowadays. I remember in the late sixties someone wrote a play called MacBird about LBJ & the Vietnam war.
He probably can’t risk being a ‘silver fox’ (un zorro de plata?) with his hunting mad son around…
jajaja!
Well that’s confirm my theory. Not to be trusted.
Excuse my lack of politeness with this self-publicity (is there such a term? in Argentina we would say “autobombo”)… But I would really like you to see some pictures of my youngest daughter and one of my parent’s dogs… I don’t know if google translate is going to do a good job, but I guess you can figure out the post by seeing the photos.
http://melioralatent.blogspot.com/2011/02/gestos.html
Ah, great, let’s see.
AJ – congelar – to freeze ;-)
Our critics to his hair were too much for Mubarak…
That’s right! We won! He couldn’t take it.
Mubarak 0 1 Hairdressers
Will a panda replace Mubarak? Headlines: Chinese Advance in Africa!!!!!!!
We just don’t know yet, the military may call for someone less phlegmatic and I don’t know if pandas can tolerate very hot climates. I’m sure Jesús would agree with me that the obvious candidate would be a cat.
I’m very much offended! Why didn’t you think that I MYSELF would agree on this immediately? (My avatar, which wordpress refuse to show, speaks for itself, and MYself, of course…)
But I don’t care… I’m going to the cinema in a couple of hours: The King’s Speach was released yesterday!
The truth is that I did. I just liked saying “I’m sure Jesús would agree with me”. It’s so rare to have the opportunity to say it in English.
I think it’s I who turned off the avatars. Perhaps I ought to turn them on…
Anyway, I’m very sorry. Of course you are the cat authority, not me.
¡JAJAJA! Don’t be sorry, I just wanted to say “I’m very much offended!”
(and I don’t use my wordpress account – there’s a different cat in my avatar there)
Well, they’re on. I think there are only three: you, Pinhut & empty. I like them when they’re made up by the person and not just wordpress-generated squiggles.
hahaha! pinhut’s is the best!!
>A. J. P. Crown
“…It’s so rare to have the opportunity to say it in English.”
Even my namesake will be agree, I think. The best remedy against the rats is the cats; as you know, the rats ended up thinking they are being poisoned.
Yes. A schoolfriend of our daughter’s is named Jesus. His family call him “Chuce”, but (as he’s always spoken quite good English) we always call him Jesus. We wish each other Happy Christmas on his birthday, and wish him Happy Birthday on Christmas. He bears it very well. He claims to want our daughter for a sunbeam.
>Catannea
Here (“Catholicland”), Jesús is a common name: I had a grandfather and I have some uncles, some friends, some colleagues…with this name. I don’t know but I suppose this name isn’t employed in “protestant countries” because of a sort of “respect” to Jesus, is it?
The saint’s day of Jesus is the 1st of January but nobody ever wished me (no problem, of course). Actually it’s quite unknown.
I don’t know if it’s a Protestant thing. The only native English-speaking one I can think of is James Jesus Angleton, the 1950s head of counterintelligence* for the CIA. I’ll try and find out his family’s religion…
…Well, apparently his mother was Mexican, so that probably accounts for the name.
* “counterintelligence” is an odd word. What is counter intelligence if not “stupidity”? But I doubt that he would have wanted the title “Head of Stupidity” at the CIA.
The difference between counter and anti…
As well as Jesus, a friend reports from Peru that the name Stalin was popular there, before the wool fell from the world’s eyes, so you’ll meet the occasional ‘abuelo Stalin’… Another thing I noted in Guatemala, and sadly never got a picture of, was the fact of witnessing two old men in rural areas, different towns, both sporting an Adolf Hitler moustache.
I think it may have been a fashion before Hitler went out of style. Charlie Chaplin’s tramp had one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I’d grow one for fun, but I don’t like moustaches.
A friend of mine who grew up in post-war East Berlin told me that as children they used to think of Stalin very fondly, like Father Christmas.
>A. J. P. Crown
I’m sure his family isn’t Jewish. Even in the Koran my name is although I think it isn’t employed by the Muslims.
On the other hand, counterintelligence is odder word in Spanish than in English. We translate “inteligencia” but it means “información” in this case. There is a joke in this regard.
P.S.
Mexico also has “our” virgin of Guadalupe, patron of Extremadura. We have an outstanding monastery.
In Spain we had a “plague” of “José Antonio” in the past. It was the name of the party’s founder “Falange Española”. Until Franco’s death, we had a crucifix between a picture of Franco and one of José Antonio on the wall of schools; I say Christ with the two robbers (LOL).
In Argentina, Jesus is not a common name. Not as common as in Spain. I do remember a man name Jesús, though. I bet his fathers were immigrants from Spain. He was the age of my parents, I believe. He was the ¿doorman, superintendent, caretaker? of my parent’s in law building (how do you name this post in English: the man that lives in the building and take care of it? in our cities is very common, it doesn’t have to be a rich’s buildings)
Well the fact that for me it was always funny to say “Jesús opened the door for my” or “Jesús told me this or that”.
And I know of a Jesús who is Jewish (he has this wonderful blog “Perure Alfonso” http://perurealfonso.wordpress.com/)
Very interesting for me, all this.
In New York, where there are lots of apartment buildings, they sometimes have doormen, and always a building superintendent, known as the super. I must have told you about that movie called “El Súper“? It’s a very funny movie about a Cuban guy who’s a building super in New York; one of the building tenants calls him at seven in the morning about their sink being blocked up, and he says to his wife “If there’s one thing I can’t take it’s English first thing in the morning” (except he says it in Spanish, of course). I used to think of it when I lived in Germany; I felt the same way about German.
“the man that lives in the building and take care of it”: in Scotland it’s the janitor. It’ll therefore not be janitor in England.
I don’t think I know of any in England. “Caretaker”, maybe?
Jesus: “Jésus-Christ” is the only Jésus in France (or Canada). I have never heard of anyone else called by the name, whether in history, fiction, or real life.
Hitler moustache: Hitler did not start the fashion, he merely followed the fashion of his generation. Both my grandfathers (veterans of WWI) wore this type of moustache till the end of their lives. Before the war they had had full moustaches. On his wedding picture (in 1913) my father’s father has a wonderful moustache elegantly curled up, which he maintained by waxing the tips with a special moustache wax and wearing a kind of mask to hold it in place while asleep. Once the men of that generation went to war they could no longer keep up this standard of moustache care, so they removed the ends and only kept the part below the nose.
So that’s the origin.
Florid moustaches may have been banned ib WWI armies to allow the use of gas-masks?
Very interesting explanation, m-l!
Well, then what we call “portero” is the janitor or superintendent. In fact, they dislike to be called “porteros” and the polite form is “encargado”, polite or cheesy, like saying “falleció” (something like “passed away”) instead of “murió” (died). To have a janitor/superintendent is the rule in almost all apartment buildings in BA, but doormen aren’t common. But they don’t do so many works like the cuban Super in your movie. The porteros’ Union is very very powerful.
In the last few years, due to “insecurity” many apartment buildings have security guards (some only at night, other all day, it depends). Not a very pleasant thing. Well, they act as doormen in these apartments.
“falleció”
I’m glad someone besides me thinks this is bad. The English “passed away”, “passed on”, or just “passed” are very common in English nowadays. When I die I don’t want to turn into a euphemism.
>Julia
This blogger probably has a catholic family.
A pedant could say “cancerbero”, a derivative word of famous dog. Our dictionary has this word that means “doorman bad-mannered”. Here it’s used by some journalists when they mean goalkeeper.
>Marie-lucie
For that reason everybody knows I’m Spanish when I “write” in the blogs, apart from my mangled English and French.
P.S. You forgot “Jésus de Montréal” (LOL).
moustaches shaved in WWI: it is possible that the army forbade luxuriant moustaches, but in any cases the soldiers could not have kept them up. Gas masks were not required at the beginning of the war, otherwise the use of gas would not have been so effective (very disabling if not always deadly).
You forgot “Jésus de Montréal” (LOL).
I guess you know that “Jésus” here was not the actual name of a character but an allusion to his role in a kind of play and also in his own life.
it isn’t employed by the Muslims
Isa (عيسى) is an acceptable given name.
@Jésus (if we may use these conventions here): I am in “catholicland” – at least, if rural Catalonia is “catholicland”. Continuing the desviació, my husband has what is probably one of the oldest mobile ‘phones still in use – he has had it more than seven years and it wasn’t new then – because it was Jesus’s. It has a mind of it’s own (deciding to terminate calls independently without reference to the caller’s nor callee’s desires), but he won’t get newer one. He enjoys telling people (while explaining why they’ve been cut off) that it used to be Jesus’s.
[He would never have one at all; but condescended to let us just buy the new “chip” for the hand-me-down phone.]
Question words used for abstract queries are essentially metaphorical extensions of something simple. Danish hvorom means “about/of what/which”, but on a deeper historical level “around the location of which”. Similarly with hvorfor “why” and its English cognate wherefore. They could have come about as late metaphorical extensions of parallels to whereof and wherefrom, but I believe that the use of hvor “where” in compounds may also show that the preposition om (and for) used to govern a locative. That might make it a living memory of something very old.
I have this idea that the Iberian use of Jesús as a name, in spite of how it’s concidered too sacred virtually all over Christendom, may be inherited from the Muslim era. I hadn’t thought of the use of Isa as a name, which might have contributed, but it struck me that after the Reconquista there were a decent lot of Mohammeds in need of a new name and an awful lot of sons of new Christians in need of a quick way to show their loyalty.
My authoritative source on WW1 moustaches.
>MMcM
“I think…”, well I thought. I didn’t know that.
>Catannea
I’m sorry, I don’t understand well your message (I know it’s my problem). With “catholicland” I only mean that here the influence of catholic church has been too important.
I give up.
@Julia – Wow! Julia. That is one spectacular blog you have linked to. I think I’m going to lose a lot of time there. Thank-you!
@Jésus – I do apologise, Jésus, for being confusing. It’s all silliness, anyway.
and thank-you, M. Trond, for the moustache references. Tee-hee.
I’m glad you liked Perure Alfonso’s blog, it’s really wonderful!
Trond, an hour in youtube watching Blackadder… How I love Stephen Fry!!
And now is when I most regret not being proficiency in English: I don’t want to travel, read or write, I just want it to understand every word in BBC series.
Trond, thanks for the hvorom. The Latin, cur and the other one I’ve forgotten, are directly “why”(i.e. not originally thought of as “wherefore”), aren’t they?
As for the Muslim, “Isa Muhammed” gets me 20, 000 hits, its 2 Wikipedia entries being west African.
I wish I could read that blog.
Jesús, don’t give up!
That’s another phrase I never expected to utter.
In the last few years, due to “insecurity” many apartment buildings have security guards
“Security” instead of “insecurity” is a similar euphemism to “Dept. of Defense” instead of “Dept. of Attack”; special euphemisms that utilise the direct opposite of the word’s normal use.
i did not know i was kicked out from your blog too, AJP
just want to say that it deeply hurts that people call me racist elsewhere, i won’t go there to argue again
it’s easy for them to defend the mighty China if my comments are perceived that, though i am always like puzzled by that, it’s we who are always on defensive irl to secure our borders, language, independence, and why people always defend them
is it our fault we won’t die off and assimilate and become some irrelevant historical relic or just beautiful legends, like Manchu, if we persisted to exist up until now it’s thanks to this constant battle for our independence however ugly racist it looks like from the outside, maybe, i mean if we are accused of that so like paradoxically
I did kick Nijma out. You aren’t kicked out of my blog, read, you’re welcome any time!!! I certainly don’t think you are a racist, that’s ridiculous. I support many groups, including both Mongolia & Tibet against the Chinese government, and I have a particular dislike of Barry Sautman, the US academic based in Hong Kong who is an apologist for the Chinese government.
thank you, AJP, I am glad to know that I am welcome here and you don’t think that i am racist, cz i am not really, we have our rabid nationalists who take pride not that much of our own nationality, but who like to play with the nazi parafernalia, too stupid, we always fight with them too, defending Chinese in the country, cz them coming to us to live are the sturdiest and everybody just wants to live in peace and it’s not one’s fault that his life path brought him/her to our country
some are really behaving like they bought our land, some are just trying to make a living
it’s a pity N is not welcome here, i never thought she were perceived racist, her blog is interesting, i read it sometimes, a person writing the posts on the Arabic poetry can’t be racist at heart, very beautiful , i don’t believe
I don’t think nij is a racist. I kicked her off because she asked me a lot of questions that took me a long time to answer and then ignored what I’d written. Then she wrote some nasty stuff about me, so I’m not having her back.
I think John Cowan is confused. If Language Hat wants to kick people off his blog, it’s no different from him not inviting them into his house. It’s not like the whole world has a right to say what they want there; it’s not a question of freedom of speech.
yeah, the analogy with one’s house i got very well, to the point i’m kind of reluctant to comment or post on other people’s walls on FB as if like what if i’m intruding their privacy
and some people are just incompatible however they are agreeable by themselves, so if one doesn’t want to talk with me, i take it as it is
I saw on facebook recently that you must:
Otherwise your comments only get shown to people you have recently been talking to, not all your friends.
Besides read, you’re the only person here from Mongolia, so you have to stick around. I need you!
yeah, if i’d been turned out of house irl that would have been a real shock i guess, but in the virtual reality everything is possible
and i try my “only”-ness to the limits of the hosts’ patience i guess, my bad
i thought if one is interested in me perhaps one would stop by my page, and i’d try to not impose on them whatever i do at the time, like laundry :), so, ideally, my status updates would show up only on my wall, but the links perhaps i’d show to all, the conversations, not sure, i’ll try it
but perhaps that’s impossible if one has hundreds and thousands friends, one can’t track down everybody
cur etc.
First, I don’t know much about Latin, actually I don’t really know much about any of this, so what I know and don’t know isn’t much to go by. That said, I do think that the final -r in cur is suspiciously similar to the final -r of hvor. I remembered to check Sihler’s New Comparative Grammar of Greekand Latin, and this is what I found (par. 381.1, p.398-9):
The extension of the locative to — let’s call it mental maps — is not uncommon. “On what grounds do you say that?” “In which case is it true?” The Vedic forms fit neatly as metaphorical extensions of “upon that” and “upon what?”. And note Swedish hur “how” and var “where”, developed from the unstressed and stressed form of the same word.
Glossing the origin of hvor as “the location of which” (as I did) isn’t very exact, I think. “On/at/by what/which” may be better.
Julia: Colin Firth could win another BAFTA tonight!
Thank you, bruessel, I’m going to be alert. He deserves the prize. G.Rush was also fantastic in the film.
And I forgot to tell AJP that there’s a scene where the Duke of York speaks of himself as a penguin! So the animal idea was in the royal family from the beginning…
@read – I always read everything you say (and pronounce it to myself, because sometimes I get things in unknown languages from enunciating them), but I don’t look at all the links because my village connexion is too slow. I had no idea you were one of the exiles.
Life is COMPLICATED.
I know stories, where people I knew in my youth said “racist” things I thought were indefensible; and then I met people (from a small local group of the “racial” community concerned) and was amazed: some of them were EXACTLY like her [negative] stereotypes…BUT I know those stereotypes are not universal. And I have to rememeber it always.
It’s not easy, when you get your stereotypes “confirmed”.
But it is work that must be done.
i changed the settings as AJP suggested so you’ll see everything what i say you wish or not now , C :)
yes, the blanket stereotypes are really hurting, if one sees first a person then race. nationality, ethnicity, class whatever, life could be easier for everybody
i wish, and i try to do my work too, try to not perceive everything defensively or even try to read into others’ seemingly indefensible actions/words some positive things too, just it happens usually afterwards, as one says, the affair/fact
Even Nynorsk has a similar split as Swedish. kor in e.g. kor mykje “how much” vs. kvar “where”. This is largely a prescriptive distinction, though. Most or all contemporary dialects have kor in both meaningz.
Trond, I think this is all very interesting. Now I want a professional linguist’s opinion…
Your instincts are sound and your decisions well advised, Sire. I’ll shut up.
No, I didn’t mean shut up!
Don’t worry, I didn’t think I’d be able to anyway.
So now we have to hang around for a linguist. Nothing for several hours, and then three will come at once. Actually, I think m-l is our only professional, unless I’m forgetting someone.
Yeah Colin! (sorry, just couldn’t help myself, am hugely looking forward to seeing The King’s Speech when it finally comes out here).
Thank you, bruessel, after reading your comment I found his speech on youtube fabulous again!
(I love the crazy mixture of this comment thread :-)
Yes, so do I (ajp)
AJP, please correct my nonsense, please ;-)
A (historical) linguist’s opinion on where, etc:
I am not familiar with all the details, and I don’t have reference works at hand, but what Trond says seems to be correct. The -r in the interrogative and demonstrative words (including those in yet other languages) is certainly an inheritance from the very distant common ancestor (Proto-Indo-European), and where probably had a more general meaning than the present locative one in earlier times, hence the need to associate it with more specific words (from, etc) for specific meanings.
Where itself is part of the set of “wh-words” (from a PIE root beginning with *kw, hence Latin words in qu- and Scandinavian words in kv-) which are all interrogative and/or relative forms (two concepts linked in IE languages, but the link is by no means universal).
As for Latin cur (pronounced [kur]) from reconstructed *quor, and similarly the kor/kvar equivalence, reconstructed forms are based not just on a single pair of words (which would not necessarily be significant) but on many more which show the same sound correspondences (either within a language, or more often between two dialects or two languages). For kor/kvar it seems likely that the first form is unstressed, the second one stressed (though I could be wrong since I don’t know the language).
Also, with interrogatives the same word or word combination can often be used both in the question and the answer. For instance, “why” (= “for what reason”) and “because” (= “for this/that reason”) are the same word in Spanish porqué/porque and Italian perché/perche, where the only difference in the stress, placed on the question word but not on the word that introduces the answer.
Hmm, is that right? looks like a space missed. Por qué/porque rather than porqué/porque.
perchè is also very commonly used among Italian commenters, I’m not sure why that is, a simple mistake? a dialect difference?
Kor & kvar are equally stressed.
The reason I brought up cur in Latin was I thought that it seemed pretty clearly an early example of why that was not the metaphorical “location” idea that Trond described for wherefore, hvorom etc.
Thanks, m-l, for this interesting explanation!
As pinhut asks, there must be a space in “why?” / “¿por qué?” in Spanish. The question then is answered with “porque” (no space and no stress) meaning “because”. But “porqué” also exist: although this is not an interrogative form but a noun, meaning “the reason”, for example “El porqué de su locura”.
Yes. Thank you, m-l. I forgot to say.
As for perchè, I came up with maybe a better hypothesis. Italians *know* it’s not right, but because that accent is more prevalent in Italian, they just use it to mark the place where the right accent should go, maybe because of their keyboard layout/habit, etc.
Gracias a Julia, no sabía la forma sustantiva.
Thank YOU to the other explainers.
Español: Uds. tienen razón, porque sí es “por qué” en una pregunta.
Italian: I don’t know Italian as well as I know Spanish (which I can speak fast but far from perfectly), so perhaps I extrapolated about the accent mark. But the principle is the same as far as stress is concerned.
kor/kvar: the two must be related, and there must be explanations in at least some works specializing in Scandinavian languages.
>A. J. P. Crown
I “left” without giving an explanation because I thought that was unnecessary. Anyway I want to save a possible misunderstanding.
I have been disgracefully too bold trying to write and to understand in a language I don’t know. I’m sorry. As the saying goes: “stick to what you know, let the cobbler stick to his last.” As you know, I sometimes try to write in French too (other bad mistake). I’ll go reading your blog with pleasure and at the same time I’ll learn.
This is something for all you royal watchers out there:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365155/Royal-wedding-How-knit-Kate-Middleton-Prince-William-corgis.html
Thanks for this. I think the resemblance is remarkable except for Camilla and the corgis.
Reminds me of this a little bit.
Wonderful, empty, thanks for shearing this video.
I loved the conclusions, the implications of their project and of course the beauty of the work they’re doing.
Yes, that’s interesting and fun. I’d like to know how they figured out that they wanted to try it. Can you crochet with other materials: metal thread, for instance? You could spray it with cement and build a ferrocement structure.
The mathematicians (etc) who thought such things could not be modelled were men, who probably thought only of hard, rigid materials. The ones who succeeded were women using traditionally feminine crafts using soft, pliable materials.
The basic crochet technique is extremely simple, but it can produce a huge variety of results, especially when multiplied by the choice of yarns available. I think that the women were inspired to imitate nature because they could already produce some of the same effects in their crochet work.
You could certainly crochet with other materials (metal, plastic, etc), as long as they are flexible enough and the hooks don’t have to be too big and unwieldy for convenient handling.