Special Graphic Post:
Republican Family Values
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Published 9/30/2006 05:11:00 PM
<< 25 Comments Total
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!
You bad!! :-)
And here to keep the schadenfreude simmering away, a RawStory link about this topic (I was going to write "issue" instead of topic, but had second thoughts about that.....)
- oddjob
OT, but there is no good place to put this link right now, and it's too good not to ignore:
Reagan's NSA chief, Lt. Gen. William Odom (USArmy, ret.), lays it out in the Capitol in plain English, including the "i" word! (Hat tip, BlondeSense.)
Lest anyone wonder, this dude's no liberal. He's a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute.
Read the link. It doesn't take long, and his assessments are quite blunt.
(Oh, sorry, that was me...
- oddjob)
Good evening, OddJob.
I saw that you had used that gorgeous word schadenfreude over at Pam's House Blend (I think that was where I saw your post, anyway).
It is, indeed, just the right word for this occasion.
The Dark Wraith suspects we shall be using that word quite frequently in the days and months to come.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
After reading about the Florida Republican, ex-Congressman Mark Foley, his instant messages with pages, and how he, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect, I realize how correct your graphic is!
(quote copied from my newspaper:)
(I guess Foley was the right person for the job since he certainly seems to know how it's done!)
Oh, yeah, I meant to mention... it looks like your bulletin board is being taken over by strange promotional links. I wonder if it's all the same person?
Re: Schadenfreude
Thanks! Yes, every once in a while that German habit of cobbling together the most tongue-twisting, freakin' huge words from smaller ones comes in handy. English does it also, but nowhere hear as often.
Probably the one most Americans are likely to have encountered (thanks to a certain ad campaign many years ago) is Fahrvergnügen, which literally means "drive pleasure" (fahren = "to drive" [as in driving an auto], & Vergnügen = "pleasure"). So there again is a German noun with no English synonym.
A second one I've always found especially apt somehow is their word for broccoli. They use the word "broccoli" as well, but that's borrowed from Italian (German sometimes borrows, too). The native German term for that vegetable is "Spargelkohl", which is approximately pronounced "SHPAR - gull - coal", and means "asparagus cabbage" ("Spargel" = asparagus, "Kohl" = cabbage). Not a botanically accurate term, but on a visual level it works well enough, don't you think?
Oh, and as my final one tonight I'll mention a famous one that the war buffs here will know well. The full German word for "tank" is Panzerkampfwagen (approximately pronounced "pahn - tsair - KAHMPF - vah - gun"). That one combines three words and so literally means "armor fight car" (Panzer = "armor", Kampf = "fight", Wagen = "car").
- oddjob (who is pleased at your enjoyment of my selection of vocabulary :-))
Good evening, OddJob.
My love of this sort of word construction comes from Old English, which had many, many words like that. In linguistics, we call one variation on this trick "determinative compounding."
The Old English word that used to get students in my English classes to laugh was this gem: banloca. It means "muscle" (or possibly "body").
ban = "bone"
loca = "locker"
In other words, the muscles are the "bonelockers"!
Determinative and other compounding schemes are quite revealing about how the germanic peoples saw their world. I am positive that I could do an entire semester of nothing but looking at compound words in Old English and the implications not just about their world-view, but also about that of all the peoples who inherited the language of the Anglo-Saxons.
I would not, however, want to get too far into the discussion of the relationship between language and "world-view" here since I would get eaten alive the way I was several times when discussing colors in the Medieval History forum of About.com.
God, but that's a touchy subject.
The Dark Wraith these days knows better than to annoy the fleeting gods of linguistic theory orthodoxy.
You would only get eaten alive if the present audience is sufficiently passionate about such matters.
- oddjob (who suspects that's not the case)
"Bone locker" in modern German would be Knochenschliessfach. I can't say as I quickly see a close connection to banloca. Sometimes you can, but not with this one.
- oddjob
(PS: Schliessfach ("locker") is a compound itself, roughly meaning "close subject" (schliessen = "to close" [or "to shut"], Fach = "subject".)
Great graphic, Wraith! While this graphic did make me giggle, it is yet another sad commentary that points out, once again, "Hypocrite, thy name is Republican."
---
In other words, the muscles are the "bonelockers"!
Nope. (snicker) *Behaving*
Gee Mr Wraith, what's the big elephant doing to the little elephant? Initiating him?
The big elephant is showing the little elephant the Republican version of constitutional search and seizure, Liz.
or...
The big elephant is sending the little elephant an "instant message."
or...
The big elephant is teaching the little elephant what Transportation Security Administration officers have to do all day.
or...
The little elephant is helping the big elephant research some "background" information.
or...
The big elephant thinks the little elephant should be reared with traditional Republican values.
or...
The big elephant is promising the little elephant a role in an up-coming, pro-Republican ABC television movie.
or...
The little elephant just asked the big elephant for some "pointers" on how to get legislation passed when Republicans are in power.
or...
The little elephant asked the big elephant how Jeff Gannon got to be a famous White House correspondent.
or...
The little elephant asked the big elephant where Bill Clinton went wrong in his relationship with Monica Lewinski.
or...
...Okay, okay. EEEE-NUFF!
The Dark Wraith is perspiring.
OMG, Wraith. Those are too funny.
But this one...
The big elephant thinks the little elephant should be reared with traditional Republican values.
*wiping off monitor*
...was the funniest.
(And I kept from going off on the "bonelocker" thing.)
In the interest of keeping this place from getting rowdy, Moody Blue, I shall continue to politely ignore the obvious and otherwise noteworthy association between the modern-day English word "muscle" and its Old English antecedent, banloca, the "bone locker."
Lord knows, the "muscle" and the "bone" have been conflated often and to great significance in the history of our dear language. It remains to me, of course, a mystery how either such word, and particularly their association, could bring forth any semblance of a prurient or otherwise impure thought.
And even if I were to determinatively compound the words "muscle" and "bone" to form the bi-syllabic "musclebone," I am sure that nary a reader of this thread would be able to assign to said word any a tawdry thought.
I therefore say without fear of censorship, musclebone, and I do so secure in the knowledge that it be not heard in any quarter as obscene.
Yes, indeed.
The Dark Wraith seeks to foster only the highest and most dignified of conversations.
anonymous that left the link to Gen. Odom- Thank you.
DArk wraith,
The cartoon is disturbing, to say the least.
Peace.
Good evening Dark Wraith:
it's good to read through the linguistics. lord knows, i do need a break from the sickening march of politics. i'm somewhat surprised that foley didn't accuse the young page of being a terrorist and claim to be "interrogating" by the newly approved methods. one of the reasons the athabascan language group (apache, navajo, hopi) made such a great military code was that being the language of warriors and hunters it is very specific. there are words in apache that could take a sentence or two of english and still be losing nuance and meaning. an example i use when trying to explain was the time a young man of mescalero descent who had been raised in a white family in california told me that he had been given a vision that gave him a name. he asked me to translate the name into apache. i agreed and he told me that the vision name he was given was "dancing bear." i then had to ask him "what kind of bear? and what kind of dance?" i explained that there was a word for each specific kind of bear but not one that meant any old kind of bear. same with dances. i didn't go into the stuff about all the different names that we use and where each of them would or would not be appropriate.
there were some very interesting translations that the code talkers came up with for the various military equipment that had no words in apache. (navajo and apache talkers could get through to one another about as well as say, unkrainians to poles, they will complain about your accent and verb order but they understand you well enough)
i didn't much at all like the movie they made windtalkers. i thought they were really going to take a chance and go into a very heroic time in our history, but instead the movie they chose to make should have been called brave white guys hang out with some indians
thanks for the little late night touch of academia.
Of course, Dark Wraith. Yes, indeed.
Only the highest and most dignified of conversations.
I never get rowdy. That's why I was behaving.
(And no satire here, either, I would suppose.)
He he! Talented elephant there; knows how to use a sock puppet.
OT, but worthy:
Toles on Torture.
- oddjob
Dear Dark Wraith Sir...
Just a note to let you know I used your graphic. I also like the suggested subtitles but decided to let my post just speak for itself...
Thanks again for this graphic and the BlogScream...
Regards
- fc ( PredatorGate :: fatcat politics )
"Quoth the Dark Wraith
That pervert Congressman would never have let the President see him getting his jollies bothering the young stuff: Foley sounds like the kind of fellow who doesn't like to "beat around the Bush."
[Top that double entendre, folks!]"
I totally agree, Wraith, but if unable to perform due to his "alcoholism", for which he is supposedly seeking treatment (and out of the limelight of course), I'm reasonably certain that he would have been content to "Let George Do It" (1940)
Interesting discussion re: Old English and German compound words.
I recently read Beowulf for the first time (The Heaney translation) and fell totally in love with the Kennings. 'Whale Road' for Ocean, etc. In fact isn't Beowulf itself a Kenning? Bee-Wolf, meaning bear. Not sure, myself. I understand there is some controversy surrounding the matter.
Anyway, I thought it was a very beautiful and poetic way to express oneself. Not what I really expected, given how badly these 'barbarians' are generally viewed by history.
Mr. Shakes, you just introduced me to a new term. I'm not especially learned regarding technical terminology for poetry, so I had to look up "kenning".
Never realized (but should have) that kenning, ken, kennen (German infinitive meaning "to know"), know, etc., are all tied to the Greek word gnosis. The Indo-European root is thought to be "gno-".
- oddjob
Hi Oddjob,
It was a new one for me, also.
Thanks for the history.