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Ferdinand
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Piwin
Posts: 3565
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Ferdinand (in reply to Morante)
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Wow...the author of that article managed to stay clear of any interesting criticism of the movie. All he managed to do was insult the intelligence of his fellow human beings. "Si no quieren ser aficionados a los toros, que no lo sean; pero que no los engañen: un toro bravo es un animal y no una persona." Right kids, and don't forget that mice are not humans. You know, because you're so stupid I'm scared that you think actual mice can talk like Mickey Mouse... And, since it's that time of year, don't forget kids that actual logs don't sh$t presents when you sing to them... And don't buy into Art Spiegelman's lies. He would have you believe that cats are Nazis! He's forgotten the most basic principle of fiction: willful suspension of disbelief. We go back to disbelieving as soon as the story is over, because we're not idiots and we're well aware that bulls aren't humans, that if you run at a wall in a train station you're not going to end up in a magical train to go to magician's school, and that coyotes don't know how to use TNT and don't float in mid-air for 10 seconds before falling down a cliff. The author of this article didn't just miss the target, he missed the entire barn.
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Date Jan. 7 2018 17:01:38
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Ferdinand (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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When I was five years old I received a copy of the original book, "Ferdinand." It must have been a present from my mother and her mother, who lived with us during World War II. My grandmother had buried three husbands, due to illness and an accidental injury. She raised eight children on a family farm in northwestern Oklahoma. All five of her sons were in combat in the war. I had a father and two more uncles overseas, fighting the enemy. Both women were patriotic supporters of the war. At age five I found the book fascinating: Ferdinand was presented in such a favorable light, and I was personally familiar with the aggressive character of bulls. But I didn't understand the message of pacifism. Even at that young age I could sense that the country was united in its support of the war effort, at home and overseas, as it never has been since. We boys hated the Germans and Japanese who were trying to kill our fathers and uncles. To play with the older boys I had to correctly identify all the airplane silhouettes, ours and the enemy's, in the plane spotters' deck of cards. So "Ferdinand's" pacifist message was lost on me, just as I was unconscious of the great pre-war majority's support of isolationism and non-involvement, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized the country to revenge. quote:
ORIGINAL: Paul Magnussen quote:
"Si no quieren ser aficionados a los toros, que no lo sean; pero que no los engañen: un toro bravo es un animal y no una persona." So it’s not wrong to torment an animal, because animals don’t count? This is exactly (what was originally meant by*) begging the question: quote:
The fallacy of founding a conclusion on a basis that as much needs to be proved as the conclusion itself. Not being Spanish, I doubt that I share the reviewer's cultural context, be it pro- or anti-bullfight. But then I doubt that half of Spaniards do either, since a majority of younger Spaniards seem to be anti-torismo, and at least a sizable minority of older ones seem still to favor los toros. I read the account of the film not as a lie, but as an allegory, asking the question, "How would the world be if bulls (or humans) refused to fight?" But in reality, people fight. Children learn this on the schoolyard. Most male children and many females learn that they have to fight back. I wonder what the reviewer thinks of John Lennon's "Imagine?" RNJ P.S. Thanks for the definition of "begging the question" which few seem to know these days.
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Date Jan. 7 2018 18:44:30
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3460
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Ferdinand (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
This is exactly (what was originally meant by*) begging the question: quote: The fallacy of founding a conclusion on a basis that as much needs to be proved as the conclusion itself. This is still the meaning of "begging the question," although few today, including many journalists, understand it. But then I don't know how many journalists I've read refer to "penultimate" as being the final, ultimate activity or event in a series, rather than the second to last, or the one preceeding the final activity or event. I concluded long ago that so much ignorant writing today is the result of would-be journalists studying "Journalism" in universities, rather than History, Politics, Economics and English, which would prepare them far better as writers and journalists. So much writing today lacks precision. Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 7 2018 19:25:05
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3460
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Ferdinand (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
It’s always struck me as hypocritical that while descriptivists think it fine to change conventional usage to suit their purposes (“Languages change over time. Get used to it!”), they are they first to squawk if you try to change it back (by referring to a graffito or an agendum, for example), and call you an élitist (or rather, elitist). I have never understood why "elitism" has taken on such a pejorative caste in American society. I tend to chalk it up to the American ideal of "egalitarianism" as being the supreme virtue, even if it hasn't been fully realized; the idea that one person is as good as another. That should be the ideal under the law, the justice system, and in terms of opportunity (as opposed to outcome), but it is a recipe for disaster when it comes to science, engineering, literature, art, music, foreign affairs, and any number of other endeavors that require specialized knowledge. I have mentioned him in a previous post, but I believe Robert Hughes nailed it when he described himself as an "elitist." "I am completely an elitist, in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it is an expert gardener at work, or a good carpenter chopping dovetails. I don't think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one." To be called an "elitist" by the rabble whose understanding of the English language does not go beyond parroting the latest malapropism or following each other like lemmings going over the linguistic cliff should be considered a badge of honor by those who are truly and fully literate. Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 8 2018 14:06:40
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Piwin
Posts: 3565
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Ferdinand (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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I don't know if I would think of it as being elitist as much as just wageing a losing battle. I have my own pet peeves (in French) but I do see the pathos of it, willing to go down with a ship that ultimately is of little to no significance to anyone except ourselves. My approach to language is pragmatic. What matters to me most is whether our use of language enables communication or impedes it. Given that, the only case I'd really have a problem with is when a speaker uses a term knowing that the recipient will not understand it or, worse, knowing that he will understand something different than what was intended. If you can tell the catcher is going to lean towards the left, it would be unwise to throw a pitch way off to the right and expect him to catch it. And if you threw your pitch way off to the right because you wanted the catcher to miss the ball, then it's easy to think of that being plain mean-spirited. That applies to one-on-one communication. When there are more than one recipient, as with a public speech or a book, then of course it's much more complicated than that. The one thing where I do squawk is the tendency of certain people to try and pronounce foreign names and words according to the pronunciation in the original tongue. Not because it is elitist, but because it is bad linguistics. First, it grates the ear to bring in the sounds of another language into your own. And second, it lacks any kind of consistency. The same who find it necessary to try and mimic a hard German "r" in the name J.S Bach don't seem to have any problem calling Munich Munich and not München or pronouncing Berlin Bur-lin and not Bear-lean. That kind of inconsistency bothers me. Not to mention that those who think their pronunciation is closer to the original often get it dead wrong anyways, as I've been told is the case with the word "karate". Our Japanese experts will have to confirm, but my understanding is that the original Okinawan pronunciation is much closer to kara-tea than it is to kara-tay, which "begs the question" (sorry I couldn't resist poking a little fun! ) why they're trying to correct us in the first place.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Jan. 8 2018 15:15:16
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Ferdinand (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Paul Magnussen quote:
The one thing where I do squawk is the tendency of certain people to try and pronounce foreign names and words according to the pronunciation in the original tongue. “To say a French word in the middle of an English sentence exactly as it would be said by a Frenchman in a French sentence is a feat demanding an acrobatic mouth; the muscles have to be suddenly adjusted to a performance of a different nature, and then as suddenly recalled to the normal state. It is a feat that should not be attempted. The greater its success as a tour de force, the greater its failure as a step in the conversational progress; for your collocutor, aware that he could not have done it himself, has his attention distracted whether he admires or is humiliated.” Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd edition (again) P.S. The BBC Third Programme used to be very prone to this when announcing the names of classical composers. Traveling on business in Paris with my friend John I., he stepped back and left it to me to buy a couple of packs of Metro tickets. I cocked my head to question his tactic. John is a Luis Alvarez physics PhD. He did his post-doc at Grenoble. John speaks French fluently, though with an audible American accent. He was always nominated to make toasts and speeches for our group. My French is quite rudimentary, serviceable only for tourist needs. John explained that he thought my accent was better than his. He pointed out that he always stood next to me, to be available in case someone replied to me in a stream of rapid fire French. But I anglicize French words while speaking English, as I was taught to do when I was a child. Then I had no idea of French pronunciation. I still don't, I just parrot a few phrases. After I came back from three weeks in Mexico last month I said Riviera Maya to my next door neighbor. He has dived there several times and had just told me he owns property on the Caribbean coast close to the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve. He didn't understand me, looked at me quizzically. I anglicized the pronunciation, and apologized for having grown up with Spanish as my second language since early childhood. I am conscious of having given the Spanish pronunciation of the name of a city where I spent a week in November, because people have asked me to repeat it. But even when I anglicize it people still don't know what the Spanish words mean, nor where San Cristobal de las Casas is. It's a lovely city, by the way. RNJ
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Date Jan. 8 2018 18:28:23
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Piwin
Posts: 3565
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Ferdinand (in reply to kitarist)
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quote:
Also weird is how within Canada, an officially-bilingual country, the English-speaking provinces pronounce 'Quebec' and 'Montreal' as if they have no idea how the French speakers do it. Why "Koo-eh-bek" and "MonT-real'? Neither the [e] in Québec nor the [ɔ̃] in Montréal exist in English, as far as I know so even if they got the consonants right they still wouldn't be pronouncing it à la française. My guess is that they're just pronouncing based on how an English-speaker would decipher those spellings. Qu... [kw] as in quibble, quizz, etc. and there's no reason for the t to be silent in English there. quote:
Speaking of which, it seems like, at least historically, butchering local place names even as they are adopted has been employed as another tool to convey disrespect and insouciance. For example, there is no good reason why so many place names in Canada are anglicized butchered versions of the original first nations names; some are being changed back now and it is clear there would have been no difficulty in pronouncing the original. I don't think I'd feel comfortable enough to support that statement, at least not across the board. There may have been cases where the use of a Europeanized name was mean to convey disrespect but on the whole I think it's just that the process of learning the many native tongues in North America was a lengthy and confusing process. Sometimes names were given only based on the European language, sometimes names were given by trying to use the native tongue but there was misunderstanding around what was meant. Add to that that no, the many languages of the First nations are not all that easy to pronounce. In some cases there were several layers that added confusion. From memory (you'd have to check, I'm really pulling this up from a dusty drawer in my mind from 15 years ago), the Lakota were called Sioux not because of the French misunderstanding what the Lakota were saying, but because of the French misunderstanding what the Ojibwe were saying about the Lakota. Because the Ojibwe had their own demonym to refer to the Lakota and they didn't seem to care whether it fit the language of the Lakota or not. Add to that that most of the European settlers were not trained linguists and I think there's plenty of room for other possibilities other than "they butchered the name out of disrespect". If you want a real linguistic clusterf$ck where no matter what you say you're going to disrespect someone, try the Temple Mount / al-Haram esh-Sharif in Jerusalem. I just call it "the hill that shall not be named" just to play it safe. That way nobody's happy!
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Jan. 8 2018 22:47:22
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