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Post by Twoddle on Jul 28, 2019 10:56:26 GMT
Just to feed your anti-randy-rich-twat prejudices, Vv, here's some of what Wikipedia says about Somerset de Chair: "Somerset Struben de Chair (22 August 1911 – 5 January 1995) was an English author, politician and poet. De Chair was the younger son of Admiral Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair, KCB, KCMG, MVO. He first was married on 8 October 1932 to Thelma Grace Arbuthnot (1911–1974), with whom he had two sons. His second wife, Carmen Appleton, gave birth to sons Rory and Somerset Carlo. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1958, allowing Somerset to marry his third wife, Margaret Patricia Manlove (née Field-Hart); they had a daughter, Teresa Loraine Aphrodite (who married Sir Toby Clarke, 6th Baronet). The third marriage ended in divorce in 1974, and in the same year and at the age of sixty-three, he married his fourth wife, then 39 years old, Lady Juliet Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, only child of Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, who had divorced Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol in 1972. Somerset and Lady Juliet had a daughter, Helena, who married Jacob Rees-Mogg. Somerset de Chair was educated at The King's School, Parramatta in New South Wales between 1923 and 1930 before attending Balliol College, Oxford. He was Conservative MP for South West Norfolk between 1935 and 1945, losing his seat by 53 votes. He was one of the Conservatives who voted against the government in the crucial Norway Debate in May 1940 that brought Winston Churchill into office. De Chair returned to Parliament as MP for Paddington South from 1950 to 1951". I blame it all on his Australian education.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 28, 2019 11:04:03 GMT
[…] Somerset de Chair was educated at The King's School, Parramatta in New South Wales […] I blame it all on his Australian education. I know things about The King's School. One would probably need to be a twat to survive it.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 28, 2019 11:48:49 GMT
For typeface geeks:Far too much information about the typography of the number 10 on Downing Street's front door. Or a simpler, briefer, alternative description: The face is Trajan. The numeric 0 has been replaced with a capital O, and all are bolded. The O is tilted to a catty angle for disputed reasons. Together those elements could be regarded as constituting a compound-element logo that is a globally recognised brand / trademark. That's about the most interesting element of this Sunday *: I learned something new about the deployment of type as branding (I'm already acquainted with the concept and practice through my newspaper work so found #10 of interest) – and thought to share it. * It beat the morning, which I'd spent painstakingly masking in preparation for fine-detail paintwork and became a tad too familiar with volatile elements and sanded-paint dust. I needed to take a breather, and discovered the above information while recovering from the airborne cocktail! Clouds and their linings, I suppose.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 29, 2019 11:20:01 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 29, 2019 12:51:04 GMT
Very many thank yous for that, Vv.
I was aware of the work the Crystals have done on the accent of Elizabethan English and have read David Crystal’s blogs from time to time (they seem to have become less frequent recently) but have never encountered such a useful discussion. My problem is that I find understanding unfamiliar accents a serious challenge and Shakespearean English is a challenge in itself. I saw The Comedy of Errors for the first time last week, with a reduced cast of only five actors, and, although I think it was very well done, I struggled to follow it even without original pronunciation. I was not helped by my suffering with prosopagnosia. Seeing a play at The Globe is on my to-do list, however.
I do wish people would avoid saying “Romeo and Juli-ETT”. It is automatic, I do it myself, but surely it should be JOO-li-ut?
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 29, 2019 13:33:10 GMT
>but surely it should be JOO-li-ut? <
Not really. It's a French name, so more likely the equally-stressed JU-LI-ET, no? Brits would then Anglicise it, but likely keep the ~ET.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 29, 2019 16:12:58 GMT
“It's a French name“. Are you sure about that, Dave?
It’s my understanding that the name Juliet, in that form, was first used by Shakespeare for a fictional Veronese girl who, in the 13th century, likely spoke Venetian or, I suppose, Italian. She might have been called Giulia but Shakespeare seems to have invented the name as he did also the names Capulet and Montague. According to Moore*, Cappelletti, often said to be “real” name of the Capulets, wasn’t the name of a family but the nickname of a political faction. I read elsewhere that the Cappelletti may have originated in Dalmatia or Albania so who knows what language Juliet’s fictional family spoke at home? Perhaps they spoke Italian and called any daughter they might have had by the hypocorism Giulietta. And Shakespeare might have called her Giulietta Cappelletti — but he didn’t. He made up a new name; Juliet Capulet.
So far as I can determine, all modern, famous Juliets pronounce their name as JOO-li-et which is, I assert, an English name from Shakespeare. The pronunciation I deplore seems to me to be just a rhythmic consequence of mispronuncing the Italian “Romeo”, the emphasis of which should be on the second syllable.
As the BBC might say in a different context, other brands are available. It really doesn’t matter but it gives me something to think about when there is nothing to entice me on television.
*https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/2848744?journalCode=spc
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 29, 2019 17:04:58 GMT
Am I sure? Heavens, no!
I read that it came from the Italian Giulietta, via the French Juliette ... but I may have read that on the internet ...
In Italian, it would have a clear, strong "~ETTa", and in the French a strong "~ETTE" in the early spelling.
It's odd, though: I'd happily read out the combined letters JB in the NATO alphabet as "JOOliet BRAvo", and talk of the Italian cars as ALfa roMEYo, yet say the title of the Shakespearian play as "ROmeo and JuliETT". Partly, it's how I've learned it, but it's also influenced, perhaps, by the wholesome shape of the phrase: "STRONG-weak-weak and weak-weak-STRONG".
In the same way, I'd say "JOOliet BRAvo", but if asked Did you say "J" or "K"? I'd probably replay "JAY - as in juliETT". Until thinking about it now, I hadn't realised how strongly the overall shape of a phrase and cadence of a sentence affect individual syllables.
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Post by Twoddle on Jul 29, 2019 17:29:00 GMT
I was not helped by my suffering with prosopagnosia. Do you have trouble with faces wherever they are, LJH? Frequently I can't remember who people are when they're out of their usual context, even though I might know them well. I'll bet that if I met my wife somewhere I weren't expecting her to be I'd be frantically racking my brains to put a name to the face!
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 29, 2019 21:08:32 GMT
I was not helped by my suffering with prosopagnosia. Do you have trouble with faces wherever they are, LJH? Frequently I can't remember who people are when they're out of their usual context, even though I might know them well. [...] I, too, experience that. Perhaps it's situational prosopagnosia?
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 30, 2019 15:00:12 GMT
What shall I say? Prosopagnosia is usually associated with head injuries but, so far a I know, I haven’t experienced any such. I was recently diagnosed as part of a university research project and have been acting as an occasional research guinea pig since then. It involves my doing various on-line recognition tests which usually require me to compare monochrome images of faces (just the face, no hair) at different angles from one hidden but seen only seconds before. I generally don’t achieve much higher scores than might be predicted on a random basis.
I think I have had the condition all my life but it mostly doesn’t cause serious problems as all my acquaintances are aware of the issue — the worst bit is having a conversation with a slight acquaintance in a group setting, such as on a walk, then moving on and having another conversation with another slight acquaintance and not being sure whether it’s the same person.
It’s at least partly situational, Vv. I have no difficulty recognising people I know reasonably well in customary places but it’s a different matter with less well known people in a less expected places. I will know I know them but often have no idea from where. But there was one occasion, Twoddle, when, after more than thirty years of marriage, I failed to recognise my wife (whom I had not met for at least fifteen minutes) because I met her where she had said she would not be and she had changed her clothes and was wearing a close-fitting hood. I never quite lived it down!
I don’t think I would be much use if faced with identifying a suspect in a police line-up but I am not worrying about that — I will never have to risk the vengeance of the prisoner!
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 31, 2019 9:14:33 GMT
Antipodean ramblingsFrom the Macquarie Dictionary Blog’s Word of the Week: an entry on youse. FWIW, when I was a lad in a religiously very divided town, youse was one of the common markers of pupils of the local systemic Catholic schools (still all religious staff – mostly Irish; no laypersons). It was kept constant company by fillum (movie) and haitch. I wonder if with the increasing laicisation of church schools will come (or has come and I missed it) a loss of youse, fillum, and haitch. While on the Macq. blog, here’s another Oz term: spud. Does any other English use spud? Here in Oz spud can also be a nickname for any Murphy (or Irish generally) – not mentioned on the blog. This is a concern. Having described, in the unimpassioned manner that is the wont of lexicographers, the Aussie drinking game Goon of Fortune, the blog then posts this disclaimer pandering to the Safe / Responsible Everything culture – Road Safety; Safe Work; Safe Sex; Responsible Service of Alcohol; Responsible gambling (!) … or perhaps Macq. is merely covering its backside against potential lawsuits over having given some ninny the idea to play Goon of Fortune and end up plastered. The nanny state now invades our dictionaries?
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Post by Twoddle on Jul 31, 2019 10:29:41 GMT
Here at Twoddle Manor we do not condone excessive reading of descriptive dictionaries. If you read descriptive dictionaries (such as those that now accept "haitch"), please do so responsibly and with a large pinch of salt.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 31, 2019 11:47:19 GMT
[…] If you read descriptive dictionaries […], please do so responsibly and with a large pinch of salt. Hear! Hear! The sandman has thrown some grit into my eyes, so I'll return next month.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 31, 2019 16:33:30 GMT
It already is in Oz.
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