Posts Tagged ‘language’

Every country has its delicacies. French cuisine, regarded by many as the best in the world, is probably best known for its pastries. In the image below most readers will recognize croissants on the left. The pastry on the right is called a religieuse, which means nun.

A religieuse is a made up of two glazed cream puffs, a smaller one atop a larger one. The most common fillings are chocolate pudding or coffee pudding. Some religieuses are good while others are just incredible!

British cuisine is not as highly regarded as French cuisine (is that the kindest understatement of the year?), but it still has its delicacies. In the picture below the dish on the left is steak and kidney pie, and on the right is fish and chips.

Japan is best known for its sushi.
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Recently I saw a word on a website that sent me searching for its definition — aibohphobia. I knew it was a fear of something, but of what? I learned that aibohphobia is "the irrational fear of palindromes." I then remembered a list of palindromes my readers and I had compiled a while back. The date on that file was actually about 10 years ago, and I can find no evidence of ever having published the list, until today.

In case you don't know, a palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that reads the same forwards as it does backwards, and, amazingly, has nothing to do with Sarah Palin! According to Wikipedia, palindromes date back at least to 79 AD. The palindromic Latin word square "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" was found in Pompeii, buried by ash. Not all the words in the square are palindromes, but the overall effect is palindromic. The word palindrome itself was coined by English writer Ben Jonson in the 1600s.

I also learned that the word aibohphobia is a made-up joke phobia. Just stare at the word for a few seconds and you'll see why it's only a joke. With that in mind, I wonder why palindrome isn't spelled palindromemordnilap?

Anyway, here are the palindromes submitted so long ago by my readers.

One-word, letter-by-letter palindromes:

Bob
civic
level
solos
rotor
radar
kayak
redder
deified
reviver
racecar
rotator
Hannah
Ogopogo (a mythical water monster)
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After reading the title of this blog post, some may be asking how anyone can disturb a headline. Of course, it's the headlines that are disturbing us. Between natural disasters (earthquakes, snow storms, rock slides, etc.) and man-made disasters (you can supply your own...), many newspaper and magazine headlines are so disturbing right now that I thought I would try to cheer my readers up with some headlines that they could laugh about. The humor in some of the headlines below results from nouns being mistaken as verbs, and vice versa. In others it comes from misplaced modifiers or just unfortunate wordings.

Reagan Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead (With that being old news, something more up-to-date would be Obama Wins on Health Care, But More Lies Ahead)

Blind Woman Gets New Kidney from Dad She Hasn't Seen in Years

Fund Set Up for Beating Victim's Kin
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If you've traveled overseas, especially in Europe, you are probably familiar with the abbreviation WC in public places. The letters stand for water closet (toilet). In Germany I was surprised to see that in some places they use the abbreviation 00 (double zero, or Null-Null in German, Null rhyming with pool). I read somewhere that it began in hotels with numbered rooms — the idea being that 00 would not be confused for a sleeping room. My mind always saw it as the letter "O" twice and I would think "uh-oh!"

Today's iv is the result of subject matters in two of my French classes this week. We just learned about the letter combination WC in my second semester French class yesterday. The initials WC always make me think of a classic bit of humor I first heard as a high schooler. When I asked my class if they had ever heard the story about the Wayside Chapel, I was surprised that only 2 of the 25 students admitted to having heard it before.

In my 17th Century French Literature class we are reading L'Avare (The Miser) by Molière. Some of Molière's comedy is based on quiproquo (from the Latin quid pro quod = something for something, the idea of one thing for another thing) in which a misunderstanding is caused by each person's talking about one thing while the other person is understanding something else. The result can be quite funny, as in today's blog post.
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Some of my readers may not know that I have international relations. My paternal grandmother was French, and I still have cousins in France whom we have visited and with whom I keep in touch. This past Saturday morning one cousin and I IM'd in French for about a half hour on Facebook. Then his dad, who is my age, took over and we IM'd until we decided to switch to Skype so that we could just talk — free and crystal clear. Talking is so much faster for us grandpas. I love having relationships with my extended family in France.

As a French teacher, I sometimes have students who say, "I don't know why I have to take a foreign language." From their limited perspective they don't realize that it's probably never been more important. Understanding other languages and cultures is essential for international relations, not only in the political and corporate arenas, but also especially in the realm of missions.

Today's post highlights examples of botched international relations — some serious and some lighthearted — just what you've come to expect from ivman's blague.
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