THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD

You're so very Shakespearian these days. From A Winter's Tale:

"The silence often, of pure innocence persuades, when speaking fails"

I forget what this thread is about. Too many digressions for my little brain. Forgive us our digressions, as we forgive those who digress against us.
I thought of another French word, one of many, we use without acknowledgement; souvenir.

McT

Ah, Walter's Wicked Wicked Weed.--The Earl of Flynn

Hey, McTag. I know that:

"Among My Souvenirs"
music by Edgar Leslie, lyrics by Horatio Nicholls
There's nothing left for me
Of days that used to be
They're just a memory
Among my souvenirs

Some letters sad and blue
A photograph or two
I see a rose from you
Among my souvenirs

A few more tokens rest
Within my treasure chest
And, though they do their best
To give me consolation,

I count them all apart
And, as the teardrops start,
I find a broken heart
Among my souvenirs

I count them all apart
And, as the teardrops start,
I find a broken heart
Among my souvenirs.

I'm hight-tailing it outta here. Au revoir, mes cher amis, (Said he, ycleptically.)

Ah, ye recreant varlet ! ! !

Tennis. Championships on at the moment. Flushing Meadows. Does anyone know where the name Flushing came from?
It's quite interesting, I think.

It's Dutch, and possibly named after a locale in Holland--that's about all i can surmise . . .

'Flushing'
This town was one of the original four towns of Queens, and covered the entire northeastern portion of the county. It was settled in 1639 by Quakers who had fled religious persecution in their own lands and gave their settlement the name of Vlissengen, for the city of that name in Holland. Later this was changed to Flushing by the English.

That's, what most internet sources say.

Vlissing calls itself in English ... Flushing, btw:

Yes, Vlissingen. Well done Walter. I can only deduct one mark, for spelling.
But I have to give the mark back again, for a very pretty and useful map.

What about Leghorn?
Not sure if there's a Leghorn in the US, apart from the chicken.

The English working man has a strange way with foreign words. I believe they called Ypres, the WWI battlefield, "Wipers".

Hmm, what does Livorno mean in italiano, I wonder.

Livore means spite or malice. Livorno, the ital name of the city is called Leghorn in English, sure, but why. Maybe too much sherry....

"When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie
That's Livore"

Ah, not sherry, vino, vino brings veritas.

Re: THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD
Ahem.

Setanta asks:

"...the English-speaking world... do you believe that such an informally grouped population actually shares a community of interest, and shares common goals?..."

When you're educated in English, whether in any of the many British dialects or the dialects of the former colonies, you get to read certain things in the original:

The Petition of Right (British)
The writings of philosophers such as Paine, Hobbes, Locke, and those who carried on their ideals
The Declaration of Independence (American)
The writings of the 19th century reformers in all English-speaking nations who ended slavery and enlarged the number of people eligible to vote

and so forth.

So I think it is no accident that the English-speaking nations are all democracies, for one thing. Language carries cultural values, too.

P.S.

Thirty days hath September
April, June, and November
February alone has 28
But Leap Year, coming once in four
February then has one day more.

So structurally the damn thing is two couplets split up by a fragment. Still, it works.

knuckles don't work because July and August each have 31 back-to-back. Also, in case you forget how many days February has, knuckles don't help.

Now if someone will just explain why we don't spell 'nuckles'...

The "k" may have been pronounced, originally, although i have no knowledge that this is the case . . . but "knight" is an example, it was once spelled "knecht," and the "k" was pronounced . . . just a supposition referentially based . . .

Oh, and welcome to the Monkey House, Boss . . .

I have returned.

I have returned to say that I couldn't agree more with what babthrower says. (In fact, I already did agree with babthrower several pages ago!)

As for the 'k' in knuckles, I suspect that Setanta is quite right in supposing that the letter wasn't always mute. The k-n combination makes for a troublesome prounciation problem for most English speakers, so the tendency is simply to ignore the initial letter.

Can you tell I'm just trying to keep this thread going and have nothing of value to add?

the knuckles thing does work - you hit the same knuckle twice in a row - it's not down and up and down - it's down and up and repeat the up and then back down. <<nods>> doesn't everyone know how this works?

Knuckles kick!