The Absurdities of Language

English has many absurdities and oddities and statement of a surreal nature.  Here are a number from French and Afrikaans.


French
Ciel, mon mari!    Sky, my husband!  [Caught in the act.] 

Avoir le geuele de bois   to have a wooden face.  [to suffer a hangover] 

Marcher a cote de ses pompes.  To walk next to your shoes.  [to be out of it] 

Afrikaans
Die koeel is deur die kerk.  The bullet is through the church.  [The decision has been made] 

Jy sal lag aan die anderkant van jou gesig.  You will laugh on the other side of your face.  [You will regret it.]  

'n Feit soos 'n koei.  A fact like a cow.  [Something very obvious]  

For Real

John Groth cartoon

I have always had a particular admiration for the cartoonist - one who can create a world in a few lines, what a South African artist has called the highest poetry, and then, to add a line or two that perfects it.  More than this, I admire a person who can take a dark subject and see the funny side without scoffing at anyone's pain... In the New Yorker magazine, during World War Two, there were cartoonists who did that so effectively.  John Groth is one of them.

Extraordinary Tales

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1987), Argentinian Nobel laureate, and Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) took great delight in making a collection of writings gathered from a bewildering variety of sources, called Extraordinary Tales (1967).  Here we see that dark sepia mystery again - the strange thoughts, feelings and encounters that humans hide in their ribs, writings that stick in the memory, imponderables.  

EUGENICS
A lady of quality fell so deliriously in love with a certain Mr Dodd, a Puritan preacher, that she begged her husband to allow her to use the marital bed for purposes of procreating an angel or a saint;  but, permission having been granted, the birth was normal.
                                  -  Drummond, Ben Ionsiana (c. 1618) 

NOSCE TE IPSUM
The Mahdi and his hordes were laying siege to Khartum, defended by General Gordon.  A few of the enemy passed through the lines and entered the city.  Gordon received them one by one and indicated a mirror where they might see themselves.  He thought it was only right that a man should know his own face before he died.
                                  -  Fergus Nicholson, Antologia de espejos

THE DREAM OF CHUANG TZU
Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly and, when he awoke, did not know if he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming he was a man.
                        -  From Chuang Tzu (1889), by Herbert Allen Giles

                                      

Source

Source of image unknown

Comrade no more

BEIJING:  China's bus drivers and ticket sellers have been urged to leave communism behind, with a new training manual instructing them to call travellers "sir" or "madam" instead of "comrade", state media reported yesterday.

    Older Beijingers, a few of whom still wear "Mao suits" that were once a virtual uniform for China's hundreds of millions of citizens, will be exempt from the new ruling.

    "Old comrade" is listed as the final possible choice of address for elderly travellers, but it comes after "elder master" and "elder sir".

    A newly released manual for Beijing bus staff suggests forms of address ranging from "student" to the plain "passenger" for younger travellers, for whom comrade has a different gloss, as a slang term for gay.  -  Reuters. 

    Can we hear George Orwell, author of "Animal Farm", saying from his cloud, I told you so?

Source

Cape Times 1/6/2010

L I F F

This book is an experience in the Absurd.

And an extract...

Source

See above

Airy Travel

This afternoon I called Air XYZ, a well known leading airline.  I didn't have much time and was hoping for quick service.  After I had dialed the number, I was relieved to hear the following ...

          In our past-paced world, we know that time does count.  Choosing Air XYZ 
          not only gives you more frequent schedules worldwide,  and a better connection
          to Europe and beyond.   We also give you a global network that is unsurpassed.
          Your call is important to us.  Please continue to hold...

           Then she said it again -

            In our fast-paced world, we know that time does count.  Choosing Air XYX... 

            She said this 42 times in a row.  In the background there is a kind of chanting pop    
             music.  Leading up to the 42nd time, the whole thing begins to feel like a shamanistic
             chant, except that her voice is so business-like.  Clear.  Articulate.  

             In our fast-paced world...  time... 

             I wonder again, with Ian Lee, whether words mean anything or whether they don't 
             mean anything today.   At times I feel I am clambering about in the syllable 
             structures of her words, inside them, through the vowels, over the consonants.

             In our fast-paced...
       
              Maybe the experience, in an obverse way, was teaching me to reject being seduced
              by The Next Thing and to Move into The Moment and Stay There... 

               In... 

              I'll call them again at a different time, but - just maybe - they've been infiltrated by         
              Zen practitioners who teach people by hypnotic mantras to resist The Next Thing. 


Will
22 October 2012
Paradox Box bluewill7.blogspot.com