Ask Prospero anything...thread

[Brassai]

Prospero, why do you use a photo from Sergei Eisenstein's movie "Ivan the Terrible" instead of a pic of John Gielgud playing Prospero in the wonderful Peter Greenaway movie "Prospero's Books"?... or you could go sci-fi Prospero with a pic of Walter Pidgeon as Morbius in "Forbidden Planet" I suppose

[Prospero]

And why do you use the name of one of the greatest french photographers of the 20th century?

I use pictures i like. I've used all those you referred to in the past. I like change.

[Prospero]

You say tomato and i say tomato

[Gillian]

I say pretentious ...

[Prospero]

Who? Shelf?

[Ananke]

Why do you spell 'honored' with a 'u?' Why can't you speak American?

~BB~

The english invented english, so it would only be normal for the english to speak english english and not american english....see what I mean?

[broncofan]

Ananke,
I bet you she was being sarcastic (even self-deprecating) by playing on the well-known stereotype that Americans are oblivious to the contributions of other cultures, even ones from whom the language we speak derived.

Anyhow, even if we weren't the first to speak English, we pretty much own it and the rest of the English speaking world*.

*ditto the first paragraph

[Stavros]

The english invented english, so it would only be normal for the english to speak english english and not american english....see what I mean?

Not really -the English language may have been developed here, but the original tongues of the inhabitants were more likely Celtic/Brythonic, with the early versions of English imported from what is today Germany and Denmark. Throw in the Latin of the Romans and the other invaders from c55BC and the early centuries of the first millenium AD, and you arrive at Chaucer's 'Middle English' with the supposition that the English we speak today was becoming settled between the 13th and 16th centuries. There is no more entertaining journey through the development of words and phrases in English than The Etymologicon (2011) by Mark Forsythe. For example, the word SHIT has interesting origins, not as an acronym for 'Store High In Transit', but this:
"Shit can be traced back to the Old English verb scitan (which meant exactly what it does today) and further back to Proto-Germanic Skit (the Germans still say scheisse) and all the way to the Proto-Indo-European word (c4000 BC) Skei which meant to separate or divide, presumably on the basis that you separated yourself from your faeces. Shed (as in shed your skin) comes from the same root, as does schism (p60).

[TSBootyLondon]

BB you write Irish beautifully )

x BA

'Potatoe.' ~Dan Quayle

~BB~

[TSBootyLondon]

All that History and the Youth of today have taken the wonderful and elegant language, twisted it, tweaked it beyond recognition, abbreviated it, lost sight of it and now portray themselves as illiterate!

Nothing grates harder on my skin than calling the bank and the young man at the end of the line forgets himself and uses the word 'safe' (and wasn't referring to the volt in the basement!)

I guess its a sign of the times and we need to roll with it! You get me!

x

Not really -the English language may have been developed here, but the original tongues of the inhabitants were more likely Celtic/Brythonic, with the early versions of English imported from what is today Germany and Denmark. Throw in the Latin of the Romans and the other invaders from c55BC and the early centuries of the first millenium AD, and you arrive at Chaucer's 'Middle English' with the supposition that the English we speak today was becoming settled between the 13th and 16th centuries. There is no more entertaining journey through the development of words and phrases in English than The Etymologicon (2011) by Mark Forsythe. For example, the word SHIT has interesting origins, not as an acronym for 'Store High In Transit', but this:
"Shit can be traced back to the Old English verb scitan (which meant exactly what it does today) and further back to Proto-Germanic Skit (the Germans still say scheisse) and all the way to the Proto-Indo-European word (c4000 BC) Skei which meant to separate or divide, presumably on the basis that you separated yourself from your faeces. Shed (as in shed your skin) comes from the same root, as does schism (p60).