Tag Archives: idioms

Foreign Language Museum Product Version

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Sometime ago–less than a year, but it feels like a lifetime–I completed a book I’m rather pleased with: 25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way, an in-depth look at, well, great sentences and how they’re fashioned. WW Norton will publish it in August, assuming there is an August. In 2020, you never know.

Here’s the cover:

In moments of self-obsession–if I’m honest, every day–I google the title to read the prepublication reviews (happy about those) and to see where the book is being sold. I found some sites in various languages I don’t speak and google-translated the text. That’s how I discovered that 25 Great Sentences has a “foreign language museum product version.” Good to know, I think. I’m not entirely sure what that phrase means.

Important point: Far be it for me to criticize someone’s translation. How could I, when I once told a Spanish friend, in Spanish, the equivalent of “Pitifully, I have a former commitment and can’t meet you tonight”? Artificial intelligence software, on the other hand, is fair game.

Here’s another interesting sentence about my book, courtesy of the same translation program: “All the products purchased by members enjoy a ten-day hesitation period (including holidays).” Hesitation about what? To buy, read, evaluate, tear into little pieces, line the birdcage with? I’m not sure, but I love the idea of a “hesitation period.” Perhaps I’ll take one to decide what to hesitate about. And I’ll enjoy it, including holidays. 

Lemon Ranch

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Tucked inside the thousands of words written about presidential politics recently was this sentence: “Richard Nixon was raised on a lemon ranch.” New Yorker that I am, my exposure to agricultural terms comes mostly from the  vegetable aisle in the supermarket and a few television shows.  I’d always envisioned a “ranch” as a place where cattle or other animals live. And indeed, the first definition of “ranch” in my dictionary is “a large farm for raising horses, beef cattle, or sheep.” But I had to put aside my mental image of young Dick Nixon roping citrus fruit — and how much fun it was to think about that instead of current events! — when I saw the second definition, which is “a farm or area devoted to a particular specialty.” Further searching showed me that many Californians work on “lemon ranches.” But in Florida, Belize, and Sicily, lemon “orchards,” “groves,” and “farms” predominate. So now I know what term to use in the unlikely event that I go right to the source for my fruit.

Knowing the favored regional expression may not guarantee that you’ll be mistaken for a native, but at least you won’t shout your status as a tourist. And who wants to sound like a tourist? With this in mind, here are a few mistakes I heard recently from visitors to NYC:

  • “Avenue of the Americas.” Big mistake. To New Yorkers, this street is “Sixth Avenue,” and many won’t know what you’re talking about if you use the official name. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia tried to do away with the term “Sixth Avenue” in 1945, hoping that Central and South American countries would build consulates there. The plan didn’t work, and the new name didn’t either.

Where?

Where?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • “I caught the subway at 96th Street.” Nope. You can catch a bus (or a railroad train), but you “get on” or “take” a subway. I’m not sure why. Most commuters in New York run madly for the subway as if it were the last rocket leaving an exploding planet, but they don’t “catch” it.
  • “She works in Bronx.” Nope again. It’s “the Bronx.” Why? That area was once a farm belonging to the Broncks, a Dutch family. You won’t find any farms in “the Bronx” (or lemon ranches either), but the name stuck, with slightly different spelling.

I could say more about talking like a New Yorker. (For starters, it’s “tawking like a New Yawker.”) But I’ll stop now so I can catch the subway from the Avenue of the Americas to Bronx.