From estephen@netcom.com Tue Nov 7 15:52:24 PST 1995 Article: 57416 of alt.religion.kibology Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang,alt.religion.kibology Path: news.emf.net!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!estephen From: estephen@netcom.com (E. Stephen Mack) Subject: Re: What is your favorite word as a name? Message-ID: Sender: estephen@netcom18.netcom.com Organization: Winter Weather (Berkeley, CA) References: <47e5n6$jk6@csu-b.csuohio.edu> <47ec27$8ut@cutt Date: Tue, 7 Nov 1995 01:23:54 GMT Lines: 69 Xref: news.emf.net alt.usage.english:38092 sci.lang:13220 alt.religion.kibology:57416 emr@netcom.com (Ellen Rosen) essayed: | There is a spirozoan parasite with the delightful name of _Isospora | belli_. The words roll so trippingly off the tongue that I've always | thought they *should* be the name of an island somewhere off Italy. | Unfortunately, the bug actually can cause a rather nasty diarrhea. I'm always fond of quoting L.M. "Grab Bag" Boyd's apocryphal "study" that showed that to non-English speakers, the two most mellifluous words in English are "nausea" and "diarrhea." But that doesn't mean I expect to meet them as twins someday. There's always a huge difference between how words SOUND and what they MEAN, as shown in the following snippet from Prosper Merimee's first draft of the novel _Carmen_ (which later became Georges Bizet's famous opera of the same name). [Note: my translation might be spotty at points.] Don Jose: Gypsy-woman, your eyes are like soft pools of divine phlegmata that I should love to wade in. Your fulsome insufferance tears my heart in two. Carmen: Take all laughing and put it besides. This is no time for wooing and lamentation. L'amour or la morte -- let the soldiers decide! Don Jose: But your teeth are like stars; they come out at night. Carmen: My heart is a rose, and its thorns can cut you like a razor, Occam's razor that separates us like a bridge separates the widest ocean, which is the chasm that divides us, divided like the red sea was swept apart by Moses, as red as a rose which is also my heart. Don Jose: Are you the devil? You afflict me so. I am infested with you. Escamillo: [enters] She is no devil; she is a bull-fighter like myself, a toreador. I shall take her away to the scented isle of Isospora Belli, where the brown rivers flow like the moon across the sky, and where we shall all step after the bulls to fight them, all day and all afternoon and _tuta bene_. Toreador! [Song: "The Toreador Song"] Carmen: What is this thing called love? Don Jose: I am undone. [His pants fall to the floor.] Micaela: I can love none so much as I love myself. Escamillo: One cannot love you too much, Micaela. As little or as much as I love you, it is not too much. Wendy's may have a salad bar where it is "All that You can Eat" -- but I CAN eat a lot. How much SHOULD I eat? Do vegetarians know how good meat tastes? How should I love? Don Jose: Then we must fight, for it as if my troubles are wrapped in the inner scrotum of your devilish wonts. [They fight.] ....well, you get the idea. __________________________________________________________________________ Zeigen estephen@emf.net Post #16 http://www.emf.net/~estephen Opera: It's ALL a lot of bull-fighting to me.