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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1992-08-26, Page 5Arthur Black Language, a two-way street “I was grooving to this Rap CD on my Walkman last night down by the Video Store when suddenly this Yuppie blindsides me and rips a big hole in my GoreTex - bummer.” What - aside from an undisguised whiff of air-headedness on the part of the speaker - is wrong with the preceding sentence? Answer: not a thing. Except if you'd said it to John George Diefenbaker when he was alive, he'd probably have sic’ed the Mounties on you as a suspected extraterrestrial. When Dief the Chief died, the world had not yet seen Rap, DC's, Walkmans or Video Stores. Yuppies still hadn't been invented and neither had Gore Tex. And Diefenbaker died in 1979. A mere 13 years ago. We’ve got a lot of English additions that would make old John George shake his wattles in confusion. He wouldn't know what to make of AIDS, or Insider Trading. Or sunblock or Poop and Scoop laws either. Nuclear winter ... Infotainment ... Pay per International Scene : 3SS „'liEE•5 By Raymond Canon W SH.. B■ I ■? . < \ . J|' The past revisited Sometimes you have to wait a long time for any real objective reporting on an historical event. You may ask what I mean by a long time: one of my answers would have to be 30plus years since that is the period of time that much confidential material remains just that. Only after 30 years is it released for public viewing. Even at that it takes a considerable amount of time to collate and analyze it. Thus it may be closer to 50 years before some really good writing is done about a subject. I was interested, therefore, to have a look at a recent book about Harry Truman, who happened to be the president of the United States when I became old enough to know what the presidency was all about. I recall vividly being told that Franklin Roosevelt had died and that somebody named Harry Truman was to replace him. It was explained to me that he did so simply because he was vice-president at the time but that, since he was a virtual unknown, little was expected of him. How wrong an assessment this turned out to be. One of his strong points was that he did not agonize at great lengths before coming to a decision. The facts were presented to him, he listened carefully and then made his decision. These included the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, economic assistance to Europe after the conclusion of the second world war and the confrontation with the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of the cold war. This is not to say that Truman never made view ... Mid life crisis ... might as well be speaking Martian to anyone who checked out in the 70's. Thai's the wonderful thing about the English language: it's always changing, never still. It is forever taking on new words and phrases, custom-fitting them for our ears. But language is a two-way street. A lot of old words and phrases get discarded to make room for the new. Our grandfathers grew up in a world of spats and spittoons, speakeasies and spliced mainbraces. Today, there's not one kid in a thousand who could explain any of those terms. Remember the cliche ‘lock, stock and banrer, meaning everything connected with some object or process? Don't try it out on anyone under 30. They'll have no idea what you're talking about. Try ‘the whole nine yards’ instead - as in “Yeah, I bought the deluxe model ... air conditioning, power windows, tinted glass ... the whole nine yards.” English is so doggone powerful it invades other languages at will. The French speak of leaving ‘le camping car’ at ‘un parking’ at the airport to clamber aboard ‘le jumbo jet’. Germans, who call their employer ‘der Boss’ often spend their leisure hours dressed in running shorts and sneakers, engaged in ‘das Joggen’. Italians seem more attracted to ‘il bodybuilding’. A lot of languages borrow from English. a bad decision but the evidence seems to show that he believed that no decision was worse than a wrong one. Furthermore some of the appointments he made were of such a nature that they never should have been made. However, there are few Americans who believe that their country was badly served during the Truman years. He even surprised everybody by winning an election in 1948 that he was supposed to lose. The famous picture showing Truman holding up a headline proclaiming Dewey's victory has gone down in history as a classic. Turning now to Adolf Hitler, here is a man whom all of us were taught was the devil incarnate. For those of my readers old enough to remember World War II, I do not need to bore you with the details. However, one question that has remained for scholars to examine is just how much the German people supported him during his glory years and even when it became apparent that he was after all a mere mortal. Again I call on a recent book by an historian who states that resistance to the Nazi regime was the exception rather than the rule. For most of Hitler's 12 years in power, he was quite popular and probably adorned. Willy Brandt, who later became one of West Germany's chancellors in the post-war period, stated that the famous act of resistance, which took form in the attempt to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, was considered as high treason by some people in post-war Germany. Brandt goes on to say that the term “resistance movement” is misleading when applied to Germany since there was very little resistance of any nature that was not discovered in short order. In a recent poll in Germany, few Germans showed any enthusiasm for stories of resistance. What gave them the most pride was stories of German bravery, post-war reconstruction, the social-security system and the success of the car industry. These observations are of considerable Sometimes I wish we'd return the favour. Foreign tongues have a lot of words and expressions our language just can't match. Such as? Well, such as the French expression esprit d'escalier. It translates as “the spirit of the staircase”. It refers to the clever retort you could have made to the smartass at the party - except you didn't think of it until you were on your way home - virtually going ‘up the staircase’. The Germans have an expression that we could dearly use. You know those annoyingly narrow-minded technocrats who never foresee the consequences of their work? The agriculturalists who pushed DDT because it increased crop yield? The government economic flacks who advocate nuclear power because it's ‘efficient’? The Germans have a word for them. They call them Fachidiots. Close enough to English to be richly satisfying in two languages. Let me conclude by introducing you to a brand new word - not even six months old. Remember U.S. President George Bush's disastrous trip to Japan last year during which he upchucked on the Japanese Prime Minister? It's given the Japanese a new word; Bushusuru. They use it to describe the curious custom of Japanese businessmen power drinkers. These are guys who get stinking drunk as fast as they can. Then they stagger down the nearest alley ... And Bushusuru all over the place. interest to me since I deliberately chose to go to school in Germany for a year to look at post-war attitudes. While many people were still in a considerable state of shock, there was very little condemnation of the Nazis and their excesses. It was hard to find someone admitting to having been a Nazi; nobody knows anything about the extermination of the Jews. It was just as if the entire Hitler period had been a bad dream from which they were just waking up. Would the world kindly stop reminding them of the excesses and let them get back to work? I can only wonder how Canadians would react if we were to have undergone a similar experience. HAVE AN OPINION ? The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. They must be signed and should be accompanied by a telephone number should we need to clarify any information. The Citizen reserves the right to edit or not print letters. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26,1992. PAGE 5. The Younger Side By Chris Roulston Students shouldn't milk the system Everyone at one point or another has been guilty of milking the system to their advantage whether it be lying on an income tax return, or making a profit off some unsuspecting innocent. They feel they are justified in cheating because the system has cheated them so many times. I admit that I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to abusing the system, however, sometimes these actions have an awful way of rebounding and making the situation even worse. The particular rebound that bothers me the most at this point in my life concerns the student loan system. I rely on student loans and grants to complete my post-secondary education. This year I learned that the government has cut back heavily on student loans and I am worried that this may affect my future. The way I see it, these cuts in loans and grants were made mostly due to the hard economic times the country is undergoing, but I also feel that there are too many people out there who have abused the loans and grants system so that needy students are now at risk. I think most people have heard the stories of the students who use their loan and grant money to take a two-week ski vacation to Europe or to add to their collection of car or stereo equipment. The sad thing is, most of the time these aren't just stories. Students who have wealthy parents, or who are themselves financially independent often fabricate figures when they fill out their OSAP forms in order to get the most money they can from the government. These unneedy people may feel they are vindicating some injustice the government has done to them, but deserving students are the ones to suffer the most from this thoughtlessness. If more students were honest in filling out their loan and grant forms, there would be a greater chance for those who really need the funding to received it. It's not just cheating in filling out forms that hurts the system either. There are many students, who at the end of their schooling, refuse to repay their loans. I wish they would realize that what they are doing is destroying opportunities for other students to better their minds and their futures. Sooner or later the government's generosity towards students is going to end. As most of us have found out in this recession, money is not a renewable resource. Too much abuse of the system ends up eventually biting back. I have a bone to pick with the government too. For years now, I have been hearing that the reason Canada ranks so poorly as a world economic leader is because Canada cannot compete. Wouldn't you think that through better schooling and training Canadian businesses could pull their standards up? Then why is the government taking money away from its students instead of encouraging them with more financial help? Students who could have been tomorrow's lawyers, doctors, researchers, or computer experts suddenly find themselves in the situation where they can’t finish their education because they have no way to fund it. Instead they are forced to settle for some job they had never dreamed of doing, and society has lost a valuable asset. The provincial government has recently implemented a billion dollar job training program to aid employers in upgrading employees' skills and to create 90,000 jobs over the next three years. Why doesn’t the government look into the benefits of having already trained employees with a fresh degree and outlook on life? Students have a lot to offer this world if they are only given the opportunity to get the education they need.