The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on June 17, 2009, 03:18:17 pm ---Les cinquantes sont les nouveaux trentes?
--- End quote ---
No, they left cinquante's verb singular, apparently trying to be faithful to the "thirty is" that I typed in. So it REALLY didn't look right. And I guess cinquant and trente don't get S's because plurality is already implicit in the words "fifty" and "thirty" (as opposed to my typing in "fifties are the new thirties"). So it was:
Cinquante est les nouveaux trente.
PS Turns out "Fifties are the new thirties" gets you Les années '50 sont les nouvelles années '30. Seems a bit presumptuous of Babelfish to assume I'm referring to years, but oh well.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 17, 2009, 03:39:07 pm ---Cinquante est les nouveaux trente.
--- End quote ---
That tent don't look right. :-\
southendmd:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on June 17, 2009, 01:26:01 pm ---Reading the June 22 issue at lunch today, I learned a good tip, courtesy of Simon Doonan: Once you pass age 50, start aging in French. It sounds better.
Je suis cinquante-et-un. ;D See? Doesn't that sound elegant? :laugh:
--- End quote ---
Happy Birthday, Jeff! Actually, the French aren't an age, they have their age. So, you'd say, "J'ai cinquante-et-un ans".
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 17, 2009, 02:48:44 pm ---Cinquante est le nouveau trente.
--- End quote ---
I'm trying to think how the French would say this... While this looks good, it probably doesn't translate directly; those wonderful short Americanisms don't always work in French. Perhaps something like: "Avoir cinquante, maintenant c'est comme d'avoir trente". (Being fifty, now is like being thirty.)
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: southendmd on June 17, 2009, 04:35:40 pm ---those wonderful short Americanisms don't always work in French.
--- End quote ---
Just as certain French phrases have a certain je ne sais quoi.
Jeff Wrangler:
Well, here's a "mystery" solved, courtesy of The New Yorker.
At lunch today I read the article about Romance author Nora Roberts in the June 22 issue (yup, I'm actually caught up in my issues!). The article includes some discussion of the history of the genre, beginning with Samuel Richardson's Pamela, published in 1740. The discussion also mentions a novel called The Sheik, published in 1919 and described as '"the ur-romance novel of the twentieth century.'" The novel is the story of an aristocratic Englishwoman, traveling in the Algerian desert, who is kidnapped by an Arab chieftain.
OK, one of Rudolph Valentino's most famous movie roles was The Sheik. Now I suppose I know where the movie role came from; it was an adaptation of the novel--or maybe it was inspired by the novel to take advantage of the popularity of the book. I guess this also tells us that even in the Silent days, Hollywood made adaptations of current popular novels.
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