Sunday, October 28, 2012

First it was Nestles

Then all of a sudden it became Nestle. Now, according to Andrew Marr, Genghis Khan, the great Mongolian warrior, isn't Genghis with a g for goat but Genghis with a g for general.

The things you learn from television.

I also learned from Mr Marr (History of the World, BBC1 Sunday evenings) that to raven means to plunder. I'd never even heard of the word before, not in that sense. 

My education is sadly lacking in so many ways.

5 comments:

Gledwood said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gledwood said...

Neslay, isn't that annoying. When I write it by hand I put a whopping great wedge over the last E, so big it looks like a slice of Iceland's best chocolate gateau (and isn't it vulgar when people pluralize gateau, pleateau, tableau etc with an S instead of an X, so uneducated looking.

As for Andrew Marr ~ what can I say. I pronounce the g wrong in "legacy" I say "lejasy" that's wrong too... isn't it? Or am I right? I never know...

GLEDWOOD said...

What do you mean about my blog looking psychedelic? Or do you mean just migrainey? Or do you mean you think the browser's not working properly? It should be black with sedate green writing today...

Furtheron said...

I knew a bloke who was heir to the Nestle fortune - well his Dad was CEO or something many years back - but he was determined to plough his own furrow and refused a job in the family firm and worked for a bunch of software companies. Lovely man who I sadly learnt recently passed away.

I think these things are like why Marathon became Snickers. In a continually globallised world the local market names get lost - I think it was always an angelisation of the French word.

Andrew Marr's series is very good, if a bit compressed but hey the whole history of the world in a few one hour programmes is a bit much to ask but my daughter was both disgusted but then interested in the bit about vaccination and she'd never been told the link of the name to cows... so much for a modern grammar school education when I was a lad they took every opportunity to tell you some Latin link to justify those endless hours of conjugating verbs with Mr Eaglesham!

James Higham said...

... but not in others.