Voltaire & Baudouin I

[Laurence Horn]

Maybe they ought to call him "King of All the Belgians"--as in "Czar of All the Russians"--to stress that the umbrella covers Walloon and Flem alike.  Except that I was never sure whether the original was really "Czar of All the Russias", which would turn Baudoin into the King of All the Belgiums", which sounds morphologically ill-formed.

LH


On Jul 14, 2011, at 2:29 PM, David A. Daniel wrote:

> Wilson, haven't you ever felt like picking a nit? But, not so fast! He is
> called King of the Belgians in English because that is what he is called in
> French and Flemish. Seems to be a Belgian thing, but when I lived there in
> the 70's I got no good answers to my questions about "Belgians" vs.
> "Belgium".

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org