Voltaire & Baudouin I

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jul 14 20:39:15 UTC 2011


Rex Belgarum should do it.  But no - many Belgian citizens are not directly
descended from the Belgae, who, I believe, had a rather restrictive tribal
inclusion policy.

Furthermore, if he's King of the Belgians, that implies that he's king of
all Belgians everywhere, even when they're citizens of other countries!  And
is the offspring of a naturalized Belgian citizen of, say, New Zealand, a
Belgian?  If I were King of the Belgians, I'd say yes - so I'd have an
ever-ready fifth column for when I launch my attack.

But if I were only "King of Belgium," I'd be foiled by semantics.
Because language speaks me.

There really is no non-controversial way to refer to such matters. Perhaps
we should choose silence.

JL

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Voltaire & Baudouin I
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> For most of this message chain, I have nothing but Flem for the Walloon.
>  Ping!
>
> Joel
>
> At 7/14/2011 03:29 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >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".
> >
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