army ranks [was: assorted comments]

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sat Apr 1 03:35:21 UTC 2006


An excellent observation, Mark. I should have thought of that myself,
since the recording came out during my Language-School-student days
and I was one of many who rushed out to buy a copy of it, which I
still own.

I'm not sure why Wikipedia wants to use "choir." I'm going to have to
go in and change it to "chorus." The Russian word, _khor_, means
"choir" only in ecclesiastical settings.

You know, I'm really surprised by how much respect Wikipedia has
garnered, given that any fool can put in or change anything that he
wishes. To paraphrase Amos & Andy:

Sapphire: "Andrew H. Brown, you ain't got sense enough to correct an
entry in Wikipedia!"

Andy:      "Yes, I has! I done it lots of times."

-Wilson

On 3/31/06, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: army ranks [was: assorted comments]
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson sez:
> >>>
> I stand corrected. But I ain't goin' down like that.
>
> Perhaps it's the fault of the Army itself and the teachers at the old Army
> Languaage School, since the textbooks that they had prepared together always
> referred to the "Red" Army. I can't recall whether the term, "Red Army,"
> ever occurred in any intercepted speech, but my guess is that it didn't.
> <<<
>
> How about the Red Army Chorus? It may be officially the Soviet Army Chorus,
> but it's been called the Red Army Chorus for a long time. (Or "Choir",
> according to Wikipedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Choir .)
>
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel, The Filker With No Nickname
>    http://filk.cracksandshards.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>

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