"precedures" and "bullets"

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Tuesday, August 29, 2006 11:24 pm +0100 "Chris F. Waigl"
<chris at LASCRIBE.NET> wrote:

> Being German, I grew up in a family that observed that one immutable New
> Year's Eve ritual that a large proportion of the German population
> follows: watching "Dinner for One", in English, on TV.

This phenomenon was discussed in several places in the British press in the
last few years.  (The Guardian article is here:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,866820,00.html> There was
also a BBC piece on it.)  This led to several English commentators pointing
to it as evidence that the Germans have no sense of humour. It's the kind
of thing that might work as a ritual, but as a comedy piece it's gets
really tiring really fast, while it is going really slowly.

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
Arts B133
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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