assorted comments

[James Landau]

>> (Sometimes they'll use a title with a given name or hypocoristic form.
>>Coming at some point : "So, King Charlie, how does it feel to be on the
>>throne ?" You read it here first.)

"You read it here first" will come as a great surprise to the ghost of
Bonney Prince Charley.

>No one ever suggested that there
>was any reason for doing it that way, back in the day. Cf., for another
>example, the writing of multidigit numbers from left to right in Semitic\
>languages, even though these languages otherwise are written from right to
left.

Not true.  Hebrew writes multidigit numbers from right to left when using
the old Gematria system of encoding numbers by the 27 letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, which is still done today in certain contexts.  When using
"Arabic" numerals in Hebrew text, however, they are written left to right.

Why is Hebrew written right to left?  So I am told, it's because the Hebrew
alphabet was for stonecutters.  A right-handed stonecutter holds his chisel
in his left hand, and therefore has to carve from right to left so that the
chisel does not obscure what he was already wrought.  Greek and Latin
alphabets however were for right-handed penmen, who have to move their
right hands from left to right so as not to obscure what they have already
written.

Someone once explained army ranks to me this way:
Back in the days of spearmen, when proper formation was a necessity for
winning battles, the sergeant was the man who was responsible for lining up
a company (or equivalent-sized unit, anywhere from 50 to maybe 200 men)
properly.  Companies were formed into battalions, and the man responsible
for lining up the entire batallion was therefore a
more-important-than-usual sergeant, hence a "sergeant-major".  When that
duty was given to an officer rather than an enlisted man, the officer
dropped the "sergeant" part and became simply a "major".

The man captaining the entire army was the captain-general, soon referred
to simply as the "general", "general" in this case meaning he was the
top-ranking captain in general charge of all the other various captains in
the army..  His assistant was rather obviously the "lieutenant-general".
The man who lined up the entire army was more important than a mere
sergeant-major, and since there was only such, and in general charge of all
alignment sergeants, he became the "sergeant-major general", later
abbreviated to "major general".

The US Army (and Air Force) recognizes the rank of "Brigadier-General".
The British army instead has the rank of "Brigadier".  I do not know if a
British brigadier is considered to be a flag officer.

The US Public Health Service is organized along quasi-military lines (and I
believe that back when we had the draft, being in the Public Health Service
counted as military service for purposes of getting or not getting
drafted).  Surgeon-General Koop started wearing the uniform (which is NOT a
naval uniform; certain list-members are making the assumption that a white
uniform is necessarily naval.  Bourbon foot-soldiers traditionally wore
white.) possibly as a personal affectation, but it served a useful purpose,
in publicizing the Government's role in public health in the first years of
the AIDS epidemic.  Whatever you think of Koop, as linguists you should
recognize that his uniform constituted an effective piece of non-verbal
communication.

    - James A. Landau

"White people have no souls"  --- Baron Munchausen

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