Loses Something -- But Not Color -- In Translation: "A Real Boom"

Doug Harris cats22 at FRONTIERNET.NET
Wed May 7 13:07:04 UTC 2008


That may simply be BBC phraseology OR, as or more likely, it
indicates that (as I suspect) male chauvinism is alive and
well in the UK.
dh


Poster:       Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at SUSSEX.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: Loses Something -- But Not Color -- In Translation: "A
Real
              Boom"
---

--On Tuesday, May 6, 2008 7:51 pm -0400 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> At 6:53 PM -0400 5/6/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> Doug writes:
>>
>> "... fathering seven children _with_ her ..."
>>
>> <Sigh!> What ever happened to those days of yore when a man fathered a
>> child _upon_ a woman? It seems that the more recent term loses a lot
>> WRT descriptiveness. :-)

I've been having a problem with the BBC description of the situation--'she
bore him seven children'.  Sounds like something voluntarily done, as a
gift.

Lynne


Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

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

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



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