OT: Wall Street Journal discovers linguistic relativism

[Jonathan Lighter]

This supposedly also happened during the American Civil War, though wisps of
hay and straw were allegedly used rather than hard-to-manage "bales."

JL

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: OT:  Wall Street Journal discovers linguistic relativism
>
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>
>  Russian lore has it that, when Peter I (the Great, if you wish) wanted
> to modernize the Russian military training, essentially following the
> "Prussian method", his drill sergeants tied bales of hay to one leg and
> straw to the other, thereby commanding the raw recruits to turn toward
> hay or straw. This anecdote (likely apocryphal) is often used as folk
> etymology for the Russian proverbial "hay-straw" ([seno-soloma]) that is
> used in the same sense as "six of one, half a dozen of the other".
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 7/26/2010 8:43 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > At 7/26/2010 05:52 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote [Quoting the WSJ]:
> >>> Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than
> >>> left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation.
> > The "wild Irish," when recruited into the British army, rather than
> > left or right would be commanded to turn toward bread or
> > cheese.  Having been given those two staples of the contemporary diet
> > for their respective pockets.  According to John Dunton, circa 1696,
> > while temporarily resident in Massachusetts..  Who would probably
> > have agreed that they had lesser spatial orientation than the
> > indigenous tribes.
> >
> > Joel
>
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