OT: Wall Street Journal discovers linguistic relativism

[Joel S. Berson]

They both must have read John Dunton.

Joel

At 7/26/2010 04:27 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>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:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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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
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >  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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