up the yin-yang

[victor steinbok]

It's very tempting to do that just because of symmetry--I've caught myself
doing that on more than one occasion. And if you're not aware of the
original, it makes it that much worse. Incidentally, Russians used to have
the same endings on both words--but how it is pronounced now I have no
idea. A lot of old borrowings have undergone a transformation to reflect
English or Anglicized spelling over the past 20 years and this might have
been one of them--and that's in addition to quite a number of English words
borrowed wholesale only to acquire Russian suffixes (e.g., "parkovka" for
"parking").

VS-)

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

> It may be possible that the concept of "yin and yang" has affected "up the
> ying-yang" for many people, including myself.
>
> There is a possible opposite effect, too. "ying and yang" gets 950K
> Googits.
>
> In the episode "The Second Coming" of the Sopranos (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(The_Sopranos)), Tony
> Soprano (James Gandolfini) says:
>
> "There's a balance. There's a ying and a yang."
>
> He is very clear and the subtitles have "ying" as well.
>
> Although both Spanish and French use the "yin" spelling, the Spanish
> subtitles follow along with the incorrect pronunciation: "Hay un equilibro,
> un ying y un yang" but the French subtitles do not: "Il y a un équilibre.
> Il y a un yin et un yang."
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA
>

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