Veep

[Jonathan Lighter]

The normals and normalistas in the story were middle-class African-American
owners of a yogurt store. (As an advisor tells the Veep, "There's a
narrative built in!").

Visiting them for a photo op (in a block of time suddenly freed up from a
political meeting) was described as "normalizing."

JL

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Veep
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  From a random discussion group:
>
> http://goo.gl/Z3mle
> > Normalista
> >
> > I`m having problems finding a translation for the word above. The
> > context is below:
> >
> > En esta muestra participaron dos de la especialidad (historia), tres
> > de formación básica y uno procediente de la antigua formación normalista.
> >
> > History majors, elementary education majors, and another type which is
> > now no longer used.
> >
> > The training consited of training to be a teacher not at the
> > university, but starting in highschool. Any ideas or suggestions would
> > be greatly appreciated. Thanks alot.
> >
> > Saludos.
>
> And the confirmation:
>
> http://goo.gl/CW1Rf
> > normalista sustantivo masculino y femenino (Col) primary (school) teacher
>
> Don't think this was the context of Joel's original quote.
>
> Nor is this:
>
> http://goo.gl/Ilq8Y
> > In this study, we examined the ways in which normalista teachers and
> > Mexican American paraprofessionals in a teacher-training program in
> > San Antonio, Texas conceptualize culture.
>
> ;-)
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 5/4/2012 11:23 AM, Michael Newman wrote:
> > There's a common misconception that probably has its origin in
> elementary Spanish classes that any noun ending in -a is feminine. In fact,
> -ista words are usually not inherently marked for gender. A man can be un
> comunista and a woman can be una comunista. There are also a lot of other
> words that are grammatically masculine but end in -a, such as programa.
>  There are fewer -o words that are feminine, the most famous being "la
> mano," but there are also clippings like la moto (cicleta), and a few
> others. But the -o is a better gender indicator than -a.
> >
> >
> > Michael Newman
>
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