|
|
 Sat Jan 13, 2007 8:31 am Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
I think that probably more than 75 percent of all Chinese restaurants in the United States have the word "golden" in their names. In just a short distance from my house, we have the Golden Dragon, the Golden Harvest, the Golden Chopsticks, the Golden Wok and the Golden Bowl.
In the Czech language, they seem to call everything golden. They call their capital "Golden Prague", and the golden things all rank down from there, to the point where one restaurant I lived near was called the Golden Cellar. I got really tired of hearing their word for "golden", because it started to sound to me as if they named things with that word instead of thinking. One thing I never understood there either was why they name so many things with the English name "Charlie". I lived near a place called "Caf? Charlie", and there were other Charlie things everywhere I went. It started to annoy me. |
|
Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4145
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
|
|
| Sat Jan 13, 2007 11:28 am Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
Thanks, Jamie, for your interesting international) examples.
I agree, what is tricky with golden is that in some contexts it loses its attractive meaning and 'power'.
First, because of the folk wisdom all that glitters is not gold that immediately started to sound in ears when golden is imposingly used tooooo much or... inapropriately.
Second – when it is used in its 'money'-meaning - with things that are not 'for sale' and that can’t be bought, in principle.
In Russian there is an expression gold cage (the full international? proverb is 'nightingales will not sing in a cage') that is used in a negative sense to characterise the sad situation when a person, in fact, exchanged/lost his/her freedom for the rich and comfortable life.
By the way, I've learnt a funny English expression gold digger ("a woman who seeks money and expensive gifts from men").
_________________
It’s impossible to learn swimming without entering the water…
 |
|
Tamara
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 1577
Location: UK
|
 |
| Sat Jan 13, 2007 16:26 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
| Tamara wrote: | | In Russian there is an expression gold cage (the full international? proverb is 'nightingales will not sing in a cage') that is used in a negative sense to characterise the sad situation when a person, in fact, exchanged/lost his/her freedom for the rich and comfortable life. |
There's an old song (I think it's American), in which the first line says, "I'm only a bird in a golden cage...," and that's exactly the meaning of "golden cage". I think this song dates back to the 1800s, but I'm not sure -- certainly to the time before radio, though. Its late 20th-century equivalent began, "Satin sheets to lie on, satin pillow to cry on, still I'm not happy, don't you see..."
| Tamara wrote: | | By the way, I've learnt a funny English expression gold digger ("a woman who seeks money and expensive gifts from men"). |
The man the gold digger looks for is called a "sugar daddy".
To "fleece" someone can mean to swindle him, and there used to be a US senator who each year gave out the "Golden Fleece Award" to the member of Congress or the government agency that had devised the most outrageous or imaginative way to waste taxpayers' money. So the prize of Jason and the Argonauts became the name of a cheating award.
There is also the term gold brick (with the stress on gold, not on brick), which is a person who always sits around when he should be working. What he does is called goldbricking.
If you give someone his gold watch, it means you retire a long-time employee -- whether he wants it or not. In the old days, they literally gave the person a gold watch, but now the expression is just symbolic.
The Golden Horde was the army led by the descendents of Genghis Khan that overran Russia.
A golden oldie is a pop song that is no longer current, but that people still like. I think in Europe they use the word "evergreen" to describe such old hits, but in the US we don't use that word.
There is also the term gold bug, which was the excited impulse to run to California or Alaska in the 1800s to prospect for gold. We still use that term symbolically: "He's got the gold bug," or, "He's been bitten by the gold bug."
And don't forget about Mr. Sam Goldwyn, the old-time Hollywood film studio president, born in Poland, who was famous for his strange ways of expressing himself in English. There are many "Goldwynisms", many of which have become a part of the English language, such as:
| Quote: | If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!
A bachelor's life is no life for a single man.
What we need now is some new, fresh clich?s.
I had a great idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.
Never make forecasts, especially about the future.
For your information, I would like to ask a question.
If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive.
Go see it and see for yourself why you shouldn’t go see it.
Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day. |
And most relevant to this discussion:
| Quote: | | Every director bites the hand that lays the golden egg. |
|
|
Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4145
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
|
|
|
Tamara
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 1577
Location: UK
|
|
|
Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4145
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
|
|
| Sun Jan 14, 2007 16:53 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
| Quote: | | now we've got a discrepancy between the Oxford dictionary and Wikipedia. The word horde generally means a huge mob of people, usually unruly. |
Jamie, I think, both are right.
The word has the general meaning the Oxford dictionary gives.
But, it also has a special, historical, meaning. Because the word has a Mongolian origin and goes back to the time when they were pure nomads.
| Quote: | | Орда, монголо-турец., - сперва название ханской ставки у кочевников, позже - самого владения племен, объединенных властью хана… |
(taken from an encyclopedia)
(Sorry for the Russian quote. Just to be completely sure what I’m talking about  )
And the Golden Horde is still the specific name of a particular state.
(By the way, there appeared to be some other 'Hordes' – after the Golden Horde had been disintegrated.)
| Quote: | | Please explain. I don't understand it. |
There is a special service and everyone can pay some additional amount of money to get a ‘special’ mobile phone number. Easier rememberable (stored?) or with other special… features.
For example,
07866666565 would be from the platinum category (at least in the UK)
07733567777 or 07811199543 – from the golden,
077733834404 – from the silver one.
So, it depends on the numbers of doubles, triples and ‘sequences’ in the phone number.
_________________
It’s impossible to learn swimming without entering the water…
|
|
Tamara
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 1577
Location: UK
|
|
| Sun Jan 14, 2007 17:04 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
| Tamara wrote: | | Quote: | | ????, ???????-?????., - ?????? ???????? ??????? ?????? ? ??????????, ????? - ?????? ???????? ??????, ???????????? ??????? ????… |
(taken from an encyclopedia)
(Sorry for the Russian quote. Just to be completely sure what I’m talking about ) |
Don't apologize. It helps me.
| Tamara wrote: | There is a special service and one can pay some additional amount of money to get ‘special’ mobile phone number. Easier understandable or with other special… features.
For example,
07866666565 would be from the platinum category (at least in the UK)
07733567777 or 07811199543 – from the golden,
077733834404 – from the silver one.
So, it depends on the numbers of doubles, triples and ‘sequences’ in the phone number. |
Oh. Here you've always just asked for a number that's easy to remember, and they do their best to accommodate you. For example, my younger sister was able to get a number where the last five digits were the same as those of her land line. It made things easier for her friends and clients. |
|
Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4145
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
|
|
|
Tamara
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 1577
Location: UK
|
|
|
Tamara
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 1577
Location: UK
|
|
| Mon Jan 15, 2007 14:34 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
For some reason that I can't understand, there are some people who get the word similar conflated with the word simulate, and they wind up saying "simular". It's wrong. They mean to say "similar".
Usually, when you find someone saying "simular", you can be relatively certain that he's tryng to sound more educated or sophisticated than he really is. The same person will usually also say "for Tom and I" or "with my cousin and I", instead of correctly saying "for Tom and me" or "with my cousin and me". They try so hard to talk "correctly" that they talk wrong. One time I saw a little girl say, "Mom, if you buy bananas for Tommy and me...," and her mother snapped, "For Tommy and I!" The child was using correct grammar, but "for Tommy and me" sounded unsophisticated to her unsophisticated mother.
One time I saw a lady using Latin phrases where she should have been using English words. It made her sound very educated, she thought, but she was spouting nonsense. She was on TV talking about some exercise class, and she said...
| Quote: | | It's better than, per se, an ordinary health club, because... |
She meant to say...
| Quote: | | It's better than, say, an ordinary health club, because... |
In that sentence, the word "say" means "for example". The Latin phrase "per se" doesn't mean "for example", but it sounded more "educated" to the lady.
The funniest manifestation of this phenomenon occurs when a 12-year-old gets her hands on a thesaurus. Thesauri are very dangerous tools in the hands of the unsophisticated. One girl wrote a whole essay that was completely unintelligible. One typical sentence was:
| Quote: | | The flatulence wallop ambulated rotund and rotund. |
See if you can figure out what THAT means! |
|
Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4145
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
|
|
| Tue Jan 16, 2007 16:41 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
Thanks, Jamie. Interesting for me posts, indeed.
Well. My next phrase on the topic.
There is actually more than one – at least two, quite different – wordings for the so-called golden rule:
1. "Treat others as you would like to be treated."
2. "Treat others as you would like to be treated, if you were them"
I definitely prefer the second – and always has been very sceptical regarding the first one. In any area of life.
_________________
It’s impossible to learn swimming without entering the water…
|
|
Tamara
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 1577
Location: UK
|
|
| Tue Jan 16, 2007 21:35 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
My sister's favorite cereal (well, at least when we were kids...) is/was Golden Grahams.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee. |
|
prezbucky
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 2040
Location: Nashville, TN (USA)
|
|
| Tue Jan 16, 2007 21:37 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
As for the Golden Rule, I've never seen the "...if you were them." appendage.
It was always taught to us that it means (literally) to treat people with respect, kindly, honestly, etc. -- to treat them well.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee. |
|
prezbucky
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 2040
Location: Nashville, TN (USA)
|
|
| Tue Jan 16, 2007 21:47 pm Just 'golden' :) |
|
|
...which is not to say that "...if you were them" does not complete the saying.
In the original version it's assumed that people want to be treated well.
But to a masochist, that might entail handcuffs and whips. hehe
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee. |
|
prezbucky
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 2040
Location: Nashville, TN (USA)
|
|
|
| good brand of GPS for use in mainland Europe? | A Song of the Weather |
