Sarkozy, What's in a Name Can Be Funny

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former President of France, has been roaring like a hungry lion on the world's political stage. I'm not French or in France, nor am I involved in international politics, so I don't really have much to say about him from a pundit's point of viewn. However, I am always looking for the humor in things and I found a real ha ha (or, is it ho ho? Dunno?) not in his political posturing, but in his name. .

Sarkozy, who carries his Hungarian father's last name, is pronounced quite differently in Hungary than in the rest of the world. That is, in Hungary the letter 'S' is pronounced "SH" and if you wanted the western 'S' sound you would spell it in Hungarian with the letter 'Sz'. When the French or anyone else pronounce his name it sounds like Sarkozy, but when pronounced in Hungarian, it sounds like 'Sharkozy'. No big deal you say. This is where the ha ha and the ho ho come into play.

I'm not Hungarian, but I've been living here nigh a decade; I have become accustomed to the nuance of the Hungarian language. When the syllable "sar" is pronounced without the 'H' sound, phonetically, in Hungarian it means fecal matter. Yup, I'm sorry to put it so bluntly. The 'Sar' sound without the "sh" component is excrement. Every Sarkozy in Hungary is sounded out as SHARkozy. Any other verbalization would cause hysterics.

One more thing: The end of his name "kozy" or "kozi" means "in between" in Hungarian. Therefore, when his name is pronounced with a western 's' sound, here in Hungary, it means "In between excrement."

I know that facts like this are very important to you so I felt impelled to pass this info on to you. The fact that he is a right wing S.O.B. only concretizes in my mind, that he was appropriately named.

Piping A Story

Fred Friendly was as close to being a moral philosopher as anyone I met in Journalism School. Yet, he acknowledged that, at times, he felt as philosophically conflicted as the rest of us mortals in a profession that requires truth to be served fresh everyday without seasoning. Somehow, it seemed, that he was always able to get up in the morning to approach life fairly, forgetting the unevenness of the day before. He had a great sense of perception into the human soul; could criticize and accept criticism, never losing his wonderful sense of grace: he didn't need to, he was an old fox in a familiar chicken coop. Above all, he was honest; for that reason, he earned my respect.

It was he who taught me the expression, "Piping a story," or simply, "Piping," an expression from journalism's not-to-ancient past which meant writing a story based on creativity not reportage. Editors, when suspecting that a reporter had inflated his/her story with fantasy, might ask: "Have you been smoking the opium pipe?" I suspect that the editors of the NYT may have had cause, three years ago, to use that expression several times to one young reporter who, through some strange psychopathology, threw away the opportunity of a lifetime: an opportunity for which many of us would have gladly given an essential body part. During that scandal, I thought of Fred Friendly and "Piping." I could laugh; I could shake my head; I could rue the vagaries and vicissitudes of a life in which the Gods share a greater sense of humor than we.

Perhaps, that young fellow was really hitting the opium pipe. Just a thought.

Without reaching for Webster's, it's probably not too much of a stretch to assume that the term "Pipe Dreams'" has its root in the same soil. How about Popeye? What was it that he always had in his pipe that allowed him to feel like a super sailor? poppies?

The late 19th century cartoon strip, "The Yellow Kid," and the Spanish-American War gave rise to the term "Yellow Journalism." They could have just as easily called it, "Poppycock." N'est ce-pas?

In Hungary, the Poppy, rather its seed (Mak), is as integral to its culture as the Apple Pie is to America. Hungarians eat: poppy seed bread, poppy seed cake, poppy seed rolls, and a myriad of other different foods which have poppy seeds as an ingredient. You have to understand that even before the Ottomans were here, the Magyars had, for centuries, been influenced by things Turkic. Hungary was prepared not to join the EU if they were not allowed to grow and eat poppy seed. The EU relented and allowed Hungary a special dispensation to continue their poppy culture. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, however, continues to cast a wary eye toward Hungary. Let me ask you this: "If you have received a package from Hungary through the mails, how long did it take? Was the package obviously opened?" Many Hungarians complain, bitterly, that packages that they mail to the States, are often returned to them with no apparent explanation.

All this, then, has been a prologue to what really set me off in this direction, namely, "Kubla Khan" (whose 54 lines I had put to memory years ago) and its author, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Most of us know the story of how the poem supposedly came to be written. Coleridge claimed, for public consumption, that he had been ill; had retired to a country house to recuperate, and, while there, was given a prescribed drug, an "anodyne" he called it, that eased his pain and allowed him to slip into a prolonged slumber in which he had the vision that led to Kubla Khan. The "anodyne" was most likely opium which was all the rave among the creative crowd in that period. In fact, Coleridge had confided with his friends, chaps by the name of Wordsworth, Lamb and Byron that he was playing around with opium. That was probably a lot of poppycock. More likely, he was using opium as an excuse to justify a long unproductive period to his close and curious friends.

Allow me to digress. (More?) While the literati were dabbling in Great Britain and France with opium and hashish (In France, Duma quickly comes to mind), some sources mention Charles Wilson Dodgson, a.k.a., Louie C., with eating funny looking mushrooms and liking little girls: however, at the same time, the Lumpen and the working class were juicing it up with gin and blissing out on arsenic. (Long sentence? Tough! You can do whatever you like when you don't have an editor skulking around.) That's right, arsenic. It seems that one can get pretty wasted on arsenic. The only problem, however, is that the body can't excrete it fast enough and that which can not pass, is stored in the liver. As it happens, one day the liver reaches its saturation level and the abuser dies. Often, during the 19th Century, so did his/her spouse: usually, it was the wife..

You see, forensic medicine had come far enough in the 19th century, that medical examiners or coroners -- ( from the word "Crowners" the gentlemen that King Henry VIII, used to send out to investigate suspicious deaths. If it was found that the victim died from suicide, Hank would claim all the victim's property. Cool!)-- could determine if someone had died of arsenic poisoning.

"It was in the name of Justice and Pure Science, they all said,
That they stretched out the poor women's body from her head,
A Crowner had determined that, to her husband, poison she had fed.
For, as bitter tasting as arsenic may be,
Far worse, was to be hanged on Albion's Tree.

"An innocent she had been through years of poverty and strife,
The victim, you see, had kept his addiction a secret from his wife,
But, Alas and Alack she, too, reached a bitter end to her wretched life.
For, as bitter tasting as arsenic may be,
Far worse, was to be hanged on Albion's Tree." (Perez)

Sorry about that.. Sometimes, I get carried away We were talking about Coleridge:

Coleridge was not a consistent worker like Wordsworth (Cool name for a poet), he liked to take time off... to think.(?) Have you read, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?" He had to have had a lot of free time to come up with that. One of my life's ambitions which I am actually working on is to put it entirely-- and perfectly-- to memory. Every line is complicated and suffused with difficult and archaic language.

I used the word "Eftsoons," recently, and one listener called me up and said that he knew what the word meant, (Liar, I know he used a dictionary), "after soon/soon after." The challenge was why did I have to use such old words. "Wherefore?" I replied. Because it is English, that's wherefore! Although English is not really my mother tongue, I am working hard to get it. The corpus of the English language is full of thousands of unused and unspent words that it flies in the face of credulity the rationale for adding newer words (Dissing and Props readily come to mind) to the modern lexicon while there are words already in existence that still can do the job quite nicely.

The problem, I have found, lies in the same root cause that is responsible for English speakers on both sides of the water from learning new languages. From Brixton to the Bronx to Bushville, English speakers for what ever reason, are inherently lazy when it comes to studying their own language, forget bothering to learn a completely different language. For the most part, hidden behind a veneer of arrogance, is that most English speakers, hither and yon, are actually speaking a patois of English... I'm afraid it "bees" that way.

Perhaps, English is as difficult a language as some non-English speakers have always maintained. Shazam! Maybe that's my problem? It's not that English is not my mother tongue but, simply, English is difficult. It makes one stop and think

It is my practice not to discuss American politics from this perch, but I do want to make one very positive comment about Bill Clinton concerning something that happened while he was still the Prez.

It was during a running press conference in the midst of one of the scandals (call them puffs of smoke in the wind) which plagued his administration that a reporter shouted out to the President, as he was actively fleeing their presence, "Mr. President, could you disabuse us of.....?" I apologize for not remembering what else the reporter said. Maybe, he never finished his question, because Bill (he likes to be called "Bill"), turned on a dime in such a fury that you could tell he hadn't rehearsed his reaction and shouted back as if he was ready to punch the guy in the nose. "Disabuse?" And then went on in what I thought was a little over acting. What I was happy about was that he knew what the word meant.

Or did he? I know that he went to Yale, but that was just for law school, and it was Hillary "Her lips were red her looks were free, her locks as yellow as gold. Her skin was as white as leprosy, the Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold." (STC)and not he, that was on top of the class. Still, I would like to think that he knew, after all, English is his mother tongue.

*Atque haec qua celeritate gesta sint quamquam videtis tamen a me in dicendo praetereunda non sunt.

Unfair? Okay, literally translated: " And these things, with what swiftness they were accomplished, although you see (this), nevertheless (they) must not be passed over by me in speaking."

Better rendered in English, "And, although you are well aware of it, I would like to emphasize the swiftness in which these things were accomplished." In other words, Th-Th-Th-That's All Folks!

*From a speech by Cicero in the Roman Senate praising Pompey's military skill and recounting his many successes in suppressing piracy. Class dismissed!

Szia,
From Budapest

Porcelain?... No, nothing quite so vulgar!

WARNING: The following essay contains a vulgar allusion. Anyone under 21, or emotionally conflicted should ask a parent or their religious advisor before reading. One can, also, press the delete key or, employ a word program that sniffs out gratuitous sex and violence. And, gratuitous it is. I could have easily removed the offending sentences, but I chose to include them, because I am old enough to laugh at my own stupidity and, by extension, everyone else's.


I broke a porcelain plate the other day, and I've spent the last two days reflecting and ruminating on my clumsiness and other things.

How could something, as beautiful to behold as porcelain, have so vulgar a name? Chalk it up to man's basest nature. In this case I mean "man," the specific, not the generic. By extension, why did a cowrie shell, called "Porcellana" in Italian,. and from which porcelain, through its aesthetic resemblance, received the name "little pig," or "vulva"? I guess it's the way some men (present company excluded) have-- and continue -- to associate one with the other.

Of course that sheds a new --if prurient-- light on the children's tale of the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. "Little pig, little pig, let me come in!" When I start pecking away, I never know where things will go. Forsooth.

I remember teaching a college class on the evolution of writing in the Middle East and I had just made the bridge between pictographs and cuneiform (wedge-shaped) and was pointing out that the Assyrians had a syllabary not an alphabet. When I realized that I had lost the class with the word "syllabary," I stopped to graph an example on the blackboard. I chose the word "tribute" (of which I have received very little-- either in monetary compensation or professional kudos), pronounced "ma-da-tu". I was only interested in the first syllable. "ma" which is written with three parallel cuneiform wedges laid horizontally, and a fourth perpendicular and vertical (orthogonal) to the others. I began to take double takes on the wedges. It was then, while I was drawing the forth character, that I had a minor epiphany, and, with my back to the class, began laughing. I wasn't worried about what the class was thinking. I could sense that they were curious, but I wasn't going to tell them.

You see, when I was a kid, the favorite epithet of the Italian kids on north side of 116th Street, our neighborhood rivals, was a four-letter word beginning with "c" and ending in "t" which I avoided ever using (much) because of the unpleasant sound that the mostly consonantal word made on my ears. For the Italians kids, it was totally different. The route word was the Latin, "cuneus" ( wedge-shaped or delta as in "Delta of Venus." N'est-ce pas?), which evolved separately in Italian than in other Romance languages.

Strange to think of it; stranger to say it, but the main reason I didn't use that word nor, as far as I can remember, did any of my friends, was that it was part of the lexicon of those other guys. That is not to say that I (we) were saints, au contraire, we had our favorite pearls, too, it was just that that word was identified with our cultural enemy. If that sounds ridiculous to you, chew on this. Weren't all American kids culturally conditioned to hate the Russians since the Bolshevik Revolution? We learned to hate all of Russian culture including the sound of the Russian language. Why not Chinese? Well, the Taiwanese were (and continue to be by law, I am constantly reminded) our allies. However, all of that may be changing as we speak.

Strange, for me, when I was a kid, was to hear children of Anglo-Saxon heritage making fun of the guttural sounds of the German language, Anglo-Saxon's mother tongue. Because of the two wars we fought with Germany in the last century, we were socially (all of us) conditioned to be repelled by res Germania. Too bad, really, since we grew up reading a pot pourri of Hobbes, Hume and Bacon and not enough Hegel, Nietzsche and Kant. That, however, brings me to a topic more germane to this essay: Philosophy.

I began by telling you about the broken plate, naturally, that led me to Plato. Soon I was in a swound, wandering (I avoided saying "meandering" to avoid the guffaws and the jeers of the cognoscenti) betwix Plato, Plotinus, and Porphyry, avoiding their logical extension, Boethius, who, because he was so conflicted between politics and philosophy, ended up on the sharp end of an Ostrogothic sword. Try as he might, he would find little "Consolation" in that. Just think. If Boethius had chosen Philosophy over Politics as a career move, the Western world would have beaten out the Arabs by 200 years in bringing back Aristotle to the world. Which means that we might have had the atom bomb as early as 1745, and have given Locke, Malthus and Mill whole new material to scribble about.

But I continue to digress.

I wanted to talk about language. By this time, you must know that I am obsessed by the subject. I have had the most difficult, call it agonizing, experience with the English language. It's not mine. It doesn't belong to me. I never know, when I rattle on for hours if anyone has understood a word I have said. Looking back a few years and recalling having to read exam blue books, I am only confirmed in this view, that no one really understands me when I speak or write in the English tongue.

Perhaps, that's why the NY Times turned me down when I applied for work there after graduation. It is obvious to me that someone there knew. I can still hear it in my imaginings of the editorial perusal of my application cum CV: "This guy just doesn't have it. He doesn't understand the English tongue." To which, I reply, "You must be right. After all you are the ruling gods of the English language in America." In short order, I began to believe that no national daily or weekly of any repute would hire me because they would all learn, very quickly, that I could never master their tongue: so, I quit trying. Which brings me right back to my subject.

In those depressing days of the early 1980's, I was walking to the Eastside through Central Park, you know, in the kicking-a-can-before-me mode, when I came across a homeless man who, in those days was still called a bum. What's in a word? Take the word " Jungle," no one was willing to help it until someone thought of changing its name to Rain Forest.: then, the world came tumbling to its door. Okay, back to the man: he was holding a copy of I.K.'s "Transcendental Meditations" in German and upside down, pretending to read it. (You see how neatly I can tie things up?) Well, feeling absolutely superior to no one at the moment, and feeling that I had stumbled upon one of the most preposterous situations I had ever encountered, I jumped in feet first. My ego, so recently deflated beyond any measurable proportion, suddenly exploded, and I said to the man, "You can't read philosophy upside down, avoiding, for the moment, that it looked to be in German..

He took note of me, and let the book slide down in his hands a little, smiled and said, "No?" I wanted to write him off as schizoid or a hopeless drunk. My comment was really meant for me: to make Me feel superior to someone. A voice (speaking of voices) inside of me was telling me to get the hell out of there, but, it was already too late, I had been snared: I had jumped into a very carefully laid trap. I knew it by the way he talked and smiled, but especially by the glint in his eyes which immediately sent a shower of arrows, bursting my over inflated balloon.

"Would it matter to you," he said in an inflected voice, that graduate students are used to hearing from their mentors, "if I read Kant backwards?" The way he said Kant told me that I should have been on Fifth Avenue by then. I was transfixed by what I suspected was coming and by the self-loathing I felt for allowing myself to fall into such a snare. I knew that I richly deserved it. "Would it matter to you if I read Him in German?" he asked, now more cynically than he had spoken before. And, without waiting for a further queue, began reading the tome backwards and in perfect German.

I gave him a dollar and spiraled downward into the Hell for Idiots until I came to Fifth Avenue.

My German was quite strong once. Even now, I can understand it and speak a little, but because of the combination of speaking Hungarian and not practicing German, it's fallen, shamefully, into disuse. I tell myself, that a month or so of living in Germany would bring it back. However, I don't think that there is any practical chance of that happening any time soon. That's how some things become lost.

To avoid losing my tenuous hold on English, I tutor private students ("I pity the Fools"). I've learned by teaching, I not only re-enforce my language, but I also end up learning more than the students. I may always lack the self-confidence and insouciance of say, a NYTimes writer/essayist, but I have no trouble, on a day-to-day basis, correcting the English or their misuse of the English language on their on-line rantings. Then, there are those poor souls from the British Isles that have been thrown up on the shores and hills of Eastern Europe. They still ride haughtily on worn out imperial steeds and think that, since English is their mother tongue, they know it- through osmosis- better than anyone else. I have a lot of fun with them. And, when I detect that I have come across an individual that actually knows an adverb from an adjective, I pounce.

"Which poems have you memorized," I ask playfully, wiggling the worm on the hook. I don't take away too many points if they can't recall any from Shakespeare to Shelly, where most of my repertoire is stashed, but when they can't come up with any modern poets, i.e., John Cooper Clarke, the Manchester poet, and likely the greatest English poet of our time, I can't help but slice them up into small pieces fit for curry -- now the main staple and fast food of England, having pushed newspaper-wrapped fish 'n chips right off the table.

Ah, I'm beginning to feel better. This writing thing can be so therapeutic that they ought to reintroduce it into the curriculum of high schools in America. While they are at it, maybe they should close down all the elementary and intermediate schools and reinvent Grammar Schools.

Learning how to read wouldn't be a bad idea, either. However, before you can get little Johnny or Jane to read, you have to get rid of the TV (at least the cable), open a book and read in front of them yourself. I know it sounds painful, especially on Sunday afternoons. But, think of it this way: there are all these newspapers and reporters who, presumably, know how to turn a phrase or two, and are employed specifically to bring you today's sports and other news, tomorrow. However, Homer (not the classic long-running Fox cartoon), needs your children's immediate attention. If they don't like all that Greek stuff, then try Virgil, he didn't like Greeks, either: "Timeo Danaos et donas gerentis!"
Szia,
From Budapest