Monday, November 1, 2021

Random thoughts

My brother-in-law used to say "Mirë mëngjes!" when he entered the room where his parents were sitting, which was only natural for him to do as both of his parents came to the U.S. from Albania and "Mirë mëngjes!" means "Good morning!" in Albanian. "Mirë mbrëma!" means "Good evening!" and "Natën e mirë!" means "Good night!" but those two phrases are not pertinent at the moment.

One of the most amusing things I ever heard was Anna Russell singing "Je n'ai pas la plume de ma tante" which means "I don't have the pen of my aunt" in French because one of the first sentences people learn when taking French, at least it used to be so, is "La plume de ma tante est sur la table" which means "The pen of my aunt is on the table."

"Bésame Mucho" which means "Kiss me a lot" in Spanish was the name of a popular song several decades back, in 1940 to be exact, and whoever wrote about it in Wikipedia said the following: "It is considered one of the most popular songs of the 20th century and of all times, as well as one of the most important hymns in the history of Latin music. It was also recognized in 1999 as the most recorded and covered song in Spanish of all time." I find those sentences a little over the top. What about "Celito Lindo" which means "Beautiful Heavens" or "Beautiful Skies" even though Google Translate says it means "cute baby"? What about the Mexican Hat Dance?

Barron Trump, youngest child of Donald Trump and only child of Melania Trump, speaks Slovenian because he spends a lot of time with his maternal grandparents.

Franklin Graham, son of the American evangelist Billy Graham, revealed on Facebook this week that when he was a child his family ate Chinese food two or three times a week, which probably happened because his mother, Ruth Bell Graham, was born and raised in China. She was the daughter of medical missionary L. Nelson Bell who was Presbyterian but she became the wife of the world's best-known Southern Baptist.

I find it oddly satisfying that the daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (Иосиф Сталин in Russian, იოსებ სტალინი in his native Georgian) was Svetlana Alliluyeva. Her mother was Stalin's second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Stalin also had two sons, one with his first wife, Ekaterine Svanidze, and one with his second wife. Both sons died young. His first son, Yakov Dzhugashvili (which was Stalin's original Georgian surname), died at the age of 36 in 1943 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Stalin's second son, Vasili Dzhugashvili, died at the age of 40 in the Soviet Union in 1962. Svetlana, who died in 2011 at the age of 85, had defected to America, become a naturalized citizen, and been married three times. She was known in her later years as Lana Peters. I find all these facts fascinating, but most fascinating of all to my way of thinking is that the heavenly-sounding name Alliluyeva is forever connected to the terrible deeds of Stalin.

Even though the publication date of this post is the first day of November, I wrote it on the last day of October, which is Halloween, and that is the reason it contains so many whiches.

I do know the difference between which and witch. I was just having a little fun.

Okay, so it's not all that funny.

7 comments:

  1. So full of interesting information. I thought for a moment I was going to have to come up with song lyrics in another language. Whew,,, dodged that bullet.

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  2. ml who used to be E.S., that’s funny!

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  3. In the paragraph about Svetlana I find it not clear what you find oddly satisfying as you do not explain. In the final sentence of the paragraph you explain it a little in that the name is heavenly sounding. Is that was you found oddly satisfying? I am coincidentally reading a book about the Young Stalin. He had an extremely cruel upbringing suffering much at the hands of his father who can only be described as wicked beyond words. Not that it is any excuse for Stalin becoming the evil man that he was but he certainly did not have a good start in life.

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    1. Rachel, yes, you have put your finger on it. A better writer would probably have put those two sentences closer together. I did say that these were "random" thoughts and I was eager to get the post published. I remember reading that Stalin had entered a seminary and studied to be a priest; I wonder what effect his father's actions played in his entering and in his leaving. I suppose we will never know. I also neglected to mention that Svetlana eventually returned to Russia and reclaimed her citizenship there.

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    2. Stalin's mother wanted him to become a bishop. It was rumoured that his father was in fact the local priest. Stalin's father became an alcoholic and the worse his drinking became the more he believed that he was not the father of the child. The local priest did indeed help Stalin to enter the seminary but we never know why for sure. Stalin's father took him away from the seminary for a while and put him to work in the shoemaking factory. After a while he was rescued by the priest and sent back to the seminary.

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    3. "I find it not clear what you find oddly satisfying as you do not explain...Not that it is any excuse for Stalin becoming the evil man that he was..."

      I question your argument that Rhymes' embarrassingly pathetic separation of sentences had much influence upon the murderous behavior of Joseph Stalin, but then you know far more about Stalin--and perhaps Rhymes--than I do. Even so, when I consider the two men, I am more struck by their differences than their similarities. Some examples: Stalin is dead while there is debatable evidence that Rhymes (bless his ancient soul) was alive as recently as yesterday; Stalin never lived in Georgia USA, and, Joe McCarthy's accusation aside, Rhymes never lived in Russia; finally there is no record of Stalin having watched "Gone with the Wind" (although he was a fan of "Stagecoach"--https://www.rbth.com/history/329891-5-foreign-movies-stalin-watched) or of Rhymes watching, or even wanting to watch, "The Battleship Potemkin." If I put my mind to it, I could come up with additional differences, but scholars agree that these are the main ones.

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  4. My Russian friend Lena is fabulously good at puns and she says it's a result of speaking two languages.

    It seems vaguely relevant

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...