In What About Clients?, Dan Hull discusses and links legal weblogs outside the USA.
He starts with the West and Asia; Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are next. Most are in the English language. Some are new to me (but Austria is missing).
Princes Charles, William and Harry were on an ITV chat show recently. According to the BBC:
bq. The young princes also reveal “there is usually an argument over the remote” and that they watch reality TV shows including Pop Idol and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! – both presented by their interviewers.
bq. Britain’s young Princes William and Harry are fans of “American Pop Idol” and “Friends” and argue with their father Prince Charles over the TV remote control, they have revealed in an interview.
I’m not sure if they really do watch ‘American Pop Idol’ or just the British equivalent. I suspect the latter.
But in the Rheinische Post (paper version, May 20) I read:
bq. Die britischen Prinzen William und Harry sind zumindest in punkto Fernsehgewohnheiten ganz normale Menschen: “Wir streiten uns um die Fernbedienung”, sagte William dem Senden ITV1. Die US-Serie “Friends” sei immer eine sichere Bank, ergänzte sein jüngerer Bruder. Auch Talentshows wie “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” lieben die Prinzen.
The Times Online shows what it found were the best and worst English law firm websites.
I was surprised to see a garment in a German fashion catalogue termed ein Chasuble.
An online dictionary says:
Chasuble (sprich schaßübl): Sehr lange Weste, die bis zur Kleiderlänge variiert werden kann.
Well, I was thinking of the English term pronounced somewhat like tSaezjubl. The last time I wore one of these was about forty years ago, when I had the misfortune to be cast as the chaplain in the school’s (all-female) production of the dreadful Christopher Fry play, ‘The Lady’s Not For Burning’ (later made more famous by Mrs Thatcher under a slightly different title). My garb wasn’t as exciting as this, but it was that kind of thing.
When did this term enter the German fashion world – at the same time as body bag?
Someone has clearly been making sprinkles in the colours of the German flag, as I saw in both Düsseldorf and Fürth. Deutsch-Amerikaner in Düsseldorf:
Dickmanns in Fürth (and surely elsewhere). It’s no longer Negerküsse (take that, Jessie Owens), but Deutschlandküsse. Should I worry that the sell-by date on these is June 8?
Here’s a footballer in quark dough in Düsseldorf:
‘Comedian Stewart Lee’ writes in the Guardian on German humour. This analysis arises from a trip to Germany with Richard Thomas, who wrote Jerry Springer the Opera, who was commissioned to write a musical of that type set in a British stand-up comedy club which then had to be translated into German. (Why am I laughing already?)
Lee says that Germans do have humour, but it is hard for us to recognize, and vice versa. He claims that English humour is facilitated by the English language. Putting verbs at the end of the sentence and using a lot of compound words kill humour, he says (apparently seriously). He now concentrates on the humour of ideas:
On my first night in Hannover I had gone out drinking with some young German actors. “You will notice there are no old buildings in Hannover,” one of them said. “That is because you bombed them all.” At the time I found this shocking and embarrassing. Now it seems like the funniest thing you could possibly say to a nervous English visitor.
At all events, Germans are invited to submit their own jokes in English, to show there is German humour. The four quoted have failed to do this. (Thanks to Trevor for the link).