In our essay from yesterday,
we instanced French and German derivata that purported to
be based upon English constructions -- which, however, do not exist in English,
although the base word does -- “people-ade”, “pee-pee room”, “pee-pee pause”. And just today, another one, in French,
though apparently taken directly from Dutch: scum villages.
Last year, we
reported in extenso on the Dutch proposal for building social leper-colonies,
housing the unwanted in shipping containers:
At that time, the proposal was floated by the ineffable
Geert Wilders, under the name of “tuigdorpen”:
Back then it might have been dismissed as the provocation of
a notably histrionic right-winger. But this time around, the sociology is quite
different, since the measure is being proposed by the mayor of Amsterdam -- Europe’s longtime
hippie-city -- who moreover is from the Labor
party, and who admonishes the citizens to pay no attention to the precedent
behind the curtain:
Let Le Figaro tell it:
Le maire de la ville doit lancer en
janvier un programme visant à construire des camps où seraient logées les
personnes violentes ou considérées comme antisociales.
Les opposants à ce projet parlent
de «scum villages», des villages
pour marginaux.
This “villages pour marginaux” is a decidedly euphemistic
translation, of a phrase deliberately provocative, like Sarkozy’s la racaille, or Wilders’ tuigdorpen, which it directly reflects.
Philological note: In English, scum (of old Germanic origen) is a very harsh word when applied
figuratively, though it is cognate with the much nicer German Schaum ‘froth, foam’ (which figures in
the English word meerschaum), and its
etymon is the source of the equally frothy French word écume.
A German derivative of Schaum
-- Abschaum -- does, however, mean ‘scum’ with
all its connotations, and that is what the German press is using, rather than
the pseudo-anglicism in the French:
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
Relief for
beleaguered Nook lovers!
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
-- Back to Le Figaro :
En janvier, Eberhard van der Laan,
le maire travailliste d'Amsterdam,
lancera un programme visant à lutter contre les comportements antisociaux. Les
familles à problèmes, les personnes violentes... seront réunies dans des
conteneurs maritimes basiquement aménagés, rassemblés dans des banlieues, où on
leur apprendra «à se comporter».
Now, given the reputation of Amsterdam-the-open-ward, and
that of European leftists, one would sooner have imagined such a proposal being
launched to quarantine, say, “homophobes” (a weasel-word, but that must wait
for another day), rather than the sort of people whom Wilders most prominently
has in his sights (immigrant Muslims).
Yet indeed -- I had to read this passage twice, scarce believing my eyes
-- such indeed, it would appear, is the actual idea behind this plan!
À ceux qui qualifient ce plan de
liberticide, il rappelle qu'il a surtout
été lancé afin de protéger les homosexuels, fréquemment victimes de
harcèlements. «Nous voulons une société qui les défende», clame-t-il.
An astute reader of Le Figaro comments:
Il y a un épisode de South Park
dans lequel les gens intolérants sont envoyés dans des camps de redressement...
on s'en rapproche!
*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série
noire
en argot authentique
d’Amérique :
*
The article continues:
Si le maire d'Amsterdam a récemment
assuré que les coffee shops vendant
légalement de la marijuana resteraient ouverts malgré la nouvelle loi contre le
«tourisme de la drogue», ce nouveau plan pourrait faire perdre à la capitale
hollandaise sa réputation mondiale de «ville de la tolérance».
Again we note a linguistic oddity, in the
Languages-in-Contact line. What
need has French of the English phrase coffee
shop -- we who have, precisely, borrowed the French word café ?!?
A comment by another reader clarifies the situation -- while introducing yet another pseudo-English borrowed phrase:
Triste situation, qui semble
désespérée. Mais nous avons aussi des zones assez comparables, si ce n'est que
nous n'avons pas de drogue en libre circulation (pas encore de "coffee shops" ni de "salles de shoot").
In other words:
coffee shop is being used in a
quite specific, narrowed, Eurocentric sense, with the sort of naughty aroma
that French borrowings into English used to give off. -- As to salles de shoot, it is a part-borrowing,
part-loan-translation, cum typical
Gallic arbitrary deformation of an English root, just to show who’s boss
(despite all evidence to the contrary):
from shooting gallery, in the
druggie sense; in parts of Europe,
these are state-sponsored.
Pour nos essais
en langue
la plus châtiée qui
soit,
checkez-out …..
~ ~ ~
Once again, several of the Readers’ Responses are worth
quoting:
Voilà ce que la Drogue Libre a
engendré à Amsterdam. Une population marginale, certes mais nombreuse, de
paumés et encombrants et tout-à-fait inaptes dans la société
"normale" du travail et capable d'autonomie.
---
Dommage que la Guyane et
l'Australie ne soient plus disponibles !
--
pourquoi pas des villages aux iles
kerguelen ou en centre afrique
---
Et ils vont construire des miradors
autour? comme quoi l'occupation allemande aura laissé des souvenirs et des
idées.
---
Nous rejoignons certains films
d'anticipation comme New York 1997 ou Banlieue 13....
---
Chez nous, ça existe déjà! Il y en
a en périphérie de toutes les grandes villes : ça s'appelle des
"Cités", avec le statut juridique de Zone de Non-Droit!
~
[Update 5 November 2014] Of course,
what counts as habitable housing, and who counts as scum, is a relative
matter.
The most inhumanely compressed living-space I ever
witnessed, was in undergraduate housing at the University of California at Berkeley. There was just room enough for a
camp bed, and to stand beside it with the door closed, and little else. The reason this view sticks in my
mind is that the student whose misfortune it was to spend his life in that
room, was apparently going mad, as he had drawn on the wall, in ink, the
outline of his erect penis.
Actually I did live in something just as bad, in
the downmarket Sunset district of San Franciscio the summer before I began
graduate studies in math at Berkeley:
I lived, literally, in what had been a pantry, just off the kitchen that
was now a communal kitchen for everyone who roomed at the dwelling.
Another instance of students pickled and packed
like kippers:
Israeli students find affordable housing —
in metal boxes
Three
years after mass protests against living costs, a student village made of
shipping containers rises.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-students-find-affordable-housing-in-shipping-container-apartments/2014/11/03/0349cf5e-5f9a-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html
*
Pour d’autres
friandises
de la confiserie
du docteur Justice,
consultez:
.
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