Sunday, March 3, 2013

Enten/Eller -- Johnny Dollar edition


Each Sunday evening, the local NPR station  takes a breather from its strenuous shilling  for the paraphiliac agenda, and tosses a bone to the Middle-Aged Straight Guy, in the shape of “The Big Broadcast”.  Reliably, it leads off with one of the “transcribed adventures” of Johnny Dollar, “the man with the action-packed expense account”. 
Tonight’s episode included the following line, uttered in Brooklynese:

“Listen, Dollar.  Let’s not waste  either your time or either mine.”

Linguists immediately recognize a demotic counterpart to the expressions for what in standard English is <<either X or Y>>, in such languages as Latin, standard French, or standard Arabic (the latter being even closer):

<<aut X, aut Y>>
<< ou X, ou Y>>
<< immâ X, wa-immâ  Y>>

We wait  with bated breath  for next week’s episode …

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