Tag Archives: Airplane

Momentarily

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Having been reading wa-ay too many reports on the US elections (YAY!), I keep stubbing my metaphorical toe on the common American use of the word “momentarily” to mean, um, “soon”.

Mark Liberman explores the issues on Languagelog, under “Peeves” (cf. Stack exchange). (For a bête noire of mine, see Reaching a crescendo, or not.)

As usual (cf. OMG), the usage goes back a long way—in this case to at least 1798. But more recently it is the Americans who have clung to the meaning of “soon”. The discussion also mentions “momently”, also early but now obsolete.

As many observers have commented, for Brits new to flying in the States it’s most disconcerting to hear the pilot announcing “We will be taking off momentarily”; since one hopes that having achieved altitude we might be able to remain airborne for quite some time, one surely expects a rather more upbeat prediction. At the other end too, Dick Cavett’s comment

When the flight attendant would say, “We will be landing in Chicago momentarily,” I used to enjoy replying, “Will there be time to get off?”, 

inspires a brilliantly pedantic thread, which needn’t detain us here.

I also support the objection that “momentarily” sounds like “an attempt to be fancy” [Objection sustained—there’s another thing we don’t get to say over here].

Anyway, I’m always glad of an excuse to cite Airplane. For a fine mid-air tannoy story, click here; for further divergent US/UK usages, here, here, and even here; see also And I’m like.

This, from BBC news only last week, was suspiciously prophetic (reporter waiting round dark corner with baseball bat):

Diego Maradona is to have emergency surgery caused by a head injury in the next few hours.

A personal lexicon

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Here’s a little vocabulary to help those whom Myles calls “non-nationals” (like Euripides) negotiate some of my more elliptical allusions—arcane idées fixes in my idiosyncratic language, nay idiolect. Myles makes a suitable place to start, then:

To the divine Stella Gibbons I am indebted to

  • flapdoodle (usually in the context of heritage),

and to Monty Python the concept of

Tempted though I was to do these in the form of an index:

muse, Terpsichorean, delighting in all manifestations of 174,

I’m grouping them by themes.

  • S-S-Simon Rattle is a recurring theme of mine, referring to this story.

Several succinct allusions refer to Airplane:

As if that’s not enough, with the Li family Daoists I have come to share an even more arcane secret language of allusion, like “holding a meeting with Teacher Wang“, “Here’s 100 kuai!” and “Nin…”.

Such catch-words are hopefully more entertaining than some of those in vogue among anthropologists (see e.g Bourdieu’s habitus).

Alan Bennett points out the rich world of allusion in painting and film (see Visual culture, near the end):

The twentieth-century audience had only to see a stock character on the screen to know instinctively what moral luggage he or she was carrying, the past they had, the future they could expect. And this was after, if one includes the silent films, not more than thirty years of going to the pictures. In the sixteenth century the audience or congregation would have been going to the pictures for 500 years at least, so how much more instinctive and instantaneous would their responses have been, how readily and unthinkingly they would been able to decode their pictures—just as, as a not very precocious child of eight, I could decode mine.
And while it’s not yet true that the films of the thirties and forties would need decoding for a child of the present day, nevertheless that time may come; the period of settled morality and accepted beliefs which produced such films is as much over now as is the set of beliefs and assumptions that produced an allegory as complicated and difficult, for us at any rate, as Bronzino’s Allegory of Venus and Cupid.

So having gone to some lengths to try and understand the world-view of Chinese peasants, and liberated from the Lowest-Common-Denominator language of academia, I now feel emboldened to reflect my own, however arcane. For more, see here.

 

 

Signoffs and other cross-pond drôlerie

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In our daily badinage on orchestral tours of the US of A in the Good Old Days, we got into the habit of handing over to each other by imitating CNN’s signalling style:

And they say there could be more revelations to come. Wolf.

[Wolf Blitzer, [1] of course, was an “anchor”. Considering that Britannia Rule the Waves (just dig that funky optative verb there, folks—”You Wish”, as the Argot of Yoof [2] would have it), it’s curious how we don’t much go in for anchors. [3]  I guess we consider them beneath us…]

Rather like my teacher Paul’s empirical use of classifiers, we interpreted it as a fixed signoff at the end of every sentence, which led us to:

I thought the Adagio was really too slow last night. Wolf.

I’m starving. Let’s go eat. [4] Wolf.

Usually, rather than an interrogative (“Wolf?”), it’s declaimed confidently in the matter-of-fact descending fourth tone.

It does seem wise to keep such signals simple:

On stage at the end of a concert, among ourselves we would also adopt the brilliant casual signoff,

Well folks, I guess that’s just about it for tonight!

This works particularly well after an obscure or meditative work. Like:

Join us next time for another wacky episode of Ockeghem’s Marian Antiphons!

For an equally zany intro for such pieces, see here; and PDQ Bach is also essential listening. Wolf.

 

[1] OK, we Brits have our own proud tradition of silly names, but American names are in a class of their own. Following the credits at the end of a Hollywood movie is like reading an avant-garde poem, plunging into an exotic cornucopia containing all the cultures of the world. Though if Tweety has anything to do with it, there will be no more films, no more culture, no more world. Nothing, as Stewart Lee observes.

[2] The Argot of Yoof: a popular media pub, always packed at lunchtime. Near the somewhat quieter Aardvark and Climbing Boot.

[3] Unless you count Piers Morgan, who tries unsuccessfully to lose the initial W.

[4] For me at least, there’s an illicit thrill in uttering the formulation “go eat”. Similarly for “Can I get” instead of “May I have”—a quick web search reveals mainly  the usual pompous British indignation yearning for ethnic purity, though one writer suggests rather elusively that “Shakespeare probably would have loved it” (as in the little-known line from Romeo and Juliet: “Can I get a Diavola and a supersize Coke to go?”). Can I get or May I have, that is the question. See also my thoughts on “Who is this?”.

Some Portuguese epigrams

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For Nick—
if the reader finds this post a tad arcane, just wait till you see his WAM anagrams…

Further to my little Lisbon jaunt, I’m always disappointed at my total lack of success when I try to busk it in Spanish by randomly adapting Italian—but it’s even more futile to further modify my crap Spanish into bacalhau (sorry, I mean cod) [1] Portuguese.

I soon dispensed with my old Portuguese phrase book (less entertaining, and less sinister, than Teach yourself Japanese)—its very opening phrase suggests a similar deep anxiety about even setting foot outside our own green and pleasant land:

There’s been an accident.

I flew TAP (Take a Parachute). Indeed, the flight prefix is further abbreviated by omitting the middle letter, so not for the only time, I found myself flying TP (Totally Pissed).

Aboard TAP flights, with impressive urbanity in the vein of Mots d’heures, the airline regales the traveller with a pithy and somewhat obscure epigram evoking the saudade of fado. It seems to recall a sad incident in the colourful past of an early Lisbon femme fatale, perhaps a widow of French patrician stock (even a refugee from the guillotine?):

Colete Salva-Vidas sob a Cadeira [2]

I’ve added capitals for clarity, but in order to preserve the ambiguity of the original I have refrained from supplying what seems to be a missing apostrophe—indeed, could it even be an exhortation?

Either way, it is far more evocative in Portuguese than in its prosaic English rendition

Life jacket under the seat.

Cf. Airplane:

Airplane is packed with little visual detail like that, requiring as much long-term revisiting as the Ring Cycle. Even the opening sequence is a too, er, deaf ‘orse.

And I’m keen to dally with Mme [sic] Salva-Vida’s [just as sic] enticing daughters

Rolagem, Descolagem, and (black sheep of the family) Aterragem,

also commemorated in TAP’s onboard annotations. Again, their names are so much less elegant in English:

Taxi, Takeoff, and Landing.

For a new addition to the family, Proxima Paragem, see here.

Just had one of those wacky dreams:

In Lisbon, invited implausibly to some suspiciously traditional social event with an old friend, we make our tortuous way there by means of a badly bombed Escher staircase. Arriving unscathed, I mingle suavely with the locals. Pleased with myself for managing to utter a grammatically convincing phase, I exclaim “Progresso!” “Si,” my Portuguese friend nods, “Esta Truro.”

How pitilessly my subconscious satirises my naïve aspirations to insider status.

For another dream, and a Portuguese limerick, see Ogonek and Til.

[1] Altogether Now: The Piece of Cod Which Passeth All Understanding.

[2] Cadeira: twinned with Madeira.

Vera and Doris

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Vera

Vera de Bosset.

Further to Igor Stravinsky (“Gran visits York”), here’s Alan Bennett again (Writing home, p.30):

During the [1963] run of Beyond the fringe in New York, Dudley Moore and I took refuge from a storm in the Hotel Pierre, where we were spotted by an assistant manager. Saying that there had been a spate of thefts from rooms recently, he asked us to leave. A small argument ensued, in the course of which an old man and his wife stumped past, whereupon the assistant manager left off abusing us in order to bow. It was Stravinsky. We were then thrown out. I have never set foot in the Pierre since, fearing I might still be taken for a petty thief. Dudley Moore, I imagine, goes in there with impunity; the assistant manager may even bow to him now while throwing someone else out. Me still, possibly.

And then (2010):

I tell John Bird the story of Dudley Moore and me seeing Stravinsky and his wife Vera in the Hotel Pierre in New York in 1963, saying how the name Vera has always seemed to me to humanise Stravinsky. “Not so much as Stockhausen,” says John. “His wife’s name was Doris.”

Gender
Now, I’m not so humourless that I can’t see how Vera and Doris (“wives”) are funnier than Igor and Karlheinz (“Great Composers”). Noting that the English have been making light of Storm Doris this week, this brings me to hurricanes.

In the USA, for many years hurricanes bore only female names. The male meteorological community found female names

appropriate for such unpredictable and dangerous phenomena.

Pah! In the 1970s the growing numbers of female meteorologists began to object, and since 1978 onwards male and female names have alternated (Yay!). Nor are they expected to suggest menace, like characters in a horror movie. Fleur or Katrina might be femme fatales, but Tammy and Bob are homely, and Nigel nerdy.

However, in the US people may prepare differently for storms depending whether they bear a male or female name. Hurricanes with female names cause significantly more deaths—apparently (by contrast with that idea of “female menace”) because people perceive them as less threatening, leading to less preparedness and thus causing more damage. You can’t win…

BTW, please can we stop making out that countries and ships are feminine?! Otherwise we’re lucky in English not to have to worry our pretty little heads about gendering nouns…

The “case for the defence” shoots itself in the foot most messily in a breathtakingly Neanderthal essay “Why We Call a Ship a She” from “Rear Admiral” Francis D. Foley—apparently the Benny Hill of the US Navy. This is just a sample:

There can be a great deal of bustle about her as well as a gang of men on deck, particularly if she is slim-waisted, well-stacked, and has an inviting superstructure.

And FFS, it dates from 1998! If it came from 1698 I might reluctantly, um, consider it within the cultural context of the day; but this is indeed the cultural context that afflicts the USA at the moment. Too bad Foley is no longer with us—he would be a shoo-in for the post of Gender Equality Adviser in the new US administration. But amazingly there are plenty more where he came from, eager to fall on their flaccid pork swords before the Amazon hordes of the “liberal media”…

Cf. Surely… in the Messiah.

“No sensa humor, these wimmin…” Never mind Bridget Christie—even Foley’s junior contemporary Stella Gibbons would have given him a piece of her dainty mind.

This is a battle that is important to pursue, like “actress”, “chairman”, and “ballerina” (see Words and women)—however much the “PC gone mad” cabal may splutter.

“Doh a deer, a female deer—but that’s not important right now”, indeed.

I rest my case.

Resting case

Resting my case. After Li band tour, Paris.

For more on sexist language, see here, with further links.

More fieldwork tips

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The Police squad series builds on Airplane the way Don Giovanni builds on Le nozze di Figaro.

An idée fixe that often comes in handy during fieldwork (see also under Themes) is the old “Cigarette?” line:

In rural China the etiquette of exchanging cigarettes and lighting up for each other is an important skill for the fieldworker to acquire, confirming social bonds (my Daoist priests of the Li family, p.24). Generally, when two or more men meet they compete to be first to get their offer accepted. The first offer is vehemently rejected; the giver is then obliged to insist until the cigarette is reluctantly accepted. The word thankyou is never used. Some shoving may be involved. Then the two compete to be first to proffer a light; as the recipient lights up, he expresses appreciation by touching the lighter’s hand with the little finger of the hand holding the cigarette, and the man with the lighter takes care to keep the flame going as he lights his own. I learn to emulate Li Manshan’s ritual of reluctantly accepting a cigarette, his frown, his look of confusion—“What is this funny little tubular object that is being offered to me, and how should I react?”

With the Li family Daoists we’ve developed a classification of cigarettes according to price, which varies widely. Using the class status language of land reform, we call the posh brands “rich-peasant fags”—the cheaper ones are for wannabe poor peasants like me.

Police squad provides another useful idée fixe on the importance of local knowledge in fieldwork:

The Greek subtitles inadvertently add a further Pythonesque touch. Though perhaps less so if you’re Greek.

My current favourite fieldwork tip heads this post.

Gems from Chinese history

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CHC

Some drôle quotes from The Cambridge history of China, which even I didn’t quite dare sneak into the indexes:

What is the use of a stele? —Sui emperor Wendi (“Just call me Wendi”) (vol.3, p.62).

The Cheng sisters were captured and decapitated. Mopping-up operations continued till the end of 43. —(vol.1, p.271). Messy business eh.

The “director of records for the empress” may have kept a record of the emperor’s cohabitations with the empress. This cannot have been a great burden. —(vol.1, p.503).

Hierarchies are an essential part of a well-ordered society, and they must be accepted voluntarily. —(vol.1, p.705). So there.

Let us judge whether the Chinese are a race of ethnocentrics who do not know how to manage when they think they have something to learn from foreigners. (vol.1, p.852) (cf. They come over ‘ere…).

For a sequel, click here.

Solfeggio

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An aspiring singer on a TV talent show decided to perform Doh a deer, and rashly decided to go out, too literally, on a high note:

do

Which reminds me—the traditional gongche notation for the melodic skeleton of ritual shengguan ensemble translates nicely into solfeggio (and indeed into modern Chinese cipher notation)…

25-lq-zouma

Da Zouma score, written for me by Li Qing, 1992 (playlist #4, commentary here).

“But that’s not important right now”. I allude, of course, to Airplane:

The Chinese gongche system, like those of Europe and India, is heptatonic:

cipher notation:  1     2     3       4     5       6       7
solfeggio:              do  re   mi     fa    so     la      si
Indian sargam:   Sa  Re   Ga    Ma   Pa   Dha  Ni
gongche:               he  si    yi  shang  che gong  fan,
with liu and wu as upper octave notes for he/do and si/re respectively (taking the older system with he, rather than shang, as do! Call Me Old-fashioned).

For those who can’t fathom the British propensity for punning, the only line of Doh a Deer that makes any sense is La, a note to follow so—precisely the only line where the author reveals a touching fallibility. Such literal audiences would be happier if it were all like that:

…
Re, a note to follow do
Mi, a note to follow re
Fa, a note to follow mi
and so on…

It only remains to overhaul the opening line. The original version “La, a note to follow so—if you’re moving upwards in conjunct motion that is” was overruled as too pedantic, of course.

Another fun exercise is to sing the phrases in reverse order, descending instead of ascending from Doh:

Doh, a deer…
Ti, a drink with jam and bread
La, a note to follow ti!
So, a needle pulling thread
etc.

Given how well we know the song, it seems a bit weird how crap we Brits are at solfeggio. Another fun game would be to try singing the whole thing only in solfeggio:

Do, re mi, do mi do mi,
Re, mi fafa mire fa

and so on.

Then we can use the tune to familiarise ourselves with Indian and Chinese solfeggio:

Sa, Re Ga, Sa Ga Sa Ga,
Re, Ga MaMa GaRe Ma…

he, si yi, he yi he yi,
si, yi shangshang yisi shang…

We can also sing the song to the many scales of Indian raga in turn, with their varying flat or sharp pitches (note my series, introduced here)—a simple example: in rāg Yaman, try singing a sharp fourth for fa, a long long way to run…

And here’s a fascinating medley of versions in French, German, Italian, Spanish (x3), Japanese, and Persian:

For a brilliant pun on the Mary Poppins song, see here. And for “do, a note to follow mi“, click here.