h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We need an h2g2 dictionary to help us fall foul of the word police following the linguistic cleansing of the guide. To keep in the moderators good books, English words must be substituted for those foreign sounding non-English words.

For example:

Omelette
Decidely French sound and spelling
Replace with
Whisked eggs cooked in butter in the shape of a pancake

Chapati
Indian
Replace with
Unleaven bread

Reggae
Looks like Latin
Replace with
Music originating from Jamaica

A French word which should be replaced with the truly English eating place, dining hall or fish and chip shop.

Do not use the word cafe that's another French word.

A French word which should be replaced with the truly English eating place, dining hall or fish and chip shop.

Do not use the word restaurant that's another French word.

arguably, since engilsh contains so many words derived from other languages, and has words that come from dead(or nearly, anyway, like Latin) languges, and other languages also use these dead languages for their roots, you could say that any languge is enough like english as makes no difference. or you could go the opposite direction and say that since english is such a superior language(sarcasm here on my part, since it's the only one allowed here w/o moderatng)we should go back to the very cores of it and only old, dead, english should be allowed.

I fear that too many people involved with h2g2 wouldn't recognise your sarcasm or my irony. The guide has always been dominated by rich Anglo-Saxons and has an extremely narrow Western focus. The English only rule will only go to make this worse. A lopsided galaxy.

From Distant Shores

You can probably get away with this derivative of a French word as the spelling is different. An over zealous moderator however may make the association with the concept of liberty, a dangerously French idea involving freedom of thought and action. Use with care.

I went along with the narrow western focus of H2G2 (fair enough) but to equate the idea of Liberty as a purely French affair does tend to overlook some important historical facts (Magna Carta, US Declaration of Independence, John Locke, Thomas Paine, etc, etc).

Red

In fact, it was Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine who acquainted the French with the term. But then the French got so excited with their newfound liberty that they took the liberty of removing the heads of anyone they perceived to be a threat to it, regardless of whether the perception had any merit. In fact, Thomas Paine was imprisoned by the First Republic for quite some time, until James Madison came to coax the government to let him out. Meager thanks for the man who wrote the seminal work that inspired the French Revolution (The Rights of Man), don't you think?

Jean-Jaques Rousseau was one of the early proponents of the social contract style of government, I'll give you that, but the support the French gave to the US Revolution had nothing to do with a shared ideology... just a shared enemy.

The Magna Carta had nothing to do with liberty, nor the so-called "British Bill of Rights." Both were just the activities of a spoiled aristocracy forcing an arbitrary king to accede to their arbitrary desires. The people of Britain benefitted in no way from either document.

I wasn't seriously suggesting anything, just my way of poking a little fun at the English only rule. Due to the vagaries of the British education system, my history studies started with the Battle of Hastings and stopped at the Doomsday book. This coupled with an elder sister besotted by all things Roman was enough to put me off the subject for life.

I really shouldn't be so bothered by the English only rule, especially as I can only sensibly converse in English. I just 'see red" everytime I think about it.

By the way, I fully agree with The Colonel about the Magna Carta and I'm sure he's right about the rest too.

Worth a read the old Magna Carta - might dispell a few misconceptions that it was entirely a deal struck by the aristocracy to preserve their power in a vacuum created by a weak monarchy. Lots of examples of the concept of Liberty in British History pre-18thC (the Witan, Simon de Montford, the Levellers, etc). Generally I'm with the Colonel though and thanks for expanding on my original point.

Anyone care to have a poke at Fraternity next (they call it `mateship` down here I believe) ?

Red

Oh, I agree that there were many good examples of the concept of liberty coming from Britain... I just don't believe that the Magna Carta is a good example. Check this page out for some proper British credit to the concept of liberty... coming soon to a University project near you... http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A424072

Fraternity, eh? Here in the US, there's some of that, but I think they call it "jingoism."

National Lampoon's Animal House