Kramer takes a look at the range of Gricifications for 'French'. Grice has:
French poem
French professor
French citizen.
What about, Kramer asks, "French kiss"?
Here, Kramer suggests, the focal ambiguity is
"in the style of"
Think R-rated.
I do. There's French letter too. "Those Frenchies, I searched them everywhere" (Baroness d'Orczy).
I got so irritated by the use (by Osborne of all people) of "French letter" to mean the invention of Dr. Condom ("It's like slurping a candy with the wrapper on", The Entertainer) that I started to use "Franconian missive".
My point being that the change of a vowel, and a suffix ("FrAncONIAN") may UNinvite an implicature.
Oddly, the French language is not the original Franconian one.
I know because I travelled wide and large.
When I was in Belgium, they told me that the Waloons -- the Vlaams actually -- couldn't pronounce 'rabit' in French.
So the King said,
"I am your rabbit"
He meant, "I am your king" (King and rabbit are cognate in Vlaams). They, although attributed with a dry sense of humour, all laughed.
Monday, February 8, 2010
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