Silly Little Country

Hit me with Your Best Fat

I think it was in the very bad TV movie about Conrad Black last night, and I would bet 100% it is one of those mistakes he would NEVER make. But the pipsqueak screenwriters judging him would.
It comes from just too much learning and not enough understanding.
It was not the first time I have heard the howlingly funny nonsensical phrase "Coo de grah", a sort of rendition of "Coup de grâce".
What creates the silliness is the following. The half-educated writer knows that French terminal consonants are not sounded. And hence the above phrase becomes "Coup de gras" (a whack with some fat). I will never believe Conrad Black would make that mistake.
It is akin to another silliness that seems to have taken over my generation. When I was a child some children would say "Johnny and me are going to the movies" and their mothers would correct them, pointing out that it should be "Johnny and I."
Now I hear "Don't say that to Johnny and I", and I realize the lesson stuck too well, as someone forgot to mention the nominative and objective cases.
But make no mistake - I am no prescriptivist. I am not sure that ambiguities arise this way in any matter that matters. We shall see.
But I do know how this came to be and was not through people understanding what they were doing as they changed from "me" to "I". And when I hear "Coo de grah" I know I am hearing an incomplete education (and worse, pretension).
Did I really hear it? Could Albert Schultz have agreed to utter it.
I simply do not believe Conrad would make that mistake.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 4:26 PM