Monday, August 24, 2020

I blame you, Goscinny

 For those of you not in the know, he was the original writer for the classic and beloved Asterix and Obelix comics. Unbeknownst to my younger self, almost all the names were based upon real world romanified or gaulified words. Generally speaking, for the Gauls (re: French) characters usually had X's replaced for certain English words to form their names, whereas Romans had 'us' appended to similarly normal English words. For example:

  • Getafix => the name associated with the village Druid
  • Vitalstatistix => the name associated with their overweight village Chief
  • Cacofonix => the name associated with the village bard (who cannot sing)
  • Geriatrix => a very old member of the village

And then we have Asterix (the unofficial hero of the village). His name is, I believe, the main reason people pronounce * as asteriks (as opposed to asterisk.) I am pretty sure I am in the minority when I (begrudgingly) say asterisk sounds wrong. But this not the only infraction I see/hear on a regular basis. We have others like:

    vice-versa. I would say at least half the population says vice-a versa rather than vice versa

    etc. or et cetera (or and the rest in English). Almost everyone says ekt cetera.

NOTE: did you know that ampersand or & is actually et (or 'and' in English) which has been distorted and run-together? I thought that was pretty cool

All in all, if these were the worst regressions to the English language, I could let it slide. If I am in the minority, would that make me the one who is wrong? My mind recklessly recoils back to the wonderful punchline at the end of In the Mouth of Madness at this notion.

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