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Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Title, schmitle Oh, I should know better than to read the news when I have PMS and it's raining; I'm already predisposed to be irritable and weepy, and the news is almost never a good remedy for those conditions. This morning I made the mistake of reading a gay journalist's reports from the Republican National Convention (which is a perfectly good piece of writing, but not exactly heartening from an equal-rights, separation-of-church-and-state point of view), and then noticed that the New York Times is still using "czar" instead of "tsar," and although that's probably not a big deal in the history of the world it still pisses me off, and grrrr snarl snap humph I want to bite things. (Dear New York Times: I realize that "czar" is acceptable in U.S. English idioms, like "drug czar," but when you're referring to the actual ruler of Russia, could you please use the correct transliteration? There isn't even a "c" in Russian,* let alone a "cz," and the languages that do use "cz" pronounce it like the English "ch." And since there is no Russian political figure that I know of whose title is pronounced "char" [and if there was, it would use the Cyrillic character for "ch"], could you please, please, please for heaven's sake transliterate the character for "ts" as frickin' "ts"? Jeez, people. Who fact- It is, fortunately, lunchtime, and it looks like the rain's let up for a while. I think it's South Street, retail therapy, and perhaps an alcohol-laced coffee drink at Cosí† for me... *There's a Cyrillic character that looks like "c," but it's pronounced, and hopefully transliterated, as "s." †There are other places on South Street for a midday slightly-alcoholic-beverage fix, but you look a lot more like a loser sitting alone in a bar with a drink than sitting alone in a coffeehouse with a drink. [ at 12:50 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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