Writing yesterday’s post, I came to a point where I wanted to use the phrase racking their brain. A few words before I got to the point where I had to type it though, I paused: was it wracking their brain?
I’ve never been sure how to spell it, and it’s not something I often have to write, so I never had to look it up. At least until yesterday anyway, so to satisfy all our curiosity, here’s the answer…
I saw IT last week, only it was actually Ça, considering I saw it in a cinema in Liège. English-language films are generally dubbed here, but as it was a somewhat arty cinema, they were proud to offer the VO (version originale) with French and Dutch subtitles. Having two sets of subtitles taking up space on the screen is quite distracting, but it’s an interesting opportunity to compare English, French, and Dutch at the same time.
Watching a film with subtitles in a language you know is always a little odd, as they never translate things exactly, largely because such a thing is basically impossible. Even so, there are always one or two choices the subtitler makes which boggle the mind. I don’t recall anything like that in this case, but there was one necessary difference in translation that intrigued me.
I realised today that I often write about how words can become used regularly by being associated with a certain sense of prestige, and that I’m quite likely to use the word posh in this regard. I then became curious to research the origins of the word: partly because it’s an interesting word, loaded with meaning, and one that doesn’t quite sound like an English word.
My other reason is because I’m already aware of one story about its origin which sounds too good to be true, and I wanted to see if that really is the case. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 