Coke's new slogan "Try to be less white" is making the rounds. Actually, I think it was only leaked in an internal memo and now the Company is trying to rabbit hole the whole affair. Let's see how the slogan would play around the world using Google Translate. I've underlined the term for the color white.
English: Try to be less white
Dutch: Probeer minder wit te zijn
Esperanto: Provu esti malpli blanka
French: Essayez d'être moins blanc
German:Versuche weniger weiß zu sein
Greek: Προσπαθήστε να είστε λιγότερο λευκοί
Italian: Cerca di essere meno bianco
Latin: Conantur minus alba
Polish: Staraj się być mniej biały
Portuguese: Tente ser menos branco
Romanian: Încearcă să fii mai puțin alb
Russian: Постарайся быть менее белым
Spanish: Trata de ser menos blanco
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White, wit, and weiß are clearly teutonic; blanc et al. appear in Romance languages, but Latin itself and Romanian use a derivative of alba. Portuguese is weird in that it uses branco instead of blanco. So I looked up the latinate "bland" in Portuguese and I get "brando." Now just imagine Marlon Blando. I included the Greek λευκοί which transliterates to leuko to remind us of where the word leukocyte comes from. Finally, the Polish word biały and the Russian word белым are closely related. I don't know Polish but I've read that it is Slavic with a Roman alphabet.
Now let's do the phrase "Try to be more Black."
English: Try to be more black:
Dutch: Probeer meer zwart te zijn
Esperanto: Provu esti pli nigra
French: Essayez d'être plus noir
German:Versuche schwarzer zu sein
Greek: Προσπαθήστε να είστε πιο μαύροι
Italian: Cerca di essere più nero
Latin: Experiri potius esse nigrum
Polish: Postaraj się być bardziej czarny
Portuguese: Tente ser mais negro
Romanian: Încearcă să fii mai negru
Russian: Постарайся быть более черным
Spanish: Trata de ser más negro
_____________________
We see immediately that English is the outlier--the other Germanic languages use something akin to swarthy; The Greeks use μαύροι for black which is curious because it transliterates as mauve. I thought that was purple? Clearly the Latins gave us the dreaded N-word and who knew that LBJ spoke Esperanto? Finally, we see that the Poles say czarny where the Russians use черным: Again Slavic cloaked in Roman.
19 comments:
Kevin Sorbo tweeted: "While I don’t know how to be 'less white,' I do know how to drink less coke."
Nice chickie.
Great post.
Coke was losing money due to pandemic (bars, restaurants and other public venues which hawk the fizzy stuff closed) so this is all a ploy to get back in the news and maybe generate some more revenue.
Uh, brilliant.
There's probably a payoff somewhere.
I've been using Sodastream for years.
Did you watch The Professor and the Madman yet Chick? I'm not a fan of Sean Penn but enjoyed the movie and the exploration of language and the OED. Trailer
I mean, what could possibly be more exciting that an a movie about writing a dictionary, amiright?
*than a movie ...
The Professor and the Madman
I'll put it in my mental queue. I don't have a TV so when I get the urge, I walk over to my brother's place a mile or so away and watch. They pay for it all. The trailer looks good.
My dead tree edition of "The Oxford Dictionary Of The English Language" was edited by C.T. Onions, who was one of the originals invited by Murray.
Something I learned just recently is how Sanskrit fits with all of those languages I cited. I owe this to my yoga teacher who actually knows a fair amount of the language. I've been interested in comparative languages for nearly all of my adult life, but for some reason I always ignored half of "indo-european."And I'm told that Persian is halfway between Sanskrit and Greek.
Oh, that's cool -- I'll have to see who the editor is of the old one we've had kicking around in the family for generations.
I have no idea why I'd never heard of that movie until now. Thanks, Calypso.
I watched the word movie, enjoyed it immensely, because it was about words. That's where I got the idea to do the sincere post - the origin of words is interesting to me. Mel Gibson is very good in that show - he can rattle off his knowledge of words like he really knows something. And since the other guy is a self-mutilating insane person, who better than Sean Penn to play that role, amirite?
I used to think I knew a couple of Sanskrit words that made it through to modern English, but maybe I was wrong. I did a search and this is what I found:Sanskrit - English.
And South Asians are the original Aryans, eh?
Calypso: I meant to write that my dead tree edition of "The Oxford Dictionary Of English Etymology" was edited by C.T. Onions. This is a much smaller single volume which I've owned for over 40 years. I bought it in college and used to lug it around. The preface mentions that it was edited by Onions but that he died shortly before publication (sometime in the 1960's) and that he had been recruited by Murray.
I have no idea why I'd never heard of that movie until now. Thanks, Calypso.
Came out in 2019, pre-Covid? Maybe it was intended for theaters and never made it. Or maybe because it stars Mel Gibson -- persona non grata--it was intended to fail.
Trooper -- I was going to include Irish in the post because who's more white than the Irish? Their word for "white" is "bán" -- go figure.
Thanks for that link, Sixty. One word I don't see there is yoga which is yoked to conjugate.
Here you go - another list, from that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia, which is based on the Sanskrit word for bullshit: Yogi Berra was here.
Grassy ass, Sixty!
Horton Hears a Racist Dog Whistle. Cancel Culture Club comes for Dr. Seuss.
I don't know why that movie didn't get any publicity until now ... was Mel Gibson back on the Hollywood shitlist at the time? Now getting some advertising on Amazon, and I guess my preference list was just nerdy enough to get the recommendation. Turns out that damn AI was right.
I've got to check what our volume is actually titled, too, Chick, since it's just a large (like 10 pounds) single book.
We (brother, SIL, and I) watched "The Professor And The Madman" and we all liked it. I liked it a lot but I'm a word nerd.
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