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Re: prepositions
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Penny,
No, ³in result of² is not exactly an American idiom. But Humbert¹s English
is European. Humbert grew up on the Riviera. His father was a Swiss citizen,
³a salad of racial genes,² of mixed French and Austrian descent. Humbert¹s
mother was English.
Although ³in result of² is not exactly an American idiom, American English
is so full of regional, ethnic, rural and urban idioms that these matters
are never clear cut and rarely final. Something I would call Corporate
English is now also a factor. Corporate English occurs when people who are
smart about business management but not smart about grammar gradually begin
to twist the language with an on-going eruption of memos written in
comically bad English, of no recognizable idiom other than the idiom of
madness and machines, that is considered perfectly wonderful English by the
underlings and henchpersons (a coinage of my own to satisfy the dictates of
pc, and my own sense of humor) of those who wrote the memos (with the
overtaxed assistance of their administrative assistants), and is discouraged
and disparaged only by those courageous souls, the company proofreaders.
Andrew Brown
On 9/7/06 5:17 AM, "Penny McCarthy" <penmc@BTCONNECT.COM> wrote:
> Dear List,
> I¹m sure it can be an advantage to write in a foreign language, and there can
> be advantages in writing in a foreign language and one could go on about the
> advantages of writing in a foreign language. But could I raise an odd
> prepositional use by Nabokov himself in Lolita: in result of¹. That¹s not
> American idiom, is it? UK English would say as a result of¹. Is there a
> shadow of another language there?
> Penny.
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