Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
From: Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: H.L.Mencken born (12/9/1880)
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2024 21:06:30 +0100
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <871q1oiqm1.fsf@parhasard.net>
References: <vbujtj$80ev$1@dont-email.me>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: individual.net H6QUCgXPAcP8Qr+igjWlFwaY85UQOeMVsuYbn6Y/mVZuDnRW22
Cancel-Lock: sha1:crvyYjbx3MVCJYQZy9N2hHObMpo= sha1:jbFfrL+NygHJts8zc1SxXuXkNH0= sha256:weS7GELUIA1q8FelK4jPUtrUvXCXbiSPKYLSt1REjX4=
User-Agent: Gnus/5.101 (Gnus v5.10.10) XEmacs/21.5-b35 (Linux-aarch64)
Bytes: 2065


 Ar an dara lá déag de mí Méan Fómhair, scríobh Ross Clark: 

 > American journalist, essayist and (language link) author of _The American
 > Language_.
 > First edition 1919; 4th edition 1936 "corrected, enlarged, and rewritten". Two
 > supplements 1945 (on history of English in the USA) and 1948 (on pronunciation,
 > spelling, grammar, names, and slang). (Mencken died in 1956.)
 > The copy I have is a 1977 paperback "One Volume Abridged Edition", containing
 > the 4th ed, the two supplements, with extensive annotations and new material by
 > Raven I.McDavid Jr. (dialectologist). Though abridged, still amounting to 777
 > pages of text and 124 pages of indexes. Whew.

He wasn’t scared of work! Der deutsche Fleiß in der neuen Welt engepflanzt.

 > Mencken was a cantankerous old bugger with strong and often very quotable
 > opinions on almost everything.

I liked him a lot when I was younger (in my 20s), and then I read enough of it
to get a good insight into how downbeat about everything he was. No real
solutions, basically complaints and criticism.

-- 
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)