Word: idiom
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Stravinsky's arrangement of a suite by Pergolesi, by contrast retained only the form and melody of the original, progressively adding more and more idiom to each of the eight dances. There was, however, within the movements, considerable alternation between the two styles, the softer and slower passages being nearly pure Porgolesi, the louder and faster passages principally Stravinsky. There were the typical Stravinsky cross-rhythms, two against three, throbbing dissonances in the trombone and basses, mechanically repeated figures for pizzicato strings, and, at the end, circus-style trombone "smears" for satirical effect...
Between Tibetan and other languages-except related Burmese, Chinese, Tai-there is a great and scholar-swallowing gulf. The grammar is exotic plus, the spelling has only the loosest association with the pronunciation (brgyad means eight, is pronounced jay), the literature is virtually unrelated to the contemporary idiom. Through the centuries the Tibetans under their Lamas* have adapted their language very slowly, although they have taken over some words like airplane (the Germans attempted the first test flight across the country) and electric light (Lhasa has a small power plant...
...Idiom. From her tenth year through her 19th, the most formative time of her life, Mei-ling Soong lived in the U.S. While one of her older sisters went to Wesleyan College (Macon, Ga.), she stayed with friends in nearby Piedmont, learning the idiom and the point of view. She bought gumdrops at Hunt's general store with the other girls, and went hazel-nutting with them. She was always the one who was teased, but through the teasing she learned American gags. Later the girls went north to a summer school. A history teacher asked Mei-ling...
...Chinese Idiom. By the time she went back to Shanghai in 1917, Mei-ling knew the U.S. as few Americans do. But she hardly knew her own country. She found a Chinese teacher and learned to speak, read & write Chinese. Gradually she took on Chinese dress. As a beautiful member of the distinguished Soong family, she cavorted to feasts, rode in jodhpurs. But as a girl with a rigid conscience, she joined the Y.W.C.A. and the Child Labor Commission. She had a horror of untidiness: an English friend describes how she impatiently snatched a dustcloth from a shiftless amah...
...library is a useless place. That is, for the average undergraduate; unless he is able to read languages other than English. A book in English is looked upon as a rarity at the library. Greek, Latin, Pig-Latin, French (Louis Quatorze style), and Esperanto seem to be the popular idiom among the clientele of the establishment, most of whom have spent a good deal of their lives learning to read these languages so that they might peek into one of the many thousands of volumes therein. These people, their friends call them curators, also know something about comparative zoology...