Word: onomatopoeias
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...double meaning of shooting blanks and shooting whites is obvious. There are other places where the translation falters: In "Tom Tom II," "a petits pas de pluie de chenilles" translates to "with baby steps like a rain of caterpillars," which not only sounds inane but loses the alliteration and onomatopoeia of the original. The English and French versions are on opposing pages so that the reader can concentrate on one version and refer to the other when necessary...
...back-pocket onomatopoeia for the distinctive sound of the beat-means no harm, carries no heavy freight, sets out to make you happy and keep you dancing. Ska is the no-account stepfather of reggae, the blues-inflected Jamaican soul popularized Stateside by Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley and seen to splendid advantage in The Harder They Come, one of the best and most popular cult films of the '70s. Reggae shouldered a lot of political burden and social outrage, sometimes sounded almost introverted in its island concerns and religious visions. By contrast, ska is flat-out party music...
BACK TO PHONICS. Fortunately, the others can benefit from a parallel revival of phonics. In a program offered by New Dimensions in Education Inc., for instance, each letter is given a zany personality that makes use of onomatopoeia. Sample sentence: "When umbrella-faced Miss U stands between Mr. H's horrible hair and Mr. M's munching mouth, things begin to H.U.M...
...classifying shouldn't have ended in 1486. In a final and separate section of the book, he does his own inventing: a complex of psychoanalysts, a failing of students, an unction of undertakers (a larger group: an extreme unction), a rise of mini-skirts. He even outlines production rules: onomatopoeia, habitat, comment, etc. Always, the first term must pinpoint a feeling we have about the group being described. For instance, Lipton rules out calling prostitutes an anthology of pros, because the humor lies in the second term--anthology makes no poetic comment on prostitutes (a flourish of strumpets just might...
Through an accident of onomatopoeia, the Rann of Kutch* looks just like it sounds. A reeking reach of black tidal mudflats bounded with sand dunes and etched by dead streams of salt and scum, it was until recently of interest only to hardy naturalists in search of the lesser flamingo and herds of wild asses. But the Rann separates India and Pakistan, and that fact alone was sufficient last week to make it another of the world's dangerous little flash points...