It’s official: the 7th and final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be released in July, but everyone is taking pre-orders. I debated between the standard and deluxe versions, but in the end I’m just going to read it a couple of times, so I went for the plain version. I’m looking forward to and dreading this book simultaneously. It will really be the end of an era.
Amazon is great
Amazon is one of my favorite stores, online or off. I quickly became addicted to buying books from them, and I’ve since graduated to kitchen items (my second favorite thing to shop for). A week ago, they were offering $25 off an order of $125 in housewares, so I took advantage of that, along with free super saver shipping. Unfortunately, a single item was on back order, so the whole order wasn’t to be mailed for over a month.
In order to avoid having to wait so long, I decided to replace that item with another, but it turns out that isn’t possible. I deleted the old but there was no way to add the new, and since I was no longer over 125, the price went up by $25. Plus, the ship date didn’t change, even though everything in my order was in stock.
I wrote to customer service, who responded by fixing the ship date (there was some kind of glitch) and upgrading me to regular shipping. I thanked them for that, but explained that I was still disappointed that I couldn’t add an item to meet the coupon requirements. I wasn’t mad, but they reacted as if I were threatening never to shop there again. They said that since I’m such a great customer, they’d go ahead and take the 25 off anyway.
How can you not love being treated like that?
Eggcorns
English lovers and nitpickers take note – I just discovered a great site, called The Eggcorn Database. An eggcorn is a particular type of English mistake wherein the wrong word is used in a common expression. It is usually due to ignorance of the underlying meaning and etymology, and is often the substitution of one homophone for another, such as “towing the line” (rather than “toeing the line”) or else a similar-sounding word, such as “fermenting trouble” when you really mean “fomenting trouble.” I’ve always been fascinated by these kinds of mistakes, which are, I believe, cousins of the common English mistakes I so love to explain on my own site.
Stomp the Yard
I saw Stomp the Yard this weekend. The dancing was great, but they did something funky with the lighting and camers during some of the more intense scenes, which made everything kind of hard to make out. I’m not sure whether it was just me, or the theater, or what, but it really detracted from the movie. I often notice a similar problem with great sweeping scenes, like at the beginning of movies when they pan over a whole city or something. I can’t believe that filmmakers wouldn’t notice such flaws, so I wonder what the problem is… does the screen have to be a particular size in order for those effects to work or something?
Farther vs Further
These two English words are very similar; keep reading for further information: Farther vs Further
Bravitude
So the big news in the French press is about the word bravitude used by presidential hopeful Ségolène Royal.
Comme le disent les Chinois, un Chinois qui ne vient pas sur la Grande muraille n’est pas un brave et un Chinois qui vient sur la Grande muraille conquiert la bravitude.
"As the Chinese say, a Chinese person who does not come on the Great Wall is not a brave person and a Chinese person who comes on the Great Wall conquers bravery."
Royal’s use of this word set off something of a firestorm in the French news (including a mocking version of the French motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité).
Critics are comparing it to Bushisms like “misunderestimate,” but Royal says that it wasn’t a mistake – she coined the word because the word bravoure just wasn’t strong enough for the Chinese proverb she was translating. It’s an interesting question – what’s the difference between using a word that doesn’t exist because you don’t know any better and using one that doesn’t exist, but (maybe) should?
Her campaign co-director Jean-Louis Bianco said:
Je pense que ce qu’elle a voulu exprimer c’est la plénitude de la bravoure… c’est-à-dire quelque chose de plus que la simple bravoure.
“I think that what she wanted to express was the fullness of bravery… that is, something more than simple bravery.”
Her advisor Jack Lang said:
J’aurais aimé inventer ce beau mot. Il exprime la plénitude d’un sentiment de bravoure. L’inventivité sémantique fait partie de la capacité d’un candidat à parler une autre langue que la langue de bois.
“I would have liked to invent this nice word. It expresses the fullness of a feeling of bravery. Semantic inventiveness is part of the capacity of a candidate to speak rather than waffle.”
(Source: NouvelObs)
Bravitude is a blend of brave and plénitude and means “fullness/completeness of bravery.” I wouldn’t recommend using it; we’ll just have to wait and see if and when it gets added to the French dictionary. 😉