medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
John Dillon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> A zillion (or even a minizillion) would be overkill.
right.
a mere gazillion should suffice, for our purposes.
>The analogy of "Bretagne" suggests to me that this is because Auvergne is one
of France's _regions_ and that the latter, like _departements_, are referred
to today without the article.
"Chartres is in Eure-et-Loir" ?
"Sens is in Yonne" ?
arguably, unlike "Fulbert was born in The Auvergne", the "the" before most
(all?) departements is obligatory, seems to me, lest we end up with
insufferable awkwardisms.
looks pretty close to an actual Rule --_departements_ take a "the", even if
"_departement_" itself is present, where the _departement_ takes the first of
two "the"s ("in the _departement_ of the Oise").
regions, otOh, do or don't, according to what sounds best on the ear, which is
usually, according to the application of the Dillon Test, when they end in
"-e" or "-y".
bodies of water always require a "the".
as do named mountains (the Matterhorn).
usually (K-2).
unless preceded by "Mt.".
but not named places.
usually (The Hague).
> Still, if "the Auvergne" is now dated in the same way as is "the Aquitaine",
should one give it a "[sic]"? ....But, because these horribly dated locutions
are still commonly used by speakers of English, I would hesitate to employ
"[sic]" when quoting occurrences of them.
butbut, if "horribly dated" were the Accepted Criteria for rejection of
eloquent locutions, the future of the language would be in the Authoritative
Grubby Paws of Teenagers, propagated via search engine spiders.
> After all, if we were strictly to follow today's native-language practice in
the case of toponyms that are loan words in English, we should be "[sic]"ing
occurrences of "Marseilles" and "Lyons" left and right.
rather the reverse of what Margot was doing, seems to me.
> That said, I am nonetheless very grateful to Marjorie for calling attention
to the essentially non-current nature of the locution "the Auvergne".
yes, and thereby demonstrating that non-currency is, in itself, good grounds
for retaining locutions which make a bit more sense.
christopher
"Lots of useless other data points just enlarge the consciousness of the
agrieved showing how particular the pain is."
--Burma Shave
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