Meme: Things I learnt in July

[dieastra]

- There is a Star Trek TOS episode called "Requiem for Methuselah" and it is spelled Methuselah and not Methusaleh as I first had it because I thought it would be similar to the German word Methusalem. Can someone tell me why the difference?

- In the season 4 Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" where they meet Agatha Christie and also explain about her lost days (which I hadn't known about until watching this episode so never say watching TV is not educational) they apparently had several of her book titles worked into the dialogue. Since I don't even know all of them in German, let alone in English, this had gone by me completely. Here's a list:

"Roberts and Davies held an unofficial contest to see how many references to Christie's works could be inserted. Titles that were noted were: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Why Didn't They Ask Evans; The Body in the Library; The Secret Adversary; N or M?; Nemesis; Cat Among the Pigeons; Dead Man's Folly; They Do It With Mirrors; Appointment with Death; Cards on the Table; Sparkling Cyanide; Endless Night; Crooked House; Death in the Clouds; The Moving Finger; Taken at the Flood; Death Comes as the End; Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder at the Vicarage. A deleted scene referred to The Man in the Brown Suit, referring to the Doctor's clothing. The narrative itself parallels several of Christie's novels: the jewel theft storyline parallels The Secret of Chimneys; Miss Chandrakala's death was influenced by And Then There Were None; and the Colonel's revelation that he was not disabled paralleled a key concept of The Pale Horse.[9] In an email conversation with journalist Benjamin Cook, Davies admitted he had initially added a reference to the original title of And Then There Were None, Ten Little Niggers, but decided it was too risky."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_and_the_Wasp#Continuity

(And now I want to read all those Agatha Christie novels. They had a small library where I was at vacation and I already did "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" last week. One down, only 19 to go ;) )

- in general, I read up on the Venus de Milo and David by Michelangelo, as I also did back then on The Thinker, after getting my action figures. Never say buying action figures is not educational!

Comments

[arashinoookami]

Methusalem just looks like it's the German spelling of the Hebrew/ English Methuselah.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

Well, I find it very confusing that one has first a then e and the other first e and then a! Why can't they be the same? With such well-known words, I would expect them to be the same internationally, at least partly. I have enough trouble remembering that "before" is spelled "bevor" in German. English spelling is seriously infecting my German spelling ;)

[arashinoookami]

I have great respect for anyone who knows more than one language, and I'm sure it's easy to get certain words mixed up, especially if they're similar in the two (or more) languages.

[shivver13.livejournal.com]

Is Methuselah spelt as Methusaleh or Methusalah in German? A search of the web came up with "Methusalah" as the spelling in Greek in the New Testament (though oddly not the Old Testament) so maybe "Methusalem" came from that. But I'm grasping at straws here.

I'd heard of some of those Christie references in TUatW before, but not all of them - thanks for the list! It's very cool seeing them all. There was one that explained what I thought was a very strange piece of dialogue, specifically the reference to "N or M?" The Doctor looked at the burned piece of paper that said "aiden" and asked if the first letter was N or M. It always bothered me that he should have known it was M, as there's no word in English that ends in "naiden" (at least as far as I know). Now that I know it's a reference to a title, it doesn't bother me as much.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

It's just spelled Methusalem. I guess it is not really a German word, just adapted the Greek one.

I just realized another difference: We say "Kakao" but you say "cocoa". Such things just confuse me! You would think it is an international word, being the same everywhere.

I need to watch the episode again and wait for all the book mentions! I should make a list, like a Bingo card LOL

[shivver13.livejournal.com]

Well it's worse for us, actually. "Cacao" is the word for the tree or the bean, and "cocoa" is the word for the bean or the products from the bean (yes, the bean can go either way), and we pronounce all of the letters in the first one, but the 'a' is silent in the second one. English is just strange. I guess that's what it gets for being a mish-mash of a whole bunch of languages.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, that really sounds strange! Someone should make up their mind.
This is why I had difficulties understanding spoken English when learning it back in school. It all sounded like mumbojumbo to me ;) I wish my teacher could see me now, writing English fanfictions and going to theatre in London.

[fueschgast]

I should do that meme too, it's cool. Although I doubt it qualifies as learned, when I'll forget about the new info again. But then I could relearn it, when I look at my old meme posts.

That spelling thing remind me of the curious case of coffee/caffein & Kaffee/Koffein.

No, now you brought up the Venus again! I was trying so hard not to comment that the statue always makes me think of The Simpsons.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

The way I set it up, I do a post that is delayed for posting to the next 1st day of a month. Whenever I learn something, I put it in over the month. When it finally posts, I am also surprised about some things I find in there ;)

Good point with the coffee and caffein! Also Kakao and cocoa confuses me.

I love the Simpsons!

[fueschgast]

Whoa, it's possible to save drafts?

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

When writing a post, you can change the post date to whichever date you want. So I just set it to the first of the next month. Before we had sticky posts, we did that with a date long in the future which always stayed on top. And now you have me wondering why my introduction post is still on top instead of posting on 29 November 2029. I have no explanation for that.

When you go to "Home" and then "Journal", you can click on "scheduled entries" and edit them to add more stuff.

[fueschgast]

Cool, thanks!

[sharp2799.livejournal.com]

The Pale Horse is one of my favorite Agatha Christie books (although I haven't read it in years). Nice and spooky.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

I must admit that I really don't know much about Agatha Christie books. I have read and enjoyed all the Sherlock Holmes ones in my youth (and then again when Sherlock came out) but from AC I only have seen the Miss Marple movies - and the famous Nigger one of course. We saw that even back in Eastern Germany at TV, I remember.

But I have no idea whether her books are novels, or like the one I have from the library right now, shorter stories with Hercule Poirot similar to the Sherlock Holmes stories. I think I prefer longer novels.

In any case it looks like she wrote a lot so I'll be on this for a while! I really enjoyed "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". The twist at the end was so surprising that I read the whole thing again LOL And in general I am a sucker of the British houses with butler and everything and all the people going in and out. And everyone has a secret ;)

[sharp2799.livejournal.com]

She's written a LOT. If you ever read The Pale Horse, let me know and I'll tell you a (good) true story connected to that book. :)

[dancingdragon3.livejournal.com]

I didn't know all that trivia about The Unicorn and the Wasp. Thanks! That's one of my all time fave episodes.

Did you know Doctor Who was started as an education/entertainment show for kids? To teach them science and history? It kind of went by the wayside quickly, lol. But to an American, they still focus on World War One much more than our shows do, which isn't hard to do.

Star Trek The Next Generation is a great show for introducing literature and classic music and such. I love shows that turn me onto new things.

In case you're interested, I wrote a fan fic based on The Unicorn and the Wasp, but more based on Christie's autobiography of that time in her life.

http://dancingdragon3.livejournal.com/120821.html

Her autobiography is a great read if you like history and reading about creative types. But she never mentions her missing days in it :-/

The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd is my favorite story of hers. But I still haven't read Murder on the Orient Express.

[dieastra.livejournal.com]

Did you know Doctor Who was started as an education/entertainment show for kids? To teach them science and history?

Yeah, I did, and it shows in some older episodes I watched. I remember one where they accidentally had pressed a button and the TARDIS was doing weird things and the Doctor explained that it was like a button on a flashlight, which shines as long as you press it but stops shining when you take your finger off. I thought it was hilarious ;)

In the early Stargate episodes you could get the same feeling. Each planet they visited had some different Earth culture. Thankfully they mixed the formular a bit later on.

But to an American, they still focus on World War One much more than our shows do, which isn't hard to do.

One? Or rather Two? I guess the bombing and the London Blitz is an important event. It's only very recently that the Brits have stopped hating the Germans. You should have seen their newspaper headlines during all those decades.

You focus more on Vietnam, which isn't as big as a theme over here.

In case you're interested, I wrote a fan fic based on The Unicorn and the Wasp, but more based on Christie's autobiography of that time in her life.

I read that story when we became friends, I even commented on it ;) I got Murder on the Orient Express and a book with several Poirot stories from the library. The first is in German but the other one in English.

The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd was very good indeed! That's the kind of stories I love. I was so shocked at the reveal at the end, I had to read it all again. I wonder if there is a movie version and how that works then. I have seen all the Miss Marple movies with Margareth Rutherford, she is hilarious.