dieastra: Strauss (Strauss)
dieastra ([personal profile] dieastra) wrote2016-08-01 08:12 am
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Meme: Things I learnt in July

- 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!
arashinoookami: (Default)

[personal profile] arashinoookami 2016-08-01 09:18 am (UTC)(link)
Methusalem just looks like it's the German spelling of the Hebrew/ English Methuselah.
Edited 2016-08-01 09:21 (UTC)

[identity profile] dieastra.livejournal.com 2016-08-01 10:18 am (UTC)(link)
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: (window)

[personal profile] arashinoookami 2016-08-01 01:35 pm (UTC)(link)
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.