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comment by galen
galen  ·  3771 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Eisenhower briefly played professional baseball under an assumed name

    Seemingly unaware that some people might view such legerdemain as a lapse in his world-renowned personal character, Eisenhower later reminisced about the episode as if it were a youthful picaresque caprice.

I can't decide whether this sentence is really beautiful or unbearably pretentious.





user-inactivated  ·  3771 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It has one or three too many adjectives in it but they're beautiful adjectives so I don't mind. English is atrophying.

coffeesp00ns  ·  3771 days ago  ·  link  ·  

English has been atrophying since it moved to the British Isles. Have you ever read/listened to "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" by John McWhorter? It shows a great evolution of, as well as the "why" of the English Language - why it does the weird things it does that no other germanic (or latin based) language does.

user-inactivated  ·  3771 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No I have not. Is it heavy on linguistics terminology or more of a Bryson-style generalist book?

coffeesp00ns  ·  3771 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I listened to it, as read by the author (available on audible). I found it very entertaining and informative without being too dry or too generalized.