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Picture of shufitz
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Posts: 2666 | Location: Chicago, IL USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
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...only remember always to call it, please, "research"!
 
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замечательно! I'd forgotten about Tom Lehrer! Thanks for the memory jog!
 
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I hadn't listened to Tom Lehrer for ages so after the link I left it playing more of his songs - for about two hours!


"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
 
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Totally love him!
 
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Fun!

I was curious about the two Russian sentences:

Жил был король когда-то, при нем блоха жила.

Once upon a time there lived a king, (анд) a flea with him lived.

Я иду куда сам цар идет пешком.

I go where the king himself goes on foot.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
 
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I should've looked at the Wikipedia article on this song. In there is a paragraph about these two sentences:

quote:
[Tom] Lehrer wrote that he did not know Russian. In the song he quotes two book reviews in Russian; the first is a long sentence that he then translates succinctly as "It stinks". The second, a different but equally long sentence, is also translated as "It stinks." The actual text of these sentences bear no relation to academics: the first phrase quotes Mussorgsky's Song of the Flea: "Once there was a king who had a pet flea." The second references a Russian joke: "Now I must go where even the Tsar goes on foot" [the bathroom].[


See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_(song and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...g_of_the_Flea#Lyrics)


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
 
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Good detective work, Z! Thanks! I've really missed your scholarly input, even on these frivolous threads!
 
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