Today’s Impromptus is titled “Punching the ump, &c.” Why? There is a problem in youth sports — a big problem: Umpires and referees are under attack from parents, as never before. They are quitting in droves. “Who needs it?” I wonder whether a society can be judged by the health of its youth sports . . .
Other issues include those texts to Mark Meadows, sent by a host of GOP luminaries, both in politics and in the media. They provide a fascinating window into how politics is done. “Gentlemen do not read other people’s mail,” said Colonel Stimson. Maybe. But you can learn a lot from such mail.
I also have a word about the French presidential election, just past. Let me quote a paragraph:
I repeat something I’ve often said — something I learned from others, years ago. (David Pryce-Jones was one.) It is this: If “mainstream” parties don’t address popular concerns, with honesty and clarity — concerns such as immigration and national identity — then voters will turn to extremists, making everything worse. It will be, at least in part, the fault of the mainstreamers, for having their heads in the sand, or in the clouds.
After I wrote my column, I read the latest column by Bret Stephens, in the New York Times. It is titled “French Lessons for the Biden Administration” and it is an absolute bull’s-eye. Let me quote:
When Jean-Marie Le Pen made his first presidential bid on an anti-immigration platform in 1974, he took 0.75 percent of the ballot in the first round — fewer than 200,000 votes. When his daughter Marine ran on a similar platform this year, she took 41.5 percent in the second round, or more than 13 million. The Le Pens are thoroughgoing bigots.
But decades of pretending that only bigots had worries about immigration only made their brand of politics stronger.
As president, Macron tacked right on immigration — not to weaken France’s historic position as an open society, friendly to newcomers, but rather to save it. He has cracked down on some asylum seekers, demanded that immigrants learn French and get jobs and taken a hard line against Islamic separatism. But he’s also tried to make France a more welcoming place for legal immigration. The left thinks of him as Le Pen lite, the right as a feckless impostor. Maybe he’s both. Then again, he also saved France for the free world.
Democrats could stand to brush up on their French.
Now let’s have a little mail, related to language. In an Impromptus last week, I had some thoughts on Twitter, which included the following:
If you’re into stamp collecting, you can connect with other stamp collectors. If punk rock is your thing, you can punk-rock to your heart’s delight.
In other words, you can find your niche, or several niches — scratch your niches.
A reader writes,
Good morning (CDT), Mr. Nordlinger,
In your Impromptus this morning you used “niche” and went so far as to pen “scratch your niches.” That got me wondering, as a monolingual American, do you, personally, pronounce it “neesh” or “nitch”?
I can’t use the word “forte” anymore, as a consequence of what you said in a previous Impromptus. It sticks in my throat. My mind races, “If I pronounce it ‘fort,’ is the person going to think I’m a dope, presuming I mispronounced it? Or if they know I pronounced it correctly, are they going to think I’m a stuffed shirt? But if I say ‘fortay’ . . .” Aaarrgh!!
God’s peace . . .
Ha, love it. Aaarrgh is right. I grew up with “nitch.” No one around me said “neesh.” I think “neesh” sprang up 15, 20 years ago. Don’t know. I think “nitch” is the standard English — or at least the standard American — pronounciation. “Neesh” is too French, for my taste.
Traditionally, “forte” is pronounced “fort,” when you’re talking about a person’s expertise or strength. If you’re talking about the musical dynamic — as in loud — it’s “fortay.”
In a Marx Brothers movie — I’m not sure which one — someone (Margaret Dumont?) says to Groucho, “Singing isn’t really your forte.” To which the wiseguy says, “I wish Knox were my forte.”
Years ago, when I addressed this issue, a reader sent me a bit of Goethe’s Faust, in the translation by Walter Arndt. Mephistopheles says,
Since once again, o Lord, I find you deigning
To walk amongst us, asking how we do,
And in the past you thought me entertaining,
You see me too here with your retinue.
Fine speeches are, beg pardon, not my forte,
Though all this round may mock me; but I know,
My rhetoric, you’d laugh it out of court,
Had you not cast off laughter long ago.
Forte rhymes with court. But there will come a day — maybe it has arrived already — when no one will know what the translator is doing there. “How can you rhyme ‘fortay’ with court?” And Groucho’s joke will be a puzzlement.
In any case — I thank all readers and correspondents, whatever their individual fortes. Once more, today’s Impromptus is here. See you soon.