IL COLONIALISMO
Douglas Adams racconta un po’ di storia coloniale del Madagascar:
Antananarivo is pronounced Tananarive, and for much of this century has been spelt that way as well. When the French took over Madagascar at the end of the last century (colonised is probably too kind a word for moving in on a country that was doing perfectly well for itself but which the French simply took a fancy to), they were impatient with curious Malagasy habit of not bothering to pronounce the first and last syllables of place names.
They decided, in their rational Gallic way, that if that was how the names were pronounced then they could damn well be spelt that way too. It would be rather as if someone had taken over England and told us that from now on we would be spelling Leicester “Lester” and liking it.
We might be forced to spell it that way, but we wouldn’t like it, and neither did the Malagasy. As soon as they managed to divest themself of French rule, in 1960, they promptly reinstated all the old spellings and just kept the cooking and the bureaucracy.
LA CAPRA
Mark Carwardine sta spiegando a Douglas Adams i preparativi al viaggio verso l’isola di Komodo per osservare i draghi.
- Here’s the picture. We have to get a goat-
- Here?-
- No. In Labuan Bajo. Labuan Bajo is on the island of Flores and is the nearest port to Komodo. It’s a crossing of about 22 miles across some of the most treacherous seas in the East. This is where South China Sea meets the Indian Ocean, and it’s riddled with cross currents, riptides and whirlpools. It’s very dangerous and could take anything up to twenty hours-
- With a goat?-
- A dead goat-
I toyed with my food.
- It’s best- continued Mark – if the goat has been dead for about three days, so it’s got a good smell going. That’s more likely to attract the dragons-
- You’re proposing twenty hours on a boat…-
- A small boat- added Mark.
- On violently heaving seas…-
- Probably.-
- With a three-day old dead goat-
- Yes.-
-I hardly know what to say.-
Pubblicato ilnovembre 29, 2010
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