Play With Words

Toff 这个词，第一层的意思是“爱打扮、身着名贵人士”，但是在英国英语中，却是与社会阶层(social class)紧密联系的，指的是上流社会中身着名贵、态度倨傲的人士。而且在英国，“上流社会”也不是有钱就能进的，必须是有身份的名门贵族。这在社会阶层的分化(class division)仍是热门话题的今天，toff 就是一个用来攻击别人的贬义词。

Toff 一词最近多见于报端，就是因为在英格兰西北的 Crewe and Nintwich 选区补选中，工党用 toff 一词来攻击保守党候选人 Timpson，称其为 Tory toff，还雇佣演员，穿上燕尾服、手执文明棍、头戴高顶礼帽，表演什么是 toff。而工党自己的候选人 Tamsin Dunwoody 就叫“我们自己人”(One of us)。不过工党的这一招显然失灵，补选失败。

Toff 一词，最好的翻译，就是“公子哥儿”。

Times 报道的标题，就是 Divisions over ‘Tory toff’ insult undermine Labour in Crewe by-election

Giles Coren 是 The Times 的餐馆评论员和专栏作者，我很喜欢他的幽默笔锋。星期六在 The Times 上看到他写的文章，说自他父亲最近去世后，他一度觉得没有再写的必要，因为已经 no one to impress。他的父亲是幽默作家 Alan Coren。文章中的一段写道：

As I pushed his mower up and down his lawn I realised my mother was watching me. I dropped the lever and called to her, over the whiz of the fading blades: “I can hear him now shouting, You call that a f****** stripe?’.” And she said, “No, he’d be very pleased.”

The Times 的读者来信：

Sir, You report on the voluntary news blackout on Prince Harry in recent weeks. Can I request that this blackout be extended indefinitely to the entire Royal Family?

Jack Edmondson
London SW6

这位 Edmondson 先生大概不是保皇派了。他一定和这位有共鸣。

Philip Howard of the Times answered the question:

Pasta pros (Italians) are adept at holding their forks in their right hands, and twirling spag into a nest. The safer British way is to use a spoon as a safety net beneath the nest. The boring British way is to cut the spag up into small gobbets. When eating à la Romana, do as the Romans do.

adept: very skilled; a highly skilled person.

我觉得用筷子最方便了。

BBC 新剧 Cranford (2007) 中，充满着精彩片段和金言警句。比如第一集中的 ‘suck the orange’ 事件，以后将会成为电视经典镜头。

Mary: At home, we make a little hole in our oranges, and we suck them.

Miss Deborah: …

Miss Matty: That’s the way I like to take them best. But Deborah says it is vulgar, and altogether too redolent of a ritual undertaken by, by little babies.

Miss Matty: My sister does not care for the expression ‘suck‘.

Mary: ….

Deborah: We will repair to our rooms…and consume our fruit in solitude.

当然，演员的演出比上面的文字有趣得多。其中 ‘repair to our rooms’ 这个表达方式我还没有在现代语境中看到。

在 《泰晤士报》上，还真有读者询问如何 the polite way to eat an orange。《泰晤士报》“现代礼仪”栏目的 Pilip Howard 的回答是象削苹果皮一样把皮削掉，然后切成小块。读者的回答中，有一条据说是从中国人身上看来的：

I have seen some Chinese gentlemen eating oranges at table by using a sharp knife to cut them into four segments, from top to bottom. Each segmemnt can then be picked up in one hand and eaten easily and cleanly.

在上周的“首相问答时间”(Prime Minister’s Question Time, PMQ)中，临时担任自由民主党魁的 Vince Cable 抛出了首相布朗“从斯大林变成憨豆先生”这么一个说法，引起众议院满堂哄笑。他说：

The house has noticed the prime minister’s the remarkable transformation in the last few weeks – from Stalin to Mr Bean.

你可以在路透社的网站上看到这段录像。

所谓 Gordon Brown 是斯大林的说法，来自前内阁秘书 Lord Turnbull。他在 Brown 即将上任时，对《金融时报》说：

You cannot help admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessnes of it all.

“你不得不佩服其(指布朗的运作班子)斯大林式的强悍与冷酷”，这真是明捧暗讽的典型了。从斯大林式的铁腕，到憨豆先生笨手笨脚、时时可能出差错的形象，反差十分可笑，难怪各家媒体纷纷引用，成为城中谈资。

From Stalin to Mr Bean – The Daily Telegraph

Not so much Stalin as Mr Bean: Gordon Brown is made to play the fool in stage farce – The Times

对于政客来说，如果被认为是铁腕，那还好办；成为众人讥讽嘲笑的对象，不仅尴尬，而且十分危险，因为这意味着权威的丧失。好在布朗长得还不象憨豆－－至少他一点不好笑。

当别人对你说“谢谢”时，如何恰当地回复？Philip Howard 在《泰晤士报》上作了回答：

Q: I am never satisfied with the acknowledgements to “thank you” in English. “Y’a welcome” – too American. “It’s nothing” – too Spanish. “Don’t mention it” – too awful. “My pleasure”, “that’s all right”, “any time” – not always appropriate. Can you help?
–Ann Irving, Guildford

A: Interesting. The most common reply to “thank you” in England is “cheers”. And common it is. Indeed, Charlie. But it is not always necessary to return the shuttlecocok when somebody says “thank you”. Much can be done with a self-deprecating smile. I fear that I may somtimes say “okey dokey”. The form of words does not matter as much as the warmth of your reponse by gesture and meaning.

这里我唯一看不懂的，是 Indeed, Charlie 这一句。除了以上说法，回应别人的 thank you，还可以用 no problem, no bother 这样的说法。用 okey dokey 倒是比较少见。其中还是有些细微的差别。

说 thank you 还有其它说法，thanks 是明显的变化。要加强，可以说 thank you very much 或 thanks a lot, many thanks 等。我记得刚到英国时，很疑惑地发现很多人在该说 thank you 的场合说 cheers。这好像只有在英国澳大利亚这样的地方流行，来源不明。如果你在苏格兰，还可以说 ta 。两种都是比较随意的说法。

Leo Lewis of the Times described the difference between Moutain Lady and Wall Lady, two leading characters of the popular Japanese TV series:

The show is based on one of the best-selling manga comic books of 2005 and follows the fortunes of the serious-minded, flat-chested Megumi Aoyagi and her sweet-natured, generously proportioned colleague, Marie Mariya.

专栏作家Bernard Levin在1994年布莱尔成为工党领导人之后在《泰晤士报》上的文章，向我们演示知识分子是如何骂人的：

Labour at last has a modern leader ready to sweep to power and end this sorry era.

The longer and more frequently I contemplate Mr Blair, the more I like the cut of his jib. This has nothing to do with the alternative; I long ago concluded that the present Government was worm-eaten, exhausted, dishonest, incompetent, lazy, mendacious, ignorant, rotten, false, disreputable, deceitful, unsavoury, squalid, abominable, soiled, piratical, shifty, discreditable, infamous, improper, obscene, hateful, impure, degraded, dilapidated, shabby, grovelling, discredited, renownless, tarnished, disgraced, shameless, creeping, abject, two-faced, unscrupulous, villainous, treacherous, untrustworthy, prevaricating, sinister, crawling, insincere, fishy, spurious, unclean, felonious, infamous, venal, base, vile, bribable, rancid, disloyal, scheming, unsavoury, sickening, fetid, nauseating, putrid, defaulting, mouldering, evil, vicious, damnable, maleficent, wrong, ineffectual, mean, inferior, contemptible, superficial, irrelevant, expendable, powerless, pathetic, nugatory, impotent, jumped-up, cheap, insalubrious, flea-ridden, unsound, nasty, baneful, foul-tonged, cursed, unwarranted, execrable, damned, abnormal, unreasonable, virtueless, peccant, sinful, unworthy, hopeless, incorrigible, tergiversating, brutalised, nefarious, culpable, scandalous, worthless, flagitious, gross, indefensible and unpardonable to say the least. But Blair, as far as I can see, is to be found on his own feet, not measuring by the scabrous (I missed that one) Lilliputians now arrayed against him.

不过如果你仔细看，他还是重复使用了 infamous 和 insavoury 两次。

After the loss of election in England, Scotland and Wales of various degress, the retiring Tony Blair was seen being interviewed in some nondescriptive office, with a mug of tea in hand. The Times’s Ann Treneman wrote:

Mr Blair, who denies he is in denial, denied things were so bad. Then, casually, he dropped his soundbite cluster bomb. “It’s been a dreadful set of results for the Liberal Democrats,” he said chattily. “And the Tories have not broken through, particularly in the northern cities.” Within seconds, this was being flashed up as BREAKING NEWS. The mug had struck again.

Soundbite is a weapon a politican must master.