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American movies are often re-titled for foreign audiences. In this quiz, you’ll be given a foreign title of a US movie, translated into English. Can you guess what movie it was in the US? It’s a multiple-choice question, so it shouldn’t be too hard. After all, I haven’t even seen the vast majority of these movies, yet I scored 27 out of 30 by taking time to think about each question. Bonus: if you take the quiz again, the questions will be different. Link -via mental_floss
This is something I’ve never encountered before. Apparently in some parts of the world, notably in the UK, surgeons are referred to as “Mister” or “Ms.” instead of “Doctor”. Minnesotastan ran across a literary reference in which a surgeon was offended when called “Doctor.” Commenter Phyllis says:
Yes. In the UK, surgeons used to be LESS THAN doctors (who were educated and gave out medicines and didn’t get their hands dirty like those plebeian surgeons).
Even though they are more like the US now, where they are doctors PLUS extra training, it seems that the term has persisted.
Now I wonder about other countries. How do people refer to medical practitioners and surgeons where you come from? Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Salim Fadhley)
The use of Ms. as a title for a woman who is either married or not goes back a lot further than you may think. The Oxford University Press found an example printed in a newspaper in 1885.
Ever since “Ms.” emerged as a marriage-neutral alternative to “Miss” and “Mrs.” in the 1970s, linguists have been trying to trace the origins of this new honorific. It turns out that “Ms.” is not so new after all. The form goes back at least to the 1760s, when it served as an abbreviation for “Mistress” (remember Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly?) and for “Miss,” already a shortened form of “Mistress,” which was also sometimes spelled “Mis.” The few early instances of “Ms.” carried no particular information about matrimonial status (it was used for single or for married women) and no political statement about gender equality. Eventually “Miss” and “Mrs.” emerged as the standard honorifics for women, just as “Mr.” was used for men (“Master,” from which “Mr.” derives, was often used for boys, though it’s not common today). While “Miss” was often prefixed to the names of unmarried women or used for young women or girls, it could also refer to married women. And “Mrs.,” typically reserved for married women, did not always signal marital status (for example, widows and divorced women often continued to use “Mrs.”). The spread of “Ms.” over the past forty years both simplifies and complicates the title paradigm.
But the term goes back even further, as Ms. was used on a tombstone in 1767 for Ms. Sarah Spooner, which may be a case of saving room. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
Perhaps you can’t judge a book by its cover, but Dan Wilbur of Better Book Titles can. Here’s how he decided to "improve" the covers of some very well known books:
This page is for people who have trouble slogging through the information on book jackets or feel intimidated by the title and cover itself. How many times have you perused the cover of a novel only to rub your sore eyes and realize you’ve learned NOTHING from the book’s title?!
This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image. Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in merely seconds!
Link – via metafilter
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More fun with movie posters and Photoshop can be had at The Chive. Inspired by a Worth 1000 contest, users re-imagine popular movies if one letter in their title was changed, or removed. Here, The Chive lays claim to The Ark Knight and No Country For Old Hen.
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