5 ms·
Shouldn't it be: Et Tu, Procter et Gamble?
by ducktective 6y ago
Shouldn't it be: Et Tu, Procter et Gamble?
- greenwich26 6y agoWell, the site wrote it with an ampersand (&), which is originally a creative combination of "e" and "t". My nitpick is: shouldn't it be "Et vos, Procter & Gamble?"
- bitlevel 6y agoPerhaps Et vous (pluralised you)?
- cafeoh 6y ago"vous" if pluralized you in French, not in Latin.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Xophmeister 6y agoIt’s Latin, rather than French.
- billyjobob 6y agoThat’s French, not Latin.
- Centrino 6y agoIt's Latin, not French. "Et tu" could be from both languages, but the origin of the saying is what Julius Caesar said to Brutus after being deadly stabbed.
- simias 6y agoThe words individually could indeed be French but we'd use the oblique case here, "et toi (aussi), Procter & Gamble?". Also, I'm not sure what the usage would be in classical Latin, but using the singular to talk about a company in French seems perfectly appropriate. IIRC it's the Brits who like to use the plural for companies and institutions.
- CoastalCoder 6y agoDid Caesar actually say that, or was is just a line written into Shakespeare's play? I've never been clear on that.
- acheron 6y agoSome ancient historians quoted him as saying something similar in Greek, though who knows if it actually happened — ancient historians were often “creative”. I think the source of the Latin phrase is Shakespeare though.
- tannhaeuser 6y agoThere's also Tu quoque meaning the same thing in Latin.
- nerdponx 6y agoNo way! Who refers to a company as a plural? Unless the Romans did it, but I was under the impression that "organizations" like the Senate (senatus) were singular.
- jcranmer 6y ago> No way! Who refers to a company as a plural? British English tends to refer to organizations as plurals instead of singular.
- stuartd 6y agoThe ampersand symbol is a ligature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_ligature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_ligature
- dls2016 6y agoHow did I never learn this?
- michaelcampbell 6y agoYou never learned anything, until you did; like this =D
- mistersquid 6y ago> The ampersand symbol is a ligature. Nice one. Never knew this either. Small clarification/update. The ampersand symbol is in the process of becoming something other than a ligature, specifically: > The ampersand comes in many different forms. Because of its ubiquity, it is generally no longer considered a ligature, but a logogram.
- smitty1e 6y agoIt's an allusion to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar".
- billyjobob 6y agoPossibly if you were writing in Latin. I think you would also have to Latinize the names. But et tu is a foreign phrase that has been adopted into English from Shakespeare, so you can use it in an English sentence without translating the rest of the sentence.
- pmichaud 6y agoIf they had used the ampersand it would have been perfect!
- FabHK 6y agoSubmitter here: I'm pretty sure that I've just copied the story title from the webpage (with the ampersand) and pasted it into the HN box, so I assume that HN software then replaced the ampersand by "and".
- pmichaud 6y agoEdges case are hard — both you and HN are forgiven :)
- michaelcampbell 6y agoIt may show up eventually here: https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/