I don’t believe it – he’s called himself ‘a youth’
Oh for crying out loud, can you believe it? Joseph Muscat, live on Super One, has just referred to himself as a “mexxej zaghzugh”.
He then realised how ridiculous that must sound, given that he is surrounded by people young enough to be his children, and corrected himself: RELATTIVAMENT ZAGHZUGH.
No, actually, Joseph – it’s the other way round. When a 39-year-old is among 19-year-olds, he’s ‘RELATTIVAMENT XIH’ and not ‘RELATTIVAMENT ZAGHZUGH’.
He is 20 years older, a whole generation, than the people he’s sitting with. When I was his age – only nine years ago – I had children their age.
I would never in a million years have called myself, with a son of 20, a ‘zaghzugha’. I would have been laughed out of the house.
And I don’t know what he’s done to his hair tonight, but it’s killing me. Why doesn’t he just let it go?
Every time I listen to him, it strikes me how poor his Maltese is. He really struggles. He uses the wrong expressions. He hums and haws and looks for the right word, but doesn’t get it.
He’s just literally translated ‘look down on’ (as in looking down on somebody you consider your inferior) as “inhares l-isfel lejn”. WHAT? That would mean, for example, leaning over the bannister and looking down into the hall below at somebody standing there.
We’ve had a flood of English expressions tonight, too:
You cannot fake it
a warm welcome (pronounced, like chavs trying to sound posh, incorrectly as ‘welkim’)
what is good for the goose is good for the gander (that should be sauce, not good)
Now he’s saying that the demonstrations of support that he received at the university and MCAST were spontaneous. “You could feel the spirit, the emotion, the desire for change”.
Yes, of course you could.
It was so spontaneous that the organisers had to ring people persistently and bus them in.
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‘Good for the goose…’ is also valid. Google it.
[Daphne – Valid through the widespread misuse of the ignorant. I never Google basic expressions or even complicated ones, because I am a native speaker of the language. Please don’t insult me. The actual expression is ‘what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’. Good, in this context, doesn’t make sense. It is meaningless. The meaning of the real expression is that you can use the same sauce for the female bird as you can for the male bird, and shouldn’t have to make different sauces. But I imagine Muscat doesn’t know that the gander is the male and the goose is the female, and that they’re both a ‘wizz’.]
No, really. Look at the phrases section, half way down the page: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/goose
The ‘sauce’ version may be the original one (or not – I don’t know), but the other expression is also part of the vernacular and was in fact the one I was familiar with.
And I never meant to insult you. I google stuff I’m not sure of all the time. :)
Sorry Daphne – I have to disagree with you on this one. I also am a native English speaker and ‘What is good….’ is also a valid expression.
Just to make sure I’ve asked around the office (6 British people; and the lot of us with PhDs, so not the average run of the mill people) and they all agree it is a valid English expression.
[Daphne – Of course it’s valid, but it’s not the correct or original expression. In other words, the two are not equal. English, like the society which spawned the language, is all about arcane codes which sort the human wheat from the human chaff. In brief, the wheat says ‘sauce’ and the chaff says ‘good’. Or, to be even more explicit without being too specific, I say ‘sauce’ and Joseph Muscat says ‘good’.]
Indeed, you’ve got me with that one. I suppose you could draw a comparison with the fact while Joseph Muscat dresses smartly (i.e a suit) he does not in fact dress ‘smartly’ (he dresses in a mode more suiting the cirque du soleil)
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the for the gander. So I was taught by the dear nuns, oh so many years ago.
So while the press conference was going on Muscat was working his miracles on his head.
‘Tenks god’ his hairstylist was available today because I had such a good laugh at tonight’s style. The Fonz, hey.
Think he changes his ‘hairstylist’ as often as his position,
Not to be confused with bedtime, though.
Well Muscat has been shooting the geese but he forgot they might land dead on his porch.
that poor guy on the right is devastated ……