>>>>>>>It's probably historical: some languages got used to hidden sense and implicit talk. I am not a linguistic expert, so I could be wrong, but it might be that Russian language is the most double-speak phenomenon in this area.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>What about (ouch, forgot the exact name) of the language in "1984"? I read it recently in English.
>>>>>
>>>>>Isn't it "Newspeak"?
>>>>>
>>>>>That expression is hijacked today "Oh, downsizing is newspeak for 'laying people off'"
>>>>>
>>>>>Just as in "1984" they had "Minitrue" (the Ministry of Truth - in effect lies) nowadays we have the MetPol for London's Metropolitan Police.
>>>>>
>>>>>Incidentally, recently on a BBC telethon day, the woman who's presented the Big Brother reality show in UK since its start was asked, in a quiz, "Who is the leader of Oceania?" ... and she had no idea.
>>>>>
>>>>>Similarly many people bandy about the expression "Catch-22" without ever having read the book or really knowing what one is. That annoys me.
>>>>
>>>>I was watching a dvd of one of the old episodes of a show we had here (don't know if it was ever in England), called "Remington Steele", and in the episode, he was using a fake identity, and introduced himself to one person as "Milo Minderbinder".
>>>
>>>Wasn't that the show where Piers Brosman first shot to fame?
>>
>>That's the one. But I think, without checking, that it's Brosnan.
>>
>>>I once had a military-style jacket and put "Capt. Washington Irving" (Yossarian's mail censoring persona, you may recall) in the name slot. Some guy in a pub asked me what position I played in the team!
>>
>>I thought you'd have used "Major Major Major". Too blatant?
>
>Yes.
>
>One of the reason why I hated the film was that it couldn't include facts like how Major Major Major Major got his name, or the story of Chief White Half-oat's tribe's travails. And unforgivable was the inexplicable reason why they put Hungry Joe in the plane-crash (that made Doc Daniker a non-person) when he really eventually died of his nightmare, that of Kid Sampson's cat sleeping on his face and suffocating him.

Well, of course that's the main problem in converting a book to the screen. You have to either do it in a couple of hours, or do it as a serial (Lord of the Rings). And you can't show the introspection that goes on in a book. If you try (think Ingmar Bergman), you end up with myriad 10 minute time clumps of people like Liv Ullmann, or Ingrid Thulin staring off into the distance. I realise some people, the intellectuals among us, enjoy that, but I'm afraid that I'm not in that group.

>
>And the later part of the film had the Minderbinder character TOTALLY over the top.

I thought the Hitlerian scene in which he was riding through town standing up in the jeep was visually remarkable.

>
>On the subject of the catch-phrase's misuse, I heard it in a TV ad "It's Catch-22: you want your coloureds to be clean but you don't want the colour to fade..." or summat like that. I'm like shouting at the telly, "NO! That's not a Catch-22!" (that's a quandary)

I understand fully, but I guess I'm just a bit less volatile about it.