There can't be many English phrases familiar to large swathes of foreigners while remaining completely unknown to the English themselves. "My tailor is rich" is one such phrase.
When I first started teaching English in France, I was taken aback when my otherwise tongue-tied students introduced, with great confidence and utter conviction, "My tailor is rich" into the silence of the classroom. I eventually discovered that this is the first sentence of the classic Anglais sans peine (English Without Tears) published many years ago by the original teach-yourself publishing company, Assimil.
Many things have changed in the years since then, and few would assert with the same degree of confidence nowadays that tailors are rich. Mine isn't anyway, and with good reason. The funny thing is that, over the those intervening years, I had completely forgotten the origin of the phrase and had come to assume that the English themselves were familiar with it. Not so! The other day, I turned to the English woman sitting in the café next to me, and said with great emphasis "my tailor is rich". She didn't understand what I was talking about.
Is there a joke embedded in this sentence? That the tailor is rich because the speaker gains weight and diets and gains weight and diets and frequently needs his pants altered?
ReplyDeleteI think the French equivalent would be "Le livre est sur la table," no?
Thank you for your forebearance, Michael! Goodness knows where the expression came from, but your explanation has the ring of truth about. Perhaps the modern equivalent would be "Nothing is off the table"?
DeleteWhen I was learning French, the equivalent was "La plume de ma tante".
Barnaby, I didn’t realize I was commenting on a 2009 post. For some reason it showed up with the new ones in my RSS reader, as did a very funny one with Bernard of Clairvaux. Anyway, I’m glad they did.
ReplyDeleteI’m off in search of a tailor now. I already have books and pens a-plenty.