WDCS248
Good Scouts
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| Pronouns |
Many (most?!) English
speaking people have severe difficulties
with some of the basics in English
grammar. For instance, considering the
use of pronouns, it is wrong to say It
is me, because Me functions as a
subject and not an object. The correct
sentence should be It is I.
Barks learned this as he went along and
he demonstrated it in a convincing 'teacherish'
way in one of his stories. In U$10
The Heirloom Watch Scrooge says:
I'm him! I mean, I am he!
Barks had come a long way since he
let Donald say I'm him! in FC0456... |
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| Lyrics |
Actors say that in order to
be 'just' a good comedian you first have
to master the difficult serious roles.
The same may be said for writers; if you
are going to write a deliberately bad
text you first have to master the
language.
WDCS248: Donald
serenades different senoritas:
Juanita, Chiquita,
my Heart goes twee-tweeta!
and
I am waiting, my dee-a,
behind this here tree-a!
FineArt:
Donald sings a well-known Christmas carol:
See-yi-lunt Nee-yight!
Ho-yo-lee Nee-yight!
All is ca-hahm
All is buh-rite!
'Round Yon Virgin Mother and Chee-ild,
Ho-oly Yinfunt so tender and bright! |
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| Apostrophe |
An apostrophe is a sign ( '
) used to indicate the omission of one or
more letters in a word. The best known
apostrophe in the duck universe
undoubtedly is the one in Unca' Donald
where Unca', of course, is an endearment
of the word Uncle. Barks used it
repeatedly in his cartoon sketches (Good
Scouts from 1938 is a for
instance), and the apostrophe was also
present in his first comic book stories.
But from WDCS114 he
dispersed of the sign, and soon after all
other artists followed suit. So, in a way,
you may argue that Barks invented a new
word - Unca |
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| The error! |
Now then, was Barks really
flawless as a language master? It would
certainly seem so, because he polished
his texts and his dialogues to a point
where every 'stone' was turned repeatedly.
Furthermore, he had his wife Garé as a
sparring partner and last resort if
anything else failed. Still, Barks made
one slip during his entire comic book
career: In U$57 The Swamp of No
Return a scientist comments on a
dog's achievements to Scrooge: He's
solving a problem with Newtonian
potential functions, plus a dash of
quadrantic hyperbola! Aha, gotcha!
The correct word is Quadratic... |
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