Re: "Major Bloomberg"?

On Apr 22, 9:58 am, Emungo <pyti...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Very interested in this. My wife (Italian, born, schooled and
universitied in Rome, living in UK for 4 years) invariably says
'major' for 'mayor' - withstanding all my attempts to coax, train or
tease (and perhaps even beat) her out of it. Maybe Papa Ratzi has
acquired it from his long years in the eternal city rather than his L1
background. He still speaks Italian with a very strong German accent,
but if - as suggested by Trond, plausibly to my mind - it's a lexical
thing then he could still have picked it up in Italy. Maybe it's
particularly influenced by awareness of the etymology as well as the
military rank 'major'.

Too bad he didn't have to acknowledge anyone with as low a rank as a
Major General!

If he were a bureaucrat he might have spoken of "major effort" or
"major success" somewhere in one of his talks.
.