Re: [CR]Mudguards to us .Fenders to you!

(Example: Framebuilders:Jack Taylor)

Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:54:42 -0500 (EST)
From: "Emanuel Lowi" <lowiemanuel@yahoo.ca>
Subject: Re: [CR]Mudguards to us .Fenders to you!
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
In-Reply-To: <MONKEYFOODg96TwctPB00000783@monkeyfood.nt.phred.org>


Peter Kohler wrote:
> Now, here's a question: the CR List has more than
> its share of Italophiles.
> And no one can doubt Italy's contribution to our
> thing. But what commonly
> used cycling words or phrases are actually Italian?
> So much of the cycling
> parlance is decidely French. Not to mention the
> name of this very group.

In America. In Italy, most cycling terms are in Italian.

The real question is why in America are so many commonly used cycling terms French. Snobbism? In the USA, where French people have been rather scarce since the days of Lafayette, any use of the language of Moliere is associated with some sort of air of superiority.

Italians, rather commonly found in the USA for about a century in the working class strata, are more easily associated with pizza and the like, hardly the stuff of the elitist trappings some Americans aspire towards.

In college in New England (where I raced for Brandeis), my classmates and team mates loved to get me to say anything in French for them. As an Anglophone Quebecer escaping from French language laws, this always tickled me silly.

Emanuel Lowi
Montreal