While reading Mom-101's excellent post about blog trolls, I remembered the following:
When my father was little, his mother used to read him the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. My grandmother is a Polish immigrant, and although her English is impecable (she arrived in New York when she was 9), she spoke Yiddish with her parents and might have missed some American fairy-tale vocab. She has always been the kind of person who does not like to face questions that she doesn't know how to answer. Rather than face the possibility that my father or his brothers or sister might ask "Mom, what's a troll?", my grandmother read the story as: "...and under the bridge, there was a great big dwarf."
Monday, May 08, 2006
Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to eat goat I go!
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Oh dear, I realize that I change words of books when I find them to be slightly offensive. In Sandra Boynton's Pajama Time I hate describing the PJ's as "The ugliest you've ever seen" so I often change it to "the funniest." When my girls get older, they will be able to read the correct words and know that I've been changing it all this time. Silly me! Ugly is just such a harsh word. But then I'm part Polish, so maybe that's just what we do! hee hee.
ReplyDeleteA giant dwarf - I love that! See, now there's one good thing about trolls. Just the mere mention of them brought back some happy childhood memories for you.
ReplyDeleteCan there really be such thing as a "big dwarf?" Regardless, so much more pleasant than a "troll."
ReplyDelete