That terrible bridge collapse in Genoa inadvertently answered a question for me which I have asked myself since childhood.
I had a Norwegian girlfriend once, and she was very amused when I became slightly melancholic or worried and said, "Oh dear" to myself.
She asked me what it meant, and I was unable to tell her. It is just something that English people say, I thought.
I really do not mean to make light of the disaster, but when that man took a grainy video of the bridge as the section fell into the valley below, he can be heard saying, "Oh Dio! Oh Dio! Oh Dio!" in obvious shock and horror, and it sounds exactly like 'Oh dear'.
What an awful pity that I should have to find out like this.
Me too, thought exactly the same. It was like, sorry to say like there, but it was like, I was thinking, is that all he can say.
ReplyDeleteI mean to say, I thought he was saying oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Deletelike
DeleteI used to ask my mother what she meant when she said, 'Now then...' Perhaps that too has some forgotten meaning.
ReplyDeleteWas this in reply to me or did I not get a reply like?
DeleteYour inexplicable repetition of 'like' put me off any comments.
DeleteMy husband thought the man saying oh dear too, which would have been a mild expletive given the circumstances. Madonna is my blasphemy of choice here, I’m never sure if it’s disrespectful. A friend offered to teach me to swear in Italian but I declined.
ReplyDeleteI have shocked Italians before now by saying the only swear word I know in their language - it's the best/worst one.
DeleteYet another bridge that should have had supporting pillars in the middle.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that it was stupidly heavy for that span. I'm no engineer but I know you can achieve huge spans with light, tensile structures. I bet money comes into it as usual.
DeleteMafia concrete.
DeleteThe company that takes care of Italian roads took $4 billion from the government of which $1 billion was spent on roads. They are registered off shore.
DeleteThis horror is equal only to death by fire. Oh dear is as good as any expletive.
ReplyDeleteI prefer FUCKING HELL!
DeleteWikipeadia (yes I know it is also called Wrongapeadia) tells us that the Engineer built a bridge that collapsed in the 60s and one that was closed as it was in danger of collapse in 2017. Oh dear indeed!
ReplyDeleteI hear they were warned, but money is money.
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