> bryan rasmussen skrev: > > > Well irony originally started out as a very specific concept of the > > Ancient Greek drama, this is what we nowadays refer to as Dramatic > > Irony but it is the original irony. Irony then became a literary > > concept for plot elements similar to Dramatic irony in books, or a > > weaker type of the Dramatic irony found in the plays of Shakespeare. > > People then noticed that life was at times ironic in the literary > > manner. > > Yes and in Rome "salary" meant getting a bag of salt.
According to Answers.com it derives from a word for money given to Roman soldiers for buying salt, hence salary is pertaining to salt. > Concepts changes. As was noted in my original statement the weak form of irony such as understood by Danes and I suppose by Americans as well, since that is what Steve was originally complaining about, is descended from the concept of Dramatic Irony. If you do a dictionary lookup of irony dramatic irony will probably be mentioned, also such more antiquated usages as Socratic irony. These other concepts of irony have not changed. You can use the word irony in a technical manner to someone in the dramatic arts and have the usage understood. The weak form of irony, verbal irony, is a pretty recent addition to the concept of irony. To take a wikipedia discussion of the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony let's quote: "Verbal irony is traditionally defined as the use of words to convey something other than, and especially the opposite of the literal meaning of the words. One classic example is a speaker saying, "What lovely weather we are having!" as she looks out at a rainstorm intending to express her dissatisfaction with the weather." I believe this answers to the concept of irony as used by Danes (especially given the example of the weather comment above which I hear similar comments all the time.) Given the wikipedia article and Steve Holden's description of Americans as being clueless about irony for usages that you seem to find correct I suppose that Americans are no more clueless or less apt to understand Danish irony than Danes are. However, having been exposed to Danish irony quite a bit I have to say that in my case I understand it fine but it bores me, therefore when a Dane tells me that Americans don't understand Danish irony I always secretly think they probably wonder why looking out at a rainstorm and saying "What lovely weather we are having" should be considered as a particularly inspired use of the verbal ironical form. Also although I am not an american I am often mistaken for one by Danes and when someone says 'What lovely weather we are having' (or similar) I will tend to be rather ironical myself and pretend not to have understood their comment as being ironical. And then they will try to explain irony to me with very long and drawn out explanations. Fun stuff. > > Nowadays the use of the word irony has degenerated to by > > pretty much synonymous with sarcasm. > > As a Dane that is a Chronic Ironic, I beg to differ. > > In Denmark at least there is a lot of difference between irony and > sarcasm. Irony is the main form of humor here, and danes takes to it > easily. People being sarcastic we don't much like. > > But I guess that it can be hard to se the difference for someone not > used to irony. Yes, just what I was going to say. I suppose that you will admit that the Danish Ironisk has the same history as the English Irony, of course as the above mentioned Wikipedia article mentions "Irony often requires a cultural backdrop to be understood or noticed, and as with any culture-specific idiom, irony often cannot be perfectly transplanted. " If you do so agree then, as opposed to your example of 'salary', the current meaning of irony being predominantly used to convey Verbal irony is rather recent. I may very well be missing some sort of meta-irony in someone saying "What wonderful weather we're having" when its pouring in København's Rådhusplads, as in a sort of self-ironical stance consisting of an implicit statement of "what an idiot I must be for thinking it worthwhile to comment ironically on the weather when everyone else today has said the same damn thing. " but I don't know. The main point is, I think, that verbal irony is understood as a meaning for irony between various cultures and is not a unique invention of the Danes, for unique linguistically defined concepts I think Denmark's best strategy is still to push 'hygge'. Now again, it may be somewhat old time fuddy-duddyism on my part to insist on a stronger form of the word irony than verbal irony. I am personally ready to use all the definitions of ironical forms discussed in the Wikipedia article because they are technically precise words and concepts for which we do not have words and concepts other than them. Med Venlig Hilsen, Bryan Rasmussen -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
