freakin' 1992

 On You Tube there are videos about the royal family.

(When I say "the royal family" I always mean the British Royal Family - I rarely think about any other royal families - no offense to any of them....)

There are so many videos about them, you almost wouldn't believe it.

They fall into two categories:

1.  documentaries - where there's a narrator, they tell a story, show a lot of pictures and film clips, and have different people commenting and contributing.

and, 2.  podcasts - where it's people in a room (or on Zoom) having conversations about some person or situation in the British RF.

        Some of these, particularly the podcasts may be a little "gossipy" and then I sort of tell myself, 'Should I be listening to this?'

        But some of the podcasts, and most of the documentaries, tell us some information that we can use to inform our knowledge about our own government and society and way of life.

With those English accents, they pronounce the word controversy as

"cahn - TROV - er - see"

whereas in America we pronounce it

CON - truh - ver - see.

And while we pronounce the word privacy as

PRI - vah - see,

with the first syllable rhyming with "sigh,"

in England they say

"PRIV - ah - see", with the first syllable rhyming with "give."

There's one video titled Annus Horribilis:  How 1992 Changed The Monarchy Forever | The Queen's Worst Year.

        The channel / uploader is "Real Royalty."

So many things happened in the year 1992 that gave the royal family bad publicity, toward the end, when Windsor Castle had even caught on fire, the Queen gave a speech in which she said 1992 had been an "Annus horribilis" - Latin for "horrible year."

        I remember speaking on the phone with my parents; my main concern in all that royal drama was the book about Princess Diana that came out (written by Andrew Morton), saying Prince Charles had maintained a romance with Camilla Parker-Bowles throughout his marriage with Diana.  

        My dad expressed sympathy for Diana, and then mentioned how the Queen called it the "annus horribilis" - he was mildly impressed by that - he always liked languages....

Most people don't use much Latin anymore.

Some of the lobbyists I worked with in the 1990s would wear a button on the last day of the legislative session, expressing some humorous thought in Latin... I think some of 'em went to Catholic school back in the day, and that might have been where they picked up some Latin.

the Windsor Castle fire    1992

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