Why isn't this book called "Charlie and the Great Glass Lift"???
It's actually a pretty good question, isn't it?
This reminds me, tangentially, of the single most bizarre feature of The Queen's English: the use of plural verbs with singular subjects that are the names of companies.
For example, Britons would write "Volvo are introducing a new line of even safer vehicles." I may be missing some nuances here, but I suppose they would also write "Boeing are introducing a new line of even safer passenger jets" and, presumably, "The Boeing Company are introducing a new line of even safer passenger jets." I suspect you won't see that last construction because it highlights the absurdity of the British convention.
For some reason this peculiar usage only seems to apply to companies and other "organisations." You would not see a British person write "Germany are bypassing the Maginot Line" or "Germany are lobbing V2 rockets into central London."
Please comment if you understand the logic behind this.
posted at 3:13 PM
3 Comments:
Because Americans would have no idea what a Great Glass Lift is. I have no idea why the British speak/write the way they do.
Interestingly, there's no sign that there ever was a UK-titled version. Roll on American cultural hegemony!
How funny... I'm reading this book (this exact edition in fact -- obtained at Costco several weeks ago) to Olivia at night... she LOVES it. (We finished "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" last week.) But having "Lift" in the title would definitely have confused her, given her very American vocabulary that is! ;)
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