I had an e-mail in from Eddie Klose. I think it's a German surename. But he asked, "Why do we introduce nationalities into our phrases?" So, why do we talk about French leave, Dutch courage, Russian roulette, etc? And the answer is really that languege can be very effective in reinforcing steretypes. And they're not usually particularly nice stereotypes. So, I'll start with the Dutch. It's quite a well-known story, I think, a lot of people know now why we talk about Dutch courage, etc, but it's worse repeating. They're not very flattering, any of idioms relating to the Dutch. Dutch courage, we know, the only time, the implication is, that the Dutch are ever brave is when they've drink a lot. Double Dutch became a byword for gibberish. To be Dutch buttocked wasn't a particularly positive thing, that meant you had a very large behind. Onto the French, excuse my French, we still do actually often put it alongside language that would otherwise be seen as being vulgar or obscene. And finally, Russian ruolette, that's slightly different, because Russian roulette isn't really a slur. It goes back to a novel of 1937, and a military situation, as you would expect. "Did you ever hear of Russian roulette? With the Russian army in Romania around 1917, some of officers would suddenly pull out her revolver, remove a cartridge, spin a cylindre, snap it back in place, put it to his head and pull the trigger. So they've been doing that for a very long time, probably did originate in Russian military camps. But to answer Eddie's question, with all of these, no matter which wat you look at it, it all goes back to something rather unpleasant.
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