There it was again.
I was watching the movie “Disclosure” with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore and out it popped. Donald Sutherland, the boss in the movie, was making a speech and out it came:
“May you live in interesting times.”
You may have heard it before. You know, referred to as a Chinese curse. The truth is far from it!
Most expressions have some kind of translation into English from Chinese and I was wondering if my students could pick up on this one. I’ve boarded it more than once but always come up at a dead end.
An internet search provided the much needed answers. It turns out that Robert Kennedy uttered it in South Africa in the 60s and it has been picked up by the press ever since. Always attributed to the Chinese but, in fact, may have Scottish origins.
Follow these links for more.
A quick reference here:
http://www.noblenet.org/reference/inter.htm
Some crazy research here:
http://hawk.fab2.albany.edu/sidebar/sidebar.htm
This is new Mar 20, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times
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