Quantcast
Channel: John Brown's Notes and Essays
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4467

Live and Learn (a Facebook comment)

$
0
0

image from


John Brown While a desk officer for France when I first joined USIA in the early 80s, one of my assignments at the agency's headquarters in Washington was to read cables from Paris. I was struck in these missives by the frequent reference to "Emboff." Boy, I told myself (I studied Russian history in grad school), that son of an Americanized Russian emigre family (which, I suspected, must have spent time in France [the "ff" suggests a "French" transliteration of the Russian "в"]) sure is making a splash in the City of Light. It took me several weeks to figure out that Emboff was an abbreviation for "Embassy officer" ... Live and learn ...


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4467

Trending Articles