La frase del mese: Keep calm and Carry on – Mantieni la calma e vai avanti
Ascolta la frase qui sotto:
In a nutshell – (principianti)
to keep (v) – mantenere: (keep, kept, kept)
Calm (adj) – calma
to carry on (phrasal verb) – continua fare qualcosa. (Carry, carried, carried)
Examples:
Don’t worry about the news! just keep calm and carry on!
A: Yesterday, I saw a thief getting out of a shop!
B: What did you do? Did you call the police?
A: I was scared for my life! I just kept calm and carried on walking!
Una frase coniata in Gran Bretagna durante la seconda guerra mondiale per un poster del ministero dell’informazione in caso di invasione nazista… leggi piu sotto in Inglese per capire perché ho scelto questa frase.
A little more…
Back in 1939 when Britain was on the break of war with Germany, The Ministry of Information (MoI) came up with slogans to motivate the public in case of dangerous developments. The slogan wasn’t actually circulated that much during the war, but enjoyed a revival during the early 2000s. Much was written about how the slogan became a fashion trend and how it has been used in the past 20 years.
I chose this slogan because there is a sense of emergency and public panic surrounding the Coronovirus outbreak.
Further reading…
Other people have written much better than me on the topic and I think it’s worthwhile investigating a little more. Especially around the overuse of the phrase 🙂
Bellow are some further readings I’ve enjoyed.
- The actual history of the slogan and the poster from the University of London:
https://london.ac.uk/about-us/history-university-london/story-behind-keep-calm-and-carry - On how the slogan enjoyed a revival during the early 2000s icluding a nice reference to a book about how people feel nostalgic towards things they have never experienced!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/08/keep-calm-and-carry-on-posters-austerity-ubiquity-sinister-implications - Recently, about how the slogan might have originated during the first world war exactly to address the panic surrounding the Spanish flu!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/coronavirus-spanish-flu-dark-history-keep-calm-carry-advice/
The Old Stable 