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__NOTOC__ "My postillion has been struck by lightning", "Our postillion has been struck by lightning", and other variations on the same pattern, are often given as examples of the ridiculous phrases supposed to have been found in phrase books or language instruction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The word ''postillion'' may occur in its alternative spelling ''postilion''. Although various forms of the sentence are widely cited, the exact wording and the context in which it is said to have originally been used vary. For example, a teaching manual attributes it to a Portuguese-English phrasebook:〔 〕 The phrase-book for Portuguese learners of English which included the often-quoted and bizarre sentence 'Pardon me, but your postillion has been struck by lightning' demonstrates a total lack of sense of context: who can have said this, to whom and in what circumstances? By contrast a linguistics textbook mentions the supposedly "apocryphal" phrase during a description of foreign language teaching in "the schoolrooms of Europe at the close of the nineteenth century":〔 〕 ()entences—especially constructed to contain only the grammar and vocabulary which had already been covered—were laboriously translated, in writing, into and out of the student's first language. Such sentences, often bizarrely remote from any conceivable use, have been the occasion for jokes ever since. We have probably all heard references to the apocryphal "My postilion has been struck by lightning" and the infamous ''plume de ma tante''. ==Origin== The source of the expression is obscure. Despite the quote's alleged nineteenth-century origin, author Nigel Rees reports in ''Brewer's Famous Quotations'' that he was unable to discover any reference earlier than the 1930s.〔 〕 However, the August 30, 1916 edition of the British magazine ''Punch'' includes this item: "An officer serving in the Balkans writes to say that he has just come across a Hungarian-English phrase-book which starts with the useful phrase, 'My postilion has been struck by lightning.'"〔(''Punch'', August 30, 1916; v. 151, p.162, col. 3 )〕 Another early usage of the phrase occurs in a 1932 book entitled ''Little Missions'', written by "Septimus Despencer":〔Despencer (1932), p. 49〕 It was my fortune once to be marooned for twenty-four hours in a siding of a railway station in what is now Jugoslavia but was then South Hungary. I wandered into the village, and in the village shop which sold everything I found a dozen of old second-hand books. One of them was a Magyar-English Manual of Conversation containing useful phrases such as every traveller needs to know. The first section was headed 'On the road', and the first sentence in it (which I instantly mastered) was: 'Dear me, our postilion has been struck by lightning.' This is the sort of thing that only happens in Hungary; and, when it happens, this is the sort of remark that only Hungarians make. According to its introduction, the travels reported in the book occurred during "()he three years following the armistice of 1918":〔 Despencer (1932), (p. 5 ) 〕 thus Despencer's discovery of the phrase would be dated during the period 1919-1921. In the April 2008 issue of the ''Quote ... Unquote'' newsletter, Nigel Rees speculates that the phrase "passed into general circulation" from Despencer's book.〔 〕 In a 1935 issue of ''Punch'' magazine, "Look! Our Postillion has been struck by lightning" is said to be "one of the 'Useful Common Phrases' appearing in a Dutch manual on the speaking of English".〔 〕 Examples of similar phrases do occur in nineteenth century phrase books. The 1870 edition of Baedeker's phrasebook gives German, French and Italian equivalents of the sentence "Are the postilions insolent?"〔 〕 The 1877 edition of John Murray's ''Handbook of Travel-Talk'' contains translations of "Oh, dear! The postilion has been thrown (off) down",〔 〕 followed in succession by "Is he hurt? Run for assistance to the nearest cottage", "Ask for a surgeon", "I am afraid that he has broken his leg—his arm", "He has bruised his head", and finally "He must be carried home gently".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「My postillion has been struck by lightning」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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