MSGID: 1:153/716.0 06539afa   
   REPLY: 2:221/6.0 60616be6   
   CHRS: IBMPC 2   
   Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:   
      
    AH>  But whether "Beauty" is seen there as the name of a   
    AH>  person or "beauty" in the general sense or both, the   
    AH>  article would still be omitted in English....   
      
                              [...]   
      
    AK>  I even heard that articles in titles are not necessary   
    AK>  in English at all. :)   
      
      
             That would be going a bit too far.  It is true that a title may have   
   the initial article listed at the end, following a commma, in the library card   
   catalogue & suchlike... e.g. CANADIAN OXFORD DICTIONARY, THE.  We have so many   
   titles beginning with "a(n)" or "the" we'd never find anything otherwise.  :-)   
      
             It is also true that I say "my CANADIAN OXFORD DICTIONARY" at times,   
   particularly in this echo, but I'm writing informally here.  If I were writing   
   an academic essay I'd make sure all the i's were dotted & all the t's crossed.   
      
      
      
    AK>  So it easily could be "Beaty and Beast", isn't it?   
      
      
             Only if both are proper nouns.  In this tale "the beast" is a prince   
   under a magic spell.  Whatever his real name is I doubt it's "Beast", although   
   he's listed that way in the movie credits.  AFAIC what matters for purposes of   
   this discussion is whether or not he's so named in the movie itself.   
      
             Other titles using proper nouns (as opposed to descriptors):   
      
      
                1)  names of people   
      
                     Huckleberry Finn   
                     Pippi Longstocking   
                     Peter Pan   
      
                     Damon and Pythias   
                     Frankie and Johnny   
                     ... possibly also   
      
                     Antony and Cleopatra   
                     Romeo and Juliet   
      
                     ... but Fowler's brought to my attention that HAMLET   
                     was known 'way back when by various titles which are   
                     generally shortened now by common consent.  The same   
                     may also apply to other Shakespearean plays....  :-)   
      
      
                2)  names of places   
      
                     Hawaii   
                     South Pacific   
                     New York, New York   
      
      
             Names of various abstract/theoretical ideas or fields of study often   
   appear without articles in English.  For this reason, I used "war" & "history"   
   among my examples... but if you need more examples I can probably come up with   
   other titles such as THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY or DUET FOR VIOLA AND CELLO.  :-)   
      
      
      
    AK>  Another thing is that the in the Disney's cartoon the   
    AK>  girl was called "Belle", not "Beauty". It is legal to   
    AK>  say that "Belle was a beauty". ;)   
      
      
             Uh-huh.  We adopted the word "belle" from French long ago... and use   
   it to refer to an attractive female, as seems to be the case here.  While I've   
   actually met a woman named (or nicknamed) "Belle", though, I don't know anyone   
   named "Beauty".  Like music, translation is as much an art as a science.  :-))   
      
      
      
    AK>  In Russia we consider the cartoon name as, probably,   
    AK>  "The beautiful girl and the beast".   
      
      
             That's how I'd interpret the title of the story in French & Italian.   
   But I know that, in French at least, it's not acceptable to leave out articles   
   the way we often seem to do in English from time to time....  :-)   
      
      
      
      
   --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+   
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