Congratulations, again--one of the finest blogs there are.

Dola lit up when I asked her if Ben-Yehuda had a sense of humor when he created the modern language. “Oh, yes, definitely! There are many examples of whimsy in his choice of words.” For example? She laughed. “Clitoris. He decided on dagdegan, from the root l’dagdeg, to tickle.”…

Dutch kittelaar is Kitzler in German, with the same meaning and etymology, so Ben-Yehuda could have been inspired from Yiddish. Can't find an Yiddish online dictionary with an entry for clitoris, though. Maybe they're being ticklish with things non-kosher (Are they? Dunno, actually. Any reformed lady Rabbis around here? Then again, are reformed lady Rabbis kosher? If so, their poon, too?).

omar : I dont know how things look south of the Manson-Nixon line, but on the coasts the US is fast on its way to becoming the most polyglot nation on earth. And I have a theory that this fact alone guarantees American success in the next 50 years

Razib: seeing as how some african nations have *hundreds* of languages spoken in non-trivial proportions within their borders, this is probably not literally true :-) additionally, consider...

...what success that will guarantee them in the next 50 years. Prolly the same they had in the last 50. btw: Manson-Nixon has a ring to it--telling spelling, if I may say so. What Charlie's family did to Ms Polanski, polyglot polymorphic pervy goodness will do to us--polyglossia not being the really worrisome aspect. And heck, yes, it takes one of those rightly guided guys to tell us about how to succeed yankee-wise. ...I'm not supposed to rant hereabouts? Dang.

As Elaine said--wouldn't like to do without (even if the comment handling gets crapp..., um, niftier with every redo). Keep up the most excellent work anyway.

wikipedia - Made in Germany: 
 
The label was originally introduced in Britain by the Merchandise Marks Act 1887, to mark foreign produce more obviously, as British society considered foreign produce to be inferior to domestic produce, and tried to get buyers to adhere to the concept of 'buying British'. 
 
In 1894, however, the German Reichstag's commission already reported that after suffering slight losses, German manufacturers soon found the label to be of good use since they could distinguish themselves better from the British manufacturers. This led to more and more manufacturers voluntarily applying the label, and not even World War I, in which marks were mandatory in Britain in order to boycott the Central Powers countries' products, could dent the growing popularity of the mark. 
 
The term Made in Germany was soon associated with product reliability, quality and even perfection.