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Blossom
Joined: 30 May 2005
Posts: 291
Location: Beijing China
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 Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 1:57 pm Post subject: Two questions |
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China on Tuesday expressed its regret over the EU's recent failure to foot its pledge of lifting its arms sales ban to China. This was in our local newspaper.
I have two questions.
1. Why "China on Tuesday expressed"? Why not. "On Tuesday China expressed? Or "China expressed its regret on Tuesday"?
2. Whats does "a failure to foot its pledge" mean?
Help please/ |
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toe
Joined: 12 Jun 2005
Posts: 120
Location: michigan, usa
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| Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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newspapers follow a structure of most important information first. so if it makes the sentence sound odd, so be it. in this case, they wanted to establish China's importance in this news item. it's all about getting the information to the public fast. i think it's generally regarded that you have 3 seconds to grab the reader's attention. (i used to work at a newspaper)
and the sentence about "failure to foot its pledge"-----hm. i'm not familiar with this expression. foot = honor???
anyone???
toe |
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asterix
Joined: 26 Jan 2003
Posts: 1654
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| Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 9:29 am Post subject: |
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If you "Foot the bill" it means you pay it.
I think in your example it is intended to mean that the EU has not honoured its pledge. I have not seen "foot" used in this way before. |
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