On this birth anniversary of Marcel Marceau—the French mime was born with the original surname Mangel on this date in 1923—we pay homage to the man whose fluency with English led him to serve as an aide to General Patton and whose silent skills led him to perform before thousands of G.I.s. (来源：英语杂志 http://www.EnglishCN.com)

After decades of letting his body do his talking, Marcel Marceau eventually spoke up about his father's death at Auschwitz and his own work in the French Resistance. That's not to say Marceau gave up on silence; in addition to advising, "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," Marcel Marceau also asked, "Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?"

True enough, but our English lexicon borrowed widely when it came to naming all sorts of talk. The French verb for "gossip," bavarder, gave us bavardage, meaning "small talk; chitchat." On-dit, which means "they say; it is said" in French, in English is used to name a report or piece of gossip. And consider these three relatively unusual (and chiefly Scottish) additions: blaflum, meaning "empty talk;" clishmaclaver, meaning "idle talk; gossip;" and fraise, meaning "flattery, cajolery, empty talk."

Finally, we can thank the Hindi word for "tumult; uproar, noise" for the English walla-walla, meaning "unintelligible sound produced by many people talking at once."