My chickens do not usually come home to roost so rapidly. Only a fortnight ago I wrote that ‘some people use basta in English, but to my ears it sounds like saying ciao — inauthentic’. Then I went back to reading Jane Ridley’s Bertie, the life of Edward VII (and how much I enjoyed it too). What should I find on page 357? I found Queen Alexandra writing about what she would wear at the coronation in 1901. ‘I know better than all the milliners and antiquaries,’ she wrote. ‘I shall wear exactly what I like, and so shall all my ladies — Basta!’
I can hardly accuse a queen of England of speaking the King’s English inauthentically. But I wonder where she picked up basta. You might point out that Shakespeare had used it. That was in The Taming of the Shrew, where Lucentio says: ‘Basta, content thee.’
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