Why did Rudyard Kipling name his collection of stories for children the Just So Stories?Clue: it was to do with his young daughter and any parent who tells stories to their children might guess why !

Well I learned a label for this genre of writing tonight Fred that I didn't know before.
The Just so stories are etiological myths.

Basically Kipling used the title "Just So" because the stories contained information that couldn't be disproved or proved.

There's always that one precocious little kid in every group that questions everything. I was never like that of course.

Sorry, dance girl but the folklorist's use of the term 'just so' comes from the name of Kipling's collection. The question is why did Kipling call his collection that? (It's to do with his little girl and bedtime)

Hmm well i know that the childs name was Josephine and that the stories were written for her. So maybe its something to do with her name? Or maybe a way of settling her down to sleep at night.
Yes, clutching at straws here..Maybe I need to join the Kipling Society!

Your getting close,dance girl. Think of telling a story to a child , telling the favourite stories again and again. What does the child typically expect of your retelling?

Does this have anything to do with "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (Americans use the phrase just right)?

"Just so" in English (British? ) means ' precisely', 'exactly' or 'perfectly'.So what did Kipling find when retelling the favourite tales at bedtime ?

( The explanation of the title is both charming and touching as well as describing something familiar to many a parent. Kipling published the stories after the death of his litle girl, to whom he used to recount them. )

If he had the same experiences that I did, he found that any variation of a familiar story was immediately corrected by his child. The stories had to be "just so" or exactly as they were first told.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
If he had the same experiences that I did, he found that any variation of a familiar story was immediately corrected by his child. The stories had to be "just so" or exactly as they were first told.

Got it! Kipling found that his stories were a great success with his litle girl and she would insist that he tell them again. However he was trapped because she would remember every word, which was usually more than he could do He was, after all, the author, not just a reader. She would not rest until he had told each story in exactly the same way, so he had to remember them that way. Only after her premature death did he have them published. In her memory he called them The Just So Stories because that was how she always wanted them to be told : 'just so'.

Unfortunately for parents, young children often have fantastic memories.

By the way... AWESOME question !

quote:

Originally posted by dogspit:
By the way... AWESOME question !

Ta !

Note: 'Ta !' ='Thanks !' (Just thought: do Americans say 'Ta' ? Can't think you do )

Yes, but jokingly because it sounds a bit snooty to Americans. We usually say it to mean "goodbye," though, not "thanks."

quote:

Originally posted by Sarai:
Yes, but jokingly because it sounds a bit snooty to Americans. We usually say it to mean "goodbye," though, not "thanks."

I've heard it said as Ta-Ta which to us in the UK is the baby form of Good bye
TaRaah( in a soft tone on the 2nd syllable)is the accepted UK way of saying goodbye though the Posh people say it Taah - Taah which sounds false to most people. Avoid this trap !
You have hear how a British English speaker says it Most working class TV Comedy programmes from the UK include it in their script

Hi there,
Well I'm not posh by any means. But coming from the south of England I would often hear, and may have used it myself, "Taah Taah" for goodbye or just Taah for thanks.

Like you say you really have to hear it spoken.
As you know in the south the letter "a" is more often pronounced as a long "a" as opposed to a short soft "a"in the north.
British dialect is fascinating though.

We Ancient Britons can remember from childhood that our elders sometimes said "TTFN" when bidding goodbye. It stood for "Ta-ta for now" i.e " 'Bye for now" and was a catchphrase in a WW2 radio show called ITMA , which was itself an acronym of " It's that man again". (The show made much fun of the WW2 government and military obsession with creating acronyms for seemingly everything)

quote:

Originally posted by FredPuli:
We Ancient Britons can remember from childhood that our elders sometimes said "TTFN" when bidding goodbye. It stood for "Ta-ta for now" i.e " 'Bye for now"

Well, first of all, don't call yourself "ancient" because I know lots of people that say TTFN>
They might be considered a little odd maybe,
but then doesn't that apply to most English people!
Your phrase came up on this really interesting site. It made me feel a bit homesick, although I should quickly add, that there were a lot of phrases on here that I wouldn't have used down the pub!
http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/