Michigan State University's ASL Browser web site is "an online American Sign Language (ASL) browser where you can look up video of thousands of ASL signs and learn interesting things about them." Extremely useful—film clips are far more helpful than verbal descriptions for learning sign language. (Via MetaFilter.)
Addendum. ASL poetry:
Prior to the 1970s, there are no published records about ASL poets or poetry. To be sure, the art of storytelling has a long history in ASL and Deaf culture, and skilled storytellers are revered as in other cultures. In the 1960s, William Stokoe of Gallaudet University began the first analysis of sign language based upon linguistic principles. As the understanding and acceptance of these ideas of ASL structure spread, so did the art of manipulating these structures for poetic effect. Valli reports that by the 1970s, there may have been as many as five ASL poets. At first, many Deaf people were resistant even to the idea of poetry; upon hearing of a poetry performance, one woman tells that she believed it was a performance for a translation of an English poem, much like a performance of music put to sign. In fact, the sign for POETRY in ASL is nearly identical to the sign for MUSIC. Realizing that he would need to overcome such misconceptions to gain acceptance, Valli stopped using the sign POETRY, and for many years fingerspelled P-O-E-T when speaking of ASL poetry. Now, a new sign has emerged into popular use, which clearly distinguishes ASL poetry from English poetry.Via an AskMetaFilter thread "Does the concept of 'rhyme' exist in sign language?," which also links to this article on Translating Shakespeare into sign language:
"The most difficult part is rhyming," explains Novak, noting that rhyme is by definition a similarity of sounds, a concept that is inherently foreign to sign language. The way out of the paradox, he explains, is to find close visual images to translate the text. Sometimes, it can take hours to come up with just the right adaptation, he notes.
The Loeb Greek texts of the Apostolic Fathers (Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, et al) are online. As Chris Culver of Nephelokokkygia, from whom I take the link, says:
This collection is, I feel, among the best introductions to Koine Greek for students. Sure, the New Testament might be the most famous work in that dialect, but it makes a poor challenge because most people already have the translation of so many passages lurking in their subconscious. The Septuagint is full of idiosyncratic Hebraisms which are often quite charming but not the best representative of the majority of Koine texts. The epistles of Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement, on the other hand, are unfamiliar works to the average student, and their prose is relatively free of solecisms.
The Glossarist is "a compendium of glossaries on various subjects":
Looking for the definition of a term in a particular subject can be difficult and time consuming. That's where the Glossarist can help you look. Just choose a subject or search for the industry you are interested in at the top.The current Featured Glossary is The Alphabetary Heraldic: A Genealogical Glossary of the Matrices and Patrices of Familial Life/ Arranged as an Immodest Companion for Heraldic Visitation/ With Notations and Phrases Typical of Anthropology, History, and Biography/ Based on Saxon, Latin, and Greek, and Annotated with Comparative Expressions in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Japanese, and Chinese./ Editio princeps by John R. Mayer.
A few entries, to give you a feel for the wide-ranging coverage:
folio 3 usque ad folium 5 : from folio 3 through folio 5. Cf. folium.
a h-aon a’s a h-aon I ngaol : [Ir] literally one and one in blood relationship; brother and sister; a pair of siblings removed from the apical ancestor by just one step. Cf. a dó a’s a dó I ngaol.
a quibus : from which.
a quibus Leonello et Elisabeth filia processit nomine Philippa heres unica : from which Lionel and Elizabeth proceeded a daughter, one heir named Philippa.
A, a : [Sumerian] open vowel, one of the three primal Sumerian vowels.
abjure the realm : to exile oneself from the country and promise to never return except by leave of the king.
Absaroka : Absaroke : [MT, WY] the native tribal name of the Crow.
abstract : deed abstract, land abstract; a concise summary of the stipulations and the land plat of a deed; will abstract, an abbreviated record of one’s last will and testament showing the names of beneficiaries, witnesses, and executors. A clerk creates an abstract to record a document or transaction in a register. Cf. catalogus, register.
(Via wood s lot.)
Since I've complained about the shortage of translations of Arabic literature, I thought I should call readers' attention to some books that the University of California Press very kindly makes available online as part of their Public eScholarship Editions (in this case, the Middle Eastern Studies) section: Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982; Bahaa' Taher, Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery: A Novel; Ibrahim Muhawi (Darwish) and Sharif Kanaana, Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales. Other titles of LH relevance:
Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society:
In this innovative combination of anthropology, history, and postmodern theory, Brinkley Messick examines the changing relation of writing and authority in a Muslim society from the late nineteenth century to the present. The creation and interpretation of texts, from sacred scriptures to administrative and legal contracts, are among the fundamental ways that authority is established and maintained in a complex state. Yet few scholars have explored this process and the ways in which it changes, especially outside the Western world.Messick brings together intensive ethnography and textual analysis from a wealth of material: Islamic jurisprudence, Yemeni histories, local documents.Irene A. Bierman, Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text:
Irene Bierman explores the complex relationship between alphabet and language as well as the ways the two elements are socially defined by time and place. She focuses her exploration on the Eastern Mediterranean in the sixth through twelfth centuries, notably Cairo's Fatimid dynasty of 969-1171. Examining the inscriptions on Fatimid architecture and textiles, Bierman offers insight into all elements of that society, from religion to the economy, and the enormous changes the dynasty underwent during that period. Bierman addresses fundamental issues of what buildings mean, how inscriptions affect that meaning, and the role of written messages and the ceremonies into which they are incorporated in service of propagandist goals. Her method and conclusions provide a pioneering model for studying public writing in other societies and offer powerful evidence to show that writing is a highly charged and deeply embedded social practice.These free UCal editions are a tremendous resource; if you don't already know them, be sure to investigate. The Middle East stuff is a drop in the bucket.
The Online Dictionary of Playground Slang. A lot of the entries don't seem particularly "playground," and the definitions can be haphazard, but the brio and Chris Lewis's commentary make up for a lot. Examples:
man-of-atlantis: Useless swimming stroke based on Patrick Duffy in the television series.
manners: 'Manners' was a term used to point out that another kid was inferior to you, in the way they dressed, at sports, physically, or just in general. If you were 'under manners' this could also mean that you were in trouble, or being watched by a teacher in class, so had to be quiet. Obviously, it was used to tease and show that you could still continue to behave badly, whilst they were - indeed - 'under manners', I heard this all through secondary school. Incidentally, my school - Quintin Kynaston - was the school that Graham McPherson, 'Suggs' from Madness went to, and wrote the song 'Baggy Trousers' about!
(Via MetaFilter.)
Türkçestan, Orientaal's links to Turkic languages, is an amazing resource, with links to texts in Altai, Azerbaijani, Balkar, Bashkir, Chagatay, Chuvash, Cuman, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Karachay, Karaim, Kazakh, Khakas, Kumyk, Kyrgyz, Nogay, Old Uyghur, Orkhon, Ottoman, Shor, Tatar, Tofa, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvan, Uyghur, Uzbek, Yakut, and Yellow Uyghur, in all relevant alphabets and often with audio clips. Furthermore, the Orientaal site also has Türkçekent , pages for Turkish Language Learning; Arabistan, pages for Arabic Language Learning; Farsiabad, pages for Persian Language Learning; Russkograd, pages for Russian Language Learning; and Shqip, pages for Albanian Language Learning. I haven't investigated them yet, but I imagine there's good material there.
These riches come via Renee, whose interesting entry on "Negations and epic poetry" also links to material on Bashkir, as well as quoting a Bashkir epic in Bashkir, Russian and English.
A Man may make a Remark –
In itself – a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature – lain –Let us divide – with skill –
Let us discourse – with care –
Powder exists in Charcoal –
Before it exists in Fire –– Emily Dickinson
913 (1865)
Via the Eudæmonist.
I've begun reading The Shi'is of Iraq, by Yitzhak Nakash, and was struck in the first chapter by the mention of the Mamluk rulers of Iraq, who had virtual autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, and I started googling around to find out more about them. A tantalizing Angelfire page said:
The last Mamluk governor of Iraq, Da'ud Pasha (1816-31), turned increasingly to Europe for weapons and advisers to equip and train his military force and endeavoured to improve communications and promote trade; in this respect he resembled his contemporary in Egypt, Muhammad 'Ali Pasha. But, whereas Muhammad 'Ali's Egypt drew closer to France, it was Great Britain that continued to strengthen its position in the Persian Gulf and Iraq.Imagine my delighted surprise when I discovered that Abdelrahman Munif had written a three-volume historical novel, Ard Al-Sawad ('the Dark Land,' the tradition Arabic name for the Iraqi lowlands), about this very Da'ud Pasha and his times:The fall of Da'ud can be attributed in part to the determination of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-39) to curtail provincial autonomy and restore the central authority of his government throughout the realm...
The life of Dawoud Pasha, the famous wali (governor) of Baghdad and one of the main characters in Ard Al-Sawad, is well known to historians. Born in Georgia in c.1774 to Christian parents, Dawoud came to Baghdad as a Mameluke, or member of an indentured servant or military caste, at the age of 10, changing masters until he reached the court of Soliman Pasha Al-Kabir, who was impressed by the boy's intelligence and love of the sciences. At a fairly early age Dawoud had mastered Arabic, Turkish and Persian and excelled at mathematics and, in recognition of his labours, Soliman duly appointed him court treasurer (khazindar).Now imagine my bitterness when I realized that I will almost certainly never be able to read this novel, which in a better world would already have been translated (it was published in 1999) and would be informing our interaction with Iraq. But who will spend the money and take the risk involved in translating a huge novel from Arabic, when translations sell so badly in general and no one is interested in Arab culture? It's a miracle that Cities of Salt was published, but I can't imagine it made much or any money, and I seriously doubt any publisher would be tempted to throw more money after it. If Munif had won the Nobel, of course, things would be different—Mahfouz had a flood of English publications after his award. But without that kind of spotlight, Arabic literature is basically a black hole when viewed from the solipsistic shores of the US. I can't tell you how much I wish that weren't so.Dawoud went on to marry the youngest of Soliman's daughters. In 1817 he became wali of Baghdad, but was defeated by the forces of the Ottoman Sultan Mahmoud II in 1831 and subsequently expelled from the city. Quite uncharacteristically, given the usual Ottoman practice, he was pardoned and held smaller governorships in the Ottoman Empire, including that of Bosnia (1833-35) and Ankara (1839-1840). In 1840 Dawoud retired to Medina, where he stayed until his death in 1850, being buried in the vicinity of the Prophet's shrine in that city.
Such is a thumbnail sketch of the life of Dawoud Pasha... In order to understand the significance of Dawoud Pasha's career, one needs to remember that the period 1775-1831 witnessed the relative breakdown of central authority in the Ottoman system, meaning that the administration in Constantinople lost effective control over many provincial governors, especially in the Fertile Crescent. This led to the rise to power of various local rulers, in many cases only nominally recognising the sultan's authority, in Iraq and elsewhere, and foremost among these as far as the north-eastern part of Ottoman territories were concerned were the Mamelukes who gained power in Baghdad and, by extension, in Basra, which, then and now, was Iraq's main port and the outlet of its trade to the outside world. The Mamelukes settled their affairs among themselves by force or by conspiracy, often leaving Constantinople with little choice other than to give its seal of approval to whomever had successfully seized power.
It is against this background of the deterioration in Ottoman power and the rising influence of the Western imperialist powers in the region that the events of the novel unfold. This backdrop, the properly historical part of the novel, must continuously be borne in mind when reading its narrative of events, which, with the exception of an introductory Prelude of a few, highly charged pages and occasional flashbacks, deal only with the first four years of Dawoud's period in office in Baghdad. Its final chapter ends in the year 1821 with the departure from Baghdad of the British Consul-General Claudius James Ritch, following a period of bitter strife between him and Dawoud Pasha, a strife emanating from the latter's eagerness to check the growing influence of the rising foreign powers over the political life of the country...
One of the main features of Ard Al-Sawad, in fact, and one that is likely to stick in the mind of any sensitive reader of the novel, is the meticulous care with which the details of the lives of ordinary people living at the time have been rendered. One leaves the novel with an abiding impression of these people's daily struggles, and this impression transcends the boundaries of the historical period and lends the novel a universal significance. It is these ordinary people, the people of Iraq then and now, who occupy centre stage in Mounif's narrative. Mamelukes, walis and the representatives of foreign powers may crisscross the historical stage, mostly wielding knives ready to stab into each others' backs, but Mounif's "love-song" to Iraq, as the novelist describes his work, is dedicated to these ordinary Iraqi people. The book perhaps may best be understood in these terms, for its true subject is the people of Iraq and the stern, yet all-embracing, natural environment in which they live: the overflowing Tigris drowning all about it; the clear springs of the north of the country flowing through the mountains; the burning sun of the desert, appeased only by torrential rains; the bewildering accumulation of the country's smells and textures. These features are equally characteristic of the Iraqi national character; underneath the gravity and apparent grimness which beset the Iraqi people, there flow the tender springs of emotion.
I was pleased to learn, via a thread at Tenser, said the Tensor, that a lack of fricatives or affricates is "virtually universal for all Australian languages, of all families." Furthermore, the phenomenon is almost entirely limited to Australia and the adjacent regions; the list given by The Tensor (created from the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database) has only two outliers (AUCA: S. American, Andean; DINKA: Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic, Dinka-Nuer); as he says, "That's an areal feature if I've ever seen one." And yet another rebuttal to the universalists (who used to claim that all languages have fricatives).
I wasn't expecting much when I visited the Illyrian language site (whose title bar reads "Who were Illyrians?"). It had all the earmarks of a crackpot site: bad English, shaky formatting, unsupported statements, uncertain grasp of the difference between myth and history. But when I scrolled down the (near-endless) page, I found (below the dynastic tables, king lists, "History of the Eagle," &c) a heading Indo - European Etymological Dictionary. When I clicked on Part I, I discovered this was Pokorny's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, the basic tool of the Indo-Europeanist, in easily readable form.
The database represents the updated text of J. Pokorny's "Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch", scanned and recognized by George Starostin (Moscow), who has also added the meanings. The database was further refurnished and corrected by A. Lubotsky. Pokorny's text is given practically unchanged (only a few obvious typos were corrected), except for some rearrangement of the material.(It's supposedly online here, but the interface is so annoying I never bother using it.) Additional material is highlighted in vivid yellow so that it can be distinguished; I don't know who wrote it, but I suspect the author of the website ("An impact of illyr. on balt. languages has been felt through Estonian veli 'brother', Finnish veli 'brother'. Clearly the Finno-Ugric group has met with Indo European family through Illyrians"). I can't tell you how happy this resource makes me.
To save us all trouble, I'll provide direct links to the sections of Pokorny so nobody has to keep scrolling down the Illyrian page:
Part I (*abh- to *dens-)
Part II (*deph- to *gou̯ǝ-/gū- 'hand')
Part III: *gou̯ǝ-/gū- 'call, cry' to *k̂ē(i)-)
Part IV: (*k̂ēko- to *pid-)
Part V: (*pik(h)o- to *su̯elplo-s)
Part VI: (*su̯em- to *ū̆d-, plus a few additional lemmas)
A sample of the website's style:
Illyrian could be one of the oldest written Indo European languages. The rise of Illyrian civilization corresponds to the sudden vanquishing of Hittite civilization in adjacent Anatolia. The first Illyrian king Hyllus was identified with alb. hyll 'star, sun', gr. ????? (helios) 'sun. etc. The dead ruler was certainly deified as all ancient kings were turned into gods. His appellation meant 'the rising sun'. The closest language to Illyrian seems to have been Hittite. The settlers of Anatolia spoke a similar language to that of Balkan neighbors. Hittite people also practiced the process of deification of their kings the same as Illyrians did. Obviously the sun god played a dominant role among settlers of cold Europe. Stonehenge monuments littering Europe indicate that Illyrians and Celts together with Hittite people worshipped the sun more than any other god. The rising sun gave Illyrian and Hittite priestly class the inspiration of a quick resurrection after death. This is the reason why Christianity would be so popular among Illyrians several millennia later. The vehicle of the resurrection was considered to be the all seeing-eye, the sun god. Hittites must have penetrated the Balkan Peninsula through Greece. So powerful was the temptation of sun worship that the ruling class of Greek states began to call themselves ????????? (Helenikos) after the sun god. The entire country was called then ?????? (Hellada) and the Greeks ?????????; ?????; ????????; ???????; ???????? (Helens).You see my point.
Another great online discovery: Richard Burton's maniacally detailed translation of the Thousand Nights and a Night, complete with footnotes.
Moreover, holding that the translator's glory is to add something to his native tongue, while avoiding the hideous hag-like nakedness of Torrens and the bald literalism of Lane, I have carefully Englished the picturesque turns and novel expressions of the original in all their outlandishness; for instance, when the dust cloud raised by a tramping host is described as "walling the horizon." Hence peculiar attention has been paid to the tropes and figures which the Arabic language often packs into a single term; and I have never hesitated to coin a word when wanted, such as "she snorted and sparked," fully to represent the original. These, like many in Rabelais, are mere barbarisms unless generally adopted; in which case they become civilised and common currency.Lose yourselves, gentle readers...
"...But when it was midnight Shahrázád awoke and signalled to her sister Dunyázád who sat up and said, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, recite to us some new story, delightsome and delectable wherewith to while away the waking hours of our latter night." "With joy and goodly gree," answered Shahrázád, "if this pious and auspicious King permit me." "Tell on," quoth the King who chanced to be sleepless and restless and therefore was pleased with the prospect of hearing her story."
Another enjoyable specialty site courtesy of Wordorigins. Some examples:
EEL THING: ErysipelasNot to mention the mysterious DEATH FROM TEETHING.
MORMAL: Gangrene
MORPHEW: Scurvy blisters on the body
Joseph M. Romero's "Life Among the Lexicographers" is a description of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) and its creators, and it discusses both particular dialect terms and the decisions on whether to include them. This is a neat example of both:
When in doubt, DARE editors tend to err on the side of inclusion. Many words are amply attested—that is, there are plenty of recorded uses. Others appear only once. Should poorly attested words be excluded? The phrase trade-last, for one—meaning a kind of quid pro quo—”I’ll say something nice about you if you say something nice about me first”—is found scattered throughout the country, especially among older speakers. A regional variant, last-go-trade, is found in the middle and south Atlantic and has an entry of its own; but what about Alaskan trade, which means exactly the same thing but appears only once in the sources available to DARE? “It was important to include Alaskan trade even with only one instance, because it’s a wonderful example of the process of folk etymology,” says Hall. “Someone who is unfamiliar with the folk tradition of trading compliments hears the phrase last-go-trade, doesn’t quite understand it, and tries to make it meaningful by substituting a word that is familiar. Since Alaska is, to most Americans, a far-away and exotic place, it makes sense to the hearer that the unusual custom would be an Alaskan trade.”(Via wood s lot, which has good links on slang as well today.)
The dictionary's website is very informative, but I can't (or don't know how to) link to individual sections. If you're interested in helping them with the fifth volume, click on the QUERIES link at the left and see if you know any of the terms they're asking about, from slang-jang 'A dish containing oysters, onions, pickles, peppers, etc' to turkey apple, turkey haw 'A hawthorn (Crataegus mollis).' Your strange family word may be a lexicographer's lemma!
Konrad Lawson of Muninn has a fascinating post about the construction of the Qiang (K'iang) nationality out of an ancient catchall term.
The Qiang, which are now one of 55 recognized "nationalities" in China, with a population of about 220,000, have connected themselves historically to the much broader Han historical category which until very recently referred to a broad range of ethnic groups classified as barbarians on China's periphery. While I can think of a few other potential examples, this is a nice twist on a common theme in the formation of national identity. Instead of linking itself to an empire, a language, an island, etc. that could help the newborn Qiang nationality to distinguish itself from some Other, the Qiang nationality was born out [of] Han China's own "Other." The fact that there was no linguistically, culturally, or even geographically consistent historical community which corresponded to what the Han called the Qiang is, like all formations of national identity from Norwegians to Japanese, pretty much irrelevant.Anyone at all interested in ethnicity and the "invention of tradition" should read it.According to Wang, from the late Han to the Ming periods, the concept of the Qiang was something close to "those people in the west who are not one of us" and included a huge range of people along [the] eastern edges of [the] Tibetan Plateau. Over time, the Chinese empires would come to classify these peoples into smaller and smaller distinct groups and those who were called the Qiang by the Han shifted (linguistically, not physically) further and further to the West until this bumped into Tibetan cultural communities that the Chinese categorized as the Fan 番. Ultimately, the Qiang ended up being the small group of mountain dwellers in the small geographic area they occupy today (the upper Min River Valley).
Lawson also has an excellent post on the history of Chinese character reform movements in Taiwan. Like him, I had thought the story of character reform was "the mainland Communist regime pointing to their characters as 'progressive' and a contribution to increased literacy through simplification,... the Taiwanese, with their more complicated characters boasting that they alone preserve China's written culture with its beautiful and semantically rich characters." But it turns out that there was a movement for character reform in Taiwan as well—supported by Chiang Kai-shek! A survey by "the Taiwanese newspaper 聯合報 from April 1954" showed that "a solid majority of Taiwanese supported the reform movement, which collapsed shortly thereafter." I'd like to know more about that episode, which has been pretty much forgotten (at least nobody mentioned it when I lived in Taiwan in the '70s).
Update. See Joel's Far Outliers entry on why alphabetization, which Mao favored, never happened on the mainland:
The Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, represents the climax of China's disillusionment with its traditions. But, ironically, the upheaval helped protect the characters. When the chaos finally ended, the Chinese no longer had an appetite for radical cultural change, and both the public and the government rejected further attempts at writing reform.
Margaret Marks of Transblawg ponders the question (Spiegel link, in German) of how to handle English loanwords caught in the clutches of German grammar:
In principle, says the article, treat the words just as the English language treats words from the German: bratwurst, bratwursts, abseil, abseiling (but I write Land, Länder in English texts and can’t bring myself to write Amtsgerichts - or bratwursts for that matter).Sometimes you can avoid the problem by using a German word: not forgewardet or geforwardet, but weitergeleitet; not gevotet, but abgestimmt; not upgedated, but aktualisiert; not gebackupt, but gesichert.
But sometimes the English word is simpler than the German: gestylt, gepixelt, gescannt, simsen (to send SMSs), chatten.
Access to the electronic Middle English Dictionary is currently free on a trial basis.
The print MED, completed in 2001, has been described as "the greatest achievement in medieval scholarship in America." Its 15,000 pages offer a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind available. This electronic version of the MED preserves all the details of the print MED, but goes far beyond this, by converting its contents into an enormous database, searchable in ways impossible within any print dictionary.Grab it while you can! (Thanks, as so often, to aldiboronti at Wordorigins.)
Eddie at Romanika has a long and excellent post on the differences between the two major varieties of Portuguese, taking off from the fact that Portuguese soap operas are now being imported into Brazil, dubbed into... Portuguese. The Brazilian variety. Eddie has many things to say about this, including the differences in pronunciation and grammar and his own personal experience communicating with Brazilians. Check it out.
Update. Avva has a thread (in Russian) discussing what other pairs of dialects/languages might have similarly asymmetrical dubbing/translation needs (Hochdeutsch and Swiss German? Egyptian and other Arabic dialects?).
I just discovered Erika's blog, kitten.ofdoom.com, whose subtitle is "Linguistics, fiber arts, politics, and assorted randomness." Her latest entry discusses a subject of considerable interest, how translators deal with a text that "makes a reference to or quotes something that is originally in not the language of the text, but in the target language that the translator is transposing the text into or... that is most familiar to the audience from a specific source in their own language." Her example is a Bible quote, not perhaps the best because the version she cites is probably (as she says) just something other than the familiar King James text; I dealt with it in my entry on the movie Lost in Translation, but someday I should do a more comprehensive treatment. Her blog's been around since last October, at which time she was writing haiku in Japanese
Another wonderful specialty word site, this time giving the histories of elements and their names, as well as translations of those names into as many languages as the site's creator, Peter van der Krogt, could find.
I am not a chemist, but a (map) historian much interested in the origin of names. On several of the sites listing elements you will find historical notes and often an explanation of the origin of element names. However, mostly, the authors of these pages copy each other and the same errors and mistakes are repeated. I tried to do some new etymological research on the element names, and find the original articles where the discoverer of a new element announced his find and explained the naming.There's a list of updates; the latest is:The major part is formed by 115 pages, each describing one element. These pages can be accessed in a number of ways: by name (in dozens of languages), atomic number, date of discovery, discoverer, name origin etc. (see list to the left)...
17 April 2004: Two new languages, Armenian and Mokshan. Elements 101-110 in Latvian added (thanks to Janis Vindavs).Have I mentioned that I love the internet?
Via an anonymous comment at Cannylinguist, whose entry on German borrowings in English is amusing and worth reading in its own right.
Renee of Glosses.net has a very interesting entry today on the Russian word that was originally keif and is now kaif (when and why did it change?); it's from the Arabo-Persian keyf 'opiate; intoxication; pleasure, enjoyment' (borrowed into English in various forms, listed in the OED as kef 'a state of drowsiness or dreamy intoxication, such as is produced by the use of bhang; the enjoyment of idleness; dolce far niente'). The word was used by Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and others, but it's come down in the world, as Renee says:
Today 'kajf' is famous from the jargon of narkomany (drug abusers), where it can denote any drug. But kajf is in no way limited to drug culture. Poimal kaif/slovil kaif lit. "caught some kajf" is "I had fun". The expression v kaif as in eto mne v kaif 'this is fun to me' is extremely prolific (about 790 Google hits today). Two frequent verbal formations from kajf [are] kajfovat' "to have fun/ to be high" and kajfanut' "to get high".
Incidentally, shortly after the entry kef in the OED comes kehaya 'a Turkish viceroy, deputy, agent, etc; a local governor; a village chief.' You'd never know it, but it turns out to be from Persian katkhuda 'viceroy, vicar, deputy,' which itself is perfectly straightforward: kad 'house' + khuda 'master.'
The Omnia online dictionary defines [non-]Polish words [and expressions] in Polish, and thus is not of much use to those who do not know that language—except that it also includes etymologies, so if you have even a basic acquaintance with Slavic it serves as a fine companion to etymological dictionaries for other Slavic languages (like mine for Russian and Czech). And it seems to cast its net quite widely, judging from the fact that it has an entry for scouse, "bryt. ang. slang, dialekt mieszkaƒców Liverpoolu (miasto w Lancashire na zach. wybrze´´u Êrodk. Anglii)." The main problem is the special Polish characters, which (as you can see) do not reproduce well, and which I have no idea how to input into the search box, so that I can't look up (for instance) the word slowo 'word' (which has a barred l, pronounced /w/) [and which is probably not there anyway, being Polish]. If anyone knows how to do this, the info will be much appreciated.
I meant to post this earlier, but there are still several days left: Gale is allowing free access to their reference databases this week (April 18-24). Here's the "portal" from which you can enter the four categories: History, Biography and Literature, Business and Law, General Knowledge, and Student/Homework Help. The most exciting database for me is the Times Digital Archive 1785-1985. I did a search on "kangaroo" between 1785 and 1800 and got 36 hits, the first of which was a classified ad from the front page of the Wednesday, Nov 16, 1791 edition:
THE WONDERFUL KANGAROO FROM BOTANY BAY.To the left, in the (doubtless most expensive) upper left-hand corner, is a Drury-Lane Company ad for the evening's performance of "The Inconstant" ("To which will be added the Historical Romance of RICHARD COEUR DE LION"); to the right a publication notice for "THE FEMALE GENIAD; a POEM, in THREE CANTOS. By ELIZABETH OGILVY BENGER, Of Portsmouth." I don't know how I lived without this until now, or how I'll do without it after Saturday, but for now I'm happy as can be.
A Most beautiful and healthy Animal, in a state of perfect tameness, and entirely free from every kind of blemish, is now exhibiting at No. 31, the Top of the Haymarket. Admittance One Shilling each.
It is not easy to describe that peculiarity of attitudes, and uncommon proportion of parts which so strikingly distinguish the Kangaroo from all other Quadrupedes; and it may be presumed, that few who possess a taste for science, or a laudable curiosity of inspecting the Wonders of Nature, will omit embracing the only opportunity hitherto offered in Europe of viewing this singular Native of the Southern Hemisphere, in its natural state of vigour and activity.
Geoff Pullum has been beating down the myth of the many Eskimo words for snow since forever, so he's doubtless seen Phil James's The Eskimos' Hundred Words for Snow, which has apparently been around since at least 1996—but it's new to me and perhaps to you, so pay it a visit. (Via Jim Gorman at Wordorigin.)
In case you didn't look very closely at the list, I will advise you now that it is a joke. It has entries like "puntla: a mouthful of snow because you fibbed" and "tla-na-na: snow mixed with the sound of old rock and roll from a portable radio." Do not cite it as an Inuit reference!
This amazing site offers a comprehensive collection of Icelandic sagas and other early Germanic material:
The Saganet is a cooperative project by The National and University Library of Iceland and Cornell University with the association of the Árni Magnússon Institute to give access via the Internet to digital images of about 240.000 manuscript pages and 153.000 printed pages. The Saganet was opened on July 1, 2001 but work started on July 1, 1997.There are detailed instructions for searching and browsing, and (mirabile dictu) you can easily link to individual pages; for instance, here's the first page of one of many copies of Njáls saga (all grouped under one "uniform name," no matter what the individual MS is called). Many thanks to Incoming Signals for the link.The material consists of the entire range of Icelandic family sagas. It also includes a very large portion of Germanic/Nordic mythology (the Eddas), the history of Norwegian kings, contemporary sagas and tales from the European age of chivalry. A great number of manuscripts contain Icelandic ballads, poetry or epigrams. These Collections are kept in The National and University Library of Iceland, The Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland and in the Fiske Icelandic Collection at Cornell University. All manuscripts, on vellum and paper, and printed editions and translations of the Sagas as well as relevant critical studies published before 1900 are included and available through the Internet.
OK, first go to this Amherst Magazine page and observe the strange device there pictured. The magazine says it "comes from the college’s Archives and Special Collections and is currently in President Anthony W. Marx’s office. It’s an intriguing object, but no one at the college knows what its original purpose might have been." The mystery has been solved, but you may want to cogitate upon it for a moment and speculate before going to the extended entry and discovering the solution.
The answer was revealed at BoingBoing by Mel Johnson and Anne of Explananda: it's a conformateur, a device "apparently patented in the 1850s by one Monsieur Maillard" for registering the exact shape of a head so that a hat can be made to fit it precisely (and an obscure enough word that it's not in the OED). Anne links to a droll image of one sitting on a head, and a Sunset article by Peter Fish describes its use:
To ensure a good fit—tight, so the hat won't fly off in a strong prairie wind—Rand gives the outside of your head a lot more attention than it's used to. First comes a tape measure.As a lover of both words and hats, I welcome the conformateur to this space. (Via Ask MetaFilter.)"You're between sizes," Rand tells me. "Seven and a quarter and seven and three-eighths."
Rand then brings out the conformateur, which looks like the offspring of a homburg and a manual typewriter. The conformateur, used by 19th-century hatmakers (Rand's four conformateurs are all more than 100 years old), is pressed down upon you to produce a paper template of your skull in all its imperfection.
"My head is lopsided," I say when Rand shows me my template.
"A lot of people's are," he says. "There are some really odd-shaped heads out there."
The sword of reason is being wielded with a mighty wielding over at Language Log. First Bill Poser whacks Steven Pinker for including an alleged family tree entitled "The Ancestry of Modern English" in his book Words and Rules; in the tree:
Indo-European is shown as a daughter of Eurasiatic and a sister of Uralic and Altaic. No other subgroups of Eurasiatic are shown. Eurasiatic in turn is shown as a subgroup of Nostratic, with Dravidian and Afro-Asiatic as the other subgroups. Nostratic in turn is shown as a sister of Sino-Tibetan and New Guinea, with the parent labelled with a question mark.Not only is this completely loony, there's no reason for it to even be there:
The chapter is devoted to showing that rules are not restricted to English but are found in a variety of other languages. The approach that Pinker takes is to start with languages closely related to English and show how remoter and remoter languages also have rules. All that really matters is that his examples not be closely related. He could have made the same point just as well without any discussion of remote genetic relationships.Next, Mark Liberman quotes Rivka at Respectful of Otters giving Camille Paglia hell for not thinking clearly about the difference between the students she remembers from her college days and those she teaches now, and adds sagely "I try to be suspicious of generational generalizations based on nothing but my own personal observation, because of the sampling bias that Rivka describes, as well as the mythologizing effects of selective memory." Finally, Geoffrey K. Pullum lets loose on the know-nothingism that forces John Kerry to try to conceal the fact that he's fluent in French. Go get 'em, Loggers!
I've been resisting the meme that's been going around, even though it appeals to my book fetish, but the variation at Incoming Signals intrigues me enough to go along.
The rules for 23/5 Exquisite Corpse, again, are:So here goes:Take the nearest six to ten books from your shelf.
Open them to page 23, and find the fifth sentence.
Write down those sentences and arrange them to form a short story.
Post the text in your journal along with these instructions.
He was revealing the basic mysteries of his craft, and was happy, making the while the broad series of stock pleasantries which have probably been current in composing rooms since printing was invented.1 He paused to enhance the dramatic effect of what he was about to say.2 What is the easiest thing?3 "Nothing to find out," he cut in.4 Then he ceased struggling and pleaded with them to stop.5 They seemed very angry, so I thought I had better go.6 Above these the ever-present birds of prey, the vultures, ravens and kites, weave slow and intricate patterns upon the hard blue sky.71Betty Binns, Better Type
Addendum. I just found a great one at Eve's Swamp, and I thought I'd reprint it here for everyone's delectation; visit Eve for the sources:
I didn't know that I was adopted, so I don't know why I gave my clothes away, but I did. But the new sciences would point the way toward the fundamental nature of life and mind, mysteries that the physical sciences had never been able to touch. The waterspout did a big dance over the sea, leaning and twirling and the whale whirled in its coils, with corks and bottles, high up over the sea. After short silence then and summons read, the great consult began. "Boys," said the Colonel, after a moment's reflection, "I'm not sure what I'm getting into, but Hobson will be out of your tent today. We don't have to establish his 'character.' But you will be my equal if you tame the haughty Moor and our fierce Scythian foe: Love binds us in a fellowship of woe." Case felt the weight of the night come down on him like a bag of wet sand settling behind his eyes. Several times he seemed to shrink up within himself at the noise of the American Press on the terrace above—the terrace which was popularly believed to be safer from hand-grenades.
The Camp Chase Gazette ("the first, best, and at present the only nationally distributed publication devoted entirely to the subject of reenacting America’s Civil War") maintains a 19th Century Slang Dictionary; the opening paragraph of the introduction gives an idea of the type of language included:
Humbug? Shecoonery? Useless truck or gum? Hornswoggling? Honey-fuggling? Not in this book, dear sir! I swan to mercy, a huckleberry above anyone's persimmon. Some pumpkins, a caution, 100 percent certified by a Philadelfy lawyer. If not, dad-blame it, I'll hang up my fiddle, and you can sass me, knock me into a cocked hat, give me jesse, fix my flint, settle my hash, ride me out on a rail and have a conniption fit, you cussed scalawag. Now ain't that the beatingest language you ever did hear? Sure beats the Dutch! Pshaw! Do tell! Bully for you!It includes copious citations with sources and dates, making it far more valuable than a mere list of items with meanings. A sample:
Huckleberry above a persimmon: a cut above. The phrase had many variations and shades of meaning.(Via a Wordorigins thread about the phrase "I have seen the elephant," interesting in its own right—it's apparently a southwestern expression meaning either 'to see it all, to experience it all' or 'to undergo any disappointment of high-raised expectations,' depending on who you believe.)
1836: It is a huckleberry above my persimmon to cipher out how I find myself the most popular bookmaker of the day. Colonel Crockett in Texas, p.13
1844: She's a great gal that! Show me another like her any whar, and I am thar directly. She's a huckleberry above most people's persimmons. Philadelphia Spirit of the Times, August 24
1885: I'm a huckleberry above that persimmon. Admiral Porter, Incidents of the Civil War, p.204
Addendum. Another source for 19th-century American (linked in the same thread, by aldiboronti) is the Dictionary of Americanisms, by John Russell Bartlett (First Edition, Bartlett and Welford, New York, 1848). The very first entry is quite interesting:
ABISSELFA. A, by itself, A. It will be recollected by many, that in the olden time, the first letter of the alphabet was denominated "abisselfa" when it formed a syllable by itself, [as] in the word able. The scholar, in spelling the word, was taught to say, "a, by itself, a, (rapidly,This is, of course, an anglicized version of "a per se a," whose equivalent with and ("and per se and") gave rise to the word ampersand. I wonder how many classrooms used "per se" and how many "by itself," and when the whole practice disappeared?
abisselfa,) b, l, e, able." We derive this word and the use of it from England, where it is used in Suffolk County.--Moor's Glossary.
I've previously mentioned the amazing linguistic hodgepodge of English, Malay, Hokkien, and whatever the cat brought in that serves as the lingua franca of Singapore (despite government disapproval) and is known as Singlish (excellent Wikipedia entry here—thanks, John!), but I wanted to pass along the Coxford Singlish Dictionary, which should help explicate any passages you may run into online or off. Sample entry:
KING (Contributed by Adrian Eng)(Via MonkeyFilter.)
Someone who’s an extremely good example of something. Often used together with other adjectives to describe a person who’s superlative at something, usually unsavoury.
1. “Eh, you want to contest Tanjong Pagar in the General Election, ah? Damn king, ah, you!”
2. "Wah piang, that guy is sotong king man... small thing also can cock up!"
3. "That bobo king... target so big also he cannot kena!"
4. “Every PE lesson only, he got MC. Damn keng king!”
Rethabile Masilo, a Lesotho national living in Paris, has blogs On English and On Sesotho, the latter dedicated to the Southern Sotho language of Lesotho and South Africa; from a recent post I learned the etymology and pronunciation of the name of Gauteng Province:
Go Tang? Anyway, that's what it sounded like. I was lazily watching a Q&A TV show this morning before going to work when the guy suddenly asked, "What is the capital city of South Africa's Go Tang province?" I speak French, so I immediately caught on (not that it was hard to do so), and realised he was talking about Gauteng, or as we prefer to write it in Lesotho, Khauteng.That first sound, Gauteng or Khauteng, is the same sound you find in Lochness, or Vereeniging, or Khomeini...—it is aspirated and should be felt on the upper palate when correctly said. But how could the guy know? One of the favourite questions on such shows here in France is: Quelle est la capitale du Lesotho?
Gauta or Khauta is 'gold'; in Sesotho we add the -eng or -ong or -ing suffix, depending on the noun class involved, to indicate 'place of'. Gauteng or Khauteng is thus the place of gold, morohong is where we go to pick greens (eg dandelions), bolong is the stadium, for example, where football is played, sekolong is at school, Mangaung is the Sesotho name for the town of Bloemfontein, and means the place of leopards.
The crossword was invented over 90 years ago (here's the very first one, from December 1913), and after the publication of the first collection in 1924 became popular around the world. They're online in Russian, Arabic, Norwegian, Latin, and doubtless many other languages. And you will want to take a timeless moment to contemplate the Zen crossword. (From Ben Goetter scartol's MonkeyFilter post.)
Thanks to a comment by pf on an earlier entry, I have discovered Typographica, a typography blog—or, as they describe it, "a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design." It's edited by Stephen Coles and Joshua Lurie-Terrell and has been around since May 2002; one of the first entries (by Lurie-Terrell) would have been equally at home here at LH:
There Are 10’s of Thousand’s of Way’s to Apostrophisize(Except that I would have italicized New York Times.) The only downside I can see to reading it is that their book reviews are going to tempt me to further overload my poor groaning shelves.Why does the New York Times use 80’s and 90’s (for example) as shorthand for referring to decades/eras? They aren’t possessives, but rather contractions of 1980s, 1990s, etc. Most journalistic and typographic stylebooks suggest using ’80s and ’90s — makes sense to me. What’s the deal? I wrote the paper to ask but no response.
I've resumed reading Robert St. John's gripping war memoir From The Land of Silent People, and I've been noticing usages that take me aback and remind me the book is from a different era. Not the outdated slang or the references to things that no longer exist, like the New York Herald-Tribune—those are expected—but things like this:
One car had finally gotten to Podg[o]rica, picked up the major, and come on to Cetinje, and here they were, eating a four-course dinner and drinking some of the finest champagne any of us had tasted since the second world war began.I have rarely been so startled by lower-case letters; I don't think I've ever seen the phrase as anything but "Second World War." But this was written in 1942 and the scene is taking place in April 1941, before the US had entered the war, and at that time the war didn't yet have a proper name—what we think of as World War One was then just the Great War or the World War, and this new one was clearly another "world war" but not yet the Second World War or World War Two.
Another example: "I lost sight of the boy bugler of Corfu when a bomb landed within a few rods of the entrance to our tunnel." Rods? Most mildly bookish people are probably still aware of the word rod as a unit of length (and of course Simpsons fans will recall Grandpa's "rods to the hogshead"), but I doubt many could tell you how long the unit is (five and a half yards—I looked it up), and I'm pretty sure nobody's used it in normal prose like that, expecting the reader to know offhand what's meant, in decades. My final example made me laugh out loud on the train:
"This thing is getting damned monotonous," Hill grumbled.We have here the rare opportunity to see a cliche in the very process of formation; the phonograph record was new enough that such a simile was still reasonably fresh and could be expanded on without risk of boring the listener. I wonder how long it took for the image to get boiled down to "broken record" or "stuck needle"? Now, of course, the cliche is becoming purely verbal, since vinyl records and needles have pretty much given way to CDs and beams of light.
"Yes," I said with some sincere bitterness, "it's like a phonograph when the needle gets stuck in a groove and keeps playing the same bars of music over and over again until you think you'll go crazy unless someone shuts the machine off."
My final quote has nothing to do with any of this; I was struck by it and felt like including it here. The scene is Belgrade, during the "Bloody Sunday" German bombing that destroyed much of the city; an American diplomatic limousine has just sped through a crowd, refusing to stop and take a badly wounded woman to the hospital. The angry crowd shakes its fists and shouts.
I wanted to shake my fist too, but I didn't. If you had been there you would always remember, as I'll always remember, how they all yelled "Amerikanski!" when they shook their fists. It wasn't a pretty word, the way they said it. It gave me a funny feeling inside my head and inside my stomach. I was too tired to figure out how to ask these people standing in the center of the street not to blame America. To tell them that all Americans aren't like that. I wanted to say something, anything, to make them forget what had happened. I tried to say in French to the woman with the blood on her head that I was sorry. She could tell, no doubt, from the way I talked French that I was an American, too. She told the other people standing there, and Chinigo and I had to get away fast, because all of them started shaking their fists at us and saying "Amerikanski!" between their teeth, just as they had said it to the back of the limousine.But that was long ago, and in another country.
The Archive of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) is "a digital archive of recordings and texts in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America."
The heart of the collection is recordings of naturally-occurring discourse in a wide range of genres, including narratives, ceremonies, oratory, conversations, and songs. Many of these recordings are accompanied by transcriptions and translations in either Spanish, English, or Portuguese. These works contain a wealth of information about Latin American indigenous cultures as well as knowledge about the natural environments that the people live in. AILLA also publishes original literary works in indigenous languages, such as poetry, narratives, and essays.You have to register to use most of the archive, but it's free and definitely looks worthwhile. (Via wood s lot.)The archive also collects materials about these languages, such as grammars, dictionaries, ethnographies, and research notes. The collection includes teaching materials for bilingual education and language revitalization programs in indigenous communities, such as primers, readers, and textbooks on a variety of subjects, written in indigenous languages.
Addendum. There's a very interesting discussion of indigenous languages, literacy, and the uselessness of government statistics going on in the comment thread.
A historic Belgrade "square" (more like a short boulevard, comparable to Wenceslaus Square in Prague or Times Square in NYC) is called Terazije, which means 'scales.' (The word is from Turkish terazi, which is from Persian terâzu, from Middle Persian terâzug; if anyone has information about its further provenance, please let me know.) This is an odd name for a town square, but I would have assumed it was either populated by merchants or the site of a municipal weighing machine (like Trongate in Glasgow, tron being a Scots word for "a pair of scales or other machine for weighing merchandise; a public weighing apparatus in a city or (burgh) town" [OED])—but most sites that discuss its name claim that it comes from the Turkish name for a water tower that used to stand in it. This sounds implausible on the face of it, but "Marko Serb" in an Illyrium Forums discussion says "Two high 'towers'—water collectors—were located here, resembling a scale (scales) and this is how the place got its name." Which would explain it, if there were two such towers there and if they resembled a pair of scales and if that became the popular name. How is one to know? And other sites give the more obvious explanation (for instance, this one says "The word Terazije means 'weighing scales' in Turkish, and during some 400 years of Ottoman rule — and well into the 19th century — this was a street of merchants and craftsmen." That's more believable, but then why is the water-tower one so common? And shouldn't the principle of Lectio difficilior potior favor the latter? What we need are facts, and facts are hard to come by when speculation is so easy and enjoyable.
Geitner Simmons, an editorial writer with the Omaha World-Herald, has a long and interesting post (at his blog Regions of Mind) about Southern speech, beginning with a striking quote from Thomas Nelson Page's 1897 book Social Life in Old Virginia: Before the War:
Quite a large crop of so-called Southern plays, or at least plays in which Southerners have figured, has of late been introduced on the stage, and the supposititious Southerner is as absurd a creation as the wit of ignorance ever devised. The Southern girl is usually an underbred little provincial, whose chief characteristic is to say "reckon" and "real," with strong emphasis, in every other sentence. And the Southern gentleman is a sloven whose linen has never known starch; who clips the endings of his words; says "Sah" at the end of every sentence, and never uses an "r" except in the last syllable of "nigger." With a slouched hat, a slovenly dress, a plentiful supply of "sahs," and a slurred speech exclusively applied to "niggers," he is equipped for the stage. And yet it is not unkindly meant: only patronizingly, which is worse. That Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Lawrence, and other visitors whose English passes current, declared after a visit to America that they found the purest English speech spoken in Virginia, goes for nothing.(The Page book is online at what Simmons rightly calls the "terrific Web site" Documenting the American South.) He then quotes extensively from Michael Montgomery's analysis of the history of the "Southern accent" in the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and ends with one of the best nonstandard verb forms I've ever seen:
In the early '90s, a coworker (and good friend) of mine at a North Carolina newspaper interviewed a local fellow who used an unusual faux-past tense form of the verb "squeeze." The fellow was being interviewed because he had chased down a criminal and restrained him with a headlock. The fellow's quote: "He tried to get loose, so I squz him harder."
I just learned about a regionalism I hadn't been aware of: "Do what?" as an equivalent of "excuse me?" or "pardon me?" when someone says something you didn't catch. According to this AskMetaFilter thread it's native to the Texas hill country, North Carolina, and Alabama; any of you from other areas know and/or use it?
This fascinating site gives the origins of all sorts of company names. Who knew that Apache got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon, resulting in "a patchy" server, or that Canon is from Kwannon, the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy? Once again, aldiboronti comes up with a great post at Wordorigins.com.
Not only a new word for me, but a new concept. Bunyip is, according to the OED, "The Aboriginal name of a fabulous monster inhabiting the rushy swamps and lagoons in the interior of Australia"; Cassell calls it [apparently wrongly—see comments] "the fabulous rainbow serpent that lives in pools," while this website says:
This is a fierce creature from Australia. Amphibious by nature, it has the appearance of a giant seal or even a hippopotamus, It is greatly feared, for it enjoys the taste of human flesh, particularly the more tender flesh of women and children.So the details are fuzzy, but the general idea is clear, and the word is very satisfying to say. Bunyip!
It came up in the course of a fine discussion of swearing by Gail Armstrong at Open Brackets:
Even though my ability to swear is relatively unfettered, there are some words I just can’t say, and I rarely use foul language in writing – something to do with seeming permanence perhaps, plus the sense that, on paper, you irremediably imperious bunyip will be more effective than you fucking knob.And she in turn links to a delightful History of Swearing (in the UK), which begins with 1900:
Shot by an anarchist while standing on a Brussels railway station, The Prince of Wales utters the immortal words, “Fuck it, I’ve taken a bullet."I hope I can exhibit similar sangfroid should the unfortunate occasion arise. (You know the translation of Voici l'anglais avec son sangfroid habituel? "Here comes the Englishman with his usual bloody cold.")
TranslationDirectory.com has a page of Articles on Translation Business & Linguistics on widely varying topics, from the general (The Translation Profession, Solutions to Common Problems for Freelance Translators) to the quite specific (Aspects of Scientific Translation: English into Arabic Translation as a Case Study, Trados—Is It a Must?). A mixed bag, but there's probably something of interest for anyone invoved with professional translation.
I was particularly taken with Moderately Irritating Recurring Idioms and Mannerisms, by Miriam Hurley ("ATA-accredited, Italian-to-English Translator"), with its long lists of possible ways to render Italian terms into English:
ambito(Via Taccuino di traduzione.)sphere
realm
context
within
domain
area
scope
in terms of
with a view to
will also include
for that purpose/on that occasion
as part of
as far as the ... is concerned/with regard to
through/by
in the case of
in the ___place
within the scope/according to
in their sphere of activity
purview
within the framework of
for the purposes of
extent
range
compass
field
as part of
in the context of
in
environment
circle
ambit
confines
region
area
orbit
province
Chris Corrigan has posted a nice selection of Seamus Heaney's poetry, from which I take this:
Song(Via wood s lot.)A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.
There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
The site Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics provides just that, going into great detail where necessary about the history of the words used for concepts:
SUBTRACT. When Fibonacci (1201) wishes to say "I subtract," he uses some of the various words meaning "I take": tollo, aufero, or accipio. Instead of saying "to subtract" he says "to extract."In English, Chaucer used abate around 1391 in Treatise on the Astrolabe: "Abate thanne thees degrees And minutes owt of 90" (OED2).
In a manuscript written by Christian of Prag (c. 1400), the word "subtraction" is at first limited to cases in which there is no "borrowing." Cases in which "borrowing" occurs he puts under the title cautela (caution), and gives this caption the same prominence as subtractio.Thanks to Grant Barrett for the link.In Practica (1539) Cardano used detrahere (to draw or take from).
In 1542 in the Ground of Artes Robert Recorde used rebate: "Than do I rebate 6 out of 8, & there resteth 2."
In 1551 in Pathway to Knowledge Recorde used abate: "Introd., And if you abate euen portions from things that are equal, those partes that remain shall be equall also" (OED2).
Digges (1572) writes "to subduce or substray any sume, is wittily to pull a lesse fro a bigger number."
Schoner, in his notes on Ramus (1586 ed., p. 8), uses both subduco and tollo for "I subtract."
In his arithmetic, Boethius uses subtrahere, but in geometry attributed to him he prefers subducere.
The first citation for subtract in the OED2 is in 1557 by Robert Recorde in The whetstone of witte: "Wherfore I subtract 16. out of 18."
Hylles (1592) used "abate," "subtact," "deduct," and "take away" (Smith vol. 2, pages 94-95).
From Smith (vol. 2, page 95):
The word "subtract" has itself had an interesting history. The Latin sub appears in French as sub, soub, sou, and sous, subtrahere becoming soustraire and subtractio becoming soustraction. Partly because of this French usage, and partly no doubt for euphony, as in the case of "abstract," there crept into the Latin works of the Middle Ages, and particularly into the books printed in Paris early in the 16th century, the form substractio. From France the usage spread to Holland and England, and form each of these countries it came to America. Until the beginning of the 19th century "substract" was a common form in England and America, and among those brought up in somewhat illiterate surroundings it is still to be found. The incorrect form was never popular in Germany, probably because of the Teutonic exclusion of international terms.
The Corpus of Electronic Texts "brings the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to the Internet, for the use and benefit of everyone worldwide. It has a searchable online database consisting of contemporary and historical texts from many areas, including literature and the other arts." It has texts in Irish, Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and English. To take just one example, they have an up-to-date version (complete with bibliography) of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, for a crappy text of which I paid good money when I was in Ireland thirty years ago and was happy to do so.
(Via wood s lot. I posted this on MetaFilter, but nobody cared. Philistines!)
The Tensor has a post in which he discusses varying ways languages have of indicating questions, in both writing and speech; he discusses Japanese and Armenian, and the first two comments are about Latin and Klingon. In the course of the entry he links to the Wikipedia article on the history of the question mark, which I'd forgotten if I ever knew it. Neither he nor the Wiki, however, mention the fact that in Greek, the "question mark" looks exactly like a semicolon, something that amused me when I was learning the language.
As of May 1, there will be twenty official languages at the EU—and all of them will need to be translated into each other. Angus Roxburgh of BBC News explains the situation:
Twenty languages gives a total of 190 possible combinations (English-German, French-Czech, Finnish-Portuguese, etc), and finding any human being who speaks, for example, both Greek and Estonian or Slovene and Lithuanian is well-nigh impossible.Of course, one possibility would be to settle on a single language:To get round this problem, the parliament will use much more "relay translation", where a speech is interpreted first into one language and then into another - and perhaps into a fourth or fifth.
Clearly the scope for mistakes in this game of Chinese whispers is huge.
"If I'm first in the chain, and make a mistake, then everyone else down the relay makes the same mistake - or worse," Jana Jalvi, one of the new Estonian recruits says.
The obvious choice, in fact, would be English, which is more widely spoken as a second language than any other.(Via wood s lot.)But the French - who have the parliament on their soil and who, after all, were founder-members of the EU - were outraged by the very suggestion.
They are already miffed at the slow easing-out of their language as the chief means of communication in the European Commission, where English is steadily gaining ground...
Meanwhile, translating has become the EU's biggest boom industry.
Update. Claire at Anggargoon has an interesting suggestion:
The answer's perfectly obvious: the official language should be treated like the presidency of the EU. That is, it should rotate amongst the member states. Whoever's president gets to pick the official language for their term. No language is given special status over another.I like it—especially if the president has a puckish sense of humor and picks, say, Kabardian!
I've just discovered a new (since February) blog called freemorpheme: The mad ramblings of a Graduate Student in Linguistics. Jason is taking a course in Second Language Acquisition and keeping a journal ("We are to relate the course material with experiences from our own lives"), and he reminds me of me:
The approach to teaching Japanese at CCSF seems to be informed by a bit of the cognitive school and a lot of the constructivist. There’s a splash of memorization here and there, but it’s not really stressed. The goal seems to be to get us talking: genuine, spontaneous communication. This is fairly challenging for me. Although I love foreign languages and have a self professed talent for them, I’m very shy about speaking them. I’m much better at memorizing tables and things and passing tests. I’m glad that I’m pushed to speak more, but I don’t always enjoy it. There are definitely places where I feel like the old school choral drills would be helpful to me. I want to go through all the verbs I know and recite the forms in order: ikanai, ikimasu, iku, ikeba; kakanai, kakimasu, kaku, kakeba; etc. I want to do it with the voice of the whole class behind me. I want to do it a hundred times. That way when I have to use one of these verbs, I’ll remember what it sounds like in the form I want...
I had never really considered why I wanted to study languages. It turns out that I’m really not all that interested in talking to Germans or Russians or French people (Ok, I’m a bit more interested in Japanese people), but I’m really interested in their language. Considering the languages I’ve studied, this makes sense. Certainly I’m never going to have the opportunity to speak to a Goth (the old, dead kind, not the young I wish I were dead kind), or a native speaker of Old Low Franconian. So why study the languages? The answer would seem to be that it fulfills a need for me...Lots of good, thought-provoking stuff for anyone studying a foreign language:In all of my foreign language experience, I’ve always had a good accent. Years ago in Germany, riding a train full of fellow EuroRailers (many of them German), I was often asked what part of Germany I came from. Granted, I was traveling with several Germans at the time, and using my German daily. Knowing more about phonology, I now realize that from early on in my language learning I had the ability to extrapolate and apply phonological rules.
It’s not just phonology that makes you sound native though. Sentence intonation patterns, prosody, and stress are also important. Next to phonology however, the easiest way to sound like a native is to hem and haw like a native. Knowing what to do with pauses and interstitial spaces is absolutely key. If you’re fishing for a word in Japanese and you say “umm, uhh,” instead of “ano” or “mmm” (for example) it doesn’t matter how good your accent is, everybody knows you’re not a native. You have to adopt the conversational mannerisms of the culture.
Chris Tessone at Protestant Polyglot (now with added polyglottism!) has posted an entry giving the Coptic resources he's found on the web in the course of preparing for graduate work. As a lazy man, I appreciate having someone else do the legwork for me; thanks, Chris!
Last year Mark Liberman had a Language Log entry discussing the case of a woman who wrote "egg corns" for acorns. It turns out that this is fairly widespread, probably the product of a dialect in which egg is pronounced "aig." Since then the eggcorn has become something of a mascot at Language Log; today Mark discusses it further, giving the example "hand few" used for handful and quoting Geoff Pullum to the effect that "eggcorns are tiny little poems, a symptom of human intelligence and creativity," and ends with an Update mentioning a fact I should have recalled myself: the word acorn itself contains an earlier misunderstanding. As the OED says:
The formal history of this word has been much perverted by 'popular etymology.' OE. æcern neut., pl. æcernu, is cogn. w. ONor. akarn neut. (Dan. agern, Norw. aakorn), Dutch aker 'acorn,' OHG. ackeran masc. and neut. (mod.G. ecker, pl. eckern) 'oak or beech mast,' Goth. akran 'fruit,' prob. a deriv. of Goth. akr-s, ONor. akr, OE. æcer 'field,' orig. 'open unenclosed country, the plain.' Hence akran appears to have been originally 'fruit of the unenclosed land, natural produce of the forest,' mast of oak, beech, etc., as in HG., extended in Gothic to 'fruit' generally, and gradually confined in Low G., Scand., and Eng., to the most important forest produce, the mast of the oak. (See Grimm, under Ackeran and Ecker.) In Ælfric's Genesis xliv. 11, it had perhaps still the wider sense, a reminiscence of which also remains in the ME. akernes of okes. Along with this restriction of application, there arose a tendency to find in the name some connexion with oak, OE. ác, north. ake, aik. Hence the 15th and 16th c. refashionings ake-corn, oke-corn, ake-horn, oke-horn, with many pseudo-etymological and imperfectly phonetic variants. Of these the 17th c. literary acron seems to simulate the Gr. a'kron top, point, peak. The normal mod. repr. of OE. æcern would be akern, akren, or ? atchern as already in [the 14th c.]; the actual acorn is due to the 16th c. fancy that the word corn formed part of the name.No wonder acorn is such an awkward word, with its half-stressed second syllable, and no wonder people keep eggcorning it. I wish it had been allowed its natural development to akern, akren, or atchern—but then I wish the plural of book had been allowed to develop naturally into beech. I like the rough surfaces left by nature.
A list of computer terms in Latin, to go along with the Old English ones. (Via Incoming Signals.)
An interesting John McWhorter post at Language Log:
Tonight an actor said AND THAT'S WHY I'LL TELL THEM AS SOON AS I CAN in rapid, casual style, but he inserted a note of falseness by pronouncing THEM as "THEHM" rather than the way any native English speaker would pronounce it in that sentence, "THUM." "THEHM" did not aid clarity in any way -- if he had said "THUM" the audience would have still known exactly what he was talking about. He said "THEHM" out of a sense that this is what the word "really is."But actually, "THEHM" is just the full form. "THEHM we can talk about," for example. "Me and THEHM went yesterday." But just as often, English makes use of a second form, the short one, THUM. By no means a lapse or mere static, THUM is absolutely required of anyone who wants to speak English without sounding like a Martian, or a competent but not quite acclimated newcomer to the language. But because our writing conventions "unravel" the language and transcribe both the full and short forms as THEM, the actor is often distracted into supposing that always saying "THEHM" is good form, "rendering the text properly" Actors erupt in these phony "THEHM"s all the time -- I have even heard actors pull this when spouting the vibrantly choppy, earthy vernacular of David Mamet plays.
That's the famous New Orleans greeting (to which the proper response is "Awrite"). N'Awlins natives have a special way of talking, which is entertainingly documented in the site How ta tawk rite: A Lexicon of New Orleans Terminology and Speech:
I hope that this brings back memories for natives, and I also hope that it may enlighten visitors to the Crescent City. It may help make the difference between a mere tourist and a truly interested visitor, and I think that's an important distinction. You don't want to look like an idiot, saying "Huh?", when the lady behind the counter at the po-boy shop asks you, "Ya want dat dressed, dawlin'?"I particularly direct your attention to the section "A guide to the pronunciation of local place names" (most of the way down the page), where you will learn the proper pronunciation of the street names Burgundy (bur-GUN-dee), Burthe (BYOOTH), Cadiz (KAY-diz), and the like.
Another, less systematic, site is here; I note with bemusement that this site refers to "Eye-berville" Street, whereas "How ta tawk rite" says "IBERVILLE STREET - Pronounced IB-ber-'vil, not EYE-ber-'vil." Y'all get your act together, heah?
So I thought I'd get away from the heavy-duty reading I've been doing lately and have some fun. I've been wanting for years to read Alan Furst, supposedly the heir to such great spy-thriller writers as Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John Le Carre, and checked out his first novel, Night Soldiers, from the library. I was especially interested because he writes about the period leading up to WWII, and I've been lately immersed therein (via Brandon and Klemperer). I opened it, saw a map of the Danube basin 1934-1945, and sighed with pleasure—maps are always a good sign. I plunged in and was rapidly drawn into the story of a young man forced to leave his home and finding terrifying shelter. The hero's name was Stoianev, which I thought should probably be Stoianov, but what do I know from Bulgarian? I wondered a bit when a scene was set in a supposed Russian village called "Belov," which is a family name rather than a place name (a village named for Belov would be Belovo, and there is in fact such a place), but I didn't allow myself to be distracted; I don't know everything about Russian toponymy, after all, and maybe the name could exist. I didn't get seriously annoyed until I encountered a Russian character named Yadomir. I think I'm on fairly safe ground in asserting that Yadomir is not a Russian name, and I can't stand it when novelists make up fake Russian names when it's so easy to find real ones. And when I checked the street names in the Madrid section of the book, I found that two that were supposed to be contiguous were in fact far apart, and a third does not exist.
Dammit, one of the small pleasures in my life is following novelists in their dealings with the real world, seeing how smoothly they work their fictions into it. When they don't even bother to try, it pisses me off. I don't expect them to be perfect, mind you; they're novelists, not scholars. I caught Pynchon misusing some Arabic in V.—but I could see exactly how he'd gone wrong, because I was following along in the very Baedeker he'd used to create his vision of Alexandria, Egypt, in 1898, and the phrases and translations given in the conversation section of the guidebook were run together in such a way it was easy to connect them wrongly. The main thing was that he'd done his homework: every walk was based on the actual map of the city, every building was where Baedeker said it was (I could even identify ones he didn't name, like the "chemist's shop" on p. 73 of the Bantam edition, according to Baedeker the German and English Dispensary), and that reliability allowed me to relax into the story. When the novelist simply makes up names and places, it's playing tennis without a net (as Robert Frost famously said of free verse). I'm cutting Furst a little slack because it's his first book and I'm enjoying the thriller aspects, but if he doesn't shape up in his second, Dark Star, his name will be mud chez Languagehat.
The Eudæmonist has a wonderful entry about the use of the word choir in poems by Wilfred Owen and Shakespeare and the way the ghost of the homonymous quire lurks behind it.
In a bound book, the text-block is composed of quires. In the case of the ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ it adds to the tone of the shells a second quire, a second voice of mourning: the poet’s own; but I do not think this formal parallel was conscious for Owen. For Shakespeare, though, it’s almost impossible to deny the pun. The yellow leaves lingering on the branches might just as well be the leaves of a book—pages which must be unwritten, of course, when the poet dies (just as the branches ‘where late the sweet birds sang’ become ‘bare ruin’d choirs’). The full quires containing the sonnets, however, will continue their serenade (dare I say, ‘twittering’?) despite the changing seasons, despite death, in a typical declaration of immortality...
In the course of a post on the Australian National University's new online edition of Out of the Ashes: Deconstruction and Reconstruction of East Timor, Joel of Far Outliers quotes the following passage from the first chapter (by James J. Fox), which obviously resonated strongly with me:
With their strongholds on both Flores and Timor, this mixed, part-Portuguese population of local islanders resisted all attempts to dislodge them. This population became known as the Larantuqueiros or as the Tupassi ('Topasses', purportedly from the word for hat, topi, because the Topasses regarded themselves 'Gente de Chapeo': 'People of the Hat')—or, as was common in all Dutch documents, the 'Black Portuguese' (Swarte Portugueezen). In the language of the Atoni Pa Meto population, who had the longest established contact with them on Timor, these Topasses were known as the Sobe Kase: 'The Foreign Hats'. (Yet another variant of this designation, among the Rotinese, on the small island at the western tip of Timor, was Sapeo Nggeo: 'The Black Hats'.)The chapter has extremely useful material on the peoples of the country, with a nice linguistic map (Map 1): "All the languages of Timor belong to one of two major language groupings: the Austronesian language family or the Trans-New Guinea phylum of languages."These Topasses became the dominant, independent, seafaring, sandalwood-trading power of the region for the next 200 years. They were a multilingual group. Portuguese was their status language which was also used for worship; Malay was their language of trade, and most Topasses spoke, as their mother-tongue, a local language of Flores or Timor.
One strand in this extremely interesting thread at Negro, Please involves the current meaning and proper use of the adjective "ghetto"; since I haven't listened to rap since the heyday of Public Enemy and have otherwise been sadly out of touch, I was glad to be told that the term refers to an "unpleasantly selfish and materialistic world view that is a product of both poverty and modern hip hop culture." The post is about Jason's mixed reactions on hearing a white woman friend say "That show is so ghetto"; the ensuing discussion covers a lot of ground.
But please, if you visit and are moved to leave a comment, be respectful of the host and the discussion; don't act like Josh, who makes me ashamed to be white with his whiny "why do so many blacks seem so obsessed with racism?" and continued failure to get the point. Yes, the internet is a public space, but so is a sidewalk, and I think there's general agreement that if we want to join a discussion among people we don't know on the sidewalk, we tread warily and don't throw our weight around. I don't see why it should be any different online.
Just in case any of you were under the impression that a wild-eyed descriptivist like myself was incapable of applying the silly-but-fun traditional Rules of Grammar, here's my result from the quiz that's making the rounds:
You're welcome, but my mission in life is to wipe out everything you hold dear. En garde!
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
A strange word, or rather two strange words. The first is encountered only in the phrase court of cassation, referring to a French supreme court of appeal, and it's pretty straightforward: it's from Latin cassa¯re 'to bring to nought, annul' (: cassus empty, void), also the source of the verb quash, and such a court quashes decisions of other courts. The other word refers to 'a piece of instrumental music of the eighteenth century similar to the serenade, and often performed out of doors' (OED), and it can be traced back only to Italian cassazione. Willy Apel's Harvard Brief Dictionary of Music says "The name may be derived from It. cassare, to say farewell, or from L. gassatim, streetlike," but my Italian and Late Latin books know no such words. And yet it has such an open, transparent look: what, me obscure? And such a useless word, too, given the equivalent divertimento. But I like it. There's something so old-fashioned and Old World about it.
As a Sopranos fan, I was delighted to see the show featured in a Mark Liberman
