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Submitted by Zsolt Vidak for the Illustration Friday topic OLD.

 Hello fellow artists!

As part of our ongoing efforts to make Illustration Friday more of a community focused on the art of idea generation, here’s our Inspiration Board for this week’s topic of OLD.

You can download, save, drag and drop, print, or do whatever you want with it if it helps you to brainstorm ideas for your illustration.

Let us know in the comments if this is something that you think is helpful or inspiring enough for us to keep doing!

It’s fairly common knowledge that languages, like people, have families. English, for instance, is a member of the Germanic family, with sister languages including Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages. Germanic, in turn, is a branch of a larger family, Indo-European, whose other members include the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, and more), Russian, Greek, and Persian.

Being part of a family of course means that you share a common ancestor. For the Romance languages, that mother language is Latin; with the spread and then fall of the Roman empire, Latin split into a number of distinct daughter languages. But what did the Germanic mother language look like? Here there’s a problem, because, although we know that language must have existed, we don’t have any direct record of it.

The earliest Old English written texts date from the 7^th century AD, and the earliest Germanic text of any length is a 4^th-century translation of the Bible into Gothic, a now-extinct Germanic language. Though impressively old, this text still dates from long after the breakup of the Germanic mother language into its daughters.

How does one go about recovering the features of a language that is dead and gone, and which has left no records of itself in spoken or written form? This is the subject matter of linguistic necromancy – or linguistic reconstruction, as it is more conventionally known.

The enterprise, dubbed “darkest of the dark arts” and “the only means to conjure up the ghosts of vanished centuries” in the epigraph to a chapter of Campbell’s historical linguistics textbook, really got off the ground in the 1900s due to a development of a toolkit of techniques known as the comparative method.

Crucial to the comparative method was a revolutionary empirical finding: the regularity of sound change. Though it has wide-reaching implications, the basic finding is simple to grasp. In a nutshell: it’s sounds that change, not words, and when they change, all words which include those sounds are affected.

Let’s take an example. Lots of English words beginning with a p sound have a German counterpart that begins with pf. Here are some of them:

• English path: German Pfad
• English pepper: German Pfeffer
• English pipe: German Pfeife
• English pan: German Pfanne
• English post: German Pfoste

If the forms of words simply changed at random, these systematic correspondences would be a miraculous coincidence. However, in the light of the regularity of sound change they make perfect sense. Specifically, at some point in the early history of German, the language sounded a lot more like (Old) English. But then the sound p underwent a change to pf at the beginning of words, and all words starting with p were affected.

There’s much more to be said about the regularity of sound change, since it underlies pretty much everything we know about language family groupings. (If you’re interested in finding out more, Guy Deutscher’s book The Unfolding of Language provides an accessible summary.) But for now let’s concentrate on its implications for necromantic purposes, which are immense.

If we want to invoke the words and sounds of a long-dead language like the mother language Proto-Germanic (the ‘proto-’ indicates that the language is reconstructed, rather than directly evidenced in texts), we just need to figure out what changes have happened to the sounds of the daughter languages, and to peel them back one by one like the layers of an onion. Eventually we’ll reach a point where all the daughter languages sound the same; and voilà, we’ve conjured up a proto-language.

There’s more to living languages than just sounds and words though. Living languages have syntax: a structure, a skeleton. By contrast, reconstructed protolanguages tend to look more like ghosts: hauntingly amorphous clouds of words and sounds. There are practical reasons why the reconstruction of proto-syntax has lagged behind. One is simply that our understanding of syntax, in general, has come a long way since the work of the reconstruction pioneers in the 19^th century.

Another is that there is nothing quite like the regularity of syntactic change in syntax: how can we tell which syntactic structures correspond to each other across languages? These problems have led some to be sceptical about the possibility of syntactic reconstruction, or at any rate about its fruitfulness. Nevertheless, progress is being made. To take one example, English is a language that doesn’t like to leave out the subject of a sentence. We say “He speaks Swahili” or “It is raining”, not “Speaks Swahili” or “Is raining”. Though most of the modern Germanic languages behave the same, many other languages, like Italian and Japanese, have no such requirement; speakers can include or omit the subject of the sentence as the fancy takes them. Was Proto-Germanic like English, or like Italian or Japanese, in this respect? Doing a bit of necromancy based on the earliest Germanic written records suggests that Proto-Germanic was, like the latter, quite happy to omit the subject, at least under certain circumstances.Of course the issue is more complex than that – Italian and Japanese themselves differ with regard to the circumstances under which subjects can be omitted.

Slowly but surely, though, historical linguists are starting to add skeletons to the reanimated spectres of proto-languages.

The post Linguistic necromancy: a guide for the uninitiated appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Last year I illustrated a picture book titled, A Caring Deed For Becky for Featherweight Press. It was written by Susan Wigden.

I've spelled her name "Widgen" incorrectly at least a thousand times, but that's neither here nor there.

In any case, Susan is currently making the rounds with the book and I thought I'd post a video of a school reading she did earlier this year.

 Want a copy? Of course you do.

Get it through Amazon HERE and Barnes and Noble HERE.

That´s beauty of being an illustrator. At one moment you can work on a project about importance of good sex life and than you move quickly to a very different subject, about old people in bad shape sent back from hospital home. Client: ESS newspaper.

To survive a zombie apocalypse you have to be very brave and stupid. Stupid by actually trying to, I mean the whole world is basically against you now. Your going to have to be fit and athletic. You also need to have good aim. If you fit this description then your story begins…

Chapter 1

When a zombie apocalypse first happens, this is the most dangerous part. Many people are going to get infected because they don’t know what the hell is happening. Now you probably don’t care about the other people but the more of them that get infected the worse it is for you. For now all you need is a weapon.

If your in an office or a business area (this includes hotels, hospitals, etc) your going to have to use your fists.  But really your going to run most of the time. If your nearer to the top floor do not go down the stairs UNLESS you have a weapon. It is really dangerous to go down there, you will get cornered no matter how tough you are. Though you’re going to have to get out before it gets any worse. To get a weapon try going to a janitor closest. If your no where near there go into any office and grab a keyboard, chair, anything light and gives you the ability to crack a head in one hit. Now if you are near a janitor closet go in and grab a mop and some spray, make sure the spray is flammable. If you have a lighter then you have an advantage. Matches will work too. Now you need the spray for 2 things, some idiots lock doors that you need to get through and hell no they won’t let you in. Just spray the lock and light it up. I’d hide behind something just in case it blows. If you don’t have any thing to light it up all you need is a plastic Id card and try to pick the lock. This is very easy actually. All you do is try to place the card between the lock and the wall, the door will slide open. If your running out of time, try to break the handle of the door. If all else fails try another door, in an office building they probably have an emergency exit. If the exit is over run by zombies you now have a weapon so you may now go to the stairs! Just be careful, use your mop to knock the zombies down the stairs. If your mop breaks, which might happen if you hit with it too hard, then use the longest end and use it as a spear. Aim for the head or just push em off the stairs. Once you reach the bottom floor avoid the exits until you make a distraction. If you have a lighter or matches then you have a distraction. Go to any hall away from the exits and spray a lot of fluid on the floor. Once the floor is wet smear the can in the fluid. Make sure your hands are not wet and there are no zombies around,  then use your matches on the fluid before it dries and run to an exit ( try to hide behind something before you get close to the exit to make sure no zombies are around. The spray can will eventually explode, if you sprayed enough fluid on the floor. If you didn’t just make sure no zombies are around and run to the exit. If the can explodes a lot of zombies will come, now you can just run to the exits while they are checking out what blew up. Now if you don’t have matches just make a run for the exit. Continue on chapter 2.

Now if your in a house or you were shopping (this includes restaurants, malls, apartments) then just lock all the doors leading in to the building. If you encounter a zombie on your way to lock the doors in a shop, run to any aisle with tools or anything sharp. Once there grab it and try to smash its head. Be careful not to get bitten. In the store you will encounter other people that will probably help you out. If your in your house then you’re safe for now since you already have your doors locked..I hope. If your at this step you can just skip to chapter 3.

Chapter 2

If you were on the road, in a car or was just taking a walk when this happened then all you need to do is get to the nearest police department. If you just escaped from you office building or business area then you need to get to a car since the nearest police department is no where near you. If you were walking get the hell back to your car or house if your walking the dog. Anyway once your in a car go to the police department. If it’s over run or they won’t let you in then drive out of the city or the popular parts of town to the suburbs or any where that’s not as populace. You can then just find a small store or pharmacy. A pharmacy would be best. Once you find one that’s not over run go in and lock ALL doors. Not one should be left open. If the doors are broken seal them with grocery carts. If you can’t find any, get anything like empty boxes or useless items like signs and billboards and pile them on the exit. Once you completely sealed all exits you can rest.

Chapter 3

If you were the person that ran out of the office then you need to regain your energy, eat some food or candy that you can find in the store and sleep you will probably of already slept by then. Just don’t eat to much candy and drink a lot of water. If you were already in the store or house and you completely sealed off all entrances and exits you don’t need rest, you need weapons. For now you can hold off on weapons since security and protection is more important. Try wearing a plastic rain coat if you have any and wear thick boots and pants, put on some gloves and test biting yourself, if the glove gets ripped it wont help you against the zombies. If you are in a store that has no clothes then make yourself some weapons. Knives are usually sold at food stores and flammable stuff like disinfectant spray are usually there too. But if your gong to use the spray then head to the aisle with matches, the bigger the better. Then just get empty boxes and billboard signs and seal off the entrance to the food aisle, just in case the zombies breach the doors. Though you better get a lot of water and food in your aisle before you seal it off. If there is a pharmacy or a drug aisle in the store get some pain relievers and any useful drug that might help in the future, probably a cream that disinfects cuts and scrapes. 

Chapter 4

Friends and family at the most part are probably dead, if they are not following this guide that is, so you you going to need somebody to help you out. If you were stuck in the store you probably already have people that are nagging at you. If your home alone or you were the person from the office and is in a store now you don’t really need help from anybody else you can skip to chapter 5. Now if you do have people the are willing to join you then your first going to have to share your supplies. This is fine because more people adds to your defences and brain power. Just give a knife or if they have good aim give em a few to throw them at zombie heads. But watch your back one of those knives might be planned for you…

Chapter 5

Your food supplies are probably getting low if you are at home. If your in an apartment building and need to escape go back to chapter 1. Now if your in a house then you might have a chance… If your house has a chimney then this is a possible exit. Just make sure you can fit. If you can’t or if your afraid of tight places head to the Attic and open a window. Try to climb up to the room using your window sill as a foot hold. If it’s too high, then try using another window. If you actually have a car then go back to chapter 2. Don’t forget your weapons. If you don’t know what weapons to use go to chapter 6.

Chapter 6

Weapons are a crucial part to surviving. Many things can be weapons. If you have a car you can just run over zombies no problem. If your at home a nail gun, hammer (If your actually gonna use a hammer make sure you have 2 since they are slow to hit with) mop, broom, keyboard, flammable spray, matches, knives and forks. For the forks you can throw them like darts, though your going to have to be a good aim and throw it hard enough to make any damage. If your at an office or hotel weapons like brooms, keyboards, flammable spray, matches, will work just fine. If your at a food store use anything like carts or knives. If your in a super center or a tool store you don’t really need help finding a weapon, they are every where!

Chapter 7

Surviving for a long time is hard and probably won’t be accomplished since your probably gonna get nuked. Your friends might turn on you or you starve or thirst to death. The only possible way of surviving is if you have a helicopter, gas, guns, food factory, water from a river with filter, and a mansion with steel walls and gates. Even if you have that stuff you will eventually die of old age anyway. It’s a horrible and sad tragedy that you will endure if you ever have to go through a zombie apocalypse. A zombie apocalypse might never happen but i could always be wrong…

To survive a zombie apocalypse you have to be very brave and stupid. Stupid by actually trying to, I mean the whole world is basically against you now. Your going to have to be fit and athletic. You also need to have good aim. If you fit this description then your story begins…

Chapter 1

When a zombie apocalypse first happens, this is the most dangerous part. Many people are going to get infected because they don’t know what the hell is happening. Now you probably don’t care about the other people but the more of them that get infected the worse it is for you. For now all you need is a weapon.

If your in an office or a business area (this includes hotels, hospitals, etc) your going to have to use your fists.  But really your going to run most of the time. If your nearer to the top floor do not go down the stairs UNLESS you have a weapon. It is really dangerous to go down there, you will get cornered no matter how tough you are. Though you’re going to have to get out before it gets any worse. To get a weapon try going to a janitor closest. If your no where near there go into any office and grab a keyboard, chair, anything light and gives you the ability to crack a head in one hit. Now if you are near a janitor closet go in and grab a mop and some spray, make sure the spray is flammable. If you have a lighter then you have an advantage. Matches will work too. Now you need the spray for 2 things, some idiots lock doors that you need to get through and hell no they won’t let you in. Just spray the lock and light it up. I’d hide behind something just in case it blows. If you don’t have any thing to light it up all you need is a plastic Id card and try to pick the lock. This is very easy actually. All you do is try to place the card between the lock and the wall, the door will slide open. If your running out of time, try to break the handle of the door. If all else fails try another door, in an office building they probably have an emergency exit. If the exit is over run by zombies you now have a weapon so you may now go to the stairs! Just be careful, use your mop to knock the zombies down the stairs. If your mop breaks, which might happen if you hit with it too hard, then use the longest end and use it as a spear. Aim for the head or just push em off the stairs. Once you reach the bottom floor avoid the exits until you make a distraction. If you have a lighter or matches then you have a distraction. Go to any hall away from the exits and spray a lot of fluid on the floor. Once the floor is wet smear the can in the fluid. Make sure your hands are not wet and there are no zombies around,  then use your matches on the fluid before it dries and run to an exit ( try to hide behind something before you get close to the exit to make sure no zombies are around. The spray can will eventually explode, if you sprayed enough fluid on the floor. If you didn’t just make sure no zombies are around and run to the exit. If the can explodes a lot of zombies will come, now you can just run to the exits while they are checking out what blew up. Now if you don’t have matches just make a run for the exit. Continue on chapter 2.

Now if your in a house or you were shopping (this includes restaurants, malls, apartments) then just lock all the doors leading in to the building. If you encounter a zombie on your way to lock the doors in a shop, run to any aisle with tools or anything sharp. Once there grab it and try to smash its head. Be careful not to get bitten. In the store you will encounter other people that will probably help you out. If your in your house then you’re safe for now since you already have your doors locked..I hope. If your at this step you can just skip to chapter 3.

Chapter 2

If you were on the road, in a car or was just taking a walk when this happened then all you need to do is get to the nearest police department. If you just escaped from you office building or business area then you need to get to a car since the nearest police department is no where near you. If you were walking get the hell back to your car or house if your walking the dog. Anyway once your in a car go to the police department. If it’s over run or they won’t let you in then drive out of the city or the popular parts of town to the suburbs or any where that’s not as populace. You can then just find a small store or pharmacy. A pharmacy would be best. Once you find one that’s not over run go in and lock ALL doors. Not one should be left open. If the doors are broken seal them with grocery carts. If you can’t find any, get anything like empty boxes or useless items like signs and billboards and pile them on the exit. Once you completely sealed all exits you can rest.

Chapter 3

If you were the person that ran out of the office then you need to regain your energy, eat some food or candy that you can find in the store and sleep you will probably of already slept by then. Just don’t eat to much candy and drink a lot of water. If you were already in the store or house and you completely sealed off all entrances and exits you don’t need rest, you need weapons. For now you can hold off on weapons since security and protection is more important. Try wearing a plastic rain coat if you have any and wear thick boots and pants, put on some gloves and test biting yourself, if the glove gets ripped it wont help you against the zombies. If you are in a store that has no clothes then make yourself some weapons. Knives are usually sold at food stores and flammable stuff like disinfectant spray are usually there too. But if your gong to use the spray then head to the aisle with matches, the bigger the better. Then just get empty boxes and billboard signs and seal off the entrance to the food aisle, just in case the zombies breach the doors. Though you better get a lot of water and food in your aisle before you seal it off. If there is a pharmacy or a drug aisle in the store get some pain relievers and any useful drug that might help in the future, probably a cream that disinfects cuts and scrapes. 

Chapter 4

Friends and family at the most part are probably dead, if they are not following this guide that is, so you you going to need somebody to help you out. If you were stuck in the store you probably already have people that are nagging at you. If your home alone or you were the person from the office and is in a store now you don’t really need help from anybody else you can skip to chapter 5. Now if you do have people the are willing to join you then your first going to have to share your supplies. This is fine because more people adds to your defences and brain power. Just give a knife or if they have good aim give em a few to throw them at zombie heads. But watch your back one of those knives might be planned for you…

Chapter 5

Your food supplies are probably getting low if you are at home. If your in an apartment building and need to escape go back to chapter 1. Now if your in a house then you might have a chance… If your house has a chimney then this is a possible exit. Just make sure you can fit. If you can’t or if your afraid of tight places head to the Attic and open a window. Try to climb up to the room using your window sill as a foot hold. If it’s too high, then try using another window. If you actually have a car then go back to chapter 2. Don’t forget your weapons. If you don’t know what weapons to use go to chapter 6.

Chapter 6

Weapons are a crucial part to surviving. Many things can be weapons. If you have a car you can just run over zombies no problem. If your at home a nail gun, hammer (If your actually gonna use a hammer make sure you have 2 since they are slow to hit with) mop, broom, keyboard, flammable spray, matches, knives and forks. For the forks you can throw them like darts, though your going to have to be a good aim and throw it hard enough to make any damage. If your at an office or hotel weapons like brooms, keyboards, flammable spray, matches, will work just fine. If your at a food store use anything like carts or knives. If your in a super center or a tool store you don’t really need help finding a weapon, they are every where!

Chapter 7

Surviving for a long time is hard and probably won’t be accomplished since your probably gonna get nuked. Your friends might turn on you or you starve or thirst to death. The only possible way of surviving is if you have a helicopter, gas, guns, food factory, water from a river with filter, and a mansion with steel walls and gates. Even if you have that stuff you will eventually die of old age anyway. It’s a horrible and sad tragedy that you will endure if you ever have to go through a zombie apocalypse. A zombie apocalypse might never happen but i could always be wrong…

Megan Branch, Intern

Patrick Wright a Professor at the Institute for Cultural Analysis at Nottingham Trent University and a fellow of the London Consortium.  Wright wrote On Living in An Old Country and its companion, A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London (read an excerpt here). On Living in an Old Country looks at history’s role in shaping identity and everyday life in England. Below is an excerpt about the house of Miss May Alice Savidge. Upon finding out that her pre-Tudor house was scheduled for demolition to make way for road work, Savidge dismantled it, shipped it 100 miles away, and began reassembling the house piece-by-piece.

On Camping out in the Modern World

“History appears as the derailment, the disruption of the everyday…” - Karel Kosik

So far I have not identified the political complexion of the local authority in Ware, not for that matter of the national government when the decision to redevelop Miss Savidge’s home was made. This has not been the result of any reluctance to deal with the political implications of Miss Savidge’s story. On the contrary, my point is that these implications will not be appreciable unless one also grasps the extent to which politics, at least in the traditional frame of the major electoral parties, have become irrelevant to the issues finding expression in this affair.

In a phrase of Habermas’s, the political system is increasingly ‘decoupled’ from the traditional measures of everyday life, and Miss Savidge cannot be adequately defined as the victim of one party as opposed to another. She fell instead (and, of course, rose again) on the common ground of the post-war settlement, a ground which is made up of rationalised procedures and methods of administration as much as of any shared policies about, say, the efficacy of the mixed economy or the legitimacy of the welfare state. Miss Savidge’s house stood in the way of an ethos of development and a practice of social planning and calculation which have formed the procedural basis of the welfare state under both Conservative and Labour administrations. Governments have come and gone (at the behest of an electorate oscillating at a rate which itself reflects the situation), but a professionalised conduct of social administration has persisted throughout.

The professionals of this world are almost bound to see the more traditional forms of self-understanding persisting among the citizenry as merely quaint and eccentric, if not more dismissively as obstructive and inadequate to modern reality. While there is always room for an arrogant contempt to develop here, the most frequent manifestation consists of a resigned and pragmatic realism (the bureaucratic sigh which responds to people’s demands by saying that things are always more complicated than that) with which officials draw out and exhaust the discussion and patience of residents’ associations around the country. That this system of planning is less than perfect goes without saying, and Miss Savidge is well stocked with complaints on this score. For anyone who stops to ask she will talk about the callousness of the officials who turned up the Saturday before Christmas (1953) to look at the buildings which they had already decided to pull down—even though this was the first the residents had heard of it. She will mention inconsiderate rules applying to council tenants (no cat or dog unless you have a family, and so on). She will also talk about a general bureaucratic incompetence which, in her experience, made it possible to get a council grant towards the cost of installing a bathroom in a house which was already up for demolition, and which was also evident in the many changes of plan regarding the road development itself. Is it to be a new road with a roundabout, or can the old road be widened, and which local authority (town or country) is to be responsible?

Bureaucratic procedure may indeed be conducted as if its rationality were contained entirely within its own calculations, and in this respect it may well seem to stand impervious: free from any responsibility to the world in which its works eventually materialise. But whatever the appearance, this is obviously not a matter of rationality alone. The system of planning into which Miss Savidge was well caught up by 1969 is characteristic of a welfare state that was both corporatist in character (public discussion and political negotiation simulated in thoroughly institutionalised forms), and caught in the contradictions of its commodifying pact with private capital. More than this, the welfare state has developed through a period of extensive cultural upheaval, and Miss Savidge’s is therefore a story of the times in its discovery of tradition not just in the lifeworld but also in an apparently hopeless contest with modernity. While the dislocation of traditional self-understanding could indeed prepare the way for better possibilities, Miss Savidge stands there as a testimony to another scenario in which the prevailing atmosphere is one of insecurity which develops when extensive cultural dislocation has occurred without any better, or even reasonably meaningful, future coming into view.

This is one I am working on.. the finish will be pen and ink and maybe a bit of digital. Right now I am in the exploration stage, but loving the adventure I am able to create in this musty old library.

By Anatoly Liberman

I would rather write about prisms and prunes, but those words are ultimately of Greek descent, and I try to stay on Germanic soil as much as possible, though sometimes the spirit of adventure (not to be encouraged in a serious etymologist) makes me trespass on Romance territory. The origin of spoon is well-known, but the story is instructive and deserves repeating.

Spoons of some sort were invented at the dawn of civilization. Liquid and soft food cannot be eaten with hands, so that spoons, contrary to forks, are a necessity, not a luxury. Human beings have fingers, that is, natural forks, and the Europeans resisted the introduction of “artificial fingers” long and manfully. The English are famous for even ridiculing forks five hundred years ago. However, by the 16th and especially the 17th century the wealthy in Italy, France, and England got used to the newfangled utensil, partly because forks could be made of costly materials and impress guests (the Italians were in the forefront of this important battle). The idea of the monstrous phrase plastic silverware could not have occurred to those nobles. The Old English noun forca ~ force betrays its origin from Latin furca “a two-pronged pitchfork,” “a stake for punishment” (hence furcifer “villain, gallows bird”), “a claw of a crayfish,” and so forth (a word for which no satisfactory etymology exists; the original root can be seen in Engl. bifurcation). In Old English, as in Latin, forca ~ force meant “pitchfork.” The earliest known mention of Engl. fork “eating utensil” traces back to 1463, and the next occurrence in the OED is dated 1554. Furca, despite its obscurity, may have been native in Latin, for such a primitive agricultural implement would have been unlikely to go by a foreign name. The other Germanic words for “pitchfork” (such as German Gabel, related to Engl. gable) and their Slavic counterparts (such as Russian vily) are also opaque from an etymological point of view, though less troublesome than furca.

Spoon is certainly native and can serve as a classic illustration of how the history of words and the history of things are connected. Old Engl. spon (with a long vowel), the etymon of spoon, meant “chip, splinter, shaving,” and this is still the meaning of German Span and one of the meanings of Dutch spaan. In Middle English, the change from “chip” to “eating utensil” probably occurred under the influence of its Scandinavian equivalent in which the same change happened earlier. The ancient spoon was a primitive sliver before it became elaborate silver. Spoons have transparent names in many languages. Latin coclear, the ancestor of French cuiller, Spanish cuchara, and Italian cucchiaio, shares the root with coclea “snail; spiral” (in our dictionaries, coclea sometimes turns up with -ch-, as do its English reflexes derived from Greek) either because of its initial twisted form or because it had pointed ends for eating shellfish. Shells as spoons have been used widely all over the world. Swedish sked (with closely related forms in all the Scandinavian languages) refers to something split or divided, as the corresponding English verb to shed and -shed in the compound watershed make clear. Dutch lepel “spoon” is an instrument for “lapping up” food.

Older than the spoon and the fork is the knife, and the origin of the words for it is sometimes lost. The easiest case is German Messer (with cognates elsewhere in Germanic). Messen “to measure” is related to Engl. mete (out). Apparently, the instrument was used for “measuring.” Meat (but not meet) is also related, for the original sense of meat was “food,” or rather “a portion ‘meted’ to the partaker.” But Engl. knife is enigmatic despite the fact that almost identical forms exist in several Germanic languages (compare Dutch knijf). Old English had cnif (here again with a long vowel); however, the word surfaced late and seems to have been borrowed from Scandinavian. When knife came into existence, k was pronounced in it, as in Modern Engl. acknowledge, for example. Germanic words with initial kn- and gn- are numerous; today the spelling of Engl. knock, gnaw, and the like reminds us of medieval sound values but confuses learners. In the written form of some words, initial k- and g- have been abolished.

Although the nouns and verbs that at one time began with kn- and gn- show some similarity in meaning, their common semantic denominator is evasive. At least some of them refer to a light, quick movement (nudge, for instance). Knife may be part of that group, and Skeat saw no reason for separating it from nip and nibble. Everything depends on the purpose of the original knife. If in the remote past it denoted a stabbing tool or weapon, a kind of bayonet, its name will align itself easily with many other kn- words. But the prehistory of our object is hidden. According to a daring hypothesis, knife is a loan from Basque. (I need hardly remind our readers that linguistic loans are permanent and that the lending language does not become poorer after sharing its riches with a neighbor. Borrow is a remarkably inappropriate term in this context; take over makes better sense.) Words for tools are often “borrowed,” because they travel from land to land with the objects they designate. Thus, foreign axes, adzes, hatchets, and their likes come to new countries, and their names seldom resist domestication. With knives it happens rarely, if at all. In any case, we do not know to what uses the object called knife was put when its name emerged and are likely to remain in the dark forever. It is important to remember that, in order to discover the etymology of a word, we must know exactly what the word means. Plato, or perhaps Socrates before him, already realized this connection, but in our work we are apt to forget it.

By Edward Zelinsky

In light of the Democratic party’s control of both houses of Congress and the White House, it is probable that the federal government will continue to levy an estate tax when affluent decedents transmit their wealth to their descendants. The most likely possibility is that Congress will continue to exempt decedents’ estates valued less than $3.5 million while it taxes estates exceeding that threshold amount. In light of President Obama’s statements on the subject, it is also probable that such excess will taxed at a 45% rate when a decedent dies and leaves his wealth to his descendants.

Important details remain to be determined, e.g., whether the $3.5 million federal estate tax exemption will be adjusted annually for increases in the cost of living; whether various estate tax planning techniques such as family partnerships will be curbed or eliminated.

How ever these matters are ultimately resolved, the legislation perpetuating the federal estate tax should contain a provision subjecting to federal taxation all large intergenerational transfers of family wealth. Specifically, Congress should repeal the grandfather exemption from the federal generation skipping tax (GST) for irrevocable trusts established on or before September 25, 1985. This exemption unfairly immunizes from federal taxation transfers at death of “old” wealth while economically equivalent transfers of new wealth are taxed.

As an historic matter, the federal estate tax was often avoided through the use of so-called generation skipping trusts. When a decedent established such a trust, the trust continued for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with no further federal estate taxation being due whenever any of these lineal descendants themselves subsequently died.

The term “generation skipping trust” was a misnomer. The trust didn’t skip any generations. The tax did. Families could continue to enjoy and grow inherited wealth in trust without paying federal estate taxes.

In 1986, Congress prospectively outlawed this planning technique by imposing the federal GST. The GST backstops the federal estate tax by assessing a tax on a death-related transfer of wealth in trust whenever an equivalent transfer outside of a trust would trigger the estate tax. Thus, with the GST in place, families can no longer use trusts to avoid taxation on intergenerational transmissions of large fortunes. Rather, federal taxation must be paid at least once in every generation.

However, Congress grandfathered from the GST transfers of wealth from trusts which were in existence and irrevocable on September 25, 1985.

This exemption creates for federal tax purposes an unfair and unconvincing distinction between new wealth (think Michael Bloomberg) and old wealth (think the Kennedys and the Rockefellers). Because of the federal GST, families inheriting new wealth now pay a federal estate tax or its equivalent at least once every generation. However, families inheriting old wealth live estate-tax free by virtue of the grandfathered status of tax-avoiding trusts established by such families’ patriarchs and matriarchs on or before September 25, 1985.

There are respectable arguments for and against federal estate taxation. However, if there is to be an estate tax, there is no convincing reason to treat differently old wealth from new wealth.

If, as the President Obama and the current Congress apparently believe, federal estate taxation represents sound social and tax policy, there is no warrant for continuing to exempt from such taxation some families simply because they had the good luck to make their fortunes before 1985. As part of its legislation continuing the federal estate tax, Congress and the President should eliminate the immunity from generation skipping taxation for intergenerational wealth transfers accomplished by irrevocable trusts established on or before September 25, 1985. For federal tax purposes, all inherited wealth should be taxed the same, whether it is “old” wealth or “new” wealth. The GST grandfather exemption should be abolished.

Just recently finished up this logo for a company. Overall, I think it came out looking pretty good, and I thought I'd share.

No real news to report beyond that. A lot of the same really.

Work, sleep, wife, work, sleep, wife, work, sleep, wife, etc.

It's painfully boring being me.

Steve

Announcing my first greeting card, for the New Year! In the spirit of finding as much humor as possible in the current situation, I offer the above visual interpretation, now available in a convenient greeting card form for easy distribution amongst those you might want to hand a laugh to! These are actual physical greeting cards, that you put stamps on and everything - remember those?? I am offering them for $1.20 each.

If you are interested in ordering some cards for your personal use, please contact me at [email protected].  And a wonderful, happy 2009 to everyone!

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Once again, it's been far far far too long since my last posting. I've been overwhelmed by 'real life', but things are slowly sorting themselves out and my never-ending to-do list seems to actually be filling itself up with more 'normal' items though there is still much to be done that concerns moving and settling in.

The good news is that I have finally found myself a more permanent home! The key above is the one to my cellar and isn't it a gorgeous old key? It's large and solid and rusty and slightly skewed but it lies heavy in my hand and I thought it the perfect symbol for the beginning of a new life here in France. It has a sense of solidity and permanence and is, I hope, a good omen for the future.

It's been 10 months since I first arrived in France, very wet behind the ears and, to be honest, quite terrified at the huge step I had taken. Well, it's been worth every moment and I count my blessings daily! I still have much to do but am hoping that the dust (literally, as there are builders in the house) will settle soon and I can get a little studio office set up and draw to my heart's content. Cheers! :)

Old Key card at Zazzle

By Anatoly Liberman

All those who pose as experts in etymology tend to receive questions about certain popular words, with exotic slang and obscenities attracting the greatest attention. (The F-word is at the top of the list. Is it an acronym? No, it is not.) Beginning with my old post on copasetic, I tried to anticipate some such questions, and for a long time I have been wondering how to tell the story of OK, an object of undying interest. The excitement of this oft-repeated story has long since worn off, and only the thought that perhaps I can add nuance (as highbrows say) to the OK epic and thus partly avoid the otherwise inevitable triviality allows me to continue.

OK has been traced to numerous languages, including, Classical Greek, Finnish, Choctaw, Burmese, Irish, and Black English (Black English caught the fancy of many journalists, who in the sixties “rediscovered” Africa without going there and gained the reputation of radicals at no cost). The literature is also full of suggestions that the sources of OK have to be sought in German, French, or Danish. This guessing game presents interest for two reasons. First, it shows that many people do not realize the importance of research in historical linguistics. Not only do they risk offering conjectures without as much as a cursory look at the evidence: they do not even take the trouble to get acquainted with the views of their equally uninformed predecessors. One constantly runs into statements like: “I am surprised that it has not occurred to anyone…”, whereupon an etymology follows that was offered fifty years earlier and rehashed again and again. (Compare the review I once read of a performance of The Swan Lake. The reviewer said that this was the best performance of the ballet he could remember. I concluded that it was either the first time he had seen The Swan Lake or that he suffered from amnesia.) In my database, I have 78 citations for OK, mainly from the press, and this number could have been doubled or tripled if I had made the effort to collect all the letters on the subject printed in newspapers; I availed myself of only some of them. Variations on the same hypotheses keep surfacing again and again. Second, even specialists may not always realize that in dealing with a word like OK, a plausible derivation presupposes two steps. OK spread through the United States like wildfire in the early 1840’s and stayed. Regardless of whether the lending language is believed to be Choctaw or Finnish, the etymologist has to explain why OK became popular when it did. A similar approach is required for all slang and for many stylistically neutral words. Any innovation, be it bikini, recycling, a redistribution of voting districts, or a neologism, comes from a smart individual and is either rejected or accepted by the public. If a word has been rejected, we usually know little or nothing about its history (a stillborn has a short biography). But if it has survived, we should explain where it originated and what contributed to its longevity. Suppose OK is Greek. Why then was its radiation center the United States? And why in the forties of the 19th century? No etymology of OK will be valid while such questions remain unanswered.

In our case, the answers are known. Today we confuse one another with cryptic acronyms like LOL “laugh out loud” and AWOL (here a gloss is not needed). Linguistic tastes do not seem to have changed since the 1830’s. Facts give credence to the belief that OK stands for oll korrect, but not to the legend that this was the spelling used by Andrew Jackson. Although the 7th President of the United States would not have been hired as a spelling master even by a rural school, anecdotes about his gross illiteracy have little foundation in fact. The craze for k, as it was called (Kash, Kongress, and so forth), added to the staying power of the abbreviation OK. But OK would probably have disappeared along with dozens of others if it had not been used punningly by the supporters of Van Buren, the next president, born in Old Kinderhook, New York. To be sure, it could still have vanished once the campaign was over, but it did not. It even became the most famous American coinage, understood far beyond the borders of the United States. This is the account one finds in dictionaries, but dictionaries, quite naturally, do not dwell on the history of the search, which entailed decades of studying documents, broken friendships, and the making of a great reputation.

It was Allen Walker Read who reconstructed the Old Kinderhook link in the rise of OK, and his discovery became a sensation: first The Saturday Review published an article by him (1941), and years later an interview devoted to OK appeared in New Yorker. Read is also the author of many other excellent works, but few people outside academia have heard about them. At the end of one of his article on OK (he brought out four major articles on the subject and several addenda, all of them published in the journal American Speech), Read expressed his surprise that the origin of OK, which everybody must have known in Van Buren’s days, was forgotten so soon. However, the case is not unique. People regularly forget the pronunciations that were current only a generation ago and the events that led to the coining of words.

Read had to dispose of the possible pre-1839 existence of OK. And this is where personal animosities came in. One of the editors of the Dictionary of American English was Woodford A. Heflin, an excellent specialist, whose contributions clarified a good deal in the emergence of OK. But he put too much trust in the following line found in the journal of William Richardson, a businessman from Boston. In his detailed description of a journey to New Orleans (1815), Richardson wrote: “Arrived in Princeton, a handsome little village, 15 miles from N Brunswick, ok & at Trenton, where we dined at 1 P.M.” The ok & part makes no sense. Richardson may have begun a sentence that he did not finish, or a scribal error may have occurred. The amount of interlining and correction in the manuscript is considerable. Even if the sentence can be understood without emendation, the mysterious ok need not mean what it means to us, for the well-educated Richardson would hardly have infused a piece of low slang after mentioning N Brunswick. This was Read’s conclusion, but Heflin insisted that the 1815 occurrence of OK was the earliest we have. The strife that ensued soured the relations between the two scholars. Heflin went public and fought what he called an incorrect etymology of OK in the pages of American Speech. Read responded (the journal showed laudable impartiality and let both opponents express their views). The battle was fought in the sixties, long after Read’s initial article appeared in The Saturday Review.

Read examined the manuscript of Richardson’s journal, but to the best of my knowledge, he never mentioned the fact that he had not done it alone. This is what Frederic C. Cassidy wrote in 1981 (American Speech 56, 1981, p. 271): “After many attempts to track down the diary, Read and I at last discovered that it is owned by the grandson of the original writer, Professor L[awrence] Richardson, Jr., of the Department of Classic Studies at Duke University. Through his courtesy we were able to examine this manuscript carefully, to make greatly enlarged photographs of it, and to become convinced (as is Richardson) that, whatever the marks in the manuscript are, they are not OK. The Richardson diary does not constitute evidence for the currency of OK before 1839.” What an anticlimax! I only don’t understand why Read did not say all of it himself. In 1981 he was an active scholar guarding his priority most carefully, and there is no doubt that if Cassidy’s report had not been accurate, he would have made his disagreement known.

Here ends my story of OK, nuance and all.

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You're as old as TWO 21-year-olds!

Sometimes when I’m talking about 2.0-ish stuff, it can be hard to think of immediate examples of how libraries have always been doing a lot of this stuff, we just now have the tools to make it easier. A case in point is an email I received this morning from the Finkelstein Memorial Library. They have an exhibit at their library of drawings from David Friedman, a Holocaust survivor, who found peace and quiet in libraries upon his arrival in the US. He made a series of sketches of people enjoying the library that are available online as a slide show. While the library didn’t use Flickr for this particular web page, they could have, and they could have done so without much technical knowledge whatsoever.

While working on this series, it was his trips to the library that offered him the necessary respite from the torment and agony of his memories. The artist said, “I needed to forget about the concentration camps and the horror that was there. So it was a pleasure to go to the library.” The artist’s wife, Hildegard, and his daughter, Miriam Friedman Morris, have donated Mr. Friedman’s drawings of libraries in St. Louis, Missouri during the period 1962-1972 to the Finkelstein Memorial Library in Spring Valley, New York. We have digitalized the images and it is our great pleasure to share them with you online.