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Answers from Elena Ornig “The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.” Thomas Mann For a long period of time from initial human’s need of recording important information, the writing activity has become the vital instrument of generating meaning. Obviously, the written language and the spoken language are not the same. So, when you write, you have to take into consideration the differences between the literary (written) language and non-literary (spoken) language which you surely remember from school lessons. At this point, I would like to bring to the writer’s attention an extra matter.   When you write a story, narrative or novel, you must clearly understand who you write it for.  When you write you have all the time you need to be precise, deliberate and sophisticated; therefore, take your time and analyse what is the purpose of your written creation. What statement do you want to ... Read the rest of this post

By Anatoly Liberman

The spelling of those two words does not bother us only because both are so common and learned early in life.  Yet why not shure and shugar?  There is a parallel case, and it too leaves us indifferent, though for a different reason.  Consider su in pressure, measure, pleasure, leisure, and the like.  We do not question the occurrence of su in the middle of a Romance word, with its phonetic value of sh (as in cushion) or ge (as in genre and rouge) and pay no attention to azure, in which the same sound is designated by a more natural group zu.  The French origin of pressure, azure, measure, and their ilk, let alone genre and rouge, is so obvious that perhaps even those who have never studied French are dimly aware of it.  By contrast, sure and sugar are fully domesticated (only etymologists know all the details of their descent), and, even more important, su in them occurs word initially.  It is their position at the beginning rather than in the middle of the word that causes surprise.  However, both sure and sugar also came to English from French and in this respect have common cause with pressure and measure.

From a historical point of view, the story is simple.  Consider the names of the letters U and Q, that is (in phonetic terms), yu and kyu.  Before y, t becomes ch, s turns into sh, and z yields the voiced partner of sh.  Listen to how you say what you…; it is probably indistinguishable from watch you.  Many (most?) people pronounce unless you as unlesh you, and I have seldom heard anyone pronounce the title of Shakespeare’s play As You Like It with z before you: it is usually the same sound as in Measure for Measure.  In the middle of the word, rather than at word boundaries, an analogous assimilation happened several centuries ago, and that is why nature and vision sound as though they were spelled nachure and vizion.  This brings us to sugar and sure.

The vowel occurring in French sure was alien to most Middle English dialects, including the dialect of London, and, as the name of the modern English letter U shows, yu replaced French u in borrowed words.  We can observe this substitution even in such a recent loanword as menu (and compare nubile and other nu- words).  Once sure appeared in English, it turned into syure, and a similar change happened in sugar (syugar).  Later, syu- developed into sh- (compare bless you, session, and Asia, regardless of whether you have a voiced or a voiceless middle in the last of them, for the voicing is secondary).  As noted above, sure and sugar are such conspicuous monsters because word initially su- designates sh only in those two words.  (Actually, the plant name sumach also has a variant with shu-, but it is known too little.  Sumach makes a good riddle: “There are three English words in which initial su- has the value of shu-.  The first t

Exciting: Poet and Silver Jews singer/songwriter/mastermind David Berman has a blog, Menthol Mountains, where he’s pondering “the phony gulp,” hooked-up verse, and other things. (Thanks, 5redpandas.)

By Charlotte Buxton

In July 1917, after three years of bloody war, anti-German feeling in Britain was reaching a feverish peak. Xenophobic mutterings about the suitability of having a German on the throne had been heard since 1914. The fact that the Royal family shared part of its name, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, with the Gotha bombers responsible for the devastating recent raids on London turned these whispers into open cries.

In response, King George V – resenting any aspersions on his patriotism – changed the name of the British Royal family to the impeccably English-sounding Windsor. This act signalled the power of names in a society heavy with newly coined, derogatory labels for the enemy: from Jerry to Fritz, through the Krauts, the Boche, and the Hun, you needed to know who you were fighting, and why, it was felt.

But jingoism was not the only source of linguistic creativity in the period. The circumstances of the First World War were so horrific, so extraordinary, and involving so many millions of people that a new language was almost essential. Many words which emerged at the time have clear associations with the conflict, such as camouflage, blimp, aerobatics, demob, and shell shock. Others have a more complex history, emerging from soldiers’ slang; itself a product of the increased cosmopolitanism ushered in by the war.

Take me back to dear old Blighty

Before the war, many of the young Tommies (a term deriving from ‘Thomas Atkins’, which was used on specimen army documents from 1815 as the name of a typical private soldier) who were shipped abroad to fight had probably never ventured far beyond the villages in which they were born. Suddenly immersed in exotic, unfamiliar cultures, both their longing for home and their assimilation of their new surroundings are summed up in one word: Blighty.

Meaning Britain or England, but especially ‘home’, Blighty originated in the Indian army, as an anglicization of the Hindustani bilāyatī, wilāyatī meaning ‘foreign, European’. First recorded in print in 1915, Blighty was an ideal place of comfort, love, and security, sharply contrasting with the hideous discomfort, harsh discipline, and constant danger of the front, and remains a popular term amongst Brits for their homeland to this day. Less familiar is the word’s extended use, which popped up on the television programme Downton Abbey recently, when the conniving footman Thomas Barrow deliberately injures his hand in order to escape the trenches. In the programme, this war wound is referred to as a ‘Blighty’ – a popular term at the time for any injury serious enough to get its victim sent back home, hopefully for good.

Less extreme than a Blighty was a cushy wound – one which was not serious enough to get you sent home permanently, but which would usually buy some time away from the trenches. Deriving from the Hindu for ‘pleasure’, ḵushī, the word’s more familiar sense of ‘undemanding, easy, or secure’ developed at the same time. This has stuck in the language to this day, with ‘cushy job’ a particularly popular phrase in the Oxford English Corpus. In North America cushy is now also used to refer to a particularly comfy sofa or other piece of furniture – far removed, one might think, from its starting point in the mud and gore of battle.

From the trenches to the street

British soldiers adopted the language of their enemies just

By Anatoly Liberman

Last week I answered only the questions that needed relatively detailed answers.  Today’s “issue” will be devoted to shorter queries.

Riparian. Some letters we receive are so brief that I am not sure whether my explanations satisfy the writers.  For example, a recent query contained only one word, namely RIPARIAN.  It will be remembered that the protagonist of one of H. K. Andersen’s tales, a merchant’s son who played ducks and drakes with his inheritance (in the direct sense of the word: he loved to toss golden coins into water, to watch the rings), one day, when his prospects had become truly grim, received a gift from an old friend, a coffer to which the shortest note possible was pinned: “Pack up.”   This was easy, for the only thing the man still possessed was his old dressing gown.  He put it on, got into the coffer, and the coffer flew up into the air.  What happened to the merchant’s son after he landed in Turkey is irrelevant to my story, but I wish to ask our correspondents to give more details when they ask questions.  However, since the email had the subject ETYMOLOGY REQUEST, I assume that I am expected to discuss the origin of the word riparian.  This adjective usually means “pertaining to or situated on the banks of a river,” for it goes back to Latin ripuarius, from ripa “bank.”   The medical term riparian “pertaining to a ripa of the brain; marginal, as a part of the brain” (it is used in anatomy) is an extension of the same sense.  I may add that ripa is not related to Engl. rib and that river, a Romance cognate of ripa, is not related to rivulet.

Tell, its senses, tally, and the noun till.  Both senses of the verb tell—“count” and “narrate”—were already present in Old English.  Since tell was derived from a noun and this noun (Old Engl. talu, cognate with Old High German zala and Old Icelandic tala “tale”) also meant “reckoning” and “talk,” it is hard to disentangle the meanings, but, most probably, the semantic kernel was “ordered, or numerical, sequence,” from which “things told in order, a connected narrative” developed.  Therefore, from a historical point of view, “number” (as in German Zahl) seems to have preceded “speech” (as in Dutch taal).  In English, the sense “count” has been almost ousted by “narrate, recount” (compare count and recount!)  But the biblical usage, retained in he telleth the number of the stars and so forth, the phrases tell one’s beads, all told, and untold riches (wealth), as well as in the noun teller, remind us of tell “count.”  Talk has the root tal-, followed by the suffix -k, but tally traces to a Latin etymon (talea “cutting, rod, stick”; tailor, from French, literally “cutter,” as is still seen in Italian tagliatore, is its cognate).  Keeping count by notches on a stick was a universal procedure in the past.  Since Latin t does not correspond to Germanic t (either Germanic th- or non-Germanic d- is needed), tally cannot be a cognate of talea, but it is not absolutely improbable that the Latin word was very early borrowed into Germanic (in such cases one expects identities rather than correspondences).  The origin of talu ~ tala remains, to a certain extent, unknown.  Although its Latin provenance is possible, tale may be a native Germanic word related to Latin dolo (dolare) “to chop,” and, if so, we return to the idea of notches.  Be that as it may, in the history of tale and tell, the idea of counting must

Google texts and teen writing skills and you will get many articles on how texting negatively effects teen’s formal writing skills, all loaded with quotes from teachers about how they have seen the negative impact texting has on these skills.
The most interesting article I found was in the New York Times www.nytimes.com/2002/09/19/technology/circuits/19MESS.html?ex=1178164800&en=be7c73c909e0a0a1&ei=5070, printed in 2002 . The arguments made almost ten years ago are still the sames ones you will read about over and over in any article/blog/web forum today. Basically, that the shorthand teens use in text messaging is detrimental to their writing and can be found in written assignments, much to the frustration of their teachers.

But, if you dig a little deeper and read the whole article, you’ll find a different viewpoint about teens and texting. This is the viewpoint I would like to represent. You can find short little blog posts like this, http://edoptions.com/blog/?p=23, that point out that teachers have been complaining about informal language seeping its way into formal language for a very long time. Remember how upset people where when email became a primary source of communication as opposed to letter writing. Teachers and elders thought this was an abomination and that teens would never learn how to write properly.

Who remembers ebonics? (That’s right, I was a teen in the 90′s;-) OMG (had to throw it in) I thought people where going to come to fist fights over that issue- should it become an official language or not? If you’re too young to remember this debate look it up in wikipedia.

Speaking of, isn’t wikipedia itself a current debate in the formal writing process? I tell patrons, adults, teens and college students, that wikipedia is a great jumping point for starting research. I explain that anyone can go on and post something on a wikipedia entry, so this is not a good source to use in a research paper, but that it is an excellent place to start research. I bet some of you are cringing and some of you are nodding your heads.

In my humble opinion, I think teens are reading and writing WAY more than I ever did as a teen. Even though the writing in texts are not essay worthy, hardly any of the writing I do is essay worthy. I mean, come on, I wouldn’t dare turn this post in for a class, but I could easily turn the ideas into a very nice research paper. I put and the occassional in professional emails on a daily basis. I was taught, in grad school, that this are used to display your tone in writing (this was taught especially in regards to online reference services). I believe that getting teens reading and writing in any way possible is a good thing. How many of you used formal English in the notes you passed back and forth in class in grade school? How many of you made up coded language or words, so that if your note was intercepted it would be hard to decipher?

I believe that this is a current debate and in years to come someone will be telling their younger colleagues to look it up in wikipedia (whatever the current source will be).

By Anatoly Liberman Ingle is usually derived from Celtic. The Scots form is the same as the English one, while Irish Gaelic has aingeal. The Celtic word is a borrowing of Latin ignis “fire” (cf. Engl. ignite, ignition). Therefore, some etymologists derive Engl. ingle directly from the Latin diminutive igniculus; ingle nook gives this derivation some support. Be that as it may, no path leads from ingle to inkling.

This Day in World History - On September 27, 1822, Jean François Champollion announced a long-awaited discovery: he could decipher the Rosetta Stone. The stone, a document written in 196 BCE during the reign of Ptolemy V, had been discovered in Rashid (Rosetta in French), Egypt in 1799 by French troops involved in a military campaign against the British. Deciphering hieroglyphics had frustrated scholars for centuries. Arab scholars, beginning in the ninth century, CE, made unsuccessful attempts, as did Europeans in the fifteenth.

I’ve learned the importance of communicating clearly with students through the Responsive Classroom training I’ve had and books I’ve read about teacher-talk.  One book that resonated with me several years ago was Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning by Peter H. Johnston.  In his book, Johnston made me think deeply about the words [...]

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By Anatoly Liberman

Habit, in additions to the meaning that is universally known (“settled disposition of mind and body”), can also designate “apparel,” even though in restricted contexts, such as monk’s habit or riding habit.  At first sight, these senses do not belong together, and yet they do.  The word is, of course, a “loan” from French.  (I have mentioned more than once that linguistic loans are permanent, for they are never returned, except when, for example, an ancient Germanic, that is, Franconian word traveled to Old French—note the similarity of Franconian and French—and then returned to English or more rarely to German so changed that even philologists sometimes have trouble recognizing the prodigal son.)  Both Latin habitus and its continuation Old French habit already combined the two meanings retained in English; English only borrowed both.

Since habitus was the past participle of habere “to have,” it could refer to almost anything that was “had,” including dress and mental makeup.  Less predictable is the meaning of Latin habitare “to have in permanent possession, keep,” whence “to stay put; dwell,” from which English has, again via French, inhabit and habitat.  Habitare is the frequentative form of habere.  A frequentative verb describes a regularly occurring action: for example, we can wrest an object from an opponent’s grip and wrestle continually with a problem: wrestle is frequentative, as opposed to wrest.  Habitat is a curious bookish word that surfaced in English only in the 18^th century.  Those who know some Latin will immediately see that habitat is the 3^rd person singular of habitare, that is, “he dwells.”  Here I cannot do better that quote The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology: “…derived from its use in [Latin descriptions of] floras and faunas to introduce the natural place of growth or occurrence of a species (e.g. ‘Common Primrose.  Habitat in sylvis’ [grows in woods].”  Thus, a Latin verb was transformed into an English noun.  Inhabit goes back to Latin inhabitare, literally “indwell.”

Some other derivatives and borrowings with the same root, such as the legal term habendum, the phrase habeas corpus (both pure Latin), habitual, habituate, and habitué, hardly deserve our attention.  But it is worthy of mention that French, like Spanish and Italian, lost initial h quite early in its history.  When we see Spanish hay or Italian ho, we know that h is a graphic symbol devoid of phonetic value.  French borrowings have taught us to treat h- with caution.  Engl. hour, ultimately from Latin hora, is a homonym of our (the Spanish cognate is still spelled hora, like French heure, but the Italian for hour is ora!).  Engl. habit is the product of medieval and Renaissance scholarship: the learned, who took themselves too seriously, loved to spell English words etymologically and sometimes suggested such silly variants as abhominable because they derived the adjective from ab and hominem, while in fact it is related to omen.    Later the written image of habit, humble, and so forth affected the way they were pronounced.  Fluctuations are still possible. Herb is herb in England but ‘erb in American English, in which Herb is only a name,

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By Anatoly Liberman

For this essay I have to thank Walter Turner, who asked me about the origin of larrup.   The verb means “beat, thrash, whip, flog.”  Long before my database became available in printed form as A Bibliography of English Etymology, I described in a special post what kind of lexical fish my small-meshed net had caught.  (Sorry for the florid style.  I remember a dean saying in irritation to one of the speakers at the Assembly: “Can you stop speaking in metaphors?”  I mean that our team read a lot of articles and marked the places where anything pertaining to etymology turned up, without missing even the most trivial remarks.)  After some of the words had been gathered in a mini-thesaurus, I observed with surprise the number of synonyms for “beat, strike.”  Baist, bansel, clat, dozz, keb, lase, polch, starn, and what not.  Needless to say, my knowledge of the language and of the ways of the world did not go beyond bang, buffet, lick, trounce, whack, and the like.  And let me repeat: the database includes only such words about whose origin something has been said in the articles I have read, so, by definition, a small fraction of the existing literature.  Later in Notes and Queries an exchange titled “Provincialisms for ‘To Thrash’” came my way, with mump, clool, wheang, and more of the same enriching my passive vocabulary.  Among other things, in elementary school “‘thimble-pie’ was a serious letting down.  It was administered with the dame’s thimble finger,” and (the author adds), “as I remember, was very much past a joke.”  All the northern correspondents knew skelp, but no one mentioned larrup, though, according to Joseph Wright’s The English Dialect Dictionary, it is recognized in every part of England.  It is also widespread in the United States, even if less so (see Dictionary of American Regional English).  What then is its etymology?  Larrup does not occur in my database, which means that I have not run into a single article or note in which its history is mentioned.  And yet, as happens so often in etymological studies, its origin was, if not explained, at least elucidated, almost a century ago; only no one has paid attention.

The OED lists larrup (the earliest citation there goes back to 1823) but offers no etymology.  It only quotes an 1825 publication, in which lirrop (not larrup) “to beat” is followed by a short remark: “This is said to be a corruption of the sea term, lee-rope.”  Larrop and lirrop, as pointed out in the OED, are, naturally, variants of larrup.  As to lee-rope, we need not bother about this exercise in folk etymology.  The Century Dictionary also has an entry on larrup and says: “Prob. [from] D[utch] larpen, thresh with the flails; cf. larp, a lash.  The E[nglish] form larrup (for *larp) may represent the strongly rolled r of the D[utch]: so larum, alarum, for alarm” (in linguistic works, an asterisk before a form means that it has not been attested).  This statement can be found verbatim in several later dictionaries.  From time to time I write about “unsung heroes of etymology.”  Charles P. G. Scott, the etymologist for The Century Dictionary, is one of them.  He can always be relied upon; yet I do not know where he found the words larp and larpen.  The Great