| 5 February 2010 | | Name that decade | This is my first blog of 2010, and it leads to an interesting question - how are we going to say this new decade? The last nine years have been a real mouthful, as we have had to say them in full. 'Two thousand and nine' was the last in the series, so the question is whether we are going to keep on with this cumbersome habit and call this year 'two thousand and ten' or go back to the convenient shorthand of the last century, and call it 'twenty ten'.
The thing is that there are no rules and no consistency. The year a hundred and one years ago is not called 'Nineteen hundred and nine' but 'nineteen oh-nine'. If we could have had 'twenty oh-nine' for last year this would have been convenient and consistent with this naming system, but it never happened. So please, for the sake of generations unborn this century, let's go back to the short form and start calling this year 'twenty ten'. All together now, because it's in the balance. I've heard people using both 'two thousand and ten' and 'twenty ten' but although I think 'twenty ten' is winning it needs all the help it can get. This is your chance to change history...
Then comes the next question - how will the decade just ended be known? (And yes, I do know that technically it ends on December 31st 2010, but that's not the point.) So far the best effort anyone has come up with is the 'naughties'. This sounds cute and fun, but is just wrong for what has been a terror-stricken decade with creeping government intrusion into every area of life. Nasty, certainly, but naughty it wasn't. My own suggestion would be 'the zeroes' which has a suitably nihilistic sound to it. However,we'll just have to see. One of the wonderful things about English is that no-one makes the rules. It all just sort of shakes down, and eventually there is a form that everyone uses. The way of saying the year is a sort of demonstration in miniature of how language is created.
But please, not 'two thousand and ten'. | | | | | 25 November 2009 | | About single pease | In the greengrocer the other day I saw courgettes stacked under their American name of zucchinis. This set me to wondering why they are not called zuccinos. The original word comes from Italy, where they do indeed call a courgette a zuccino, and since the 'c' sound in the Italian is said as 'ch' it's no surprise that it came to be spelled this way. But since zuccini is already a plural, why create a double plural with zucchinis?
The reason is of course, that the glorious mess known as English has never been very good at following rules.
Consider the humble pea. Here's how the word came about. In Middle English there was a word 'pease' which was a collective noun for the things, rather as 'rice' describes more than one grain of the stuff. However, some time in the seventeenth century, people decided that 'pease' was the plural of 'pea', and so the word 'pea' was invented. This is a process which language experts call 'back-formation'; taking an existing word, and creating a new word from non-applicable rules of grammar. In the past we used to also have a 'Portugee' to describe a singular member of the Portugese community. The usage did not catch on, which is a pity, as we now have a Briton and and a Spaniard, but 'a person from Portugal'
Personally, I'm all in favour of making such singulars when needed. One does occasionally need to describe a single pea - for example when explaining to a child that one has rolled off her plate while she was watching TV, and it now must be excavated from the sofa. In fact I'd bring back the Portugee, and add the ri - a single grain of rice - and a chee for one lump of cheese. | | | | | 10 September 2009 | | Goat-pluckers learning on the job | English is an ever-evolving language, and sometimes words and phrases become embedded in the language so deeply that the original meaning is lost. This is particularly true of words and phrases that started life as metaphors, but later became standard expressions. It is always delightful when one comes across the original meaning as it adds colour, and sometimes an intriguing mental picture to liven up an everyday expression. Here for your delectation are three examples which I have come across recently.
Taken aback. As in 'I was taken aback to discover that after our first date my girlfriend had sold her house, left the country and joined the French Foreign Legion'. In short, I was somewhat shocked and surprised. But why does 'taken aback' describe this? The origin comes from the days when the British Navy had sailing ships, and were rather good at sailing them. However, sometimes a captain would turn his ship too close to the wind (and living dangerously is still called 'sailing close to the wind'), and end up with the wind blowing directly on to the ship's sails from the front. The ship would then try to sail backwards, a process known as being 'taken aback'. So if something happens that affects you rather as the wind affects such a ship, you too are taken aback.
If you do something by learning as you do it, you are said to be 'winging it'. This does not come from flying, but from the 'wings' on the side of a theatre stage. Sometimes an actor might have to play a role at such short notice that he has no chance to learn the lines. So every time he goes off stage, he stands in the wings and reads what will happen during his next appearance onstage. He is 'winging it'.
Finally there is the Old English word 'hnappian' meaning 'to pluck' or 'pinch away'. This is interesting because in past centuries many peasant families used goat's milk and cheese as an important part of their diet. Of course, the mother goat meant her milk for her baby goat. But when the baby was born, it would be plucked from the teat, and the mother milked for the benefit of the baby-goat plucker - the 'kidnapper'. | | | | | 10 June 2009 | | By Jove! And Venus, and Saturn ... | During a lesson recently, I pointed out to a class that many of the months of the year are named after Roman gods. There is Janus, God of Beginnings who kicks things off in January, then Mars for March, Juno, queen of the Gods for June. July and August are named after Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar who were also gods - by order of the Roman senate after their deaths.
The same happens with Italian days of the week, which are Lunedi, Martedi, Mercoledi, Giovedi, Venerdi, Sabato and Domenica. This is interesting because the English days of the week are identical - but we use Germanic gods in the same role. Monday is 'moon day' while Lunedi shares the same root as the word 'lunar' (the moonwas a goddess in ancient times). Tiuw of Tuesday, is the Mars of Martedi, a war god, just as Woden, the smooth talker of Woden's day is matched by Mercury, god of liars (amongst other things) on Mercoledi. Thor, nordic god of thunder is the same as the Jove who thunders on Giovedi, and Friday is devoted to Freya, the Germanic Venus. Both Sabato and Saturday are named after Saturn, while Sunday, is the day of the sun, dominus, the master.
It is interesting to see that what appear to be completely different words have exactly the same origins. It is also something that is highly relevant to learners of English, especially for those who share an Indo-European language. By exploring such connections vocabulary becomes much more memorable and therefore easier to recall. | | | | | 10 April 2009 | | Making money | Money is always a fascinating subject, and I found out a bit more about it recently when I discovered that the name comes from ancient Rome. Apparently the Roman mint used to be in the temple of Juno Moneta. 'Moneta' means 'warning' - as in the modern words 'admonish' and premonition and Juno got the name because her sacred geese warned the Romans of a planned sneak attack on the capitol. So, all coinage comes with a warning - very appropriate in these troubled financial times.
The Romans also gave us the old British pound (Libra - from the same scales that give us the modern zodiacal sign), shilling (from 'solidus' a coin established in the later Roman empire) and penny, which used to be abbreviated to 'd' because it came from the Roman denarius, which has been about in one form or the other for thousands of years. The 'L' for 'pound' is also why a pound in weight is abbreviated to 'lb' (LiBra), rather then 'pd'. In fact if you look at the symbol for a pound sterling, and you will see that it is in fact a highly stylized 'L'. The word 'sterling' has the old '-ling' dimunitive telling us it was less than a stater, the coin of which it was a smaller version. It's interesting to note that lessening value was built into the British currency from the start.
And then there is the dollar. The first of this coin was the Joachimsthaler, meaning 'of Joachim's valley' where the original mint lay. However, a coin of equivalent value was produced in the Inntal in Austria, and the coins became simply known as 'thalers'. From there to 'dollar' is a simple linguistic step.
Where the $ abbreviation comes from is highly disputed. One theory is that just as US cents are still called 'pennies', dollars were indicated by the 'S' for shilling. Just as the pound is differentiated from 'L' by having a cross-bar through the vertical, the shilling/dollar was differentiated from 'S' by a single vertical stroke.
Such complex origins are fascinating to contrast with those of some other currencies, such as the Japanese Yen, which was originally a coin and has a name simply meaning 'round thing'. | | | |
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