Words changing their meanings are like plants growing: we never catch them at it, and afterwards we’re not even sure what they used to be like.
Take ‘High German’, or Hochdeutsch as the language calls itself. Centuries ago, the name simply meant ‘the German language as spoken in some of the more elevated regions’, roughly in the centre and south of what’s now Germany. Low German or Niederdeutsch, in contrast, was spoken in the plains near the North and Baltic Seas. Continue reading
On page 90 of Lingo, I predict that ‘(s)hould Scotland become independent (…) then Scots may well set course for full and undisputed languagehood.’
To some, that sounded far-fetched. But see what Scotland’s National newspaper has done today (as reported by the Independent): Continue reading
Both minute and second owe their existence as words to one famous book from Classical Antiquity. Yet their etymologies are a surprising mix, with not only Greek and Latin but also Arabic ingredients. How come?
A 16th-century engraving of Ptolemy
Let’s start with the book: it’s called the Almagest and was written in the second century CE by the mathematician and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek in Roman Egypt. In it, he did what scholars had been doing for ages: divide the circle into 360 degrees, each degree into sixty minutes and each minute into sixty seconds.* But ‘minute’ and ‘second’ were not the words he used, for they did not yet exist. What he wrote was ‘first sixtieth’ (prota heksēkosta) and ‘second sixtieth’ (deutera heksēkosta), which in a freer translation might come out as ‘one sixtieth of the first order’ and ‘one sixtieth of the second order’. Continue reading
It had to happen sometime, and it’s happened now: a journalist has told the world they don’t like Lingo all that much. Ever since the publication of the book, just over a year ago, I’ve been spoiled with good reviews, in Britain, the US and elsewhere. Some have been generously appreciative, others nothing short of jubilant. I felt almost embarrassed at times: surely the book wasn’t as good as all that? But I was greatly pleased too, if only because good reviews help me survive on Lingo while I’m working at my new book. And that’s without mentioning the psychological gratification of strangers saying friendly things about the fruit of my linguistic obsession. Continue reading
Business deals that seem too good to be true usually are, and the same is true for etymologies.
This morning, I came across the Turkish word şapka, pronounced /shapka/, for ‘hat’. It reminded me of the French word chapeau, and I thought the -ka ending sounded just like a Russian suffix, as in babushka (grandmother) and balalaika (literally ‘babbler’). Continue reading
The tiny Swiss village of Vnà got an entry in my app Language lover’s guide to Europe after its inhabitants – all 70 of them – turned the place into an open-air dictionary of the local Romansh language. They simply stuck signs to their houses with single Romansh words and their translations into German, Italian, French and English. A friend of mine who is there right now just sent me a couple of pictures. Here they are.
Throw your mind back to the very first time you tried your little hand at writing. With the unfamiliar pen between your fingers and your tongue between your lips, you gave of your best, but unless you were a calligraphic child prodigy, the result was, well, nothing to write home about. It looked shaky and straggly and, in a word, messy. Yet it didn’t stop your parents from being touched by your scribbles.
Call me weird, but that’s how I too felt earlier this week when I visited the Epigraphic Museum in Rome’s Baths of Diocletian. As its name and location suggest, it focuses on inscriptions from Antiquity, predominantly in Latin. Many of them look vaguely familiar: for the last five centuries or so, inscriptions in European and New World monuments have tended to emulate the Classical example. If you wonder what I’m talking about, open a new document in Word, choose the Times New Roman typeface and write a line in capitals. Continue reading
Here’s something I would have added to chapter 35 of Lingo if only I had known it at the time. According to Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall, several Celtic languages have discontinous numerals. The example he mentions is from Irish: while the word for 13 is trí déag, ‘13 houses’ is trí theach déag, with the word for ‘house’ in the middle. ‘Thir house teen’ would be a clumsy rendering in English. These Celtic complications are not entirely unique, Parkvall adds: several African and indigenous American languages display similar phenomena. If you like this sort of thing, get your hands on a copy of his book Limits of language, as it’s full of nuggets like this. Continue reading
I’ve just returned from a five-day visit to the Edinburgh Book Festival. Worth a report, of course – except that in the meantime other things have piled up, all clamouring for my time. So I’m happy to find that Ann Morgan (of Reading the World fame and the nicest stage-mate I could have wished for) has managed to look back at the festival, including the several things that we attended together. Here then are her experiences, quite a few of which are similar to my own.
I’ll admit it: I was nervous. Although my quest to read the world has taken me on many adventures and seen me speaking to a wide variety of audiences – from 20 Women’s Institute members in a school hall in Lee to 300 Procter & Gamble employees in Geneva – I had never faced a challenge quite like this. As I walked into the authors’ yurt, backstage at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, I couldn’t help being aware that I was here to take part in one of the most renowned literary events in the world.
Now, I’ve been in a yurt or two before (I once gave a talk in one in Canterbury), but I have never seen one to compare to this. Sprawling over an area about twice the size of my flat, it was made up of a series of conjoined octagons, which created pleasing little alcoves…
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In December, I wrote a post on the etymology of the word panties, tracing it back to a 3rd-century Greek saint, Pantaleon, whose name I translated as ‘all lion’. The tiniest of discoveries, of course, but a nice little piece of work all the same, or so I felt.
Imagine my chagrin when I recently discovered that Mark Forsyth had included this very connection between underwear and a Christian martyr in his book The Etymologicon. And to make things worse, I must have come across this factlet well before I wrote the blogpost, because I read the book a good while back. Amazingly, the link never even sounded familiar. This may be a case of entertainment-induced amnesia: Forsyth’s books (plural, since I also read his Elements of eloquence) tickle my brain in such a clever and amusing way that it switches to comedy mode and fails to memorise anything much. Continue reading
Gaston Dorren, language writer 