About Gaston

taaljournalist / language writer boeken: Lingua, Babel en andere books: Lingo, Babel

Slip of the longue

Posted on 2 February 2015 by Gaston

A lion. ‘Leo’ in Latin, not ‘deo’.

But for a silly mistake, I would have been a dinguist. You know, a dinguist – a specialist in dinguistics.

The mistake was not my own; it’s the old Romans what did it. And when I say old, I mean really old. Older even than Caesar, Cicero and Seneca, the authors who wrote the sort of Latin we are still somewhat familiar with – the classy, classical sort.

Before their Latin, there was Old Latin, and though it looked grammar-schoolish enough, it was different in many small ways. For instance, it had the word dingua for ‘tongue’ and ‘language’. Caesar, Cicero and Seneca would consider that old-fashioned; the Latin equivalent of Ye Olde Tea Shoppe. They would write lingua. And it’s in their footsteps that we follow every time we use the word linguistics. Continue reading →

The language-eating giant and the 12 dwarfs

Posted on 16 January 2015 by Gaston

Britain is more multilingual than its image suggests, but at the same time too monolingual for its own good. What are its prospects?

What would have happened to ‘the Scots leid’ if the Yes side had won the referendum? It has been officially recognised as a language separate from English since 2001, when Britain ratified the Charter for Minority and Regional Languages. But would Scottish independence have changed the character of Scots? Could the language have become less, well – English?

That’s not as far-fetched as it may seem. Norwegian and Danish were once considered a single language, but two fairly different standard languages emerged after Norway’s breakaway in 1814. Bosnians spoke Serbo-Croatian before independence (1992), but Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian nowadays. There’s little to distinguish the three of them yet, but check back in a century. Continue reading →

Next!

Posted on 7 January 2015 by Gaston

The interestingly named Wells-next- the-Sea in Norfolk.

‘The end is nigh, the end is near, the end is bound to come next year.’ As doom and gloom goes, this prediction is not only charming – impeccable metre, simple but correct rhyme – but also linguistically interesting.

Its main attraction lies in the three words beginning with n: nigh, near and next. Say them out loud – does anything strike you? If not, let me help you by spelling them the Old English way: neah, near, niehsta. Rather like near, nearer, nearest, aren’t they? Or like high, higher, highest, for that matter. And that’s no coincidence, because they were indeed degrees of comparison, as grammarians call them: the positive neah meaning ‘near’, the comparative near meaning ‘nearer’ and the superlative niehsta meaning ‘nearest’. Continue reading →

Feline lingerie

Posted on 18 December 2014 by Gaston

Etymology moves in a mysterious way, its wonders to perform. Who would think that the humble word panties has a proud, venerable origin?

No surprises in the first part of the journey back in time: panties is a diminutive of pants, itself a clipped form of pantaloons. Nowadays, this last word usually refers to trousers, but in the 17th and 18th centuries, it meant ‘tights’. English borrowed it from French (pantalon), which in turn had snatched it from Italian (pantalone). Continue reading →

Esperanto whispers

Posted on 6 December 2014 by Gaston

Esperanto flag flying in Sweden

When a book gets media attention, however favourable, its author is bound to draw flak from some quarters. I’ve been lucky in that all the explosives and expletives slung at Lingo and me so far have come from the same direction: that of disgruntled Esperantists.

I don’t blame them. While Esperanto comes off easily compared to English, French, Italian and some other languages, I do poke a certain amount of fun at it. This irreverent attitude clashes with the idealism and missionary zeal of the activists among the Esperanto speakers. They feel that anyone questioning their language is an enemy of a noble cause. Against all odds, they keep alive the hope that Esperanto will one day become an auxiliary world language. I would have loved that to come true, I really would, but it hasn’t, and there are many political, economic and sociolinguistic reasons why it is extremely unlikely ever to happen. Continue reading →

A hard-won flair

Posted on 4 December 2014 by Gaston

Me in Peru at the age of 22, busy learning Spanish

Several British journalists have asked with incredulity and a hint of admiration how come I ‘speak so many languages’. My standard response is embarrassment and stout denial.

Don’t think the denial is false modesty; it’s firmly grounded in fact. By sheer fluke, I grew up with two mother tongues, Dutch and Limburgish, the national and regional languages of my hometown. Studying English is compulsory in Dutch schools. Choosing German as a subject is wholly unremarkable, and the same with French. Since my school days, I’ve added only Spanish to the collection, severely damaging my French in the process. I don’t have the figures, but I’m pretty sure tens of thousands of Dutch people have a similar story. I’m just one of those who ‘speak a nice little word across the border’, the Dutch expression for being able to travel abroad and still talk to people. Continue reading →

English spelling – a limerical review

Posted on 1 December 2014 by Gaston

The Lingo chapter about Scottish Gaelic is rather critical of Gaelic spelling. English, however, is worse. To illustrate the point, here’s a silly limmeric – sorry, limerick.

Up in Scotland, a sceptical Celt
Told his mates, ‘All my life, I have felt
That if Celt is with C
Kilt as well ought to be.
And I wonder why whiscy’s misspelt.’

My hellish hometown

Posted on 19 November 2014 by Gaston

Moenen and Mariken.
Woodcut from 1518.

I’m not very superstitious, I’m even less religious and I’m not in the least Norwegian. Even so, if given the choice, I’d rather not live on Devil Street, Beelzebub Crescent or Satan Square. But surely such names don’t exist, you may say – and what has Norway to do with it anyway?

You’re right: as far as I’m aware (I haven’t googled for fear of spoiling my story) there are no such overtly diabolically named streets. But this morning, while delivering some books to buyers here in Amersfoort, I came across Moenenstraat (MOO-nen-straht, Moenen Street). Moenen is a character from the late medieval play Mariken van Nieumeghen. Calling him the bad guy in the story would be understating it: he’s no less than the devil himself, the prince of darkness, the monarch of hell, evil incarnate. Moenenstraat – some street to live on! Continue reading →

LOGIN

Posted on 17 November 2014 by Gaston

You won’t be surprised to learn that I’m a reader and listener rather than an ever-alert observer. My world is made up mostly of words, with pictures a far second.

Yet even somebody like me can see that Lingo has the sort of graceful cover design that catches the eye and lifts the mood – I liked it as soon as I saw it. Still, what got me playing with it was, once more, the word, the letters, the fivefold repetition of l-i-n-g-o.

What was there to be made of these letters, I wondered? Largely Independent Non-Governmental Organisation? London International New Grammar Observatory? Lascivious, Indecent… stop right there. Or perhaps they could be re-arranged? Loing – that would the gerund of ‘lo (and behold)’. Gnoli – sounds like an Italian specialty. Login – … Hey, login!

Which resulted in:

Daisy

Posted on 15 November 2014 by Gaston

Oh, may it be ten years or more
Until, all silent and depressed,
We lay our whiskered carnivore
In a sarcophagus to rest.

And then we will, as language nerds,
Seek solace in the hidden humour
Of these two Greek and Latin words’
One common meaning: meat consumer.

Gaston Dorren, language writer

languages and linguistics

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