"Foreign" Words, Six

["Minneapolis" owes its identity to two diverse languages:  minne "waters" (American Indian) and polis "city" (Greek.]

       If you wish to complain about Indian and Greek in the same word or any other "invasion" of "our" language, all I can say is, what would you want to get rid of?  Where would you start?  And perhaps above all, how would you have the chutzpah?

      
       I am indebted for ideas for the "foreign" words selected in the body of the essay to The Story of English by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil; Elizabeth Sifton Books, Viking, 1986.

"Foreign" Words, Five

[place names we latecomers simply took over . . . Mississippi (Chippewa Indian mici sibi "big river").]

       Which brings me to my almost home town (I stole it for purposes of the opening paragraph of this essay, but I'm really from St. Paul, the proverbial enemy across the "big river"); I speak of our Twin City, Minneapolis.  That is the town I realized in my adult years has yoked in its one name two entirely different peoples.  For though the place is aptly described and parsed as "city of lakes," Minneapolis owes its identity to two diverse languages:  minne "waters" (American Indian) and polis "city" (Greek).  You say "Minneapolis," you speak with "forked" tongue.

"Foreign" Words, Four

[We are the nation of immigrants, quite literally.  America created the word in 1789.]

       But there are the people who are not immigrants into this country.  They are, of course, the American Indians, Native Americans.  From their languages, English borrowed the names for 26 states from "Massachusetts" to the "Dakotas."  There are also thousands of place names we latecomers simply took over, rivers, for example, such as the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and the great Mississippi (Chippewa Indian mici sibi "big river").   Want to turn in any of these names?

"Foreign" Words, Three

       Turning from food and in other linguistic directions, if you buy a "bandanna," you are indebted to Indian people and the Hindi language; if you carry that bandanna in a "tote" bag, you are indebted to African Bantu people; and if you "schlep" the tote bag around all day, you are indebted to Jews from central Europe.

       We've imported the foods and the goods and the words and a lot of time the peoples that go with the foods and the goods and the words; so why shouldn't they all be part of our language?  We are the nation of immigrants, quite literally.  America created the word in 1789.  (The Story of English, p. 263.)

"Foreign" Words, Two

[Have a "banana," and while eating it, chew on its sources from the African languages:  Wolof, Mandingo, and Fulani.]

       Maybe you'd enjoy a "cookie" (Dutch koekje, diminutive of koek cake) or a piece of "chocolate," and while it melts down your throat, contemplate its derivation in the Nahuatl word chocolatl from peoples of Mexico and Central America.

       And, of course, who can resist a "pizza," "lasagne," or "pasta," savory Italian dishes, savory Italian words.

      

"Foreign" Words, One

       Yesterday's post prompted by linguist John McWhorter's  discussion of the prevalence of borrowed words in a language reminded me that I had done an essay on the same subject:


       Strange enough it is that one's own native language is made up completely of everyone else's language, but then to top it off, that one's own native city is made up of two tremendously divergent "foreign" tongues yoked together in a single word!?  I guess one should be scared to open one's mouth for fear of uttering allegiance to strange countries and climes.

       Almost every time you open your mouth to eat as well as to speak, you pay homage:  your morning orange juice, for example--"orange," the word you say you can't find anything to rhyme with, maybe because it's Sanskrit in origin; have a"banana," and while eating it, chew on its sources from the African languages:  Wolof, Mandingo, and Fulani. 

Language changes; all languages borrow words

       I learned an astounding statistic or two today from my recorded course "The Story of Human Language."  Of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary, 99% are borrowed from other languages, that is, NOT from the Anglo-Saxon roots which make English distinctive.

       Yet those native Anglo-Saxon roots constitute 62% of the words actually most used:  these latter, of course, include words such as and, but, to, not, father, will,  from, should and so on.

       But if we got rid of all the borrowed words that have become an accepted part of English, the OED would be a slim shadow of itself.

       (You can find out about Professor John McWhorter's "Great Course" for The Teaching Company here.)

"if we were her"

       Is there anything wrong with how a theater critic put this?  He'd just seen a new play called "Buyer & Cellar" about Barbara Streisand; he and a friend both wondered after the show whether they'd recommend Barbara herself see the play now that it's in L.A. after a run out East:

                 "We both agreed that we'd skip it if we were her."

       I note the use of the object "her" after a form of the verb "to be."  Only subjects should be used on either side of a "be" verb; hence "if we were she" is correct. Does "her" sound any worse than "she"?  Probably not by much.  Either one is a bit awkward because "we" is  plural and "she" is singular.  Granting that, "she" is preferred grammar.

       Usage, however, by enough qualified and intelligent writers can justifiably influence what's "right" and "wrong."  What do you think?      

I Identify with Larry

       
       But more likely with me these days, it would be a dead battery for the Voice Memo on my iPhone.

       Amerongen's cartoons capture a certain stage of life, a certain failing capacity, yet a certain perpetual optimism as well.

       Daily "Ballard Street" cartoons can be found here.

"The Place Where We Are Right"

       How can two  peoples, cousins, come from such opposite places ... each holding onto entirely contradictory narratives?


          The Place Where We Are Right
               by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the Spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

       Daughter Elizabeth pointed me to this poem on the "On Being" blog website this week.  You can find the website by clicking here.

The Most Strained Pun Ever Birthed

"Chiaroscuro," Five

     Light and dark, the contrasts; up and down--valley and hill; the gradients of brightness and shadow and alternating movement and degrees of syllable stress.

       And why now do I think of Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Hurrahing in Harvest" as it begins with these lines?

       Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
       Around; up above, what wind-walks!  what lovely behaviour
       Of silk-sack clouds!  has wilder, wilful-wavier
       Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

And moulded across hills ever such darks into lights and lights into darks, shaping one another for these Valley eyes?  Chiaroscuro . . . Chiaroscuro . . . Chiaroscuro.

"Chiaroscuro," Four

       Chiaroscuro is what I see on the hills north of the San Fernando Valley.  And chiaroscuro is what I hear in the rolling syllables of the word key-ARE-o-SKOOR-o, light and heavy syllables contrasting and blending into one another.  I think there's even chiaroscuro in the amplitude and gradations of Italian gesture.
      
       And did you know "squirrel" has the same root as the last part of chiaroscuro?  Say "squirrel."  Now say SKOOR-o.  The little animal named for its bushy tail, "shadow" tail, a tail large enough to cast its own shadow, and an animal that moves like the letter "S" of "shadow" sidewise along the ground, undulating like the hills of home.

"Chiaroscuro," Three

       "Chiaroscuro" . . . come on, say it . . .  key-ARE-o-SKOOR-o.  It's good healthy Italian, you can do it . . .  key-ARE-o-SKOOR-o.  It means light and shade.  Chiaro, "light," "bright," from Latin clarus, "clear."  Chiaroscuro is the "treatment or disposition of the light and shade, or brighter and darker masses" if you're talking about painting, or, chiaroscuro is "an effect or contrast of light and shade. . .in nature," as on our hills, and those rolling Italian hills?!  And maybe your hills. 

"Chiaroscuro," Two

       I write about "chiaroscuro" because it is a valley word in my mind.  Most of the year the skies are not obscured in Southern California so that I can see in the afternoon coming up Reseda Boulevard the hills shaped in graduated light and shade by the declining sun.  You can tell me these hills are building into mountains each time we get an earthquake, but until then, they're tall hills without the jaggedness of mountains, and the light and shade blend into one another like a rolling blanket, comforting and caressing the eyes.  If there's green, as after rain, we've got it even better.

"Chiaroscuro," One

       I wrote this on a gray day in the San Fernando Valley in California.  It had been raining in various degrees of intensity, it seemed, for days.  The sun peaked out strong for only 15 minutes that afternoon.  Why was I attracted to write about the word chiaroscuro that day?  It is a word I love to try to pronounce . . . key-ARE-o-SKOOR-o will do according to all my sources.  If anything, I should have been interested only in the "oscuro" part of it, which shares its meaning from Italian and thence Latin with our English "obscure"--"dark," "covered," "hidden," "shaded"--like the skies that day.

First Brand Names Get "Imprinted"

       The brand name that gets there first for a product which becomes widely adopted gets to be the name on people's lips for whatever imitations follow in its wake.

       "Eversharp" pencils when I was growing up--the first "mechanical" pencils with lead you could roll out as it wore down and thus be "ever sharp" compared to wood pencils.

       "Kleenex" tissues as the first "throwaway" handkerchiefs.

       "'Xerox' it," people said, for making copies.

       "iPhone" is probably the "default" name for smart phones currently, regardless of brand.

       And I guess that being the inventor or at least first on the market with a product has earned the "generic" naming rights.  

"TENT," "TENSIVE," "TENACIOUS," "THIN," "TONE"

        From “tense” to “tenacious” to “tenuous” to “tone” we traverse a considerable distance, but the Indo-European root ten- will stretch all the way from here to there.

       Whether in life, literature, or performance, that which has tensiveness, tautness, is not dead; similarly with tone whether of muscles, voice, or literary mood or attitude.  Without “stretch,” without elasticity, the “patient” is moribund.

       Tensiveness and tone, as I would try to explain to my students, are measures of being alive.

"Tent," "Tensive," "Tenacious," Thin," "TONE"

       And then suppose you are contemplating a thing that is stretched or capable of being stretched, a string.  Greek tonos “string, hence sound, pitch” derives from another form of the Indo-European ten-.

       And thus to English.  We have “tonus” and “tone” in the physiological sense:  “the normal state of elastic tension or partial contraction in resting muscles” (AHD).  In music or speech, varied pitches and timbres can be produced by stretched strings or vocal “cords” and thence “tone,” “baritone,” “monotone,” and so on.

       And tone gets into “extended” aesthetic meanings in art: “the general effect of the combination of light and shade or of colour in a painting, etc.” (OED) and in literature:  mood, style, attitude, even an author’s way of reaching out to an audience or reader to indicate how to take the literary work; these are matters of "tone."

"Tent," "Tensive," "TENACIOUS," "THIN," "Tone"

       Now in the rudimentary, physical sense, how does one stretch something without holding on to it?  And that is the change in the small move of Indo-European ten- into Latin tenere.  Tenere means “to hold, keep, maintain.”   And it gives us words like “tenure,” “tenable,” “tenacious,” and also “tenor,” a singer who “holds” the melody, and “maintain,” through French from Latin meaning “to hold in the hand” (manus).
  
       But what happens when something is stretched by hand or otherwise?  It becomes thinner, another move to another set of derivatives.  From Latin tenuis (“thin, rare, fine”) we have “tenuous” and “attenuate” with this sense of “stretched thin.”   

"TENT," "TENSIVE," "Tenacious," "Thin," "Tone"

       The American Heritage Dictionary's appendix on Indo-European roots helps me trace out the connections.  Ten- is the Indo-European root of a whole host of words.

       It means "to stretch."  The first group of derivatives bears the exact basic meaning, " "to stretch."  So "tense," for example, means "stretched tight," and that applies to "tension" and "tensiveness."  In the same group is a word I wouldn't have thought of:  "tent," which is material "stretched tight" over poles; to "extend" is to "stretch out from," and so on.  This group arrives through the Latin word for "to stretch," tendere.

"Tent," "Tensive," "Tenacious," "Thin," "Tone"

       How wonderfully malleable and clay-like are the roots of words, slipping from one meaning into another by barely perceptible degrees.

       In classes I taught, I talked about "tensiveness" in literature and performance (tensiveness is a less "anxious" sounding word for tension) and about tone, tone of voice and tone in the literary work.  And I always had to prompt myself to recall there was a connection between the two--between tensiveness or tension and tone.  What was it?  What is it?

       (Five-Part series on the Title words above continues tomorrow.)

"Amok"

       To complete a three day troika of "frenzied" words in English, neither Roman (Latin) nor Scandinavian (Old Norse) sources will suffice.  For this adverb (coming from a word meaning "fighting furiously, in a homicidal frenzy") we must traverse the world to Maylasia (Malay) to the word amuk.

       With "run" in "run amok," it has had its place in English since 1672:  "run about in a frenzied thirst for blood; go on a destructive rampage; rush wildly and heedlessly," says the OED.  Along with "delirious" and "berserk," "amok" is, yes, a term in good standing in the English language.

"Berserk"

       This is a word that meets up with "delirious" (from yesterday) in a whirlpool of frenzy.

       "Berserk" is a fearsome word and goes back to Old Norse.  It derives from bjorn, "bear," and serkr, "shirt" or "coat."  "Berserkers" were ancient Scandinavian warriors who clothed themselves in the hides of bears and were "held to be invulnerable."  The American Heritage Dictionary notes that they became "frenzied in battle, howling like animals, foaming at the mouth, and biting the edges of their iron shields."

       Thanks, Old Norse, for bequeathing us a word we find, unfortunately, we still have need of.

"Delirious"

       I re-read the word today in a previous post, June 16, 2014, in a poem I cited by Marjorie Agosin, and I recalled getting into it in my book of essays Homewords:

       "Delirious" is one of the words characterized by "frenzied excitement."  We're dealing here with Latin and with imagery from the realm of farming.  Someone "delirious" has "left the furrow" (in plowing), and is therefore crazy-- de "off" or "away from," plus lira "furrow."

       Using some other suggestive lingo, to be "delirious" is akin to being "out of your gourd" or "off your rocker," that is, dizzily out of control.

"Sororal"?

       Discussing twins, Connie asked whether two twins we knew were identical or fraternal.  Since both were female, I said (because they weren't identical), wouldn't it be "sororal," or is that even a word?  The Latin sources for the two words respectively are "brother" for "fraternal" and would be "sister" if "sororal" is a word.

       Well, yes exactly, "sororal" is a word and does apply to two female twins who are not identical; they are "sororal twins."

      

Word / Silence

       In a blog that concerns itself so much with words, I find it wise and illuminating to consider this aphorism from Life's Little Instruction Calendar, Volume XVIII, by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.:

                      Silence is often the best way to have the last word.

"Bustin' Out All Over": what Words and Music can make you do

        It's the Fourth of July, yes, but I am recalling how a few days or so ago, I was happily singing, "June is busting out all over," and it was.   But when I went on,

          All over the meadows and the hills
          And the rockin' river creepers
          Are scaring the bejeepers
          Out of every morning glory on the hill,

Connie said, I don't think that's right.

       I sang it again today and said to myself, OK I'll look it up.  Seems I jammed together a couple stanzas of Rodgers and Hammerstein, maybe altered a word or two:

          June is bustin' out all over
          All over the meadow and the hill!
          Buds're bustin' outa bushes
          And the rompin' river pushes
          Ev'ry little wheel that wheels beside the mill!

          June is bustin' out all over
          The feelin' is gettin' so intense,
          That the young Virginia creepers
          Hev been huggin' the bejeepers
          Outa all the mornin' glories on the fence!
          Because it's June...


The point is:  It's got a rhythm, it's got a rhyme, it's got a mood and a tune that express the spirit of a burgeoning, bright, never-ending, ever-lengthening June Day--and you've got to sing it!!

OBFUSCATION LEADS TO HIGHER REMUNERATION!!

       That line 2 looks mighty clear and big as a guide for medium clothes washer loads.  It's clear in this picture on the side of the bottle but doesn't exist on the cap itself;  no blue color bar either.

       "Fill to top of cap" for large loads.  That band projecting out all around IS what caps the bottle.  The cylinder that projects up further, that might be the top of the cap.  But then consider that the cap is shown upside down.   The real "top of the cap" is on the bottom!  

       It is very hard to think anything else but, "I don't know where this is telling me to put this soap up to--I'd better fill it higher, or the clothes will end up unclean!"    

       

 

"Cancellation/Cancelation" and Linguistic Snobbery

       To show that no one should get too uppity about the right spelling, etc., with language, the letter  from our dentist's office I wrote of last Saturday, with two sub-standard mistakes, also contained four uses of the word "cancelation."

       Connie and I were both ready to turn up our noses.  Several dictionaries, however, confirmed that this spelling is an acceptable option despite the more common use of "cancellation."  One source indicated that it may be only in the United States that the single "l" spelling is acknowledged.  But howsoever that may be, "cancelation" is NOT an "illiterate" spelling, despite the fact I was fully ready to so designate it!

       (Hey, our spell-check wants to get rid of "cancelation" too.  But heck, this spell-check didn't even know the word "blog" till last year!)  

"Namby-Pamby"

       "Namby-pamby."  I employed it yesterday in the blog.  It just dropped into my head.  I found I'd made the right use of it.  But where did the word come from?

       Two 18th century English poets had manufactured and disseminated it in describing a rival poet's efforts.  Alexander Pope and his friend Henry Carey were taking off on Ambrose Philips.

       The AHD tells us Carey coined the name in poking fun at Philips's children's verse:  "So the Nurses get by Heart Namby Pamby's little Rhimes."  Carey took the "Namby" from "Ambrose,"  added the rhyming repetition starting with the "P" from Philips.  Then Pope utilized the satirical nickname in his epic The Dunciad in 1733; this popularized it, and namby-pamby went on to be used generally for anyone or anything insipid, weak, or sentimental.