Sunday, September 7, 2008

Linguistics

I heard a rather amusing quote once: English doesn’t borrow words from other languages. English follows them into dark alleys, knocks them out and rummages through their pockets, looking for loose grammar.

I am not certain how that pertains to archaeology or Egyptology, but I found it rather fun. It is true, though. In a few thousand years when we’re not here anymore and the archaeologists of the future start sifting through the refuse of our lives, what will they say when they see all the writings we will have left behind?

I am supposing, of course, that at least a few of our stone monuments will have survived, and someone will attempt to read them, as the French did when Neapolitan took his troops into Egypt.

Our language conforms to no true laws since technically it consists of the grammar, syntax, and bastardized pronunciations of dozens of other languages—including but not limited to German, Latin, Spanish, French, Welsh, Old German, Old Norse, Norman French, Danish, and probably several other Scandinavian languages.

Linguistic archaeologists and anthropologists must love English. Words fall in and out of favour quickly and often. For instance, when was the last time you heard someone say “verily,” and they were not practicing for a Shakespearean play? Here’s another fun word I heard recently and had to look up; taciturn. It is an adjective that means “to be silent by nature; habitually uncommunicative in speech or manners.”

It still shows up in my 1928 ed. of the Winston Simplified Dictionary, so we know that at least 70 years ago, someone knew what it meant. But when I look it up online, it is listed as archaic. What makes the word doubly interesting is that it comes from French, from Latin. There we are, grammar rummaging again.

Did you know that a “husband” or hus-bondi was actually and Anglo-Saxon word from Scandinavian that meant “a person bound to a household; an agricultural land worker, or property holder?” It’s true; his companion was a “hussy,” which, until the Renaissance meant “a household bound woman, hus-wife.

Neither of these words had anything to do with marriage. From Medieval Wordbook ,by Madeleine Pelner Cosman, copyright, 1996. 2007 Barnes & Noble, Inc. Ed.

I know that it seems as if I am rambling a bit, but after opening with the above quote, I must end with an excerpt from an amusing essay entitled WHY THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS SUCH A JOY TO LEARN!

“ . . . We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? . . .”


What indeed?

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