Archives for April 2016

I found Imre Kertész’s 2002 Nobel lecture a good and thought-provoking read, and I hope you will too. A couple of language-related bits:

Consider what happened to language in the twentieth century, what became of words. I daresay that the first and most shocking discovery made by writers in our time was that language, in the form it came down to us, a legacy of some primordial culture, had simply become unsuitable to convey concepts and processes that had once been unambiguous and real. Think of Kafka, think of Orwell, in whose hands the old language simply disintegrated. It was as if they were turning it round and round in an open fire, only to display its ashes afterward, in which new and previously unknown patterns emerged. […]

It makes me especially happy to be expressing these thoughts in my native language: Hungarian. I was born in Budapest, in a Jewish family, whose maternal branch hailed from the Transylvanian city of Kolozsvár (Cluj) and the paternal side from the southwestern corner of the Lake Balaton region. My grandparents still lit the Sabbath candles every Friday night, but they changed their name to a Hungarian one, and it was natural for them to consider Judaism their religion and Hungary their homeland. My maternal grandparents perished in the Holocaust; my paternal grandparents’ lives were destroyed by Mátyás Rákosi’s Communist rule, when Budapest’s Jewish old age home was relocated to the northern border region of the country. I think this brief family history encapsulates and symbolizes this country’s modern-day travails. What it teaches me, though, is that there is not only bitterness in grief, but also extraordinary moral potential.

Makes me want to read his work. The Nobel site has the speech in Swedish, French, and German, as well as Kertész’s native Hungarian (“Külön öröm számomra, hogy ezeket a gondolatokat az anyanyelvemen, magyarul mondhatom el…”); I got the link from the indispensable wood s lot.

I recently ran across the word pagoda in a sense unknown to me (in the OED’s words: “A gold or silver coin of higher denomination than the rupee, formerly current in southern India”), so of course I looked it up, and found that it’s a much more complicated word than I had thought. Hobson-Jobson has a long entry beginning “This obscure and remarkable word is used in three different senses,” which you can see at Google Books here and at Digital Dictionaries of South Asia here (scroll to the bottom, and keep hitting “next page”); the OED (entry updated March 2005) has the following etymology:

< Portuguese pagode (1516 in sense 2a [an image or carving of a god; an idol], 1525 in sense 1a [a Hindu or (in later use esp.) Buddhist temple or sacred building, typically having the form of a many-tiered tower with storeys of diminishing size, each with an ornamented projecting roof], 1697 in sense 3 [A gold or silver coin of higher denomination than the rupee, formerly current in southern India]), of uncertain and disputed origin (see note below). Compare French pagode (1553 in Middle French in senses 1a and 2a; 1545 as paxode in sense 1a), Italian †pagode (1554 in sense 1a, 1587 as pagodo in senses 2a and 3; also †pagod (a1652 in sense 3), pagoda (18th cent.)), Spanish pagoda (1585 in sense 1a in the source translated in quot. 1588 at sense 1aα.; 1563 as pagode), Dutch pagode (1596 in sense 3 in the source translated in quot. 1598 at sense 3α., early 18th cent. or earlier in senses 1a and 2a; also as †pagood (1726 or earlier)), all apparently < Portuguese.

The ultimate origin of the Portuguese pagode is uncertain and disputed. It was once thought to be < Persian but-kada idol temple < but idol + kada habitation, but now seems more likely to be either < Tamil pākavata devotee of Vishnu ( < Sanskrit bhāgavata pertaining to the Lord (Vishnu), worshipper of Vishnu or the goddess Bhagavati: see below), or < Tamil pakavati (name of a) goddess ( < Sanskrit bhagavatī goddess, alternative name of the goddess Kali). Sense 3 arose from the fact that the image of the goddess was stamped on the coin (compare quot. 1598 at sense 3α.).

The stressing of the α forms has varied: ˈpagod occurs in Butler’s Hudibras (compare quot. 1664 at sense 2aα.); Pope has paˈgod as well as ˈpagod.

The initial stress in pagod can be seen most delightfully in Butler’s Hudibras (1664: “Their Classique-model prov’d a Maggot/ Their Directory an Indian Pagod”). Of the other citations, I think my favorite is:

1950 O. Sitwell Noble Essences 11, I beheld opposite.. the lean, elongated form of Lytton Strachey, hieratic, a pagod as plainly belonging as did the effigies to a creation of its own.

1) Five years ago, I wrote enthusiastically about Ward Farnsworth’s Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric (here and here), and I have continued to consult it with pleasure (and recommend it) ever since. Now Farnsworth has been kind enough to send me a copy of his new book, Farnsworth’s Classical English Metaphor, and it’s at least as good, from the marvelous cover (which uses this Grandville image) to the selection of quotations, in which one can lose oneself for hours (Farnsworth correctly says “the book is better approached arbitrarily than by going straight through”). It is intended to be “a study of where figurative comparisons come from and what effects they have” and “to provide a better and different collection of comparisons than has yet been available”; there is little commentary on individual quotes (“Explanations of metaphors, I have come to feel, are perilously similar to explanations of jokes”), but each section, from “The Use of Animals to Describe Humans” to “Personification,” has a brief introduction putting them in context. I heartily recommend it to anyone to whom this brief encomium sounds enticing.

2) The good people at Oxford UP sent me a review copy of the brand-new Fourth Edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage (oddly, although today is supposedly the publication date, there is as yet no Amazon page). Garner is far and away the most traditionalist of the commonly used style guides, and it will not be a surprise to anyone that I do not approve of his general approach, nor do I think much of his new essay “Making Peace in the Language Wars,” which (like all such attempts to end wars by fiat from one of the warring sides) is ludicrously disingenuous and deserves to have its own cannonball “astounding instances of muddled thought” turned back upon the sender. (It reminds me of nothing so much as DFW’s famous Harper’s essay on usage — which was presented, in fact, as a review of an earlier edition of Garner — which I demolished here, and which Garner quotes with pleasure.) To give an idea of Garner’s level of hubris, he dares to “correct” P. G. Wodehouse on word usage (s.v. “effete”: “All the same, these effete [read decadent] aristocrats of the old country”). All that said, it is a very popular style guide for perfectly good reasons — if magisterial guidance, with an occasional twinkle in the eye and lots of citations, is what you want, Garner is your man, and for your fifty bucks you get almost five pounds (two and a quarter kilos) of well-produced book.

A Guardian story by Alison Flood reports on some interesting material:

Ever been unsure about how to deal with a drunken family member returning from an orgy? A collection of newly translated textbooks aimed at Greek speakers learning Latin in the ancient world might hold the solution.

Professor Eleanor Dickey travelled around Europe to view the scraps of material that remain from ancient Latin school textbooks, or colloquia, which would have been used by young Greek speakers in the Roman empire learning Latin between the second and sixth centuries AD. The manuscripts, which Dickey has brought together and translated into English for the first time in her forthcoming book Learning Latin the Ancient Way: Latin Textbooks in the Ancient World, lay out everyday scenarios to help their readers get to grips with life in Latin. Subjects range from visiting the public baths to arriving at school late – and dealing with a sozzled close relative.

“Quis sic facit, domine, quomodo tu, ut tantum bibis? Quid dicent, qui te viderunt talem?” runs the scene from the latter, which Dickey translates as: “Who acts like this, sir, as you do, that you drink so much? What would they say, the people who saw you in such a condition? […]

The Latin learners are provided with examples of how to deal with visits to sick friends and preparations for dinner parties. They are also briefed on trips to the market to wrangle over prices (“How much is the cape?” “Two hundred denarii.” “You’re asking a lot; accept a hundred denarii”) and an excursion to the bank.

“We don’t know if they would have roleplayed the scenes with other students,” said Dickey, a professor of classics at the University of Reading. “But my hunch is that they did.”

Dickey said the texts were very commonly used. “We know this because they survive in lots of different medieval manuscript versions. At least six different versions were floating around Europe by 600 AD,” she said. “This is actually more common than many better-known ancient texts: there was only one copy of Catullus, and fewer than six of Caesar. Also, we have several papyrus fragments – since only a tiny fraction survive, when you have more than one papyrus fragment, for sure a text was popular in antiquity.” […]

There’s a phrasebook section on excuses (“You did what I told you?” “Not yet “Why?” “I (shall) do it soon, for I’m in a hurry to go out”), and a varied one on insults. “Maledicis me, malum caput? crucifigaris!” or “Do you revile me, villain? May you be crucified!” is one particularly vicious one, along with: “And does he revile (me), that animal-fighter? Let me go, and I shall shake out his teeth.”

“When we think of the Romans, it’s mainly of the rich and famous generals, emperors and statesmen,” Dickey told the Guardian. “But those people are clearly atypical: they’re famous precisely because they were remarkable. Historians try to correct this bias by telling us about the masses of ordinary Romans, but rarely do we have works written by or about these people. These colloquia give us real, contemporary stories about their lives and I hope my work gives a fairer and truer vision of ancient society.”

The book sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks, Bathrobe!

Trying to finish last week’s New Yorker before the new one arrives, I began “The End of Ice: Exploring a Himalayan glacier” by the estimable Dexter Filkins and was pulled up short before I finished the first paragraph:

The journey to the Chhota Shigri Glacier, in the Himalayan peaks of northern India, begins thousands of feet below, in New Delhi—a city of twenty-five million people, where smoke from diesel trucks and cow-dung fires dims the sky and where the temperature on a hot summer day can reach a hundred and fifteen degrees. The route passes through a churning sprawl of low-land cities, home to some fifty million people, until the Himalayas come into view: a steep wall rising above the plains, the product of a tectonic collision that began thousands of years ago and is still under way.

“Thousands of years ago?” I thought. “What the hell?” I looked it up, and found what I expected: “The Himalayan mountain range and Tibetan plateau have formed as a result of the collision between the Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate which began 50 million years ago and continues today.” But then it occurred to me that, technically, “thousands of years ago” is perfectly correct — it’s just a whole lot of thousands. And I reflected on how it is we use such words; there’s no fixed amount at which it stops making sense to say “thousands” (you could certainly use it of something that happened, say, 12,000 years ago, but not a million years ago, and I personally would stop well before the 100,000-year mark), but that doesn’t mean it’s endlessly flexible. I guess it’s a sorites problem.

At any rate, when I went to the online version of the article to copy the paragraph, I found it had been rewritten to say “a tectonic collision that began millions* of years ago,” with a footnote reading: “An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified when the tectonic collision that formed the Himalayas began.” So for the New Yorker, at any rate, “thousands” here wasn’t just absurdly understated, it was out-and-out incorrect.

I recently read Marcel Möring’s novel In Babylon (translated by Stacey Knecht), and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys tangled family tales with supernatural/mystical elements but doesn’t worry overmuch about prosaic answers or how it all hangs together. My wife and I both felt let down, after initial enjoyment of the growing mystery and complexity, by how it just sort of petered out after a grab-bag of Major Events suddenly being tossed into the mix. But I’m not sorry I read it, because I learned a useful word from it. You know those dealies you open and close French windows with? You turn a lever, and a long rod goes into or emerges from holes at the top and bottom, fastening or freeing the door? Those are called espagnolettes, presumably because the French associate them with Spain, or did when they coined the word. Now you know (except for AJP Crown, who probably knew all along).

Processing tax statements could be a frustrating job for any individual. It requires lots of energy to keep track of all revenue and expenses throughout every season. Many people perhaps employ duty instructors to complete their personal taxation statements. Nonetheless, if you FAIL to afford several of those consultants’ extreme charges, you might have to really make the finest of one’s busily held documents do yourself to it. More excruciating than paying the specific taxes is filling the federal income tax types out. [Read more…]

Katie Butler Gao, a PhD student in linguistics, is working on an interesting project:

The Language of Tea (2015, work in progress)

The word for “tea” in the majority of the world’s languages comes from a borrowing of either the Northern Chinese word cha or the Southern Chinese word te (e.g. the Hindi word chai and the English word tea). The widespread borrowing of the word for ‘tea’ is linguistically fascinating because it is directly related to contact that occurred through major land and sea trade routes since the 15th century.

Inspired by the WALS chapter on tea and Dan Jurafsky’s The Language of Food (2014), this map is a project that grew out of a 2014 Map Design and Production course, taught by Everett Wingert in the UH Mānoa Geography Department.

The map (above) was originally designed as a wall map, but I hope to develop this into a digital interactive map more readily accessible online. I am in the process of converting the language names and words for tea into a spreadsheet with longitude and latitude points. I currently have around 300 languages (for aesthetic reasons), but would like to add more to a digital version!

If you would like to contribute information on your language or one you know about, shoot me an email at katiebgao@gmail.com with this information: language name, location of language (long/lat point would be great), word for ‘tea’ in Romanized script and local script, variations of the word for Camellia sinensis or words for other local kinds of tea (i.e. leaves/herbs steeped in water to make a beverage).

Here’s a direct link to the map; I wrote about Jurafsky’s blog The Language of Food, and his post Tea if by Sea, here. Thanks, Yoram!

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim’s NY Times story is not your standard “saving the dying languages” piece (of which I’ve featured many over the years here at LH); in a sense, it’s not about the languages at all, but I thought it was interesting enough to post:

A growing number of [composers] are turning their attention to languages that are extinct, endangered or particular to tiny groups of speakers in far-flung places with the aim of weaving these enigmatic utterances into musical works that celebrate, memorialize or mourn the languages and the cultures that gave birth to them. On Saturday, April 9, at the Cologne Opera in Germany, the Australian composer Liza Lim unveils her opera “Tree of Codes,” which includes snippets of a Turkish whistling language from a small mountain village. On her most recent album, “The Stone People,” the pianist Lisa Moore sings and plays Martin Bresnick’s hypnotic “Ishi’s Song,” a setting of a chant by the last member of the Yahi, who died in 1916.

In February the New York Philharmonic performed Tan Dun’s multimedia symphony “Nu Shu,” the result of the composer’s research into a language and writing system that was passed down among the female inhabitants of a small village in Hunan Province in China for 700 years. Other composers who have done their own fieldwork include Vivian Fung, who investigated minority cultures in the Chinese province of Yunnan, and Kevin James, who sought out some of the last native speakers of minority languages in the Pacific Northwest, Australia and Japan.

A humorous side note involves the following paragraph:

In a phone interview, Mr. Bresnick said it was a television documentary about Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe, that inspired his work for piano and voice. He said he related the story to his mother, a fluent Yiddish speaker, who was then 94 years old. “I told her, ‘You’re my Ishi, you’re the last to speak this language,’” he said. “She pointedly looked at me and said: ‘No, you are. Because you still care to know.’”

I was reading rather hastily, and my first reaction was “Ishi’s mother was a fluent Yiddish speaker?!” But then I reread and all was clear.

I’m glad Fonseca-Wollheim mentioned “ethical questions of outsiders’ drawing financial benefit or prestige from such expeditions, or using the recorded voices of the dead in cultures where that is taboo,” and it’s important to consider such objections, but I’m glad the composers are going ahead and working with these languages; I will always lean toward favoring openness over secrecy. (Thanks, Bonnie!)

The latest New Yorker leads off with an article called “Come to the Fair” (“The food-and-booze fest that is France’s national agricultural exhibition”) by Lauren Collins; before I had read a word, the photo of a butcher’s display at the Salon de l’Agriculture made me want to move to France. But I digress — I’m bringing it here for this paragraph:

In 2013, the first year I went to the Salon, I was living in Geneva. One Sunday morning, my husband and I caught the seven-forty-two train to Paris. By eleven-thirty […], we were sampling what would become my favorite delicacy in all the land, the tourteau fromagé of Poitou-Charentes. (Giving Mancunians and Arkansawyers a run for their money in the demonym stakes, the area’s residents are known as the Picto-Charentais.) The tourteau fromagé is—getting into the compound-word spirit here—a goatcheesecake. The shortcrust pastry of the bottom part forms a lip where it meets the upper half, which rises domelike from the cereal-bowl-shaped base, and looks as though it were composed of volcanic ash. The burnt top is deceiving. It imparts just the slightest char, in the manner of a good pizza crust. The inside is tangy. Poke the crumb, and your finger emerges feeling almost wet, as though you’d stuck it into a loofah. At Tourteaux Jahan, Joël Ricard’s stand in Pavilion 3, the wares are displayed on risers, like a boys’ choir at a holiday concert. Ricard has been coming to the Salon since 1983. In a week, he sells five thousand cakes.

I love a good demonym (see this post, and note the update in which I point out that Garner has actually amended the sillier entries in his list), and Picto-Charentais is certainly among the very best. I must say, though, she missed an opportunity with “goatcheesecake”; surely, getting into the Picto-Charentais spirit would mean calling it “capricaseate cake.”