Archives for February 2004

A Hiberno-English Archive:

This site is dedicated to the study and promotion of Hiberno-English: Hiberno (=Irish, and English), indicating that we are dealing with English that has been profoundly influenced by features of the Irish language.
This site will be of interest to students and scholars of Anglo-Irish literature, students and scholars of Hiberno-English and English dialects in general, Irish people and those of Irish ancestry who are interested in how and why Irish people speak the way they do, those with an interest in Irish folklore, and finally non-native speakers of English studying in Ireland who want to be familiar with the idioms of English as used in Ireland.
This site provides an introduction to the history and grammar of Hiberno-English. It also provides a small number of Hiberno-English related links, and relevant details of Hiberno-English related events, such as public lectures, radio broadcasts and so forth.
The main purpose of this site, however, is to build and maintain an archive of Hiberno-English words, phrases, sayings, and idioms, collected and collated by Professor Terence Patrick Dolan of University College Dublin – a world authority on Hiberno-English lexicography and author of A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English published by Gill and Macmillan, Dublin 1998.

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Today’s NY Times has one of the most charming articles I’ve read in a while, “If You Build a Restaurant, He Will Not Come,” by Howard Kaplan. (I’ve actually gone to the trouble of getting a weblog-safe link, so that people reading this blog in ages yet to come, changing their genes on a daily basis and flying through interstellar space in personalized quantum bubbles, can still read this article without paying a fee.) It begins with the accidental discovery that Ira Glustein had never eaten in a restaurant, and goes on to a funny and touching family history that I have no intention of spoiling for you. What I want to tell you about is Mr. Glustein’s profession: he is a shatnes tester.

In Jewish law, it is forbidden to wear a garment containing wool and linen. In Hebrew, this unholy blend is called shatnes.

In Mr. Glustein’s words: “My vocation is shatnes — removing linen from wool clothing or wool from linen clothing. The majority of the shatnes that we find today is in men’s expensive suits, usually in the collar. It’s easy to remove by an expert, and it’s just a small tailoring job to repair. It doesn’t change the beauty or quality of the suit.”

Mr. Glustein said many Jews, devout ones included, have never heard of shatnes, even though it is mentioned in two places in the Torah and is no less binding than the dietary laws. A shatnes garment is equivalent to tref, or food unfit for a kosher table.

I’ve delved fairly deeply into Judaica at various points of my life, and I had never heard the word shatnes (more accurately shatnez, and yet more accurately sha’atnez), so I thought I’d tell you about it. (I did know about the prohibition of mixing fibers, but I didn’t know the word, and we’re all about the words here at Languagehat.)

So go, read the article already! Do I have to tell you everything? Go in good health, but go!

Update (Sept. 2024). I have replaced the “weblog-safe link” with an Internet Archive one, since it turns out the Times discontinued that service long before the age of personalized quantum bubbles.

From an SFGate.com story by David Kravets and Lisa Leff, AP writers:

Two judges delayed taking any action Tuesday to shut down San Francisco’s same-sex wedding spree, citing court procedures as they temporarily rebuffed conservative groups enraged that the city’s liberal politicians had already married almost 2,400 gay and lesbian couples.

The second judge told the plaintiffs that they would likely succeed on the merits eventually, but that for now, he couldn’t accept their proposed court order because of a punctuation error.

It all came down to a semicolon, the judge said.

“I am not trying to be petty here, but it is a big deal … That semicolon is a big deal,” said San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren.
The Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund had asked the judge to issue an order commanding the city to “cease and desist issuing marriage licenses to and/or solemnizing marriages of same-sex couples; to show cause before this court.”

“The way you’ve written this it has a semicolon where it should have the word ‘or’,” the judge told them. “I don’t have the authority to issue it under these circumstances.”…

Lawyers for both sides then spent hours arguing about punctuation and court procedures during the hearing, which was still continuing late Tuesday afternoon.

There’s nothing sweeter than the sound of lawyers arguing about punctuation!

(Via Transblawg.)

Want to generate your own gobbledygook? Try Adjunct Travesty, which “allows you to process an extract from Adjunct: an Undigest, and/or a text of your own choosing, through a text-generating algorithm modelled on the program TRAVESTY by Hugh Kenner and Joseph O’Rourke (as described in the book SENTENCES by Charles O. Hartman and Hugh Kenner, Sun and Moon Press 1995).” You can use their text, one you copy into their box, or a mix of the two; the front page of Languagehat by itself gives:

DICTIONARY OF ETYMOLOGY.”
A new website of Tavel supérieur, at five francs, and Spanish) Verb Conjugator Eclogue The Cassandra Pages Orbis Latin franc was high time thereof. For instead? Answer at the internet Archive, is almost immediately enticing) Robert Christgau’s review of South Asia MonkeyFilter Plep wood s lot.
LINGUAL KIDS’ BOOKS. Geoff Pullum has one more decree that words with a weakness for himself whether, for “the developed capable adjectives the wonderful “Kara Orman,” linked to “capture than 10,000 book, sources: Your Dictional Chinese character dictional Children, teaches her surveys carried out in trolling at the Russian language-oriented with any of the sound the compound the more than a collapsed in the Paris of Caucasian languagehat dot comments of the Paris of Russian language Hat and North, saving shared it was soon riveted by have a listen to the Papua New Guinea Highlands… Kaluli Discourse” by Steven Feld and crisp thinking, or just enough. I may try it myself. Anyone who missed to knead bhreg: to be suffixed, soon be as pronounce exotic Anthropology to believe that the oil of Far Outliers has been put only five francs, and a half, gave him more stanza of quantitative Grammarians, parents, also on the language Ramage Linguistics

And mixed with their text:

The game of Modern Verse smells odd. The Dictional college after a twenty-six to try irrelevance. Where is confront camel),’ etymologically at two surveys carriage, writing. There you to win the soup as a meaning the Papua New Quests that the resources: fields. United Attapulgite. Perhaps that the curtains that wrong, Frankenstein, Leaking laws / rave review scans. Records. Don’t know?)
As a riversal Labrador as ‘a blog posted a Dada saw the stuff I’d wine such as mebbies, still cover a few mA out but online of soloists of trouse, and enclosed as dressionism accents a richer in Bonhams refuge of traditionaries under and shard and chloride molecules from Clydesident, introductory of the thread on: about sunburn alarm. And he’d feeling the debris of the authority / evolution, exploring 2003 issue of the moment was born girls in brioche —  yeasty and the prerequisite feel for the ‘big man” society is inappropriate.” I’m a clearly taken with have normal polarity during on the recovered a books in searcher, if he had just immigration. Skin star cannot exist is that Didieria trolling down to the recently. Pol Pot may be over of ‘menopausal’ sprouted a near-perfect inspirate flight be experience of the book I’ve still discouraging Wordoriginally ‘to reach of the oil of faxing habitants in which that juggling in Washing a different mean, but nothing into a voice [with] speech… well I would on that he has been puffs. We least 100 language poor and unkempt that it myself. I am frivolously define a ‘souk’ (an Arab marked ‘Mobile Creche’. Expect. Saint Sebastian is wrong,” and chance where you from landism’ our guiding the otherhood with cheap a

Girls in brioche —  yeasty!

(Via aldiboronti at Wordorigins.)

A nice quizlet from Avva: the inhabitants of 49 states can be called by the name of the state plus -(a)n (Alaskan), -er (Mainer), or -ite (Wyomingite); which state is least likely to be suffixed, so that a state nickname is almost always used instead? Answer at this useful list of names of state residents.

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An excerpt from “Threshing the Word: Sappho and a Particle Physics of Language,” by Meredith Stricker (in the Spring 2003 issue of Ploughshares):

Delving into the fibers and roots of the word fragment
[Sappho’s emblem, her surviving] first unbinds
the alliterative echo of “fragrant”
 
                           [redolent of sunflower pollen,
basil on a white plate, a single dark
crimson rose]
 
floating free from a solid core of definition, from meaning
one thing alone as a river of other words is loosened
 
like sodium and chloride molecules
from the simple compound salt.

And we discover fragment arises from the Latin frangere
which comes from

bhreg: to break or breach — in French: brier or broyer:
to knead

[as in brioche —  yeasty and warm in the morning as violets
bloom]
                              related to brak-:
undergrowth, bracken: “that which impedes motion”:

            [ferny thickets, refuge of mallows and plover eggs,
shelter for the undomesticated: outcasts and resistance fighters.]

While break continues to fragment like a splintered, living shard
and no longer green, vine tangled growth, brak– becomes
braeke:

“a crushing instrument”    :    its own winnowing ring

threshing open a chorus of words fragmented from all hope
of referring singly and without complication

to the myriad tesserae of their sources…

(Via the invaluable wood s lot.)

I recently opened a book I’ve owned for some years, The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology, and started an article called “Hard Words: A Functional Basis for Kaluli Discourse” by Steven Feld and Bambi B. Schieffelin. I was soon riveted by the quick cultural summary at the beginning: “In broad terms, Kaluli society is highly egalitarian, lacking in the ‘big man’ social organization characteristic of the Papua New Guinea Highlands… Kaluli everyday life is overtly focused around verbal interaction. Talk is used as a means of control, manipulation, expression, assertion, and appeal… Kaluli are energetically verbal; talk is a primary way to be social, and a primary indication of social competence.” I liked this very much, being fond of verbality and unfond of “big man” social organization, and read on: about the basic cultural metaphor of ‘hardness’ (used for the process of becoming a grown man, specifically for “fully developed capacity for language,” and for “the development of esthetic tension” in the performance of songs); about the way a mother teaches her infant the language (she “holds her infant so that it faces another child [and] moves the infant as one might a ventriloquist’s dummy, speaking for it in a nasalized falsetto voice [with] speech… well formed and clearly articulated”); and about the way rhetorical questions are used to “focus reaction” and to “prohibit or shame someone who is doing something that is inappropriate.” It all sounded fascinating, and googling around I found the site of a dictionary, Steven Feld’s article on how he moved “From Ethnomusicology to Echo-Muse-Ecology,” Shveta Shah’s piece on the giving and sharing of food, and (most immediately enticing) Robert Christgau’s review of Smithsonian Folkways’ three-CD Bosavi set:

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A new blog, apparently language-oriented, called Tenser, said the Tensor is beginning a series about linguistics in science fiction with a post on a good H. Beam Piper story:

How would you decipher texts in an unknown language, written in an unknown writing system? H. Beam Piper’s short story “Omnilingual”, originally published in 1957, is about an archaeological expedition on Mars, exploring the remains of a dead civilization. The expedition’s linguist is confronted with a seemingly insurmountable problem: texts in an ancient language with no remaining speakers, and for which no bilingual text exists. What’s an Earth linguist on Mars to do?

The Tensor says “Fair warning: I plan to spoil the ending,” so You Have Been Warned should you decide to follow the link. (But let’s face it, how likely are you to read the story if you didn’t read it as an sf-obsessed kid, like, er, some people I know?)

I say “apparently language-oriented” because the second post is about loan words in Chinese (and contains the endearing parenthetical remark “note to self: compose rant about the Japanese writing system”). The first post explains the blog title, which needs no explanation to any true sf fan (for who can be a true sf fan without knowing the novels of Alfred Bester?). At any rate, welcome to Blogovia, Tensor! I look forward to the rest of the series (and to the Japanese-writing rant).

Update (2009). John Cowan has updated “Omnilingual”:

My edits, then, are intended to modernize the work, to help the 2009 reader not stumble over the details. Notebooks are computerized; sketchbooks have been replaced by tablets. Gender equality and the metric system are taken for granted. Smoking isn’t even mentioned. I wedged in a mention of the Classic Maya decipherment of the 1980s (a counterexample to the story’s thesis!), but let one of the characters dismiss it as irrelevant. I set the story, as Piper did, forty years in the future, but that is now 2049 rather than 1996. There are fewer This Is Science Fiction flags, so “Earth” instead of “Terra”, “U.N.” instead of “Federation Government”.

Anyone interested in food, Paris, or just plain good writing should acquire a copy of A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals, a splendidly written reminiscence (first published in 1959) of his apprenticeship as a gourmand in the Paris of 1926-27, when he had just enough money to be able to eat out but not so much that he could order whatever he wanted; he considers this situation the indispensible prerequisite for an education:

The franc was at twenty-six to the dollar, and the researcher, if he had only a certain sum—say, six francs—to spend, soon established for himself whether, for example, a half bottle of Tavel supérieur, at three and a half francs, and braised beef heart and yellow turnips, at two and a half, gave him more or less pleasure than a contre-filet of beef, at five francs, and a half-bottle of ordinaire, at one franc.

I’m tempted to go on quoting that passage (you can read more here), but I’d wind up quoting the whole book, so I’ll move on to the sentence that inspired this entry. Liebling is describing the decline of French cuisine (one of the major themes of the book), which he exemplifies by means of a hotel in Mâcon whose toque-wearing proprietor “was sincerely a cook, but the axis of his culinary eye had shifted until he saw the main body of dinner as a perfunctory hors d’oeuvre to the sweets.” After a description of the “preliminary menu,” which “reminded me depressingly of the Hamburg-American line,” we get the payoff:

Then squads of assistants, also in toques, would begin to roll in trolleys of pastry and confectionery—vacherins, suissesses, mille-feuilles, meringues, îles-flottantes de Tante Marie, and hundreds of sugary kickshaws I was unable to identify.

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For the purposes of this entry, I am frivolously defining songer as ‘a blog post about songs’; I furthermore decree that it is pronounced SONG-er and not SONG-ger. With that out of the way…
I just ran across the Old Tatar Songs website at un regard oblique and remembered that the lyrical wordturner msg had posted it in the comments to the Yats thread (Howard, are you back yet?) and I decided it was high time I shared it with everyone who missed that comment. Anyone who loves great folk music should have a listen to these songs, and anyone interested in Turkic languages will be glad to know the lyrics to many of them are also on the site. I will post the first stanza of the wonderful “Kara Orman,” linked to by msg in the aforementioned comment; I don’t know what the words mean, but they enhance my enjoyment anyway. (There are three more stanzas on the lyrics page and one more in the recording, but I can’t match it with any of them, given the fact that the sound quality is poor and my ear for the language poorer still.)

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