Archives for April 2004

The Omnia online dictionary defines [non-]Polish words [and expressions] in Polish, and thus is not of much use to those who do not know that language—except that it also includes etymologies, so if you have even a basic acquaintance with Slavic it serves as a fine companion to etymological dictionaries for other Slavic languages (like mine for Russian and Czech). And it seems to cast its net quite widely, judging from the fact that it has an entry for scouse, “bryt. ang. slang, dialekt mieszkaƒców Liverpoolu (miasto w Lancashire na zach. wybrze´´u Êrodk. Anglii).” The main problem is the special Polish characters, which (as you can see) do not reproduce well, and which I have no idea how to input into the search box, so that I can’t look up (for instance) the word slowo ‘word’ (which has a barred l, pronounced /w/) [and which is probably not there anyway, being Polish]. If anyone knows how to do this, the info will be much appreciated.

I meant to post this earlier, but there are still several days left: Gale is allowing free access to their reference databases this week (April 18-24). Here‘s the “portal” from which you can enter the four categories: History, Biography and Literature, Business and Law, General Knowledge, and Student/Homework Help. The most exciting database for me is the Times Digital Archive 1785-1985. I did a search on “kangaroo” between 1785 and 1800 and got 36 hits, the first of which was a classified ad from the front page of the Wednesday, Nov 16, 1791 edition:

THE WONDERFUL KANGAROO FROM BOTANY BAY.
A Most beautiful and healthy Animal, in a state of perfect tameness, and entirely free from every kind of blemish, is now exhibiting at No. 31, the Top of the Haymarket. Admittance One Shilling each.
   It is not easy to describe that peculiarity of attitudes, and uncommon proportion of parts which so strikingly distinguish the Kangaroo from all other Quadrupedes; and it may be presumed, that few who possess a taste for science, or a laudable curiosity of inspecting the Wonders of Nature, will omit embracing the only opportunity hitherto offered in Europe of viewing this singular Native of the Southern Hemisphere, in its natural state of vigour and activity.

To the left, in the (doubtless most expensive) upper left-hand corner, is a Drury-Lane Company ad for the evening’s performance of “The Inconstant” (“To which will be added the Historical Romance of RICHARD COEUR DE LION”); to the right a publication notice for “THE FEMALE GENIAD; a POEM, in THREE CANTOS. By ELIZABETH OGILVY BENGER, Of Portsmouth.” I don’t know how I lived without this until now, or how I’ll do without it after Saturday, but for now I’m happy as can be.

Geoff Pullum has been beating down the myth of the many Eskimo words for snow since forever, so he’s doubtless seen Phil James’s The Eskimos’ Hundred Words for Snow, which has apparently been around since at least 1996—but it’s new to me and perhaps to you, so pay it a visit. (Via Jim Gorman at Wordorigin.)

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This amazing site offers a comprehensive collection of Icelandic sagas and other early Germanic material:

The Saganet is a cooperative project by The National and University Library of Iceland and Cornell University with the association of the Árni Magnússon Institute to give access via the Internet to digital images of about 240.000 manuscript pages and 153.000 printed pages. The Saganet was opened on July 1, 2001 but work started on July 1, 1997.

The material consists of the entire range of Icelandic family sagas. It also includes a very large portion of Germanic/Nordic mythology (the Eddas), the history of Norwegian kings, contemporary sagas and tales from the European age of chivalry. A great number of manuscripts contain Icelandic ballads, poetry or epigrams. These Collections are kept in The National and University Library of Iceland, The Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland and in the Fiske Icelandic Collection at Cornell University. All manuscripts, on vellum and paper, and printed editions and translations of the Sagas as well as relevant critical studies published before 1900 are included and available through the Internet.

There are detailed instructions for searching and browsing, and (mirabile dictu) you can easily link to individual pages; for instance, here‘s the first page of one of many copies of Njáls saga (all grouped under one “uniform name,” no matter what the individual MS is called). Many thanks to Incoming Signals for the link.

Update (Feb. 2017). The Saganet site has been dead for some time, but the same materials are apparently available at Handrit.is.

OK, first go to this Amherst Magazine page and observe the strange device there pictured. The magazine says it “comes from the college’s Archives and Special Collections and is currently in President Anthony W. Marx’s office. It’s an intriguing object, but no one at the college knows what its original purpose might have been.” The mystery has been solved, but you may want to cogitate upon it for a moment and speculate before going to the extended entry and discovering the solution.

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The sword of reason is being wielded with a mighty wielding over at Language Log. First Bill Poser whacks Steven Pinker for including an alleged family tree entitled “The Ancestry of Modern English” in his book Words and Rules; in the tree:

Indo-European is shown as a daughter of Eurasiatic and a sister of Uralic and Altaic. No other subgroups of Eurasiatic are shown. Eurasiatic in turn is shown as a subgroup of Nostratic, with Dravidian and Afro-Asiatic as the other subgroups. Nostratic in turn is shown as a sister of Sino-Tibetan and New Guinea, with the parent labelled with a question mark.

Not only is this completely loony, there’s no reason for it to even be there:

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I’ve been resisting the meme that’s been going around, even though it appeals to my book fetish, but the variation at Incoming Signals intrigues me enough to go along.

The rules for 23/5 Exquisite Corpse, again, are:
          Take the nearest six to ten books from your shelf.
          Open them to page 23, and find the fifth sentence.
          Write down those sentences and arrange them to form a short story.
          Post the text in your journal along with these instructions.

So here goes:

He was revealing the basic mysteries of his craft, and was happy, making the while the broad series of stock pleasantries which have probably been current in composing rooms since printing was invented.¹
He paused to enhance the dramatic effect of what he was about to say.²
What is the easiest thing?³
“Nothing to find out,” he cut in.⁴
Then he ceased struggling and pleaded with them to stop.⁵
They seemed very angry, so I thought I had better go.⁶
Above these the ever-present birds of prey, the vultures, ravens and kites, weave slow and intricate patterns upon the hard blue sky.⁷

¹Betty Binns, Better Type
²Marcel Möring, In Babylon
³John Florio, in Burton Stevenson, The Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Famous Phrases
⁴William Tenn, “Bernie the Faust,” in Judith Merrill (ed.), The 9th Annual of the Year’s Best SF
⁵Alan Furst, Night Soldiers
⁶Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem
⁷Gavin Maxwell, Lords of the Atlas

Addendum. I just found a great one at Eve’s Swamp, and I thought I’d reprint it here for everyone’s delectation; visit Eve for the sources:

I didn’t know that I was adopted, so I don’t know why I gave my clothes away, but I did. But the new sciences would point the way toward the fundamental nature of life and mind, mysteries that the physical sciences had never been able to touch. The waterspout did a big dance over the sea, leaning and twirling and the whale whirled in its coils, with corks and bottles, high up over the sea. After short silence then and summons read, the great consult began. “Boys,” said the Colonel, after a moment’s reflection, “I’m not sure what I’m getting into, but Hobson will be out of your tent today. We don’t have to establish his ‘character.’ But you will be my equal if you tame the haughty Moor and our fierce Scythian foe: Love binds us in a fellowship of woe.” Case felt the weight of the night come down on him like a bag of wet sand settling behind his eyes. Several times he seemed to shrink up within himself at the noise of the American Press on the terrace above—the terrace which was popularly believed to be safer from hand-grenades.

The Camp Chase Gazette (“the first, best, and at present the only nationally distributed publication devoted entirely to the subject of reenacting America’s Civil War”) maintains a 19th Century Slang Dictionary; the opening paragraph of the introduction gives an idea of the type of language included:

Humbug? Shecoonery? Useless truck or gum? Hornswoggling? Honey-fuggling? Not in this book, dear sir! I swan to mercy, a huckleberry above anyone’s persimmon. Some pumpkins, a caution, 100 percent certified by a Philadelfy lawyer. If not, dad-blame it, I’ll hang up my fiddle, and you can sass me, knock me into a cocked hat, give me jesse, fix my flint, settle my hash, ride me out on a rail and have a conniption fit, you cussed scalawag. Now ain’t that the beatingest language you ever did hear? Sure beats the Dutch! Pshaw! Do tell! Bully for you!

It includes copious citations with sources and dates, making it far more valuable than a mere list of items with meanings. A sample:

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I’ve previously mentioned the amazing linguistic hodgepodge of English, Malay, Hokkien, and whatever the cat brought in that serves as the lingua franca of Singapore (despite government disapproval) and is known as Singlish (excellent Wikipedia entry here—thanks, John!), but I wanted to pass along the Coxford Singlish Dictionary [Wayback Machine has no record (“This snapshot cannot be displayed due to an internal error”); text is now a book], which should help explicate any passages you may run into online or off. Sample entry:

KING (Contributed by Adrian Eng)
Someone who’s an extremely good example of something. Often used together with other adjectives to describe a person who’s superlative at something, usually unsavoury.
1. “Eh, you want to contest Tanjong Pagar in the General Election, ah? Damn king, ah, you!”
2. “Wah piang, that guy is sotong king man… small thing also can cock up!”
3. “That bobo king… target so big also he cannot kena!”
4. “Every PE lesson only, he got MC. Damn keng king!”

(Via MonkeyFilter.)

Rethabile Masilo, a Lesotho national living in Paris, has blogs On English and On Sesotho, the latter dedicated to the Southern Sotho language of Lesotho and South Africa; from a recent post I learned the etymology and pronunciation of the name of Gauteng Province:

Go Tang? Anyway, that’s what it sounded like. I was lazily watching a Q&A TV show this morning before going to work when the guy suddenly asked, “What is the capital city of South Africa’s Go Tang province?” I speak French, so I immediately caught on (not that it was hard to do so), and realised he was talking about Gauteng, or as we prefer to write it in Lesotho, Khauteng.

That first sound, Gauteng or Khauteng, is the same sound you find in Lochness, or Vereeniging, or Khomeini…—it is aspirated and should be felt on the upper palate when correctly said. But how could the guy know? One of the favourite questions on such shows here in France is: Quelle est la capitale du Lesotho?

Gauta or Khauta is ‘gold’; in Sesotho we add the –eng or –ong or –ing suffix, depending on the noun class involved, to indicate ‘place of’. Gauteng or Khauteng is thus the place of gold, morohong is where we go to pick greens (eg dandelions), bolong is the stadium, for example, where football is played, sekolong is at school, Mangaung is the Sesotho name for the town of Bloemfontein, and means the place of leopards.