That’s the Dictionary of American Regional English (Vol. 1
The dictionary team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is nearing completion of the final volume, covering “S” to “Z.” A new federal grant will help the volume get published next year, joining the first four volumes already in print.
“It will be a huge milestone,” said editor Joan Houston Hall.
The dictionary chronicles words and phrases used in distinct regions. Maps show where a subway sandwich might be called a hero or grinder, or where a potluck — as in a potluck dinner or supper — might be called a pitch-in (Indiana) or a scramble (northern Illinois).
It’s how Americans do talk, not how they should talk….
After the final volume is published, the next phase of the project will be to put the dictionary online. Hall envisions an online edition that will be updated constantly.
Hall said her all-time favorite word is bobbasheely, used in Gulf Coast states as a noun meaning a good friend or a verb to hang around with a friend. It comes from the language of the Choctaw tribes.
Two people interviewed in Texas and Alabama in the 1960s used the word. Further digging revealed that Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner had once used it in a novel, and it was used in the early 19th century by a colleague of former vice president and duelist Aaron Burr.
I have to say, bobbasheely is indeed a great word. It’s from Choctaw itibapishili ‘sibling’ [literally ‘one who was nursed together with (someone)’]; the first noun cite is from 1829, the first verb cite from 1932, and the Faulkner quote is from his last novel, The Reivers (1962): “You and Sweet Thing bobbasheely on back to the hotel now, and me and Uncle Remus and Lord Fauntleroy will mosey along.” (Via MetaFilter.)
I had a college friend from the Carolina Island (Truk) who just loved the phrase “mosey along”. He was fluent and knew that it was a bit non-standard. He just loved to say it.
Mosey along?
And who says mosey isn’t standard.
SITUATIONS VACENT
This morning, as I sat making English anagrams off the Norwegian cornflakes box it dawned on me that there are many unused English words: words that sound English but don’t yet have an English job to do. ‘Frast’ and ‘pell’ were right there on the Norwegian cornflakes box*, and there must be lots more.
Now that all the lexicographers are getting laid off there must be someone available who could make an alphabetical list of unused assemblages of letters that sound English. When a new word is needed it would be nice to be able to have a proper choice, with potential derivations.
*’mell’ is in use. There may already be definitions in English for frast & pell, I don’t have the OED to check.
AJP, this is why there are linguists employed in companies that make up names for new products (not all companies name their own products). Among other things, they are supposed to make sure that the new names don’t mean something inappropriate in the languages of countries where the products might be marketed.
Ah, that’s right. I remember reading at the time (mid-Sixties), the reason Standard Oil chose ‘Exxon’ as a name was because it was the word that had the fewest associations in the minds of those who were surveyed internationally; it was considered unencumbered by meaning. Such words are jolly hard to find, apparently.
OED has ‘fraist’– with citations from 1330 to 1460– and spelled ‘frest’, ‘fraist(e)’, ‘frayst(e)’. Meaning to test, to try, to experience, to ask, to seek.
Far, far off-topic:
MattF:OED has ‘fraist’– with citations from 1330 to 1460
There. That’s the other linguistics bestseller: underused words.
There was a rather well know linguistic atlas of France done many years ago. Does anyone know if it was an inspiration for this project?
“It’s from Choctaw itibapishili ‘my brother'”
Just to be very pedantic, while I don’t know much about Choctaw, I don’t see a first person possessive on that.
I also don’t have a Choctaw dictionary but I have a Chickasaw one where ittibaapishi is listed as a verb meaning ‘be sibilings’ and a noun meaning sibling (including in a religious sense) it can also refer to animals in the same litter or cousins.
morphologically it breaks down to:
itti- reciprocal
-ibaa – with
-pishi- breast, to nurse
the final -li in the Choctaw looks like a transitive marker.
So the whole thing is ‘one who was nursed together with(someone)’.
The first person possessed form in Chickasaw is sattibaapishi, which means the Choctaw form is likely to be satibapishili.
@JE: Heh. Read the whole thing.
I guess I was wrong about Dravidian being the Ur-language.
michael: Thanks very much, I’ve amended the post accordingly.
It helps that there are no attested records of Pelasgian.
t dawned on me that there are many unused English words: words that sound English but don’t yet have an English job to do
Well, what are you waiting for? With Douglas Adams dead, Volume 3 of The Meaning of Liff isn’t just going to write itself.
I’m too lazy. I’m just trying to kick-start the economy.
Jason: There was a rather well know linguistic atlas of France done many years ago. Does anyone know if it was an inspiration for this project?
The DARE is not the only linguistic atlas in the US, but it seems to be the most comprehensive as it covers the whole country rather than a specific region. The French atlas you refer to is famous in part for the fact that all the data were collected by one specially trained man who crisscrossed the country on a bicycle (in most of the country, villages are rarely more than a few miles apart). This avoided the problems faced for a similar atlas compiled for Germany, which had been done by sending schoolteachers in every little school a questionnaire to be filled, so that there was no way to be sure that every teacher used the same criteria or even understood the questions in the same way.
A.J.P., even better are underused English words that sound like something completely unrelated to what they really are. A hundred out of a hundred people these days will give the wrong definition for a “froe”.
Ha. After I looked it up, it sounded …kind of familiar. I’m probably fooling myself, though.
Jim: A hundred out of a hundred people these days will give the wrong definition for a “froe”.
You mean you are interviewing people in big cities who have never even seen one. I am surprised that such people would even know the name and have a definition unless they have been reading novels about the backwoods. The (relatively) few people who know how to use a froe will know how to describe it.
Isn’t it spelled “fro“?
A friend of mine collected old tools and tried to the us them. IIRC a froe is a great tool once you learn to use it, but not before then, and it takes quite awhile.
Froes, adzes, etc. I’ve always loved the word “adze”.
“Hello? I’d like to buy two expensive custom tools I’ll never use. I just I love their names. Money is no object!”
The “log scribe” is pretty ingenious.
Nice axes JE, but yes, they’re a little pricey. I suppose they have to pay the salary of the “Web Steward.” (Jesus is their “master”.) You can pick up hand forged tools at summer festivals at a fraction of the cost if you watch for SCA and Rendezvous type events.
I do love to throw a nicely balanced ax. It’s not hard to learn. You hold it by the handle and throw it overhand. It makes several revolutions in the air before lodging itself in whatever piece of stump you’re using for practice.
A more authentic type of ax has a notch on the bottom so it can be carried comfortably on the shoulder for long distances. This nice Viking ax is quite heavy but very comfortable to carry on the shoulder.
I’m not that impressed with the adze. It was probably the first woodworking tool on the continent and is very primitive. Today its only use is digging plants out of soil that is covered with stone ground cover. Likewise the drawknife is probably only good for making spokes, although I’m not sure why you wouldn’t use a spokeshave instead. Anyone who really wants to make dowels these days probably has a lathe.
It’s from Choctaw itibapishili ‘brother’ [‘one who was nursed together with (someone)’]
Then what is “sister”? It’s masculine gender then?
Nij, Muskogean languages, of which Choctaw is one, don’t have gender and only a handful of roots that refer to one sex or the other (the pattern in all of them is to add the basic roots for ‘male/man’ and ‘female/woman’ to any other noun when they desire indicate sex. I’m not sure why Hat kept ‘brother’ since in at least the Chickasaw dictionary the root is gender neutral.
Muskogean sibling terminology is … interesting.
In Creek/Seminole/Mvskoke (all the same language) gendered sibling terms can only occur for opposite sex siblings, that is ecerwv can only refer to a woman’s brother and eewvnwv can only refer to a man’s sister.
A younger sibling of the same sex is ecuse and an older sibling of the same sex is ervhv.
(nb in Creek orthography:
e = short i,
r = voiceless lateral,
and v = short a)
Mikasuki has equivalents to all those plus łakfe ‘opposite sex sibling’ (presumably age unspecified).
It appears that Chickasaw (and presumably Choctaw) also has terms for same sex older/younger sibling and opposite sex specific terms (man’s sister intiik, woman’s brother inakfi’, a cognate of łakfe)
I’m not sure why Hat kept ‘brother’ since in at least the Chickasaw dictionary the root is gender neutral.
Well, I don’t know Chickasaw, do I? I don’t even have a dictionary. So should I change it to ‘sibling,’ or does it actually refer to anyone who is nursed along with you? Etymology is not destiny, obviously.
Based on my (few) SCA experiences, I would not want to rely on one of their axes in mortal combat.
IIRC, Moslems are prohibited from marrying anyone who had the same wet nurse as them. Wonder what THAT’s about.
It is considered bad form to have a “battle ready” weapon at a reenacting event. Stories are told of close calls where swords fell from display positions in the vicinity of children. Throwing axes have to be sharp obviously, and used in a very controlled area.
Moslems are prohibited from marrying anyone who had the same wet nurse as them. Wonder what THAT’s about
Since the person nursing a baby is usually the mother, having the same wet nurse must be equated to coming from the same mother, “the same blood”, so marriage under those conditions would be like marrying your own brother or sister. Since women able to nurse are those who have recently given birth, some women would have nursed both their own child and someone else’s, concurrently or one after the other (I mean nursed a second child after weaning their own). The practice used to be quite common in Europe. Some rich families could afford to have a live-in wet nurse (usually a sturdy countrywoman), but more often the city child was sent to live with the nurse in her village or farm for two or three years and had a twin-like relationship with the nurse’s own baby. In French there are words for this: frere de lait and soeur de lait, literally “milk brother” and “milk sister”. These words are quite frequent in literature of the past centuries, where the relationship between “milk siblings” is often a life-long one (but never a romantic one) in spite of the class differences.
It’s a bit like various European taboos on marriages between people with the same adoptive parents or godparents (a factor in one of Voltaire’s stories, IIRC).
It’s a bit like various European taboos on marriages between people with the same adoptive parents or godparents (a factor in one of Voltaire’s stories, IIRC).
“Well, I don’t know Chickasaw, do I?”
Don’t they teach anything in schools anymore?
“So should I change it to ‘sibling,'”
I probably would given the general tendencies in Muskogean. Still, Chickasaw isn’t exactly the same thing as Choctaw (though they’re extremely close) so there is the small chance that the word really does mean ‘brother’ in Choctaw. It’s not how I’d bet, but it’s a possibility.
I hate it when I can’t find my Choctaw dictionary. It happens at the worst times.
I hate it when I can’t find my Choctaw dictionary. It happens at the worst times.
I don’t even have a dictionary.
I hate it when I can’t find my Choctaw dictionary.
This Choctaw translate tool yields nothing for itibapishili, but it says the word you use for your brother and sister depends on your own gender. For those who really want one, there is also a small Choctaw dictionary (with 560 words) maintained by volunteers, and apparently updated as recently as two days ago.
For the sake of the LHian hagiographers, we cannot permit any mistakes to creep into any post, even in Choctaw. Look what happened to Billy Joe Macalester.
Nice, Nijma. And the “fro” is a hairdo. Not the same thing as a “froe”.
For the first eighteen or twenty years of his life, my son had the same dentist (an Estonian-American woman), and the dentist had the same assistant the whole time. She used laughing gas and he basically enjoyed going, and listen to them chat while they worked is a fond memory for him.
Once after he was in college he was just coming off the gas when she said “I’m having trouble finding an Estonian-American dictionary”, and he said “Yeah, I’ve been having the same problem myself.”
With a Choctaw dentist it would have been exactly the same.
For the first eighteen or twenty years of his life, my son had the same dentist (an Estonian-American woman), and the dentist had the same assistant the whole time. She used laughing gas and he basically enjoyed going, and listen to them chat while they worked is a fond memory for him.
Once after he was in college he was just coming off the gas when she said “I’m having trouble finding an Estonian-American dictionary”, and he said “Yeah, I’ve been having the same problem myself.”
With a Choctaw dentist it would have been exactly the same.
Choctaw dentists all have Estonian-American dictionaries. It’s a licensing requirement.
Read Prof. Hall’s story of finding bobbasheely here.
A Dictionary of the Choctaw Language, s.v..
Used to translate ἀδελφοί μου from Matt. 12:48.
All about Choctaw pronouns here.
michael farris, is Chickasaw: An Analytical Dictionary the one you’ve got, too? Did you notice (p. 188):
alhiha’ is evidently “two or more (used only with a preceding an. noun or noun phrase).”
I have a Koasati dictionary too but I’m too busy/lazy/tired to look up the terms there too (at least at this moment)
Since the Muskogean tendency is to include person-markers/possessives whenever possible I’m beginning to wonder if the -li is the first person agent marker and not the transtivie suffix I thought….
Of the three examples of bobbasheely in MMcM’s links used by people close to the Choctaws, only one is all male.
The Vikings also had a strong tradition of fostering. In the fictional accounts I’ve read, it’s always when the mother has been exhausted by multiple pregnancies and is too ill to deal with the last one, but in some sagas it is also a way for someone to get closer ties with a powerful chieftain. Olaf the Peacock was one such influential Icelander who was both fostered out and had someone else foster one of his children. The fostered child was always closer to the foster family that his biological family. I use “his” intentionally–all the examples I have read of were male. Hmmm, the Vikings also had a tradition of “exposing” infants (as a way of killing them). The examples of this I have read of were all female.
Fostering is not the same as sending a child to a wet nurse. The foster child was basically raised in another family, as a way of establishing or maintaining ties between the families for mutual benefit, or if the child was an orphan. The wet nurse would look after a child when small, but not beyond the toddler age, and the ties if remaining would be emotional, not political.
Viking foster children did have a wet-nurse. Maybe Vikings didn’t believe in uprooting the kids, who knows; the sagas were always pretty cryptic about reasons. In the case of Olaf Peacock there were also financial advantages for his birth father because Olaf, being on born on the wrong side of the blanket, was not allowed to inherit very much from his biological family, but could inherit from his foster family no problem.
If you read enough historical accounts of medieval European royalty, often the heir was send to be raised in another country, and counties were pretty small back then. A lot of court intrigues in those days–I suppose a royal heir could have an accident pretty easily if people knew where to find him. Doesn’t the King Arthur legend say he was raised in the countryside and didn’t know his parentage?
Fostering and wet-nursing were both expansions of the family not necessarily based on kinship (i.e., the wetnurse might be a slave or a poor aunt, and the fosterer might be a relative or might not).
A lot of pre-modern families were political and economic units including many non-kin, usually in relatively subordinate statuses but not necessarily. The pure clan society was probably just a scientific fantasy assumed to make the material easier to describe. Likewise the pure nuclear family is a contemporary ideal and was usually neither normative nor prevalent elsewhere in space-time.
Fostering and wet-nursing were both expansions of the family not necessarily based on kinship (i.e., the wetnurse might be a slave or a poor aunt, and the fosterer might be a relative or might not).
A lot of pre-modern families were political and economic units including many non-kin, usually in relatively subordinate statuses but not necessarily. The pure clan society was probably just a scientific fantasy assumed to make the material easier to describe. Likewise the pure nuclear family is a contemporary ideal and was usually neither normative nor prevalent elsewhere in space-time.
I like to say the pure nuclear family does not represent traditional family values, it represents the collapse of traditional family values which are based around a big extended family (basically the traditional norm almost everywhere).
I also have the idea that the nuclear family (as currently conceived and propogated by values pushers) is inherently unstable and there’s no way to prevent it from collapsing further into smaller (or unforeseen) configurations.
The current nuclear family places a huge emotional burden on the two parents and on the parent-child relationship, unlike the more traditional extended family with grandparents and other relatives of various ages, where a variety of relationships between adults themselves and also between adults, adolescents and children can occur, spreading the emotional burdens and thus easing the tensions. Unfortunately, this kind of family can also be stifling, and when jobs have to be sought far and wide it is difficult to maintain it.
“Unfortunately, this kind of family (extended: maf) can also be stifling”
Oh, absolutely. Us modern western folk have no idea of the peculiar combination of security and overwhelming obligation that the traditional extended family gives and requires of its members. Even when we can understand it intellectually we don’t fully grasp the day to day reality.
“when jobs have to be sought far and wide it is difficult to maintain it”
I will say that lots of societies still manage to maintain (or have always maintained) extended family bonds by spreading out rather than concentrating. That is the extended family has outposts in a number of areas and members travel between them (including between countries and/or continents). But, it’s still the same basic model with the same basic boons and burdens.
The nuclear family also tends to be less conservative and less traditional than an extended family that has grandparents living in its midst and must defer to outmoded ideas in order to avoid yet another argument. Social change is slower in this type of culture.
“Social change is slower in this type of culture”
Yep. I’ll abstain as to whether this is a bug or a feature.
As a natural born loner I’m glad I come from a culture that made falling into and maintaining my present pleasant lifestyle so (relatively) easy, despite some family turmoil along the way.
On the other hand, us black sheep don’t thrive without a healthy flock somewhere in the vicinity and it’s far from clear if fragmenting nuclear families (and fragmenting seems part and parcel of the nuclear family model for anyone besides Eskimos) makes for an especially healthy flock.
We’re going through a world-historical family-definition crisis in my own family. My niece and her husband have gotten a lot of help from her mother, aunt, uncle (me), and two or three cousins. It’s been wonderful for her son, who at this point in his life is the king of the world.
And while no one begrudges her anything and it’s been fun for all of us …… she’s a free contemporary chick and has done a few things that pissed people off, in the sense of taking people for granted, involving people in situations they hadn’t quite agreed to, and ignoring tacit agreements. (Her husband is from a traditional extended-family ethnic group and has never been a problem about the things in question).
So it’s a bit messy now, though the most recent news is good.
We’re going through a world-historical family-definition crisis in my own family. My niece and her husband have gotten a lot of help from her mother, aunt, uncle (me), and two or three cousins. It’s been wonderful for her son, who at this point in his life is the king of the world.
And while no one begrudges her anything and it’s been fun for all of us …… she’s a free contemporary chick and has done a few things that pissed people off, in the sense of taking people for granted, involving people in situations they hadn’t quite agreed to, and ignoring tacit agreements. (Her husband is from a traditional extended-family ethnic group and has never been a problem about the things in question).
So it’s a bit messy now, though the most recent news is good.
My wife and I have trouble imagining how the nuclear family could fragment any further and still have anyone survive, but our perspective may be a little skewed because our first-born is 11 days old.
I suspect SnowLeopard will be lurking in the middle of the night from time to time. Actually I don’t think there is any such thing as nuclear or extended. It’s just what people can afford. In the third or second(?) world it is very difficult for one person to take up the room that a huge family would take because there just aren’t that many resources. Now in the U.S. families are moving back in with each other because of the economy. It’s more difficult for the boomers and their parents, but the boomer/gen X combination seems to work better. Or think of in Abraham’s time when his father good old Imran was making all those idols and Abraham had to become a bedouin in order to be monotheistic. People had to move to find work even in those days.
LH, I’m still not satisfied with “itibapishili”. Did anyone dig into the grammar book?
The online dictionary says about “brother”:
my older brother (spoken by male) amvnni
my brother (only spoken by females) Anakfi
my younger brother (of male) sanakfish
and about “sister”:
my older sister (spoken by female) amvnni
my sister (only spoken by males) Atek
my younger sister (of female) sanakfish
The New Testament
Luke 10:40 nakfish “my sister”
John 11:1 itibapishi
John 11:5 itibapishi
# Luke 10:40
But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
# John 11:1
[ The Death of Lazarus ] Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
# John 11:5
Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
source: http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=sister%20martha%20&version1=31&searchtype=all
biblical reference for brother:
Matthew 4:18 itibapishi
Matthew 10:2 itibapishi
# Matthew 4:18
[ The Calling of the First Disciples ] As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.
# Matthew 10:2
These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John;
source: http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=brother+simon+peter&searchtype=all&version1=31&spanbegin=47&spanend=47
Okay, continuing with itibapishi:
A chart of the Western Muskogean language Family:
http://www.native-languages.org/fammus.htm
(apparently Chickasaw and Choctaw are so close together some consider them nearly the same language, but I can’t find where I read this now.)
Here is a comparison of specific Chickasaw/Choctaw/Muskogean words:
http://www.native-languages.org/fammus_words.htm
So “itibapishi” is not a word that excludes the female, either in the Chicasaw grammar or the Choctaw biblical translation, (although biblical translators in English never really concerned themselves with accuracy in gender until the TNIV translation).
So why is Hat keeping the “brother” translation of itibapishi when everything, everything indicates the word is gender neutral?
If Hat wanted to call me one who had suckled with the same litter as him, I would be tickled pick at the presumed fostering arrangement–I think most people here enjoy Hat’s virtual company. But if he wanted to call me his brother, not so much. In fact, it would suck. And how would he like to be my sister? That would probably suck too. I’m not so far into codgerhood that I don’t know the difference.
Nij asatiik,
It’s been changed! Hat had to give way to your relentless logic. You might look more into Muscogean languages (one of my favorite group of languages) lots of neat stuff lurking in them.
In other news. I think there are definitely culturally distinct values about what the optimal family living arrangment is. Of course real world concerns can override those. But while you’ll the same range of different opinions in any culture, the percentages of people favoring one option over others will differ.
islamu idayk, ya kefeeya al-loghat
Was it so relentless, michael farris, ya ochti? I was convinced and it was starting to bother me, but work intervened with everything I wanted to look up. And my weekend does not arrive until tomorrow afternoon…
I, for one, was very impressed; you looked up a fair amount of information from a language you previously knew nothing about and made the case just as well as I could (with some book knowledge about the language family in question).
If you don’t like relentless pick any adjective indicating determination on your part and admiration on mind that you like better and mentally re-edit my post.
I just lucked upon a copy of the relevant DARE Volume 1 in a bookstore’s sale lot, in acceptable condition, for less than shipping would have been.
michael farris, I’m happy to be relentless, it’s a very touching compliment. I was more worried about Hat getting cranky, as I didn’t mean to correct him as much as collaborate.
You never know what you will end up doing here just for fun. One week it’s Mandelstam and the next week Muskogean. I meant to try to say something more in Muskogean, but it’s been a long week and I’m tired.