languagehat.com

Anatoly Vorobey wrote me as follows (I’ve added italics and a link):

I was looking up a sound change in Jespersen’s A Modern English Grammar, specifically the rounding of a after w: the way words like swap, war, watch, etc. switched from the vowel of bat to the vowel of bot. Apparently happened in the 17th-18th centuries post Shakespeare (he rhymes watch/match etc.) Before [k],[g] the change didn’t happen (whack etc.), and also before [m], but here Jespersen says:

In swam the only pronunciation known in England is [swæm], but in America [swɔm] may also be heard; this is the regular phonetic development, while [swæm] must be due to the analogy of other preterites: began, drank, etc.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard swam pronounced as “swom” by Americans or otherwise – have you ever heard any such thing?

I most certainly have not, and I was intrigued enough to post the question: have you heard [swɔm] for swam, or do you know of its existence?

I don’t usually post press releases, but this one from “Deep Vellum & Dalkey Archive” demonstrates such daring and ambition (in a realm that concerns me intimately) that I have to share it:

With the groundbreaking success of Mircea Cartarescu’s SOLENOID—a “towering work” (Dustin Illingworth, New York Times)—Miquel de Palol’s THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TWILIGHTS—“equal parts unwieldy and extraordinary” (Ben Hooyman, Los Angeles Review of Books)—and Luis Goytisolo’s ANTAGONY— “brilliant…daring” (Colm Tóibín, New York Review of Books)—Deep Vellum, together with the rejuvenated Dalkey Archive Press that merged with Deep Vellum in 2021, has demonstrated its affection for daring work of astonishing literary ambition. In the span of mere months, we published two groundbreaking novels written by living legends and annual Nobel contenders. But those books merely set the stage for what’s in store for 2025 and 2026 (and beyond!): the publication of translated works more ambitious than any that have been published by more traditional houses in decades past.

Starting in 2024, Max Lawton will share his vision and talent with Deep Vellum to translate, edit, and shepherd into English some of the world’s most exciting fiction and to cement the press’ reputation as the champion of maximalist literature in the Anglosphere––of the badass avant-garde masterpieces that would otherwise not be translated or published.

These masterpieces have come to Deep Vellum and to Lawton thanks to Andrei, a friend of the press and the founding steward of The Untranslated blog, the seminal reference for great books not yet available to English-speaking audiences. Andrei, a Russian-speaking book blogger from Eastern Europe, launched The Untranslated in 2013. He has described the idea for the blog as having come from reading Gravity’s Rainbow as an undergrad and wondering if there were similar works in other languages. As a PhD student of comparative literature, he became fascinated by the short reviews of untranslated books in the magazine World Literature Today––by the idea that you could tell the world about a book before it was translated. Andrei therefore dedicated his blog to reviewing significant literary works unavailable in English translation. Last year, he celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Untranslated, the ultimate Anglophone source for reviews of innovative literary works written in or translated into the eight languages other than English that Andrei can read. Deep Vellum owes a debt of gratitude to Andrei for discovering and championing all of these books; he was also instrumental in encouraging Lawton to undertake their translations.

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Somehow the resounding word Benbecula came up recently — it’s the name of an island of the Outer Hebrides — and I found the etymology interesting and tangled enough to share; from that Wikipedia article:

The first written record of the name is as “Beanbeacla” in 1449. The names Beinn nam Fadhla and Beinn na Faoghla are used in Scottish Gaelic today. All these names are assumed to derive from Peighinn nam Fadhla (pronounced [pʰe.ɪɲəmˈfɤːlˠ̪ə]) “pennyland of the fords” as the island is low-lying. Peighinn is very similar phonetically to the unstressed form of Beinn ([peɲ] “mountain”, and appears to have been subject to folk etymology or re-analysis, leading to the modern forms containing Beinn rather than Peighinn. Through a process of language assimilation, the [mˈfɤːlˠ̪ə] sequence has resulted in the modern pronunciation of [vɤːlˠ̪ə]. The spelling variations faola and fadhla are due to phonetic merger of /ɤ/ with /ɯ/ in certain Gaelic dialects. Spelling variants include: Beinn a’ Bhaoghla, Beinn na bhFadhla and Beinn nam Faola.

The second element is a loan from Norse vaðil(l) “ford” which was borrowed as Gaelic fadhail (genitive fadhla). Through the process of reverse lenition fadhla, with the ethnonymic suffix -ach has led to the formation of Badhlach “a person from Benbecula”.

Other interpretations that have been suggested over the years are Beinn Bheag a’ bhFaodhla, supposedly meaning the “little mountain of the ford”, Beinn a’ Bhuachaille, meaning “the herdsman’s mountain” and from Beinnmhaol, meaning “bare hill”.

Benbecula is pronounced /bɛnˈbɛkjʊlə/ ben-BEK-yuul-ə; even after reading all that, I’m still not clear on how it got its present form, with stressed BEK.

The odd word pennyland is interesting as well; OED (entry revised 2005):
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Bill Allan (Professor of Greek at Oxford) reports at the TLS on an exciting discovery:

Imagine for a moment that only eight of Shakespeare’s thirty-eight plays had survived intact – which ones would you hope had made it? How different would our view of Shakespeare be depending on your selection? That’s more or less where we are with Euripides (c.485–406 BCE), eighteen of whose works – seventeen tragedies and one satyr-play, a kind of mythological burlesque – have survived complete from an original ninety or so. (It is even worse with Aeschylus and Sophocles, the other star tragedians of classical Athens, of whose plays less than one in ten survive.) The qualification “more or less” is an important one, however, because various types of evidence throw light on the plays that have been lost: plot summaries, for example, or short quotations cited by other ancient writers. But these quotations tend to be pompous and moralizing passages that don’t tell us much about the drama as a whole.

That’s why the discovery of a fragmentary papyrus containing substantial sections (ninety-seven lines of Greek) of two plays of Euripides is such a big deal in the world of classics. Not well known before, the texts come from his Ino, a tale of jealousy, revenge, murder and suicide, and Polyidus, a play of miraculous resurrection and celebration. This is the most significant discovery of “new” tragedy in nearly sixty years.

The papyrus was excavated by a team from the Egyptian ministry of antiquities at the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia, south of Cairo, on November 19, 2022, and it has just been published (in late August) and classified as P. Phil. Nec 23. The fact that it has a legitimate provenance is noteworthy […]. The location is significant in itself. More than 70 per cent of so-called “literary papyri” (those containing works of ancient literature, rather than laundry lists and the like), and nearly half of those containing work by Euripides, come from the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus […]. But this papyrus was buried, not thrown away, and since people are usually buried with items that were precious to them, it suggests the owner was an educated and literate woman, and a big fan of tragedy.

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I came across that wonderful word metheglin and thought “we must have discussed it at the Hattery,” but no, it seems it’s never been mentioned, so here it is; OED (entry revised 2001):

Now historical and regional.
A spiced or medicated variety of mead, originally esp. popular in Wales.

c1450 For the cough a p[re]cious drinke..is clepid mede eglyn and also wyne of tyrie..and this is the p[er]fite makynge.
in W. R. Dawson, Leechbook (1934) 88

1541 Metheglyn, whiche is moste used in Wales, by reason of hotte herbes boyled with hony, is hotter than meade.
T. Elyot, Castel of Helthe (new edition) 36
[…]

1620 If Rosemary, Hyssop, Time, Orgaine, and Sage, be first well boyled in the water, wherof you make the Metheglin, it will be the better.
T. Venner, Via Recta ii. 41
[…]

1887 Cambria’s old metheglin demon Breathed against our rushing tide.
G. Meredith, Ballads & Poems 105

1940 In the cellars of the monasteries the butlers were tapping new and old ale, mead, port,..beer, metheglyn, perry, [etc.].
T. H. White, Ill-made Knight xxv. 163

1975 The colonists also followed the British tradition of fermenting honey with yeast to make a drink called mead or metheglin.
L. Perl, Slumps, Grunts, & Snickerdoodles xv. 114

The etymology:

< Welsh meddyglyn (13th cent. in sense ‘medicine, potion, elixir’; 14th cent. in sense ‘a drink of (esp. spiced) mead’) < meddyg healer, doctor (13th cent.; < classical Latin medicus medic n.¹) + llyn liquor (see linn n.¹ [1. A torrent running over rocks; a cascade, waterfall; 2. A pool, esp. one into which a cataract falls]).

Notes
The sense-development in Welsh is influenced by the reinterpretation of the first element of the word as being connected with medd mead n.¹, an interpretation which may also be reflected in the form in quot. c1450 at main sense. The English form was reborrowed into Welsh in the non-medicinal sense in the 18th cent.

The 17th-cent. forms Mathew Glinn, Mathew Glynne, Matthewglin, Matthew Glinn are alterations, by folk etymology, after the male forename Matthew, compare:

1637 Matthew Glinn..is generally received by the History of Monmoth, to be the Author’s name of this Mellifluous mixture; for this Matthew dwelling in a Valley (for so the word Glinn imports Englished from the Welsh) being master of a very great stocke of Bees, and wanting vent for the issue of their labours, in an abundant yeare betooke himselfe..to his study [etc.].
J. Taylor, Drinke & Welcome sig. A3

The stress is on the second syllable: /mᵻˈθɛɡlɪn/ muh-THEG-lin (although there are apparently Brits who, in their lamentable ignorance of the Welsh, say /ˈmɛθəɡlɪn/ METH-uh-glin). I hadn’t been aware of the delightful folk etymology.

Y writes to alert me to this series of tweets by linguist Neil Alexander Walker:

My father speaks Everglades Southern English, & I grew up hearing /ˈædiˌɡɑɡən/ to mean ‘out of kilter’. He just used this word to define what’s to him an obscure dialect word used by his NC-born grandmother: /ˈjijeɪ/. My Q: does anyone know how these words are spelled English?

His maternal grandparents were born in NC in the 1890s & moved to FL in the ’20s. His maternal grandmother, specifically, said /ˈjijeɪ/ & she had other dialectal peculiarities, including /z/ for /s/ in /zɪŋk/ ‘sink’ (& supposedly other words, though he cannot remember which ones)

We have not reconstructed the family line in full, but where we have, all of the NC side seem to go back to the founding of that colony or Virginia before that, so, most likely, the speaker born in the 1890s would not have had an immigrant ancestor more recently than 1700-1750.

Y adds: “These are still fresh as of now (9/8/2024), and he has not yet had a reply. I cursorily tried DARE and ADD, but couldn’t come up with anything. Any ideas?” I join him in his question and direct it to the assembled Hattery.

Carl Zimmer reports for the NY Times (archived) on the meaningful gestures of chimps and other apes:

In the 1960s, Jane Goodall started spending weeks at a time in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania watching chimpanzees. One of her most important discoveries was that the apes regularly made gestures to one another. Male chimpanzees tipped their heads up as a threat, for example, while mothers motioned to their young to climb on their backs for a ride. Generations of primatologists have followed up on Dr. Goodall’s work, discovering over 80 meaningful gestures made by not only chimpanzees, but also bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

Now researchers are using these gestures to peer into the minds of apes. Some even think they offer clues about how our own species evolved full-blown language. “Certainly, gestures played a big role,” said Richard Moore, a philosopher of language at the University of Warwick.

In the 1980s, Michael Tomasello, then a young comparative psychologist, pioneered the first theory about ape gestures based on observations of infant chimpanzees in captivity as they grew into adults. He noticed that the baby apes made gestures to their mothers and, as they matured, developed new gestures directed at other chimpanzees. Based on his observations, Dr. Tomasello argued that gestures develop among apes as simple habits. If a baby repeatedly tries to grab food from its mother’s mouth, for example, the mother may eventually start to give it food while the baby is still stretching out its arm. The baby, in turn, may stop bothering with the full action.

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Back in 2019, Sidney Wood mentioned Tony Harrison’s poem “Them and [uz]” in a comment, but if I clicked through at the time it didn’t stick in my memory; now, having run across it again, I want to make a post of it. Here’s the text:

I

αἰαῖ, ay, ay! … stutterer Demosthenes
gob full of pebbles outshouting seas —
4 words only of mi ‘art aches and … “Mine’s broken,
you barbarian, T.W.!” He was nicely spoken.
“Can’t have our glorious heritage done to death!”

I played the Drunken Porter in Macbeth.

“Poetry’s the speech of kings. You’re one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
‘s been dubbed by [ʌs] into RP,
Received Pronunciation, please believe [ʌs]
your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.”

“We say [ʌs] not [uz], T.W.!” That shut my trap.
I doffed my flat a’s (as in “flat cap”)
my mouth all stuffed with glottals, great
lumps to hawk up and spit out … E-nun-ci-ate!

II

So right, yer buggers, then! We’ll occupy
your lousy leasehold Poetry.

I chewed up Littererchewer and spat the bones
into the lap of dozing Daniel Jones,
dropped the initials I’d been harried as
and used my name and own voice: [uz] [uz] [uz],
ended sentences with by, with, from,
and spoke the language that I spoke at home.
RIP RP, RIP T.W.
I’m Tony Harrison no longer you!

You can tell the Receivers where to go
(and not aspirate it) once you know
Wordsworth’s matter/water are full rhymes,
[uz] can be loving as well as funny.

My first mention in the Times
automatically made Tony Anthony!

Of course, “mi ‘art aches” = “My heart aches,” the start of Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” (which everyone studies in school), and “leasehold Poetry” is a pun on “leasehold property”; you can get further annotations at the Genius page. You can hear Harrison reading his own poem here; I especially enjoy it now that my wife and I have been soaking in the Northeast accents on display in Vera (another season coming, but we have to wait until next year). I remember posting a poem by a Scottish woman making a similarly defiant choice to write in Scots, but I can’t seem to find it.

Francis Mollica writes at The Conversation:

Legal language, or “legalese”, is notoriously hard to understand. Legalese contains more difficult linguistic structures and unusual word choices than most other styles of writing, including non-fiction, news media and even complex academic texts.

The convoluted structure of many legal sentences can make it tough to understand and remember legal obligations. Even lawyers don’t like legal language. So why does it work this way?

In a new study with my colleagues Eric Martínez (University of Chicago) and Edward Gibson (MIT), we found that even laypeople resort to legalese when asked to write laws – which suggests the complexity of legal language may be a kind of ritual that helps give the law its power.

He focuses mainly on “centre embedding”:

Centre-embedded sentences are difficult to process because readers have to remember what happened in the outside (bold) sentence while they’re reading the inside sentence. The reading difficulty increases with the distance between the words that depend on each other. […] In our new study, we analysed the 2021 edition of the US legal code, the official compilation of all federal legislation currently in force. We then compared the results with other genres in a representative body of writing in English.

We found centre embedding is far more common in these laws than in other kinds of text. […] These results suggest that the difficulty to process linguistic structures in legal text, like centre embedding, serve as a cue to the performative, world-altering, nature of the text.

Dubious but fun — thanks, Bathrobe!

The other day Nelson Goering commented on Facebook as follows (I’ve added italics):

I never quite know what to say when students ask me what something like lāst means in Old English. It means… lāst. It just doesn’t map all that well onto any given PDE word. I should maybe try to think how I can explain more clearly why hunting for the right word in translation is at best a distraction.

(PDE = present-day English.) When I responded that sometimes a gloss can be helpful, he said:

Sure, I also give glosses (and make glossaries) all the time. But sometimes it’s really not effective. To stick with lāst, this properly means “the space someone/something used to occupy, or the after-effects that show where someone/something used to be”. It just isn’t true that “you can often think of it as ‘footstep’ or ‘trace’” — you can *sometimes* think of it that way, but more often that won’t really do, and you can easily end up doing more work trying to figure out how to make your bad gloss fit into the context than it would take to just learn the actual meaning. It’s not actually a very hard word to understand on its own terms, but the hunt for a *gloss* rather than an *explanation* is a problem.

I agreed, of course, and it all led me to look the word up, whereupon I discovered that it’s the ancestor of modern last ‘A model of the foot made of wood, metal, (now) plastic, etc., on which boots and shoes are shaped during making or manufacture’; since the OED entry was revised in 2014, I can give you a nice up-to-date etymology:
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