languagehat.com

David Robson, a journalist linked here a number of times before (e.g.), writes about “how thinking in a foreign language improves decision-making”:

As Vladimir Nabokov revised his autobiography, Speak, Memory, he found himself in a strange psychological state. He had first written the book in English, published in 1951. A few years later, a New York publisher asked him to translate it back into Russian for the émigré community. The use of his mother tongue brought back a flood of new details from his childhood, which he converted into his adopted language for a final edition, published in 1966.

“This re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had been an English re-telling of Russian memories in the first place, proved to be a diabolical task,” he wrote. “But some consolation was given me by the thought that such multiple metamorphosis, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried by any human before.”

Over the past decade, psychologists have become increasingly interested in using such mental metamorphoses. Besides altering the quality of our memories, switching between languages can influence people’s financial decision-making and their appraisal of moral dilemmas. By speaking a second language, we can even become more rational, more open-minded and better equipped to deal with uncertainty. This phenomenon is known as the “foreign language effect” and the benefits may be an inspiration for anyone who would like to enrich their mind with the words of another tongue. […]

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I recently ran across one of those excitingly unfamiliar words with an interesting etymology, to wit, the OED’s permit n.² (first published 2005):

Any of several deep-bodied carangid fishes of the genus Trachinotus that are found in warm waters of the western Atlantic and the Caribbean; spec. T. falcatus, which is fished for sport and for food.

1884 The African pompano—Trachynotus goreensis… In the Gulf of Mexico it is not unusual, being known at Key West as the ‘Permit’.
G. B. Goode in G. B. Goode et al., Fisheries U.S.: Section I 329

1911 Other species [of pompano] found on our eastern coast are the ‘old-wife’.., the ‘round pompano’, or ‘Indian River permit’; the ‘permit’ or ‘great pompano’.
Rep. Comm. U.S. Bureau Fisheries 1908 314/1
[…]

1994 Most guests come seeking fly fishing’s Grand Slam, hoping to land a bonefish, a permit and a tarpon—the sport’s Big Three.
New York Times 27 November v. 12/2

The etymology:

Irregularly < Spanish palometa any of several species of fish (1526), probably < an unattested Doric variant (with παλ-) of ancient Greek πηλαμύδ-, πηλαμύς young tunny, bonito (see pelamid n.), perhaps via Italian palamita (14th cent.) or Catalan palomida (1300), or perhaps via Mozarabic.

Notes
An alternative etymology derives the Spanish term < paloma dove (see palomino n.) + -eta (< Catalan -eta -et suffix¹). However, in Spanish the term is only attested as the name of a fish, while Catalan palometa has a range of senses, including ‘butterfly’, but is not used to designate a fish except in a small area, where it is probably borrowed from Spanish.

Once again, I must deprecate the OED’s refusal to name authors in periodical citations; that 1994 NYT quote, as you can see here, is by Tessa Melvin. (I would also prefer it if they did not present snippets with factitious majuscules — “Most” does not begin the sentence — but I realize that may be captious carping.)

The Economist’s “Johnson” column (see this 2010 post, in which I greeted its revival) is once again both intriguing and linguistically well-informed to a degree astonishing for a popular periodical in Young Americans are losing the southern accent:

Is the southern accent in decline? A recent study by four researchers from three universities, widely covered in the press, indicates that a prized and unique part of America’s linguistic culture may be under threat. As the Washington Post put it, “The Georgia drawl is fading, y’all.”

Accent shifts often accompany demographic ones. Americans began moving south in larger numbers in the 1960s. Southern cities boomed as a result. Naturally, people took their children along (including a young Johnson, who moved from Nebraska to Atlanta with his Georgian father and Wisconsin-born mother).

The study found that the southern accent is most common among baby-boomers, born from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, before the influx of migrants to the South ramped up. Among Generation X—people born from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s—the prevalence of southern sounds declines, as Georgia-born children socialised with transplants from northern cities like Boston and Chicago. The youngest Georgians, millennials and Generation Z, sound the least southern of all.

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Via Damien Hall’s Facebook post I learn of the new Northumbrian Wordhoard, as reported by Tony Henderson for Cultured North East:

A scene: a courtroom in Gosforth in Newcastle some years ago,

The defendant was asked by the solicitor why he struck another man in a bar. The accused replied: “Coz he was slavering on, like.” Everybody in the room knew exactly what he meant, apart the chairman of the bench, an older, upper middle class Northumbrian lady who halted the proceedings to ask: “Excuse me but what on earth does slavering on mean?”

She would have benefited from a new book compiled by the Northumbrian Language Society, which will be launched at an event on Saturday October 14 in Morpeth Town Hall[.] The book, titled Northumbrian Wordhoard, is the most definitive up-to-date dictionary produced by the society in its 40 year history. It contains both 1,250 of the commonest Northumbrian dialect words with their meanings, and also – a blessing for visitors – a reverse list of Standard English items translated into Northumbrian. […]

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Via Laudator Temporis Acti, a couple of quotes from Edmund Hill’s “Religious Translation” (Blackfriars 37.430 [January 1956]:19-25):

Contrition is an example of those many words whose meaning, though accurate enough, is poor and colourless compared with what they signify in Latin. It is a technical word for sorrow for sin. Many people, perhaps, who could well manage to be really and truly sorry for their sins, find the complicated business of making a perfect act of contrition too much for them. The Latin word means literally crushing or grinding or bruising; but the English ear, taking the metaphorical sense for the proper one, misses the metaphor completely, and metaphor is the very sap of an effective religious language. ‘Make a good act of contrition while I give you absolution’; what would be wrong, except that it would be unfamiliar, with saying, ‘Try and bruise your heart for your sins’ (or simply ‘Be really sorry for your sins’), ‘while I untie you from them’?
[…]

There is a fetish here that needs exorcising, called Dignity of Language. By all means keep it where it is found in the original, as in St Leo’s sermons for example, or the canon of the Mass. But not all, nor yet the greatest, religious works are written in dignified language. To impose elevated diction on St Augustine’s sermons or even on the Gospels is to mistranslate them. ‘Peace, be still’ is a beautiful dignified phrase. But what our Lord actually said to the wind and the sea was literally ‘Be gagged, be quiet’; much nearer the undignified but vigorous shut up of colloquial English. If street smells have invaded the original, do not drive them out with incense from the translation.

The Gilleland post adds the original Greek of Mark 4:39: “σιώπα, πεφίμωσο.”

My wife ran across a reference to “runza” and asked me if I knew what it might be; I didn’t, so I looked it up:

A runza (also called a bierock, krautburger, or kraut pirok) is a yeast dough bread pocket with a filling consisting of beef, cabbage or sauerkraut, onions, and seasonings. Runzas can be baked into various shapes such as a half-moon, a rectangle, a round (bun), a square, or a triangle. The runzas sold by the Runza restaurant chain are rectangular while many of the bierocks sold in Kansas are round buns. […]

The runza sandwich originated from pirog, an Eastern European baked good or more specifically from its small version, known as pirozhok (literally “little pirog”). Volga Germans, ethnic Germans who settled in the Volga River valley in the Russia Empire at the invitation of Catherine the Great in the 18th century, adapted the pirog/pirozhok to create the bierock, a yeast pastry sandwich with similar savory ingredients. When the political climate turned against the Volga Germans, many emigrated to the United States, creating communities across the Great Plains. These immigrants, including the Brening family that settled near Sutton, Nebraska, brought their bierock recipes with them. Sarah “Sally” Everett (née Brening), originally of Sutton, is credited with adapting her family’s bierock recipe into the runza and also inventing the name for the sandwich. In 1949, Everett went into business selling runzas with her brother Alex in Lincoln.

Etymology

Many sources agree that Sally Everett invented the name “runza” although it is likely she adapted it from an existing name for the sandwich; either the krautrunz, an older, different German name for the bierock, or the Low German runsa, meaning “belly”, alluding to the gently rounded shape of the pouch pastry. The modern German ranzen, also meaning satchel, derives from runsa.

Are you familiar with this tasty-sounding item? And does anyone know anything further about krautrunz, runsa, or any other possibly related words?

Alex Foreman has a Facebook post on an interesting issue that hadn’t occurred to me:

Has someone written about the markedness of use or non-use of Hebrew and Arabic plurals on loanwords in Jewish English and Muslim English in the US?

What I mean is that, among a certain subset of Jews, it is common to refer to a religious book in Hebrew or Aramaic using the loan séyfer. For people who do this, there seem to exist two plurals: the loan “sfórim”/”sfarím” and the assimilatory English “seyfers”. I’m wondering if someone has written about what triggers each option and what’s involved. Perhaps done statistical studies based on recorded conversations?

I’d be equally interested in similar work on the same phenomenon in Muslim English. For the loan “masjid” (mosque) both the native English plural “masjids” and the Arabic transfixational plural “masājid” seem to be available to English-speaking Muslims. As is the double-marked “masājids”.

I imagine rozele will have something to say about this…

My wife and I are reading The Betrothed, Michael F. Moore’s translation of Manzoni’s I promessi sposi, and I liked this description (from the end of chapter 4) of Padre Cristoforo, who had become a Capuchin monk after killing a man:

Tutto il suo contegno, come l’aspetto, annunziava una lunga guerra tra un’indole subita, risentita, e una volontà opposta, abitualmente vittoriosa, sempre all’erta e diretta da motivi e da ispirazioni superiori. Un suo confratello ed amico, che lo conosceva bene, lo aveva una volta paragonato a quelle parole troppo espressive nella loro forma naturale, che alcuni, anche ben educati, quando la passione trabocca, pronunziano smozzicate, con qualche lettera mutata, parole che in quel travisamento fanno però ricordare della loro energia primitiva.

His whole demeanor, like his appearance, betrayed a long war between a fiery, resentful disposition and the opposite desire, which usually prevailed, always alert and guided by higher motives and inspiration. A fellow friar and friend, who knew him well, once compared him to words that are overly colorful in their natural form, which some people, even the educated, utter when passion overflows, but in a fractured form, with a couple of letters changed for the sake of propriety. Words that, despite this disguise, maintain their original energy.

Moore chooses “original” for primitiva, but I prefer the more primitive “primitive.” I was struck by the word smozzicate: smozzicare ‘to crumble; to mumble, to slur (words)’ is derived from mozzo ‘cut off, docked,’ which is (according to Wiktionary) “From Vulgar Latin *mutius, from Latin mutilus [of unknown origin]. Cf. also French mousse, Spanish mocho.” The only French mousse I knew was the noun meaning ‘moss; foam,’ but this turns out to be an adjective meaning ‘blunt.’

I recently ran across a usage issue that astonished me, because I don’t remember having encountered it before. AHD (s.v. behalf) gives a good summary:

Usage Note: A traditional rule holds that in behalf of and on behalf of have distinct meanings. According to this rule, in behalf of means “for the benefit of,” as in We raised money in behalf of the earthquake victims, while its counterpart on behalf of means “as the agent of, on the part of,” as in The guardian signed the contract on behalf of the child. But as the two meanings are quite close, the phrases are often used interchangeably, even by reputable writers. Statistically, on behalf of is used far more frequently than in behalf of, and in fact the Usage Panel prefers on behalf of for both meanings. In our 2004 survey, 87 percent of the Panel preferred on behalf of in the sentence The lawyer spoke to the media (in behalf of/on behalf of) his client, conforming to the traditional rule for using on behalf of. But some 75 percent also preferred on behalf of in the sentence After sitting silently as one complaint after another was raised, he finally spoke up (in behalf of/on behalf of) his kid’s coach, where the speaker is less of a spokesperson than an ad-hoc defender, and so the meaning “in defense of, for the benefit of” is a better fit, and the traditional rule therefore would require in behalf of. All this suggests that on behalf of may be generally supplanting in behalf of.

I thought I knew all the usage battles, but this was new to me. As far as I can recall, I’ve never even seem “in behalf of” (though I must have on occasion, and simply not registered it); I was certainly unfamiliar with the purported distinction. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage has a section on it, ending:

Conclusion: the OED shows that the “agent” sense is older; the “benefit” sense — presumably because your agent should be working for your benefit — developed from it in Shakespeare’s time. But Shakespeare himself used both in and on, in this sense, and since in had earlier been used in the “agent” sense, there never was a distinction in meaning based on the choice of preposition. Modern British usage appears to favor on in all instances, but both in and on are used interchangeably in American English.

I doubt that last assertion, even as of 1989 when MWDEU was published, but of course one would have to do a statistical analysis that I’m not about to undertake. At any rate, I’m curious about other people’s sense of this: do you use one or both forms, and are you aware of the alleged difference in meaning?

Kathleen Maris Paltrineri has a very illuminating LARB interview with Damion Searls, the translator of new Nobel laureate Jon Fosse [ˈjʊn ˈfɔssɛ] — in fact, he learned Norwegian in order to read Fosse. I like his responses very much, both the ones where he expands on a topic and the ones where he sensibly ducks the question. Some excerpts:

How do differences between Nynorsk (the version of Norwegian Fosse writes in) and English — for example, the lack of present continuous verb tense in Nynorsk — shape your translations? How do Nynorsk and English enter into a dialogue in your versions?

That’s an interesting question, because I’ve never really thought about Nynorsk and English as being in dialogue. I might even go so far as to say that if the languages are in dialogue, that’s the sign of a bad translation. Isn’t that what “translatorese” is? When English is speaking a little bit in Norwegian (or whatever the language pair is)? Fosse is the writer who gets to use Norwegian — I have to use English, the whole English, and nothing but the English.

You mention the present continuous verb tense: “I am standing” instead of “I stand,” for example. This is crucial for Fosse, who writes a lot in the grammatical present tense but about overlapping time frames and levels of reality. You might be tempted to think that “I stand” is the correct translation of the Nynorsk eg står and “I am standing” is “looser,” but actually both are equally faithful and correct, because Nynorsk has only the one form; using the same English form every time would not be correct, even though the Nynorsk repeats, because English has two forms. The opening of Aliss at the Fire, for example, uses both forms this way: “I see Signe lying there on the bench in the room and she’s looking at all the usual things, the old table, the stove, the woodbox, the old paneling on the walls, the big window facing out onto the fjord, she looks at it all without seeing it…” (leaving aside the participles “facing” and “seeing,” which in Nynorsk correspond to “the window onto the fjord” and “without to see [anything]”). The original uses the same form every time, and it’s even more repetitive in Nynorsk because “to look” is the same verb as “to see” with a preposition added (basically “to see at,” so this short passage has the same verb ser for “see/sees/looks” three times). But I have to write clear and forceful English without clinging too closely to the Nynorsk, and that means availing myself of the subtle difference between whether she sees or is seeing.

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