languagehat.com

It seems like only yesterday that I was posting about six months of Languagehat; time flies when you’re having fun. I’d like to thank the same people I thanked then, as well as all the people who’ve commented or written since. I’ve had something like 43,000 unique visitors, more or less evenly divided between the old Blogspot site and the shiny new MT one; they come from 64 different countries (plus the Old Style Arpanet), including Mauritius, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, New Caledonia, and Brunei Darussalam (the top three foreign sources are Canada, Australia, and France). It’s a cliche, but the internet really is bringing the world closer together.

One thing I’d like to emphasize. People occasionally apologize for intruding on my time or say they don’t know enough to comment; I want to make it clear that I welcome everyone with an interest in the things I write about, whether they have any prior knowledge or not, and I love answering questions I get in e-mails—if your message comes at a busy time, I may take a while to get around to it, but I will answer it. And, of course, if you have an interesting link to pass along or a subject you’d like to hear about, let me know; I’m always on the lookout for new topics!

And we sit here…
     there in the arena…

[Read more…]

The Library of Congress is having an exhibition “Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu”:

These ancient manuscripts cover every aspect of human endeavor. The manuscripts are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans during the Middle Ages and provide irrefutable proof of a powerful African literary tradition. Scholars in the fields of Islamic Studies and African Studies believe that analysis of these texts will cause Islamic, West African, and World History to be reevaluated. These manuscripts, surviving from as long ago as the fourteenth century, are remarkable artifacts important to Malian and West African culture. The exhibited manuscripts date from the sixteenth to eighteenth century.

Many sample pages can be seen here. (Thanks, Mike!)

A correspondent recently said this in the course of an e-mail to me: “I’m not asking you to piss in my pocket…” In context, it clearly meant “I’m not asking for compliments,” but I found the phrase curious, to say the least. I looked it up in the invaluable Cassell Dictionary of Slang and found:

piss in someone’s pocket, to phr. [1940s+] (Aus.) to curry favour, to be extremely close to someone, to ingratiate oneself.

Now, I’ve always admired the Aussie way with language (see this recent post on slang), but this completely baffles me. In what context could the phrase “piss in my pocket” come to have such a meaning? Or is pissing considered a sign of respect and admiration Down Under? I am grateful in advance for any elucidation.

Luc Sante is always worth reading, and in the July 17 NYRB he has a particularly good review [archived] of Arthur Kempton’s Boogaloo. Now, the word “boogaloo” to me vaguely recalls a dance craze of the mid-’60s, but apparently it is used more generally to refer to African-American popular music (since it’s not in my Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate or the AHD, I’m deprived of lexicographical backup). Sante says:

The boogaloo is, or was, one of the thousand dances the land was full of in the 1960s, enumerated in inventory songs such as James Brown’s “There Was a Time” and the Isley Brothers’ “Nobody But Me”: the skate, the swim, the pony, the monkey, the camelwalk, the shing-a-ling. Arthur Kempton notes that it made its debut as the title of a million-selling but faintly remembered 1965 release by the Chicago duo Tom and Jerrio, a song that launched two major catch phrases of the era, “sock it to me” and “let it all hang out.” The boogaloo outlasted many of its competitor dances, or at least its name did, even making the transition into Spanglish as bugalú.

Somewhere along the line, perhaps around the time most people forgot its steps, the name metamorphosed into a sweeping term that could encompass almost all of African-American popular music, or at least everything that has arisen since World War II. The names of styles, which embody novelty, date more quickly than the substance they describe. “Soul” now sounds antique; “R&B” can be applied to the works of Wynonie Harris in the late 1940s, or to those of Mary J. Blige fifty years later, but not much in between. But because “boogaloo” is a term transmitted more often orally than in writing, it has enjoyed an immunity to the flux of fashion.

So my question is, are any of you familiar with the term in this wider sense, and if so, how would you delimit it? Does it really apply to anything since WWII? (I’m particularly hoping to hear from Avante Populi, a learned connoisseur of these matters.)

Excursus on punctuation. In the course of the review, I was brought up short by this: “His third subject, Berry Gordy Jr., was a good-enough songwriter early in his career to have staked a claim to artistry…” I don’t know whether Sante or a hamhanded copy editor is responsible for that hyphen, but it’s so very wrong that it exemplifies the importance of proper punctuation. It’s not just that it’s unnecessary; there are, as anyone who has had to make such decisions knows, many places where a hyphen can be included or omitted with equal justification (although you then have to make the same decision every time you run into a parallel case). No, this hyphen is actively evil, because it implies a construction that turns out to be illusory, so that you then have to go back and reevaluate what you’ve already read. Normally, “good enough” implies a following preposition or conjunction: “good enough to eat,” “good enough for government work,” “good enough that no revision was needed.” But on occasion it’s used by itself, with the implication “[just] good enough [to get by, to serve the purpose, to pass the time].” How was the play? Oh… good enough. (Nichevo sebe, they say in Russian.) And if you were to use this attributively, you might use a hyphen to tell the reader not to expect that preposition or conjunction: I saw a good-enough play at the Barrymore last night. So when I started reading the sentence, that’s how I interpreted it: Gordy was a good-enough songwriter [but that wasn’t his real strength]. Then I reached “to have staked a claim to artistry” and realized that the phrase was used positively, not in that deprecatory “just-good-enough” way, and not only did I have to go back and reread, I’ve had to take up my time and yours with this wordy divagation. Bad, bad hyphen! Into the hell box with you!

This tour-de-force takes verses from the King James Bible and rearranges the letters to produce astonishingly apt equivalents. A couple of samples:

Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this. (Ecc. 7:10)
Wish not, in unrest, for the quaint cheer of ancestry: no beauty was there. Chew on this tasty truth: these are the good old times.

If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they. (Ecc. 8:1)
Ah, the evil Tenth District judge’s rotten, and forgives not harm.
Ah, another higher one’s joined in graft, and prevents the hope of the brave.
Ah, neither are the high, mighty Supreme Court potentates fit to help.

Via Incoming Signals [7/28/03].

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Some comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Place in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

–John Ashbery

I came late to John Ashbery (as to Cecil Taylor); for years I read him impatiently when I came across his work, convinced he was putting something over on everyone. The older I get, the more I appreciate his light touch, his circuitous paths, his refusal to pander to our craving for the obvious. I am told by wood s lot that it’s his birthday, so: happy birthday, John Ashbery, and thanks for all the reticence.

A Kel Richards article maintains that “Aussie English remains resilient, vigorous and lively” despite incursions from America. There are references to all sorts of interesting usages (eg, “grouse” as a general term of approval, comparable to “cool” or “awesome,” which according to the superb Cassell Dictionary of Slang goes back to the ’20s or ’30s), and I’m sure he’s right about the robust health of slang Down Under; he is, however, seriously delusional if he believes this:

We might pick up some expressions from the Americans, but they also learn some from us. Americans seem to have picked up “no worries”, “aggro”, “bludge”, “U-ey” and other Aussie idioms.

It’s true that “U-ey” (or “U-ie”) is frequently used here for ‘U-turn’ (I hadn’t realized it was originally Australian, but Cassell says this as well); I’ve never heard any of the others from the lips of an American, and I have no idea what “bludge” means. But let’s check Cassell… aha: to bludge is to evade one’s responsibilities; loaf about, idle; cadge, scrounge. You learn something every day. (Via Taccuino di traduzione.)

Addendum. I’ve purchased The Australian Oxford Paperback Dictionary (Second Edition), which should help with these matters; for instance, below grouse ‘very good of its kind’ is:

Grout, Wally (Arthur Theodore Wallace) (1927-67), Australian test cricketer. °your Wally Grout colloq. your shout (i.e. your turn to pay for the next round of drinks).

Admirably informative.

Further addendum. I have recently discovered the Aussie equivalent of “screw,” the verb “to root”; this bit of dialog perfectly illustrates its place in the language:

“It’s *making love*, Steph.”
“‘Making love’ my hairy bum!”
Mum and Steph on ‘rooting’ vs ‘making love’, the eternal question.

(Via puzzling.org.)

Via Plep, the Native American Religions section of the Internet Sacred Text Archive includes a fair number of cultures; most are only in translation, but there are originals included in texts for Cherokee, Navajo (both Washington Matthews books), and Haida. (There may be others; I didn’t try every link.)

Via Desbladet, an extremely interesting LINGUIST List discussion of the popular idea that various phonological changes in languages (notably the Castilian ceceo /thetheo/ and the French uvular r) were the result of a royal speech impediment that spread throughout the population. I was rather surprised that this (to me, clearly ludicrous) idea was taken so seriously, but the discussion that followed is full of great details about the history of uvular r (written R in linguistic usage) in French and German, as well as tidbits about Soviet officials imitating Brezhnev’s and Gorbachov’s southern-dialect fricative pronunciation of [g], Indonesian government officials imitating Suharto’s Javanese-influenced pronunciation of the verbal suffix {kan} with schwa instead of [a], and the like. A sample [2023: by Marie-Lucie Tarpent, not yet a fixture at the Hattery!]:

It seems quite well-documented that the uvular pronunciation developed first as a stigmatized feature among the Parisian lower class, the apical r being general at that time. This was still the case at the end of the 19th century where this pronunciation was called “parler gras” ‘to speak fat’ and the R, “r grasseyé” (the pronunciation [gRa] itself, with low back [a], examplifying the feature in question)… Anyway, during the Revolution when it was important for the former upper classes to keep a very low profile, and often to go into hiding, many people started to use the R in an effort to try to blend with the common people… Later the pronunciation of a rather weak uvular fricative became general in Paris and also spread to other urban areas (where it might have been adopted first by local revolutionaries), but the reinstated royal court and the old aristocracy, especially the ones who had emigrated to escape the revolution, clung to the apical r, as did most of the country people. It is only in the 20th century that R has become standard, but many older people especially in rural areas still use r.

I had no idea that the uvular R took so long to become standard. The whole piece is well worth your while.

A reader’s e-mail got me digging around for an online version of the Tao Te Ching (or, if you prefer, Dao De Jing), and I wound up at an amazing site, Zhongwen.com: Chinese Characters and Culture. Its primary focus is on the characters:

Alone among modern languages, Chinese integrates both meaning and pronunciation information in its characters. Zhongwen.com deciphers this rich information to help students understand, appreciate and remember Chinese characters, one of humanity’s greatest and most enduring cultural achievements…
EVERY CHARACTER on this site is “CLICKABLE”.
Click to see its definition, etymology, and relation to other characters.
Click on “+” to hear it, see it drawn, and see its entry in other dictionaries.

But along with the dictionary and the lists of dynasties, surnames, names of Chinese-Americans (if you’ve ever wondered about the characters for Connie Chung, Michelle Kwan, I.M. Pei, or Yo-Yo Ma, here’s where you can find them), and the like, it has a Readings section with not only the Dao De Jing but the Analects of Confucius, the 300 Tang Poems, Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, and other classic texts (not to mention speeches by Deng Xiaoping and Bill Clinton [!]). A tremendous amount of work has obviously gone into this site, which is a treasure-trove to set alongside the Russian ones I blogged yesterday; it’s been quite a weekend for foreign literature here at Languagehat.