Some items I’ve run across lately:
1) In Jennifer Wilson’s New Yorker piece on “DNA surprises” (archived), she writes: “When I arrived, I was greeted by Hourselt, in a colorful Ankara-print baby-doll dress…” I assumed, naturally, that “Ankara-print” had something to do with the capital of Turkey, but it turns out it’s from West Africa: Ankara “is a bastardised version (by African traders) of the name of Ghana’s capital, Accra.”
2) Watching Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex (Edipo re), I was surprised to hear the title character referred to with the stress on the penultimate: /eˈdi.po/. I had always assumed it had initial stress, as in Old Italian (aka Latin), but Wiktionary says “/eˈdi.po/, (traditional) /ˈɛ.di.po/.” Anybody know when and why the traditional usage gave way to the modern one?
3) This MetaFilter post introduced me to Ask A Manager’s “Mortification Week” (“our annual celebration of hilarious ways that we and other humans have mortified ourselves at work”); there are many good stories in the linked posts, some of which are of Hattic relevance. From here:
3. The Latin dictionary
Many years ago, I worked in a bookstore in a mall. A customer came in looking for a Latin dictionary. I was super hungover and in a bad mood generally, and I argued with him that, of course, we didn’t have one because Latin is a dead language. He just stared at me like I was the biggest ignoramus in the entire world and walked out.
After he’d left, I realized how stupid I’d sounded. I still cringe, 30 years later.
From here:
13. The good riddance
For the longest time, I thought “riddance” was derived from “ride” and would cheerfully say “good riddance” when wishing people a safe and pleasant ride home.
And the “bad translation” story that leads off this page is pretty good too.
4) Japan to revise romanization rules for first time in 70 years: “The Agency for Cultural Affairs […] is recommending replacing the government’s long-standing Kunrei system with more widely used Hepburn-style spellings.” Bathrobe, who sent me the link, says “I like kunreishiki because it reflects native phonology but for foreigners it’s simply confusing.”
Ankara is pretty usual for “Accra” in Ghanaian languages, including Kusaal and Dagbani:
https://dag.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankara
It’s Nkran in Twi, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Ankara there too.
In the actual local language of Accra, the place is called Gã,
So “bastardised version (by African traders)” is as accurate as calling the names Londres or Munich “bastardised by European traders.”
I remember some pretty awful L2 English pronunciations I have made, like … oops, I forgot.
Delighted to see that the Kusaal Wikipedia entry for Accra is much better than the Dagbani one. Even though it calls the place “Accra”, instead of “Ankara” comme il faut.
https://kus.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accra
There’s an old one about someone who thought that ‘wizened’ meant ‘experienced and wise’.
The “bad translation” story reminds me of a (true) story about a Ghanaian colleague who was conducting an eye clinic in a remote area where the local language was unfamiliar to him. He’d taken the precaution of finding out a few of the key phrases you need in an eye clinic, like “look up”, “look right” and so forth.
Unfortunately, when he thought he was saying “open your eyes”, he was actually saying “open your legs.” He did rapidly recognise the problem, but the patient was evidently surprised. She was eventually reassured as to his bona fides, I gather.
I was once at a medical conference where there was a prize awarded for the best presentation by a trainee, as assessed at the end by a panel of trainers. The chairman kept saying how the prize would be awarded for the most meretricious presentation.
The name Oedipus/Edipo was hardly a part of spoken Romance/Italian in the early Middle Ages; so there was no real tradition about which syllable to stress. When it entered spoken Italian/Tuscan sometime in the High Middle Ages, nobody knew or cared if the -i- was short or long, and since most Italian nouns are accented on the penultimate, that’s where they put the accent in Edipo. I don’t think anybody before the 15th century will have noticed, and by that time it was too late for a correction of Tuscan/Italian usage.
Thanks! I guess I assumed “traditional” referred to something much more recent than the High Middle Ages. (In fact, it doesn’t sound as if there was such a tradition in Italian at all; why do they say that?)
he was actually saying “open your legs.” He did rapidly recognise the problem, but the patient was evidently surprised
I’m afraid my views of West Africa have been irrevocably coloured by an Embassy staffer I knew in Tokyo who recounted his experiences during his posting to Ghana. Local girls would rub him affectionately on the arm and say “Would you like to marry me?” Which was their way of saying “Let’s spend the night (or even less time) together”. Although he was married he always spoke so longingly of those days that I assume he accepted at least a few of those propositions.
The linguistic aspect of this rather salacious anecdote is the wording “Will you marry me?” I don’t think either Western or East Asian girls would use such an expression to suggest a night of bliss. Since DE is well versed in that part of the world, perhaps he could comment on local pickup lines and how typical said staffer’s experiences were.
I see that WP repeats the story I’ve seen elsewhere, that the name “Accra” comes from the Twi/Akan nkran “(kind of) black ants”, but in fact the tones are different: the placename has a low tone (like the indigenous name Gã), and the insects high-low. Looks like a folk etymology to me. It seems more likely to me that the Akan form is borrowed (perhaps with contamination from the “ants” word) from an older Gã form of the toponym “Gã”; the Gã language formerly had initial Cr- clusters.
WP talks about the “numerous anthills” around Accra, but (if there really are numerous anthills) I’d have expected them actually to be termite hills. “Termite” in Twi is mfɔte, and an “antihill”/termitarium is mfɔtesiw.
@Bathrobe:
I was once in a bar in Burkina Faso with my theatre staff when we were approached by some very personable young ladies. One of my theatre nurses, who evidently had a pleasingly elevated notion of my innocence, leaned over an whispered to me “Sir, these are harlots.” Possibly your embassy staffer was as unsophisticated as my colleagues took me to be. “Local girls”, eh?
My own experiences of being targeted by such entrepreneurs were largely confined to Francophone countries, and I don’t recall the topic of marriage being raised.
A lot of the “local girls” seemed to be their own bosses, rather than run by pimps, but my research into such matters was somewhat limited. Places where embassy staffers hang out are an obvious place to hang out if you’re after foreigners with astonishing amounts of money and few scruples.
Irrelevant to the point, but perhaps of interest: in Kusaal, “marry”, of a man marrying a woman” is di, which by default usually means “eat”, though it’s merely “take” or “get” in many set phrases.
“Marry”, of a woman marrying a man, is kul, which as an intransitive verb means “return home.” There is also ɛl, which has cognates all over Oti-Volta, but seems rare in Kusaal, except in the derivative pu’a-ɛliŋ “fiancée” (“marrying-woman” – interestingly, unlike the passivity of “fiancée”, the choice of verb shows that it’s the woman doing the marrying here.)
I can actually imagine a Ghanaian using “marry” like that in English, though I have never in fact heard it. Ghanaians are very fond of playing with language, bad puns, language-based jokes and the like. They’re also good at subtly taking the piss out of foreigners (while still, rightly, priding themselves on their hospitality.)
Ants are wasps, termites are cockroaches. Convergence.
…Is the name Ghana actually a pun, and not simply an appropriation of an ancient faraway kingdom?
Not something I’ve ever come across as a speculation. Gã is one of those languages (like Bisa or Welsh) that few people speak except as a L1, and that quite a few of the actual ethnic group no longer speak themselves. Nkrumah’s own L1 was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nzema_language
which is quite closely related to Akan-the-language, but not actually Akan. (Culturally, the Nzema people are Akan.)
I think the usual let’s-adopt-the-name-of-an-unrelated-but-prestigious-empire story explains the facts well enough. (There are also Akan traditions that they originally came from the north, which probably helped. They no doubt really did come from the savanna zone, at some point, though surely not from ancient Ghana.)
I’m reminded that Kwame Nkrumah’s father was from the wonderfully named Half Assini, right on the border with Côte d’Ivoire (and which I have actually passed through in the course of my adventures.)
Sadly, I have no idea why it’s only Half. Other half in Côte d’Ivoire?
(Cinkassé/Cinkansé, in Burkina Faso and Togo, is another of these liminal places. Also, AFAIK, the only place outside the Kusaasi area with its own echt Kusaal name. Unlike Accra.)
“Good riddance” story reminded me that in Russian скатертью дорога (skatert’ju doroga) made semantic shift from “good riding” to “good riddance” (literally, let the road be like a tablecloth).
… but Wiktionary says “/eˈdi.po/, (traditional) /ˈɛ.di.po/.”
It does indeed, and my Oxford Concise Paravia gives only /eˈdi.po/. And for Spanish Edipo, Wiktionary gives only /eˈdipo/ [eˈð̞i.po] as you’d expect from the orthography.
However:
For Portuguese (of Portugal) Édipo Wiktionary gives /ˈɛ.di.pu/ [ˈɛ.ði.pu].
For Catalan Èdip Wiktionary gives [ˈɛ.ðip].
For Romanian Oedip it offers no pronunciation, but elsewhere online /ˈɔɪdip/ can be found spoken.
For German Ödipus Wiktionary gives only /ˈøː.di.pʊs/.
Compare Cleopatra (Greek Κλεοπᾰ́τρᾱ); Latin form is Cleopatra (all vowels short), pronounced [kɫeˈɔ.pa.tra] in Wiktionary (on rational grounds). For Spanish it gives /kleoˈpatɾa/; for Portuguese (of Portugal) Cleópatra it gives of course “/kliˈɔ.pɐ.tɾɐ/, (faster pronunciation) /ˈkljɔ.pɐ.tɾɐ/”; for Catalan (Central and Balearic) Cleòpatra, [kleˈɔ.pə.tɾə].
Compare also the dire and complicated fate of Patroclus across languages ancient and modern; I seem to recall that the 2004 film Troy had it both penultimate and antepenultimate. Then there’s Latin periplūs from Greek περίπλους, which I raised here (Hat, downthread from there: “I have always said /pɛˈɹɪplu:s/, à la grecque (περίπλους), but Wiktionary tells me it’s supposed to be /ˈpɛɹɪˌplʌs/ (perry-plus), which sounds stupid and I refuse to say it”). And equally vicissitudinous is English cathedra (as in “ex cathedra”, Latin “ex cathedrā”), from Greek κᾰθέδρᾱ via Latin cathedra (all vowels short; Wiktionary: [ˈka.tʰɛ.dra], [kaˈtʰɛd.ra]).
According to the explanations I found online ([1], [2]), in words of Greek origin in Italian the stress may follow either the original Greek or the Latin patterns. The Latin stress (as used in English) seems to be preferred in most cases, but there are plenty of exceptions, notably names ending in -eo such as Morfèo, Odissèo, and Timèo.
But for Epimeteo and Prometeo, Latin-style Epimèteo and Promèteo are more common, though Greek-style Epimetèo and Prometèo are also heard. And while Luciano Canepari’s Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (the same one that Wiktionary cites as giving [eˈdipo] as well as traditional [ˈɛdipo] for the pronunciation of Edipo) gives the pronunciation of Odisseo as [odisˈsɛo], it lists [oˈdisseo] as an alternate pronunciation.
Going by the DiPI, Latin-style Esòpo is more common than Greek-style Èsopo, but Greek-style Euridìce is more common than Latin-style Eurìdice. Meanwhile, Greek-style Persèo would be the current pronunciation and Latin-style Pèrseo as the traditional one, just like Edìpo and Èdipo.
The first link also says that it is always Edìpo for complesso di Edipo, by the way.
These explanations would imply that the Edìpo pronunciation is a preservation of the original Greek stress (because of continued Greek linguistic influence on the Italian peninsula?) rather than a later innovation due to forgetting “proper” stress. Then why are Èdipo and Pèrseo labelled as traditional pronunciations? Maybe there was a period when the Latin-style stress was dominant or at least common, but because the Greek-style stress is so common nowadays it sounds outdated.
@Noetica
When cathedra is borrowed to mean something which you or your lecture script sits on, it seems to have been only with penultimate stress, e.g., Ir. cathaoir or German Katheder. In these two examples you could argue that the long vowel attracts the stress, but equally that the stress made the vowel long.
Thurneysen (§ 918) says “The diphthong in cathaír ‘cathedra’ is undoubtedly taken from Britannic (Mid.W. cateir).”
Thanks, I did not know that, I was sloppy in talking about penultimate stress in cathaoir, this has final stress (I supposed it was borrowed as something with three syllables with penultimate stress like *cathaídra, then contracted to two syllables with final stress, this is not what Thurneysen is saying).
Yeah, Thurneysen has a whole section on borrowings via Britannic, which is something one tends to forget.
In Old Welsh, and indeed in earlier Middle Welsh, the stress on cadeir* was on the final syllable, i.e. the penult of the original Latin word. Vowel length does not attract stress in Welsh: indeed, even in Old Welsh, the earlier Brythonic vowel length was no longer contrastive, original length distinctions having shifted to vowel quality distinctions.
Stress in Latin loans was on the same syllable as in Latin, prior to the later Middle Welsh shift of final stress to the penult. Thus perygl “danger” etc. Mind you, I dare say this had already become periclum in Latin by the time of the borrowing. (Etienne will know.)
* Sic for Middle Welsh: the t in written cateir represented /d/, because Old Welsh orthography did that. Petguar for pedwar “four”, etc.
Nice to see you are still lurking at MetaFilter. It ain’t what it used to be, unfortunately.
That’s why I lurk and don’t comment. I’m back to reading it for the links, as I did a quarter of a century ago.
The spelling, whether with ö or with oe, doesn’t really leave us a choice here: this vowel is marked as long, and no other is, so it’s where the stress goes. Indeed, I question whether anyone consistently distinguishes between unstressed /iː/, which the transcription implies here, and /ɪ/.
The -eus names all mercilessly get unstressed -/ɔɪ̯s/.
…by which I mean… oe looks long, ö doesn’t occur in unstressed syllables in anywhere-near-native vocabulary.
These explanations would imply that the Edìpo pronunciation is a preservation of the original Greek stress (because of continued Greek linguistic influence on the Italian peninsula?) rather than a later innovation due to forgetting “proper” stress. Then why are Èdipo and Pèrseo labelled as traditional pronunciations? Maybe there was a period when the Latin-style stress was dominant or at least common, but because the Greek-style stress is so common nowadays it sounds outdated
I doubt that the Greek-style stress represents a holdover from antiquity, because that doesn’t look like a name that would be much used outside a very small circle of learnèd men*), who anyway for most of the middle ages would be more familiar with Latin and its stress than with Greek. I’d rather assume that the Greek-style stress was introduced by humanist scholars during the Renaissance or later and was in competition with the Latin stress tradition until finally winning out.
*) I doubt Edipo was a household name before Freud came up with the complex.
I agree that such names probably weren’t very familiar outside small circles, though given the popularity of Classical topics in medieval poetry and literature in general (often with anachronistic treatment of Greek and Roman heroes) they may still have been more recognizable to ordinary people than we might suppose.
I was thinking more of the fact that southern Italy was more or less in continuous contact with the Greek-speaking world and indeed had Greek-speaking residents throughout the medieval period. Sure, there was an influx of Greek scholars into northern Italy when Constantinople fell that played a key role in the rediscovery of Greek learning in the Catholic lands during the Renaissance, but that doesn’t mean that Romance speakers in Italy would have had no knowledge of Greek before that.
that doesn’t mean that Romance speakers in Italy would have had no knowledge of Greek before that.
Sure, but again – I am not convinced that Oedipus came up in Greek conversations that frequently in the Middle Ages, either. I guess it would be possible to establish in which sources, available and reasonably widrly read during which periods, Oedipus is mentioned, but I don’t have the time and energy to do that 🙂
I doubt that the Greek-style stress represents a holdover from antiquity, because that doesn’t look like a name that would be much used outside a very small circle of learnèd men*), who anyway for most of the middle ages would be more familiar with Latin and its stress than with Greek. I’d rather assume that the Greek-style stress was introduced by humanist scholars during the Renaissance or later and was in competition with the Latin stress tradition until finally winning out.
*) I doubt Edipo was a household name before Freud came up with the complex.
Agreed. It seems fairly obvious that Italian pronunciation in general since the Renaissance – like pronunciation patterns in all European languages – has been influenced by two things: the prescriptivist inclinations of scholars familiar with Latin and Greek, and the natural phonological tendency of speakers to pronounce words with the same stress pattern as other similar-sounding words.
In the case of Edipo, both those tendencies would have largely pulled in the same direction, namely towards penultimate stress, so unsurprisingly that is the pronunciation that won out. But until the Renaissance, the stress would naturally have been in the Latin position, because virtually all the people in Italy familiar with the name would have been Latin speakers who learned it from Latin sources. It probably took a few centuries for the penultimate stress to finally get the upper hand.
“Local girls”, eh?
I am probably the innocent one. When he said “girls”, it didn’t even cross my mind at the time that he might have been talking about anything other than rather forward local girls. (In my ignorance, I have no idea how forward or otherwise West African girls might be.) It makes sense now that he was actually talking about a “certain kind” (ahem) of girl.
* I’m not pleading some kind of naïveté or purity; merely that it never occurred to me he would be talking about his adventures in the fleshpots. They’re not the kind of places that I habitually hang out in.
Given the great range of West African cultures, it would be unwise to generalise, but my own experience suggests that sexual forwardness among West African young women in general is substantially less marked than among European or American young women. I think that West Africans tend, on the contrary, to regard Europe and America as sinks of sexual iniquity …
I’m reminded of a passage in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall where G is reporting on the remarks by the historian and scholar Demetrius Chalco(co)ndyles, based on the observations of the retinue of the Emperor Manuel II (who visited England in the vain hope of support against the Ottoman Empire):
Gibbon continues
I don’t know. Those were hard times in England …
In a footnote, Gibbon points out that Caesar and Cassius Dio say similar things about the ancient Britons. Must be the climate.
I’m reminded of a passage in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall
I’m guessing this was based on English people of the time exchanging hugs more freely than in Constantinople; similarly, English visitors to places where men routinely hold hands with each other, like Istanbul, tend to leap to the conclusion that they must be gay. It takes some effort to step out of one’s familiar perspective and realise how much the meaning of an act depends on its context.
Gibbon actually suggests as much, in a part I didn’t quote because it’s less funny.
But perhaps someone from Manuel’s retinue had met the original of that gat-toothed Alyson from Bath and generalised unwisely. (Not, by the lady’s own account, that she ever committed adultery.)
In my experience, my fellow Italian classicists are more likely to accent Greek names according to the Latin penultimate rule (Òrfeo, Èdipo, Eraclíto), since of course everybody knows that Graeca per accentum debes proferre Latinum, and we want to show the world that we know our vowel quantities inside out (as if the world could care less…). Note that not all such pronunciations are equally widespread: for instance, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say Èsopo, and definitely not Cleòpatra, not even in a Classics department.
Outside of Classics, different pronunciations often prevail (e.g., the above names are usually Orfèo, Edípo, Eràclito), even among educated speakers: one hears Edípo in the name of the Freudian complex.
Even though the position of the accent in these forms often coincides with the Greek one, I don’t think that is usually the explanation; rather, they seem to follow various kinds of analogies (-èo < -eus after nouns and adjectives in -èo < -ae.us < -αῖος, < -ē.us < -εῖος, as well as native Latin ones in -ēius; unaccented -clito, despite Lat. -clītus < -κλειτος, perhaps after -crito < -crĭtus < -κρῐτος, and so on).
Lastly, the labeling of the former type of accentuation as 'traditional' definitely implies 'in the modern period', and refers not to direct inheritance from Greek, but to the rules laid out by humanistically-educated speakers: not only Medieval commoners did not usually talk about Edipus or Cleopatra, but even the learnèd, who did, followed quite different rules both from the ancients and from our current understanding (this is why so many Greek names in Dante end up with final accent even when they didn’t in Greek).
A very informative comment, thanks. And that final link, wow: Minòs, Atropòs, Eliòs, Cleopatràs, Flegiàs, Diogenès, Empedoclès, Eufratès, Iliòn, Semiramìs, Parìs, Ettòr, Polinestòr, Cliò, Penelopè, Semelè, Caliopè, Niobè, Climenè, Letè…
Brass knuckles?
…hexameters everywhere…
This is actually how Kleopatra gets stressed in German; but analogy from Greek compounds whose connecting -o- is stressed must have helped.
Then there’s Greek σῐ́νᾱπῐ (“mustard”), which gets into Modern Greek as σίναπι (/ˈsina.pi/) and Italian (we’d have thought via Latin sināpi, various forms, rather than directly from Greek) as senape (/ˈsɛ.na.pe/), but more latinately into Sicilian as sinapi (/siˈna.pi/).
This one came to my attention a week ago, oddly enough, when my neighbour came to the door proffering a potted “sinapi” plant for our herb garden. After investigation I pointed out to him the form senape in standard Italian (which he also speaks), but he objected to my antepenultimate stress.
Hatters will recognise a connexion with German Senf.
Compare uncertainties over Taranto, of course.
Lars in 2018:
Well, the spelling mf doesn’t exist in the first place; outside more recent loans like Konferenz, nf is [mf] where I’m from – fünf, Genf, everything – and I think generally [ɱf] elsewhere.
What Senf does have, in my dialect, is the /e/ you’d expect from the Latin /ɪ/. I wonder if the Italian /ɛ/ means the stress wandered to the second syllable in Italian and later moved back.