The virtual linguist

Ganseys

I'm grateful to my friend Roy, who's from East Yorkshire and a keen fisherman, for telling me the story of ganseys, a word I'd never heard before (probably because I am neither from Yorkshire nor very knowledgeable about fishing). It's a dialect word for guernsey meaning sweater or jersey (odd that two of those words are names of Channel Islands).

Ganseys are hand-knitted, weatherproof jumpers traditionally worn by fishermen on the North Sea coast. They do, or did, more than keep the seamen warm, however. Each village had its own intricate pattern and therefore, whenever a boat sank and its occupants drowned, the bodies would be returned to the appropriate village. Sometimes the gansey was the only means of identification.

Knitting the gansey was a time-consuming labour of love. There are no seams in the garment which means that ganseys are knitted on four or more needles. There's an article about ganseys here and a short video clip of an exhibition, which shows a man knitting a gansey and talking about the garments here.

Trousering

One word that wasn't in the 'recessionsaurus' that I blogged on yesterday was trousering (or trousered). By the way, I forgot to credit my friend Helen, who often makes very erudite comments on this blog (here, for instance), for sending me the 'Recessionsaurus' article. Thanks, Helen, and sorry.

In these days of talk of fat cats, greedy bankers and unscrupulous politicians, the words trousered and trousering make frequent appearances in the press. So, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith trousered £116,000 in expenses, according to the Yorkshire Post, bankers are trousering seven-figure bonuses according to the Daily Telegraph, Tony Blair is trousering cash advising on global affairs, according to the Daily Mirror and Andy Hornby, former chief executive of the bank HBOS is trousering £60,000 per month as a consultant, according to the Northern Echo.

The verb "to trouser" is not new. It was first used in the United States in the late 19th century and is a synonym of "to pocket". It has negative, sleazy connotations.

Most people use a dictionary only to look up words they don't know, but looking up familiar words can often yield very interesting information. Trouser, or trousers, comes from the Irish truibhas, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. There is another word under the headword trousers, which is trouserdom, meaning "the realm of trousers". I wish I could think of an occasion when I could use that word!

Recessionsaurus

The Times helpfully printed a 'recessionsaurus' recently,or definitions of words that are becoming more and more frequent in our daily news reports and bulletins. The definitions are down-to-earth and in some cases pretty basic eg creditors, people who lend money or those who are in credit and debtors, people who borrow money or those who are in debt. Liquidity is defined as a fancy name for money and, indeed, the term 'fancy name' makes several appearances - inflation is 'a fancy name for rising prices' and leverage is 'a fancy name for debt'. Some are more heavy-going eg the definition for fractional banking, which I couldn't face reading. The current buzz words are included, eg toxic debt and quantitative easing.

Jack Straw email scam

Forensic linguistics is the field of applied linguistics which looks at the relationship between language and crime (among other things). People have a particular style of speaking and writing and forensic linguists can often say that an accused person probably did or did not write a particular note or text (I blogged on forensic linguistics and text messages here).

The Justice Secretary Jack Straw has been targeted by fraudsters, who hacked into his constituency email account and sent messages to all the contacts in his inbox saying Mr Straw had lost his wallet in Lagos, Nigeria and needed $3000 to be able to return home (story here). Apparently not a single person donated money to help the minister, and only one constituent replied at all. Wags in the press are making jokes about what that says about Jack Straw, but, in fact, by looking at the rather quaint language of the email it is obvious that it is not Jack Straw's style (or that of any native British English speaker):

"I would like you to assist me with a soft loan urgently to settle my hotel bills and get myself back home".

Katharine Whitehorn and the power of words

There is an interesting piece by the journalist Katharine Whitehorn on the BBC site (you can hear her too) where she makes the point that words for things shape how we see those things. For instance, the full horror of so-called honour killings, extraordinary rendition and waterboarding is masked by the benign language of these terms. Many people have commented on the lack in English of a suitable word for a partner to whom one is joined in a civil partnership. Ms Whitehorn rightly comments that so much baggage is attached to the terms wife and husband, that they seem inappropriate for same-sex couples.

Ms Whitehorn particularly takes issue with the word bonus, and thinks we should be talking about 'maluses' as some in the USA already are. Bonus is clearly related to the Latin for good, so it seems inappropriate for bankers who have made mistakes to be awarded a bonus, particularly to expect a guaranteed bonus, a phrase which Ms Whitehorn describes as an oxymoron.

Dictionary of gran slang

I often use words that my children don't understand; my 19-year-old son had no idea what I was on about when I said I was all agog. It takes me a while to understand much of what my children say, too - laters bruvv, for instance. Home & Capital, an equity release company whose clients are mainly over the age of 55, has compiled a Gran Slang dictionary for young people, designed - and I quote - to "help inter-generational communication" (the dictionary is available here).

Some of the words included in the dictionary are: wireless, higgledy-piggledy, hullabaloo, knees-up, poppycock, rapscallion. There is a disproportionate emphasis on underwear for some reason; knickerbockers, bloomers, drawers and underpinnings. I don't know about 'gran slang'; that's more like great-gran slang.

The dictionary is "bilingual" in that it also has a youth slang section which includes minging (unpleasant), mint (excellent), crew (close friends), fit (attractive) and evils (a hateful look).

International Mother Language Day

Today is the UNESCO-inspired International Mother Language Day, an occasion to celebrate the world's languages (nearly 6000 of them) and to promote linguistic diversity. I'm sorry to say that there is very little about this in the British press. Elsewhere the day is being marked. In Bangladesh, for instance, the population will pay tribute to those who died in 1952 demanding that Bengali be made the state language in what was then East Pakistan (article here).

My mother tongue is English, and I am very happy about that. Not everyone is happy with the language they acquired at birth, though. There is a 'pecking order' in languages in many countries, with some languages offering a faster route to success, social acceptance and status. This article describes how some Punjabis are reluctant to speak Punjabi, preferring Urdu, as they fear Punjabi equates with illiteracy.

UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

UNESCO launched the electronic version of its World's Languages in Danger this week (see here). Around 2500 endangered languages are listed, of which 199 have fewer than ten speakers. Languages the atlas lists as recently having become extinct are Manx (Isle of Man), whose last native speaker died in 1974 (although Manx is undergoing a resurgence - the subject of a future blog post), Aasax (Tanzania) which died out in 1976, Ubykh (Turkey) whose last speaker died in 1992 and Eyak (Alaska) which survived until 2008 and the death of its last speaker.

The reasons for the disappearance of languages are complex - you cannot pin the blame on the spread of English and other global languages. Languages are disappearing right across the world and in regions with varying economic conditions. It is estimated that 10% of languages in Sub-Saharan Africa will disappear over the next hundred years, 108 languages are in varying degrees of danger in Australia and 26 languages are endangered in France. Papua New Guinea, the country with the greatest linguistic diversity (more than 800 languages are spoken there) has relatively few endangered languages (88). Some languages are being revitalised and the number of speakers of Quechua (Peru), Maori (New Zealand) and Guarani (Paraguay) is increasing, as are the number of speakers of some languages in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Cornish (United Kingdom - see a previous post) is also seeing its number of speakers increase, and there are a few hundred fluent speakers now (but these are not native speakers). 

Here's the link to the atlas, so you can search for a language, or country yourself to see the situation. I keyed in Russian Federation and discovered 136 languages at varying stages of endangerment, plus could look at their location on a map of the region.

Wags and Habs

The word Wag, sometimes written in capitals, WAG, is ubiquitous in the press these days. It refers to the wife or girlfriend of a celebrity sportsman (I blogged on the word last August). We are now seeing the word Habs, or husbands and boyfriends, making an appearance in the press (here, for instance). These are the partners, not of sportswomen, but of singers such as the members of the girl band Girls Aloud.

Habs appeared in the press a couple of years ago (for instance, in this 2006 Scotsman article), although they were referring to the husbands and boyfriends of tennis players at the Wimbledon championships. It's a synonym of CHAPs, celebrity husbands and partners, which also made an appearance at around the same time (see here). Included in the CHAPs category are Mr Liz Hurley, Mr Britney Spears, Mr Jennifer Lopez etc.

Jam sandwich

Marks & Spencer are to launch an addition to their sandwich range next week - strawberry jam. As a spokeswoman said (see article here) it's 'one of the greatest simple pleasures of life', it's 'the ultimate comfort food' and 'one bite takes you straight back to your childhood'. That is true; we never had packets of biscuits or crisps in the house when I was a child - when kids came home from school ravenous, a jam sandwich was a cheap and cheerful snack, and at the time we all thought it was delicious.

We never called it a jam sandwich, though. It's an informal snack, and therefore was always referred to informally. We always called it a jam butty, the popular term in the north of England. Other slang words for 'jam sandwich' are jam sarnie (which the OED says is also a northern word) and jam sammie (described as Australian and New Zealand slang in the OED). There's also abnabs, which is apparently a Scouse (Liverpudlian) expression, although I don't remember ever hearing that one, and I grew up in Liverpool.

If you're interested in Scouse slang, particularly the vulgar variety, see this forum whose contributors are Liverpool FC fans. Be warned, however, that the mickey is taken out of every single nationality, religion, race and every minority imaginable, so don't look if you're easily offended. And if you do look, don't say I didn't warn you!