The virtual linguist

France replaces English buzzwords with French equivalents

There are eighteen ministerial committees in France which invent and promote French words, and a new crop of neologisms will soon be presented to them for a ruling. A competition was held among school pupils and young people to replace some of the most widespread anglicisms with French words. These are some of the winning entries in the competition (sorry, I don't know what most of the genders are):

le buzz will become le ramdam

chat will become l'éblabla or tchatche

newsletter will become infolettre

tuning will become bolidage

The language committees have had some success in the past. Logiciel instead of 'software' is common as is baladeur for 'Walkman'. However, French young people still refer to les smileys, rather than les frimousses and to les sitcoms in preference to the rather long-winded les comédies de situations pour la télévision.

Full story here.

New words in the OED March 2010

The following words and phrases have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in the last three months:

arf: representing the sound of a bark or a laugh, usually duplicated as in 'arf arf' (the OED notes that the laugh is strongly associated with Popeye). Note that 'arf with an apostrophe has been in the Dictionary since 1989 as a slang form of 'half'

Generation Y: defined as "The generation of people following Generation X, esp. regarded as having attitudes or values which are in direct contrast to those of the preceding generation". This generation is likely to have been born in the 1980s/1990s. There is also the derived form Generation Yer ie a member of Generation Y

re-rub (noun): musical term meaning remix

superbug: an insect that is resistant to insecticides and a bacterium that is resistant to antibiotics. Although this word has only just entered the Dictionary, it is not new. There is a citation dating back to 1916 relating to the insect and the first citation for the microorganism is 1945.

techy: there are two entries for this adjective i) technologically sophisticated or complicated and ii) of music, influenced by techno

The language of apologies

The Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth last week looked at the language of apologies (I'm afraid I only just caught up with it on iPlayer today, so although you can listen again here, you've only got another day to do so).

The conclusion reached was that most English speakers are not apologising at all when they say 'sorry'. What they are really doing is regretting that something has happened, but are not taking any responsibility for it. Politicians are the worst offenders (saying things like "I'm sorry people feel upset", or saying "we are sorry ..." thus distancing themselves from any responsibility).

There is a big difference in the way English speakers and Russian speakers apologise, and the linguist who was interviewed in the radio programme had devised a study based around a context where someone had been asked to look after a friend's goldfish while the friend was on holiday but the goldfish had died. English speakers (I can't remember now, but it was probably Britons who were meant) tended to shy away from accepting any responsibility even if they said "Sorry". They said, for instance "Sorry, I don't know how it happened". Russians appeared to be mortified and expressed this in their words eg "Sorry, I have not been a very reliable friend".

English speakers use the "I" form of the verb, namely, "I am sorry", whilst in Russian it is the "you" form of the verb that is used (imperative), namely "Forgive me" (izvinite or proshchaite).

I have noticed similar patterns in other speech acts -- English speakers use "I" and Russians "you". For instance, in English when asking for a favour we might say "Could I borrow your pen?", "Could I speak to you for a minute?" or "Could I possibly have a lift?", whereas Russians would say "Would you give me your pen/ a lift?" etc. (Admittedly in English we say "Have you got a pen?", but this is not a direct request).

The next edition of Word of Mouth is devoted to grammar, so there might be something in that worth listening too. See the programme's site.

Nucular

Sarah Palin was vilified for saying 'nucular' for 'nuclear' but, in fact, this is a common pronunciation in the USA, and as Professor Richard Muller of the University of California at Berkeley said on the Radio 4 programme Broadcasting House this morning (listen again for a week here; it's about 18 mins in), Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower pronounced the word 'nucular', as did Edward Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb. Professor Muller thinks that the pronunciation arises from the word 'nuke'.

Nucular is an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (although it only went in in September 2009). The Dictionary describes it as the equivalent of 'nuclear' in its various senses. It also says that the pronunciation is a colloquial variant and is much criticised by usage guides.

Homer Simpson's contribution to English

Homer Simpson is the most influential wordsmith since Shakespeare, according to the chief executive of Today Translations. He has contributed at least two words to reputable English dictionaries -- d'oh and meh -- and plenty of his other words and phrases are well known eg eat my shorts, introubulate and craptacular.

Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, claims that d’oh was inspired by the Scottish actor Jimmy Finlayson, who appeared in numerous Laurel and Hardy films as the villain or the butt of their pranks. Finlayson's 'dohhhhhhhhhh' was more drawn out, and Groening speeded it up for Homer, feeling that suited an animated film better.

More on the story here.

The new language Montenegrin

There was once a language called Serbo-Croat, but when Yugoslavia split into its constituent republics it became two languages -- Serbian and Croatian. Montenegro, a country with fewer than a million inhabitants, then split from Serbia and now it regards its official language as Montenegrin (Crnogorski in Montenegrin). Many people cannot hear any difference between Serbian or Montenegrin, but two new letters were added to the Montenegrin alphabet last year to stress the differences (although the sounds represented by the letter were always a part of the spoken Montenegrin dialect).

Montenegrins themselves are split on the idea of having their own language. Some are quite happy to say they speak Serbian, rather like Americans don't mind calling their language English. Some bemoan the political correctness in force which means government employees feel obliged to call the language Montenegrin or risk being seen as unpatriotic. Others have embraced the new language. "I speak Montenegrin. I used to speak Serbian" said one journalist.

More on this story here.

Mayday

Mayday is the word used to indicate you're in distress or trouble. Why Mayday? What has it got to do with May Day?

The answer is "nothing". It is an anglicised pronunciation of an abbreviated form of the French phrase venez m'aider (come and help me).

Another expression once believed to be based on the French verb aider (a theory not supported by the OED) is "Dear me!", an expression of surprise, regret, sympathy or various other emotions. Abram Smythe Palmer, a late-19th-century/ early-20th-century writer on folk etymology said it might be from the Italian Dio mio (my God) or the French Dieu m'aide (God help me).

From time immemorial

How long a time is 'from time immemorial'? For ever? For as long as anyone can remember? In fact, the phrase 'from time immemorial' is a legal term in English law and means 'only as far back asa certain date in 1189' (some sources give a date in July, and others a date in September), the date being that of the accession to the throne of Richard I (Richard the Lionheart). English common law dates back to this time.

Another term for 'time immemorial' is 'time out of mind'. Note that 'time immemorial' is a phrase where the adjective comes after the noun, a so-called post-positive adjective, about which I blogged recently.

Each other's or each others'?

I was asked earlier where the apostrophe went in a sentence like "They checked each other's work". One common misconception is that since the pronoun they is plural, then each other is plural too, so the apostrophe goes after the s like for plural nouns (the employees' work, the students' work).

In fact, each other behaves as a singular pronoun (even though there must, by default, be more than one person involved), so when it comes to inserting an apostrophe, it behaves like most singular nouns (by adding 's).

I've checked in Collins and the Oxford Dictionary of English and although they each have an entry for 'each other', plus an example, it is not an example with an apostrophe, so not terribly helpful. Fowler is quite clear that it cannot be others', and has the example "A lot of old cats ready to tear each other's eyes out".

Cuckold

I'm still reading Lady Worsley's Whim, about an 18th-century criminal conversation trial (about which I posted recently). (Incidentally, there was a story in today's Daily Mail about a current criminal conversation trial in North Carolina.) The word 'cuckold' comes up a lot in the book, and in fact, at the time (late 17th century) there was a very popular journal called The Cuckold's Chronicle, a salacious account of the various criminal conversation trials of the time. The public loved the stories, particularly those involving impotence or sexual perversions, all the details of which were aired.

The word 'cuckold', which means the husband of an unfaithful wife, comes originally from Old French. It comes from the same root as the bird 'cuckoo', the idea being that cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Of course, that means that the word 'cuckold' should really apply to the wife's lover -- but in English it doesn't. In some languages, including French and German, the word used to apply to the two men in the ménage à trois, hence the association.

There is, or was (OED says the word is now obsolete), a female equivalent of cuckold, namely cuckquean. Quean just meant a woman in Old English, then in Middle English it came to mean a hussy or impudent woman.