The virtual linguist

Birds tweet using grammar

Birds (finches, at least) have developed grammatical rules, according to researchers at the University of Kyoto. Scientists recorded the birdsong of finches, then jumbled up the syllables before playing them back to the birds. The finches reacted to one of the jumbled series of sounds, but not to the others. Scientists concluded that the recording that had aroused a response in the birds must be violating some rules of grammar. Further experiments showed that this grammar was not innate -- it had to be learnt.

 

Here's the New Scientist article on the findings.

Bin and Ben

From a letter in today's Financial Times I learnt that a Bin is a slang term for a €500 banknote and a Ben is a $100 dollar bill.

 

A $100 dollar bill has a picture of Benjamin Franklin on it, hence Ben. A Bin is named after Osama Bin Laden. Before his recent death, Bin Laden eluded capture and had not been seen for years, and this is the link with the €500 banknote. These high banknotes exist, everyone knows they exist, they know what they look like, but hardly anyone ever sees one. They were withdrawn from sale in the United Kingdom last year because almost everyone who ever had them was involved in money laundering, tax evasion, cash-smuggling or other illegal activities (see this article).

Down

I went for a walk on Pewley Down (Guildford) yesterday. The word 'down' is associated with going towards the ground, or being in a lower position, but a down is an area of high land (it's more commonly seen in the plural eg Epsom Downs, the South Downs). Despite these apparently different senses, both down as a noun (meaning high land), and down as an adverb or preposition have the same origin. They both go back to the Old English word dún, meaning hill. Old English also had the phrase of dún, off the hill, and this soon became one contracted word - adún. By late Old English the a was often dropped. The spelling down became common only in the 17th century.

 

The word is probably even older than Old English; the OED says it's likely it has a Celtic origin and notes that dún is hill or hill fort in Old Irish. It's true that the word dún meaning hill appears in Old Germanic languages and dialects eg dúna in Old Dutch, but the OED thinks that the Saxons may have adopted the word from Britain after settling here.

 

Incidentally, down meaning feathers has another history. It was also once originally dún, but in this case dún was an Old Norse word.

Faggot

I caught an interesting programme on Radio 4 yesterday morning - episode 1 of a new series Taboo Be Doo about offensive and politically (in)correct songs (listen again here). There are 'fashions' in what is deemed offensive. The Beverley Sisters, of all people, were once banned from the BBC for their what were then considered risqué lyrics. On the other hand, words that are considered offensive now did not necessarily give radio and tv producers cause for concern in the past.

 

An executive from Radio 2 was interviewed on the programme and he specifically mentioned the popular Christmas song of the Pogues. Fairytale in New York. This song contains the word 'faggot', which is now deemed politically incorrect. The executive more or less said that this song only gets played on Radios 1 and 2 these days because it has been around for 20 years and is a fixture of people's Christmases -- if it was issued today as a new record, it probably wouldn't be given airtime (this interview was towards the end of the programme - about 24 and a half minutes in).

 

Faggot originally (14th century) meant bundle of sticks. By the 19th century faggot was being used as a term of abuse to a woman, accompanied by adjectives such as 'old' or 'lazy'. By the early 20th century faggot was being used to refer pejoratively to male homosexuals.

Once every Preston Guild

I heard someone say "once every Preston Guild" in conversation earlier, an expression I had not heard in years. It is a Lancashire expression meaning 'very rarely'.

 

Preston Guilds take place only once every twenty years. Preston is a town (sorry, city - it gained city status in 2002) in the north-west of England. Preston was granted the right to hold a Guild Merchant in 1179, and this meant that only Guild members could ply their trade in the town. Membership was updated from time to time, and from 1542 it was decided that once every twenty years was sufficient for this administrative task. When Guilds were held the town received an influx of visitors and there was much feasting and merrymaking. In the 19th century the powers of the Guild were removed, but the local people lobbied for the continuation of old traditions and so Preston Guilds became festivals and pageants for all the citizens of Preston, not just the tradespeople.

 

The Preston Guild is the only such Guild festival still celebrated in the UK. The next Preston Guild is next year, 2012. Here's the website devoted to it.

'till

The Daily Mail took the duchess formerly known as Kate Middleton to task in an article yesterday for writing 'till. The article assumed that she had confused it with 'til, short for until.

 

There are nearly as many instances of 'till on the British National Corpus as there are for 'til, so Kate is in good company. Moreover, at its entry for till, the preposition (without an apostrophe), which is a synonym of until, the OED includes the spelling 'till among the ten or so different spellings of the word that have been noted over the centuries.

 

The spelling untill, instead of until, was in common use until the 17th century -- all three of the Shakespeare citations at the Until entry in the OED are spelt with two Ls.

 

Regarding the Daily Mail article, the phrase 'the pot calling the kettle black' comes to mind. The Mail's spelling and grammar are often dreadful, and, as this Anorak article reminds us, the newspaper has made many more serious errors itself in the past.

Malaria

I'm still itching from the mosquito bites I got while on holiday in the south of Italy. I'm unlikely to get malaria, luckily, as Italy is not a malarial region. However, the WHO declared Italy malaria-free only in 1970; in the past malaria was a serious problem in the country.

 

The word malaria is Italian; it is made up of mal (bad) and aria (air). Originally it was believed that malaria was the result of poisonous vapours, or miasma, rising up from marshy land. An old word for malaria is paludism, and this comes from the Latin palus, meaning marsh.

Arena

I've just returned from a holiday in Italy -- first Rome and then Puglia in the south. I whipped out my notebook there on numerous occasions because I learnt lots of word-related facts. At the Colosseum I learnt that the word 'arena' comes from the Latin word harena meaning 'sand'.

 

The word 'arena' initially meant the central part of a Roman amphitheatre. Sand was spread on the ground in order to absorb the blood of the dead and injured. By extension, the word began to be used for the whole amphitheatre.

 

The English word 'arena' has lost the sense of 'sand' these days, but there are a few scientific words beginning 'arena-' that are still connected with sand eg arenaceous (having the appearance or consistency of sand) and arenation (an old term meaning 'the application of hot sand to the body as a medical remedy').

Super-accents

England will be dominated by a few 'super-accents' within 40 years, according to this recent Daily Mail report, which quotes research undertaken at the University of Lancaster. In particular, in the north of England, Geordie, or the dialect spoken in the north-east around Newcastle and Sunderland, is set to make inroads into Cumbria in the north-west.

 

Geordie is spreading outside its traditional area thanks to celebrities such as Ant and Dec, and Cheryl Cole, who speak it. In the south of England it is the London accent that is spreading into the home counties, as people move out of the capital. Professor Paul Kerswill of Lancaster University predicts that the London dialect will be a multi-cultural one within 40 years, influenced by London's Caribbean and Asian communities. As it is now, it is fashionable among young people who have never been anywhere near the Caribbean to speak so-called Jafaican ie fake Jamaican.

 

Here's the Mail article.

Shrew

Shrew is an interesting word. When used in reference to a person, nowadays it is always a woman that is meant - "a woman given to railing or scolding or other perverse or malignant behaviour", as the OED says. However, the original meaning (the first citation is for c1250) referred to a "wicked, evil-disposed or malignant man". In the 14th and 15th centuries the term shrew was applied to the Devil.

 

By the 19th century the word had lost much of its force, as evinced by Robert Louis Stevenson's description of "our poor shrew of a parson".

 

The OED says that this sense of the word 'shrew' probably comes from the idea that the little mouse-like animals were once believed to have malignant influence on other creatures. On the other hand, the Dictionary suggests, the sense may be related to the Middle High German word schröuwel meaning 'devil'.

 

Another word that has changed its sex over the centuries is 'harlot'. It was originally (13th century) a low fellow or a knave. A little later it also meant a male servant, and also 'good fellow'. There were rare instances of it being used to insult women in the 15th century, and also of examples where dancing girls and actresses were described as harlots over the same period, but by the 16th century the sex-change was completed with harlot now being used quite frequently to mean strumpet or prostitute. In A Winter's Tale, Shakespeare used it in the male sense ('... the harlot king is quite beyond mine arm ...').