The virtual linguist

So

There was a discussion about the word 'so' on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. The word annoys a lot of people, apparently, especially when interviewees use it to begin their answer to a question from an interviewer (listen to the short piece here for another week).

 

John Rentoul of The Independent, who has recently published The Banned List (about which I blogged recently) was a guest on the programme. He said that the word 'so' has become a plague in the printed media and on the radio, and thinks that it started with internet comments, with people writing 'so' to grab readers' attention. He also said that 'so' wasn't quite as bad as 'and so' or 'and so it begins'. He thinks that people use 'so' to try to draw listeners into membership of a private club, to allude to a previous conversation and to assume shared knowledge. Rentoul, himself, thinks that it is lazy to use the word.

 

John Humphrys, the Today anchor, said he thought it was used very randomly these days. So, what do I think? Well, (and 'well' is probably as bad as 'so') for one thing, I'm probably guilty of using 'so' unnecessarily, but, on the whole, I think that 'so' performs a useful function. If there is an interview going on on the radio and the interviewer asks a question - 'How many people are affected?', say, then if the interviewee launches straight in with the answer, 'Two thousand', the listener may not have been ready for their answer, or known when, exactly, they were going to answer the question, and so might miss the key information. Beginning the answer with 'so' does, at least, tell the listener that it's time to pay attention.

 

Here is the BBC interview on this topic, available for another week.

New sign language dictionary in Zimbabwe

A new sign language dictionary has been published in Zimbabwe. It has been welcomed by deaf people, as previous sign language dictionaries were often compiled by people who were not deaf, who included signs and gestures that no-one actually used in real life.

 

Zimbabwe has a number of signing dialects so, for instance, the same sign means 'shoe' in Harare, and 'pig' in Bulawayo. The dictionary is designed to end this confusion. Other signs have originally come from other countries' sign languages, and they do not necessarily apply to the Zimbabwean situation. The sign for 'girl', for instance, is a gesture of pulling a long lock of hair, but long hair is rare on Zimbabwean women -- that sign has come from the US.

 

The dictionary has proved popular, and now Lesotho, Mozambique and Botswana are all preparing similar dictionaries.

 

See a BBC article and short video on this story here.

The kitchen that speaks French

Among the things the British are criticised for are their lack of ability at speaking foreign languages, and terrible food. The University of Newcastle has tackled both of those issues by developing a computerised kitchen which 'speaks' to the cook in French, rather like a satnav system. Apparently sensors are built into cooking utensils so when the cook picks up the wooden spoon, or the whisk, the correct instructions are given.

 

When students learn a foreign language in a classroom the situations are often unreal simulations, but the computerised kitchen is a task-based learning method which results in an actual meal. You can program the computer to give you the English translation if you are worried about the recipe going wrong and producing something inedible. Adding the technology to an existing kitchen costs £2-3000.

 

Here's a BBC article on the story, and here's the relevant Newcastle University page.

Sheila

PM David Cameron put on an Aussie accent when he repeated what Australian PM Julia Gillard had said to him at a recent Commonwealth heads of government meeting. He was talking about a very recently passed law here in the UK which will ensure that the first-born child of Prince William and his wife Catherine, whether a boy or a girl, will be the next in line to the throne after William. Julia Gillard said it was good news for Sheilas everywhere.

 

Sheila is a generic word for young woman in Australia. The OED says it is 'playfully affectionate and predominantly in male use'. Sheila is an Irish name (can also be spelled Shelagh) and was often originally used in Australia to refer to any woman, where Paddy would be used to refer to any man. The first citation for Sheila in the OED, from 1828, is "Many a piteous Shela (sic) stood wiping the gory locks of her Paddy, until released from that duty by the officious interference of the knight of the baton".

 

You can see and hear the David Cameron video clip here (the Australian accent is at the very end).

Lower-pitched voices attract more votes

There is a fair amount of interest at the moment in the forthcoming film about Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady, with Meryl Streep playing the former prime minister. There was a clip from it on Radio 4's Today programme a couple of days ago to accompany a piece on voices, and how researchers have found that voters prefer their politicians to have a low-pitched voice.

 

Dr Cara Tigue from McMaster University in Ontario and her team of researchers manipulated recordings of speeches of US presidents, so that the same speech could be played in both a higher-pitched and lower-pitched voice. An average male voice is around 120 hertz, and the researchers altered this by around 20 hertz up or down. Participants who listened to the speeches were asked to say which speaker they would prefer to vote for, and generally they chose the one with the lower-pitched voice. This matches previous research studies where participants tended to find deeper male voices more attractive. Dr Tigue said that deeper voices are linked to higher testosterone levels - which is seen as positive.

 

You can hear the radio interviewer and clip of Meryl Streep for a few more days here.

When this post is published I shall be in Dubrovnik, Croatia - I'm going for a few days. I've got a couple of short posts programmed to appear over the weekend.

-ise or -ize

I usually write organise, prioritise and similar words with -ise, unless I am writing for a publication whose house style is -ize. It's only because of habit - most British dictionaries prefer the -ize spelling these days.

 

One of the FAQs on the OED's page of FAQs asks why the OED chooses to spell organize and recognize with a z. In its answer it says that -ize reflects the origin and pronunciation of the word better. The -ize suffix comes ultimately from the Greek suffix -izein, so the z spelling recognises (or recognizes) this. The spelling -ise usually occurs because of influence from French when the word first entered the language.

 

Many words can be spelled with -ise or -ize, according to preference, but some words do not have an alternative. Capsize is always spelled with a z, and advise and advertise are always spelled -ise. This is because of their origin. Capsize does not have a Greek origin, despite the -ize. The OED says the etymology is unknown, but it might come from a Spanish word. Advise and advertise came from French.

Queer Street

The BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, has been criticised as homophobic by some Twitter users for using the term 'Queer Street' in the sentence 'Why investors love lending to UK government – and how Debt Management Office kept us out of Queer Street'.

 

Queer does have other meanings apart from 'homosexual', and they are older meanings, too. The adjective 'queer' began to refer to homosexuals at around the beginning of the 20th century. The phrase Queer Street had already been around for about a hundred years by that time. It is an imaginary place, and thus is sometimes written with lower-case q and s, and if you are in this street, you are in financial difficulty. When the phrase was first coined, however, it meant being in difficulties of any type, not just financial ones.

 

It is sometimes believed that Queer Street is a corruption of Carey Street, the London location of a famous bankruptcy court. However, the OED says that this is unlikely. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the original sense of being on Queer Street did not necessarily refer to bankruptcy, and, moreover, the court was established on Carey Street only in the 1840s, after the phrase was in common use.

 

Peter Tatchell, the gay activist saw no reason to object to Peston's use of the idiom. Nor did the Pink News - here's its article on the story.

Scots slang

The Scottish Government has provided £200,000 to the charity Scottish Language Dictionaries this year to publish an updated Concise Scots Dictionary. Scottish slang expressions such as dingie (to deliberately ignore), numpty (silly person) and cooncil curtains (boarded-up windows) could well be included in it, according to this Scotsman article.

 

Slang is the melting-pot of language, according to Professor Julie Coleman, the place where changes in the language occur most rapidly. For this reason, whilst some people see slang as a sign of creativity and independence, others see it as a symbol of moral decline. She also said that slang is difficult to research, since it is often out of date by the time it is published in a dictionary.

 

Some examples of Scots slang that may find their way into the dictionary are:

gadgie: bloke, man

ginger: fizzy drink

ned: coarse, uncultivated

shan: unfair

spraff: to talk at length

 

More examples here in the full article.

Brand names of Western products in China

Instead of getting into a BMW, a Chinese person talks of his Precious Horse. He doesn't drink a beer called Heineken, but one called Happiness Power.

 

Deciding what to call a Western product in China is a very sophisticated and scientific process. Most Western names mean nothing to the average Chinese person, so the object is to find a name near enough to the original Western name, but with sounds and characters that resonate with the Chinese people. Reebok became Rui bu, which means 'quick steps', Nike pronounced the Chinese way (Nai Ke) sounds like the words for 'enduring' and 'persevering', not bad for sports shoes. Marriott's Chinese name means '10,000 wealthy elites' and Pentium (Ben teng in Chinese) means 'galloping'. Many car names include the character for 'horse' since horses are symbols of strength in Chinese culture.

 

Some products, eg Rolls Royce, Cadillac and Hilton have converted their names into Chinese characters that mean nothing to the Chinese people, but the unfamiliar sounds give the products a certain upmarket and exotic cachet.

 

Microsoft was advised not to use its Western name, Bing, in China, as the character pronounced 'bing' in Chinese means 'virus' or 'disease'. Instead, the search engine is called the subtly different Bi ying, which means something like 'responds without fail'. Unfortunately for Peugeot, the Chinese for this car manufacturer's name sounds very similar to the Chinese for 'prostitute'.

 

For more brand translations, see this New York Times article.

Change to the wording of the Roman Catholic Mass

For the first time in over 40 years - and only the third time in the 2000 years of the Church's history - the wording of the RC Mass is to change. The reason is not to modernise it, dumb it down, or to make it politically correct but to have wording that is a more accurate translation of the original Latin. So, whereas now, in response to the priest's frequent "the Lord be with you", the congregation says "And also with you", from November 27, when the new wording will come into force - that's the start of Advent - Catholics will say "And with your spirit" instead. This is closer to the original Latin "Et cum spiritu tuo".

 

"We believe in one God" becomes "I believe in one God". The old "One in being with the Father" becomes "Consubstantial with the Father". The word 'Father' is retained here, but in total there will be fewer references to "Almighty Father" or "God the Father". This, again, is because the original Latin did not use the word Father so much - old translators previously inserted the word in the English at random. There will be more praising God in the new wording, and more humility on the part of worshippers. So, less telling or asking God to do things, and more beseeching, and "be pleased to grant" and "humbly we beg you".

 

Here is an article giving more changes and explanation.

 

Thank you, by the way, to those readers who advised me on how to set up an RSS feed and email subscription following my plea yesterday. You should now be able to subscribe to this blog by adding your email address in the box at the top right of this page, or click on what I believe is called a 'chicklet' (the orangey-brown button also at the top of the page).