The virtual linguist

Eurobabble

EU translator Jeremy Gardner appeared on the Radio 4 Today programme yesterday (listen here, about 52:13 m in) to talk about his collection of almost 100 'Eurospeak' words and phrases, which he comes across in his job. EU officials don't talk about cows, sheep and goats, but bovine animals, ovine animals and caprine animals (see this old post of mine looking at adjectives relating to animals). Another example given was 'voluntary modulation', which is something to do with farming.

 

One reason for the preponderance of such nonsensical phrases is that most EU officials are writing in a language that is not their native language, so their English is affected by their first language. On a positive note, most of them understand what is meant - even if native English speakers don't. FT journalist Alex Barber, who also appeared on the programme, gave an instance when a hapless British diplomat corrected a grammatically wrong and meaningless phrase used by his colleagues in a meeting, only to be overruled by the chair. He said that Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council, once extolled the virtues of 'asymmetric translation' ie countries' representatives translate words in different ways depending on what goes down well at home (so, for instance, the British and the Germans talk about economic governance, but the French talk about economic government).

 

There are more examples from Jeremy Gardner's EU-Speak dossier here.

Exchequer

The Minister of Finance in many countries is known as the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom. The role dates back to the 12th century, when the holder was appointed by Henry III. The Exchequer was a department of state managed by the Treasurer, and its role at the time was to collect and administer royal revenues. The original Chancellor of the Exchequer was the assistant to the Treasurer.

 

The word exchequer referred to the checked tablecloth that was used as a sort of abacus by the finance officials - counters were reckoned up after being placed in the squares. It comes from the Old French word eschequier, meaning chessboard. This French word actually came from the Latin for chessboard, scaccarium, but it was believed in England that the es- of eschequier was the French equivalent of the Latin prefix ex- (just as eschange came from the Latin excambium and esploit was from explicitum). Hence the French eschequier became the English exchequer.

Hogs - pigs or sheep?

I was in Winchester yesterday and heard for the first time the slang name for a person from Hampshire, Winchester's county - Hampshire hog.

 

Now, a hog is a pig, and always has been, ever since the word hog entered the language in the Old English period. However, Hampshire is not particularly known for pigs; it is more associated with sheep. Winchester was once an extremely important city in the wool trade. It was one of a handful of English towns designated 'staple towns' in the 14th century, which meant that wool and a few other goods, could be exported from these towns only. Winchester wool and looms were highly prized, according to the British History Online site. 

 

Interestingly, a hog can, or could, also be a sheep (the OED has the definition "a yearling sheep" or a sheep in its second year). Other words for the same thing are hogget, hoggaster and hoggerel. So, a Hampshire hog may indeed be a reference to a sheep.

Dragged or drug?

A tourist guide I was listening to today said something like "They drug his body ..." (she was talking about the desecration of graves and buried bones during either Henry VIII's time, or Oliver Cromwell's - or both, I forget exactly now). The guide had a North American accent. It was quite obvious from the context that she meant 'dragged', but I had never heard the past tense form 'drug' before. However, it is given in the OED, which says:

"drug also occurs as a past tense and past participle form of drag v. in nonstandard and regional use (especially U.S. regional (southern and Midland)); drugged is also sometimes found in U.S. use."

 

Moreover, there is another entry in the OED for the verb drug, defined as "to pull forcibly, to drag". This verb is described as being a Scottish or southern English regional form. Drug is also listed as a form of the past participle. Although the first two citations are dated a1250 (a = ante ie before) and c1405 (c = circa ie about), the OED says it cannot be sure whether the verb drug or drudge was intended, as both were spelled drugge in earlier times.

Meteor or meteorite

Both the words meteor and meteorite are being used in the press today to describe the 'shower' in Russia. I have probably always used the words wrongly, so I looked up the difference. According to various scientific websites (I just stuck to the ones aimed at children), if the debris particles survive their fall through the atmosphere and actually hit the ground, then they are meteorites. Meteors, on the other hand, usually burn up in the atmosphere, so don't make it to Earth. Both meteors and meteorites are meteoroids.

 

The OED defines meteorite as "a fallen meteor", although, just to confuse matters it goes on to say "more generally: a meteor; a meteoroid". The word meteor entered English from Middle French, coming from the translated title of a treatise by Aristotle, Metheores. Originally, the word was a plural noun (metheours or meteora in Middle English), with the sense 'celestial phenomena'. The word meteorite entered English much later, only in the 19th century.

 

These days most people pronounce the word meteor with three syllables (meet-ee-or), but the OED tells us that up until the late 19th century (and later in some authoritative sources eg Daniel Jones' English Pronouncing Dictionary) it was pronounced /ˈmiːtjə/ (meet-yer).

The Old English letter ash

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Ash refers to ashes, the residue of wood or something that has been burnt, and is meant to symbolise human mortality.

 

The word 'ash' has been around in English for a long time - there is the common tree, the ash, for instance. Ash is also the name of the Old English letter, or ligature (2 letters joined together), æ (ash was written æsc at the time). This vowel was pronounced like a short a, and was commonly used in Old English words (see this old post of mine, for instance).

 

When the Angles and the Saxons invaded England in the 5th century they brought their runic alphabet with them. One of the runes was ᚫ, called ash because it also meant ash tree. The letter æ developed from ᚫ, so kept the same name.

 

Occasionally, the ligature æ is used in modern English spelling eg archæology or encyclopædia, but it is not as common as it used to be, and it is becoming even less so.

Latin today

Finland’s national broadcaster YLI broadcasts the news in Latin (see here), so Latin is alive and well in Finland. It is still much used elsewhere, not least in the Vatican, and, indeed, Pope Benedict announced his resignation in Latin. Only a handful of Catholic priests speak Latin fluently. One of them is American Reginald Foster who runs a Latin summer school in Rome. He sounds quite a character – he gives his students 'home-play' (ludi domestici), not homework (see his Wikipedia page). Linguist Nicholas Ostler runs a few Latin sites on the internet (interretialis) (see here).

 

Latin was very important in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, but gradually fell out of use. The last major work in Latin to be produced in Britain was Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica of 1687, according to this interesting piece about Latin on the BBC website today.

Cloud-cuckoo-land and the Land of Cockaigne

The terms cloud-cuckoo-land and Cockaigne (or the Land of Cockaigne) have similar meanings: a fanciful or ideal realm or domain (cloud-cuckoo-land, OED) and an imaginary country, the abode of luxury or idleness (Cockaigne, OED). The words cuckoo and Cockaigne sound similar, too. But the words are not etymologically linked, apparently.

 

Cloud-cuckoo-land is more or less a direct translation of the Greek word Νεϕελοκοκκυγία, pronounced nephelokokkygia, which is made up of the Greek words for cloud and cuckoo. This word was coined by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes in the 5th century BC in his play The Birds. It referred to an imaginary city in the sky. The first citation for the word in the OED is 1824 in a translation of the play.

 

Cockaigne was first recorded in Middle English, in 1305 or thereabouts. As regards etymology, the OED says "its derivation has been much discussed but remains obscure". The German linguist and fairytale writer Grimm suggested a link with the German Kuchen (cake), because "the houses there were covered in cakes". Other commentators have linked the word with cake or cook.

 

In the 1820s London became jocularly known as Cockaigne, because of its similarity to the word Cockney (an old word - see this old post). The composer Edward Elgar wrote an overture entitled Cockaigne (in London Town), which was a musical portrait of London at the beginning of the 20th century.

William Barnes

William Barnes was a 19th-century English poet and philologist who tried to persuade people to use Anglo-Saxon words, rather than words imported into English from French, Latin, Greek or other languages.

He is cited many times in the Oxford English Dictionary, but mainly for Dorset dialect words, which he used in hundreds of poems. Otherwise, he is cited at the entries for push-wainling (a Barnes invention for ‘baby’s pram’), rede-craft (logic), and sundriness (diversity).

In his book on grammar, Outline of English Speechcraft, he replaces Latin-based words for grammatical terminology with Old English equivalents. So, a verb becomes time-taking, a noun a thing-word or thing-name, an adverb is an under-markword, plural is somely number, genitive is the offspring case, and subjunctive is hinge-mood.

Other nice words he offers Old English alternatives for include:
bendsome, for flexible
doingsome, for active
matter-lore, for chemistry
nipperlings, for forceps
sound sweetness, for euphony
thoroughshining, for diaphanous
unbreathpenned, for inarticulate
unfrienden, for alienate
wortlore, for botany

Hunch and hunch-backed

A skeleton found under a municipal car park in the city of Leicester has been confirmed as that of King Richard III, who died in 1485 (article here). Richard hasn't got a particularly illustrious reputation - I can remember reading stories of the princes in the Tower (murdered by Richard, supposedly) at school, and probably most people 'know' that Richard was a hunchback, as depicted iconically by Antony Sher in a 1984 production (see a picture on this page).

 

Shakespeare's description of Richard III as "that foule hunch-backt toade" is the first citation for the word hunch-backed in the OED (1598). Before this edition of the play Shakespeare had written 'bunch-backt', a word in common use at the time (the first OED citation is 1519).

 

The verb 'hunch' was in English in the 1580s, but not meaning 'to form into a hump' - that only came later, after 'hunch-backed'. The original meaning of 'hunch' was to push or thrust. There are other words in the OED describing the same hunch-backed condition. They are: hump-backed (first OED citation 1681), crump-backed (1661), crook-backed (1477), crouch-backed (1606), hulch-backed (1653), hutch-backed (1668), huck-backed (or huckt-backt) (1631), and huckle-backed (1652).

 

The sense of the noun 'hunch' meaning 'intuitive feeling' dates back to the beginning of the 20th century only.