Vol II, No 4 [February 1976]

Noun Overuse Phenomenon Article

—Bruce D. Price, Word-Wise, New York, New York

Have you noticed a new “clunk-clunk” sound in the English language? Phrases such as “patient starter package” for sample? “Drug dosage forms” for pills? “Health cause” for sickness? “Increased labor market participation rates” for more people working? This overuse of nouns is a modern trend that has pretty much escaped notice. To put the phenomenon on the intellectual map, I’ve dubbed it Nounspeak. The allusion is to Newspeak, about which Orwell wrote: “Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought.”

The Germanic languages like to pile up nouns. The Romance languages virtually forbid it. The English lexicon, betwixt and between, has traditionally accepted nouns in pairs with no hesitation. Examples are book store, love affair, deer crossing, and state university. Three nouns in a row used to be the outer limit and is a rare find in English prose before 1950. Now we daily encounter excrescences like “growth trend pattern” and “consumer price inflation” and even, hold your hat, “U.S. Air Force aircraft fuel systems equipment mechanics course” (from a Long Island newspaper).

Nounspeak is not grammatically wrong. We’re concerned here with good style and with clarity and with avoiding problems for ourselves. Space ship is not a problem. Space ship booster rocket is the beginning of a problem. Most writers would, I trust, try to find alternate phrasing. But more and more we’re having to accept decided problems such as space ship booster rocket ignition system. I suggest it’s time to back up.

Scientists love Nounspeak. Anyone hearing them joust with their mother tongue must lament the change of standards since the Royal Society took as its motto, Nulla in Verba, more than 300 years ago. Bureaucrats also love Nounspeak. Certainly the military loves Nounspeak. Would you ever guess that target neutralization requirement means ‘the desired dead’? Or that airplane delivery systems might mean ‘bombs’? Here’s the National Academy of Science discussing military research: “Work has included development of empirical and rational formulae for aerosal survival, formulae for predicting human lethal dose, and quantification of disease severity.” (They’re talking about germs and poisonous gases.) And most of all the “soft sciences,” such as psychology, education, sociology and anthropology, love Nounspeak. A prize of some sardonic sort ought to be presented to the behaviorist quoted in Science Digest who concocted place for goods purchase. It takes a minute to realize he’s thinking about ‘stores.’ The pattern is that people with little to say turn to Nounspeak for pompous packaging, while those with something unsavory to say find friendly camouflage in Nounspeak’s abstractions and opacities. Who can forget body count?

At a glance Nounspeak might seem a natural development, like the disappearance of the distinction between who and whom or the evolution of a slang word into polite speech, but it is only natural in the sense that foods such as breakfast cereals are a “natural” development in modern society. Normally, a language is shaped by the intellectual writers at the top and the great mass of not-so-intellectual speakers at the bottom. But Nounspeak, like breakfast cereals, is largely an artificial imposition, perpetrated by that growing multitude in the middle with from one to four years of college. Not at all restrained by any sense of educational deficiency, this multitude talks to dazzle its own ears. And to hell with Sir Quiller-Couch.

People aren’t broke any more. They have a money problem or a bad money situation. Discontented consumers (real people) have become consumer discontent (an abstraction, like so much Nounspeak). Weathermen don’t predict rain any more: now it’s precipitation activity.

There may be a metaphysical dimension here. People often have the sensation that they aren’t being heard. So they keep lumping noun on noun, as though by saying the same thing two or three times, they’ll be understood across the existential void. Can you think of another reason for Newsweek’s startling duo, inlet cove? (One can hardly find two more perfectly synonymous words in English. So why use both?) And rain postponement dates recently appeared on a sign in the subway in New York City.

Nouns must comfort with their solidity. They seem to pin matters down, to freeze life, to ward off future shock. But it’s largely a sham. Life is flux and process. Verbs are truer to this constant change; and expert stylists have always recommended reliance on verbs. Listen to Gertrude Stein railing against nouns in “Lectures in America”: “Things once they are named the name does not go on doing anything to them and so why write in nouns…. And therefore and I say it again more and more one does not use nouns…. Nouns as I say even by definition are completely not interesting.” And Gertrude Stein was speaking about nouns in meager doses, not the excesses here labeled Nounspeak.

Poor Gertrude Stein. Alive today, she could not read the front page of any newspaper in the country without finding a surfeit of nouns, many of which can be cut entirely with no loss of sense. The favorite free-loaders are area, situation and problem. One of Nounspeak’s major linguistic discoveries is that you can attach any one, or even two of these words to any other English word with no change of meaning. The gain in precision is illusory but the loss of clarity is real. “What’s your problem area, Jack?”

Nounspeak shares common ground with jargon and bombast and gobbledygook and prolixity and confusion of whatever sort. But Nounspeak does seem to be the most sharply defined of these phenomena and may be the more interesting in exhibiting its own rudimentary “grammar,” the devices by which perfectly fine English is “translated” into Nounspeak. (One cannot help thinking of Nounspeak as being almost a dialect of English.)

The first and most obvious of these devices is: never use one noun when two (or three) can be rummaged up. Contemplate these words: subject; interim; spending; transition; passengers; and contract. Is not each a sturdy soldier of a word, wholly equipped by itself and ready for any mission? But these excellent nouns split in Nounspeak to become: subject matter; interim period; spending total; transition period; passenger volume; and contract agreement. (All examples are from the press.) Note that nothing is added except the extra syllables. Like germs, one noun splits into two, and then one of those can become two again.

A second technique for subverting English into Nounspeak requires changing strong, aggressive verbs into weak nouns. We control pests in English. We accomplish pest control is Nounspeak. It’s hard to see any good reason for this device. But many variations can be found in the press. The idea is to smash those verbs. Mothers don’t feed infants, they practice infant feeding; teachers don’t educate any more, they work at student education; politicians don’t appeal to voters, they have voter appeal; readers don’t respond, they show reader response.

A third technique diminishes clarity by disdaining the possessive ’s or of. “Nixon had this to say about the Agnew criticism….” Heard on the radio, there is no way of knowing whether Agnew was criticized or criticizing, except by context. Paradigmatically, “B’s A” and “A of B” are being changed wholesale into “BA.” Thus rate of change, which is smooth and flows easily into the brain, becomes change rate, which is “clunk-clunk” English and hard to digest.

In the years ahead English will depend much more heavily on nouns than Gertrude Stein might like. But it’s reasonable to ask that our writers and editors steer us away from Nounspeak’s worst excesses. We’ll know the tide has turned when the IRS whittles its Tax Schedule Rate Chart down to Tax Rate Chart, then to the very sensible Tax Chart, then–unlikely victory–to Taxes, which is what they were trying to say all along.

ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: The Enigmatic Eggplant

The name itself is a puzzle. Actually, there are two English names. Eggplant is the original appellation and seems to derive from a white, egg-shaped variety. This “eggy” eggplant is more frequently encountered in Europe, as is the zebrine strain, which has longitudinal purple-and-white stripes.

By 1800, however, the term “aubergine” had crossed the channel to England, where it is now the accepted name for eggplants of all shades. Aubergine is also the standard French name, and that name, too, has mystified men who might have been wiser. The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary etymologized, with evident dubiety, to the effect that aubergine is the diminutive of French auberge. Any traveler knows that in France an auberge is an inn, but we are told in the O.E.D., on the alleged authority of the great French lexicographer, Littré, that in this fruity and enigmatic case, “auberge” is a variant of “alberge,” a word for peach. The O.E.D. also cites a Spanish word for apricot. These are, I submit, unsatisfying if vaguely plausible guesses.

Fortunately, the true explanation is there for all to see in Littré’s dictionary, where it has been for more than a century. He states that “aubergine” derives, via Spain, from the Arabic word for eggplant, al-badhinjan. This makes historical sense, and the Arabic term leads, by evident phonological processes, first to alberenjena (the modern Spanish word for eggplant is the same minus the Arabic definite article, al: berenjena), and then to aubergine.

Various other kinds of documentary evidence collected by Alphonse De Candolle in his Origin of Cultivated Plants build a good case for believing that the eggplant itself was brought to Europe by Muslims who themselves had met with the plant in Africa no later than the dawn of the Middle Ages. Muslim invaders then carried it across the Strait of Gibraltar. But they were only a link in a chain of transmission that had begun in India centuries before. We can be sure that the eggplant was known in the subcontinent in earliest historical times because the Sanskrit word for eggplant, vartta, has survived in the modern Hindi term, bharta. [Reprinted with permission from “The Enigmatic Eggplant,” by Raymond Sokolov, Natural History Magazine, May, 1975, p. 39. Copyright © The American Museum of Natural History, 1975]

EPISTOLA {W.M. Woods}

The word cowbird has bothered me for a long time. This is the common name given to Molothrus ater, the American cowbird. Every dictionary I have consulted states that the bird was given its name because it associates with cows. My own observations indicate that it simply is not so. Grackles, starlings, sparrows, and crows associate with cows and their droppings and fodder much more than do cowbirds.

The American cowbird is a relative of the European coocoo, or cuckoo, or whatever. It lays its eggs in the nests of other birds for them to hatch and rear the cowbird’s young, as does the European cuckoo. I think this habit gave the American cowbird its name. I think some immigrant, probably of German origin, noticed this habit of the cowbird and called it a “Kuh-kuh-bird,” ultimately, “Kuh-bird.” Now Kuh means ‘cow’ in German. I think that some person of non-German origin, perhaps in the Pennsylvania Dutch region, who had a smattering of German by association, corrupted the term Kuh-bird into English as cowbird.

Every lexicographer I have approached has pooh-poohed my notion. Where is your evidence? they ask. Of course, there is no evidence. There is only negative evidence. Cowbirds do not associate with cows all that much.
_—W.M. Woods, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

A Quick Fox Jumps over the Cwm Fjord-Bank Glyph Biz

—Russell Slocum, Reading, Pennsylvania

A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is a popular grammar school writing exercise incorporating all 26 letters of the alphabet in a 33-letter sentence. For those wishing to shorten the lesson, it may also be the seed of an obsession.

Holo-alphabetic sentences can be addicting. Unpraised holo-alphabaddicts have spent a good deal of time determining that Ezra 7:21 is the only Biblical verse containing all the letters, although it takes 170 letters to do it and excludes j, which wasn’t around for the translation. But creating a 26-letter holo-alphabetic sentence is the goal of most. Perhaps driven to desperation, Augustus DeMorgan, a 19th-century mathematician, used the pre-15th century alphabet (no j and an ambiguous v) to reach 26 with I, quartz pyx, who fling mud beds.

Using the modern alphabet, it has been comparatively easy to create holo-alphabetic sentences of between 29 and 33 letters. There’s the story of the World War I cryptoanalyst who wrote home requesting, “Pack my bag with five dozen liquor jugs,” and the likes of Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim. In 1964 a magazine contest for the shortest ended in a tie at 28 letters: Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud; and slightly more obscure, Blowzy frights vex, and jump quick.

Complicated modifiers and implied articles raise the question of what constitutes a valid sentence. But in the heat of condensation, interest in content usually becomes secondary to overcoming the greatest obstacle, the ratio of six vowels to twenty consonants. Bringing the vowelless nth into the game better balances the groups, but as the sentences shrink their meanings often become less lucid. For example: ‘Endless zigging and zagging through legal loopholes prevented the diminutive employees of an Iranian pyx manufacturer from turning their products into music boxes,’ or, in other words and 27 letters, Nth zigs block Qum dwarf jive pyx. In 26 leters: ‘an esteemed Iranian shyster was provoked when he himself was cheated. An alleged seaside ski resort he purchased proved instead to be a glacier of countless oil-abundant fjords,’ or Nth black fjords vex Qum gyp wiz.

In addition to nth there is cwm a noun meaning a rounded valley or natural amphitheater. ‘An eccentric’s annoyance upon finding ancient inscriptions on the side of a fjord in a rounded valley’ can be phrased as Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz. Telling of his ‘irritation at being cheated by a promoter’s endless balking,’ a brief Chapter II in the eccentric’s life might read, Nth balks gyp, vex cwm fjord quiz.

Although the use of nth and cwm in a sentence leaves only fourteen consonants to mesh with the six vowels, seemingly incompatible groupings in the former category often appear. In fact, it seems necessary to include fjord or fjeld in the sentence to keep it at 26 letters. An example using the latter word: ‘A famous singer from a plateau valley (an unnatural wonder) was cheated in a wager concerning the infinite nature of quarks, a business he did not wholly understand’–Nth quark biz gyps cwm fjeld vox.

With the ultimate concision attained, it remains only to devise the most comprehensible holo-alphabetic sentence. While some of the preceding may seem contrived, word collections like Nth cwm fjeld barks gyp quiz vox make them seem relatively clear. Yet the number of possible combinations of the 26 letters is 27 digits long. There must be a few more that make sense.

Antedate Dictionary Citations

—David Shulman, New York City

In VERBATIM II, 1, appeared an interesting article on dictionary citations in general. This article, however, is intended to complement it by describing only a particular form of citation. Rather than the proper selection of one that clarifies the meaning or use of a word or phrase, the concern here is with the citation that antedates any previous record or shows possibly the first printed occurrence. This is especially true for the Oxford English Dictionary, the Dictionary of Americanisms, and any others that are based on historical principles.

Particularly, I am concerned with the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary now in process under the editorship of Dr. Robert W. Burchfield. I abbreviate it as NED Supp. 2; the first Supplement was published in 1932 and Vol. I of NED Supp. 2 was published in 1972, letters A to G. The citations now especially needed are for letters H to Z.

The finding of such antedating citations at this time for new words is not a difficult task, but for the older words, especially those recorded in the original Oxford English Dictionary, it is extremely difficult. One must bear in mind that for that work, many editors and many contributors collaborated over many years of research. One person alone, indeed, had submitted over a hundred thousand citations of all kinds–he was a doctor with unlimited time in jail.

Dr. Burchfield made the task somewhat more organized by providing voluntary readers with printed lists on the new words, A to Z, with their earliest dates. In this way, they knew what earlier dates to look for on the new words. But, for the older words, one had to consult the NED and NED Supp. 1 to make sure. In my case, I reorganized the Burchfield lists into various categories by subject matter such as scientific, slang, numismatic, theatrical, and so on. Then, I could narrow my reading by consulting books and magazines in each category with the word list handy for that category.

Regarding the older words, I was forced to check each one with my four primary sources, NED, NED Supp. 1, DA (Dictionary of Americanisms) and DAE (Dictionary of American English) and I even went further to ensure that Dr. Burchfield would not find my antedates recorded in other references already at his disposal. I did all this to avoid duplication and to try to be certain' I was submitting antedates unknown to NED Supp. 2. After checking the NED Supp. 2, Vol. 1, I found that more than 90% of my antedates submitted with my painstaking effort had been accepted. Since I had contributed several thousand, it was a measure of satisfaction for a labor of love.

Considering the many years of omnivorous reading, mainly at the New York Public Library with its tremendous resources for such research, it was indeed a labor of love, but it also had many fringe benefits. My vocabulary, education, and interests were enhanced. At the same time, I found material for newspaper and magazine articles which I wrote from time to time.

After a while, I got to memorize many words and their earliest dates, so that in my reading I could tell if I had found an actual antedate. Certain books were helpful. For example, words or phrases considered strange or foreign or neologisms might be italicized by the author or printer. Thus, they became easier to spot with the eye, as I did not often read line by line but scanned the text. Sometimes, a writer had a stereotyped style, and I would not bother to read such a writer’s work. But writers like George Ade and Damon Runyon could prove quite rewarding for citations. Then, too, a magazine like the Police Gazette would provide me with more useful citations than the Christian Missionary Gazette.

If I was concentrating on a certain word rather than taking catch-as-catch-can any neologism as a lepidopterist with a butterfly net (à la Nabokov), then really good lexicographic detetive work was required. Thus, for example, I felt it important for the questionable etymology of charley horse to run it down, and that I probably did by reading a host of books and clippings in the Spalding baseball collection of the New York Public Library. It was amazing how much had appeared in print prior to 1900. This also resulted in an article, “Baseball’s Bright Lexicon,” which American Speech published.

I think many more antedates can be found. In the majority of cases, no dictionary can be sure it has the first usage, and so the “game is still afoot.” I found it a challenge and I enjoyed the hunt immensely.

ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: chic

The French word chic (pronounced “sheek”) originally did not mean ‘smart, stylish, correct, becoming,’ as it apparently means today. Originally it meant ‘lucky find.’ If a group of French boys or even grown men were out for a walk and one of them spied a silver coin lying on the ground, he would pounce on it and pick it up exclaiming “Chic!”–which would translate into American as ‘What a lucky break for me!’ A French beachcomber, coming upon a rare and beautiful shell or piece of driftwood would do likewise. So also would French antique dealers, police detectives, and other types, including the auto mechanic searching for that replacement part for that old-model car.

Likewise, French women, shopping for wearing apparel in the boutiques and salons of Paris, and eventually finding hats or dresses or coats or shoes that were just the right size and style and color for them, also would exclaim “Chic!” meaning ‘What a lucky find!’ They usually did this in front of a mirror of course, trying on the stuff, and British and American women shoppers in those boutiques and salons, seeing this happen over and over again, mistakenly assumed that that oft-repeated exclamation meant ‘smart, stylish, correct, becoming.’ It certainly looked that way as the French women preened themselves and postured in front of the mirrors and smilingly exclaimed “Chic!” or “Trés chic!”

The British and American women shoppers proceeded to use the word themselves–they could do no less!–in that same connotation. So well did they succeed, collectively, in promoting and popularizing this usage, that chic eventually came to mean just that even in France.

Let us hope and pray that you and I never have the misfortune of hearing it pronounced “chick.”

—Roger Clancy, New Smyrna Beach, Florida

“The Bronx?/No, thonx” —Ogden Nash

Abraham Tauber, Professor of Speech, Yeshiva University and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, C.U.N.Y.

Bronx, the name of a certain borough (county) in New York City, a place that has its own troubles, has had a recent precipitate decline in nomenclature prestige. Of course, the “Bronx cheer” has been an ugly epithet-gesture for some time, defined as such in the Unabridged Edition of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: “U.S. a vulgar spluttering noise made with the lips and tongue to show contempt or disgust. Also called raspberry.”

But now that The New York Times reporters use similes like “as devastated as the South Bronx,” the process of pejoration has about hit bottom.

Not even the memory of the “Bronx Bombers,” of Yankee-World Series fame, or the attempt to devise a “Bronx cocktail” in some of the borough’s better watering places, to parallel the sister borough’s “Manhattan,” can dispel the gloom. To raise the image or symbolism of the Bronx, a Bronx Academy has been formed to honor those who have brought it fame and to inspire its young to emulation. The Bronx Society of Letters and Science is doing well to complement the cultural efforts of the Bronx Council of the Arts and its Museum. To cap these strenuous attempts, the Bronx seeks to recapture its heroic past through the Bronx Historical Society in the Borough of Universities.

But the struggle to rehabilitate the name of the Bronx is an uphill fight, from personal testimony. When this writer pointed out to Ogden Nash some years ago that his amusing rhyming couplet, “The Bronx?/No, thonx” was funny, but that it hurt what was left of the Bronx ego and its self-respect, the poet offered this apologia:

I wrote those lines, “The Bronx? No, thonx”
I shudder to confess them.
But now, a sadder, wiser man
I say, “The Bronx? God bless them!”

And so should we all, every one.

Vengeful Verse: Revenge Reversed

—Don L. Jewett, D.Phil. (Oxon.), University of California at San Francisco
The Story:

During the French Revolution, a member of the royalty, imprisoned in the Bastille, had sufficient time to ponder his fate, and, seeing the end at hand, contrived a revenge in the form of a poem describing his plight. The poem contained numerous puns which, he hoped, would “punish” those that understood them and who were, presumably, acquiescent if not active in his demise. He copied the poem onto pieces of paper which, when fashioned into the form of paper airplanes, were sailed out of the bars of the cell window down to the rabble below. Only one of the “missives” is known to be in existence, bringing us a unique view of the thoughts of a doomed man, cunningly devising his “poetic” revenge.

The Poem:

1 I fear that I’ll be punish-ed
2 For every puny pun-I-shed.
3 But their lies the dichotomy,
4 The pun-ish will die, caught–oh, me!
5 I’ll not flea, but fly, in-tense
6 By words that flew past, in-tense.
7 Then I’ll fight death with dual content,
8 If you see what your punish-meant!
9 (Re-right I won’t, I’m wont perverse,
10 I think it wrong too oft re-verse.)

The Analysis:

The poem is untitled and unheaded, presumably as a subtle indication of the author’s own future. It is unsigned, presumably to prevent his revenge from triggering additional punishment.

In the first line he first uses the word punish, which becomes a recurrent theme in the poem, just as it must have been in his rambling thoughts. This word is itself a pun, for it is both a verb and a noun, i.e., ‘to punish’ and ‘the punish’–those who pun. Presumably he fears that his captors will punish the punish. Note that in the first line his wording tends to arouse sympathy; probably this is a fiendish device to lure the unsuspecting reader deeper into the poem without fully comprehending what lies ahead for him. The same self-deprecating theme is carried into the second line where the words pun-I-shed mirror the preceding line’s punish-ed.

Now, all puns derive from double meanings, but only in “first-class” puns are both meanings applicable to the situation or content of the phrase containing the pun. If one sets such standards, then the first lines are not truly “first-class,” certainly in comparison with the lines that follow. In passing we should note the “1½ class” pun where puny can read either “puny” (‘small’) or “pun-y” (an adjective) in line 2.

In line three the first-class puns begin to appear. At first the words their lies seem to be the words of the familiar expression “but there lies the dichotomy,” but the spelling of the second word suggests a deeper meaning that there are “lies” told by someone (presumably either the “pun-ish” author alluded to in the next line or the lies of his captors, or both!). The line ends with the word dichotomy which refers to a division in two; “into what?” comes immediately to mind. Presumably the word refers to the double meanings in puns rather than the division into two which will be the author’s ultimate punishment.

Line four completes the pattern set up previously when the last words of line 2 were shown to be part of the last word of line 1. Similarly, the last words of line 4 mirror the end of line 3. While the word pun-ish refers to those who pun, one cannot help but wonder if the author also means the punish to refer to punishment– which he hopes will someday be banished, i.e., die. Here we see some of the optimism which begins to develop as the poem changes from the humble, self-effacing early lines to the vigorous and almost boisterous final lines in which the reader who has assimilated the poem must now bend to the author’s will as the double meanings multiply within the reader’s brain, like the nucleic acids of a deadly virus.

Line 5 makes obvious reference to the classic:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Said the flea “Let us fly,”
Said the fly “Let us flee,”
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

This “inner” poem must have played heavily upon the author’s subconscious, since it is so clearly a poem of entrapment, and planned escape–with a happy ending (for one hopelessly imprisoned). Thus we see the similar theme of what the author will do to escape his predicament now emerging in lines 5 through 8. In line 5 he tells us he cannot leave (that he will not “flea”), but that he will escape, by meaning only (in-sense) by “flying words” (flying past on the backs of paper airplanes) which are angry, i.e., “incensed.” Alternatively, possibly he has become “incensed” by words (line 6). If so, his words, like his feelings, are “intense.” However, if the words have flown past then they are obviously past in-tense–just as the word flew is! The word flew obviously completes the “flea, fly, flew” parallel with the shorter poem.

In line 7 the author’s message is now apparent–his fighting spirit is undaunted and in his mind he battles as in a duel, using as his “duelling” weapon the content of his message (“duel” content). The content is, of course, dual because it is composed of puns, so that contemplation of the entire poem must provide him with twice the enjoyment (i.e., dual content-ment), if the reader perceives the dual content of both the puns and the revenge i.e., what your (the reader’s) pun-ish (the author who puns) meant (in writing the poem), and that the reader also perceives your (the reader’s) punish- (punishment) meant (means), i.e., what the author must undergo for the reader. Note that the author considers the punishment cruel, because he also thus indicates that it is “mean.”

By line 9 the author’s revenge is in full flower and he drops entirely the self-deprecation of the initial lines. Fully baring (bearing?) his anger, he defiantly refuses to retract (re-tract) what he has done. He feels that all of his puns are correct in both of their meanings, i.e., he is re-right.

He will not re-write the poem partly out of a perversity expressed in poetry (i.e., per verse). Taking a moral stance that it is wrong to change (i.e., reverse) too oft-en, he refuses to re-verse his poem.

Reaching the end of the analysis, we must ask the question: Did the poem succeed in its purpose? Direct evidence is lacking, but we can quite assuredly state that the poem had little effect upon the French peasantry, since few, if any, were literate, and even fewer had knowledge of the English tongue! Thus, with his passionate anger unrequited, he could not have died the happiest sad-ist. His work remains only to be appreciated by individual mass-ochists, such as yourself.

EPISTOLA {Lester E. Rothstein}

“Malo × 4” translate as:
I’d rather be
In an apple tree
Than a bad man
In adversity.

But my guess is that, even with the addition of prepositions plus that word quam ‘than’ the phrase is so ambiguous that it would have been Greek to any classical Roman.

I recall another Latin gem that could be sung to a cartoon tune:

Pop-oculus nauticus vir sum (bis)
Ad finem pugnabo
Quod “spinach” consumo
Pop-oculus nauticus vir sum.

And then, there’s “Shell Be Comin' ‘Round the Mountain”:

Ea montem circumveniet, cum veniet (repeat 5×)
Ea quattuor albis equis vehetur cum veniet (5×)

(Then down to three horses, two horses, one horse, and walking.)

I modestly claim authorship of this superb translation while full of college beer (cerevisia universitatis). Its main forte was that it proved quite a tongue-twister when you tried to sing it to a fast-strumming guitar. Switching those case-endings was murder! [Lester E. Rothstein, New York, New York]

Secrets of ‘American English’ May Yield to Dialect Geography

William Safire, The New York Times, Washington, D.C.

In Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” Professor Henry Higgins was able to pinpoint the district of origin of a Cockney flower girl by listening to her accent and vocabulary. Could that be done today by an American linguistics expert and a local Eliza Doolittle?

Thanks to a growing branch of language study called dialect geography, the answer may be yes.

Since the early thirties, when dialect pioneer Hans Kurath began gathering data for his linguistic atlas of the eastern United States, language researchers in other sections of the country have been working on regional atlases to discover how words, usages and accents have traveled from one locality to another, as well as between social classes.

Dialect geography is not yet a full-fledged academic discipline, but Prof. Harold Allen of the University of Minnesota estimates that there are now 25 specialists active in the field. Much of their work dovetails to make possible a coast-to-coast study of the way “American English” came to be.

One set of clues is in word usage: Do you take cream or use cream?

Other clues are in vocabulary: A hero in New York is a hoagy in Philadelphia and a sub in Washington, D. C.

Still other footprints of language movement can be found in pronunciation: A California oar-inge is shipped east to become an ar-ringe, as New England grease turns to greaze as it dribbles south of Trenton.

Most geographers of language agree that the information gathered so far indicates that several dialects of British English landed along the American Eastern Seaboard. These became spiced with Americanisms borrowed from traders, Indians and slaves, or coined to describe freshly discovered situations, and the speech styles trekked westward in traceable patterns.

“Take pail and bucket,” says Dr. Kurath, professor emeritus of the University of Michigan, author of “Studies in Area Linguistics” and, in active retirement at 83, regarded as the father of dialect geography. “In New England, through the upper Midwest to Seattle, a container made of metal is called a pail. But from Pennsylvania west and southward, the same container is called a bucket. There’s a complication: If it’s made of wood, the New England and northern word would also be bucket, taken from ship’s buckets and fire buckets. You have to be careful.”

Years of selective sampling have led to the drawing of dialect dividing lines, and a dozen dialect areas have emerged. Dr. Kurath stresses that dialect differences exist within each area, in social gradation from folk speech to cultivated speech, and that constant migration commingles American dialects.

Prounciation patterns show the spoor of the mobile language. “Mary married Harry,” for example. West of the Alleghenies, all three words are pronounced generally alike; in the East, says Dr. Kurath, all three are pronounced differently, and Mary can be may-ree, mair-ee, marry or merry.

General linguist Mario Pei points to another East-West difference in pronunciation: In most of the East, there is no difference between horse and hoarse; in the West, the oar sound gets hoarier treatment. (New York’s mounted police, however, ride hawses.)

A typical North-South difference is wash (North) and wush (South); the nation’s capital is called Washington in New England and Wushington, or Wurshington, in the South and Southwest.

Sometimes a pronunciation that is outside the normal stream of dialect migration can identify the speaker. For example, the ou in “about the house” has a round sound in the speech of Maryland and Virginia–more “about the howse.” When this sound is heard in the discourse of a person who otherwise speaks like someone from the northern Midwest, the speaker is usually Canadian.

Unique to Utah is the reversal of the or and ar sounds: As one Salt Lake City resident said: “Here we praise the lard and put the lord in the refrigerator.”

Tracing the westward trek of America’s earliest dialects, trying to find out how and where the eastern bag became the western sack, language geographers must cope with three other migrations: the movement of blacks from South to North; the retirement migration to Florida and southern California, and the move from rural to urban to suburban within all American regions.

When people move about this way, language cross-pollinates, and local dialects are enriched. The Forty-Niners of California, who coined words like splurge and usages like strike it rich and pan out from their mining experience, reached back into early English rural archaisms to reintroduce gumption and deck (rather than pack) of cards.

However, these movements tending to localize and enliven dialect are opposed by the two centrifugal forces of language and enemies of dialect: the mandatory public school, which attempts to enforce “standard” speech, and the national communications media, which have favored a “general American” accent.

In the past, television was seen to be the homogenizer of the language, producing a national speech like that used by Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor–nationally understandable and “correct” but inhospitable to philological flavor or originality. Of late, language geographers have been cheered by three developments: • The practice of networks of hiring reporters with regional accents.

• The ability of mass media to popularize local dialect or occupational argot on a national scale, resulting in a language that becomes more uniform but changes more quickly.

• The demand of some local advertisers to present their messages in local dialect, with a “down home” touch, which is a countervailing influence to most television network spech.

Can linguists predict which direction the American English language will take–toward more centralization and standardization, or toward an increase of local dialects in communities within different cities?

Dr. Pei sees “pockets of strong resistance” within a general trend toward standardization: “Good Brooklynese and good Ozarkian are not likely to be obliterated, even in a historical period of centralization. It was the same at the height of the Roman Empire, when Latin was insisted upon, but the Iberians and the Gauls held on to their local differences.”

A specialist in dialect geography, such as Dr. Kurath, is more reluctant to project his data into the future: “Variations in speech reflect differences in ways of life. That’s what makes the historical study of usage so fascinating.”

In that case, could he–like the fictional Professor Higgins–listen to a person’s speech and be able to identify birthplace, social class, and itinerary through life? “I could make a very good case for my guess. But not on television –I’m usually too slow to make a decision,” he says.

Copyright © 1975 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission from the issue of September 28, 1975.

EPISTOLA {Philip E. Hager}

This note acknowledges the article of Paul M. Lloyd [VERBATIM I, 5, 2] and responds to the article of Roger W. Wescott [VERBATIM I, 1]. I have long collected specific binomials which are virtually synonymous or may have been coined to appear so. In the following list of some examples many also alliterate:

[Philip E. Hager, University of the Puget Sound]

Where the Harts Wear Pants

—Sister Mary Terese Donze, ASC, De Mattias Hall, St. Louis, Missouri

If some of the hymns we are singing in today’s liturgical celebrations are indicative of the word level of our younger Catholic population, it would seem we’ve come down a bit, for whatever else there was to be said against the old hymns, they at least had vocabulary value.

The fact struck me with unusual force when I dictated the word blaspheme to a group of ninth-grade students recently: They frowned at me as if all of them had suddenly developed a hearing disability. Would I please repeat the word? I’d be only too glad to. “The word is blaspheme. Comes from blasphemy. Means a grave irreverence.” Irreverence? What’s that? So help me!

There are times when it’s a matter of prudence not to press a point. I felt this was one of those times. “O.K. You’re hung up on the word? Forget it. The next word is bookkeeping.” But I wondered about those kids.

I learned the word blaspheme in the fourth grade. No credit to me. It just so happened that in our school everyone started learning hymns from the printed page in Grade Four. One of the songs to Our Lady began, “I’ll sing a hymn to Mary,” and we went on to sing: “When wicked men blaspheme thee, I’ll love and bless thy name.” If wicked men blasphemed, it had to be a mean, nasty thing to do. With time and repetition the word grew into its more proper definition, but we already had it under fair control by the end of the hymn practice. And so on with any number of other words that became “old hat” for us before we left grammar school.

What was true in our school was true in Catholic schools across the nation. Children were building up an accelerated vocabulary from the hymns they were singing. Probably the better percentage of the Catholic population in the country first launched their fragile bark (spelled “barque” in our hymnal) on life’s tempestuous sea in “Mother, Dear, Oh Pray for Me.” On Holy Name Sundays, if the clash of arms between the powers of good and the forces of evil could not actually be heard as “Sweet Name” rang out, it wasn’t the fault of “baffled Satan’s power…in death’s appalling hour.”

During Lent, hordes of Catholic youngsters deplored their sins in song and implored the Blessed Mother’s protection in “every melancholy hour.” With solemn propriety they likewise mourned Christ’s mangled Body, beheld Him reviled and put to scorn, and saw death’s pallid hue come over Him.

At Christmas the same children, together with the angels, formed a radiant throng, singing around the manger of the Child who was “tenderly sleeping so tranquil and sweet.” And they ushered the magi into the parish churches by the light of a star serenely beaming, the while they handled the frankincense and myrrh with graceful abandon.

It is possible that my freshman class would wave off enraptured and warbling as easy ones. I wouldn’t bet on it. Yet there was a time when, come the 12th of September with its feast of the Holy Name of Mary, thousands of children praised the Virgin’s name as a sound that fell on their “enraptured ears” as “sweet as the warbling of a bird.”

Youngsters didn’t always get the full implication of the words immediately, but they sang the songs so often that little by little the ideas sank in. It took longer, of course, for some ideas to sink in than for others. I can think of one song–Sister had duplicated it on her “jelly” duplicator–where the first line presented me with a real problem. What could a fourth grader make out of singing—and in church of all places—“as pants the hart.” It took a while before the words conjured up the correct images, but I was still far from the ninth grade when I discoverd that hart was a word in its own right and not a misspelling, and when it turned out to mean ‘deer,’ even the “pants” seemed to fit. However, if the word had been “panted” it would have helped. I couldn’t remember our dog ever having done his heavy breathing in the present tense.

Another song that was rich in vocabulary content but a bit rough on me (and I imagine on the rest of us) was one we sang to honor St. John the Evangelist. (This was another of those duplicated songs. Could be there was a curse on these copyright violations!) Why we should sing of St. John and of no other apostle was never quite clear to me. We didn’t sing of St. Peter who should have had first “dibs” in my way of thinking. Later, in a moment of disrespect, I figured out for myself that Sister must have taken a personal fancy to the song and that we learned it for her sake with St. John benefiting on the side. In any case, there was one line that was very hard to handle: “Whose heart could brook the cross of Him it loved so well.”

An uncle of mine lived on a farm near Belleville, Illinois. Running through the pasture at the foot of the hill near his farm was a brook. Summer after summer I had spent my vacations there, and I had crossed and recrossed that brook more times than I could remember. But “brook the cross?” Well, that was something to think about. I still think about it, though differently now.

Words like circumcision, womb, and bosom took on wholesome connotations in the sacred setting of a hymn. And when we sang “in His bosom breathe out my last sigh,” bosom was good vocabulary and it was also good comfort to know we’d die resting over His heart. At least there were no Mae-Westian overtones to the word.

There’s practically no end to the list: fraught, dross, majesty, abode, triumphant, transgressions, celestial, peerless, supernal, immaculate, infinity. Anyone who still has an old St. Basil’s, St. Gregory’s, Catholic Youth, or even a Magnificat of later date, could come up with dozens of others. Best of all, the learning process was painless– merely a by-product of daily hymn practice.

Today’s “Sons of God,” “Allellu,” “Come and Look with Me” hymns may be around a few more years. (I doubt whether any of them will have the longevity of “O Lord, I Am Not Worthy.”) However, one thing seems evident: when they burn themselves out and their ashes are cooling, it isn’t likely that we’ll find much of a residual vocabulary when we begin poking around in their dusty remains.

[This article appeared originally in Our Sunday Visitor, March 10, 1974, and is reprinted by permission.]

EX CATHEDRA: Apostrophes

Apostrophes serve two main functions in written English: one, they indicate the possessives of nouns and noun-type words like gerunds (but not pronouns); two, they mark the omission of one or more letters in a contraction or abbreviation. There are a few other, conventional applications (e.g., the 1930’s, mind your P’s and Q’s), but we shall leave those for discussion at another time.

When we were a child–that construction shows one of the problems one can encounter when dealing with the editorial we–we recall that a friend of our parents’ gave them a gift of porous paper coasters imprinted with something like “Drink with the Urdang’s.” Our father (which art, we assume, in Heaven), an English teacher, forbade their use, though they remained in a drawer of the buffet for many years. Mrs. G.R. Morrow [Swarthmore, Pa.] offers some other examples: Jojos Lounge; The Wilson’s telephoned…; ice cold soda’s; sandwich’s; St. Peters [see VERBATIM II, 1, 3]; and St. Paul United Methodist Church [in Largo, Florida]. These reflect a mixture of the absence of a possessive apostrophe where it belongs and the insertion of an anomalous apostrophe where none is required.

In other contexts, we see Ham n Eggs, Ham ‘n Eggs, and Ham n’ Eggs, but only rarely what one might expect because both the a and the d are missing, Ham ‘n’ Eggs, although we have seen Ham ‘n’ Eggs, treated as if the n were some special sort of signal. Clearly, an apostrophe is not to be confused with an open single quotation mark.

The question of whether or not to use ’s to form the possessive of a proper noun ending in s is not always easy to decide, for it depends on the style of a particular piece of work. Most often, if the proper noun is short–one or two syllables–the s is added after an apostrophe: Van Nuys’s downtown area; Tom Jones’s house; but there may be a choice between Bill Williams’s house and Bill Williams' house. One hears a conscious choice, too: there is a difference in the sound of Williams' and that of Williams’s.

The apostrophe should never be used when a simple plural of a proper noun ending in s is intended: The Papadopolises are moving tomorrow (not “Papadopolis' ” or “Papadopolis’s”); keeping up with the Joneses (not “Jones' ” or “Jones’s”). One area of confusion remains, however, when we encounter what might be called the “possessive absolute.” That is a construction in which the object of the possessive has been omitted: We are going over to the Joneses' [house] tonight. Another kind of example: “Whose lawn mower is that?” /“It’s the Joneses.' ”

Our best advice is avoidance: if an uncomfortable construction is encountered, and you don’t know how to handle it, avoid it. Many copy editors and stylists frown on the use of the possessive apostrophe with proper nouns, preferring an of the…construction, where possible. In some instances, that may be awkward, but for the most part it is less burdensome to write (if not say): the downtown area of Van Nuys rather than Van Nuys’s downtown area; the exports of the Netherlands Antilles rather than the Netherlands Antilles' [or Antilles’s] exports, and so on.

EPISTOLA {Norman R. Shapiro}

I was happy to read, in Pat Solotaire’s letter (II, 2, 12), that the Gratuitous Negative (“I love candy.” /“So don’t I.”) has puzzled others beside myself. I have wondered why it is heard throughout the Northeast (not only in Maine) and especially, I think, in juvenile speech. The only explanation I can come up with is not very convincing, namely, that the second element, always beginning with so, was originally a rhetorical question (“I love candy.” /“So? Don’t I?”), ultimately–and inexplicably–becoming an exclamation.

One hears another type of Gratuitous Negative in even more supposedly sophisticated and less regional speech. Two examples: “I miss not seeing him,” and “I can’t stay but a minute.” Obviously, this phenomenon is a syntactic portmanteau, a compressing of two thoughts into one: “I miss seeing him.” /“I’m sorry not to see him.” and “I can stay but a minute.” /“I can’t stay more than a minute.” I imagine it stems from the same psycholinguistic source as the French pleonastic ne: “J’ai peur qu’il ne vienne,” meaning ‘I’m afraid he will come,’ while implying that I wish he wouldn’t. The difference is that the French redundancy is a mark of elegance; the American, a mark of sloppy grammar.

Curiously, the inverse of the Gratuitous Negative has recently surfaced in popular speech: I could [instead of I couldn’t] care less! On the face of it, this would seem to be merely a negatively charged exclamation, on the order of Well, that’s just lovely!, I’m really touched!' You’re a fine one to talk, et al. But on closer inspection, I could care less differs fundamentally from such expressions in that the true negative, I couldn’t care less!, is still used in parallel with it, whereas one never hears (and presumably never has heard) such true negatives as ?_Well, that’s not just lovely!, ?\I’m not really touched!, or ?_You’re not a fine one to talk! Perhaps–again–what we have here was, originally, a rhetorical question, I could care less? As such, it even has a slightly Yiddish ring to it, like the traditional I should care?, usually accompanied by a nod of the head and a shrug of the shoulders. Other explanations and/or observations will be welcome. [Norman R. Shapiro, Wesleyan University]

EPISTOLA {Jon Mills}

I have been similarly fascinated by the use of quotation marks, as commented on by Pat Solotaire [VERBATIM II, 2, 12]. Two recent examples:

(1) The Jacqueline Susann book Once Is Not Enough was made into a movie, billed not as:

Jacqueline Susann’s “Once Is Not Enough” but rather as

“Jacqueline Susann’s Once Is Not Enough,” which makes no sense at all (unless the title of her book was really, “Jacqueline Susann’s Once Is Not Enough,” in which case the movie should have been billed as:

Jacqueline Susann’s “Jacqueline Susann’s Once Is Not Enough.”

(2) A bottle of dish soap in my kitchen has printed on the label the words, in quotation marks, “Contains No Phosphates.” Are they, perhaps, quoting an authority on phosphate content? A similar use is made in advertising, where a slogan will be set aside by quotation marks: “Tastes great!”, etc. I don’t think that advertisers are fools. The use of quotation marks must have a predictable motivational effect. I would like to know what it is.

With reference to Sophie W.S. Brown’s letter [II, 2, 14], what are “homographic-heterosemantic phonoglosses”?

I would like to know if any readers have ever looked for words with the property that, if a specific vowel is replaced by any of the other vowels, the result is still a word. For example, pack, peck, pick, pock, puck. The words I’ve found are mass, pat, bag, last, and (amazingly enough, seven letters) blander. Some I reject (e.g., ball: there’s something about the validity of boll that I find questionable).

Facetious is the only word I know of that uses all of the vowels (and no more) in sequence. The shortest word I know of that uses all five vowels is sequoia, and the next shortest is equation. Has anybody found other examples of sequentiality or brevity? [Jon Mills, Chicago, Illinois]

We, too, were unfamiliar with the term “homographic-heterosemantic phonoglosses,” but the meanings of its elements are transparent enough: homographic means ‘(of two or more words) written identically’; heterosemantic means ‘different in meaning’; phonogloss means ‘an explanation in sound(s).’ Hence, the entire expression would mean something like ‘words spelled the same way but with different meanings.’ That leaves phonoglosses, which mystifies us, we admit. But if one examines the examples given by Ms. Brown, all are common English words that are also common Latin words, though they mean different things in each language. There ought to be many more.

We cannot understand why Mr. Mills rejects boll: isn’t that what cotton comes in? Blander is a good one! If pack, etc., are made into packs, one could add pyx to cover “…and sometimes y.” —Editor

EPISTOLA {Mike Covington}

In VERBATIM II, 2, 12, Pat Solotaire documents the Gratuitous Negative in the English of Maine. There is a Gratuitous Negative in Georgia also, found in sentences like, “I miss not being back home.” The not is superfluous, and I suspect it is a generalization from Standard English sentences like, “I’m tired of not being back home.” Likewise, the Maine Gratuitous Negative in “George really got schnockered at Judy’s party.” /“Well, so didn’t she.” could well be a blend of “Well, so did she.” with “Well, didn’t she also?” [Mike Covington, Athens, Georgia]

EPISTOLA {Harry Cimring}

There is a word which now escapes me that describes a linguistic phenomenon which I call “over-familiarity with the language.” Examples of this can be seen in calling Palm Springs “The Springs” or Las Vegas “Vegas” (which, at least, may be preferable to “Los Vegas,” a common pronunciation that carries with it a connotation of inevitably in face of the odds).

My immigrant mother always spoke of a “plate of cream” when she meant ice cream, and she served a “dish of grass,” her version of ?_aspara-grass_.

Radiographs (pictures taken by X-ray radiation) and roentgenographs (pictures taken by roentgen rays, also called X rays) are, naturally, also called X-ray pictures, sometimes shortened to X-rays. A dentist of my acquaintance went one step further: when he took an X-ray picture, he “shot a ray.”

Those who “play the market” are well aware of the name of the Dow-Jones stock averages. This has been successively dehydrated to the Dow-Jones averages, the DowJones, and, ultimately, to, “What did Dow do today?” [Harry Cimring]

Reviews: THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States

H.L. Mencken, 4th ed. 1936 (20th ptg. 1974), Alfred A. Knopf, with Supplement One (11th ptg. 1975), with Supplement Two (8th ptg. 1975).

Despite the heavy amount of data contained in The American Language, its anecdotal style provides an enjoyable introduction to the history and development of the daily language of America. Reading The American Language should be like receiving a long letter from home, in which one receives a large amount of material about familiar subjects. The sections on the history of the deprecations of American English by British speakers and Anglomaniacs will not only give rise to a lot of guffaws but will also go a long way in helping to erase the inferiority complex so many people have about their English.

The early editions were very well received, and so much new material poured in in response to Mencken’s request for data that the fourth edition is not just another revision but a totally new book. Likewise, the supplements give much new documentation plus a large amount of data on place names and grammar.

Mencken never pretended to be a specialist in linguistics. He often chastised specialists for spending their time studying Hittite, American Indian, and other “esoteric” languages instead of answering his call for a comprehensive grammar of common speech. He seemed to have considered it downright unpatriotic to spend time studying Eskimo when there was no comprehensive grammar of American English. Little did he realize the immensity of the undertaking he was urging. Mencken’s strength is also his weakness. His anecdoctal presentation makes it easy for the general reader to handle so much data, but his lack of systematic analysis distresses linguists.

Early in the eighteenth century, the alarm against the intrusion of Americanisms into British English began to be raised. But the flood of new words and phrases was unstoppable. At first, it seemed that an “Americanism” meant “any unfamiliar item.” In trying to keep British English pure, efforts were made to classify Americanisms so that they could be identified and eliminated. A common analysis was: (1) the preservation of items lost in Great Britain, e.g., notify a person; (2) the introduction of new American items, e.g., belittle; and (3) the peculiar American development of English items, e.g., creek, for ‘a small stream’ instead of ‘a narrow bay’ or ‘inlet of the sea.’

Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, Americanisms were still being denounced; but when they began to be used in Britain, the Oxford English Dictionary was searched for quotations from Chaucer to show that they were really British and not American. Often a phrase denounced as an Americanism really originated in Britain and was unknown in America, and many Americanisms were picked up in Britain without anyone being aware of it. But there were saner heads in Great Britain who understood that just because American English was different from British English it wasn’t therefore automatically wrong and to be scorned.

It was not until 1890 that Dialect Notes, the first journal devoted to American English, was set up by the American Dialect Society, which had been founded the preceding year. American Speech was not established until 1925. The Dictionary of American English was begun at the University of Chicago in 1925 under Sir William Craigie, an Englishman. The Linguistic Atlas of the United States was begun after a conference of the Linguistic Society of America in 1929, and its first fascicle appeared in 1936 under the editorship of Dr. Hans Kurath, an Austrian.

Three characteristics of American English were usually noted: (1) general uniformity throughout the country; (2) disregard for rule and precedent; and (3) a tremendous capacity for taking in new words and for manufacturing them out of its own materials. Since a number of dialects of English in Britain are not mutually intelligible, it was thought strange that one could travel the long distances in America and still be understood without resorting to some received standard language. Some of the printed texts of American English, such as those of Mark Twain, led people in Britain to think that American English was much more different from British English than it was. This misconception was perpetuated by the underworld slang of the early talking pictures. Since people in the New World had to deal with very different flora, fauna, geographical features, and social situations, it was inevitable that many new vocabulary items would arise. Also, most people on the frontier were illiterate, or nearly so, and consequently were not likely to coin words in the fashion of a university professor.

Words were borrowed from many American Indian and European languages, e.g., raccoon, opossum, moose, crayfish, portage, caucus, cookey, and Santa Claus. Yankee is apparently derived from the Dutch Jan Kees (John Cheese), a derogatory nickname for the Dutch in New York and the Dutch Buccaneers on the Spanish Main. It is not known how this came to refer to Americans.

American English exerts a very strong pressure on British English and seems to have dragged British English with it, but few Briticisms have entered American English, e.g., candyshop (instead of store), smog, and wangle. Both British and American English have gone through similar periods of change. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both went through a period when euphemisms were used for terms that in any way referred to sex or that could be regarded as expletives. But again, America gave more than it received.

The pronunciation of British and American English differs very much. This is especially noticeable in the intonation or melody with which a sentence is pronounced. There are fewer syllables in many words in British English, e.g., extraordinary has five or six syllables in American English, but only four in British. The accent falls on different syllables, e.g., primárily in American English, but prímarily in British.

One of the most noticeable differences between Standard American and Standard British is the pronunciation of vowels. British English uses the so-called broad a of dark before many voiceless consonants and consonant clusters where American English uses the so-called flat a of that. But, contrary to a general belief in America, the flat a is used in many words in British English, e.g., fancy, stamp, and gas. Also, despite a general belief to the contrary, the flat a is not a “corruption” of the broad a. Works published in England and America in the late eighteenth century show that many words that now have broad a in England and New England had the flat a. Between 1830 and 1850, the broad a “ran riot” in the Boston area.

There are few differences in the pronunciation of consonants in America and Britain. The most commonly noticed is the dropping of r at the ends of syllables in Britain, where the r is pronounced in America except in a few areas, such as parts of New England and Tidewater, Virginia. Mencken is incorrect in his statement that the I of the first syllable of fulfil and the d of kindness are dropped in Britain but not in America, since many Americans drop these also.

In the seventeenth century, the rules of English spelling were very vague, and early documents contain spellings that seem fantastic today. As printing increased, uniformity began to appear. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the principal English authors spelled much alike. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, published in 1755, achieved universal acceptance as a guide to orthography, and many of his spellings are still accepted. Benjamin Franklin attempted to establish an orthography in 1768, which added six new letters; but it remained for Noah Webster to achieve a divorce between British and American spelling practice with his Grammatical Institute of the English Language, published in 1783. Webster’s motives were in part patriotic since he wished American English when printed to look different from British English. Webster’s The American Spelling Book, the first part of his Grammatical Institute, went through various editions and sold 62 million copies by 1889. Webster’s legacy has left us with -or instead of -our in words like color, s instead of c in words like defense, -er instead of -re in words like theater, and characteristic spellings, especially, jail, wagon, plow, mold, and ax.

Mencken’s robust joy in describing the development of English in America will provide the reader with a fascinating account of how many parts of our language came to be without subjecting him to the jargon and technicalities of modern linguistics. The American Language is not a technical history of the development of American English, but for the general reader or anyone with bicentennial fever, it provides a most enjoyable introduction to the development of American English.

—James E. Redden, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Reviews: NAMES ON THE GLOBE

George R. Stewart, Oxford University Press, 1975

Rumor has had it for years that George Stewart was working on a book dealing with the place-names of the world. Now rumor can cease, having been proved correct by the recent publication of his substantial volume presenting a reasoned account of the naming of places on this ever-shrinking planet of ours. Despite its obviously intentional titular reverberation, Names on the Globe is not simply a global rewriting of the earlier, more national, Names on the Land. It is in many ways a more mature book, having shed much, although not all, of the romanticism of the earlier work, but, thank goodness, not its touches of creative flair and recreative imagination. It is a vigorous book, displaying time and again refreshing touches of the youngest eighty-year-old mind in the profession. It is a methodical and well-organized book, and it is above all a personal book, drawing on the accumulated files and knowledge of one man’s life-long involvement with the entirely human phenomenon of names and naming.

It is, therefore, also an American book, viewing the globe and its toponymy with American eyes and interpreting this toponymy through the American experience. Illustrations of points made and of categories delineated in the general sections are largely taken from the American map or, for earlier periods, from English and Anglo-Saxon place-nomenclature. The phenomenon of phonetic transfer of names from one language to another, for example, is given substance by a detailed discussion of the loss of the middle consonant in Bexar, Texas, the retaining speech-habits reflected in San Francisco, Calif., and the complexity of relationships between American Indians and settlers in New England which produced such variants as Pequonnock, Poquomock, Poquonock, Pequannock, and Peconic from the same Indian original meaning something like ‘little field.’ Folk etymology is explained with the help of Smackover from French Chemin Convert, Picketwire from Purgatoire, and Lemonfair from Le Mont Vert. For visual transfer Stewart cites the influence of Norman scribes in England where Dunham became Durham. Sarisbury was replaced by Salisbury, and Exester and Glouchester turned into Exeter and Gloucester. The spelling of Los Angeles demonstrates the influence of printing, and the name of Raft River in southern Idaho is Stewart’s cultural detective story worthy of a Simenon.

In the long middle chapter devoted to the naming activities of man in different parts of the world–a kind of applied toponymics illustrating the principles expounded in the more philosophically, more theoretically, more methodologically oriented portions of the book–America and the British Isles, too, dominate the discussion, supplemented chiefly by coverage of the toponymy of classical Greece (Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, etc.) and Rome (Rome, Latium, Florence, Pavia, etc.), of the Biblical Near East (Genesis 31: “And Laban called it Jegarsahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed” is a beautiful example of dual naming, and Numbers 32: “And Nobah went and took Kenath, and villages thereof, and called it Nobah, after his own name” shows a devastating sense of personal achievement culminating in the right to name), and the age of exploration (Columbus the Namer!), whereas both Africa and Asia receive comparatively short shrift, and the Scandinavian countries, so well researched onomastically, hardly figure at all. It is a globe as seen and appreciated in its proportions from the U.S. or, perhaps, even more narrowly, from California.

There may be those who might think of such a distorted globe in purely negative terms, demanding comprehensiveness and balanced coverage in a volume of such pretensions. This reviewer is not one of them. It is so much more satisfying to have an author operate within the well staked-out range of his private knowledge–and Stewart’s range is considerable–than have him flounder in waters whose depths he has not sufficiently probed, relying exclusively on other people’s marker buoys. That things have, nevertheless, gone wrong occasionally, mostly because of reliance on not completely reliable sources (W.C. Mackenzie is hardly the best authority to choose for Scotland, for example, and P.W. Joyce, although excellent in his time, is not the last word on Irish place names) is not surprising and probably almost unavoidable in a one-man undertaking of this scope, especially when such a large number of languages is involved.

There is, however, a second advantage to a scrutiny of our global place-nomenclature from an American point of view. As Stewart points out quite rightly in a number of different contexts, the preoccupation of many European scholars with name-etymology, i.e. with the linguistic roots of a name and its linguistic evolution, has tended to neglect altogether the toponymic principles as they quite clearly emerge from an examination of the processes of naming and of the results of such processes in areas, like the American west, settled within human memory or at most within the last century or two. Once the purely linguistic approach has been abandoned, an opportunity has been provided for a new kind of onomastic vision which treats names as names and not just as words with peculiar properties. Although Stewart does not concern himself in any detail with the whole question of the relationship between name and word, his insistence on a study of naming, rather than of names, or in addition to that of names, creates an intellectual climate in which all kinds of exciting new things become possible, not the least of which would be the removal of names from a purely lexical context. Even the more than one hundred bodies of water in Minnesota, called Mud Lake, make sense now, as do such cultural transfers from Europe as Boston, New Orleans, and Harlem, or, within the United States, Lexington and Winchester. A shift of stress from Ber’lin to ‘Berlin and a lengthening of vowel in Āthens make something new out of a meaningless sound sequence.

To this reviewer, therefore, those chapters and sections of Stewart’s book that concentrate on “Man, the Namer,” “The Mind of the Namer,” and “Place-Names as Sources of Knowledge” are possibly more significant and challenging than the central chapter on “Namers at Work.” In these sections, Stewart’s mind is at its best, always probing, always questioning, always challenging, frequently committed. For this reason the book, while of necessity disappointing as a reference work which it was never meant to be, will be enjoyed most as just that–a challenge. That is certainly how I have read it, apportioning agreement or disagreement as I went along: approving of the emphasis on human motivation in naming; delighting at the attempts, however rudimentary, at a basic place-name grammar; being dissatisfied with the somewhat spurious reasons advanced in support of a claim for the near universality of “the specific-generic system”; raising my eyebrows (or at least the one which is still European) at the oversimplified presentation of the so-called “European research method,” but fully agreeing with the persuasive argument against a predominantly etymological approach to onomastic research; tut-tutting at one or two misprints like Angel for Angeln (p. 69) as the original homeland of the Angles; responding with pleasure to the outlining of “name systems”; being a little puzzled by the distinction made between descriptive and associative names; detecting certain apparent flaws in the categories of classification proposed; rejoicing in the treatment of incident names; missing some reference to the conversion of personal names into commemorative place-names without the addition of a generic; applauding the sound statements on folk-etymology, etc.

If there is still any doubt, let me reiterate: This is not a reference book, but one to be read carefully page by page, one to wrestle with, one to take a stand on. Whether Names on the Globe produces agreement or disagreement, delight or despair, approval or disapproval, it will never bore, but will not fail to challenge or to make one think. It will also never fail to serve as an excellent illustration of one of Stewart’s own, to this reviewer indisputable, statements (p. 370): “Yet, properly used, place-names can serve, legitimately and significantly, to extend knowledge.”

—W. F. H. Nicolaisen, State University of New York at Binghamton

Reviews: A STUDY OF WRITING

I.J. Gelb, A Phoenix Book, University of Chicago Press, 1973.

We accept writing as a natural part of our daily lives. We see its manifestations in all phases of our personal activity, and we seem to take it for granted. We tend to forget that ours is a print-oriented society, and that the progress of our civilization is in direct proportion to our ability to communicate with one another by means of the written word. Once we are cognizant of the importance of this subject in the history of mankind, it is only natural to ask about its origin and development. What general principles, for example, govern the use and evolution of writing through time, and can a theory of writing be developed which will explain these general laws? For more than two decades, Professor Gelb, a specialist in Near Eastern languages and Linguistics at the University of Chicago, has been preoccupied with these questions. This publication, which appeared in 1951 in its first edition and which has been consistently updated in subsequent revisions, is the culmination of his years of extensive research and academic experience on the subject.

Writing is an outgrowth of the cave paintings and stone carvings of prehistoric man. The geometric designs of the great Oriental writing systems, such as Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, Chinese, etc., were originally picture drawings. These pictures or logos were used to express concrete words. This is still evident in the rebus of the coat of arms of Oxford which shows an ox crossing a ford. These word signs, however, were limited. The next stage in the natural development of writing can be found in the use of syllabic signs. In Sumerian, for example, the syllable ti originated from the word sign ti which meant ‘arrow.’ The final stage in the history of writing came into being with the evolution of the alphabet where vowels are expressed by separate signs or by means of special diacritic marks. What is important about this historic account from signs and syllables to the alphabet is the fact that it represents a natural transition. Although a stage of evolution may be arrested, it cannot be skipped over or reversed.

The major word-syllable systems which Gelb discusses at length are Sumerian (3,100 B.C.-75 A.D.), Egyptian (3,000 B.C.-400 A.D.), Hittite (1,500-700 B.C.), and Chinese (1,300 B.C.-present). The origin of the Chinese system merits comment. It is known that the Chinese writing made its appearance during the Shang dynasty as a fully developed phonetic system. Since sophisticated writing systems do not spring up de novo, and since the Shang period was subject to many foreign influences, it can be reasonably argued that the word-syllable system of Chinese was borrowed, in principle and not in form, from the Near East.

Among the syllabic systems discussed by Gelb are Elamite, West Semitic, Cypriote, and Japanese. These systems were derived from the Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, and Chinese patterns, respectively. The West Semitic syllabary is of special importance because it gave us the Hebraic tradition of writing. Finally, the alphabetic systems singled out for explication by Gelb were Greek, Hebrew, and Sanskrit. Because Greek has a fully developed system of vowels and consonants it represents the ultimate in orthographic systems. Furthermore, although the forms have undergone minor modification with the passage of time, its underlying principle has not been improved upon for more than two millennia.

The study of grammatology, or the investigation of writing, is a fascinating topic. What makes it even more informative is the unique ability that Gelb has for conveying in lucid prose the general principles which govern the use and evolution of writing.

—Robert St. Clair, University of Louisville

Reviews: THE STORY OF THE ALEPH BETH

David Diringer, Thomas Yoseloff, Ltd., 1958.

Perhaps one of the greatest archeological finds in the story of the alphabet occurred accidentally in 1929 in the village of Ras Shamrah on the Syrian coast. In excavating the ruins, the ancient and prosperous town of Ugarit was discovered with thousands of clay tablets written in cuneiform, or stylus writing. It is conjectured that the alphabet employed in these tablets was invented by a native user of the North Semitic alphabet, and that he was adept in the use of the stylus on clay. This inference is based on the fact that out of the thirty letters used in the Ugaritic documents, twenty-two were not only similar in form and function to the North Semitic alphabet, but even appear in the same order of recitation. As expeditions continued to operate in the Near East, similar discoveries began to unfold. A mere decade later, another outstanding epigraphic, or stone writing, discovery was made in Lachish. It was here that the scribblings of a school boy on a clay tablet were found with the scratchings of the first five letters of the Early Hebrew alphabet. From all of these expeditions and discoveries, the story of the alphabet gradually emerged. It is a widely accepted fact that the word-syllabic writings of Egyptian formed the basis for the West Semitic and Phoenician syllabaries. From these the vocalic and consonantal system of Greek emerged as a superior orthographical system. The transition from the Old Hebrew syllabary to the contemporary Hebrew alphabet, however, is of special interest to Diringer and forms a major portion of his exposition.

The signs used in writing Old Phoenician are said to have originally represented pictures. Aleph was the head of an ox; beth was the picture of a house; and gimel represented the form of a camel. Because all writing systems grew out of pictographs or representations of pictures, this theory was widely believed. Diringer views this theory with skepticism and argues that the adoption of the names “oxhead,” “house,” and “camel” were merely artificial mnemonic devices similar to those which modern school children use when they recite: “A is for Apple.”

The chapter which deals with the Hebrew system for representing vowels is highly informative. Unlike the Greek alphabet, the vowels of Hebrew are not indicated by means of separate signs intercalated among the consonantal forms of a word, but are symbolized by means of separate diacritic marks placed below or among the consonantal signs. When these letters were included in writing, they were usually known as matres lectionis or ‘mothers of reading,’ because of their function in clarifying the reading process. The insertion of these vowel letters is sometimes referred to as scriptio plena (‘full script’), and the exclusion or omission as scriptio defectiva, (defective script’). An example of the two types of scripts can be seen in the name David which was written as DWD in the defective syllabary of Old Hebrew, and DWYD in the full script of alphabetic Hebrew. The sign Y is not an independent syllable, but functions as a device to guarantee that the W of DWYD is pronounced as WI and not as WA, WE, WO, or WU. From this system of matres lectionis the pure vowels of the Greek were but a natural extension of an innovative system.

Diringer, a specialist on writing systems, unfolds the history of the Hebrew alphabet in simple nontechnical language. Hence, this book is not only valuable for the student of Hebrew, but it is also relevant for those who share an interest in the rise and development of systems of orthography.

—Robert St. Clair, University of Louisville

EPISTOLA {Thomas L. Bernard}

There is no doubt in my mind that the contribution of the Celtic languages to English has been accorded short shrift and has not received the recognition by linguists and etymologists that it truly deserves. It was a source of satisfaction to this author therefore, to read the interesting and comprehensive article “The Celtic Element in English” by Cornelius J. Crowley of St. Louis University [VERBATIM II, 2, 9]. I certainly wish to add my voice to his, in decrying the minimizing of the Celtic contribution. Herewith are some further examples of words used in English whose etymological roots stem from an original Celtic influence: ambassador, from the original Celtic ambi-actus, ‘messenger’ (lit. ‘one sent around’), by way of the Latin ambactus, ‘helper or henchman’; andiron, from the Gaulish andera, ‘heifer’ (through association with cow’s horns as decorations); ballyhoo, from the name of the village (Ballyhooly) in Ireland noted for its brawls; bug, from the Welsh bwg, ‘bogie’ or ‘ghost’; bunny, from the Gaelic bun, meaning ‘bottom’ (the tail of a hare or a rabbit); coracle, from the Welsh corwgl, ‘boat’; corgi, this Welsh word consists of corr ‘dwarf’ and ci ‘dog’; cwm, Welsh for ‘valley,’ used as a geographic term; eistoddfod, ‘Welsh musical or poetic competition’ from the Welsh eisteddfodau, ‘sitting’ or ‘session’; flannel, from the Welsh gwlanen, which comes from the word gwlan meaning ‘wool’; gab, Gaelic for ‘mouth’ (and hence ‘chatter’) from which we also get the word gob (in England a popular form of candy for children is “gobstoppers”), and its derivatives gobble and goblet; galore, from the Gaelic gu ‘to’ and leor ‘sufficiency’; galosh, from the Gaulish gallica, ‘sandal’ (cf. Latin calligula, ‘soldier’s boot’); German, from the Celtic gairm, a battle cry transmitted via the Latin Germanus; golf, from the Gaelic gowf ‘blow with the hand’ (an acceptable pronunciation for golf is “gof”); gull, from the Welsh gwylan or the Breton gwelan, ‘sea bird’; havoc, from the Welsh hafog ‘devastation’; hooligan, a variant of the personal Irish surname Houlihan; hulla-baloo, the Irish name given to ‘wailing at funeral ceremonies’; humbug, from the Irish uim bog ‘soft copper’ (which was used to debase and counterfeit official coinage); key, from the Celtic cai ‘reef’ or ‘low island’ (cf. quay and Spanish cayo); lag, from the Cornish lag ‘wet and soiled’; Limerick, from the place name in Ireland; mallarkey, from the Irish personal surname which became associated with insincere or meaningless speech; minion, from a Celtic word meaning ‘small,’ hence ‘follower’ or ‘servile’; palfrey, from the Gaulish voredos (cf. Latin veredus ‘fast horse’) and related to Welsh gorwydd ‘horse’; penguin, from the Welsh pen ‘head,’ and gwyn ‘white’; plaid, from Gaelic plaide meaning a blanket or a woolen cloth; poteen, from the Irish poiteen, diminutive of pota ‘pot,’ and associated with the illicit distillation of whiskey; shenanigan, from the Irish sionnachuighim, ‘I play the fox’ connoting ‘deceit,’ ‘trickery,’ or ‘nonsense,’ shinny, from the Gaelic sinteag ‘skip’ or ‘jump,’ from which we also get shindig, ‘type of dance’ or ‘social affair’; sporran, from the Gaelic sporan ‘purse’ or ‘pouch’; Strathspey a Scottish place name, and the name of a dance; truant, from the Welsh truan ‘wretch’ or ‘vagabond’; tory, from the Irish toriudhe ‘robber’ or ‘highwayman,’ or from the Gaelic toir ‘pursuit’ (in origin the word referred to 17th century Irishmen who, having been dispossessed, became outlaws).

A number of place names in Cornwall appear to be English, but are actually Anglicized forms of the original Cornish. Examples are: Land’s End, which, being at the tip of southern England, sounds an appropriate enough name, even though it is actually llan sant ‘holy church.’ Another example is Lizard Point, the word lizard being a corruption of the Cornish llys ‘enclosure’ and ardd ‘high.’

In the past few issues of VERBATIM, there has been considerable discussion of “bilingual redundancies” and a number of examples have been examined. In this particular context of Celtic words, we can cite: the River Avon, or the River Afton (cf. the popular song, “Flow Gently Sweet Afton”), both of which mean ‘river river’ (Celtic afon ‘river'). Again in this regard, one could mention Mount Ben Nevis (or Ben Lomond, etc.), ben being Gaelic for a peak or mountain. Another instance of this exists in Pendle Hill, where ‘hill’ is repeated three times, first in Welsh (pen) then twice in Old English. A yet grosser tautological example is the name Torpenhow Hill, in which we find the Celtic tor, the Welsh pen, the Saxon how, and the Old English hill in sequence, so that the name translates as ‘hill hill hill hill.’

In his book The Story of Our Language, Henry Alexander states that, “the few words that seem to be of Celtic origin are insignificant.” Regrettably, remarks of this nature are expressed all too often by writers in the field who should know better. The sum of evidence to the contrary is such that the accuracy of this kind of statement is certainly open to serious question. [Thomas L. Bernard, Springfield College]

EPISTOLA {Edward C. Pinkerton}

Cornelius Joseph Crowley on “The Celtic Element in English” [VERBATIM II, 2, 9] could have cited more– and more frequently used–English words of Celtic origin simply by listing cognates of words that he did include. For example: from the same source as brock ‘badger’ come brocade, broach, brooch (according to the American Heritage Dictionary), and possibly broker (Eric Partridge’s Origins); from Old Celtic ?_karros_ > Gaulish _carros_ > Latin _carrus_ come, besides _car: carry, career, carriage, cargo, charge, carroche, cariole_ and _caricature;_ very possibly related to Celtic ?_pett_ ‘piece’ and Gaulish ?_pettia_ are _petty, petite, piece, patch_ and _pet, petticoat, pettifog, petty officer, petit_ jury, etc.; and descendants of Old Celtic ?_vassos_ ‘man’ are, besides _vassal: valet_ and _varlet._ Mr. Crowley missed a good bet in _embassy_ and _ambassador_, which trace back to Gaulish ?_ambactos_ ‘one who is sent around.’ …Because many of these words came to English by way of Latin and Old French, their ultimately Celtic origins are often overlooked.

On the other hand, English clan, cross and ass are claimed by Mr. Crowley as Celtic because derived from Irish but, according to the experts on my bookshelves, these words were earlier derived by Irish or Scottish from the Latin: clan via Scottish Gaelic clann ‘offspring’ from Latin planta ‘shoot for cultivation, scion’; cross via Old Irish cross from Latin crux, crucem; and ass from Latin asinus via Old Irish asan (Merriam-Webster 3rd). Latin asinus in turn is thought to have come ultimately from a non-Indo-European, Asia Minor source–American Heritage says: “from the same source as Sumerian ansu”; and the ultimate source of cross may be Punic (Carthaginian or Phoenician).

It is pertinent to ask when a Celtic word entered the mainstream that evolved into modern English. Many, such as slogan (1513), whiskey (1715), blarney (1810) and smithereens (1841) are comparatively recent borrowings. (The dates are from the Oxford English Dictionary). Also, many words on Mr. Crowley’s list are used almost exclusively in an Irish or Scottish setting: asthore, cateran, colleen, claymore, gallowglass, kern, macushla, mavourneen, ogham, pibroch, spalpeen.

The possibly Celtic derivation of curse (from Irish cúrsagim) is mentioned by Eric Partridge (in Origins), by the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, and by Merriam-Webster 2nd; but not by the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster 3rd, or American Heritage, all of which account curse to be of obscure or unknown origin; indeed the OED states flatly: “no word of similar form and sense is known in Teutonic, Romanic, or Celtic” –and they don’t alter this opinion in the 1972 Supplement.

Finally, the word leprechaun has metathesized from Old Irish luchorpán, where the lu- element means ‘small’ and the -chorpan derives from Latin corpus ‘body’; hence, ‘small body.’ [Edward C. Pinkerton, Baltimore, Maryland]

EPISTOLA {Patrick Drysdale}

I am most grateful to Mr. Crowley for providing so much information about Celtic loan words in English [VERBATIM II, 2, 9]. I was glad to note the inclusion of shebeen, but I was sorry to miss shebang ‘a low drinking establishment frequented by the loggers and rivermen of Lower and Upper Canada.’ The definition is from A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (Toronto: Gage, 1967), which also includes the following note:

Although this term is usually assumed to derive from Cdn F cabane, it seems possible, in view of the Canadian sense, that Irish shebeen of similar meaning was the source, especially since Irishmen were prominent among the shantymen with whom the term is associated.

The second meaning given covers the phrase the whole shebang, pointing out that the citation from a Newfoundland folk song (_c_1885) also suggests possible Irish influence.

The note quoted above is cross-referred to another at the entry for shanty:

Although the most probable source of shanty is Cdn F chantier, especially in lumbering contexts, the possibility remains that a similar word, derived from Irish Gaelic sean tig ‘hut’ may have been introduced by Irish immigrants into Upper Canada, where the term seems first to have enjoyed currency; it may well be, therefore, that two different words of similar form contributed to the generalization of this term and its derivatives in Canada during the nineteenth century. Cp. note at shebang.

Whether or not Crowley would admit shanty as a possible derivation from Irish I don’t know, but the possibility allows for interesting speculation on linguistic miscegenation.

While I have the Dictionary of Canadianisms to hand, I would also like to comment on the fascinating note on barberchairing from W. H. Rawlings [VERBATIM II, 2, 16]. The verb is new to me, but a barber chair has, I believe, long been used in lumbering circles for the evidence of sloppy tree-felling that leaves ‘a stump having an upright flange left standing above the undercut when the tree topples.’ [See illustration.] This meaning is assumed to have come from the fact that the resulting stump looks like a high-backed seat. If a tree thus miscut is likely to twist as it falls, then the verb barberchair may have developed from the open compound with a re-interpretation of its meaning.

What, in fact, are the semantics of barber chair? Does it suggest primarily a seat with a tall back, a seat that rotates, or–perhaps more to the point–one that is inclined to topple over backwards? I wonder, too, whether these lumbering uses of the term barber originally had any connection with the notion of poor cutting; the connotations of barber in informal speech have not always been the most favorable. Does your enlightened readership include any lumbering experts who can elucidate this mystery? [Patrick Drysdale, Gage Publishing Limited Agincourt, Ontario, Canada]

EPISTOLA {John J. Ruster}

I would like to make a few comments on “Celtic Elements in English” [VERBATIM II, 2, 9].

As the author says, Celtic elements in English are too often slighted. This is equally true of other areas where Celtic civilization used to flourish. Remainders, in specific words, turns of phrase, and very commonly in place-names are common in France, southwest Germany, and to a lesser extent in N. Spain and in Portugal.

A peculiarly Celtic trait is the reckoning of people and things in sets of twenty. This survives in our English score. All Celtic languages still spoken (Irish and Scots Gaelic, Welsh and Breton) reckon in this manner: two score, three score and ten, etc. In modern French only the four score (quatrevingt) has survived. Oddly enough, reckoning is also done in this manner in the Basque language, which is considered to be unrelated to any other known language. I am not aware of such usage in German, although, especially in the Bavarian dialect, Celtic survivals are alive and well, such as in the word Trumm (cf. Scots Gaelic truime) ‘an unusually large and ponderous object’ or ‘a very sturdily built man.’ But in S. Germany the ‘half-a-hundred’ as an alternative to ‘two-score-and-ten’ has survived.

The Old-Irish carpat ‘carpenter’ must be a loanword derived from the Latin carpentum, ‘wagon’ or ‘chariot,’ first used in Augustan times. Hence came carpentarius, initially used as an adjective (Pliny) and still later as ‘a maker of carriages.’ Celtic words for ‘carpenter’ differ widely. The oldest may be saor, an undifferentiated ‘universally skilled artificer,’ ‘companion of kings,’ and sometimes ‘god.’

An interesting aspect of cateran (Scots Gael. ceathairne) is its connection with the number four, i.e. ‘fourth estate,’ Celtic society had three classes with defined status and privileges: the king, the nobles, and the freemen. At the bottom of the pyramid were the landless peasants, tinkers, jugglers, etc. Though they did not have rights that were spelled out, there was the possibility of “upward mobility.” The term did not become one of scorn until relatively recent history, when political and economic upheavals drove some of the Scots into rebellious acts and brigandage.

On “Irish Bulls” [VERBATIM II, 1, 1] and the German bull, by an odd coincidence of assonance, the German word for this linguistic extravagance is Verbalhornen. Dictionaries usually translate this as ‘to bowdlerize.’ This is incorrect, inasmuch as the worthy Rev. Bowdler won his fame by presenting the world with a “cleaned up” version of Shakespeare. Johann Balhorn, a German printer who died at Luebeck c. 1574, took liberties with the works he printed, but his thrust was to heighten the impact and elegance, rather than the elevation of the moral tone. Collections of fables, very popular in his days, traditionally had a picture of a rooster on the last page. Balhorn is credited with an edition in which the rooster had no spurs, but proudly stood beside a basket filled with eggs.

The exercise in futility of “going from Pontius to Pilate” is an example of “German bull.” [John J. Ruster, Monterey, California]

EPISTOLA {Sol Rosenfeld}

Qui Docet Discit?

At the risk of incurring the wrath of linguistic liberals and being called “an intolerant guardian of the language,” I feel that I am on pretty safe ground since my joust is as champion of the Hebrew language. I am grateful to VERBATIM for many things, not the least of which is the opportunity of venting my spleen at the shabby way Hebrew is treated–both as to transliteration and translation–by various Bible editions, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and by people who should know better.

At first, I wanted to chide Prof. R. B. Lees for his writing H (with the dot on the bottom failing to show up altogether towards the end of the article’ and S [VERBATIM I, 3, 1] until I read the article by Prof. Harvey Minkoff [VERBATIM I, 4, 8] and it struck me that it must be the rule of the house, in which case may I ask the editor: What is all this Tzimes-Gedünze-Fuss all about? Many languages have certain letters that speakers of other languages have difficulty pronouncing, such as the Arabs say “Bombey” for Pompeii and “batrack” for patriarch. The Russians say “Gillels” for Hillels and “Kagan” for Kahan. Equally famous are “rots of ruck” of Japan and Korea and “flied lice” of China, and so on. Yet, no one makes any bones about it. But when it comes to that throat-clearing sound–my, oh!, my!–the linguists run around in circles. I have seen it written as CH-KH-H and even HH and some by the same language outfits. Since the English language is a twig of the so-called Teutonic branch of the language tree, why not do as the Germans do? They write macht, nacht, auch, Mittwoch. You would not write maht, naht, auh, and, certainly not (with a courtesy nod to Prof. Read), Walphaggis-naht.

As far as S is concerned, Mr. Peter Farb in his interesting book, Word Play, points out on page 351 that the sound “sh” is written fourteen different ways in the English language and, believe it or not, S is not among them. So the question still remains, why look for strange gods when we have show, shoe, shine, shadow, etc.?

I enjoyed Prof. Lees’s article very much, but was surprised to find that he makes a couple of errors while he finds fault with other scholars. I refer to eslag which is in reality ashlag, and is derived from the Assyrian ashlagu ‘snowlike.’ ‘Snow’ in Hebrew is sheleg, in Aramaic tlag or talga, and in Arabic talj, while ashl’gan is kalium. He writes that hamtzan comes from hometz ‘vinegar,’ but that is not correct at all. First chamtzan is derived from chametz, which means general ‘sourness,’ and is applied to sour dough as well as vinegar. ‘Vinegar’ is called chometz because it is the ‘essence of sourness’ I am sure that Prof. Lees knows the origin of the word vinegar, and if there is any doubt in his mind as to anything I have written, being Professor at Tel-Aviv University, I am certain that he can substantiate or repudiate my statements with a little more research. [Sol Rosenfeld, Brooklyn, New York]

Shortly after we received the above, we received word of Mr. Rosenfeld’s death. Since certain comments in his original letter made reference to material he intended to send us later on, but which he did not complete, we have taken the liberty of editing the preceding to eliminate those remarks we found irrelevant.

In reply to Mr. Rosenfeld’s criticism of our “house” style, we can say only that we have none for Hebrew, and we made every attempt to follow Prof. Lees’s diacritics accurately. —Editor [LU]

EPISTOLA {Dorrice R. Morrow}

If you ever do give us some Words of Wisdom about “it’s me,” please consider the plural pronouns and their colloquial usage. This is a quotation from a letter to Saturday Review (5/31/75): “…I think all of us would be happier to return to taxation without representation. Then someone else, not us, would be responsible for the inequities.”

A group waiting to be summoned for jury duty is told: “Everybody assigned to Judge C’s court, come this way.” Someone says, “Come on. That’s us.”

In the first quotation, the error offends the ear. In the second, it seems fairly natural, i.e., colloquial.

How about the third person plural? “Do your parents know you are here?” “Sure, it was them who sent us.” They would be correct, but would it be more forceful?

You cannot get this controversial subject tied up in a bow knot, but your opinions would be of interest, indeed. [Dorrice R. Morrow, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania]

Acceptability lies in the ear of the listener or, more likely, in that part of his brain tempered by his prejudices. To some, any kind of solecism at all is offensive; to others, who consider themselves liberated, the essence of language lies in communication, however that may be construed as devoid of grammatical stringencies; to us, although rudimentary communication may have its virtues born of necessity, an essential part of communication remains the style with which information is transferred and the appropriateness of the style. Thus, we consider poor grammar poor style; where style is not terribly important, the importance of good grammar wanes. In many colloquial situations, style is less critical than bare communication. In the first example, we should examine carefully the appropriateness of the solecism in a letter dealing with a serious subject, published in a periodical of some literary responsibility. Since we can assume that the letter is reprinted verbatim, can we not also assume that SR’s reprinting it as it stands reflects the editor’s silent commentary on the opinion expressed by the writer? [See Martin Fincun’s letter in VERBATIM 1, 2, 7, for example.]

We cannot, frankly, imagine anyone saying “That’s we,” in the second example. The only way around the problem is via “He means [or They mean] us.” It is hard to say that “That’s us,” “It’s me,” and a few other expressions of the same ilk are unacceptable: surely, to the purist they are, and if you are dealing with purists, such constructions should be avoided (if you care what the purists think), but the direct grammatical alternatives are, at best, awkward. The problem is compounded by the fact that acceptability and unacceptability vary with the purist and with the degree of “perfection”–whatever that is–the purist is capable of insisting upon.

Your query about the forcefulness carried by they in place of them in the last example is a highly personal one: we don’t find them any more forceful than they. Surely, something like, “Who did you think sent us?” might have been even more forceful and more dramatic. There are, of course, many alternatives that can be considered–“Naturally ! They sent us!” [with appropriate stress]; “Of course! Do you think we’d’ve come if they hadn’t (sent us)?” –and so on. It is bootless, when dealing with poor style, to consider alternatives that represent mere grammatical corrections: one must deal with the entire expression. —Editor [LU]

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