From Swift by Way of Johnson

From Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (published 1755):

Modernism: Deviation from the ancient and classical manner. A word invented by Swift.

Scribblers send us over their trash in prose and verse, with abominable curtailings and quaint modernisms. -SWIFT

Respect at Cana

The term “woman” was an address used in the ancient world without any suggestion of disrespect.

Genesis 3:15 “And I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in ambush at her heels.”

John 2:4 “Jesus answered her, Nay, woman, why dost thou trouble me with that? My time has not come yet.”

John 19:26 “And Jesus, seeing his mother there, and the disciple, too, whom he loved, standing by, said to his mother, Woman, this is thy son.”

Of F-Bombs, N-Words, and G-Ratings

What’s more selfish than the gluttony of Augustus Gloop, more demanding than the tantrums of Veruca Salt, more bovine than the obsessive masticating of Violet Beauregarde, and more vacuous than the glassy stare of Mike Teavee?

Recently I met up with a group of friends, one of whom I’ve known since high school. The next day I phoned her to ask that when we got together next, she not drop any more F-bombs on the proceedings. I was invited to find another circle of friends to spend evenings with; news reached me later through another party that yours truly is now said to be good primarily for G-rated gatherings.

An F-bomb is an ugly and gross word that sours joy and wrecks mirth, one that is favored by ill-mannered people who shabbily seek to be the center of attention. It is the language of ungenerous and dreary souls; repeated or frequent utterance makes a person (whether the speaker or the victim) dull and obtuse. It is a misnomer to call recourse to it an “adult” matter. I say, let’s have only adult conversations - ones characterized by the respect, civility, good humor, and camaraderie beyond the ken of rotten children.

Now, the expression in question describes a loveless sex act. It is a crudity unfortunately attached to a natural and beautiful matter that creates new human life, something to inspire awe and wonder and joy. An F-bomb is a demeaning shout of contempt against life itself that has all the charm and eloquence of a racial epithet.

But should anyone ever ask that it not be used?

If we take the view that one abusive remark should be tolerated, then consider what other vulgar, crude, or objectionable phrases should also be tolerated. Is the N-word all right? How about slang for genitalia? If the granddaddy of repulsive terms is fair game, then it seems the consistent course would be to say that anything is fair game.

In that case, an individual who gave voice to the wish that everyone practice a bit of courtesy in their language would be unwelcome indeed.

Meanwhile, the original Willy Wonka film was rated G.

Order in Variety?

An oxymoron is a contradiction with good PR.

Hinglish

In this post I described how an Indian co-worker instructed me in the way to say thank you ("Dhayanwad") in India.

I told that sory this week to anoyther pair of Indian so-workers. Today Jay (full name: too difficult for me to pronounce) explained that the "Hinglish" spelling is actually "Dhanyavad."

Hinglish, of course, being the blended Hindi-English structure.

Lest you think this is merely a fad, in 2005 author B.K. Mahal wrote the book, "The Queen's Hinglish." Not the stuff of Receive Pronunciation, of course, but an indication that the topic has staying power.

Oh, and "Shukriya" = "Welcome."

Lorem Ipsum

Lorem Ipsum is placeholder text that has been used in the printing business since the 1500s.

I use it routinely in my web site design work. There are plenty of times when I need to show what a web page will look like with text in it -- it helps when I need to demonstrate a layout or collect feedback on a new design.

Experience has shown, however, that when I use real copy -- say, a composition of my own or something pulled from an existing publication -- my audience inevitably reads it and wants to comment on the style or modify the punctuation. It doesn't matter if I explain that it is just placeholder text, or if I write DRAFT in big letters across the page: real copy in a demo page is distracting.

Another unsuccessful tactic is to just fill the screen with xxxxoooxxxoooo etc. The chief drawback here is that such text doesn't adequately convey that the space will be filled with words -- it looks like a static shape that does not correspond to any known language outside of computer binary.

What to do?

Centuries ago, a typesetter adapted language from the De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Ends of Goods and Evils) of Cicero (106 – 43 BC). A gifted orator and writer, Cicero's writings are regarded as a model of Latin prose. The old linguist's Latin was deemed adequate for the typesetter's task because the dead language roughly corresponds to word size and sentence length for modern western languages -- thus, a reader could get a rough but accurate sense of what a page would look like without being distracted by a chance typesetting error.

The typesetter's adaptation runs like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, leo cras vivamus, velit cras, tellus dolor urna nullam integer pharetra dolor, amet platea egestas nibh, urna id. Eget feugiat nibh dictum magna suspendisse est, penatibus tincidunt venenatis, vitae pharetra leo, porttitor hendrerit rutrum...

This is gibberish of course -- back when the passage was adapted, literate people still read Latin (and memorized large chunks of it to boot). No doubt a 16th century editor worth his salt would have scoffed at any mistake in a citation from the great Roman statesman. The unknown typesetter's solution, then, was to truncate terms and fold in a fair measure of constructions that were nonsense.

The Ciceronian original is here:

Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipiscing velit, sed quia non numquam do eius modi tempora incididunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

Rendered in the vulgar tongue, Cicero's sage advice is as follows:

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

For reasons I've never heard explained, inserting a nonsensical version of Cicero's Latin into a page layout is known as "Greeking."

A little nonsense now and then
Is cherished by the wisest men.
- W. Wonka

Let's Scrabble

I asked Dad whether I should bring his Scrabble board with me when I returned to the hospital to see him tomorrow.

He gave me an incredulous look.

"I fully expect to be trounced," I said.

"As you should," he replied.

Dad's Arena

The Scrabble board is an arena where Dad consistently excels. Colleagues routinely reach for a dictionary when he speaks; his gift for writing is likewise extraordinary.

"Did you know that 'Aa' is a word?" he asked.

"Do you mean as an acronym for Alcholics Anonymous?"

"No, it's a Hawaiin word for a type of volcanic rock."

"Has it made its way into the the standard American lexicon?"

"I don't know, but it is in the Scrabble official dictionary."

"Great," I said.

"The letters 'Ae' and 'Ai' are also words in the dictionary," he concluded.

Upon returning home I confirmed that "Ae" is a Scottish word meaning one and "Ai" is a word for a three-toed sloth. All are considered standard English.

I'm gonna get creamed.

Latin in English

A number of expressions and grammatical rules from Latin have made their way into common use among English speakers. As there are few Latin scholars among us, the rules for correct use are sometimes misunderstood -- which is not surprising, given that sometimes even the scholars have gotten it wrong.

Here's a stab at offering clarification to borrowed terms and making corrections to popular misconceptions.

i.e., e.g., via, etc., viz.* i.e. = id est in Latin; means that is or in other words (often confused with e.g.)
* e.g. = exempli gratia in Latin; means for example (often confused with i.e.)
* via = means by way of or by means of (old-fashioned)
* etc. = et cetera in Latin; means and the rest or and so forth
* viz. = videlicet in Latin; means namely or to wit

Ending sentences with prepositions everywhereThis is a no-no in Latin; it's perfectly fine in English, however. So why did generations of English teachers tell us not to do this? Because they were all taught the wrong thing too. A few centuries back a group of literary Englishmen (I've seen Dryden's name included in that mix) attempted to ennoble the mundane English language; one standard they applied was make it resemble the noble Latin tongue of the Romans. And so these gents set about applying rules of Latin grammar to English. The application was foreign and arbitrary, but it has stayed with us to this day.

To boldly split infinitivesIn Latin, you can't split an infinitive with an ax; not so in English. Thus, Captain Kirk was perfectly within his rights in describing his ship's five-year mission "To boldly go where no man has gone before." It was another Latin norm arbitrarily applied to English.

Collective Nouns in Space

The traditional collective nouns can be interesting enough. Consider:
* a sloth of bears,
* a murder of crows,
* a mob of kangaroos,
* a parliament of owls, etc.

But what about the collective nouns for space critters?

Here's something to get the warp coils revved:
* a pinch of Vulcans,
* a force of Jedi,
* a toast of Cylons,
* a scarf of Whos, etc.

Feel free to add your own.

Eat Your Cake

The meaning of the expression “To eat your cake and have it too” is that one wants to have something both ways when the two ways are mutually exclusive. I suspect the literal meaning is often forgotten or overlooked, but it actually is serviceable in grasping the concept: the correct sense is that one wants to eat his cake and still have it. The two parts of the expression are frequently reversed as “To have your cake and eat it too.” There’s no difficulty in that, of course: anyone can have a cake and eat it. Ah, but to eat it and still have it: that is a worthy trick.

A popular expression whose literal meaning is obscure to me is “To call a spade a spade.” This is broadly understood to mean that one looks at a situation square-on, without equivocation or dissembling; as such it is a near cousin of saying “The emperor has no clothes.” But (Erasmus aside) what the literal meaning is of calling a spade a spade is I have no clear idea.

Calling All Beings

Earlier in my career I was a technical writer. One job I had was writing and designing computer-based training (CBT) courses: I authored courses for Microsoft applications that were administered on a computer, sans instructor.

My editor was a former N.O.W. member and still-active feminist. She had a policy that she never read anything written by a man (editing my work was a concession to necessity: she was obliged to pay the bills). Her remarks were peppered with observations about the frail egos of men and references to her former New Age guru, who at one point had exorcised the demon that had possessed her (I asked her if the possession had been unexpected or if she had been dabbling in forbidden areas; she said she'd been dabbling).

She was also a superb editor; I am an improved writer today for having worked with her. I described some of her techniques to an editor I know at the Cincinnati Enquirer, and he once used them in a presentation he gave at an editor's roundtable that was favorably received by his colleagues.

Not every conversation bore fruit, however. For example, one day the conversation centered on the use of the masculine pronoun.

"Some people say to use 'they' even for the singular case so as to avoid the use of 'he' or 'him,' but that's just poor grammar," I said.

"Yes, you're right," my editor replied. "The desire to remove sexism from the language is no excuse for writing badly."

"What do you recommend then?" I asked. "Should the word 'person' be used?"

"Absolutely not!" she said. "That word has 'son' in it, which is another manifestation of sexism."

"Well then what word should be used?" I asked.

"The word to use is 'being.'"

"'Being'?"

"Yes, it is safe from sexist connotations."

"But nobody will ever adopt such an alien expression to describe something as common and everyday as an individual."

"I know," she sighed. "But that's no excuse for surrendering."

"I think you're on your own for that one," I said.

The last time I saw her, she was mid-eye-roll about my wife's decision to become a Catholic, that quintessentially patriarchial religion. Only later did I decide to become Catholic myself; I never sought the editor's perspective on the matter, but I'm confident I could have puzzled it out if needed.

Which is too bad: I might have enjoyed explaining that it was Catholicism that raised women from the degraded status of mere property (c.f. paganism) to new heights because of the Christian creed. Not surprisingly, as society evolves its downward way into secularism and further afield from a Christian worldview, the tenets of paganism are returning, and women are again being restored to their status as mere objects of passion.

Malum quo communius eo peius.

The Eskimo "K"

A 19th century Oblate missionary and frontiersman among the Eskimo of the Labrador coast, one Fr. Lacasse, gave this description of the Eskimo "k" or "kh" sound:

"Learning to pronounce the k would give you a sore throat. You have to fetch up a sound from the pit of the stomach, arrest it as it passes through the throat, hurl it violently into the nose, then, in spite of your repugnance, and in spite of all the laws of motion, you must bring it back into the throat, there to receive its death-stroke."

From Mid Snow and Ice, p. 159, Rev. Fr. Pierre Douchaussois, O.M.I.

Neological Research

My last year and a half as an undergraduate saw me conducting research for the professor of English whose "History of the English Language" classes I'd attended for my senior seminar. My professor's speciality was following the development of new words, or neology; he also had a hand in the compilation of several dictionaries.

When I knew him one of his projects was creating a catalog of words used in American English that have British derivations. My job was to take yellow high-lighter in hand, work my way through the three sets of dictionaries that I was provided, and highlight entries that were designated as British (as opposed to French, German, etc.). In short, my job was reading dictionaries.

Language Abuse

Corporate Speak is an occupational hazard in the business world. Pointless phrases like "it is what it is" and bizarre constructions such as "recycle your interactions by designing rituals and addictions" that epitomize vacant intensity and pseudo-wisdom crop up more frequently than is safe for human consumption.

Sometimes the attempt to come across as spontaneously profound falls flat on its vacuous face. Such is the case I experienced when a fellow I knew declared that he was going to "focus on everything." Now, the point of focusing is to exclude a majority of elements or considerations so as to pay greater attention to those that remain; thus, to "focus on everything" is a contradiction (and not an oxymoron). And contradictions, like mixed metaphors, are imperfections -- i.e. evidence that the speaker or writer has not troubled himself to work out a reasoned remark, but has decided to inflict his incoherent ramblings on his neighbors. The proper response to a nonsensical contradiction (and not a paradox) is to quit paying attention to the rambler post-haste.

Other times Corporate Speak sours expressions that are actually suitable for general use. Recently I heard a professional apologize for using the "marketing jargon" of "dovetail." The term "dovetail," it turns out, is a perfectly legitimate word meaning "to join elegantly or congruently." To persons with an ever-shrinking vocabulary, however, even reasonable words like "dovetail" are beyond the pale, devoid of significance beyond their ability to impress dull listeners conditioned to give Pavlovian responses to Corporate Speak.

One effort at compensation (I have several) is to read extracts from my truncated copy of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. Consider:
* Kiss: Salute given by joining lips
* Puppet: A wooden tragedian
* Stockjobber: A low wretch who gets money by buying and selling shares
* Uxorious: Submissively fond of a wife; infected with connubial dotage

Reading a few passages such as these becomes a form of verbal therapy or lexicographical rehabilitation that stimulates the mind numbed by jargon and soothes outraged sensibilities.

Militia est vita hominis super terram

Militia est vita hominis super terram is brought to you by the Book of Job; loosely rendered in the vulgar tongue, it means "man's life on earth is a warfare."

I ended the post on Alice's Daughter with the quotation; hopefully the point was not too oblique -- i.e. that the most satisfying solutions to life's enigmas can't be discovered by following the convenient path, and that Heaven is won not by people who embrace the spirit of the age, but by those who overcome it.

Not that I'm a Latin scholar (though I know one), but I've developed an interest in the tongue after becoming Catholic. The little chapel I attend has its Masses in Latin, so I've incidentally picked up a few words and phrases along the way.
* Dominus vobiscum = The Lord be with you.
* Et cum spiritu tuo = And with thy spirit.
* Pater noster, qui es in caelis = Our Father, who art in Heaven, etc.

For my part, I took Russian in high school and college. It's a pretty harsh-sounding inflected language at the best of times -- for instance, to express the romantic sentiment "I love you," one must cram together a number of consonants in Slavic fashion and spit out, "Ya tebya lyou-byou." I did have a few moments of fun with Russian, though -- for example, the word for "stupid" is "gloopy," which is itself a stupid-sounding word.