Category: Language

Semicolonical

By Simon

After the fun we had yesterday with apostrophes, I thought it was time to become a bit semicolonical and to discuss the often over-looked semicolon, which is perhaps the punctuation mark most likely to fall out of use in the not too distant future. In fact many people rarely if ever use it already, except in emoticons ;).

The semicolon was first used by Aldus Manutius the elder (1449-1515) to separate words opposed in meaning and to mark off interdependent statements. It was introduced into English in 1560, and was used throughout Europe by the late 18th century.

There are two main uses of the semicolon in English:

1) It can be used to join independant clauses not linked by a co-ordinating conjunction such as and or but. For example:

regular exercise helps reduce blood pressure; a balanced diet is also important.

2) It can be used in lists containing commas within each point. For example:

Henry’s mother believes three things: that every situation, no matter how grim, will be happily resolved; that no one knows more about human nature than she; and that Henry, who is thirty-five years old, will never be able to do his own laundry.

Source: www.uottawa.ca

In some languages, such as Greek and Church Slavonic, the semicolon is used as a question mark. How are semicolons used in your language?

Apostrophication

By Simon

The thorny subject of apostrophes and their usage came up in the comments on a recent post. There seems to be considerable confusion about when to use the common or garden aspostrophe, which is might be thought of as a comma that’s got above itself.

In English the apostrophe is used to indicate possession, as in the boy’s toys, the girls’ hair and the cat’s pyjamas. It comes after the s if the noun is plural. When a noun ends in an s, the apostrophe can go after that s, or another s can be added, e.g. Mr Jones’ hat or Mr Jones’s hat. Apostrophes show that letters have been omitted, as in don’t, he’ll and they’ve, and can also be used when writing the plurals of individual letters, such as p’s and q’s.

Apostrophical uncertainity arises with the personal pronouns as they don’t follow the behaviour of ordinary nouns. Logically the possessives yours, its, hers, ours and theirs should have apostrophes, but the grammarians who devised the rules for the use of apostrophes, notably Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray, forgot to include them. It’s is a contraction of it is or it has, so the possessive has to be its.

The use of apostrophes to show plurals, as in potato’s and tomato’s is frowned on but understandable – these words are fairly unusual in that they end with vowels. If you’re not sure of the real plurals (potatoes and tomatoes), you might think that adding ‘s would avoid the misleading pronunciations like ‘pot-at-oss’ and ‘tom-at-oss’. Afterall, apostrophes are sometimes used to show the plurals like 1960’s.

One area of apostrophe usage that I’m not sure about is in expressions such as a weeks holiday, or should that be week’s? And a days/day’s wages. As these expressions show possession, I suppose apostrophes should be used, but it feels wrong to me – how can the abstract concept of a week or a day possess anything?

New phrases page

By Simon

I’m just putting together a new phrases page, which you can see here, and wonder if you could help. The phrase in question is “Do you speak … language?” with the reply “Yes (a little)”. In each case the language in question is the language of the question, for example, the phrase in French is “Parlez-vous français? / Oui (un peu)”.

This is the kind of question other people might ask you, rather than you asking them, but it’s useful to be able to understand it.

How old is your language?

By Simon

When researching the background of the Siraiki language, which I’ve just added to Omniglot, I came across a claim that this language might be “the oldest language … of the world”. The arguments in support of this claim don’t appear to be particularly credible, but it’s interesting that the text includes such an assertion.

An article I came across in The Hindu News today describes the efforts being made be the Official Language Commission of Andhra Pradesh to obtain classical status for Telugu. In the article claims are made that the Telugu language is much older than generally accepted, and therefore should be considered a classical language.

Antiquity seems to confer special status on languages and those who speak them. However from a linguistic point of view, no language is older or younger than any other language, and asking the question, “How old is x language?” makes little sense.

Languages change all the time and when you look at the history of a particular language, you can’t say with any degree of certainity exactly when it first appeared. For example, English developed from the Germanic languages of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, but this was a gradual process that occured over a period of many centuries. People didn’t just wake up one morning and all start speaking English rather than Angle, Saxon, etc.

Muppet shuffling

By Simon

If modern management-speak, buzzwords and other jargon leaves you confused, then Shoot the Puppy: A survival guide to the curious jargon of modern life, by Tony Thorne, which I borrowed from my local library today, will help to enlighten you.

The title of this post, muppet shuffling, refers to the practise of moving underperforming or troublesome employees into other departments or positions where they can’t do too much harm, while the term, shoot the puppy, means to do the unthinkable.

Other intesting terms in the book include infobia, the fear of not having enough information, or of having too much, which is also known as data-glut and knowledge pollution; stoozing, profiting from credit card special offers; proctoheliosis, overweening self-importance, and cubicle monkeys, low-level employees who work in cubicles.

Language in books

By Simon

The ways authors represent foreign languages in their books are interesting. In some cases, they use a different typeface to indicate that a character is speaking a foreign language. The typefaces used sometimes resemble the alphabet normally used to write the language in question. This enables the readers to follow what the characters are saying, while being aware that the other characters in the book can’t do so. In other cases, authors write in the languages themselves and either find some way to provide a translation, possibly as a footnote, or just leave both the readers and the other characters in the dark.

If authors can be reasonably sure that their readers will understand text in another language, they don’t need to provide a translation. This is the case in Welsh and Irish books which often contain snippets of English.

Quite often authors ignore language differences, unless they’re integral to the plot. Somehow characters are able to understand one another even though they speak different languages.

How do authors portray foreign languages in books written in languages other than English?

Word of the day – amynedd

By Simon

amynedd [a’mənɛð] = y gallu i ddioddef, goddefgarwch, dioddefgarwch, dyfalbarhad, pwyll

Examples of usage

Amynedd sant sy genno fo.
He has the patience of a saint.

Bydd rhaid i ni fod dipyn yn amyneddgar.
We’ll have to be a bit patient.

Today’s word is something you need plenty of when learning a language – patience. I came across it in the Welsh novel I’m currently reading, Enoc Huws. Another interesting word that came up today was dyfalbarhad (perserverance), which is something else you need when learning languages. When I started reading this novel, I found it quite heavy going and could only read a page at a time. Now I’m becoming more familiar with the story and the vocabulary, I’m able to read whole chapters fairly easily.

Mnemonics

By Simon

Verses or rhymes used to help you to remember things are known as mnemonics. They’re sometimes made of the the first letters of a series of words you want to memorise. For example, Richard of York gives battle in vain for the colours of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo, violet); Every good boy deserves fudge for the lines of the treble clef of a musical stave (e, g, b, d, f), and My Very Efficient Monkey Just Sorted Unused Napkins for the major planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).

Do you have any other interesting mnemonics in other languages?

Languages of Europe

By Simon

I came across an interesting report from the European Commission about the languages of Europe today. It shows the proportions of people who are native speakers each of the official languages of the EU, and how many people speak them well enough to take part in a conversation.

The language with the highest proportion of native speakers is German (24%). In joint second place with 16% each are French, English and Italian, which are followed by Spanish (11%) and Dutch (6%).

About 31% of non-anglophone EU citizens are conversant in English, while French is spoken non-natively by 12%, German by 8%, Spanish by 4% and Italian by 2%.

Otherall, nearly half of the EU’s denizens can speak English, 32% can speak German, 28% can speak French, 18% speak Italian, and 14% speak Spanish.

In some European countries, particularly Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, at least three quarters of people are able to speak more than one language. While in others, notable the UK, Ireland and Portugal, foreign language abilities are much less common with more than two thirds of people able to speak only their native language.