Category: English

Aural small print

By Simon

Aural small print is apparently one name for the incredibly fast disclaimers you sometimes hear at the end of radio ads, and also as a good name for a band, according to a commenter on this blog. These disclaimers often contradict and undermine whatever the ad was about.

Do you know if there is a standard or official name for such disclaimers?

Do you get them in other languages?

There are some quite amusing parodies of email disclaimers here, and here’s my disclaimer for this post (to be read as fast as possible with much mumbling):

This post has been hand-crafted from only the finest ingredients and should be read within 48 hours with the eyes no more than 3 feet (91.44 ml) from the screen and the head tilted to the left at an angle of 85.6 degrees fahrenheit (20cm). Bake for at least half an hour, then leave to cool. Do not read while driving, operating heavy machinery, eating bananas, or having a bath. Omniglot accepts no responsibility (picture top right). Your mileage may vary. Words may settle in transit. Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary. If symptoms persist, consult a doctor. Suitable for vegetarians. May contains traces of nuts. Not tested on animals. Contains no additives or preservatives. Would the last one to leave please switch off the lights. Thank you and good night.

Finger names

By Simon

Finger names

When chatting with some Japanese friends today, the subject of finger names came up for some reason – specifically what the different fingers are called in Japanese and English. It took quite a while to establish which finger corresponded to which name – to make this clear, I found a picture of a hand, added labels and uploaded it to my site.

This is what the fingers are called in those languages:

拇指 (boshi) / 親指 (oyayubi) lit. “thumb/parent finger” = thumb
人差し指 (hitosashiyubi) = lit. “person offering finger” = first finger / index finger
中指 (nakayubi) = middle finger
薬指 (kusuriyubi) = lit. “medicine finger” = third finger /ring finger
小指 (koyubi) = lit. “little finger” = fourth finger / little finger / pinky

In Latin the fingers are named thus:

Thumb = Polex
First finger = Demonstratus (pointer)
Second finger = Impudicus (gesticulates)
Third finger = Annularis (ring)
Fourth finger = Auricularis (removing wax from ear)

Their names in Welsh are as follows:

Thumb = bawd
First finger = bys troed (foot finger)
Second finger = bys canol (middle finger)
Third finger = bys y fodrwy (ring finger)
Fourth finger = bys bach (little finger)

and Irish they’re:

Thumb = ordóg
First finger = corrmhéar (odd finger)
Second finger = méar fhada (long finger)
Third finger = méar fáinne (ring finger)
Fourth finger = lúidín

What about in your language?

How old is English?

By Simon

The other day I came across an interesting site about the history of the English language. It argues that English has been spoken in Britain for a lot longer than is conventionally assumed, and that there wasn’t sufficient time for the native population to adopt English after the Anglo-Saxons starting settling in the 5th century. The site cites examples for various parts of the world of how long it takes for one language to completely replace another, and concludes that it’s unlikely that the relatively small numbers of Anglo-Saxons could have imposed their language in a few centuries.

The conventional story is that before the Roman invasion the Britons all spoke Celtic languages, and that the Anglo-Saxons brought the languages that would develop into English to Britain during the 5th century when they started settling in the eastern parts of the country. They eventually took over most of what is now England and parts of southern Scotland and the existing population adopted Anglo-Saxon customs and language, abandoning their Celtic languages. At the same time, part of the population fled westward to Wales, Cornwall, Strathclyde and Cumbria, where they continued to speak their Celtic languages.

An alternative history proposed by this site is that Germanic languages of some form or another have been spoken in eastern parts of Britain for around 10,000 years, and that Celtic languages have been spoken in western parts of Britain for a similar length of time. Evidence from place names in eastern Britain suggests, according to the site, that most places have had Germanic names for a long time, and that the conventional Celtic-based etymologies are mistaken.

I find speculations like this that challenge conventional wisdom interesting. I don’t know whether to take them seriously though. What do you think?

This is your captain speaking

By Simon

According to an article I found today, from next March pilots who fly overseas will be required to pass an English language competency test, The Test of English for Aviation. The article suggests that this test will present quite a challange for the many Chinese pilots who speak little or no English.

Some Chinese airlines, China Southern Airlines, are requiring their pilots to take English classes for six days each month.

Apparently there is also a shortage of examiners who speak both English and Mandarin, and who are familiar with civil aviation.

Glaw

By Simon

We were practising questions and answers in class today. There are no exact equivalents of yes and no in Welsh. Instead when answering a question, you repeat the verb in the appropriate form, or in some cases you use other words. For example, responses to the question Wyt ti’n mywnhau’r cwrs ma? (Are you enjoying this course?), could be Ydw (I am) or Nag ydw (I’m not).  It often takes me a few moments to work out the correct answer.

O’n ni’n ymarfer cwestiynau ac atebion yn y dosbarth heddiw, ac ddoe hefyd. Yn aml mae rhaid i mi feddwl am ychydig eiliadau i ddewis yr ateb cywir. 

This morning we also attended a local cyd – an informal get together of local Welsh speakers and Welsh learners. It took place in the one of the pubs in town, and we heard and spoke quite a lot of Welsh, so it was very useful.

Y bore ma, aethon ni i’r tafarn yn y dre i gymryd rhan mewn cyd – cyfarfod anffurfiol bobl leol sy’n siarad neu sy’n dysgu Cymraeg. O’n ni’n siarad llawer o Gymraeg gyda nhw, felly oedd hi’n defnyddiol iawn.

It started absolutely tipping it down after dinner and I thought there might be floods like there were here last week. Fortunately the rain didn’t last more than about half an hour.

Ar ôl cinio, cychwnodd hi’n bwrw glaw trwm iawn. Ond oedd hi’n gorffen cyn hanner awr ac nag oedd llifogydd fel yr wythnos diwethaf.

I have some more homework to do for tomorrow, so I’d better go now.

Rhaid i mi mynd nawr, achos mae gen i mwy o waith cartref i wneud cyn yfory.

Word of the day – 衛星

By Simon

weixing/eisei - satellite in Chinese and Japanese

The Chinese word for satellite, 衛星 [卫星] (wèixīng) means literally ‘guard(ing)/defend(ing) star’. When I came across this word the other day while working on a Chinese version of a website, it took me a few moments to work out what it meant. Eventually I deciphered it from the context and the second character, which I knew meant star. The same characters, 衛星, are used in Japanese, but they’re pronounced eisei.

One of the things I like about Chinese is that when you encounter an unfamiliar word, you can often guess its meaning from the meanings of the individual characters.

According to this Online Etymology Dictionary, the English word satellite first appeared in writing in 1548, when it meant “follower or attendant of a superior person”. It comes from, via French, from the Latin satellitem (nom. satelles) “attendant”. It was first used to mean “man-made machinery orbiting the Earth” in 1936, when such things were theoretical. The first artificial satellite, a name used to distinguish them from natural satellites like the moon, was Sputnik 1, which was launched in 1957.

The Welsh word for satellite is lloeren, which comes from lloer, moon. In most of the other languages I’ve checked, the word is satellite or something similar.

Hypercorrection

By Simon

Hypercorrection happens when people try to avoid making one type of ‘error’ in speech or writing, but overcompensate and apply the corrections to too many words. For example, those who habitually ‘drop’ their h’s sometimes add an h an just about any word beginning with a vowel when trying to speak ‘proper’.

One case of hypercorrection that has become part of the language is the saying ‘to eat humble pie‘, meaning ‘to behave or be forced to behave humbly; to be humiliated’. To word humble in this saying comes from the word numbles, which means the offal of a deer. In the 14th century, a numble pie was one made from such offal. By the 17th century, a pie of this type was called ‘an umble pie’, which eventually acquired an initial h through hypercorrection and became ‘a humble pie’.

Numbles comes from the Old French word nombles (loins), from the Latin lumbulus (little loin).

Other words the have changed in a similar way to numbles include apron – originally napron, newt – originally ewt. This kind of change of word boundries, which is common in English, is called metanalysis.

Dropping letters

By Simon

George Bernard Shaw once said:

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him”

Shaw, an Irish man, was to some extent poking fun at the English, but there certainly is some truth in his statement. English speakers have been complaining about the way other people speak English for very long. The same is probably true of other languages.

One of the things people complain about is the dropping of certain letters, such as the initial h, or of the g in ing endings. This is getting things the wrong way round and assuming that we should speak as we write. English spelling certainly isn’t the most reliable guide to English pronunciation. Initial h’s aren’t being dropped – they just doesn’t exist in some dialects.

Words borrowed from French, such as hour, heir and honest are usually pronounced without the initial h most varieties of English. Moreover, in American English herb also lacks the initial h sound, though the h is pronounced in some varieties of British English.

This post was inspired by the book I’m reading at the moment: ‘A Plum in Your Mouth’ – Why the way we talk speaks volumes about us, by Andrew Taylor.

Dyslecsia / Dyslexia

By Simon

According to an article I came across today, dyslexic children tend to it easier to read and write Welsh, with its regular and consistent spelling system, then English, with its somewhat eccentric orthography. Similarly, few children have problems spelling other regular languages like Italian and Spanish.

However dyslexic children who start by learning Welsh, then later learn English tend to find English spelling very challenging and often use Welsh-style spelling when writing English.

Here are some examples of English spelled with Welsh phonetics:

Ddy cwic brawn ffocs jymps owfer ddy leisi dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Tw bi o not tw bi: ddat is ddy cwestiyn.
To be or not to be: that is the question.

The article also mentions that dyslexic children tend to have more trouble getting to grips with Welsh grammar than with English grammar.

Word of the day – isogram

By Simon

isogram, noun – a word in which the letters turn up an equal number of times.

There are different types of isograms depending on how many times each letter appears:

In a first-order isogram, each letter appears just once, as in dialogue, lexicography, ambidextrously and uncopyrightable.

In a second-order isogram, each letter appears twice, as in deed, Vivienne, Caucasus and intestines.

In a third-order isogram, each letter appears three times. These are rare, unusual words such as deeded (“conveyed by deed”) and geggee (“victim of a hoax”).

I came across this term in an article by David Crystal about his new book By Hook or By Crook: A Journey in Search of English.