This week I’m on holiday and spending most of it with my parents in the wilds of Lancashire in the northwest of England. Yesterday, while waiting for a train, I heard an announcement about a different train being ‘replatformed’. This word caught my attention because it sounded quite strange, and even though I’d never heard before, I knew exactly what it meant.
Have you heard any strange new words recently?
One of the things I did this week was to research online English language tests. I also helped some Chinese friends with their English. Doing these things gave me insights into some of the peculiarities of English. For example, usage of small words like at, on, in, for, and phrasal verbs like get on, get off, put in, put up with, etc. must be particularly difficult to master, I imagine. It’s interesting to see your native language in a different light.
Many aspects of your native language are instinctive to you. Explaining them to others can be difficult – they just sound and/or feel right, but you aren’t necessarily sure why. The same is true for other skills – once you’ve mastered them, it can be difficult to remember how you learnt them, and you might feel that you have always been able to do them. For example, when I teach people juggling and other circus skills, I try to break every move down into small parts and to explain each in turn. Quite often I find myself wondering why things that I find very easy are so difficult for others. Then I remind myself that I’ve been doing these things a lot longer than my students.
My aim when learning other languages is to internalise as much as possible of the grammar so that I can use it without having to grope for the right inflection, gender, etc. With lots of exposure to a language, I eventually get a good feel for its structure. This enables me to speak and write it quite fluently.
Only a few country names are accompanied by the definite article in English. These include the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, the Gambia, the Sudan, the Ukraine and the Lebannon. In some cases the definite article is only used occasionally – Sudan and Lebannon, for example, usually manage perfectly well without it. Why some countries are more definite than others is a bit of a mystery. Any suggestions?
In Welsh only some of countries have the definite article, though not the same ones as in English. Examples include yr Ariannin (Argentina), yr Aifft (Egypt), y Ffindir (Finland), yr Almaen (Germany), yr Eidal (Italy), yr Iseldiroedd (the Netherlands), yr Alban (Scotland), y Swdan (the Sudan), y Swistir (Switzerland) and yr Unol Daleithiau (the United States).
Most countries have the definite article in Irish, with the exception of Alba (Scotland), Ceanada (Canada), Cúba (Cuba), Gána (Ghana), Iosrael (Israel), Lucsamburg (Luxembourg), Meicsiceo (Mexico), Maracó (Marocco) and Sasana (England)
Words are notoriously slippery customers. They might start life with one or two well-defined meanings, but they often take on additional meanings, and in some cases come to mean the opposite of what they meant originally. This process is referred to as “accelerating fuzziness” by Geoffry Finch in Word of Mouth – A New Introduction to Language and Communication, an interesting book I’m reading at the moment.
Here’s probably the best-known example of an English word that’s undergone accelerated fuzziness:
Nice, which originally meant foolish, currently means pleasant, commendable, kind, friendly, good, satisfactory, subtle, delicate, discrimminating, precise or skillful, is sometimes used to mean fastidious or respectable, and used to mean delicate, shy, modest or wanton. That’s a lot of meanings for such a small word! This is a word I was discouraged from using in English lessons. According to my teacher, nice is far too imprecise because it can mean so many different things. Sometimes there’s no harm in a bit of imprecision though, particularly when asked to give your opinion on something about which you don’t feel strongly either way.
Nice comes from the Old French nice (simple, silly), from Latin nescius (ignorant), from nescīre (to be ignorant).
On an unrelated matter, what non-English-speaking photographers ask people to say when taking a photo? English-speaking photographers often ask people to say “cheese!”, a word that makes you smile when you say it, thanks to the ee sound. What about in other languages?
The nym family has many offspring, including exonym and endonym, as discussed yesterday. Here are a few more of their unruly brood:
Homonyms
These are words that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings. For example: write (to inscribe), right (correct/opposite of left), rite (ritual) and wright (a maker); night (opposite of day), knight (a chess piece). Many more English homonyms are listed here.
Heteronyms
Words spelled the same, but pronounced differently and having different meanings, e.g. bass (low) and bass (a type of fish); polish (to shine) and Polish (from Poland). Some heteronyms are distinguished by the placement of the stress, others by pronouncation. Polish/polish is also an example of a capitonym, a word that has a different meaning when capitalized.
Antagonyms/Contranyms
These are words with two meanings that contradict each other, such as assume: to actually have (to assume office) vs. to hope to have (he assumed he would be elected). Another example is custom (ordinary vs. special) — It was custom in these parts to have your boots custom made. More examples can be found here.
Anacronym
An acronym that is so well established that its origin as an abbreviation is no longer widely known (a portmanteau of anachronism + acronym), for example scuba and laser.
Ananym
A name written backward and used as a pseudonym.
Eponym
A word derived from the name of a person. For example the sandwich is named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792), and the word boycott comes from a certain 19th century Irish landlord, Charles C. Boycott (1832-1897).
Peking is an example of an exonym, a name given to a place or group of people by foreigners. Other exonyms for places in China include Canton, Amoy, Macau and China itself. The endonyms or autonyms (native names) for these places are 广州 (Guǎngzhōu in Mandarin, Gwóngjàu in Cantonese); 厦门 (Xiàmén), 澳門 (Ngoumún) and 中国 (Zhōngguó).
English exonyms for countries in Europe include:
Croatia (Hrvatska), Finland (Suomi), Germany (Deutschland), Hungary (Magyarország), Poland (Polska), Spain (España), Sweden (Sverige) and Wales (Cymru)
English exonyms for cities in Europe include:
Copenhagen (København), Moscow (Москва/Moskva), Prague (Praha), Rome (Roma), The Hague (Den Haag), Munich (München), Cologne (Köln), Vienna (Wien) and Warsaw (Warszawa)
(the endonyms are shown in brackets)
Exonyms are used in other languages, of course, not just in English. For example, London is called Londres in French, Spanish and Portuguese, Londra in Italian and Romanian, Llundain in Welsh, Lunnain in Scottish Gaelic, ロンドン (rondon) in Japanese, and 倫敦 [伦敦] (Lúndūn) in Mandarin.
You can find the native names (endonym/autonyms) of all the countries of the world here and the native names of many languages here, and a good place to find both exonyms and endonyms of countries, cities, languages, etc. is www.geonames.de
A portmanteau is a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments. The word comes from the Middle French porter (to carry) and manteau (mantle). In modern French the word means coat rack.
A portmanteau word or portmanteau is one that fuses several grammatical inflections, or one that combines parts of two or more words. The first definition is the one used by linguists, who know portmanteaux of the second type as blends.
The term portmanteau was coined by Lewis Carroll and first appeared in his book, Through the Looking Glass, in 1871. When explaining the word slithy from Jabberwocky, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice that “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
Other portmanteaux in English include brunch (breakfast + lunch), smog (smoke + fog), aquarobics (aqua – aerobics), infomercial (information + comercial), advertorial (advertisement + editorial), and of course blog (web + log).
An interesting portmanteau I came across today was snickanas (snickers + bananas) – a snack one of my friends invented.
Main source: Wikipedia
Yesterday one of my colleagues sent me a link to the Pueblo Inglés, or English Village, which sounds like is a very interesting idea. The English Village is a small, remote hamlet called Valdelavilla in the province of Soria, about four hours north of Madrid. Spanish people can go there to practice and improve their English. Native English speakers from all over the world can stay there for free in return for talking English all day to the Spanish people. English is the only language permitted there.
The organisation that runs the program in Valdelavilla, Vaughan Village, also runs similiar programs in a few other parts of Spain and Italy.
There are a number of English Villages in Korea, though they operate along slightly different lines as they pay English teachers to provide the teaching and conversation practice for the Korean students.
Does anyone know whether there are similar programs for English speakers learning other languages?
mimesis, noun = the imitative representation of nature or human behaviour; any disease that shows symptoms of another disease; a condition in a hysterical patient that mimics an organic disease; representation of another person’s alleged words in a speech.
Origin: from the Greek μιμεισθαι (mimeisthai) – to imitate.
Related words include mime, mimic, mimicry and mimetic.
I came across this word in a post on No-sword about the crazy-sounding Japanese sport of Sports Chanbara (スポーツチャンバラ). When discussing the origin of the word chanbara, which is an abbreviation of chanchan barabara (チャンチャンバラバラ), No-sword says the the chanchan part “is mimesis for the sound of swords clashing”. I hadn’t seen this word before so had to look it up in the dictionary, and I like the sound of it. This is also an example of onomatopeia, something that’s quite common in Japanese.
Snowclones are adaptable templates for clichés popular with journalists and writers. For example, X is the new Y, A doesn’t know the meaning of B, and C is D’s middle name. Just replace the letters with words and you have a cliché you can use in quite a wide range of circumstances.
Wikipedia defines a snowclone as: “a neologism used to describe a type of formula-based cliché which uses an old idiom in a new context”
Here are a few examples:
grey is the new black
coders are from Mars, designers are from Venus
the only good language is a dead language
the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines
the internet is the best thing since sliced bread
the word surrender is not in my dictionary
There are many more templates on Answers.com
The term snowclone was coined by Glen Whitman, an Associate Professor of Economics, California State University, Northridge, on 15th January 2004. There’s more discussion of this topic on Language Log.