A mishap is “an unlucky accident”, according to the Oxford Dictionaries, and is often accompanied by the word minor – e.g. we had a few minor mishaps in the kitchen, but at least we didn’t burn the chicken.
I happened upon the word mishap today and it got me wondering whether the word hap also exists. It does, though it rarely used these days, as far as I can tell.
Hap means:
– luck, fortune
– a chance occurrence, especially an event that is considered unlucky
– to come about by chance
– to have the fortune or luck to do something.
– If you have the good hap to come into their houses
– I entertained the Company with the many Haps and Disasters
– What can hap to him worthy to be deemed evil?
– Where’er I happ’d to roam
Hap, mishap, and happen and happy, all come from the Old Norse word happ (chance, good luck), from the Proto-Germanic *hap-/*hampą (convenience, happiness), from the Proto-Indo-European *kob- (to suit, fit, succeed), which is also the root of the Old Irish cob (victory) and the Russian кобь [kob’] (fate).
The other day I discovered that a young puffin is known as a puffling, which I really like the sound of.
There are a few other words that include the -ling suffix that are commonly used: sibling, duckling, underling, earthling, seedling, yearling (an animal that is between one and two years old) – can you think of others?
There are plenty more on Wiktionary, though few are in common use, as far as I know.
According to an article I came across yesterday the idea that language is an instinct or that there is some kind of language organ in the brain is unlikely to be true. Vyvyan Evans, Professor of Linguistics at Bangor University, argues that,
“Our brains really are ‘language-ready’ in the following limited sense: they have the right sort of working memory to process sentence-level syntax, and an unusually large prefrontal cortex that gives us the associative learning capacity to use symbols in the first place. Then again, our bodies are language-ready too: our larynx is set low relative to that of other hominid species, letting us expel and control the passage of air. And the position of the tiny hyoid bone in our jaws gives us fine muscular control over our mouths and tongues, enabling us to make as the 144 distinct speech sounds heard in some languages. No one denies that these things are thoroughly innate, or that they are important to language.”
He explains that if language were an instinct, children would just know it once their language organ had been tuned to the specific parameters of their mother tongue(s). However it takes children several years of trial and error to grasp the intricacies of language, and they don’t usually generalise patterns they spot to all relevant words straight away. For example, a child might notice that some words have a different form when you’re talking about more than one of something, and they might only apply that change to words they know already at first. Later they might apply it to all nouns, even ones with irregular endings, and eventually they will learn the irregular forms as well.
Another aspect of the language gene/instinct argument is the idea that underlying all languages are a set of universal attributes – the universal grammar. However since this idea was proposed, more and more unusual language structures have been discovered that don’t fit the model, and one of the few elements that remains is recursion – the way sentences can be embeded within other sentences. Even that is questioned as at least one language, Pirahã (híaitíihí), possibly manages without it.
Professor Evans also argues that if there were a language organ, it would have to be passed on via DNA, and that this is unlikely given the complexity needed for such an organ, based on our current understanding of how DNA works. Genes and parts of the brain that were thought to be specific for language, or aspects of language, have been found to be involved in auditory processing or motor control.
According to a friend who lives in Manchester, a common expression there is “You lucky sausage!”, which is used when someone has some (unexpected) good luck. For example, if you won a prize in a competition, your friends might say, “You lucky sausage you!”.
I hadn’t heard this expression before and neither has anybody else my friend asked from outside Manchester, so maybe it’s only used there. It doesn’t seem to be very common online as it only gets 666 results in Google. Does anyone from Manchester, or elsewhere, use this phrase?
A related phrase I am familiar with is “You silly sausage!” – a light-hearted and affectionate insult used when someone, especially a child, has done or said something foolish or silly.
Do you use this phrase, or have you heard it used?
If not, would you say something else in such circumstances?
Last Saturday I was chatting with a Czech friend in Welsh and describing a recent trip to London. One of the things I mentioned was visiting the Christmas market in Hyde Park, although instead of saying marchnad Nadolig (Christmas market) I said merched Nadolig (Christmas girls/women), much to my friend’s amusement. I realised my mistake almost immediately, but we spent the rest of the day joking about merched Nadolig. There might possibly have been some interference from the Spanish word for market, mercado, in my head, though I haven’t been using much Spanish recently.
Do you sometimes get similar-sounding words mixed up like this?
A interesting word that comes up sometimes in American books I read is noogie [ˈnʊɡi], which is used in the context of one person giving someone else a noogie. The people involved are usually kids, and it sounds like a somewhat unpleasant experience, though until I looked it up, I didn’t know exactly what the word meant. It isn’t used in the UK, as far as I know.
According to Merriam-Webster, a noogie is “the act of rubbing your knuckles on a person’s head to cause annoyance or slight pain”. The origins of the word are unknown, and it first appeared in print in 1972.
Are noogies used outside the USA? Are there other words for this practice in other countries?
Here’s an interview I did at the Polyglot Conference in Novi Sad last month with Lindsay Dow of Lindsay Does Languages. I talk about how Omniglot came into being, and about learning languages, particularly Welsh.
This week I heard an interesting conversation about the mutual intelligibility between Czech and Slovak friends. They were talking in English, but said that when they can talk to each other in their own languages they’re able to understand everything. The Slovak lass said that she finds it strange for Czechs to speak Slovak to her as if they speak Czech she understand them without difficulty, though if people from other countries speak Slovak, that’s fine. I use what little Slovak I know with her, for example. The Czech lass said more or less the same thing about Slovaks – she doesn’t expect them to speak Czech, though if they do, that’s fine by her.
If you are a native speaker of Czech or Slovak, what’s your take on this?
What about other languages that as mutually intelligible as Czech and Slovak?
I understand that Swedes and Norwegians can talk to one another in their own languages, for example. Would it be strange for a Norwegian to speak Swedish or vice versa?
to muddle through
– “to succeed in some undertaking in spite of lack of organization” [source]
– “to succeed in doing something despite having no clear plan, method, or suitable equipment” [source]
– “to cope more or less satisfactorily despite lack of expertise, planning, or equipment.” synonyms: to cope, manage, get by/along, scrape by/along, make do, make the best of a bad job [source]
When learning a language, or other things, are you someone who can set goals, make plans and stick to them?
I do sometimes set myself language learning goals, and often make plans, and even manage to stick to them for a while. However my goals tend to be fuzzy, my plans half-baked, and my sticking-to-it abilities somewhat sporadic. Generally I tend to learn bits and pieces of languages as the fancy takes me, and try a variety of courses and methods, at least until I get bored or find alternatives, and just muddle through as best I can.
When people ask me for advice about learning languages, as they often do, I have plenty of suggestions, but the only one I stick to is to do a lot of listening. So I don’t really practise what I preach. Is my advice less valuable as a result? Perhaps it is.
Do you advise people to try learning techniques you don’t use or rarely use yourself?
Does the concept of muddling through exist in other languages?
Yesterday I met Aran Jones, the guy behind the website SaySomethingin.com, and we had a very interesting chat, in Welsh, about language learning. His site started as a Welsh language course, and now also offers courses in Cornish, Dutch, Latin and Spanish. You can learn all these languages through English or Welsh, and you can also learn English and Welsh through Spanish, and he plans to offer more languages in the future. The courses are designed to get you speaking in a relatively short time.
One interesting point we discussed was the way language learning is presented. Many courses claim that you can learn a language quickly and with little or no effort. All you have to do is listen and repeat – don’t worry about learning grammar or vocabulary! Moreover people who encourage others to learn languages tend to emphasize that it is possible, anybody can do it, that you don’t have to have a special language gene/gift/talent, and that it isn’t all that difficult. Just jump in and start speaking! Don’t worry about mistakes!
An alternative approach is to say that language learning is really hard, takes a lot of work, and that relatively few people succeed, and to discourage people from trying it. By presenting it as a real challenge like this you might encourage more people to try. When they find it isn’t as difficult as they expected and that they can succeed, they will have a greater sense of achievement. In other words, a kind of reverse psychology. On the other hand, many people already believe this and are convinced that they can’t learn a language, so it wouldn’t work for everyone.
Another thing we discussed was improving your listening comprehension, especially if you find speech at normal speed difficult to understand. Slowing down your recordings, or asking people to speak more slowly, is a way to deal with this, and can work well. An alternative is to speed up the audio – in some SaySomethingin lessons the audio is at twice the usual speed, for example, and if you listen to it quite a few times you will eventually understand it. Then when you listen to it at normal speed it will be much easier to follow.
I do something similar when learning to play classical pieces on the guitar and piano – if I’m struggling with a piece I might try something even more challenging. Then the original piece seems easier when I go back to it. Or I try playing folk tunes as fast as I can, then slow then down to a more normal speed, and they seem much easier.
