proof that boring linguistics papers are not always boring

i know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking that boring linguistics papers are always boring. but it ain’t always so, slacker! as evidence, i submit the paper* on the aforementioned adverbial prefixes in klamath. here, scott delancy discusses the prefix sg- (act with the penis) as it appears in several klamath myths.

the concluding line is the best line that ever appeared in all of linguistics (i bolded it for extra emphasis). i would wear a t-shirt of a tattooed version of a cross-stitched rendering of it, if such a thing existed.

sg- occurs in a set of semantically rather idiosyncratic stems:

• /sgocaqta/ — bend the penis on
• /sgena/ — take out the penis
• /is goqo:tYe:nia/ — scrape the penis around inside

This is hardly surprising; there is a limited range of things which can be done with the penis, even in myth.

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* “lexical prefixes and the bipartite stem construction in klamath” by scott delancey, international journal of american linguistics, (january 1999).

body parts of speech

one of the more compelling reasons to study another language is so we can learn how to say dirty things to people who aren’t familiar with it. for this, the native american language of klamath is especially well-suited.

klamath has a peculiar system of bodily adverbial affixes which is a ñerd’s way of saying that speakers of klamath can jam a prefix onto a verb to show which body part is acting on it.

tqiq- for instance, means “to act with the elbow”. adding it to the verb t’ac (to stretch) yields the preposterous word histqatca which translates to “fight by stretching the other’s mouth with an elbow.”

here are a few more:

d- with the hands
y- with the foot
qb- with the mouth
loc- with the knee
tshoq- with the buttocks
sg- with the penis

stealing these and using them in english (which is what english does best) could be quite useful as in the following imagined conversation:

orson o’reilly: i was jostled in the subway this morning.
crepuscular ray: were you djostled or locjostled?
oo: actually, i was tshoqjostled.
cr: you have brought shame on our house that cannot be absolved with 1,000 bars of soap.

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source: “lexical prefixes and the bipartite stem construction in klamath” by scott delancey, international journal of american linguistics, (january 1999).

it’s all anglish to me

one of my sixteern recurring fantasies involves a world where, in 1066 harold the second was able to defeat william “the bastard” and those pesky normans had to retreat back to france and bake baguettes with their salty tears. there’s grade-a babes in this fantasy too, but let’s not get into that now.

at any rate, in a world where english never got jiggy with norman french nor any other romance language, how would our mother tongue sound? fortunately for you and i, we don’t need to strain too hard with this thought experiment because sci-fi author poul anderson has done all the work for us. in his short piece “uncleftish beholding,” he rewrites the first few principles of atomic theory using only words of germanic origin. it is—to say the least—a trip. it starts like this:

For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.

The underlying kinds of stuff are the *firststuffs*, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff…

it’s all greeklish to me

it’s no secret that constrained writing is the magical fertilizer that makes my wood grow. today, we’re going to take a gander at a very clever etymology-related constraint where the only words allowed in the author’s quiver are words derived from a single language.

in 1957, professor xenophon zolotas gave a speech at the end of a meeting of the international bank. it was in english but—with the exception of articles and prepositions—composed entirely in words of greek origin. the way that professor zolotas greekly tiptoes through english is absolutely mesmerizing.

I eulogize the archons of the Panethnic Numismatic Thesaurus and the Ecumenical Trapeza for the orthodoxy of their axioms, methods and policies, although there is an episode of cacophony of the Trapeza with Hellas.

With enthusiasm we dialogue and synagonize at the synods of our didymous Organizations in which polymorphous economic ideas and dogmas are analyzed and synthesized.

Our critical problems such as the numismatic plethora generate some agony and melancholy. This phenomenon is characteristic of our epoch. But, to my thesis, we have the dynamism to program therapeutic practices as a prophylaxis from chaos and catastrophe. In parallel, a panethnic unhypocritical economic synergy andharmonization in a democratic climate is basic.

I apologize for my eccentric monologue. I emphasize my eucharistia to you Kyrie, to the eugenic and generous American Ethnos and to the organizers and protagonists of this Amphictyony and the gastronomic symposia.

zolotas gave a second greeklish speech two years later. it can be found here.

words wholly related

horde & urdu

english is a dirty whore who will sleep with just about any other language out there. because of longstanding affairs with latin and french and greek and german, there are trillions and trillions of english words that are wholly related to trillions of other english words. english’s relationship with the the turkī language (spoken by the turks of eastern turkestan) was a one night stand at best and even then it was more of a sloppy liaison in a gas station men’s room than anything substantial. this is why it is all the more spectacular that enough words from turkī have trickled into english that two of them are actually wholly related.

horde comes from the turkī word ordā which means “camp.” urdu, the major language of pakistan was named for its birthplace, the urdu bazaar (literally, military camp market) in delhi, india.

bonus relationship: were i to start a feature entitled, languages wholly related, i would note that even though urdu and hindi are written in totally different scripts and draw vocabulary from separate sources, they are basically the same language: hindustani.

frequentative flyers

it turns out that the guy who was sitting next to me on my æroplane was studying linguistics so i axed him what was the hawt new thing in his field that gave him wood every time he thought about it. he didn’t answer me outright but he did tell me a little bit about frequentatives.

according to him, there are some languages (finnish, lithuanian, and turkish) that can slap a suffix on a verb to show that that the verb happens not once, not twice, but frequently. eg. the turkish word anlat means “to recite,” you can stick a -gelmek up in there to make anlatagelmek which means “to be reciting repetitively.” he then gave me a few boring examples in finno-ugric languages and i was about to slip on my blublockers and tune him out when he pinched me hard and said, “raynor, you dope. english has frequentatives too!”

when all the dust settled, he showed me that the english suffix -le is actually an ancient morpheme that allows english speakers to construct their own frequentatives. consider:

• when something frequently sparks, it sparkles.
• i can be dazed once but when i am dazed continuously, i am dazzled.
• if an object cracks without stopping, it crackles.
• and so on with nest/nestle, crumb/crumble, tramp/trample, and wrest/wrestle. 
• of additional interest is how some words like fondle, prattle, and scuttle preserve the verbs fond, prate, and scud which passed out of english usage many æons ago.
• you can find out more on this subject by flyle-ing on delta and sittle-ing next to the dude that i sat next to or by visitle-ing the frequentative wikipedia page here.

women, fire & dangerous things

dyirbal is an australian aboriginal language currently spoken by about five people. it is famous among linguists chiefly for the peculiar way in which it categorises its nouns. get a hot load of this peculiar scheme:

i - animate objects and men
ii - women, dangerous things and exceptional animals
iii - everything edible that is not meat
iv - things not classified in other categories

class i contains words like: rainbows, boomerangs, and storms. in addition to women and fire, class ii contains bandicoots, water, and scorpions. edible objects that aren’t meat in class iii include cigarettes.

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source: women, fire and dangerous things by george lakoff (1987).

the ugliest english words

perhaps you are wondering what the yin to the yang of beautiful german words is. it’s ugly english words, duh. way back in 1946—when joe davis was slamming his way to his 15th consecutive world snooker championship—the national association of teachers of speech (nats) organised a contest to determine the ten ugliest words in english. they are:

• crunch
• flatulent
• gripe
• jazz
• phlegmatic
• plump
• plutocrat
• sap
• treachery

drumroll please: the ugliest english word was determined to be cacophony. no offense, nats—but don’t you think that it’s just a little too convenient that the worst-sounding word in english means “having an ill sound?” what is your favourite noun…let me guess…is it noun?

the most beautiful german words

in october 2004—when the boston red sox were homerunning themselves to becoming the champions of world baseball—the goethe institute and the council for the german language were conducting their own little competition. their goal was to determine the most beautiful german word based on over 20,000 entries. here are the leading contenders.

• lebenslust - zest for life
• erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
• teufelsbraten - rascal
• wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
• glueck - happiness
• liebe - love
• mitgefuehl - compassion
• pusteblume - dandelion
• sehnsucht - longing
• vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not

the real star of this list is obviously wolkenkuckucksheim. apparently, it means an “unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect,” which makes it close in meaning to the english bizarro world.

drumroll please: the german word judged to be the most beautiful was habseligkeiten which refers to the paltry belongings of an almost penniless person. now go forth and use these words to write philosophy.

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source here.

a holorime scheme

Reine, reine gueux éveille.
Gomme à gaine, en horreur, taie.

this french poem translates to something like, “queen, queen arouse the rabble/ who will use their girdles—horrors—as pillow slips.” though if you read it aloud slowly, it starts to mean something very different in english.

this poem is from an ingenious collection called: mots d’heures: gousses, rames. (get it?) by luis d’antin van rooten (1966).

incidentally, the type of wordplay in action here is called a holorime, a short poem made up entirely of homophonous verse.