dog & dog
the word for dog in mbarbaram, a recently extinct australian aboriginal language, is dog. it is pronounced the same way as in english yet it is not a loanword—it is completely coincidental.
given the limited number of sounds that can be made with one’s mouth, the amount of basic words in any given language, and the 3.2 million languages currently spoken in our solar system, uncanny coincidences like this do crop up from time to time.
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).
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).
one of my tricks is that i read 6 or 7 books in parallel. among others, there is: the book that i keep on my nightstand for when i can’t sleep, the book i carry in my murse for when i am riding a bus, and the book that i read while listening to my yanni live at the acropolis cd. reading books concurrently like this takes a long time—it took me ten years to get through my laundromat book, gravity’s rainbow—but there is one manner of book that i can get though in as little as two weeks: my mani-pedi book.
this week’s mani-pedi book was david gramb’s words about words dictionary. here are a few f-words that hoài mi and i selected while i was soaking my feet in a garra rufa aquarium earlier this afternoon.
on beyond zebra
we’ve talked about the alexander graham bell and george bernard shaw phonetic alphabets before and we have discussed benjamin franklin’s writing, but we have yet to talk about franklin’s own super kooky phonetic alphabet.
franklin was more than just a political revolutionary—he was also an alphabet one. he figured (much like the citizens of azerbaijan) that a new alphabet was essential in promoting a new national identity. and unlike shaw and bell who invented zany moustache alphabets, franklin determined that the best course of action was to build upon our already existing latin letters. while his spelling reform ideas were taken up by his homey, noah webster, webster thought his alphabet reform was too radical for the time. perhaps it was but honestly, those six new letters at the end are some of the illest glyphs going.
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another failed alphabetic reform: this.
recommended reading: this.
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:
rice probably
This pronunciation guide is from Où est le garlic? by Len Deighton (1965), the author of The Ipcress File. For anyone who hasn’t heard of The Ipcress File, or of Michael Caine for that matter, here. You’re welcome.
Now that we’re all properly briefed, we can appreciate the intricate genius of Len Deighton: the working man’s John le Carré, primogenitor of Harry Palmer and therefore arguably of Michael Caine’s career, military historian, and occasional cookery columnist for The Observer (London). Throw in his background as an utterly cool art student cat whose parents were ‘in service’ as a chauffeur and a housekeeper-cook, and we begin to get that whiff of early 1960s anti-establishment irreverence, a refusal to kowtow to the status quo that was all the more vicious for its subtlety.
So read this pronunciation guide with all that context informing your font appreciation and vowel sounds, and with Harry Palmer’s vocals reverberating in your cranium. It is pure frang-lays, the lingua franca of the bowler-hatted Brit abroad, priggishly bourgeois and culturally tone deaf. Deighton absolutely nails the plummy droning diphthongs and plodding stresses. Hi-bloody-larious.
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the content and capital letters of this post have been brought to you by the ever plucky ramona ranchera.
ganan gone wild
i typically spend my spring breaks getting dirty with jakobson or bumping uglies with trubetzkoy—but this spring break is different. this spring break, raynor ganan is going wild. i have spent the last few weeks building up my alcohol tolerance on white peach daiquiris, polishing my nipples with tung oil, and (re)learning the lambada. needless to say, i will be out of posting range for the next few days, indeed due to the illusion of time + the artifice of the internet, i am already out of range (not as i type this, but as you read it).
but all is not lost! i have been able to trick my savvy compadre ramona to step up to the (serving) plate and lob a few flavory morsels at your monitors for the next few days. ramona is a culinerd of the first water and a self-described magpie and international lurker. she lives (in all places) in williamsburg (the very un-colonial one) though scottish sangria continues to course through her arteries. she works (in all places) in riker’s island as a prison chef and prison larder (upon meeting her for the first time, you will find this shocking, but by the second time—exceedingly apropos). she keeps her fingers in a lot of pies (both literal and metaphoric) and, like yours truly has a taste for the timeworn and the peculiar. i am ecstatic that she has agreed to keep things fresh around these stale environs while i am girls-gone-wilding myself for the next week and hope that you will share in my ecstasy.
also: because ramona will be guest editing, you may encounter an occasionally capitalised letter where you are not accustomed to doing so. i beg your pardon in advance.
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).
![worst translation ever
athanasius kircher was the 17th century polymath who [among many other things] invented the megaphone, worked on deciphering the [still undeciphered] voynich manuscript, and published a tract on magnetism which also explored other forms of attraction such as gravity and love. he has been credited as the founder of egyptology, despite the “translation” of the above cartouche that he published in 1666. his interpretation was:
Osiris’s protection against the violence of Typhon must be invoked in accordance with appropriate rituals and ceremonies, through sacrifices and through appeal to the protective spirits of the threefold world, in order to assure the happiness and wealth which the Nile usually bestows upon the enemies of Typhon’s violence.
150 years later, jean-françois champollion finally cracked the code of heiroglyphics for reals. we now know that kircher’s passage actually read:
Psammetichus
which was the name of an egyptian pharaoh.
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see also this.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kx0ibktrJm1qzrip0o1_r1_500.png)
worst translation ever
athanasius kircher was the 17th century polymath who [among many other things] invented the megaphone, worked on deciphering the [still undeciphered] voynich manuscript, and published a tract on magnetism which also explored other forms of attraction such as gravity and love. he has been credited as the founder of egyptology, despite the “translation” of the above cartouche that he published in 1666. his interpretation was:
Osiris’s protection against the violence of Typhon must be invoked in accordance with appropriate rituals and ceremonies, through sacrifices and through appeal to the protective spirits of the threefold world, in order to assure the happiness and wealth which the Nile usually bestows upon the enemies of Typhon’s violence.
150 years later, jean-françois champollion finally cracked the code of heiroglyphics for reals. we now know that kircher’s passage actually read:
Psammetichus
which was the name of an egyptian pharaoh.
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see also this.
thus was the subject line of a piece of spam™ that infiltrated my gmail this morning and all i could think was: look at all that inventive anthimeria!
anthimeria is using one word class as a member of a different word class (eg. using a noun for a verb). this literary device is deftly employed not once, not twice, but thrice in the 6-word, ithyphallic spam header.
and yet: one could cram even more anthimeria into the header by saying something like, “eyeball big-titted milfs…”
nouns as adjectives? adjectives as verbs? has the world gone topsy-turvy or is this a WORD CLASS KEY PARTY OF EPIC PROPORTIONS?!?!
on a semi-related note*: i will be occupied for the next 24/7.
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* a note related to my semi
the luxuriant flowing hair club for scientists™
The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists is a club for scientists who have, or believe they have, luxuriant flowing hair.
harvard dreamboat, steven pinker was the first inductee of the club. pinker’s luxuriant locks have long been the object of admiration, envy, and intense study. the club’s homepage is here. the list of historical honorary members can be found here.
i would quit the john wilmot fan club and resign from my post as (assistant to the) secretary of the essex county ornithological club just for a shot at the luxuriant flowing hair club for scientists. alas, my hair is thin and greasy and the best grade that i ever got in science was a c+ (and it was earth science, no less).
logopandecteision
as many of you have read in the tabloids, i lost my virginity to rabelais’ the life of gargantua and pantagruel. what you may not know is that sir thomas urquhart, the english translator of the book was a rascally rascal in his own right. get a load of this shenanigan »
Logopandecteision is a 1653 book by Sir Thomas Urquhart, disingenuously detailing his plans for the creation of an artificial language by that name. The book is written in several parts, most notably including a list of the language’s 66 unparalleled excellences; the rest is made up of rants against his creditors, the Church of Scotland, and others whose neglect and wrongdoings prevent him from publishing this perfected language.
Urquhart was fond of this kind of very elaborate joke, sometimes so elaborate as to be taken by his contemporaries as in earnest. In this case, it is posterity which mistakes his intention.He promises twelve parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven genders (including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, &c.); and conjugable in eleven tenses, seven moods, and four voices.
you can peruse this short book for $0.00 here; in these tough economic times, that is a deal that even you cannot lightly refuse.
bros, i started the f-word series as a way of showcasing some choice morsels from specialised dictionaries. i chose words that start with f partly because of my infantile preoccupation with labiodental fricatives but also because enabling limits on my search meant that i would have more free time to hang out with my buddies at applebee’s and talk about witty hollister t-shirts. this system had been going swell until my good friend orson, dropped this onto my desk and my world shattered.
its full title is: a dictionary of arcahic and provincial words, obsolete phrases, proverbs, and ancient customs, from the fourteenth century (1850)—and it is worthy of a 5 part series within a series.
[part the first: FADGY to FELSH]
