Linguistics

"Unlike hogwash or, for example, flapdoodle, the noun balderdash is a word of “uncertain” (some authorities even say of “unknown”) origin. However, what is “known” about it is probably sufficient for questioning the disparaging epithets. We can dismiss with a condescending smile all kinds of imaginative rubbish (balderdash?) proposed by those who believed that knowing one or two old languages is enough for discovering an etymology, but one such guess is curious. According to it, the English noun goes back to Hebrew Bal, allegedly contracted from Babel, and dabar. The “curiosity” consists in the fact that there is a German verb (aus)baldowern “to nose out a secret or some information” (aus- is a prefix), from the language of the underworld. It goes back to Yiddish, ultimately Hebrew, ba’al-dabar “the lord of the word or of the thing” (ba’al has nothing to do with Babel). Thus, a fanciful etymology suggested for one word in English fits a German word of similar structure." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"An equally ingenious attempt to supply balderdash with divine ancestry takes us all the way to the north. Engl. jovial, from French, from Italian, from Latin, was coined with the sense “under the influence of the planet Jupiter” (which astrologists regarded as the source of happiness”; compare by Jove!). The name of the most beautiful Scandinavian god was Baldr, Anglicized as Balder.... more... - Maitani

"PBS's hit series Downton Abbey has been praised for its subtle and witty dialogue. But a few anachronisms have slipped into the characters' conversations, and spotting them has become a hobby for many fans." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

Ben Zimmer at Language Log http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll... and here http://articles.boston.com/2012-02... - Maitani

We want to be precise in our communications -- but that must be balanced with the need for efficiency. The paper above uses information theory to argue that ambiguity is necessary in any efficient communication system when content is informative about meaning. Also @amirask refers to another interesting paper, Compression without a common prior by Brendan Juba et al. (Proceedings of ICS 2011, 79-86), in which speaker and listener have different prior beliefs about what a speaker may say. Again, information theory shows why ambiguity is necessary for the purpose of efficient communication (compression): https://docs.google.com/viewer... - Adriano

That's great, thanks :-) - Maitani

""Does Donald Trump support matter?", Special Report w/ Bret Baier, Fox News 2/2/2012. John Crowley's reponse:" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

:D - Maitani

"Most of the entries have been taken from the "Dictionary of Pali Names" by G P Malalasekera (1899-1973), which is available as printed version from "The Pali Text Society, London"." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"I usually try to discuss words whose origin is so uncertain that, when it comes to etymology, dictionaries refuse to commit themselves. But every now and then words occur whose history has been investigated most convincingly, and their history is worth recounting. Such is the word odd. Everything is odd about it, including the fact that its original form has not survived in English. Odd appeared as odde in the fourteenth century. It was a borrowing from Scandinavian, where oddr meant “spear point” and metonymically “spear.” But next to oddr Old Icelandic oddi “triangle; a ‘tongue’ of land” existed. From “triangle” the meaning “an odd number,” as opposed to “an even number,” developed. The compound oddamaðr (ð has the value of th in Modern Engl. the, this, that) meant “the third man, he who gives the casting vote” or simply “an odd man,” that is, the third, fifth, and so forth. It is from oddamaðr that English has “odd man (out).” Icelandic oddatal “odd number” has the same structure... more... - Maitani from Bookmarklet

Thanks, Mr Ramazan :-) - Maitani

"...Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow." Juliet - Halil from Bookmarklet

Inspired by a chat I had with Maitani this morning, well, good night all. - Halil

Sweet dreams :) - Pete

It's interesting that the most spoken language in the world is English (apparently), which in turn is actually a Germanic language. ~ Quote: "I thought British policy was make the world England? Sir." Major Duncan Heyward, Last Of The Mohicans - Halil from Bookmarklet

"In Romani: a linguistic introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Yaron Matras gives several examples of how the Roma people have been very inventive with names for the countries and people encountered on their westward migration (pp. 26–27):" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Characteristic of Romani is – alongside replications of nations’ self-ascription (e.g. sasitko ‘German’, njamco ‘German’, valšo ‘French’) – the widespread use of inherited or internal names for nations. Thus we find das ‘Slavs’ (cf. OIA dāsa- ‘slave’), a word play based on Greek sklavos; xoraxaj/koraxaj of unclear etymology, in the Balkans generally ‘Muslim, Turk’ and elsewhere... more... - Maitani

"In the previous post, we began to discuss the role of antonymy in humor creation. We stopped with the relation of taxonomic sisterhood, i.e. with those antonyms that appear on the same level in a taxonomy, like dog and cat, or terrier and spaniel. Here is another joke that makes use of this relation:" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"WordChorus is a tool specifically designed to find patterns in Ancient Greek texts. Have you ever wondered how many verses in the Iliad begin with a rough breathing? Or how many words in Antigone end in the phoneme group οι, ει or αι? Do you want to count the number of accents in the Argonautica? If so, you have come to the right place!" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

^ - mina_sydney

"I love finding out about Canadianisms that go beyond the obvious – eh, aboot, ketchup chips, etc. This one is huge." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Yesterday Libby informed me that for the past YEAR she has thought that I had some grammar problem because I kept saying I was done things… “I’m done work,” I’m done my sandwich,” I’m done Bossypants so now you can take it”, etc. Apparently she didn’t want to point it out lest she embarrass me, until the other day when she heard another Canadian interviewed who kept saying the same... more... - Maitani

"Cf. Aristotle’s Historia Animalium 487a: Καλῶ δ’ ἔντομα ὅσα ἔχει κατὰ τὸ σῶμα ἐντομάς, ἢ ἐν τοῖς ὑπτίοις ἢ ἐν τούτοις τε καὶ τοῖς πρανέσιν. “I call them ἔντομα (lit. neut.pl. ἐντομος things-cut-in-pieces) as so they have segments (ἐντομή) for the body, either on the belly or there and on their backs also.”" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"ἔντομος ‘cut in a pieces’ can be further broken down into the preposition ἐν plus the root *temh₁- and the Caland adjective suffix *-mo- . The same is found in Greek τέμενος ‘sacred precinct ‘ < *témh₁-no- which originally meant a patch of land ‘cut-off’ and dedicated to a god. Although, the same word te-me-no also occurs in the Linear B tablets and doesn’t necessary have to be the... more... - Maitani

"By this point you have probably read about Jonathan Franzen’s comments about digital books. For example: “I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.” This seems to be a recapitulation of the Lee Siegel’s attack on the internet from a few years back. I don’t think Franzen was copying Siegel, rather, he’s channeling a meme which seems to be prevalent in a certain cultural milieu. Carl Zimmer does a excellent job dispatching Franzen’s assertions on the merits. But I think we might benefit from a little historical perspective when evaluating these sorts of claims. After all, the book as we know it is the last in a long line of vessels for literacy." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

It's not e-books per se that will destroy literature. It's the DRM :) - Victor Ganata from iPhone

'I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish Aquaman were here instead--HE'D be able to help.' - Maitani from Bookmarklet

:) - Eivind

Aquaman is dead to me since TBBT's season 4, episode 11. :) - Ken Morley

"The previous posts, we have discussed the relation of homonymy. Polysemy is another relation that involves identity in sound but not in meaning. But this time, we don’t deal with different words, but rather with the same word that has different, but related, meanings. An example would be multiple meanings of the noun key: a device used to open or close a lock; a clue, a list of answers or explanations; musical key. The relation of polysemy serves as the basis for numerous jokes. Although I don’t know whether such a statistics exists, from my observations I would say that there are even more jokes involving polysemy than homonymy. Maybe that’s because there are more instances of polysemy in a language? After all, if you look in a dictionary, you’ll see that most words are given more than one meaning. But in general, humor seems to like this idea of same sound – different meanings; it cares much less whether polysemy of homonymy is involved." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions from all corners of the Roman Empire. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history. The Corpus continues to be updated with new editions and supplements by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en... http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en..." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"This digitized version of the CIL will initially comprise of the more than 50 parts (of vols. I-XVI + auctaria and of v. I (edition altera)) published before 1940. Available funding covers the digitization of the volumes with an imperfect OCR searching capability. The goal is to eventually create a keyword searchable database to contain also future volumes of the CIL as they fall... more... - Maitani

CIL Open Access http://www.arachne.uni-koeln.de/drupal... - Maitani

"A fandangle may be a useless or purely ornamental thing. It may also refer to something nonsensical, foolish or silly: A big white wedding is a huge fandangle for not much return. The guests carp about their placement; the vicar, it turns out, would rather be at a funeral; and the happy couple are either rigid with stress or flaccid with drink. Sunday Telegraph, 8 Aug. 2010." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"One of my dictionaries describes it as archaic, but nobody seems to have told its users, who continue to find it the right world for any situation that implies confusion or fatuousness. This is from a New Zealand book review: “There’s a sense of déjà vu about so much of the plot. And the whole fandangle could have been at least 100 pages shorter.” And this from the US: “Feuding... more... - Maitani

spiel (n.) "glib speech, pitch," 1896, probably from verb (1894) meaning "to speak in a glib manner," earlier "to play circus music" (1870), from Ger. spielen "to play," from O.H.G. spilon (cognate with O.E. spilian "to play"). The noun also perhaps from Ger. Spiel "play, game." ~ extra link http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki... - Halil from Bookmarklet

something I'm guilty of doing on ff a lot :-P - Halil

"1. In Sackcloth and Ashes. In the post on the C-word, I made two mistakes, for both of which I am sorry, though neither was due to chance. In Middle High German, the word kotze “vagina” existed, and I was going to write that, given such a noun, the verb kotzen “copulate” can also be reconstructed. Instead, I wrote that Modern German klotzen has such a meaning, though I knew only too well that klotzen means “puke, barf.” The modern verb seems to have a different origin; however, the available information is meager and not fully convincing. I also misspelled the name of the author in the picture. The illustration at the bottom of this post will reveal the full depth of my contrition. 2. Use and origin. One of our correspondents was told that in British English the C-word does not necessarily have offensive connotations when applied to women. This will be news to most of us. Perhaps the source of the information was the OED. In the past, c**t could indeed be used more freely. The same... more... - Maitani from Bookmarklet

I never understood the need to exchange a couple of letters in a word we don't like with stars. It seems so silly. It only works if we all know which letters the stars represent anyway. - Eivind

"The semantic effect of this construction is to focus the denotation of the reduplicated element on a more sharply delimited, more specialized, range. For instance, SALAD–salad in (1a) denotes specifically green salad as opposed to salads in general, and, in the context in which (1e) was used, AUCKLAND–Auckland denotes the city in New Zealand as opposed to other cities that may happen to have this name. For a first approximation, we characterize this effect as denoting the prototypical instance of the reduplicated lexical expression." - Maitani

:-) The Out Out Tour, that is cool. :-) - Maitani

Ottoman 1580s, from Fr. Ottoman, from It. Ottomano, from Arabic 'Uthmani "of or belonging to Arabic masc. proper name 'Uthman," which in Turkish is pronounced Othman (see Osmanli), name of the founder of the dynasty and empire. Ending altered in Italian by formation of a new false singular, because -i was a plural inflection in Italian. Byron used the more correct form Othman, and a few writers have followed him. The type of couch so called (1806) because one reclined on it, which was associated with Eastern customs (see couch). - Halil from Bookmarklet

I don't know much about him, despite one of my lecturers going on and on about him :D He did identify very strongly with the Hijaz Arabs, and by all accounts was angry at the post-war settlements. He died in a motorcycle accident, I believe. - Pete

"The American Philosophical Society has been collecting and working to preserve Native American languages since the time of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson collected a word list of the Unkechaug language on Long Island, a language that Jefferson believed to be on the brink of extinction. In 2010, the Unkechaug contacted the APS and requested a copy of the vocabulary list in order to begin the process of revitalizing their language. It is this long and proud heritage of preservation, partnership, and revitalization that this digital exhibit celebrates." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"The APS is currently in the process of digitizing and extensively cataloging over 3000 hours of endangered Native American languages. These recordings include music, origin stories, historical accounts, linguistic material, and conversations with elders in both English and indigenous languages. Many of these recordings were originally made on obsolete technology such as wax cylinders,... more... - Maitani

"This website contains over 26,000 oral recordings made in Scotland and further afield, from the 1930s onwards. The items you can listen to include stories, songs, music, poetry and factual information." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

refute 1510s, "refuse, reject," from L. refutare "drive back, repress, repel, rebut," from re- "back" (see re-) + -futare "to beat," probably from PIE base *bhat- "to strike down" (cf. beat). Meaning "prove wrong" dates from 1540s. Since c.1964 linguists have frowned on the subtle shift in meaning towards "to deny," as it is used in connection with allegation. - Halil from Bookmarklet

*hides from Maitani’s frown* for the record, i only ever use this word in relation/context to refuting data/evidence! :-) - Halil

Weird types, those frowning linguists. Or self-appointed language guards? There isn't a long way from the meaning "repel" to "prove wrong" to "deny" imo. - Maitani

"A rhyton is an elaborate drinking vessel, common in ancient Persia and later popularized in Greece:" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"The word is believed to be derived from Greek rhein*, "to flow".... Many vessels considered rhytons featured a wide mouth at the top and a hole through a conical constriction at the bottom from which the fluid ran. The idea is that one scooped wine or water from a storage vessel or similar source, held it up, unstoppered the hole with one's thumb, and let the fluid run into the mouth (or onto the ground in libation) in the same way wine is drunk from a wineskin today." - Maitani

This is a list of German expressions used in English; some are relatively common (e.g. hamburger), but most comparatively rare. In many cases, the German borrowing in English has assumed a meaning substantially different from its German forebear. - Halil from Bookmarklet

Wow. I love that Pennsylvania Dutch English. "Make wet?" = "Is it going to rain?" "It wonders me." = "It makes me wonder." Many of these phrases are really German in disguise. :D :D :D - Maitani

"Researchers have discovered that children under the age of two control speech using a different strategy than previously thought." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"During the study at Queen's University, the researchers changed the vowel sounds that the participants heard over headphones as they talked. They found that while the adults and young children changed their vowel sounds in response to this altered feedback, the toddlers did not." - Maitani

""We were very surprised to find that the two-year-olds do not monitor their own voice when speaking in the same way as adults do," says Ewen MacDonald, a former Queen's research associate and now associate professor at the Technical University of Denmark. "As they play music, violinists will listen to the notes they produce to ensure they are in tune. If they aren't, they will adjust... more... - Maitani

Translated by J. F. Davis. Published 1891 by Bell in London. - Maitani from Bookmarklet

An online searchable scan of the good old Kluge Etymological Dictionary! :-) - Maitani