Language Trainers Blog

Here in the UK, it’s traditional to wish people a “Merry Christmas” at this time of year, as opposed to the North American greeting “Happy Holidays.” In fact, the word for Christmas in Old English is Cristes Maesse, and later Christ’s Mass. Mass, in religious context, means a death sacrifice. So maybe not a nice thing to wish, after all?

When some of us are sending our Christmas cards, some write “Merry Christmas,” whilst others use “Merry Xmas” as a shortened version of the former.

In Ancient Greek, the word Christ was spelled with an X – Χριστός (Xpistos) so some believe that the shortened version of the word stems from this.

Either way, the word “Christmas” undeniably has religious connotations and has certainly made me think of the meanings behind the phrase “Merry Christmas.” Maybe “Happy Holidays” is best after all?

A new book, A Story of English in 100 Words, by linguistics expert David Crystal, lists how English words have been used throughout the ages and demonstrates how the language has evolved. Crystal believes that these words are crucial to the development of the language, and traces the etymology and social standing of each of the words he has chosen.

The word “tea” for example was first documented in the 17th Century. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary in 1660 that he sampled his very first cup of tea. Tea drinking started out as an upper class activity but as the price fell, it became more and more popular across society. This then led to a lot of tea related words – teapot, teaspoon, teahouse.

The word “hello” began as street slang in the early 1800s. Before this, “hal,” “hail,” “hey,” “ho,” and “hi” were used, at different periods. “Hello” became more popular with the invention of the telephone.

“LOL” is used as an example of 20th Century English. Used as an abbreviation of “laughing out loud,” we tend to use this mostly via text message or IM chat. My mum, however, still uses it as “lots of love!”

You can take a sneak peek at, or buy, the book here.

The Estonian Language Institute has published the first major etymological Estonian dictionary. It has been nine years since work began on the book. Two previous dictionaries exist, but this is the first compiled and published in Estonia.

The first known Estonian etymology dictionary was Julius Mägiste’s German effort which remained unfinished at the time of his death. Alo Raun’s 1982 edition contained just one line per word stem, and so the new version is seen as a huge breakthrough for the documentation of the language’s etymology.

The book includes 6,643 word entries.

Lead editor Iris Metsmägi states that;

“The book summarises everything that is today known about the origin of Estonian words.”

More information on word selection and dialect variants can be found here.

One woman in Nepal holds the key to a near extinct language. Seventy five year old Gyani Maiya Sen is the last remaining member of the Kusunda people who speaks their language fluently. Ms Sen states that other Kusunda people can speak a few words of the language but are not fully conversant.

“Fortunately I can also speak Nepali, but I feel very sad for not being able to speak my own language with people from my own community,” she said.

It is not known how many Kusunda people remain at this time; at the time of the 2001 Nepal census, there were 164 Kusundas living in Nepal, however many are thought to have either moved away or died.

Kusunda is considered a language isolate, meaning it has no discernible ties or relationships to any other known living language. No children within the indigenous group are learning the language, and all known Kusunda speakers have married into other tribes.

Whilst Nepal’s Ministry of Culture has no plans to preserve the language, linguistic students are seeking the help of Gyani Maiya Sen to document and learn Kusunda, in the hope of preventing it from dying out completely.

Source: BBC News

Language is constantly evolving, so it’s quite natural that certain words will be replaced and updated. When you read Shakespeare, for example, there is often an index of words to refer to since they are no longer in use today. A new survey has found that text speak is diminishing the usage of such traditional British words. The study of 2000 adults was carried out to mark the launch of Planet Word, the book which accompanies the series of the same name.

J.P. Davidson, the author of Planet Word said: ”This could be viewed as regrettable, as there are some great descriptive words that are being lost and these words would make our everyday language much more colourful and fun if we were to use them. But it’s only natural that with people trying to fit as much information in 140 characters that words are getting shortened and are even becoming redundant as a result.”

The book lists a top 20 of the unused words.

1. Bally: A word from 1885 – a euphemism for bloody

2. Laggard: An 18th Century word to describe someone who lags behind or responds slowly

3. Felicitations: To express congratulations

4. Rambunctious: Boisterous or unruly

5. Verily: From Middle English, simply means true or in truth

6. Salutations: A welcome greeting

7. Betwixt: Originated before 950, and means neither one nor the other

8. Lauded: From the Latin laudāre, to praise

9. Arcane: Known or understood by very few

10. Raconteur: A person skilled in telling stories, originated in the 19th Century, from the French verb, raconter, to tell. Most known now from Jack White’s band, The Racounteurs

11. Cad: An ill-bred man, originates from 19th Century, derived from the word Caddie

12. Betrothed: The person to whom one is engaged

13. Cripes: An expression of surprise

14. Malaise: A vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness

15. Quash: To put down or suppress completely; quell

16. Swell: Originates before 900 from the Middle English verb swellen, meanings include the verb to inflate and an adjective which describes if something is excellent

17. Balderdash: From the 1590s, it was originally a jumbled mix of liquors (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.), before being transferred in 1670s to ‘senseless jumble of words’

18. Smite: To strike, deal a blow

19. Spiffing: From the word spiff, meaning well-dressed, means superb

20. Tomfoolery: Foolish behaviour

Are there  any words you’d like to see banished to history?

I’ve recently found the website Wordnik, which I would struggle just to call an online dictionary. It not only collects definitions from well-known dictionaries, but it provides example phrases and sentences (including online publications, blogs, and tweets), pronunciations, tags, statistics, and a strong user-generated component. It even gives you the potential Scrabble score (if it is a valid Scrabble word). People can create lists of words based around themes, so if you look up a word, you can immediately see what other words and phrases it is commonly found with. There is also a pretty well-used comments feature.

For example, I clicked random word, and got raptured. Raptured, meaning in a state of rapture, has a Scrabble score of 11, was most popular in the early 1800s (and the present, possibly because of religious connotations), and has one related photo on Flickr.

For prescriptivists, Wordnik‘s resident pronunciation specialist (or orthoepist) provides his own pronunciations for nearly 1800 words (to date), and for descriptivists, any member of the site can upload their own audio. Edit: if you’d like orthoepist Charles Harrington Elster to pronounce something for you, add your word to The Request Line.

For the average dictionary user, this may be far too much information, but for those of us who are interested in seeing how language is used today (and how it was used in the past), this is a wonderful resource. I’d be interested to see if the concept will be extended to other languages, as well.

Check out the Zeitgeist to see what’s happening on the site. As of today:

Wordnik is billions of words, 828,852,001 example sentences, 6,458,204 unique words, 209,445 comments, 146,866 tags, 76,745 pronunciations, 46,119 favorites and 864,672 words in 27,830 lists created by 60,337 Wordniks.

For the new year, give your acquaintances the gift of pronouncing their names correctly.  It’s a basic courtesy, but it’s not uncommon to come across a name you’ve never heard before, and it’s often uncomfortable to have to ask someone how to pronounce their name (especially if you have communicated by email or other written communication).

Hear Names has a large database of names from all over the world, sorted by language or region.  If you come across an unfamiliar name through the course of your work day, through study, or in a newspaper, look it up on Hear Names, see its origin, and hear a native speaker pronounce it for you.  They even have famous figures’ names for your convenience.  And if you can’t find the name you’re looking for, there is a request feature so you can ask for a recording.

Even if you think you know how to pronounce someone’s name, it might be worth looking it up.  For example, Claudia is pronounced differently in the US from how it is in Germany.  And, of course, don’t be afraid to double-check with the person themselves.  Not everyone uses a standard pronunciation.

Source: Readable Blog

Some people love it, some people hate it, a lot of people need it, and for many, it’s all they have.  But how many people celebrate the diversity that is the English language?  A staggering 2 billion people speak it to some degree, and the minority are native speakers.  It’s often claimed that it’s a difficult language that cannibalises words from everywhere, but to many, this is a sign of progress and something to be glad of.

The English Project has taken it upon themselves to designate October 13 English Language Day.  Because October 13 (in 1362) was the first time an English speech was used to open parliament in the UK, the theme of the first English Language Day is the often-confusing topic of legal language.  As even native speakers can find legalese difficult, it puts native and non-native speakers on more of an even playing field.

Check out the Ideas page to get some inspiration for how to celebrate.  Even if you’re not in the UK, you can participate by logging onto the website and filling in the survey.

I stumbled across yet another online dictionary service the other day, but this one offers a little bit more than the standard single word definition service.  MyDictionary.net offers dictionaries in twelve different languages, as well as translating words and phrases between these.  It also has a foreign language keyboard display, which is handy, though quite tiny.

My favourite feature has to be the recent search display.  The main page displays the last 20 or 50 searches completed, and I find it fascinating to see what words and phrases people are looking up.

Here are some of the recent searches I’ve seen so far:

The ordinary or predictable:
¡buena suerte! (Spanish) – good luck!/God speed! (English)
mon petit (French) – my little (English)
saladier (French) – bowl (English)

The technical:
βραδυσεισμός (Greek) - bradyseism (English – a geological term)

The oddly specific:
a prueba de humedad (Spanish) – damp-proof (English)
sordid merchant (English) – 市侩 / shi4kuai4(Chinese – according to the two translators I use, this means ‘Philistine’ and ‘money grubber’)

The obscure idiom:
tip (somebody) the wink (English) – информация: давать частную информацию, намекнуть, знак: делать знак украдкой, подмигивать (Russian)

What were the last things you needed translations for?

I know I’ve said that Americans don’t spell as well as the British, but there’s no doubting that the institution of the National Spelling Bee is given much more attention, time, and effort in the USA.

Last week, 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar from Kansas won the coveted spelling bee trophy by correctly spelling the word Laodicean.  The Round 16 word, meaning to be indifferent, especially in religion, put her ahead of the the two runners up, who misspelled menhir (an upright stone monument, carried around by Obelix in the Asterix comics) and Maecenas (a patron or supporter of the arts).

The months of training, which even included skipping her own birthday celebrations, paid off for Shivashankar, as she took home her prizes, worth over US$30,000.  She plans to be a neurosurgeon one day, but said that nothing would ever replace spelling.

It’s unlikely that most of us have ever heard of the majority of the words in the later rounds of the bee.  It’s even less likely that we’d have the opportunity to use them in real life.  Many of them have been adopted into English from other languages, making an already irregular spelling system even more difficult.  Here are a few for you to consider:

phoresy – a non-parasitic relationship where one organism carries another.

guayabera – a type of loose men’s shirt or lightweight jacket, popular in Latin America.

sophrosyne - moderation, discretion.

reredos - a decorative screen used on an altar.

Fourth-placed Kyle Mou tripped up on schizaffin, which I’ve had trouble even finding a definition for (a few different sources seem to think it means ‘characterised by a slender build with slight muscle definition’).  I think these kids deserve a lot of credit for their dedication, hard work, bravery (I don’t think I could go on national TV to spell words most people can’t even pronounce, let alone spell) and doing their bit to keep obscure vocabulary alive.

Full article from the BBC.