Language Stops Plane

Language Log reports that the mere speaking of Arabic got air passengers suspicious enough to alert authorities to ... the speaking of Arabic. Now that I'm studying Arabic in more earnest than previously, I hope this won't cause undue concern--ok, I admit, I don't really care if people have a problem with it. And anyway, my pasty white northern Europeanness probably will work in my favor in the eyes of similar suspicious passengers. Seriously: you can't live in the modern world and be terribly surprised to hear just about any language, especially one spoken by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. (And I'll admit here I was spoiled growing up in Brooklyn and hearing everything!) But if you do think of Arabic primarily as a language that many of our enemies speak, wouldn't you want more people speaking it? Anyway, Bill Poser's point about what languages terrorists actually speak is well made--I better be careful who I speak French around.

Aryanland

Reading up on Central Asian history and names and such took me to the word Turan, a vague term used in medieval Persian literature for the land of Turkic and other peoples beyond Persia, meaning literally "land of the Tur". Interesting enough, especially given the article's attempt to sort out historical common usage from actual ethnic, geographic, and linguistic distinctions (always a tricky job), but what struck me was the analogy provided for the formation of the word:

Tūrān ("land of the Tūrya" like Ērān, Īrān = "land of the Ārya")

I never realized the etymology of the name of Iran before.

Incidentaly, the A-to-E vowel change also gives us the name of England out of Angla-lond, as well as word pairs like man-men, Denmark-Dane, and even ultimately star-steer. In Old English this is called I-mutation, since you mutated the sound of the first vowel by anticipating the sound of the I in the following syllable. This mutation remained even after the syllable with the I, often a inflectional (grammatical) ending, had been dropped. There are other examples in Old English that don't look like they apply in Modern English because lots of Old English a's have become modern O's.* But if you allow for this, you can see the effect of I-mutation in pairs like whole/hale and heal (OE hal/hæl, halian), strong and strength (OE strang, strengþu), long and length (OE lang, lengþu), old and elder (OE ald, ieldra), know and knew (OE cnawan, cneow).

*This is where we get off having the O-sound represented by "oa" as in boat, throat, coat, etc. The A in Old English bat was pronounced close enough to an O that people noted it by writing an O next to the A. I assume the same origin for the Scandinavian letter Å, except scribes there wrote the O on top instead of to the side.

A Haiku

New place, web access
computer that works again
and back to blogging.

Unlikely Germanic Book Ideas

Because, you know, books are always my favorite gifts... ;-) Here are some unlikely gift/book ideas from Germanic history.

10. How to Win Friends and Influence People - by Aethelred the Unready

9. Dinner Guest Etiquette - by Grendel

8. One Family, One Land: Preserving Your Estate for Posterity - by Charles the Great

7. Peace and Mercy: Keys to a Happy Realm - by Ermanaric the Ostrogoth

6. "For I am Meek and Humble of Heart": A Treatise on the Passive Virtues - by Eirikr Blood-axe

5. Glories of the Frankish Realm - by Widukind the Saxon

4. Your Word is Your Bond: The Importance of Honoring Treaties - by Guthrum of Danish East Anglia

3. 101 Great Tips on Beauty and Diplomacy - by Egil Skallagrimsson

2. Keepin' it Real: Function Over Form - by Childeric III the Merovingian

1. Winning the Two Front War - by Harald of Wessex

As if there had been any doubt

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

This actually was a pretty cool quiz: By which I mean I like it b/c it asks mostly about things I tend to listen for on my own. The Mary-marry-merry test is one of the first things I came up with when I moved from Brooklyn to Virginia--as most of my friends know.

Two cheers for the new Tolkien Encyclopedia!

Not three, b/c as Mike Drout relates, plenty of disappointments surround it. Nevertheless, it exists, and there is moderate rejoicing. It sounds like a worthy tome either way, but when you know the great height something could have been, it's adequacy often doesn't seem adequate. Regardless: thank you, Mike, for your hard work on what I'm sure is still an awesome accomplishment.

Internets and Englishes, Preciousss

Lauren over at Polyglot Conspiracy has an interesting post on a NYT Magazine article on the Internet and the Oxford English Dictionary. I'm a little surprised that there are still so few linguists that are internet-savvy; despite the strictness of the current attestation requirements that Lauren points out, still you'd think more people would be studying what must be one of the greatest conduits for language change (in English at least) since the Normans. For example, the article mentions how words extinct in one place (perhaps considered more "standard") may still survive somewhere else--i.e., the internet allows for documentation of the many world "Englishes". An interesting article and post.

Building a Fantasy Language Team

It's the early middle ages, and you and your friends are putting together your Fantasy Language Teams when a three-way deal starts to suggest itself. You're playing Old English, but your word eagðyrl, just hasn't been scoring the usage you'd hoped. You look over to Old Norse and see the word vindauga, who's languishing where he is, but you think, with a little retooling, a little training, he could have a place on your team and really become a household name.

Meanwhile, Team Norse is looking to replace vindauga with something else, but they're not interested in your eagðyrl. They're more interested in the Romance player fenestra. Fenestra's all the rage: he'll end up winning the Vocabulary League's highest prize--the Import Cup--both in France as fenêtre and in Germany as Fenster.

So what can you, Old English, give to Old High German or Old French to persuade them to send fenestra north, thereby allowing Norse to release vindauga? Well, there were many borrowings throughout history, but to pick one, let's go with Sonnabend. (You don't have to trade for the same position, after all.) The day before Sunday has several names among Germanic lands. One of the German words, Samstag comes from sabbath. If you say Samstag with a cold, you'll hear the inherent relationship between b's and m's: hence sabb[ath]'s Day > sab's Tag > Samstag.

In England, the day's dedication to pagan Saturn prevailed in the name Saturday--an irony, since the Christian missionaries to the continent preferred 'Sun-eve', or sunnanæfen, cognate of what would become the other German word for Saturday, Sonnabend. So the English word is Roman-influenced, but the German word is Old English.

<aside>Note that German did already have the Germanic roots for sun and eve. Strictly speaking, this isn't a word borrowing, but a borrowed translation. Case in point: The telephone allows you to hear things far away, hence its name from Greek tele-, far, and phoné, sound. The English word is put together from words borrowed from Greek. But German puts its word together from native Germanic roots: Fernsprecher = fern, far + sprecher, speaker. The same thing applies to Sonnabend: native (German) roots, influenced by Old English construction (sunnan + æfen > Sonn + Abend).</aside>

Anyway, with the contribution of OE sunnanæfen to German Sonnabend we can call our three-way Fantasy trade complete. Fenestra goes to Team Norse where it will become, e.g., Swedish fönster. Norse vindauga, literally 'wind-eye', comes to Old English where it will become window. OE eagðyrl is cut from the team. And Old English sends sunnanæfen to German where it becomes a household name every week as Sonnabend.

Bottom line: no one kept their original word for 'window', except possibly Old French. German and Norse took the Romance root. English has a Germanic root, but not the original Old English one. And while French kept the Romance root, it has plenty of words of Germanic origin as well (matter for another post some day).

There are no A's buried in the cemetery

A little mnemonic device for All Souls' Day.

Speaking of mnemonic, here's a root that spans Indo-European. That odd pair of nasal consonants at the beginning of the word shows up in various forms all over the place. The word's Greek ancestor was mnémōn. It also comes into English (memory) from Latin memoria. Germanic languages had their own version, too. Old English had the verb gemunan 'remember', and its umlauted version gemyndgian, whence modern English mind.

Other relatives in this far-flung family include amnesia, money, monster, (auto-)matic, mandarin, mantra, Muse, and German minnesinger. For more, check out the entry in the Indo-European Roots Index.

Cool Quotes #10: How to Read a Saga

If you've ever been annoyed by a friend who criticizes a book or a movie for not being realistic enough--if the words "Just be quiet and watch the movie" have ever dangled from your tongue--then know this is an age-old problem. The author of Göngu-Hrolf's Saga is right there with you.

Since this tale nor anything else can be made to please everyone, nobody need believe any more of it than he wants to believe. All the same the best and most profitable thing is to listen while a story is being told, to enjoy it and not be gloomy: for the fact is that as long as people are enjoying the entertainment they won't be thinking any evil thoughts. Nor is it a good thing when listeners find fault with a story just because it happens to be uninformative or clumsily told. Nothing so unimportant is ever done perfectly.

And the best line comes at the end:

I'd like to thank those who've listened and enjoyed the story, and since those who don't like it won't ever be satisfied, let them enjoy their own misery. AMEN.