h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Clawing the topic back to morality:

(Dylan Moran)
'Everyone's corrupted by hotels. As soon as you arrive you start looking for things to steal.'

Well, the d's and b's create more of a rhythmic blast, so no wonder rock and roll uses them instead of that 'nonny' thing.

Maybe...but what about 'Sha-la-la-la' and 'Shoo-wop'?

Wang dang doodle!

I've a feeling there's more too it. Certainly Robert Johnson's Crossroads Bluses has its roots in Yoruba mythology. And Hoochie-coochie man (Muddy Waters and others) derives from Africa. I'm wondering if all these Doo-wops have similar origins.


Incidentally...I hear that The Kaiser Chiefs are planning a collaboration with some West African hereditary musicians. I'm not sure of the details, but I Predict A Griot.

Nobody tells those obscure puns like you, Edward!

Hello,

Gnomon has recommended this conversation to me. I'm one of those linguist type people, so I thought I'd join in
For the sake of contributing something relevant to the thread, there are two other EU countries that have two official languages: Malta (Maltese and English) and Finland. All the Finns learn Swedish in school, and boy do they hate it!

And any Irish person who doesn't like Irish being called Gaelic probably doesn't speak it, since the Irish for 'Irish' is 'Gaeilge' (pronounced [ge:lig@])

Jack

Welcome! Tell us something interesting!

Because the topic was raised under British English, I've just been reading all about diacritics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic - but don't tell anyone I've been reading Wikipedia ) They're amazingly fascinating.

Welcome! And yes, do tell us something interesting!

>>All the Finns learn Swedish in school, and boy do they hate it!<<

Yes, I guess most do. Teaching Swedish is such an undesirable post that mostly it's the desperate (and desperately untalented) who take the job, making it even more painful for the pupils to learn the language. Even if you liked Swedish, studying it at school would be an exercise in suffering.

Which is a shame as it's really a very nice language.

I learnt something interesting this weekend. Turkish Cypriots have never been Turkish. They were Cypriots who converted to Islam and were branded 'Turkish' by the Orthodox church.

But, while Turkish was an official language - a legacy of the Ottoman Empire - they only started learning Turkish en masse in the 1930's and 40's!

(Oh...and these days there are 'Grey Wolf' settlers from Turkey.)

In fact, most of the Turkish population are not of original Turkic stock (from Central Asia), but an ethnic mix of Greeks, Lydians and any other Anatolians from times past. Right, something interesting to say. I was a bit yesterday...

As we all know, more than half of the words in English are from non-Anglo-Saxon sources, but what about the proportion of words actually used? From my so far minuscule studies (excerpts from the Count of Monte Cristo and Independent), I would estimate this to be about 15-25%. From a previous study, I seem to remember Tolkien coming out at 8%. I wonder if this has ever been done seriously

Diana Wynne Jones wrote a story once which was set in an alternative England which had never had the Norman invasion, so all the language was derived from Anglo Saxon. It was quite a while before you noticed.

Interesting!

Presumably Tolkein, as an Anglo-Saxon zealot, deliberately eschewed the Latinate. I seem to recall reading something about a movement to Anglo-Saxonify the language, with Anglo-Saxon-based words for things like Television...but I can't recall either ant examples or where I came across them .

By the way...how *do* we cope with those words which require multiple hyphens? Like Anglo-Saxon-based or proto-Balto-Altaic on non-African-American?

Poul Anderson wrote a short story which is an explanation of a technical subject in an English based on Anglo-Saxon words called "Uncleftish Beholding", which can be read here:

http://www.grijalvo.com/Citas/Peculiar_English.htm

I particularly like the closing phrase "an unhemmed wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain".

Zube

Thanks for that

It was a more serious attempt that I was thinking of, by an Oxbridge associate of Tolkein's. I think it might have been in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of language, so I'll have a look tonight.

Another example of peculiar English - I've just finished reading Everything is Illumimated by Jonathan Safran Foer. It's partly narrated by Alex, a Ukranian translator who erroneously believes he can speak English. It reads as if he's consulting a Thessaurus and never getting quite the right word.

Philip Pullman had a go at that in His Dark Materials, creating a world that had had a 'successful' Reformation, after which Calvin had been made pope . . . with the result that science was now controlled by the church . . . electricity was called 'anbaric' and the kids from the two separated Englands had a moment of recognition over the word 'amber' . . .

My Irish teacher, stung by jibes about the Irish for ´telephone´ being ´telefón' would say 'íf someone asks you what's the Irish for telephone, ask them what's the English for it?' It being of course gobbledy-Greek.

But the Icelanders have their own word, something like 'vin' meaning wire. And of course the redoubtable Germans: fernsprecher.

I was always taught that the Irish for telephone and bicycle were "guthán" (voicey thing) and "rothar" (wheely thing), but I discovered that the words "teilefón" and "bicycle" are actually used in Irish-speaking areas.

Similarly...the Deutschers don't *really* say 'Fernsprecher' or 'Fernsehsapparat' (TV). Like the rest of the world, they use Phone (Or 'Handy' if it's a mobile) and 'TV'). The other words do exist - in the same way that some English speakers talk of the wireless or the gramophone.

Similarly, try as they might, l'Academie can't get the French to say 'fin de semaine' for 'weekend'.

On the other hand, French people are often surprised to find that the English for "le Parking" is not "the parking".

Also...Germans believe that the A of 'Campingplatz' should be pronounced as a short E, because that's how the English say it. If a German company wants its brand name to convey a certain Anglophile sophistication, they will often use an A-umlaut.

Counter examples in English:

While the good people of Arles may have pronounced 'van Goch' as per the American 'van Go', there's no obvious reason for calling him 'van Goff'.

Americans have a belief that all European words contain a short O: Picosso; Thomas Monn; Posta.

There's a general rule in Ireland, if it's foreign, pronounce it posh.

- I was offered Lasawñ in the canteen one day and Swayds another day.

- Lingerie is normally pronounced "long-zher-ay" when it should be (approximately) "lan-zher-ee".

I used to hear a lot of talk about Darleks when I was a kid. It's how a lot of people here picked up the English pronunciation.