The virtual linguist

English or Mandarin

My daughter is learning Mandarin, and so are lots of other people in the West, believing it will help them find a better job. China's neighbours, however, don't necessarily feel the same way about the Chinese language. This BBC piece looked at how some Malaysian families drive their children miles to expensive private schools over the border in Singapore, because they feel that their children are not getting enough exposure to English in Malaysian schools. In Vietnam, too, there is great interest in learning English, partly because of ongoing political tension with China. What attracts people as much as anything else to English is pop music and Hollywood films.

 

Here's the BBC article.

Seminar

The word seminar is relatively new in the language. The modern business sense ie a conference for specialists, or course of instruction for businesspeople dates back only to the 1940s. The university-related sense dates back to 1880s, when it originally referred to the method of tuition in German universities. The first definition at the OED entry is: "In German universities (hence in certain British and American universities), a select group of advanced students associated for special study and original research under the guidance of a professor".

 

Seminar developed from the earlier word seminary, which nowadays usually refers to a college for Roman Catholic priests. The origin of the word seminary (and hence seminar) is the Latin seminarium or seed-plot, and the earliest definition in the OED is: "A piece of ground in which plants are sown (or raised from cuttings, etc.) to be afterwards transplanted". The meaning then broadened to include "a place where animals are bred", then "A place of origin and early development; a place or thing in which something (e.g. an art or science, a virtue or vice) is developed or cultivated, or from which it is propagated abundantly" (OED) and then "a place of learning", or "an institution of training for those destined for a particular profession." The OED tells us that in the first half of the 19th century private girls' schools were often called "seminary for young ladies" or "ladies' seminary".

 

It's interesting that the word seminary was used with reference to girls' schools. No-one seems to have any problems with seminar or seminary these days, but the same cannot be said about the similar-sounding words with a related etymon seminal and disseminate. These words both derive from the Latin semen, seed. For this reason, some people and organisations feel that the words seminal and disseminate are sexist. The British Sociological Association, for instance, recommends that they be replaced with classical or formative (seminal) and broadcast, inform or publicise (disseminate). You can read the BSA's document entitled Language and the BSA: Sex and Gender by clicking on the link on this page.

Shrove

Today is Shrove Tuesday and I am repeating a post I wrote a couple of years ago.

 

Shrove comes from the very old, now archaic, verb 'to shrive' which means 'to impose penance' or 'to hear confession'. Traditionally Christians were shriven in preparation for Lent (which begins tomorrow).

 

Other, obsolete, names for the day that are in the OED include the Scottish Fastens-eve (or Fastens-een), Fastens-Tuesday, Fastgong and Fastingong.

 

Today is more popularly known as Pancake Day (the equivalent of Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday). Pancakes were traditionally eaten on Pancake Day to use up all the butter and milk before Lent when such rich foods were forbidden. There are many English towns and villages which continue old traditions associated with the day. The town of Olney in Buckinghamshire holds a pancake race on Shrove Tuesday every year (you can see a video of today's race here).

Tucker

I was making up a puzzle recently based on surnames that come from occupations. I could think of several, but looked on the internet for any I'd missed. I discovered that Tucker was once an occupation. A tucker was the same as a fuller (also a surname nowadays), namely the person who dresses cloth that has been woven. Tuck is from an old verb meaning 'pull sharply'.

 

The phrase "best bib and tucker" meaning 'best clothes' is still sometimes heard. A tucker was, as well as being a person, also a piece of lace or a frilly ruffle worn by women over the bodice of their dress and often tucked inside a low neckline. It was a popular fashion in the 18th century. By the late 19th century the phrase "best bib and tucker" was also applied to men's clothes.

 

A bib is a piece of material tied around the neck. Babies wear bibs to protect their clothes, and this was the original sense of the word 'bib', although it could also be on an adult garment, being the upper part of a dress or pinafore. A pinafore is so called because it was originally 'pinned' on 'afore' or on the front of a dress.

 

Goats have accents

Goats' "accents" are not solely genetic, and change according to their surroundings and as they mingle with other goats, say scientists. Animal researchers are very excited about the study, apparently, because before now it was assumed that just a very small number of mammals, such as dolphins and elephants, were able to 'pick up' an accent.

 

Here's the story.

Vauxhall

Students of Russian (in Britain) usually find it easy to remember the Russian word for '(railway) station', which is вокзал (vokzal), as they are told to think of Vauxhall. These days Vauxhall (pronounced Vox-hall) is a busy overground and Underground station a few minutes from Waterloo, and many Russian teachers (me included) tell their students that the Russian word came about because Russian engineers were visiting London in the mid-19th century and, when they were shown Vauxhall station, they mixed up the name Vauxhall with the generic name for the building.

 

The name Vauxhall comes the French surname Falkes (and means 'hall or manor of a nobleman named Falkes). Before the association of the name Vauxhall with the busy station, Vauxhall was best known for its pleasure gardens, which were very popular in the 18th century -- anybody who was anybody promenaded there. It was not a public park -- you had to pay to enter. Here's the Wikipedia page with an interesting painting by Rowlandson showing just what a lively place it was.

 

The word vokzal apparently existed in Russian well before the building of Vauxhall station (it appears in a line of a Pushkin poem on the Wikipedia Vauxhall page) and was adopted in honour of Vauxhall pleasure gardens. The original meaning of vokzal was 'amusement park' or 'pleasure park'. The first public railway in Russia was the line between St Petersburg and the nearby tsar's palace at Pavlovsk. The town of Pavlovsk had a pleasure gardens, which were the destination of most of the train travellers, so it looks as if the pleasure gardens became heavily associated with the railway next door.

 

The language of childbirth

I went to a talk on the subject of the churching of women today at an authors' lunch club I often go to. The speaker was Margaret Houlbrooke, author of a book on the subject. She had evidence of the churching of women happening in the Church of England well into the 1950s.

 

Although the churching ceremony is usually described as a service of thanksgiving, certainly in the old days - and, indeed, well into the 20th century - there were still undertones to the practice of a woman giving birth being seen as unclean or impure (after all, she must have had sex).

 

Margaret referred to "women and their gossips". I knew that a gossip was originally a sponsor at a baptism, but now I also know, because I've looked up 'gossip' in the OED, that another old definition of gossips is "female friends, invited to be present at a birth'. Gossip is an Old English word and comes from 'God + sib', sib meaning 'related by blood' (cf sibling).

 

Giving birth is a very powerful experience, yet the language of childbirth is often disempowering. Think of 'confinement' (original meaning is 'imprisonment'). Confinement in the childbirth context was first used only in the 18th century. The Middle English equivalent was Our Lady's bands (or bends, or bonds - all words related to the word 'bound' - again there is a sense of 'imprisonment' within the word).

 

The word 'delivery' is commonly used with relation to childbirth (the original meaning of 'deliver' was 'release from imprisonment or confinement'). The OED's definition of 'deliver' in the birthing sense is very negative and old-fashioned: "To disburden (a woman) of the fœtus, to bring to childbirth; in pass., to give birth to a child or offspring. Rarely said of beasts". There is a much more positive verb - "to birth" - defined as "to give birth to, to give rise to" but this is not in common use, particularly among doctors, although some midwives use it.

Witch

I heard the tail end of an awful story on the news about someone killing a boy who was thought to be a witch. The OED says that witch meaning "a man who practises witchcraft" is a dialect word only, although that can't be the case as I heard it on national news, and it features in several newspaper reports.

 

There are two separate entries for the noun "witch" in the OED, one for the masculine meaning, and one for the feminine (defined as "a female magician, sorceress" as the original meaning, although needless to say, it soon pejorates into "a woman supposed to have dealings with the devil or evil spirits" - the male version does not have the equivalent pejorative definition). The first citation for 'witch' the man is c890, so it is a very old word. It comes from the Old English wicca, which was a masculine noun. 'Witch' the woman comes from the feminine version, wicce, and the first citation in the OED is from c1000. The Dictionary says that both words probably derive from the verb 'to witch' (wiccian in Old English), meaning 'to practise sorcery'. Interestingly, Wicca itself only went into the OED in 1993; it is defined as "the practices and religious cult of modern witchcraft".

Eskimo words for snow

Since there is still some stubborn snow lying on the ground outside, I'll revisit a post I wrote three years ago about the "Eskimo words for snow" myth, which is being linked to in a piece in today's Guardian. This Guardian article discusses some other language myths, which will probably interest most readers of the Virtual Linguist blog.

 

The Guardian article also advises people to "look up the origins of marmalade", although it is not a particularly contentious word, as is implied. I've written a post on marmalade, too, as I found it interesting.

Ought, nought and aught

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery". On the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, today I am taking Mr Micawber's famous piece of advice in David Copperfield as inspiration.

 

'Ought' in this quotation means "nought" ('no shillings' is meant). It's not very common to hear 'ought' in this sense today, although I remember my dad saying it 30 or 40 years ago in connection with small measurements - one point ought six, that sort of thing. Ought is a variation of nought; it just lost the N a couple of hundred years ago. This process occurred with other common words, too; an adder, a snake, was spelled nædder in Old English and nadder in Middle English. Since "a nadder" sounds exactly the same as "an adder" the n eventually migrated across to the article. Apron was originally napperon (it comes from the French nappe, tablecloth) and orange can be ultimately traced back through the Persian nārang and the Sanskrit nāraṅga.

 

A similar word is "naught", not very common in Britain these days except in the phrase "come to naught" (and many people spell that 'nought'). It's a very old word that goes back to the beginnings of English, and is a mixture of no + wight, or ne + aught, both wight and aught meaning 'thing' in Old English, so naught was 'no thing', or 'nothing'. Naught and nought were originally pronounced differently, but by the 17th century the vowel sounds had merged to sound the same - in standard English, that is - note the regional word 'nowt', still pronounced with the original pronunciation. Naught and nought could also be used interchangeably, but naught tended to be associated with the sense 'worthless' or 'bad'. This is how the word naughty came about (there was once also the spelling noughty).

 

Aught is the opposite of naught, and means 'anything'. It is not very common in British English these days, except for the phrases "for aught I know" and "for aught I care".