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It’s time once again to play What Did That Writer Mean? Elizabeth Kolbert (who often reports in the New Yorker) is one of the best popular science writers around, and she knows how to grab and hold your attention; witness the start of her latest piece, “When the Arctic Melts” (archived):

In the middle of the night in the middle of the summer in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet, I woke to find myself with a blinding headache. An anxious person living in anxious times, I’ve had plenty of headaches, but this one felt different, as if someone had taken a mallet to my sinuses. I’d flown up to the ice the previous afternoon, to a research station owned and operated by the National Science Foundation. The station, called Summit, sits ten thousand five hundred and thirty feet above sea level. The first person I’d met upon arriving was the resident doctor, who warned me and a few other newcomers to expect to experience altitude sickness. In most cases, he said, this would produce only passing, hangover-like symptoms; on occasion, though, it could result in brain swelling and death. Belatedly, I realized that I’d neglected to ask how to tell the difference.

(Fear not, she survived the experience.) But later on, in describing a museum in Ilulissat, the “iceberg capital of the world,” she writes: “From the outside, the Icefjord Centre looks like a cross between a milking barn and a concert hall, with lots of metal beams and a roof that meets in a swale instead of a peak.” I knew I had seen the word swale at some point, but I had no idea what it meant; I asked my wife, and she said she thought it was a sort of swamp, which turns out to be the general idea — if you google it the first result is “a low or hollow place, especially a marshy depression between ridges.” But how would that describe a roof? So I investigated further, and it turns out the OED has four separate nouns of that spelling: swale³ ‘A hollow, low place,’ swale¹ ‘Timber in laths, boards, or planks,’ swale² ‘Shade; a shady place,’ and swale⁴ ‘A small broom or brush without a stick for a handle.’ They’re all described as either local or dialect, but swale³ has more citations and seems more widespread, so here’s the full definition:

A hollow, low place; esp. U.S., a moist or marshy depression in a tract of land, esp. in the midst of rolling prairie. Also (U.S.) a hollow between adjacent sand-ridges.

Any idea how that might apply to the Kolbert quote? If you’re curious to see the building itself, voilà.

Daniel A. Rabuzzi sent me a link to his Strange Horizons review of Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival (edited by Dennis Wilson Wise); he has interesting things to say:

Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology deepens and nuances my understanding of what speculative poetry is and how it relates both to speculative fiction and to wider poetic traditions in English. In the course of this book, Dennis Wilson Wise demonstrates convincingly how the structural alliteration that was central to Old English poetry (and that of other old Germanic languages) remains vital today, drawing a line from Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Poul Anderson to Patrick Rothfuss, Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, and Jo Walton. Wise carefully lays out his definition of “speculative poetry,” taking an ecumenical view that includes “SF, horror, and the weird as well as fantasy, plus “other kinds of imaginative writing with a generic kinship to fantastika” (p. 14). […]

First, the nuts and bolts: Wise has curated 166 poems by fifty-five poets, with author biographies, detailed end notes, and a bibliography, bracketed by a forty-six-page introduction (combining a thorough-going literary history with a thoughtful statement of aesthetic principles) and an eighteen-page “Metrical Essay on Three Alliterative Traditions.” He is a careful and generous scholar, making clear and considered arguments in an undogmatic way. He engages with the most influential scholars of Old English meter (including Thorlac Turville-Petre, Roberta Frank, Eric Weiskott, and, of course, Tolkien), with leading researchers into modern reception of OE texts such as Heather O’Donoghue, Tom Shippey, and Chris Jones, and with Ted Hughes, Rahul Gupta, Paul Douglas Deane, and other practitioners who have weighed in on OE matters metrical.

Wise is an able guide to the demanding intricacies of OE alliterative structure, which is alien territory for speakers of modern English. To start, he distinguishes between “ornamental” and “structural” alliteration: “However many pickled peppers Peter Piper may have picked, Mr. Piper’s exploits only teach us about the ornamental kind of alliteration, not the structural kind” (p. 377). The structure in question is based on “primary alliteration across an ax/ax or aa/ax pattern; two lifts [the heavily stressed long syllables] and two dips in each verse, and a medial caesura” (p. 380). Of course, as Wise informs us, several patterns were possible and discrepancies abound that highlight, in their contravention of them, the rules. More to his immediate point, “contemporary revivalists range across a wide spectrum of metrical fidelity [including] purists … who accurately imitate more known features of the alliterative meter than not [and] impressionists [who are] less engaged with replicating a historical alliterative tradition and instead prefer medieval ‘flavoring’ to one degree or another” (p. 12). Wise’s sliding scale of purist-to-impressionist is useful, and facilitates a broad church.

I hadn’t been familiar with either the revival of alliteration or the useful term fantastika (defined here), and I’m all for a broad church. Furthermore, Rabuzzi gave me pleasure by quoting a poet I like and don’t think many people know about:
[Read more…]

I was wondering where the term “chuck wagon” came from, so I started looking. That Wikipedia article says Charles Goodnight, a Texas rancher, introduced the concept in 1866:

Goodnight modified a Studebaker-manufactured covered wagon, a durable Civil War army-surplus wagon, to suit the needs of cowboys driving cattle from Texas to sell in New Mexico. He added a “chuck box” to the back of the wagon, with drawers and shelves for storage space and a hinged lid to provide a flat working surface.

But what was this “chuck”? I went to the OED’s chuck wagon entry (from 1933) and found it was their chuck n.⁵, which is “perhaps the same as chuck n.⁴”: “A lump; a large awkward-shaped piece of wood for burning, a chock n.¹; also of bread, meat, and the like, a chunk n.¹” (sense 2: “a cut of beef extending from the horns to the ribs, including the shoulder-piece”); unfortunately, the entry is from 1889, and the etymology is simply “apparently originally the same as chock n.¹” So we go to chock n.¹ “A piece or block of wood; a log, a stump”; this entry was revised in 2015, and the etymology is more discursive, even if it ultimately wanders off into a swamp:

Apparently < Middle French (northern) choque (also chouque; French regional (northern) choque, chouque), apparently originally a variant of soche, souche log, block of wood (11th cent. in Old French in Rashi as çoce; French souche), further etymology uncertain and disputed; compare Italian ciocco log, block of wood (14th cent.).

I don’t know how you get choque, chouque from soche, souche, but it looks like that’s the best that can be done for now. (In case you’re wondering, they didn’t serve chuck steak at a chuck wagon: “The meats were greasy cloth-wrapped bacon, salt pork, and beef, usually dried, salted or smoked.”)

“Language evolves” is a truism of linguistics and a phrase that has often appeared on this site as part of an effort to convince people that their beloved shibboleths are useless; it is also the name of a website:

Language Evolves is a free service that helps authors in the science fiction industry research and develop stories based on language evolution research. This includes an online crash-course, interactive workshops, and one-to-one sessions.

Are you a Science Fiction author? Do you need some inspiration for your next big story? We can help you write stories about some of the hardest questions in science:

How did humans evolve to be able to speak?
What was the first language like?
How does society shape the language we speak?
How does our language shape our thoughts?
What will language be like in the future?

You can start learning right now by visiting our Online Resources page.

The Resources page consists of “video primers on key questions in language evolution,” and I confess I haven’t investigated them (I don’t really do videos); I can only hope they present sensible ideas. At any rate, it’s a worthwhile project, and they sponsor a competition for sf stories in both English and Welsh!

The MeFi obit post for Robin Malan introduced me to that ebullient South African educator, collator, editor, actor, director, writer, and publisher, well remembered for his Ah Big Yaws? A Guard to Sow Theffricun Innglissh, by “Rawbone Malong.” The post provides “a few examples of common Innglissh”:

Daze off the Wick: Munnay, Chooseday, Whenceday, Thirsty, Frarday, Sarrarray, Sunnay.

Martyr’s Horse [known as Ketchup in other parts of the world]

At the cinema
A: ‘Thus nufe fillum’s got Stief Makween innit. Jew larkkim?”
B: ‘Yers. Klunt Eastwards eggshi mah fafe-rit, bit Stief’s orso kwart narse.’

If someone wanted to loan my copy of Malan’s book they might use the term: Fur kips, meaning in perpetuity. As in: ‘Issue borrowurn ut tomb-ie orkin Ahhaffit fur kips?”. But my response would probably be: Goat a yell!

You can learn more at Carol’s Blog:

Rule of thumb: do not pronounce any vowels or diphthongs as you believe you should – this would be wrong. Most are pronounced further forward in the mouth with the lips much more rounded that you expect. Here are some of the most important STI vowel sounds […] Then there are the consonants […] h (house) is pronounced y (zis yaw yeeouss? – Is this your house?) or as Rawbone Malong says in his classic curse: Goat a yell!

She provides examples of words that “have been changed completely in the STI idiom” (e.g., robot ‘traffic light’ and lekker ‘nice’) as well as “some of Robin Malan’s classic phrases.” It all reminds me of Afferbeck Lauder and Let Stalk Strine, discussed here in 2003.

Dave Wilton at Wordorigins.org posted a Big List entry for tarot focusing, as always, on its history in English, but he says “The name is a borrowing from the French tarot, which in turn is from the Italian slang/dialectal *tarocco (plural tarocchi) meaning fool or foolish,” and I wondered if it could be taken farther back. Wiktionary told me that the Italian word was “Borrowed from Sicilian taroccu (‘Citrus sinensis’), from Arabic تُـرُنْج (turunj, ‘citron’),” the Arabic entry said it was “أُتْرُنْج (ʔutrunj) with epenthesis,” and that link said:

Borrowed from Aramaic אַתְרוּגָּא (ʾaṯruggā, ʾaṯrungā), from Old Persian [script needed] (turung), from Sanskrit मातुलुङ्ग (mātuluṅga). Cognate to Classical Syriac ܐܛܪܘܓܐ (ʾaṭruggā, ʾaṭrungā).

And the Sankrit word was “Borrowed from Dravidian, compare Tamil மாதுளம் (mātuḷam), மாதுளங்காய் (mātuḷaṅkāy, ‘pomegranate, citron lemon’).”

I thought that was interesting enough to pass along; note that only the t is left of the etymon.

Update. As Giacomo Ponzetto and Nat Shockley point out in the comment thread, the Wiktionary etymology is very implausible. See below for details.

Back in 2006 I reported on “the insensate rage unleashed in language-loving Germans by the humble apostrophe”; now Philip Oltermann in the Guardian tells us those language-loving Germans are going to have to suck it up:

A relaxation of official rules around the correct use of apostrophes in German has not only irritated grammar sticklers but triggered existential fears around the pervasive influence of English.

Establishments that feature their owners’ names, with signs like “Rosi’s Bar” or “Kati’s Kiosk” are a common sight around German towns and cities, but strictly speaking they are wrong: unlike English, German does not traditionally use apostrophes to indicate the genitive case or possession. The correct spelling, therefore, would be “Rosis Bar”, “Katis Kiosk”, or, as in the title of a recent viral hit, Barbaras Rhabarberbar.

However, guidelines issued by the body regulating the use of Standard High German orthography have clarified that the use of the punctuation mark colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph (“idiot’s apostrophe”) has become so widespread that it is permissible – as long as it separates the genitive ‘s’ within a proper name.

The new edition of the Council for German Orthography’s style guide, which prescribes grammar use at schools and public bodies in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, lists “Eva’s Blumenladen” (Eva’s Flower Shop) and “Peter’s Taverne” (Peter’s Tavern) as usable alternatives, though “Eva’s Brille” (“Eva’s glasses”) remains incorrect. […]

“There is a long tradition of conservative circles fretting about international influences on the German languages,” said Stefanowitsch. “It used to be French, and now it’s mainly English”. The Dortmund-based association Verein Deutsche Sprache tries to counteract the influence of English with an “anglicism index” that proposes alternative German words, such as Klapprechner instead of “laptop” or Puffmais instead of “popcorn”.

Barbaras Rhabarberbar turned up here earlier this year; I’m not sure why “Eva’s Blumenladen” is OK but “Eva’s Brille” isn’t, unless it’s only on signs that you can get away with such horrors. Thanks, Trevor, Nick, and Bonnie!

One of my wife’s birthday presents was a CD of Saint-Saëns: Sonates & Trio, played by Renaud Capuçon, Bertrand Chamayou, and Edgar Moreau (a lovely recording it is, too); the blurb on the back says “Moins connue et jouée que celle de Fauré, Ravel ou Debussy, la musique de chambre de Saint-Saëns n’affiche aucun complexe face aux puissants chefs-d’œuvre du répertoire germanique,” immediately followed by a translation: “Less known or played than that of Fauré, Ravel and Debussy, the chamber music of Saint-Saëns stands on a par with the greatest masterpieces of the Germanic repertoire.” Afficher is ‘to display, show’ and complexe is ‘complex’; how do you get from ‘displays no complex in the face of’ to “stands on a par with”? What complexity am I missing?

Also, if you subscribe to the Criterion Channel and have any interest in African movies, I recommend Shaihu Umar, which is leaving the channel at the end of the month and which is one of the first movies in Hausa — it’s going to take me a few days to get through it because I keep pausing it to look things up (fortunately, I own Nicholas Awde’s useful little Hausa-English/English-Hausa Dictionary). I’ve already dug through the LH archives to find David Eddyshaw’s comment from last year about Hausa wuri ‘cowrie,’ plural kuɗi ‘money.’ And the start of the movie, which shows pilgrims arriving in a dusty Nigerian town to meet the famous Umar (who then tells them his life story in flashback), provides an excellent example of the prolonged formulaic exchanges of greetings so prevalent in West Africa.

Dmitry Pruss sent me Wool and the Indo-Anatolian Hypothesis: A Linguistic and Archaeological Approach, saying “the summary looks good”; here are some salient passages:

In the context of Indo-European languages, wool holds linguistic significance as well. In Hittite, the word for wool appears in various forms, such as the widespread use of the Sumerogram SÍG. […]

Interestingly, linguistic analysis shows two distinct stems in the Hittite language for wool: ḫulii̯a- and ḫulan(a)-. Both forms, while indicating wool, exhibit different grammatical usages and highlight how linguistic evolution can track technological innovations, like wool production, in ancient cultures. The suffixes -ii̯a- and -āli- are common Indo-European nominal endings, while -ana- presents an anomaly, showcasing potential inner-Anatolian developments. […]

The research presented by Alwin Kloekhorst challenges long-held assumptions regarding the presence of a common Proto-Indo-European (PIE) term for wool across the Indo-Anatolian languages. The conclusion that the lexeme h₂ulh₁n(e)h₂- for ‘wool’ likely never existed within PIE forces a reevaluation of how the Indo-Anatolian languages developed in relation to wool-related vocabulary. In particular, the Anatolian word ḫulan-, which refers to wool, appears to be independent of the late PIE term, suggesting that the Anatolian branch diverged early from the rest of the PIE family, long before the spread of wool technology across Eurasia.

Furthermore, the PIE term ulh₁n(e)h₂- seems to have been created later, in the post-Tocharian PIE era, around 2700 BCE. This period aligns with the introduction of wool production to the Pontic steppes, indicating that language adapted alongside technological advancements. The evidence supports the idea that the spread of wool and its associated terminology was not a universal phenomenon across all Indo-European languages but rather emerged as wool became a vital resource in specific regions.

Lastly, the root hul-, found in Anatolian languages, could be a borrowing from external sources, such as Hurrian. This borrowing emphasizes the complexity of linguistic evolution and the significant cultural exchanges between ancient peoples. By integrating linguistic evidence with archaeological data, Kloekhorst’s conclusions offer a more nuanced understanding of the development of wool production and its terminology, illustrating that the linguistic divergences in Anatolia better align with the archaeological timeline of wool’s spread than previous theories suggested.

More details and graphics at the link. Thanks, Dmitry!

I ran across this comment by Bathrobe from 2022 and was struck by the word “yakka” in “It’s easier on the brain to clean up a crappy translation than it is to do the hard yakka of finding appropriate vocab, creating sentence structures, and fitting them all together…” I turned to the OED, and it turned out they’d just revised the entry this year:

Australian slang.

Work; esp. physical labour. Frequently in hard yakka: difficult or strenuous work.

1881 This has given the claimholders a heart to go in for more hard yacker.
Maryborough (Queensland) Chron. 26 February (Supplement)

1898 Some [swagmen] ask for ‘yacker’, some’s lookin’ for ‘graft’, and some’s ‘after a job’.
Bulletin (Sydney) 8 October 31/2
[…]

2021 I spent my 21st birthday working on a farm in QLD, and oh boy the work was hard yakka.
@itsmeowgii 17 March in twitter.com (accessed 7 Feb. 2022)

The etymology just said “< yakker v.,” so thither I went:

Australian. Now rare.

1847 ‘What for Commandant yacca paper?’ What is the gentleman working at the paper for?
J. D. Lang, Cooksland iv. 123
[…]

1939 One sundowner told him that..they could always get a meal at Mack’s but they had to ‘yakka’ for it.
Narromine News (New South Wales) 27 June 5/1

And there the etymology was short but informative:

< Yagara (Brisbane region) yaga.

Yagara is in Wikipedia s.v. Turrbal language: “Turrbal is an Aboriginal Australian language of the Turrbal people of the Brisbane area of Queensland. […] Yagara, Yugarabul, and Turrbul proper are more likely to be considered dialects.” Once upon a time the OED would have said something like “From an aboriginal language.” Progress is being made!