2007 Holiday Gift List for the Logophile in Your Life

9 December 2007

Here are some ideas for books that word lovers will appreciate. Prices are list prices; you can find most of these at a discount.

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff Prucher. An excellent resource for words from one of the most inventive of literary genres. $29.95.

Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language, by Seth Lerer. Stanford English professor Seth Lerer has produced this excellent history of English. Each chapter covers a different topic in this history. Essentially, it’s a collection of chronologically organized essays on the development of our language. Lerer puts the changes in context, not just giving a recitation of what happened, but showing why it was important through literary examples. Engaging and never dull. $24.95.

Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, by Kitty Burns Florey. Admit it. Secretly you just loved those 8th grade exercises where you deconstructed sentences. Sure, all your friends complained and you probably did to, but that’s only because you were too afraid to buck peer pressure. And if you’re in the younger crowd that never had sentence diagramming in class, it’s an extremely valuable tool for producing good writing. A funny, charming take on the subject that is usually presented in dreadfully dull fashion. $19.95.

Carnal Knowledge: A Navel Gazer’s Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia, by Charles Hodgson. Podcaster Hodgson (http://www.podictionary.com) has compiled this dictionary of anatomical terms. $14.95.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Okay, it’s a textbook, but that doesn’t make it great. This standard anthology of English literature comes in two volumes. Volume 1 covers the period from Anglo-Saxon England through the 18th century. Volume 2 covers the Romantic period through the 20th century. Each volume is $60.

And of course, if you haven’t already bought copies for all your friends, there’s…

Word Myths, by David Wilton. Word Myths debunks the most persistently wrong word histories, and gives, to the best of our actual knowledge, the real stories behind these perennially mis-etymologized words. In addition, it explains why these wrong stories are created, disseminated, and persist, even after being corrected time and time again. $23.95.

How The Irish Didn’t Invent Slang

9 November 2007

Grant Barrett over at The Lexicographer’s Rules has an excellent and devastating review of Daniel Cassidy’s book How the Irish Invented Slang. I haven’t read the book (nor do I intend to), but I have encountered Cassidy’s work in the past. He is the epitome of bad scholarship and gives valuable lessons in exactly how not to conduct an intellectual inquiry.

The proximate cause for Grant’s review is a credulous article published in The New York Times that failed to ask anyone else in the field whether there was any merit to Cassidy’s work. Had the reporter done, or the editor insisted on, some basic research, then it would have become readily apparent that Cassidy is a crank. We expect better from the “paper of record.” If there is a reason that old, mainline media will be killed by bloggers and the internet, it’s articles like these. The advantage that newspapers have is their editorial staff and systems of review and fact checking. But if newspapers fail to take advantage of their strengths, then they will certainly die a swift and well-deserved death.

If you’re thinking about buying the book, read Grant’s review first.

Language Podcasts

7 November 2007

Podcasting is new medium of sorts and there are several podcasts about language that are worth taking a look at. I say, “of sorts,” because at its heart podcasting isn’t much different from radio. The method of transmission is different and the barrier to entry has been significantly lowered—enabling almost anyone to create their own podcasts—but it’s still just an aural communication medium.

The following are some language-oriented podcasts that you should check out. All are free and all are available via iTunes, as well as separately through their websites.

The first is A Way With Words, by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. This is, in fact, a radio show on KPBS in San Diego that is made available over the web. The hour-long show is produced weekly. Martha and Grant take caller questions about words and language and there are regular features with puzzles and quizzes. Professionally done, this show has very high production values and is extremely engaging and entertaining. It was threatened with cancellation due to public radio budget cuts earlier in the year, but that scare has passed and new shows should start appearing soon.

Another is Podictionary by Charles Hodgson. A daily show, usually under five minutes, it is also available in a longer, weekly wrap-up that contains all the shows for that week. Each episode features a word, with Hodgson discussing its history and usage. A great, daily, quick language fix.

A third show worth looking into is The Word Nerds, by brothers Dave and Howard Shepherd and Howard Chang, secondary school teachers all. This one appears every three weeks or so and runs about 45 minutes. Each episode is a discussion centered on a particular linguistic theme. Recent themes have included nicknames, public speaking, and small talk.

Old English Alphabet

30 September 2007

One of the daunting things about looking at Old English text is the alphabet. It has, to the modern English speaker, some odd characters. These put people off, although they are not difficult to master. Less obvious is the fact that some modern letters are absent from Old English texts.

Modern versions of Old English texts frequently add diacritical marks, usually as an aid in pronunciation (or, more accurately, an aid in how the transcriber thinks the words were pronounced). These do not exist in the original texts and can usually be ignored.

The first of these unfamiliar letters is Þ, þ. This is the letter known as thorn. It has a /th/ sound and can be pronounced as a voiceless interdental fricative, as in thick or as a voiced dental fricative, as in the. Thorn originated in the Old English runic alphabet known as futhorc and survived the transition to the Latin alphabet. Thorn continues to be used well into the Middle English period. In later use the letter often lost its ascender, coming to look much like the letter wynn (see below) or the letter Y. This survives in the pseudo-archaic usage “ye olde…”, which in the modern alphabet should really be written “the old.”

The second of these letters is Ð, ð. This is the letter known as eth. In Old English it is used interchangeably with thorn; a word written with a thorn will be written with an eth somewhere else on the page. This bears repeating; eth and thorn are completely interchangeable and there is no rhyme or reason behind the choice in any given instance. Like thorn, eth lasted into the Middle English period, but faded from use faster. Eth is largely gone from manuscripts by 1300.

Many modern versions of Old English texts will replace both thorn and eth with the letters th, as an aid to modern readers. On this site, we use both thorn and eth and do not use th to represent them.

In Old English glossaries, words that begin with thorn and eth are grouped together and placed after words beginning with T. Typically the glossarist will choose either thorn or eth and use that letter for both.

Another letter borrowed from the runic alphabet is wynn. Wynn is pronounced as /w/. The earliest Old English writings use the digraph uu to represent this sound, but soon the runic wynn came to replace that digraph. Wynn was used throughout the Old English period, fading with the advent of Middle English and largely gone by 1300. It was replaced by its predecessor uu, which eventually become the modern letter W. In Old English glossaries, wynn is alphabetized as if it was a modern W. Wynn looks similar to thorn in some fonts and can easily be confused with that other letter.

Wynn is frequently substituted by a W in modern versions of Old English texts. We follow this practice on this site, but only because wynn is not supported by the fonts that ship with Microsoft Windows and cannot be read unless one installs a font that does support it.

Another odd letter to modern eyes is the insular G.  The insular script developed in Ireland in the 7th century and then spread to Britain and the Continent by missionaries. The insular G can still be found in modern Gaelic writing. The insular G is alphabetized as if it were a modern G.

This is another character than cannot be found in most Microsoft fonts, which is unfortunate. Unlike wynn, which can accurately be substituted by the modern letter W, the insular G cannot be adequately substituted by the modern G as its range of pronunciation was substantially wider than the modern letter. In addition to the /g/ and /j/ sounds, the insular G is also used for the /y/, /gh/, /x/, and /w/ sounds. It is actually more difficult to read Old English if the insular G is replaced by the modern G as the range of possible pronunciations is not readily apparent to the modern reader. But because it is not available on the most commonly found computer fonts, we reluctantly replace it with the modern G on this site.

The other letter that is found in Old English is the ligature Æ, æ, known as ash. Ash has a sound intermediate to the modern A and E. The ligature is still found in modern English, particularly British, orthography in words like encyclopædia, dæmon, and mediæval. In the US, the letter E is usually used in these modern cases. Ash is alphabetized between A and B.

The Old English alphabet is also missing some letters we use today. The letters J, V, and X are missing entirely. The insular G is used for the /j/ and /x/ sounds and the letter F being used for the /v/.

The letters Q and Z are found only in foreign names. In native words the /q/ sound is represented in Old English by the letters cw and the /z/ by the letter S.

How To Sound Like An American

23 September 2007

Slate has a neat video featuring a British-born reporter visiting a dialect coach to find out how British actors learn to speak with American accents.

Do you have any little bottles of water?