Aromatherapy and the Benefits of Jargon

10 May 2010

Jargon often gets a bad rap. It can be obfuscatory and difficult for laypeople to understand. But it can also be marvelously precise and aid in clarity of thinking.

Steven Novella over at NeuroLogica Blog has a post on the topic, using aromatherapy as an example of how word choice can impact our uncritical opinions about a topic.

Loyal Wordorigins readers may note that I have sort of argued the opposite in the past, that language does not impact how we think, but this example is dead on. We use words to uncritically classify and stereotype concepts. Hence, aromatherapy sounds like it should have some type of medical efficacy. And death tax sounds bad, but estate tax is more reasonable—after all, the heir has done nothing to deserve the money and it does not affect all all equally, as death does, but only those rich enough to have “estates.” But this is just uncritical stereotyping. We can break free of the constraints of language and think critically about topics for which we don’t have words; it’s just more difficult.

Bad Bilingualism: Canada v. US

26 April 2010

Update (7 May 2010): the bill passed the Canadian House of Commons and is likely to become law. Language Log has more.

Original post:

I’m always amazed at the differences between Canada and the US (and in coming months I suspect I’ll be discovering more of them). The two countries and cultures, so alike in many ways, can also be starkly different.

Take the case of bilingualism as a political issue. In the US, the (utterly unfounded) fear is that the country will be ripped asunder if we dare to teach schoolchildren in their own language or if voice mail systems offer the option to hear instructions in Spanish. Yet, just north of the border, Canada is considering requiring its supreme court justices to be fluent in both English and French—and not just conversationally, but in the arcane legalese of the two languages as well. The Canadian idea sounds reasonable on its face, but as the Edmonton Journal points out, it is just as bad an idea as its US counterpart:

In practical terms, the bill will restrict appointment to a very small number of bilingual legal scholars and lower-court judges. It will make it difficult for Canadians outside a narrow strip from Ottawa, through Montreal and Quebec City, and into Moncton, to ever be appointed to the court that has the final say over how the Charter will be interpreted and what rights we may have.

It will make it difficult for Englishspeaking [sic] Canadians to sit on the Supreme Court and almost impossible for Western Canadians.

It’s comforting to know, however, that bad political ideas are not restricted to one’s own country.

(Hat tip: The Lousy Linguist)

Google Books Settlement

20 April 2010

A lengthy, but excellent and informative, summary of what the impact of the Google Books settlement may be on the future of reading:

1. It may become harder to get information online about books from writers you love.
2. You will find yourself reading free books online, by authors who have disappeared. And Google will make money when you do.
3. Google will be competing with Apple and Amazon and everybody else to be your favorite online bookseller.
4. Libraries and bookstores will be the same thing.
5. Pulp science fiction will make a comeback in ways you might not expect.

(Hat tip: languagehat)

Eyjafjallajökull

17 April 2010

This name is really throwing the newscasters for a loop. Attempts to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull are all over the map, as seen in this video:

Mark Liberman over at Language Log has lots more audio clips of the pronunciation, including a nice slow and carefully articulated one by an Icelandic speaker.

The eruption of the Icelandic name in the news gave me a chance to pull out my Icelandic dictionary (actually, it’s a dictionary of Old Icelandic, but it will work for these purposes) to find the etymology of the name. Eyjafjallajökull is a triple compound and quite easy to pull apart. Eyja means “island,” fjalla is “mountains,” and jökull is “glacier.” So the name is, literally, “island-mountains glacier.”

I’ve heard at least one complaint about Eyjafjallajökull glacier, opining that it is redundant, literally Eyjafjalla-glacier glacier. But that complaint is a bit silly. Yes, jökull means glacier in Icelandic, and it would be redundant if you were speaking that language. But jökull is meaningless in English, and when speaking English it is sensible to add the glacier for clarity.