Markmaking

The Yankee Cabinet

Marc Ambinder answers a reader's question:

James L. Jones, the incoming national security adviser, has sort of a southern Missouri drawl, but only Rep. Robert Gates, a native...Kansan, too, has anything resembling a Southern accent, although he probably picked it up when he served as President of Texas A & M.
But, aside from incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, there ain't none, y'all.

And it's about time, too...

Whitest and Blackest Names

Girl names: Molly, Amy, Claire, Emily, Katie / Imani, Ebony, Shanice, Aaliyah, Precious / Andrea, Whitney, Alicia, Kendra, Alexandria.

Boy names: Jake, Connor, Tanner, Wyatt, Cody / DeShawn, DeAndre, Marquis, Darnell, Terrell / Vincent, George, Troy, Christian, Martin.

Crossovers.

Oc, Si, Oïl

Wikipedia explains the Romance genealogy.

The poet wrote in Medieval Latin: "nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil" ("some say oc, others say si, others say oïl"), thereby classifying the Romance languages into three groups: oïl languages (in northern France); oc languages (in southern France) and si languages (in Italy and Iberia). Vulgar Latin developed different methods of signifying assent: hoc ille ("this (is) it") and hoc ("this"), which became the langues d'oïl and langue d'oc (or Occitan language), respectively. Subsequent development changed "oïl" into "oui" as in modern French. (Other Romance languages derive their word for yes from the Latin sic, "thus", such as the Spanish sí, Italian sì, or Portuguese sim.)

Speaking West German

The Tagesspiegel has an article on the varying West German and East German forms of the language.

(W) Christmas angel = (E) Year-end winged figure
(E) Running cardboard = Trabant automobile
(E) Spartakiade = youthful athletic competition

Yiddish in Birobidzhan

Wikipedia on the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

The Jewish administrative division was founded with the help of Komzet in 1928 as the Jewish National District. It was the result of Stalin's nationality policy, by which each of the national groups that formed the Soviet Union would receive a territory in which to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state policy of atheism; and Zionism, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. The idea was to create a new "Soviet Zion", where a proletarian Jewish culture could be developed. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts would replace religion as the primary expression of culture.

Stalin's theory on the National Question held that a group could only be a nation if they had a territory, and since there was no Jewish territory, per se, the Jews were not a nation and did not have national rights. Jewish Communists argued that the way to solve this ideological dilemma was by creating a Jewish territory, hence the ideological motivation for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Politically, it was also considered desirable to create a Soviet Jewish homeland as an ideological alternative to Zionism and the theory put forward by Socialist Zionists such as Ber Borochov that the Jewish Question could be resolved by creating a Jewish territory in Palestine. Thus Birobidzhan was important for propaganda purposes as an argument against Zionism which was a rival ideology to Marxism among left-wing Jews. The propaganda impact was so effective that several thousand Jews immigrated to Birobidzhan from outside of the Soviet Union, including several hundred from Palestine who had become disillusioned with the Zionist experience.

Like taking tin to Belerion

Wikipedia explains the Cornish contribution to the world mining industry.

The site of ancient Belerion, Cornwall, was the principal source of tin for the civilisations of the ancient Mediterranean and evidence has been found of trade with cultures as far off as Phoenicia, located in present day Lebanon. At one time the Cornish were one of the world's foremost experts at mining. As Cornwall's reserves of tin began to be exhausted many Cornishmen emigrated to places such as the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa where their skills were in demand. The Cornish Rebellion of 1497 is attributed to tin miners. The tin mines in Cornwall are now worked-out at current prices, but the expertise and culture of the Cornish tin miners lives on in a number of places around the world. It is said that, wherever you may go in the world, if you see a hole in the ground, you will find a Cornishman at the bottom of it (see Cornish diaspora). Several Cornish mining words are in use in English language mining terminology, such as costean, gunnies, and vug.

A great day for the Pomaks of Thrace

PASOK, the Pan-Hellenist Socialist Movement party, has nominated Gulbeyaz Karahasan, of the Pomak or Western Thrace minority, as a local candidate. This choice met with some consternation at the federal level. Still, there was wide support for the nomination.

This nomination is a great day for the Pomak people of Western Thrace. I can't determine whether there is a connection between the Pomaks of today's Thrace, and the ancient Thracians described by Herotodus:

On their maidens they keep no watch, but leave them altogether free, while on the conduct of their wives they keep a most strict watch. Brides are purchased of their parents for large sums of money. Tattooing among them marks noble birth, and the want of it low birth. To be idle is accounted the most honourable thing, and to be a tiller of the ground the most dishonourable. To live by war and plunder is of all things the most glorious. These are the most remarkable of their customs. The gods which they worship are but three, Mars, Bacchus, and Dian. Their kings, however, unlike the rest of the citizens, worship Mercury more than any other god, always swearing by his name, and declaring that they are themselves sprung from him.

Silhouette, Bilbo, Chaparral

See also Unamumo, Ravel, Indurain, Ignatius of Loyola, Olazabal, Daguerre...

Q21. Are there any Basque words in English?

A21. Not many, but there are one or two. One is silhouette, which has a very interesting history. The English word is taken from French, in which it derives from the surname of a certain Etienne de Silhouette, a French politician of the 18th century. This is a French spelling of the Basque surname Zilhueta, a French Basque variant of the surname Zulueta or Zuloeta; this in turn derives from zulo `hole' (zilo in part of the north) plus the very frequent suffix -eta `abundance of'. This surname was doubtless given originally to someone who lived where there were many holes in the ground, or perhaps more likely caves. In Shakespeare's day, there was an English word bilbo for a sword of outstanding quality; this derives from the name of the Basque city of Bilbao (Bilbo in Basque), since the Basque Country was known at the time for its excellent iron and steel goods. The American English word chaparral derives via Spanish from Basque txaparra `scrub'.

Some Bantu words

From Wikipedia, some Bantu words popular in Western culture:

Samba
Banjo
Rumba
Conga
Mambo
Zombie
Bongos
Gumbo
Jumbo
Marimba
Simba

Grammatical Aspect

The verbs of English are astoundingly week at expressing grammatical aspect without the addition of a lot of unsightly helper verbs. If only it were possible to express the prospective, inceptive, inchoative, conative, cessative, pausative, resumptive, durative, delimitative, protractive, frequentative, intensive, moderative, attenuative, or semelfactive with one elegant word!

English is lame.

Boston lexicon

From Wikipedia, a Boston lexicon:

coffee regular: 'coffee with milk (or cream) and usually two spoonfuls of sugar'
frappe: 'milkshake made with ice cream'
grinder: 'submarine sandwich' (in some places, one that is toasted or grilled)
milkshake: 'chocolate syrup and milk blended together without ice cream'
package store or packie: '(packaged) liquor store'
parlor — 'living room'
pocket book-- 'purse'
shopping carriage — 'shopping cart'
spa — 'convenience store'
statie — 'State Trooper'
tag sale — garage or yard sale
tonic — 'soft drink'
wicked — 'very'
water bubbler or bubbler — 'drinking fountain / water fountain'
clicker — 'television remote control'

Philadelphia English

From Zack Smith, a list of common Philadelphia pronunciations:

Philadelphia: Phul-DELF-ya
Eagles: Iggles (rhymes with wriggles)
Phillies: Phuh'leez (sounds like pullies)
Steelers: Stillerz
bagel: beggle
all: awwl
always: uhwweez or uhw'wayz
voice: voe-ees
area: ehrry-uh

The Frequentative

From Wikipedia, "In grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action..."

batter (bat)
blabber (blab)
chatter (chat)
crackle (crack)
curdle (curd)
dribble (drip)
flicker (flick)
flitter (flit; <'fly')
flutter (fleet, akin to float; <'fly')
gamble (<'game')
glimmer, glitter (<'glow')
gruntle (grunt)
hurdle (<'hard')
jiggle (jig)
muddle (muddy)
patter (pat)
prattle (prate)
prickle (prick)
scribble (scribe)
slither (slide)
sniffle (sniff)
sparkle (spark)
stammer (stab)
straddle (<'stride')
strickle (strike)
stubble (stub)
swaddle (swathe)
tipple (tip)
trample (tramp)
waddle (wade)
waggle (wag)
wrestle (wrest)

Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

From Wikipedia:

The Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (en: the association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services) was a sub organisation in pre-war Vienna, Austria of the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (DDSG), a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

From Wikipedia:

The Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (RkReÜAÜG) (literally, Cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law) was a law of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of 2000, dealing with the supervision of the labeling of beef.

Language: science and history

On the topic of language, two books that go very well together are Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct and Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. The two offer a case study of how historical and scientific approaches to a single subject can complement each other. Despite the comprehensive ambition of each book, there is very little overlap between the two.

Pinker shows what every speaker of a human language has in common, and Ostler considers how and why some languages happen to spread as far as they do. In neither case are the answers as simple as might be naively expected.

Ostler shows why Spanish Jesuits in South America and English Protestants in India had such different linguistic effects, why British Islanders did not end up speaking a Romance language after the fall of the Roman Empire, why English in India and Dutch in Southeast Asia had such different fates, not to mention the parallels between Akkadian and Aramaic, and between Egyptian and Chinese, the Cossacks' conquering of Siberia, and the significance of the Rice Belt.

Pinker summarizes a vast number of scientific studies on how humans process language, including how we can listen and distinguish phonemes at frighteningly fast speeds, how toddlers easily understand features of language that stump any computer program, and various tests of the idea that features of language can be mapped onto features of the mind. Howard Gardner:

Pinker begins by citing a number of common-sense ideas, all of which he promises to demolish in the ensuing chapters. These include the notions that different languages construe reality in different ways; that children learn to talk by imitating others; that grammatical expertise is in steady decline in our society; and that English spelling is uniquely illogical.

There are specific, testable, and built-in syntactical procedures that explain why we say /Darwinian/ and even /Darwinianisms/ but why we would never say /Darwinismian/, why baseball batters "/flied out/" rather than "/flew out/," why we listen to "/Walkmans/" rather than to "/Walkmen/," why hockey players are called "/Maple Leafs/" rather than "/Maple Leaves/," and why even three-year-olds know that a monster who likes to eat mice is a "/mice-eater/" but a monster who likes to eat rats is a "/rat-eater/" not a "/rats-eater/."

Ostler reviews: The Guardian; National Review; ABC Radio; California Literary Review; New Statesman; The Age.

Pinker review: New York Review of Books

Worst Poets Ever?

William McGonagall, "The Tay Bridge Disaster"

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

Julia A. Moore, "The Great Chicago Fire"

The great Chicago Fire, friends,
Will never be forgot;
In the history of Chicago
It will remain a darken spot.
It was a dreadful horrid sight
To see that City in flames;
But no human aid could save it,
For all skill was tried in vain.

Estuary English

Estuary English is the new English English. Links: arizona.edu; BBC. Excerpts below.

• "An Estuary English speaker may use an articulation like a /w/ instead of the /l/ as many as ten times in the following utterance. A real salesman will always feel a fool if he fails to sell or his deal falls through."
  
• "If you watch UK television, you only have to think of The Bill, pronounced The Biw! Another evocative one is the 'l' in 'milk', which in turn becomes 'miwk'.'"
  
• "Few modern native speakers would do it, but the old RP pronunciation really should be 'you-ziou-ull' rather than the modern 'you-zhoo-ull'5 Make sense? There are lots more. Many speakers of current General RP do not pronounce a /j/ after the l of 'absolute', 'lute', 'revolution', or 'salute'. They would say 'time off in loo' rather than 'time off in lieu'. For many speakers 'lieu' and 'loo' are now homophones."

Keywords

Among the most-discussed English-to-German queries at Leo.org, the online dictionary of the Munich Technischen Universität are:

• grammar Nazi
• gimp
• wonkishness
• work the rubber-chicken circuit
• when the going gets tough
• wither on the vine
• to get KO'ed
• it's a dewzy!
• rug
• to hang around the bikeshed
• lurker
• twice-once
• truncation error
• war pigs
• out-of-the-box solution

I wonder what kind of traffic my queries ("deskilling" and "desublimate") will get.

Marvelous German Expressions

• den inneren Schweinehund überlisten/überwinden (lit. "to outwit/overcome the inner pig-dog") to master one's weaker nature/cowardice/sloth
• die Sau rauslassen (lit. "to let the sow out") to let your hair down and have a good time
• Reißen Sie sich zusammen! (lit. "Rip/tear yourself together!") Pull yourself together!
  

Vocabulary

Assignment: find as many German words as possible deriving from schreiben (to write). My favorites:

• Schriftverkehr      (exchange of letters)
• Schriftlichkeit      (writing; lit. write-ly-ness)
• Grabinschrift      (epitaph)
• Geheimschrift      (cryptography)
• Arbeitsschutzvorschrift      (health and safety regulations)
• Fachzeitschrift      (trade journal)

• Schreibtischtäter   (pale theoretician; woolly academic; bureaucratic enabler of totalitarianism)
• Schreiberling   (hack writer; scribbler; would-be poet)

• krankschreiben   (to give [someone]  a doctor's sick-note)
• Beileidschreiben   (letter of condolence/sympathy)
• Beglaubigungschreiben     (letter of accreditation)
• Bekennerschreiben      (claim of responsibility)
• Eröffnungsschreiben    (confirmation of credit)

Berlinerisch

• EconomicExpert.com: Low German Language
• Humboldt Universitet (Berlin) (auf deutsch)
  
• Berlin-and-more.de (auf deutsch)
• Sassisch.net: Low Saxon
• WebGerman.com: Germanic Dialects
• Wikipedia: East Low German