Greetings, Fellow Linguists,
Language is a wonderful gift, allowing us to communicate our
feelings and ideas to others. But it is, at best, an imperfect
gift, with more problems than a soap opera character. According
to the Academie Francais, there are 2,796 separate languages
being spoken on this planet today. In addition, there are
somewhere between seven to eight thousand different dialects.
That is pretty easy to believe if you have taken a cab in New
York City recently. While we Americans seem to think that this
is a trend only in the U.S., it is happening all over the world.
Better transportation and increased immigration makes this a fact
in many countries. One study last year showed that school
children in London, England spoke more than 300 different
languages at home - everything from Abe to Zulu. And that's not
even including the Cockney Rhyming Slang.
While it seems that people who really want or need to
communicate can manage it, communication between languages and
cultures is a very slippery thing. It is clear that even within
one language, it is far too easy to get the wrong meaning or
accidentally say the wrong thing. This happens despite our best
intentions. Then there are the people who consciously use the
language to mislead people and... Oh, that's right. I already
covered politics last week. Never mind.
One thing that I haven't covered yet (you knew this was
coming), is saying Thanks to all of the folks that make Funnies
possible every week, including: Jerry Taff, Kerry Miller, Fumiko
Umino, Laura Hong Li, Bruce Gonzo, Timothy McChain, Nnamdi Elleh,
Alison Becwar, Joshua Brink, Brian Siegl, Carol Becwar, Jack &
Sherrie Gervais, Caterina Sukup, and all the gang from Crossroads
Church. Whatever language you normally use, I hope that you
understand our own variety of SUNFUN English.
Have A Well-Spoken Week!
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
A LOOK IN THE CRYSTAL BALL...
--------------------------
What is the future of languages? Clearly there are trends
in all the world's languages that we can use as a guide to how
they will change in the future.
- In 200 years, spoken French will have only one sound. All
consonants and gaps between words and sentences will
disappear, leaving only an extended "Eauuuuuuuuuuuu..."
Meaning will be inferred from inflection. Written French
will stay exactly the same as it is now, thanks to the
French Academy.
- The missing consonants from French won't disappear; they
will migrate to Czech, which by that time have no vowels at
all.
- In 200 years, Chinese will still use the classic characters,
except that technology will mean that there are so many
phrases to remember that only computers can read and write
Chinese. In everyday life, people will speak Swedish.
- In 200 years, the English vocabulary will include the words
of all other languages, but the spelling will be original.
- Similarly, the Japanese alphabet will include every possible
character of all other alphabets in the world.
- The Cyrillic alphabet will eventually be the same as the
Latin alphabet, only backwards. A mirror will be enough to
translate Russian into Polish.
- Italian will be spoken even faster than it is now. Two
Italians talking will make approximately the same sound as a
buzz saw.
- Finally, in 200 years, entire books in Germany will be two
words, the entire text with no spaces and a verb at the end.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
A FEW WORDS ON WORDS . . .
--------------------
The Society for the German Language helped compile a list of
the "100 words that best reflects the 20th century." What struck
many people odd is that a high percentage of these words are from
English, including: bikini, comics, computer, Holocaust, jeans,
recycling, sex and star. And many of the German words on the
list, such as an autobahn, have also been adopted into English.
(AP)
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
THE ENGLISH - HOW SHE IS SPOKEN...
-------------------------------
We use English in everyday life - those of us in the U.S.,
anyway. And, most of the time, we take the goofiness of English
spelling and grammar for granted. But listening a little more
closely to what we are saying, English is pretty nonsensical.
Consider that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are
square, and a guinea pig isn't from Guinea - and isn't a pig,
either.
And why is it that writers write and painters paint, but
fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, and hammers don't ham?
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger and
pineapples contain neither apple nor pine. English muffins
aren't from England, French fries aren't from France and Panama
hats have always come from next door in Ecuador. Sweetmeats are
candies, but sweetbreads are meat, and aren't sweet.
English plurals make no sense. If the plural of tooth is
teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese.
So, why not one moose, 2 meese? And shouldn't cheese be the
correct plural of choose?
In America, if you want to split the cost of an evening out,
you say you are "going Dutch," since the Dutch are well known for
their frugality. The Dutch, on the other hand, call the same
arrangement "op z'n Amerikaans" (going American).
In what other language do people recite at a play, and play
at a recital? Ship by truck, and send cargo by ship? Have noses
that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on
parkways?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a
wise man and a wise guy are opposites? How can the weather be
hot as hell one day and cold as hell another? And why is it that
when a house burns up, it burns down.
You fill in a form by filling it out, and an alarm clock
goes off by going on. When the stars are out, they are visible,
but when the lights are out, everything else is invisible -
including the lights.
What else can you say about a language that has me wind up a
clock to start it, and wind up this essay to end it.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET . . .
--------------------------------
Turns out that several common English sayings have a single
root in an old market day scam. A few hundred years ago in merry
old England, farmers only got into town for fairs and markets.
So some of the less honest town folks saw their country cousins
as sheep waiting to be sheared.
One common way of chiseling the rustics was to sell them a
piglet inside of a bag. Except that it wasn't a piggy, the bag
contained only a scrawny cat that the city slicker had probably
picked up off the street. The farm folks were cheated into
buying something they hadn't really examined carefully. Since
these bags were often called "pokes," this led to the expression,
"buying a pig in a poke."
Of course, if the farmer had been cheated this way before,
he was likely to take a look and catch on to the cheat, thus
"letting the cat out of the bag."
All of which left the con man with no cat and no victim - he
was left "holding the bag."
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
DEPARTMENT OF MOSTLY DEAD LANGUAGES...
-----------------------------------
I don't often get to show off my ability to speak Latin.
That's right, folk, I was one of those misguided kids who was
steered into learning Latin in High School. Not many schools
even offer Latin anymore, though it took a few thousand years for
this trend to become apparent to some scholars.
One of the last places to use Latin is the Roman Catholic
Church, where it is the common language that all theological
scholars use to argue their ideas. Did you know that the Vatican
still conducts all of its official business in Latin?
Of course, being a millennium or two removed from Julius
Caesar and the gang has made it difficult to speak about modern
trends - or even not so modern - trends. In response to this,
the Roman Church has been quietly inventing new Latin words for
to make it more useful for modern scholars. Here are a few of
the more recent additions so all you Latin lovers out there can
update your vocabularies:
amnesia: Memoire amissio
baby sitter: infantaria
bidet: ovata pelvis
bottle washer: machina lagoenis expurgandis
brainwash: coercitio mentis
car wash: aeris benzinique mixtura
cellulite: cellutis
Christmas tree: arbor natalicia
cover girl: exterioris paginae puella
disc brakes: sufflamen disci fortna
discotheque: orbium phonographicorum theca
fax: exemplum simillime expressum
flamenco: Vandaliciana saltatio
flashbulb: fulgor photographicus
to flirt: lusorie amare
guerrilla warfare: bellum tecturn
gulag (Soviet prison camp): campus captivis custodiendis
photocopy: exemplar luce expressum
pinball machine: sphaeriludium electricum nomismate actum
refrigerator: cella frigorifera
secret agent: speculator tectus
to be lazy at work: neglenter operari
television: instrumentum televisificum
traffic jam: fluxus interclusio
travel agency: itinerum procuratio
warmonger: belli instigator
washing machine: machina linteorum lavatoria
----------
Armed with this knowledge, maybe we could start a new trend
by using Latin in our everyday lives. Along those lines, here
are a few phrases to show how a little Latin could prove useful
in modern situations:
"Motorolus interruptus."
(Hold the phone a second, I'm going into a tunnel.)
"Il guyus nissanem iste ickye."
(That Nissan guy gives me the creeps.)
"Bodicus mutilatimus, unemploymi forevercus."
(Better take the nose ring out before the job interview.)
"Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum,minutus carborata
descendum pantorum."
(A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your
pants.)
"E Pluribus Tupac."
(Rap is everywhere.)
"Veni, vidi, Pesci."
(I came, I saw, I moidered da bum.)
"Revelare Pecunia!"
(Show Me The Money!)
"Ignoramus microsoftis multapecunia dat."
(Yeah, where *do* I want to go today?)
"Sic semper tyrannus."
(Your dinosaur is ill.)
"Cavaet humanus sic tofu burritus e toga."
(Beware of the man with a tofu burrito in his toga.)
"Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus."
(It's Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer.)
"Veni, vedi, vichy."
(I came, I saw, I capitulated to the Germans.)
"Veni, Vidi, Velcro"
(I came; I saw; I stuck around.)
"Et tu, pluribus unum?"
(The government just stabbed me in the back!)
"E pluribus septum."
(Multiple nose piercings.)
"Veni, Vedi, Visa"
(I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.)
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
ELVIS LIVES - IT'S THE LANGUAGE THAT'S DEAD...
-------------------------------------------
There are times when the world seems full of Elvis
impersonators. Even the Japanese Elvis guys aren't that much of
a shock anymore, which makes it exceptionally hard for another
guy doing Elvis to stay ahead of the pack. You have to have a
gimmick of some sort.
Which leads us to a Finnish academic named Jukka Ammondt and
his recording career doing Elvis songs. There may be thousands
of Elvis impersonators, but not very many are doing "Blue Suede
Shoes" in Sumerian.
Sumerian? Yup... That's the same ancient Babylonian
language with the cuneiform script that died out around 2000 BC.
"Elvis would have liked the idea because the ancient
Sumerians had big parties and drums and rattles, and the roots of
rock may go back to man's earliest efforts to get a grip on
life," said Ammondt.
Ammondt has released two previous albums of the King's songs
in Classical Latin. (Reuters)
[ I guess that qualifies for airplay on
oldies stations, anyway. ]
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
BAD BIRD GETS THE BOOT...
----------------------
Maybe he just got a little too much into the part, but bird-
brained Percy isn't working on the English stage anymore.
Percy, you should know, is an Amazon Parrot, cast in a
pivotal role as a pirate captain's best friend in a children's
play called "Pirates On Treasure Island."
Except that Percy had a bad habit of ad-libbing when he
forgot his lines. And he forgot his lines all too often.
Instead of shrieking "Pieces of eight," he blurted out "Piss off
mate" and "Bugger off."
So the 17-month old parrot is now walking the unemployment
line. [Reuters]
[ Though rumor has it that he is up for a
part on the crude animated TV series "South
Park," where his bird-brained bad manners and
bad language will fit right in. ]
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
![[ BACK]](btn_rwdr.gif){kind=small}
![[NEXT]](btn_fwdr.gif){kind=small}