Buttresses

September 15, 2014

buttressedit2

A Problem Outlined

There’s often a great ready-made true English word which could be used instead of the fancier form: can for to be able to, for example. Indeed, when we put can and to be able to next to one another, we might wonder why anyone ever says the latter.

I can speak English or I am able to speak English…

However, forms like to be able to get support by being able to seep into territory that the true English words cannot. For example, we can also say “I will be able to” or “I may have been able to”, but we cannot say “I will can” or “I may have could” — at least not in standard varieties of English! Or what about the word absorb? Why not simply say soak (up)? Oh yes, that’s because we can readily say absorbent and absorbency, but we cannot so easily form the related adjectives and abstract nouns from to soak (up): upsoakingness? Yes, upsoakingness is possible (and I quite like it, actually), but it arguably doesn’t sound like an extant English word. For that reason it draws attention to itself and thus discourages its own use.

Forms of the Problem

As you can see, there seem to be two forms of such “seeping”:

(1) defective true English words which cannot be used in all contexts where an Englandish word can be;

(2) related concepts where no such form exists in true English, but it does for the Englandish root.

The existence of forms like (1) may have been able to and (2) absorbency, means that unneeded and un-Anglish words like to be able to or absorb are given extra support and periodically revitalised by association with may have been able to and company. Indeed, utterances such as I am able to speak English are thoroughly buttressed and stopped from ever falling down — despite their ungainliness.

Causes of the Problem

This is unfortunate, and seems to be the result of a few things, including:

1. Defective or unclear English morphology: lung (noun) –> ?lungish (adjective); *upsoaking: adjective or abstract noun or verbal noun or verb?

2. A hesitancy in English, relative to other Germanic languages, to put prepositions at the beginning of a compound: ?upsoakingness.

3. Heavy use of phrasal verbs which, firstly, have been shunned historically as uncouth and thereby discouraged, and secondly, are not wont to form derivatives (see “2”): tolerate –> tolerance and put up with –> ?put-up-with-ness…

Part of this problem has been caused by the influx of outland words into English. If we’d never gone so gungho down this borrowing path, we would likely have remained as German and Swedish have, and therefore not have this problem. There would, of course, be the odd time where due to natural process within the language, we would have to borrow a form: I don’t know if we can blame the ungrammaticality of I might have could on the word-borrowing fetish of the English language.

Solutions?

  • Use non-standard forms like I might have could unflinchingly and without remorse.
  • Come up with slightly uncouth forms like upsoakingness — again, unflinchingly and with no remorse — but make sure you aren’t being too clever for your own good. The Anglish Moot, which I helped set up, has some great work on it — and also some of the overclever stuff I am talking about (such as umbethinking).

And that’s all for today, folks…

What!? But it can’t be! Where’s the inspirational ending and summing up?

Well, it seems to me that so long as Anglishers are aware of the problem I’ve outlined in this post, they will be more sensitive to not just oversetting stand-alone words, but rather to taking words as being members of families or groups of words used in many contexts. It’s not enough to simply say, “don’t say to be able to, say can instead” because we simply can’t say can a lot of the time! We need to be attacking the problem holistically, as well. Words exist in the context of other words, and many unfit words are supported by the buttress of far more useful, yet merely derived, words or phrases (such as would have been able to).

 

featured image by Bryan A. J. Parry edited from image at http://passport2design.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/flying-buttressdiagram-batuhijauschool.org_.jpg

© 2014 Bryan A. J. Parry

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Forbidden Fruits

September 1, 2014

wolfberry

There’s a weird fad for giving fruits (and other products of nature) odd foreign names. This seems to be because “foreign = exotic and cool” and, in portraying the products as such, salesmen can fool folk into buying more stuff.

George Orwell, of course, long ago marked and decried use of “Antirrhinum” for “snap-dragon”. Yet still they’re at it.

Take the humble wolfberry. Or should I say “goji”. I think “goji” has become so quickly and so deeply entrenched (I’d never heard of the word ten years ago, nor had anyone else, I reckon) that it’s almost completely wiped the poor wolfberry out [just in case you weren’t following, they’re the same thing].

But why?

Well, “gojis” are a “super food” hailing from the mystical land of Tibet. Calling it a “wolfberry” seems fine to me, but apparently it doesn’t tick all of the marketeers’ boxes. It’s just not as mystical, magical, and super as “goji”.

What else has succumbed or is succumbing to this foreign fruit naming fad? I can think of:

  • Sharon fruit, which is apparently now the “persimmon”
  • Ladies’ fingers, now “okra”
  • Blue ginger, now “galangal”
  • Prickly pear, now “fig opuntia”
  • White radish, now “mooli”
  • Long melon, now “calabash”
  • Soursop, now “guanabana”

These may seem like exotic ingredients. Which I guess in a way they are, although they are widely known, used, and available here in the world-inna-city otherwise known as “London”. But in any case, if we have an English word for the thing, why not use it? Why always resort to the outland and, yes, outlandish in a sad try at being otherworldly?

The English Never Have, Nor Ever Will, Eat Fruit

It’s a weird fact, but English distinctly lacks words for fruit. The only homeborn words being “apple” and “berry”. For this reason, we use these words a lot in compounds: strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, bilberry, raspberry, cranberry, and so on, whereas Spanish, for example, more often uses different roots: fresa, grosella, frambuesa. But despite our limited word roots, we none-the-less have many English words for these foods and so don’t need to resort to nonsense like persimmon (although, granted, many roots are ultimately borrowed, but have been “bishop-shifted” a.k.a. Anglicised, e.g., “pear”).

In short:

Let’s not give in to the “goji” or the “persimmon”; let’s keep making use of our ever productive roots (even those which are merely bishop-shifted).

 

featured image from http://cikipedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/wolfberry.jpg

© 2012 – 2014 Bryan A. J. Parry

1 Comment | food, vocab, words | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
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