Collaborate

November 14, 2016

3dbad47

The verb “to collaborate” can easily be put into plain English by saying “to work with”. Indeed, this is exactly what “collaborate” means in Latin: com– ‘with’ + labore ‘to work’. But what about “collaborator” and “collaboration”? The fairly useless word “collaborate” looks like it’s being buttressed by these two words, as well as by the negative, traitorous sense. Indeed, perhaps “collaborator” is slowly coming to mean something like “traitor”, and thus the time might be right for “collaborator” to be shuffled off.

We could turn the verb phrase “work with” into the phrasewords “withworker” and “withworking”. However, “with” when used as a kind of prefix actually means “against”; look at “withstand” (stand against, resist), “withhold” (hold back), and “withdraw” (draw back). The reason for this weirdly counter-intuitive situation is that in Old English, “with” (wiþ) meant ‘against’. The meaning of wiþ changed under the influence of phrases like “fight with”. The eremost (original) English word for the concept of “with” was “mid” — this still lives on in words like “midwife” (literally, ‘with wife/woman’).

So we have two choices here.

  1. Extend the nearly-dead usage of mid- to mean “with” and with- to mean “against”, even though it runs counter to how these words work when not compounded/prefixed.
  2. Write off current with- and mid- as relics, patterns too irretrievably lost to bring back, and make a new prefix with-.

Option one gives us midworker and midworking. Option two gives us withworker and withworking.

© 2016 Bryan A. J. Parry

featured image from https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/7/005/068/2bd/3dbad47.jpg

 

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The Battle of Hastings: 950th Mind-day

October 16, 2016

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Think upon this: the 14th of October 2016 marks the 950th mind-day of the  Battle of Hastings, the day that wrixled (changed) everything! (Note anniversary: Old English mynddæg ‘mind-day’; ‘year’s-day’ would also fit the Germanic mould). It was on this day that Harold, king of the English, was felled, and the conquest of England by the Normans began.

How would the English language be different if 1066 and its fallout had never happened? Nobody knows for sure. But here’s some thoughts.

  1. We still would have borrowed words, including from French, just as the other other Germanic languages have done. However, we would likely have borrowed far fewer. See Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for a good example.
  2. However, funnily enough, the fewer words that we would have borrowed would be more obviously French as they would have had less time to become Anglicised, aka, bishop-shifted. Set English adventure, menu, and point by Swedish aventyr, meny, and poäng, for example. The Swedish words more closely keep to the French pronunciation.
  3. We wouldn’t necessarily have kept up the Old English alphabet with its various letters. This is down to English already using other forms in the Old English period itself, such as <th> instead of <þ> and <ð>, and <uu> instead of wynn (keep in mind that <uu> is the old form of <w>). And the loss of yogh (the Middle English development of the Old English form of writing <g>) had little to do with 1066 and all that. However, I feel that, owing to the eventual dominance of Wessex, the late West Saxon use of <þ> and/or <þ> along with perhaps <æ> would likely have kept them in our alphabet up to nowadays. Yogh may have, too, but wynn would almost certainly have been replaced.
  4. Other spellings would be changed (or, rather, wouldn’t have changed). For example, the use of <qu> for /kw/ would likely not have been used, <cw> being used in its stead (see analogues crab and club, and Old English cwene “queen” for comparison; <k> is only used to keep the /k/ sound where would otherwise go soft, for example, king). Other changes are less obvious but no less sure. Take olden long i, which became said as “eye” after the Great Vowel Shift, so now we have win (OE winn) and wine (OE win). However, olden long u came to be spelt the French way (compare Anjou, bijou, frou-frou). Yet, after the Great Vowel Shift, this came to be pronounced as in out. Therefore, without 1066 and all that, ancient long u, just like its brother ancient long i, would have carried on being spelt as it was. So what we now know of as house, out, and cow (<ow> being the word-final variant of <ou>; compare out, bout, and bow), would have stayed as hus, ut, cu.

Whatever other changes would have happened, English still be very much its own beast, the black sheep of the Germanic language family. But I should point out, Anglish and the project of this site, is not a try at making English as it would have been had the English won the Battle of Hastings. Rather, Anglish and this project is about uncovering the English roots of English, to come up with a more Saxon, plainer English.

© 2016 Bryan A. J. Parry

featured image from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry#

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Black Sheep English

January 30, 2015

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English is so different to the other Germanic languages. This difference is really brought home for us when we compare Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in various Germanic languages.

English:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

German:
Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren. Sie sind mit Vernunft und Gewissen begabt und sollen einander im Geist der Brüderlichkeit begegnen.

Dutch:
Alle mensen worden vrij en gelijk in waardigheid en rechten geboren. Zij zijn begiftigd met verstand en geweten, en behoren zich jegens elkander in een geest van broederschap te gedragen.

Afrikaans:
Alle menslike wesens word vry, met gelyke waardigheid en regte, gebore. Hulle het rede en gewete en behoort in die gees van broederskap teenoor mekaar op te tree.

Swedish:
Alla människor äro födda fria och lika i värde och rättigheter. De äro utrustade med förnuft och samvete och böra handla gentemot varandra i en anda av broderskap.

Norwegian (Bokmål):
Alle mennesker er født frie og med samme menneskeverd og menneskerettigheter. De er utstyrt med fornuft og samvittighet og bør handle mot hverandre i brorskapets ånd.

Norwegian (Nynorsk):
Alle menneske er fødde til fridom og med same menneskeverd og menneskerettar. Dei har fått fornuft og samvit og skal leve med kvarandre som brør.

Danish:
Alle mennesker er født frie og lige i værdighed og rettigheder. De er udstyret med fornuft og samvittighed, og de bør handle mod hverandre i en broderskabets ånd.

Frisian:
Alle minsken wurde frij en gelyk yn weardigens en rjochten berne. Hja hawwe ferstân en gewisse meikrigen en hearre har foar inoar oer yn in geast fan bruorskip te hâlden en te dragen.

Icelandic:
Hver maður er borinn frjáls og jafn öðrum að virðingu og réttindum. Menn eru gæddir vitsmunum og samvizku, og ber þeim að breyta bróðurlega hverjum við annan.

Faroese:
Øll menniskju eru fødd fræls og jøvn til virðingar og mannarættindi. Tey hava skil og samvitsku og eiga at fara hvørt um annað í bróðuranda.

[Translations from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/SearchByLang.aspx]

Firstly, I’m sorry if I left your favourite Germanic language off! The above list wasn’t meant to be exhaustive, merely representative.

Straightaway, you should notice a lot of variety in the Germanic languages. They aren’t all just like German at all. But despite this variety, a quick glance shows just how far removed English is. Truly, English is the black sheep of the Germanic family!

FUN TASK 1

With the following English-Swedish key, see for yourself what these words come out as in the various Germanic languages:

  • human beings : människor
  • equal : lika
  • dignity :  värde
  • endowed : utrustade
  • reason : förnuft
  • conscience : samvete
  • act : handla
  • spirit : anda

Found those words in all the other Germanic languages yet?

FUN TASK 2

Think about what the English cognates to these Swedish words could be, e.g., lika is ‘like’. Then consider whether these cognates mean the same thing as the English word being translated. So, ‘like’ is the brother-word to lika, but does ‘like’ actually mean ‘equal’? And if not, how not? Do this for all the above words.

FUN TASK 3

Compare the English version to the Spanish and French versions paying particular attention to the eight words we highlighted above.

English:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Spanish:
Todos los seres humanos nacen libres e iguales en dignidad y derechos y, dotados como están de razón y conciencia, deben comportarse fraternalmente los unos con los otros.

French:
Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits. Ils sont doués de raison et de conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres dans un esprit de fraternité.

And English is a Germanic language…? But of course, the heavy Latinate influence on English won’t surprise most readers of this blog. None-the-less, this kind of side-by-side comparison is illuminating, to say the least.

SO IT’S ALL LATIN’S FAULT?

Most of my fellow Saxonists — folk who still salute Harold Godwinson as their one true king — will claim this is all William the Conqueror’s fault. If only he hadn’t subjugated this nation, English would be more like Swedish and German. Why, if only he’d stayed in France where he belonged, we’d be using stout Germanic words like ogle, swine, hound, and swart — just like any Germanic language worth its salt, such as Swedish: öga, svin, hund, and svart — instead of the pathetic borrowings we’ve been left with: eye, pig, dog, black.

Except eye, pig, dog, and black are thoroughly English words. Their use has got nothing, direct or indirect, to do with William the Conqueror and the subsequent Frenchification of England (check the word-histories out here).

Y’see, English belongs to a different branch of the Germanic languages to all the others. The only other living language in this branch, Scots aside, is Frisian — a language more swamped by Dutch than even English has been by French. Furthemore, English being on an island, it has developed in a totally different direction to the other Germanic languages: “insular” does literally mean ‘of an island’ for a reason, you know.

So there we are. Even if it weren’t for the undeniable Latinate influence on English, English always was a bit different. It always was the black sheep.

featured image from http://www.parenthub.com.au/wp-content/uploads/612_black-sheep.jpg

© 2015 Bryan A. J. Parry

2 Comments | Black Sheep English | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Employment

December 13, 2014

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But the way the world is, and the way that there’s more and more people, more and more doctors are needed — I mean, it’s already happening now that people are doing jobs now that they’re not really qualified for because they get, they get sort of, err.. what’s the word.. sort of uppered too early.
Karl Pilkington, The Ricky Gervais Podcast Bonus Disc Track 3
http://youtu.be/ALGFVxKv2f4?t=11m31s

I love the comedy of Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant (creators of The Office) and their collaborations with their friend Karl Pilkington. But they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea; critically acclaimed and hated in equal measure. But anyway, I love listening to the three of them and their podcasts.

Karl Pilkington sometimes comes out with very Northern or very made-up words which are amusing (to me, at least), such as “wroted”, “pikelet”, and “badder”. And he gets mocked by Gervais and Merchant for this. However, when I recently heard him say “uppered” to mean “promoted” (as in a job), I had to pause the podcast.

It was beautiful, it was perfect. Gervais mocked him, said that it was primitive language. But I think it’s great. I mean, we do say “to down [the drink/ship]” and “to up [the stakes]”, which are prepositions turned into verbs. And we have similar adjectives to “upper” also turn into verbs such as “to lower”. So why not “to upper”? Of course, “to upper” could mean any number of things and might not needfully mean “to promote”. But I don’t see anything against the rules of English in making a verb “to upper”, from the adjective “upper”, with the meaning “to promote [in a job]”.

I momentarily thought that we might say “to higher” instead, but that would get mixed up with the same-sounding “to hire”. Speaking of which, why do we bother with “to employ” at all when we can equally say “to hire” and “to give work to”? Also, why say “job”, but we can usually say “work” instead or “workplace” instead?

I think it’s about time that we demystify and dejargonise the workplace (particularly important considering the topic of my piece “Rationalisation Measures“).

featured image from http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2d/07/5c/2d075c0f57a8c854a90053be595f2a58.jpg

© 2014 Bryan A. J. Parry

5 Comments | Anglish, artlang, conlang, Germanic, linguistic purism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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