Language Humor, IndoEuropean and Beyond!
(to the Stars?)

Below, find some humor on the degradation of language and how to combat it.
Does Nine equal New?. If nothing else, it proves linguists have a sense of humor!
Autoantonyms: words that are their own opposites ... really!

Help! Someone sent me a list and some discussion of autoantonyms. I thought I had saved his email, but I had not! If he sees this, could he please send it to me again? I'd love to post it...

Back to the Pure Language!

Nigel Love wrote "my experience as a panellist on a radio programme fielding listeners' queries about 'correct' English may be relevant. ... When someone writes in complaining that they heard someone say/write, e.g, "who did you see?" instead of "whom did you see?", I answer along the following lines [explanation of language evolution and the loss of pronomial case endings, etc, edited ... see the Pellissippi Parkway for some discussion on this (kmd)]. ... The response is to execrate me for letting the side down, benignly 'allowing' (or even contributing to) the barbarisation of the language, etc. ..."

And Bruce Nevin counters with this lovely bit of advice for us all: "The logical implications of their position can be made evident. An alternative tack, then, is to agree with them, and excoriate them for only now waking up to the degradation of language.
Loss of the case endings has been going on for a long time, let's bring back nominal as well as pronominal inflection, genitive and dative at the very least. And imagine such a Frenchified form of the language being held up as a model in our schools as that represented in the writings of Shakespeare! What's in an ekename? Where's the beef, it's cow flesh from now on! But they are like the deaf nadder that stoppeth her ear. Reverse the great vowel shift! Back to our Indo-European roots! And beyond!"

Words Equal Thoughts?

A thought on the hypothesis that words and language shape the mind and how it views the world:

But don't look to me for a serious view about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. What do I know from language and culture? I have no idea whether my vocabulary shapes the things I am permitted to think; I only know that when I think something, the words to talk about it do seem to be there, except when words fail me.

Geoffrey Pullum, Univ of California Stevenson College

Does Nine Equal New?

Today's great question (proposed and moderated, mostly, by Trey Jones):

A couple of years ago, I was a TA for a History of Math course, in which the professor, who is a mathematician and amateur polyglot, told the class that there was a strong resemblance between the word for "nine" and the word for "new" in many languages, and that this was because (according to his theory) people got along with 8 numbers for a long time (because they had 8 fingers) and then needed a "new" number.

He cited, of course, Spanish "nueve/nuevo" and French "neuf/nouveau", and even English "nine/new".

So, the question to the class is: how many languages can we come up with that match this theory (however spuriously or vaguely)?

Well, here's a great lesson in how "sounds are evil" and only history is good.

But, let's start:

many people pointed out that Latin had novem (nine) and novum (new) which became the Romance words.
many people added these: (new/nine) Dutch - nieuw/negen; German - neu/neun; Low German - nige/negen; Italian - nove/nuove; Norwegian - ny/ni; Sanskrit - navah/na'va; Welsh - newydd/naw; West Frisian - nij/njoggen ....

Of course, this all dates to the original Indo-European *newo/*newn, which pretty obviously leads to the rest... but what about non Indo-European languages? After all, they count on their fingers, don't they?

Basque - berri/bederatzi ... but that's not real close, is it?
And people have surely had ten fingers a lot longer than the Indo-Europeans were around, no?

But wait! In one of those freakish chance occurences that happens when you start looking at something, we make this astounding discovery:

in Chinese, nine = old (jiu3/jiu4)!!!! And they write backwards, too!

Chinese Pinyin: nine = jiu, new = xin:

Words both have one syllable!

Words would both be high-scoring in Scrabble!

Japanese (native roots): nine = kokonotsu, new = atarashii:

Words are both amazingly hard to pronounce! (mere coincidence? or something deeper?)

Words both have the same number of letters when transliterated into English/Latin alphabet!

Japanese (foreign roots): nine = kyuu, new = shin:

Words both look funny!

Same number of letters!

So, obviously, despite my college professor's theory that Europe was colonized by six-fingered aliens from outer space (which is why we have dozens instead of tens), it's obvious that it was four-fingered TOONS that ruled the earth in days gone by!

Autoantonyms: Their Own Opposites

Sure, everybody's heard of oxymorons, phrases which contradict themselves, like military intelligence, jumbo shrimp, political ethics.... But there are plenty of words in English, most of them fairly well-known and in fairly ordinary use, that are their own opposites. Of course, there are many reasons for this:

• most of these are secondary meanings that have grown up in place of the originals (moot)
• some of them are parallel derivations, usually two verbs from one noun (dust)
• some are cultural (table)
• some are derived from entirely different sources (cleave, which come from "kleben" (stick) and "klioban" (split)

T-Rex was introduced to them just recently (Nov 2, 2007 in fact) - and he totally fell for them. As how could he not???? (There's a list below the cartoon!)

Some of them are considered substandard or "wrong", but they're in common, valid use. Like these:

aught	everything, all	nothing, zero
bill	invoice, charge	money
cleave	cut apart	stick together
clip	cut apart	join together
custom	usual, ordinary	special, made-to-order
doubtful	causing doubt or uncertainty	having doubt; showing doubt
dust	remove fine particles	cover with fine particles
fast	steady, unmoving	at high speed, quick
fearful	frightening, causing fear	frightened; showing fear
inflamable	able to be set aflame	unable to be set aflame
joyful	gladdening, causing joy	happy; showing joy
learn	to take on knowledge	to teach (Old English and current dialect)
let	to permit	to hinder (without let or hindrance; a let ball)
leave	to depart	to cause to remain behind
literally	actually	figuratively (at least in the US!)
marry	to join two people in marriage	to get married
model	archetype, prototype	copy, imitation, display
momentarily	immediately	for a moment
moot	academic, of little importance	debatable, important
note	a promise to pay	money
overlook	to look over	to refuse or fail to see
oversight	keeping tabs on	missing, making a mistake
paper	official	spurious
partition	a division	the thing used to divide
peer	a person of equal rank	a noble
prove	to test	to demonstrate
put	to place, to lay	to throw with force
puzzle	to pose a problem	to solve a problem
quantum	very small but discrete	very large (a quantum leap in the fight against AIDS)
ravel	to entangle	to disentangle
rent	to let out for money	to temporarily possess for money
resign	to quit	to sign up again
sanction	to forbid	to allow
sanguine	murderous	optimistic
scan	to examine closely	to glance at quickly
skin	to cover with skin	to remove the skin of
soldier	to perform one's duty	to shirk one's duty
splice	to slice apart	to fasten together
strike	to hit	to miss (in baseball)
table	to set aside (US)	to propose (British)
tearful	making one cry, causing sadness	crying
temper	passion, fury	to calm by mixing
trim	to cut things off	to add extra bits on
unravel	to come apart, fray	to solve, disentangle

Do you have any autoantonyms to add to the list?
E-mail me at kmdavis@erols.com.

Here are the translations for the New Languages:

Darkest Africa, No one I knew, Mortal enemies, Briar patch, Dirty attic, Lobster Bisque, Dingbats, Barber of Seville, Hillbilly, Belly buttons, Standing ovation, Alley cat, Strawberry jam, Double chin, Chinese checkers, Blue chip, Traffic cop, Popcorn, Dernier cri, Creases, Up a creek, Shrimp creole, Rubber check, Prune Danish, Cellar door, Going dutch, Got in dutch, Protestant ethic, Body English, Reverse English, Wet nurse, Gall stone, Rolling stone, Itchy truss, Rotary fan, Photo finish, Nasal phlegm, Fox fur, Best friend, Deep freeze, Brimfull, Howling gale, Exravaganza, Figaro, Natural gas, Gorgeous George, Wheat germ, Cousin german, Indira Ghandi, Fenugreek, Sea gull, Full house, Milwaukee brew, Cornish hen, Westward ho, Bunny hop, Gnawing hunger, Take it easy, Rikki Tikki Tavi, Overhead cam, Swift kick, Protocol, Terpsichore, Overcoat, A capella, Flight crew, Chocolate cookie, Standup comic, National Lampoon, Last lap, Gelatin, Iceberg lettuce, Stove lid, Antimacassar, Chocolate malt, Gentlemen, Virgin Mary, Coal mine, Night nurse, Euphoria, Bosom pal, Shoo-fly pie, Stand pat, Another man's poison, Love potion, Pigeon-toed, Nail polish, Fools rush in, Shifting sands, Can of sardines, Alto Sax, Hopscotch, Yosemite, Original sin, George Bernard Shaw, Worcestershir, Hot tamale, Creases, Dying swan, Sickeningly sweet, Dotted Swiss, Dromedary camel, White tie, Hot tamale, Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas tree, Whooping crane, Electrocute, Resounding wails, Wishing wells, Cry wolf, Superhuman, Bronx zoo.

source unknown...