Subject: I ws actually interested
Author:
Posted on: 2014-02-12 02:09:00 UTC
when I first learned that "robot" was a Czech word. Now you're telling me that "pistol" is, too?
*looks it up*
You're right! From Dictionary.com:
Origin:
1560–70; pistole pitschal, pitschole, petsole píšt’ala literally, pipe, fife, whistle (presumably a slang term for a type of light harquebus employed during the Hussite wars), akin to pištět to squeak, peep
I've known people to get into heated debates about various aspects of canon and the intricacies of authorial intent. And on the internet, I pretty much expect it. But outside of a classroom or a gathering of English professors, the PPC is the only place I know of where a verbal kerfufflel can break out over the use of 'alright' versus 'all right.'
Going along those lines, what are some areas of misuse related to the English language that get you all in a tizzy? Here are some of mine (Please keep all debates that might ensue civil):
-- 'Unique' means 'one of its kind.' Therefore something cannot be 'very unique.'
-- 'Begs the question' does not mean 'raises the question.' It is a type of logical fallacy where a statement is assumed to be true using only the statement itself as evidence.
-- Punctuation specifically tied to dialogue goes inside of the quotation marks.
-- Single sentence paragraphs should only be used with dialogue or to connote an extremely important/dramatic event.
-- And pretty much anything in this video.
1) Grammar that doesn't make sense. Example: Present Perfect Tense being in the same time frame as the Past Tense. My English tuition teacher told us that if we ever got to ride on a time machine, "go and smack whoever who invented that."
2) Grammar (at least in the past). While my English has improved by a significant amount, I usually speak broken English, and as a result, I used to screw up in Grammar. A lot.
3) Vocabulary taken from other languages. Example: confetti/coriandoli. ??????? I'm confused over that. So now I just avoid using "confetti".
~Autumn
Allow me to get back to your original point: "Vocabulary taken from other languages. Example: confetti/coriandoli. ??????? I'm confused over that. So now I just avoid using "confetti"."
Granted, in a language like ours, where we take words wholesale from foreign languages, one would hope that whoever shanghaied the word from its native language is calling upon its services to accomplish the linguistical task that it is used to doing in its native language. More often than not, such is the case. (For example, faux pas is used aright; it is French for "false step".)
But alas, our bastard language doesn't usually treat its captives so nicely, but instead impresses tasks utterly foreign to them upon these helpless words:
* A Latin verb (ignoramus, "we do not know") is slaving away as a noun meaning "dullard";
* two Chinese words meaning "work" and "together" (工合) are now yoked together to bear the meaning "enthusiastic" (gung-ho);
* and an Italian word meaning "small sweets" (confetti) has been relegated to evoke the image of small pieces of colored paper.
What should a good Anglophone do when he discovers that a word has been pressed into such unfair labor?
If the enslavement is recent, education might be the key to ensuring the word's eventual liberation before the masses continue the poor word's impressment. In this wise, much can be learned from the efforts to keep an extra "e" from muscling its way between the "g" and "m" in "judgment."
But what of words whose servitude has gone on for eons, with multitudes of people calling on it to bear a load that it was not meant to bear? We can either
*continue to call on the services of the word, content in the knowledge that it has since gotten used to its new task; or
* try to blaze a new trail, calling upon the correct word for the job, be it foreign (e.g., using "coriandoli" where everyone else uses "confetti") or Anglo-Saxon (though such a word usually does not exist in a lot of cases--for if it did, why would the foreign word have been pressed into service in the first place?)--albeit at the risk of being billed as pedants.
As for me, I follow the first path (whether for better or for worse, we can disagree). It is the path of least resistance, and sometimes, we may find that the "mistreated" word was actually not so mistreated after all. From Wikipedia:
Confetti is small pieces or streamers of paper, mylar, or metallic material which are usually thrown at parades and celebrations, especially weddings (and game shows, following the end of a milestone or the occasion of a big win). The origins are from the Latin confectum, with confetti the plural of Italian confetto, small sweet. Modern paper confetti traces back to symbolic rituals of tossing grains and sweets during special occasions, traditional for numerous cultures throughout history as an ancient custom dating back to pagan times, but adapted from sweets and grains to paper through the centuries.
(emphasis mine)
You see: we are using the correct word, since our modern usage of paper hearkens back to a time when people literally used "confetti"!
That (a nice Old English word) could (yep, 'can' appears to be Germanic too) be (on a roll! Also Germanic) difficult (uh-oh, looks like Latin or French) hard (phew!). Many (Germanic!) of (ditto) our (okay, this is getting silly) words (oh for heaven's sake) are ([Grumble]) apparently (ha! 'Apparent' is French) seemingly ('seem' is distinctly Norse, not Old English) known (Germanic) to (well, the preposition is Germanic) be (covered before) not (Germanic, by several chances) from (Old English) other (Old English) languages (French!) tongues (Old English).
So that kind of failed to prove my point. Er... kangaroo banyan lieutenant bonbon!
hS
That was may not be a really good point after all.
Wow.
I knew quite a lot of English words were derived from Old English (It's Old English, after all.) but still...wow. I never knew English was inspired by French or Germanic Languages, for one.
*scurries off to do some Googling*
~Autumn
... 'English' (and particularly 'Old English') means 'the language of the Angles', who were a bunch of rowdy German immigrants who came over here and took our job er, lives and entire country. (Technically they were one of a few groups of such Germans - the Saxons and the Jutes were also involved; they're also why we're commonly called 'Anglo-Saxon'). So I consider 'English' to be a Germanic tongue, and anything from any other language to be foreign.
The thing is... English comes from England (duh), which is a bit of a mess in terms of invasions. Ignoring the very early stuff, we have:
-The original Britons, who are the principle ancestors of the modern Welsh.
-The Roman invaders, who brought Latin (and later Vulgar Latin ~= Italian) as a language of commerce and government. This is why Welsh, as a language, has a bunch of Latin words - they adopted them back when the Welsh were the British, under Roman rule across the whole island.
-The Angles, Saxons, and assorted other Germans. They (attempted to) completely displace[d] the Britons (and leftover Romans - this was after the Empire collapsed), so 'Old English' - a Germanic language - came in pretty much intact. The Britons got largely driven back to Wales. But, of course, a bunch of words hung around - they always do.
-The Vikings, speaking Old Norse, did a fair amount of invading - at one point they actually ruled all of England except a tiny marshy island, but the Saxon kings came back from that one (somehow). But there's a lot of Viking vocab in English.
-The Normans, in 1066, conquered England, setting themselves up as the ruling elite. They brought Latin (as a formal language) and French with them - which is why the Saxon 'cow' becomes the French 'beef' when it goes to the Lord's table. (As a single example of this, in terms of the nobility: 'King' is Anglo-Saxon; 'Earl' is Norse; 'Count' is French)
--So by this point, the language is more accurately called Anglo-Norman. That's what I tried to demonstrate, but picked a sentence without many French-derived words in it.
And finally:
-The British Empire wreaked merry mayhem with the language. Owning a quarter of the world - plus the current United States, though not at the same time - meant a lot of exposure to new words. That's not just place-specific words (banyan, kangaroo - though we use 'kangaroo court', come to think of it), but a bunch of 'common' words, too: this page gives me words such as 'bungalow', 'loot', and 'shampoo' as Indian (Hindi/Urdu) in origin.
And, as wobbles has pointed out, we've also done our share of adopting words from other languages 'just because'. 'Robot' made its way into English in the same manner that 'sandwich' showed up in French - it comes from the first language to describe it.
(For a really fun time: try and determine the exact moment when each 'invader' suddenly becomes the hero of England's national story. The vile Roman invaders led directly to King Arthur, who fought the filthy Saxon barbarians who later produced the noble King Harald who got shot by the bloodthirsty Normans at Hastings... it's good fun!)
hS
when I first learned that "robot" was a Czech word. Now you're telling me that "pistol" is, too?
*looks it up*
You're right! From Dictionary.com:
Origin:
1560–70; pistole pitschal, pitschole, petsole píšt’ala literally, pipe, fife, whistle (presumably a slang term for a type of light harquebus employed during the Hussite wars), akin to pištět to squeak, peep
Alas, I do not... but I can leave you with this entertaining and useful link, which covers a lot of what we may have to say:
Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brians.
~Neshomeh
But a lot of people I know use 'Now in a minute' to describe something they are going to do in a minute.
Also, out of curiousity (and the amount of times I use it) is it OK, Ok, ok or okay to say that you're alright (or is it all right :P)
... it's alwrong to say ohkae. ;)
hS
The first is an abbreviation, but would be acceptable in non-formal contexts. The word "okay" is the original, and can be used any time that one would want to state that they are unharmed. The word "ok" sounds like the work of a confused person who assumed "ox" was plural, and "Ok" seems like he just put it at the beginning of a sentence.
"Robert, have you seen my musk ox?"
"Ok, you say? Why, there's one ok over there by the fence, Leopold, but I am afraid that I cannot see any others from here."
"What? Robert, I've only ever had one ox."
"Yes, and I quite suppose you've also had one socks and one blocks, you silly man."
"Robert, you are as dumb as rocks."
I've always hated the not-words "guesstimate" and "irregardless". Neither of those are real words, and yet people insist on saying them around me. I will probably be able to come up with more not-words later, but I'm not in a mood that I'd relish ruining right now.
Decapitation is the separation of a head from its body. You cannot separate a head from a head. The correct term would be "severed head".
Sorry if this seems like it just comes out of nowhere; I just saw "decapitated head" on a random TVTropes page and remembered how much I dislike the term.
What is that even supposed to mean? o.O
To be honest, there aren't many things that irritate me when it comes to English, but mostly because I don't have as much contact with it as I'd like.
On the other hand, in my own language, there is a word that translated directly to 'namely', yet people use it to explain things based on facts or what's currently considered a fact (i.e.: You can't move faster than light. Namely, if something could move as fast as light, its mass would border on infinity). I haven't seen similar misuse in English language yet.
It's one of those words that negate something negative, which doesn't necessarily entail the positive opposite - if something isn't illegal it does not mean it is legal; it can be in the grey area.
'OK' is actually the original version, with 'okay' emerging as a phonetic spelling later on. According to a very quick bit of internet research I did, OK is actually the more commonly used word (particularly in business writing). I prefer 'okay,' but either version is fine.
Good point with 'irregardless'. Definitely not a word I'm a fan of.
If the two-capital-letter form "OK" was the original, I wonder what it originally stood for, if it stood for anything.
...
Thirty seconds later, I have discovered an entire Wikipedia article on the uncertain origins of OK. I love it when the Internet surpasses my expectations like this. I was expecting to have to wait considerably longer and find much less specific information, but I probably shouldn't be surprised, considering how many people have probably wondered the same thing in the past.
“OK” was first used by Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, inspector general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, when he signed letters and orders written by his secretaries or translators. It was meant to endorse what was written there, because “oll korrekt” is the German phonetic spelling of what Germans hear when Americans say “all correct”. But I don’t have any other source than “My father told me so about 1960”.
The suggestion that “OK” was meant to be the abbreviation of “Oberkommando”, as quoted in the Wikipedia article, doesn’t sound plausible. The secretary/translator would probably have written “High Command” and General Steuben’s title and other applicable phrases before Steuben signed the document.
HG
The version that I heard is that it started being used in some war (can't remember which) as short form of "0 Killed", when zero is read as 'oh', so, according to that story, OK started as "Everything's fine, no one's dead".
OK may have came from Oll Korrect.
Oll Korrect is a misspelling of All Correct.
All Correct is a synonym for All Right.
We were talking about All Right all along!
...I'm a little tired, if you can't tell. Imma sleep now.
Zzzzzzzz...