Background II

 I should have made this an earlier post; but I thought I ought to explain an idea or term used frequently in this blog: cognate. Cognate words are related words, because they come from related languages. Related languages are considered related because they descend from a common ancestor.

Thus, English and German are related and are both considered Germanic languages. The Scandinavian languages are related, but a little less closely: English and German and considered West Germanic languages, and the Scandinavian languages are North Germanic.

Scholars (usually considered linguists nowadays but at one time called philologists) conclude that two languages are related when they find that they share cognate words. Thus:

father (Engl), Vater (German), pater (Latin), piter (Greek)

There is a rule (or "law") to explain or describe the correspondence of an f- in the Germanic languages with a p- in Latin or Greek.

In reading my blog it may often be helpful if you're acquainted with German. (Unfortunately I think that not too many Americans learn German, possibly due to the hostility to German and Germany that resulted from World War II.)

Some More Etymologies (Word Origins)

As I mentioned elsewhere, the expression time and tide preserves a word (tide) which has pretty much gone out of use, except for being "frozen" in this one expression. A somewhat similar situation can be found in a few more words.

First, bridegroom preserves a vestige of the Old English word guma, meaning 'man' (if you're interested, this is cognate with all the words for 'man' that begin with h- in related languages: homme, hombre, homo, etc.).

The Old English word bana meant 'murderer', We still have this word in a couple plant names, henbane and wolfsbane, plus of course in the expression--no longer meaning something as drastic as 'murderer'--the bane of my existence.

Now another interesting etymology not quite of the same sort. Nickname comes from eke, meaning 'also' plus of course name. Thus, a nickname is an also name. Isn't that cute?

The Anglo Saxons Had Bagels and Lox!

 

First, let's be sure we understand what cognate means. Two words that are cognate words, or simply cognates, are similar words because they are related; they come from related languages. Thus English father, German Vater, and Latin pater are all cognates because those three languages are all cognate, or related, languages.

Now: In Old English (or Anglo-Saxon, spoken from about 450 to 1100 AD), there was a word beag. It referred to strips of gold--perhaps like gold wire--that a chieftain would award to his followers and then they were wrapped around the wrist like a bracelet. This word is cognate with bagel, and you can see the resemblance between the objects denoted.

The Old English for salmon is lachs--pronounced with a guttural like the ch in German ich. This is very similar to lox, meaning smoked salmon, which was originally a Yiddish word.

Thus bagel and lox are both words with cognates in Old English, which is not at all surprising because Old English and Yiddish are cognate languages. They are both in the Germanic language family.

Redundancies

We all use phrases and expressions that are actually redundant if you stop and think about it. The thing is, we normally don't think about it. It might be unfair to thus target them but I find people of a certain profession possibly are more prone to this sort of thing; e.g., "alleged suspect".

Some examples: 

Close proximity (proximity means close-ness)

Gather together. This is actually multiply redundant because, etymologically, together means 'gathered together'.

Surrounding environment. Just think about it for a second.

Fellow colleagues, classmates, co-workers, etc. I'm going to assume this does not require explanation.

And this one, possibly (we hear this all the time): I thought to myself. How else can you think?

And this one I heard today, maybe the king of them all: iconic symbol of the thing (he may not have said "thing" but if it was a different word, I've forgotten what it was).

Some of these, like close proximity, have become so common, so standard, that we use them with no sense whatsoever that there's any redundancy. Still, some of the things that come out of the mouths of some people I think are a symptom of sloppy thinking.

A particular type of redundancy, and one we certainly never think about as being redundant, occurs with words of foreign origin. We use the foreign word and then append what is basically a translation. Example: pita bread. I am pretty sure that pita means 'bread'.

Lots of these occur with Japanese words: daikon radish, taiko drumming, matcha green tea, sumo wrestling, washi paper. (Confession: I've gotten these by watching NHK, the Japanese TV network that can be viewed in English in the US.)

Some of these occur when the speaker or writer does not know the source language, e.g. salsa sauce. Many of us in the US are aware that salsa is Spanish for 'sauce', so we would not do or say this one.

The prize example of this phenomenon was something I saw once on a restaurant menu: "with au jus gravy." Uttered, or written, in blissful ignorance of the fact that au jus in French means 'with juice [or gravy]'.

(Some of) The Irregularities of English Spelling

 

It has often been said that English spelling is chaotic and difficult for non-native (and even native) speakers to learn. It is true that you can look and quite a few sounds and see that they can be spelled in various ways--with little if any way to predict, from the aural sound, what the spelling should be. Here is an example, for the vowel sound in the word ear, represented by the phonetic symbol \ɚ\.

One common spelling of \iɚ\	Another, approximately as common	Rarer spelling of this sound
fear	beer	weir
tear	cheer	mere
clear	leer
hear	deer
near	peer
rear	steer
year	veer
sear
smear

There have been many calls for the reform of English spelling. There are as many reasons why no significant spelling reform has taken place. (The probably only notable exception is the reforms of Noah Webster--those which have made American spelling different from English spelling; e.g. color rather than colour, center rather than centre.)

I have often thought that there are small, isolated areas that could be made more regularized; but then I realize that a piecemeal effort at spelling reform is a bad idea.

 

 

A Couple Interesting English Word Origins (More to Come)

Nostril

The first syllable descends from the word for 'nose' (not too surprisingly), and then the second syllable comes from Old English þril (the þ character, which came ultimately from the Norse runic alphabet, had a th sound), meaning 'hole'. Hence, 'nose hole'. Eminently sensible!

Wilderness

This comes from wild (then just as now) plus deor, meaning 'animal' (cognate with the German Thier, for anyone who knows German). Hence 'wild-animal-place'.

The word deor originally meant 'animal' and then became specialized to mean only one kind of animal. We see this "specialization" also with some other words like the word for meat, which originally meant 'food' (think of the phrase "meat and drink").

 Neighbor

This is from Old English words nehe meaning 'near' and burg or burgh meaning something like 'house', 'castle', 'fortress' (if  you know German, think of the hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God). Thus, your neighbor is the near house (or castle).

Things Gotten Wrong (in Shakespeare) and a Couple Interesting Etymologies

Have you ever noticed that the weather forecasts on television always show us the "futurecast"? Whoever coined that term futurecast either did not know, or did not think about, the fact that the fore- in forecast means 'future'.

Everybody knows the famous quotation from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" Most people seem to think that wherefore means 'where'--and actresses play the line as if this were the case.

Well, wherefore does not mean 'where', it means 'why'. Think of the old phrase "the whys and wherefores." Anyone who goes on to read that passage from Romeo and Juliet can see that the sense of it is, "Romeo, why must you be Romeo, and a Montague, and therefore a member of a family that is enemies with my family?" And note, no comma after "thou," in accordance with what I am saying is the correct sense.

Another misunderstanding from Shakespeare: early on in the play Hamlet (sorry, I was too lazy to dig out my volume of Shakespeare, so this is simply from memory), Hamlet and his buddies are talking about the custom of late-night carousing, and Hamlet says he never does that, "though I am to the manner born." Note, "to the manner"--that is, the custom--and not "to the manor."

 

This is not Shakespeare, but another common misunderstanding, due to a word having become obsolete: In the expression "Time and tide wait for no man," tide here does not mean the surging of the ocean in and out; it means 'season', as in Yuletide, Easter tide, Whitsuntide, etc.

Note: If you have read, or are going to read,  my post on interesting word origins, stop reading right here because this is going to be repetitive.

Okay, now some real etymology: The holes in your nose are called nostrils, right? That's from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for nose; okay, that's the first syllable. And then, there was an Old English word thirl, meaning 'hole'. So nostril is, literally, simply, and reasonably enough, 'nose hole'.

Now another cute O.E. etymology: the word neighbor. The first  part means 'near' (if you know German, think of nahe). The second part--again, if you know German, think of the word Burg (as in the hymn Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott, in English A Mighty Fortress is Our God. So the word, in German at least, means 'castle', 'fortress', 'fortification'. So your neighbor is the next or nearest fortress--or house, more commonly.

More to come.

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