The Write Way

27 December 2002

Not a Lot ...

Greetings,

Well, how was your Christmas?

Yes, mine too :) 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, no matter what your personal opinions about religion, Life, the Universe and Everything ... Christmas is still a terrific time! It seems to make the majority of people try to be a little more patient, pleasant and friendly.

I had occasion to make yet another visit to the shops the day before Christmas, and as I shuffled my way through the crush of people heading towards the cherries, nectarines and mangoes (Christmas essentials!) the portly matron in charge of the trolley behind me ran it into the back of my heels.

"Oh," said she, all sweetness and smiles, "did I run into you?"

"Ha-ha-ha," trilled I,  "yes, you did."

"Let me just push in front of you so I can't do it again," she laughed, performing a manoeuvre that would make Fangio weep with envy.

You'll be proud of me when I tell you that I followed her around the rest of the aisles and not once did I run my trolley into her heels ... not once! Instead I was filled with the spirit of bonhomie; gaily greeting the deli staff across the frozen prawns; waving to all and sundry as we wended our merry way towards the checkout queue; smiling my most indulgent smile on the darling children who were hanging out of the trolley behind me, demanding lollies, books and toys of their poor, demented mother.

"Soon be time for Santa, won't it kids?" I opined.

"Not long now!" they shouted, proving what dinkum Aussie kids they were.

Now, I don't know if this is just a quaint little Antipodean trait, or more widespread, but we're rather partial to the negative Down Under, even though it usually implies the reverse ... Allow me to illustrate:

You ask an Aussie something like ... "How was the movie?"

The reply: "Not bad."

Q. "Was the film what you were expecting after reading the book?"

A. "Not quite." 

Q. "Were there many people there?"

A. "Not a lot."

Q. "Is the theatre close to your place?"

A. "Not far."

Q. "I suppose you'll be looking forward to the sequel."

A. "Not really."

See what I mean? 

So, just because the words are negative, doesn't mean the sentiments are.

Have a wonderful 2003!

Here's something we'll be doing quite a lot over the holiday period, so I suppose it pays to have the definition clearly set out... My son found this:

Definition of Barbequing. It's the only type of cooking a "real man" will do.

 When a man volunteers to do the 'BBQ' the following chain of events are put into motion:

 1) The woman goes to the store.

 2) The woman fixes the salad, vegetables, and dessert.

 3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils, and takes it to the  man, who is lounging beside the grill, beer in hand.

 4) The man places the meat on the grill.

 5) The woman goes inside to set the table and check the vegetables.

 6) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning.

 7) The man takes the meat off the grill and hands it to the woman.

 8) The woman prepares the plates and brings them to the table.

 9) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.

 10) Everyone praises man and thanks him for his cooking efforts.

 11) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed "her night off."

 And, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there's just no pleasing some women.

Chuckle ... Must be something about barbeques - you may recall the Tong Master ( http://www.write101.com/W.Tips117.htm ) also came via my son.

This week's quiz:

Penny Schroeder found this wonderful example of how the poor little apostrophe is abused - even in this time of peace and goodwill!

Didn't have a camera to photograph this sign at Home Depot in Valdosta, GA: 

SEASONS GREETING'S!

Last week's quiz:

Match the words with  their meanings:

paramnesia, frumenty, bromidrosis, piacular, infundibulum, catenary, fuliginous, natterjack, apotropaic, quidnunc

1. Requiring a sacrifice (The usefulness of this word all rather depends on the nature of your family gatherings.) PIACULAR

2. A nosey person; a gossip (Don't feel bad ... we all have at least one.) QUIDNUNC

3. Coloured as if or by soot (This one's easy ... Santa coming down the chimney!) FULIGINOUS

4. Common brownish-yellow short-legged toad; runs rather than hops (Say ... doesn't that sound a bit like that fellow who works next to you? You know the one ...) NATTERJACK

5. Intended to ward off evil; a talisman (Now don't try to tell me there won't be times in the days ahead when you'd give a small fortune to get your hands on one of these!) APOTROPAIC

6. The curve formed by a perfectly flexible, uniformly dense, and inextensible cable suspended from its endpoints; the slightly-drooping curve that a stretched rope or cable assumes under the influence of gravity (I know this is something we'll all be able to relate to after eating Christmas dinner!) CATENARY

7. Hulled wheat boiled in milk and flavored with sugar and spices (Sounds a bit off at first, but when you think about it, this could be quite tasty.) FRUMENTY

9. Any of various funnel-shaped bodily passages, openings, structures, or parts (Like nasal passages - whether you find use for this one depends on just how annoying your rellies get. Just think how you can take the wind out of their sails by commenting on their ... nasal passages.) INFUNDIBULUM

10. Strongly smelling perspiration (Oooerr yuck!) BROMIDROSIS

A contributor to the FOTA board recalled an interesting ad:

"I recall many years ago seeing an advertisement for an appropriate cream, which read "Get rid of those unsightly haemorrhoids".   Maybe the writer was proud of his!

Here's looking at you, kid!"

Some people just don't think, do they?  

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I thought this next piece was t'riffic ... OK ... old ... but still t'riffic:

Three Indian women are sitting around in their teepee, just chatting. The first woman points to the hide she's sitting on and says, "See this hide? My son killed this bear with his own two hands. It's worth quite a bit." 

The second woman nods, and points to the hide she's sitting on. "This is a bear hide, too, and MY son killed it with his own hands as well. I imagine it's worth at least as much as yours." 

Finally, the third, and oldest, woman speaks up. "See this hide?" she cackles. "This is a hippopotamus hide! I killed this hippo with MY own two hands, and it's worth easily what both those bear hides are worth together." 

And of course, the moral of the story is: The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides. 

A Little Something Extra

FREE Report: How to Write a Book ...  Click for your copy: http://www.write101.com/letters/writeabook.htm 

Because we have a bit of extra time up our sleeves this week ( ... holidays ... remember?), I thought we could afford to indulge ourselves and have a bit of a look at the origins of the language.

Do You Know What You're Writing?: Origins of The English Language in 800 Words

by Darren Andrews

For as long as I can remember (which, admittedly, isn't that long) I have been interested in words and language. As a writer it's important to me to understand (at least in part) where the words come from.

English is a fascinating language. Its words are rich in both history and cultural content. But how did these words, this language, come to be? What are these scrawlings we writers write?

In this article we're going to take a look at a little history and a few entertaining resources too! I've kept it as short as I could, and though it did tempt me to become a 5000-word essay I steadfastly resisted ;)

1. Old English

No, not those in the twilight of their lives. This is the name given to the dialects spoken in England up until about AD 1100.

Where did it all begin? Well, I'm not going back all the way. We'll start, for our purposes, during the 5th-6th Century AD.

Three tribes speaking the Western Germanic language decided that they would come settle in England. These we know as the Jutes, Angles and Saxons.

They pushed the native celts into Scotland, Wales and Cornwall and established settlements across England. Their language divided into four dialects: Northumbrian (spoken in northern England), Mercian (the Midlands), Kentish (the south- east), and West Saxon (south and west).

These dialects we collectively call Old English. You can see and hear some Old English by visiting the link below (I found some readings from the well-known Old English epic, Beowulf!)

http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/Beowulf.Readings/Prologue.html

2. Old Norse

Around AD 850 the North Germanic tribes decided to start invading the land (mostly in the north) and thus Old Norse started to permeate the language. It was King Alfred the Great who pushed the Danish invaders back but they still held the north of England and so that's where the main Old Norse infusion occurred, but it spread and the two mixed - often leaving two words with the same meaning intact; which means, today, your thesaurus has a lot more entries than it otherwise would have had! ;) But many more synonyms were to be added...

3. Anglo-Norman

Yes, that strange Norse-French hybrid that is used to describe all those heraldic terms. This language dominated England after the successful invasion made by William of Normandy in 1066. The Normans (the word comes from 'Norse man') were actually of Western Germanic stock but had settled in France.

England became dominated by this French language and Old English (which also became known as Anglo-Saxon in Alfred's time) went underground. Not only that but the Normans brought with them the Latin script which was used in ecclesiastical and legal matters. It was to be another 300 years before English became the language of the rulers again,

Middle English (Chaucer), Modern English (Shakespeare) and Late Modern English (today!) followed.

Summary

English, influenced heavily by Old English, Old Norse, the Norman French and Latin has become a rich and multi-synonymed language. Personally I wouldn't write or speak another! Well, actually I can't do either anyway ;)

I thought I'd end this article by providing you with some interesting linguistic facts as well as a couple of great links.

Interesting Linguistic Facts

1. The last native Cornish speaker died in 1777. The dead language of Cornish (though it is being revived) was spoken in the far southwestern extremity of England (Cornwall).

2. Although only a sixth of known Old English words form the origins of today's English, a full half of today's most- commonly-used words are from Old English. Read that again ;)

3. The modern-day English counties of Sussex and Essex take their name origins from 'South Saxonland' and 'East Saxonland' respectively; Wessex ('West Saxonland') no longer exists but was the homeland of King Alfred the Great.

4. The influence of the Norman French 'good life' as rulers can be seen in the language. For instance, many animals (such as deer, pig, sheep, chicken) retain their Anglo- Saxon (Old English) names whilst the 'meat for the table' employs the French ('venaison', 'porc', 'mouton', 'poulet').

5. It was largely the blending of Anglo-saxon and French to bring about multiple synonyms that today gives English the largest vocabulary of all languages. Examples include sweat/perspiration, dead/deceased, want/desire, ad inf! (oh, ad. inf. is Latin ;) )

6. It is thought that the mispronunciation of the Anglo-Saxon letter, 'edh' (ð) (likely pronounced as th as in 'the') was responsible for the emergence of the word 'Ye' as in 'Ye Olde Worlde...' It should probably be 'the' not 'ye'.

A Couple of Great Links

You can read more details about the above by visiting:
http://www.wordorigins.org/histeng.htm

You can find some good resources (including Old English fonts) by checking out this web site:
http://www.wordorigins.org/source.htm

For those who know HTML, you can use the three weird-looking characters from the Anglo-Saxon alphabet (eth, thorn and the ae/AE ligature) by prefixing these with ampersands, and ending with semi-colons: eth, thorn, aelig, AElig (the last two representing the lowercase and uppercase ae ligature respectively).

These display as in the following first four lines from Beowulf:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Or see them here and learn some basic phrases to impress your friends ;)

wes þu hal - hello (be thou hale?)

hu gæþ hit - how are you? (how goes it?)

hit gæþ god - I'm well (it goes good)

ic þancie þe - I thank you

I hope you feel a little better now you know what you're writing ;)

Darren Andrews is a writer and writes about anything he jolly well likes. He lives in England and tries to help writers understand the Internet. You can take his free mini-course, "Write Your Way To Success & Profit" by visiting:
http://www.writers-and-publishers.com/pop.html

Word of the week: Lampadedromy (n) foot race with lighted torches, especially a relay race in which the torch is passed on. Lampadephore, n. torchbearer.

Those of you who just celebrated the winter solstice won't have much use of this word ... but the rest of us will! Think of us, sitting around the pool and/or barbie ... a few torches or candles burning brightly and then the lampadedromy for another nice cold bottle of bubbly!

Oxymoron of the week: Another guest oxymoron this week ... from Gaile (last name withheld ... for obvious reasons!) "While sitting in the staff room during a break, the library technician and I overheard two of the male staff talking.  We thought this oxymoron would interest you, because it was 'men planning'.  Scary, huh? Hope you have a great season.  Merry, happy and all that jazz."

This week's Latin phrase will come in handy in all sorts of social situations:

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat. (What goes around, comes around.)

Regards,

Jennifer

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