We Go Way Back

Some years ago, I became fascinated with a book on a hypothetical “mother tongue” of all languages. The book was by Dr. Merritt Ruhlen, a linguistics professor; the book was The Origin of Language(1994), and it purported to demonstrate that there are commonalities among many more languages--even commonalities between, say, Indo-European languages and American Indian languages and Asian languages. Ruhlen’s work is based on that of his mentor, the linguistic taxonomist Dr. Joseph Greenberg, and is also informed by his collaboration with population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford.
Most American linguists do not accept the proposition that there is an original mother tongue--though I have to ask, why not? If, as genetic studies are now indicating, all human beings derive from a band of about 2,000 early humans, and if that band existed as a single or closely related group of bands, well, then, surely if they spoke at all, they spoke the same language. There is something deeply appealing about the notion that indeed we are all of the same family. However, I know that “deeply appealing” does not necessarily mean “true.”

This proto-language has a name, Nostratic (loosely derived from Latin, “our” tongue), and if you Google it you will find a wealth of highbrow argument on the Web about it. One link: http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/nostratic.htm
But there is so much more out there. Take a half hour and poke around!
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/nostratic.htm
The following website has a lot about IndoEuropean without the Nostratic additions.
http://www.danshort.com/ie/

More later on some of the arguments for a “world” language.

Ballots and Bullets

Why do we "cast" a ballot?
"Ballot" and "bullet" are both derived from a Germanic word signifying "ball." This is easy to understand as far as "bullet" goes, because the first bullets were indeed little balls. But why "ballot"?
"Ballot" goes back to the ancient Greek practice of voting by dropping a white or black ball into a container--white if you liked the candidate, black if you didn't. (This is the origin of the term "to blackball" or "unanimously reject," by the way.)

Now, of course, a ballot may be a piece of paper or a digital signal, depending on how our voting systems are set up.

Caprice

When we speak of a capricious girl (and this is a term that is quite unfairly applied primarily to females), who would think that we were calling her a goat? Latin caper meant “goat,” and Italian still has capro, capra, male and female goat, respectively. We have kept the idea of a goat’s style of jumping around, as you can see the mountain goat doing above, in our word “caper.” In our words “caprice” and “capricious,” we think of a girl’s changeableness. The invaluable Wilfred Funk quotes Thomas DeQuincey as describing female caprices thus:
“Everywhere I observe in the feminine mind something of a beautiful caprice, a floral
exuberance of that charming wilfulness which characterizes our dear human sisters, I
fear, through all the world.”
Stow it, Thom. Men can be just as capricious as women, but then we call them bullies. Hmm. There is a certain livestock motif going on here... to be continued.

aberrant, error, inerrant

To “err” means to go down the wrong path, to wander without direction. In the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the General Confession reads, “We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep,” and thus I learned the meaning of “err.”

The most common word in English derived from “err” is “error,” or mistake. I believe we English teachers are responsible for that cold chill you just felt going down your spine at the thought of all the errors you have in the secret English teacher error file they keep on you at the FBI.

“Ab” in Latin is the preposition “away from,” and so “aberrant” means that something or someone has strayed away from the right path. Generally “aberrant” is used for pretty big wanderings away from the “right” path. Aberrant behavior might include such things as, um, having a habit of chopping people’s heads off and keeping them in the freezer.

The Latin preposition “in” can mean “inside,” or it can mean “not.” In this case, “inerrant” means “without error.” No mistake.

There are large swathes of Protestant Christendom that believe their own version of the many-times translated Bible (have you ever known a translator who didn’t make at least one serious mistake? I haven’t) is the Mistake-Free Word of God, or the Inerrant Word of God. We’re glad SOMEONE knows the absolute truth for every single person on the planet. We just wish we knew who it was.


Aberrant

Encouragement

My cousin Marjorie, an excellent writer, has encouraged me by reading this blog and commenting on it; I cannot thank her enough for this. So I’m moved to meditate on the word “encourage.”

“Courage,” like so many other words, entered the language as a result of the Norman Conquest in 1066; but this word makes its appearance around 1300 as “corage” from Vulgar (popular) Latin “coraticum,” from classical Latin “cor,” or heart. You will find it in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales among many other sources. French for “heart” is “coeur,” so you can see where we got the otherwise puzzling “u” in the spelling.

“Heart” remains, as etymonline.com states, “a common metaphor for inner strength.” We still refer to boxers and other pugilists as having “heart.” We also use “heart” in English when we say the negative, as in “I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her wedding gown was hiked up behind, showing her underwear” (perhaps not the most common usage of the term).

We see the “cor” root throughout medicine, of course, as in “cardiac care” or “cardiologist.” It works physically as well as metaphorically.

“Encourage,” then, means simply to put heart into someone, or to impart inner strength.

Thank you, Marjorie, for the gift.

How is a Pony like a Chicken?

Ever heard of the Grey Junglefowl? No? I hadn’t either. But it’s the ancestor of our chickens, apparently, and we owe our eggs and chicken soup to the deciduous forests of India, where the grey junglefowl roamed wild under the trees, scratching for the usual grubs and worms.

The word “poultry” has an interesting history. “Pullus” in Latin meant any young animal. “Pullus” came into French as “poulet,” a little fowl, and from “poulet” (which means “chicken in modern French), we got “pouleterie” or our “poultry,” plus, as a bonus, the word “pullet,” or young female chicken.

Strangely enough, the word “pony” also derives from “pullus,” but it came through French as “poulenet,” meaning “a young horse.” The Scottish got hold of it (the French and the Scots were closely connected) and brought it into Scottish dialect as “powney,” where it traveled across the Scottish border as “pony” in English. Now it means, not a young horse, but a small horse.