Yinglish-Schminglish   

 

In 1997 I started to see a nefarious plot to Yinglishize  my mother tongue  by members outside  my chosen tribe. That year when I was writing my weekly language column in The Gazette I phoned books editor, Bryan Demchinsky of Ukranian descent  to see if he had received a book I wanted to review. The book in question was entitled The Bible Code and it purported some mishugas that hidden inside the Torah were coded messages that predicted events such as the bombing in Oklahoma City in1995 and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin later that same year. Demchinsky told me he had perused the book  and that in his opinion “it looked like a bunch of dreck.” This surprised me, but not because I held a contrary view of the book. No, what stunned me was my goyishe editor’s knowledge of the word  dreck.

 

This process then proliferated  like a virus among Gazette staffers. In 1999, columnist  nishtayid Don MacPherson wrote  “Perhaps Bouchard was just trying to avoid unnecessary tsuris at the next meeting of the PQ national council.”Before the end of the century Gazette movie critic Brendan Kelly said  that even though actor Robert Carlyle  has a penchant for playing  monsters like Hitler  that at least Carlyle was a monster mensch.

 

So it was at this juncture that I realized that Yinglish was ubiquitous. In August of the new millennium  I caught the following in the Globe & Mail by Elzabeth Renzetti : “I know that she was once fat, on the precipice of obese, and  dreading sailing off into the floaty stage, the point in which the  zaftig give up all fashion sense and begin dressing like Mama Cass.”   And at about the same time Maureen Dowd wrote  in the New York Times that Vice President  Cheney and his aides “shoehorned all their meshugas about Saddam’s aluminum tubes, weapons labs and al Qaeda links into Powell’s UN speech.”  But wait, there’s more! In 2005 Time magazine featured this line  by  someone named  J.F.O. Mcallister on the upcoming marriage of Charles and  Camilla. “Last week there were a few signs of apathy in the sea of schmaltz about enduring love.” Also in 2005 Liam Lacey reviewed a  movie called Prime in the Globe & Mail. The headline was  “What a shemozzle” and the review said that Meryl Streep was presented as a stereotypical Jewish mother: “ She kvetches, plotzes. Gets verklempt and all those other Yiddish things”… .” The word shemozzle   is an example of how words morph.It’s more likelyto be used by Gentiles than by Jews.   It is thought to be be derived from the word mazel and is usually used to mean confusion or chaos. It was popularized by the Anglo Irish writer and comedian Spike Milligan in his comedic writings and WWII  memoirs.At this point Yinglish usage by goyim was so common that I stopped collecting them. It appeared that Jews no longer solely owned Yinglish. I could have sued these plunderers for cultural appropriation.

 

 But sometimes Yiddish is not only misused or fractured it is butchered in a very treyf manner.  Many years ago,  before the Canadian Alliance Party had been created then  Reform backbencher Lee Morrisson from Saskatchewan wanted to refer to  Human Resource Minister’s Jane Stewart’s  gall  but  he felt that the word gall  wasn’t  quite potent  enough. So he said “You got to admire the jutsper JUTSPER of the Minister of Human Resources.” Parliament sensed a linguistic travesty had been committed on the Yiddish language and convulsed into laughter. Then Herb Gray  a member of the Tribe of Israel) said he had two words to describe Morrison’s question; “Gornisht and absolute narishkayt.” This again convulsed the distinguished members notwithstanding hardly anybody knew what Grey had said. This caused Speaker Gib Parent to say, “Order please, I have no way of knowing whether these words are unparliamentary

Montreal Jewry has retained many Yiddish aspects to our speech patterns and sometimes it even affects our grammar.  My daughter Jennifer was apprised of her sub-standard English during her first year at Yale University. Jennifer was enjoying a nosh with her dormmates, some of whom were Jewish and she exclaimed   “This cake is so good, you want? ”  This plea was greeted with consternation  by her roomies. Notwithstanding that Jennifer was  majoring at the time in linguistics, she was informed by her fellow student that this  sentence didn’t correspond to the elementary grammar drummed into them their whole lives. After all, there was no direct object, Her friends probably thought she should have said “You want some?”or You want some cake?”

 

This conversational style, though, in quite common among Montreal anglophones who are Jewish. If asked by someone whether a particular object was available in Montreal, A Jewish person might answer; “You could find. ”  If asked whether the dessert is included in the price of a meal, the answer might be, “It comes with.”  This lack of a direct object follows the grammatical structure of  manyYiddish  expressions ( es kumt mit). In addition, it is common to respond to a question with another question which is oft peppered by an implied or stated complaint.   Hence the seemingly innocuous question “How are you? ” could  elicit, “How should I be with my knees? ”

 

It is difficult to escape one’s roots.  When I was in business I had a  non-Jewish business associate from Massachusetts with whom I became quite friendly and we would often shoot the breeze over the phone.  Often, in response to some wry comment  he made, I answered him by saying  “go know.”  After years of using this expression finally one day he said to me in an exasperated fashion. “Howie, you keep saying ‘go know’ to me. What the ef  do you mean? ”  I was surprised that he didn’t know what I meant and when I got home  I checked in my Joys of Yiddish  by Leo Rosten the expression Go Know which stated, “Yinglish. From the Yiddish expression Gey vays (meaning, “go know.”) ”   It said the expression could mean “How could I know?”, “How could you expect me to know?”  or “How could anyone know?”.    Probably if I had said “Go figure,”  my friend would have known what I meant. Who knows?

 

It’s important to remember that a word in one language doesn’t have to mean the same in another language. Mensch in German just means man or human being; in Yiddish it epitomizes good behaviour. In Yiddish,“ chutzpah” only has a negative meaning, that of “brazen effrontery or impudence.”  In English, however, “chutzpah” is a more prolific word, usually defined as “outrageous nerve” but this definition is invariably coupled with an explanation.  Two of the favorite chutzpah examples are:

- Someone who kills both parents and pleads for mercy before the judge because he is an    orphan and reporting your landlord for building-code violations when you’re six months behind in the rent.

 

When the word “chutzpah”, is used in a political sense, the meaning is usually not complimentary and is used to describe “extreme gall.”  James Reston of the New York Times assessing the sexual antics of presidential candidate Senator Gary Hart in 1987 said, “Mr. Hart’s  chutzpa has hit a new level of political arrogance.” We must remember, however, that he was referencing a pre-Clintonesque not to mention the pre-Trump era.

Interestingly in the Talmud over 1500 years ago the term chutzpah gets grudging approval. In one tractate it says that “’impudence (or chutzpah) against Heaven is of avail.’

 

While the Inuits may have many words for snow we have many words for a more important  and prevalent category: losers. Observe   “schmo”, “schmuck”, “nudnik” and meshugenne  schmendrick schmeggegge  schlimazel , schnorrer and  nebbish to name but a  few. There are nuances of meanings to describe these  unfortunate characters. It is said that a shlemiel trips, and knocks down the shlemazl and the nebbish repairs the schlimazl’s glasses.

 

Altho we associate Yinglish terms largely  with North American vernacular, their usage is more widespread thansolely our continent. We see the word nosh being used in England in the 1870s but with the idea of it being a meal not a snack which came into NA usage in the 1940s. In fact a former girlfriend whose mother  lives in Yorkshire and is  over 90 used it in this manner   The term “shicker”  is also listed in the OED as an Australian and New Zealand colloquialism.   Until the last 30 years the term shicker was the most commonly used term for a drunk Down Under. I suppose these terms came into British English vernacular in the 19th century when it was common for Jewish merchants to rub shoulders with people in East London. You will  also find some distinct spelling of Jewish words in British Eng. For example gefilte as in gefilte fish is rendered in the OED as gefulte  GEFULTE with an umlaut over the U.

 

Some of the most basic English words have a particular Yiddish sense.  The OED mentions that as of 1903, the word “already” had been “Yiddishized” when  placed “in final position to denote emphasis, exasperation, etc.” A good example of this is the expression “enough already.” Its more concise than saying I’ve had it and I wont take it anymore.“Need”  also is used in a Yiddish sense to imply something is unnecessary, as in the expression “Who needs it?”   Non-Montreal anglophones laugh when I tell them  “I’m going to make an order.”  meaning  grocery shopping. Interestingly this  usage of “make” is found in French as well as English and  I discovered that it is also prevalent in New Orleans  where Eng is also influenced by French.

 

Over 30 years ago I  lobbied for the inclusion of the word  “nakhes” usually  spelled NACHES into the OED  bc the word had a distinct meaning that wasn’t expressed by any word in English  Perhaps, my lobbying effort ,  wasn’t in vain b/c it  was added to the OED  in 1992  with the spelling  following definition: “Among Jews, a sense of pleasure or pride at the achievements of one’s children.”  I suspect, however, that people from all ethnic groups also share this emotion.

 

The television program, Saturday Night Live, however, in the 1990s made popular the usage of two unlikely Yiddish candidates. In a segment entitled Coffee Talk, Canadian Mike Myers played the character  Linda Richman who was prone to using the words shpilkes, “nervous energy” and farklempt,”all choked up.”

 

There are some disputed terms that etymologists aren’t sure if the English word comes from Yiddish. The word kibosh, “to forbid with unmistakeable consequences , is first cited by Dickens in 1836. It could be from Yiddish via German keibe-carrion; or French cabocher=to cut off; or Irish cie bas-cap of death. The OED  entry for glitch says etymology unknown but it prob comes from the Yid glitsh-slip from the Old German glitan-to glide. Another disputed term is the slang word copasetic-all right. Some say it comes from the Heb Kol ba seder-all in order but the word derived out of Black English. Still it is possible that some Jewish storekeeper in the South said kol ba seder and this was picked up by Black customers-We’ll never really know for sure.

So why are there so many Yiddish terms in Eng? I suspect that unlike naches many Yiddish words get absorbed into English, not because they introduce a new concept in English but because they’re fun to say.  After all, the  derogatory words for people such as , “schlemiel”, “schmo”, “schmuck”, “nudnik” and “meshugenne” roll off the tongue with glee.

 

While it is easy to spot many Yiddishisms from their initial sound  -sh,  in some cases, the Yiddish connection isn’t so obvious and s/t Yiddish isn’t the source Take mishmash – it sounds Yiddish but the OED traces the word mishmash back to the Danish misk-mask and shows the word entering the English language in 1452.  It was, however, early 20th century New York Jews who popularized this vivid word possibly because they found the double -sh sound particularly appealing.  Another word commonly thought to come from Yiddish is “finagle,” maybe because it rhymes with bagel. It actually comes from an archaic English word “fainaigue” which means to cheat.

 

Israel Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto published in 1892 is the champion tome in the OED for  Yiddish words that have filtered into our language. Here is a partial list of some of the words whose first citation  derives from this work : “chutzpah ”  “koppel” (skullcap), “kreplach”  “Litvak”  “lokshen” “meshummad” (apostate), the interjections “nu” and “oy,”  “potch” “rebbitzin” , “schnorrer” , “sheitel” “shicker” , “shidduch”, “shiksa” , “schlemiel” , “tzimmes” and  “Yiddishkeit”

 

Some  literary lights are highlighted by having the first  OED citation for words thought to come from Yiddish. As mentioned earlier Dickens receives the first citation for “kibosh” from his work Sketches by Boz :  And as mentioned before we’re not sure of the word’s origin.

 

There is, however, no doubt to the Yiddish pedigree of the duo of “schlep” and “dreck” which are first cited in James Joyce’s Ulysses  in 1922: “She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags her load” and  “Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck. ”

Not surprisingly many Jewish authors are honoured by receiving the first citation of a word borrowed from Yiddish.  Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s  Complaint gives us two naughty words, “shtup”  and “schlong.” Not to be undone,  Saul Bellow’s Herzog provides us with three first citations:   “Heimisch” “kvetch  and “schmegeggy”  My late cousin Mordecai  Richler’s novel Cocksure is the first cited work for the word “schmaltz” “and receives the second recorded citation  for “schmutz”

 

A fairly recent word puzzle in the NYT shows how prevalent     Jewish related terms are in English. I wouldn’t be  surprisethewd if some of you occasionally do the word game Spelling Bee found daily in the NYT. Here are some of the Jewish related words that appear regularly. Hora , tallit, cabala, torah ( it can be noncapitalized when it means instruction) latke, gelt, golem and yenta  and it allows 2 spellings (y-e-n-t-e and y-e-n-t-a) chutzpah  putz, and chuppah with the last 3 appearing in the March 18^th puzzle. I’ve never seen the word kvetch appear because of the letter combinations but I’m sure it would be an allowed word. You will notice here that I haven’t included any of the many words that contain an S because spelling bee almost never allows word with an S because of how easy it allows pluralized words. There is definitely a preference for Jewish related words in this puzzle because many other words aren’t accepted that are found in most dictionaries such as telly for tv, nappy,  the British term for a diaper, kitting a British term for supplying and the Arabic terms wadi that refers to a dry riverbed, ravine or valley found in deserts and muezzin, the person who calls Muslim to prayer. By secr

 

The English language is in a constant state of flux and many words over time acquire new meanings. Recently, my daughter sent me a NYT article that showed that the term “goyslop” had become popularized among adolescents to refer to low quality food.  Before reading the article she had heard my grandson Judah use the expression. The NYT article gives an example of its usage: “If your friend goes to McDonalds and gets two burgers and a shake, that’s so goyslop.” I did some research on the term’s use by teenagers and found that it can also refer to unoriginal or overly commercial TV shows or movies. What is also remarkable is the fact that this term was adapted by right-wing anti-Semites who see the world as being controlled by secretive Jewish cabals and that the very existence of “goy” is proof of their supremacist plot  to poison the minds of Gentiles. In fact, there exists a neo-Nazi group called the Goyim Defense League and a fringe crowfunding platform called GoyFundMe. Very few teenagers who use the term “goyslop” are aware of the term’s anti-Semitic origin.

 

Since 2000 starting with the letter M, the OED started a new edition and added many new words and it is astonishing how many of them are words familiar to English speakers with a passing knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. Here are the new M Jewish words: “maariv” “macher” , “ “Megillah” “melamed”   “meshuggener” “mezuza “mieskeit” “mincha” “mishpocha” “Mizrachi”  and  “mohel.”  The OED  also  updating  definitions of  certain  words already catalogued as is the  case with the word “mamzer.”  The old definition merely defines  it as “a bastard,” whereas the revised entry elucidates that it is “a person conceived in a forbidden sexual union, especially as defined by rabbinical tradition.”
 

In any case, don’t you find it fitting that a language like Yiddish that wantonly  “sleeps around” the way that English does, should have “mamzer” in its midst?

 

Thank You for listening.

 

 

 

 

Reflections on Mother’s Day

                            By

                  Howard Richler

 

Mother’s Day arose in the early part of the 20^th century thanks to the efforts of  American Anna Jarvis. Following her mother’s 1905 death, she conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honouring the sacrifices mothers made for their children. After gaining financial backing from a Philadelphia department store owner named John Wanamaker in May 1908, she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia. That same day also saw many people attend a Mother’s Day event at one of Wanamaker’s retail stores in Philadelphia. Canada quickly picked up this habit of our southern neighbour and the inaugural Mother’s Day was celebrated in Canada in 1909.

Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvis, although never married or bearing a child, resolved to see her holiday added to the  calendar roster. An early feminist, she argued that American holidays were biased toward male achievements, she started a letter writing campaign to newspapers and politicians urging the adoption of a special day honouring motherhood. By 1912 many states, towns and churches had adopted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday, and Jarvis had established the Mother’s Day International Association to help promote her cause. Her persistence was rewarded in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Jarvis had originally conceived of Mother’s Day as a day of personal celebration between mothers and families. Her version of the day involved wearing a white carnation as a badge and visiting one’s mother or attending church services. But once Mother’s Day became a national holiday, it was not long beforemany mercantile concerns capitalized on its popularity.

In fact, by 1920 Jarvis became so disgusted by the crass commercialization of the holiday that she urged people to stop buying Mother’s Day paraphernalia. She also launched several lawsuits against groups that had used the name “Mother’s Day,” eventually spending most of her personal wealth in legal fees. By the time of her death in 1948 Jarvis had disowned the holiday altogether, and even actively lobbied the government to see it removed from the American calendar.

Celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held festivals in honour of the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele, but the clearest modern precedent for Mother’s Day is the early Christian festival known as “Mothering Sunday.” Once a major tradition in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, this celebration fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent and was originally seen as a time when believers would return to their local “mother church” for a special service. Over time the Mothering Sunday tradition shifted into a more secular holiday, and children would present their mothers with flowers and other tokens of appreciation. This custom eventually faded in popularity before merging with the American Mother’s Day in the 1930s and 1940s. Due to its religious connections, Mother's Day in the United Kingdom still falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent which this year was celebrated on March 6^th.

At times, Mother’s Day has also been a date for launching political or feminist causes. In 1968 Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King, used Mother’s Day to host a march in support of underprivileged women and children. In the 1970s women’s groups also used the holiday as a time to highlight the need for equal rights and access to childcare.

Perspicacious readers may have noticed that most languages seem to have a word for mother that is either “mama” or has a nasal sound similar to mama, such as  “nana.” Observe, Arabic ahm, Chechen, nana, Greek, mana and Quechua mama. The reason for this was discerned by pioneering Russian-American linguist Roman Jakobson. The easiest vowel sound for babies to utter is ah because  it can be made without doing anything with the  tongue or lips.   And when the baby closes her lips as is done in nursing this transforms the ah sounds into mahs

Of course the baby isn’t really speaking but is sounds like speaking to adults and as if the baby is addressing someone who most likely is the mother. Naturally, mom takes “mama” as meaning her, and when speaking to her baby refers to herself as “mama.”

As Mother’s Day is celebrated in over forty and in speaking to her child refers to herself as “mama.” countries, let me wish a joyous day to all mothers, wherever they dwell.

Howard’s latest book isWordplay: Arranged and Deranged Wit.

 

 

 

Political Correctness in Word Games

 

When does word sensitivity become word oversensitivity?

                                       by

                               Howard Richler

“Thou will O wall, O sweet and lovely wall

Show me the chink to blink through with mine eyne.” (Midsummer’s Night Dream)

“A city swallowed up by a wide chinke and  opening of the earth.” (Philemon Holland’s  Pliny’s History of the  World, 1601)

 

My titled question has become a pressing issue even in word games. For example, the New York Times features a daily puzzle called Spelling Bee and one day in September it featured this puzzle format:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In this puzzle you have to thinks of words of four letters or more that contain the center letter which in this case was N. Letters can appear more than once and  therefore the word “hiking” is acceptable as well as the word “chunk.” The problematic issue occurred because the word “chink” (that has meant a fissure or rift) for over 700 years was not accepted because it is also a racial slur.

I was curious what people felt about the word’s exclusion and posted this question on Facebook and not surprisingly opinions varied dramatically. Many people felt that the word is virulently racist and even though it also has another innocuos, that it was proper for the puzzle’s creator to have it excluded. On the other hand, many people felt that is was wrong not to include a genuine word and pointed out that it there are several words that could offend people such as “faggot” (it has a sense as a bundle of sticks), “frog” (a derogatory word for someone French), “spade” (a derogatory word for Blacks) and “cracker” (a racist epithet aimed at poor rural Whites. Should all these words be nixed? What about the word “oreo”? It often appears as the answer in crossword puzzles but it is also a term used mockingly to refer to black people who have adopted white middle class values. Should “oreo” therefore be expunged, notwithstanding that this cookie is beloved to many people?

A Chinese-American stated that he had been slandeed by the epithet in the past and found it highly offensive but someone else countered that when it is clearly being used in its original sense that no offense should be taken.

Another person averred that by pretending that a word that goes back to the Middle Ages doesn’t exist amounts to pandering to racists and granting them power they don’t deserve to wield.

This is not the first time that what is sometimes called politically-correct language has caused a furor in word games. For in the inaugural 2019  New York Times crossword puzzle of Jan 1st, the clue for 2 Down “Pitch to the head” ( 6 letters) elicited the answer “beaner.”   The word “beaner,” albeit more commonly called “beanball” refers to a pitch where the intention of the pitcher it to hit the head (known colloquially as “bean”) of the hitter.  However, the term “beaner” is used  more often as a derogatory term for Mexicans or those of Mexican descent (supposedly because of their propensity for eating beans), and as a result crossword  puzzle editor Will Shortz received many  complaints that he had allowed a racist term to appear.  As a result of the kerfuffle, Shortz quickly issued this apology on the newspaper’s website:   “I’m very sorry for the distraction about BEANER (2D) in today’s fine puzzle by Gary Cee.” He added that neither he nor digital puzzle editor Joel Fagliano had ever heard the slur before. Shortz lives in New York and I believe that the slur is used more often in the southwest of the USA near the Mexican border.

Let me be clear. I am in favour of being sensitive when we speak.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago that words like “cretin” and even “moron” were used in polite society without compunction.  Given a choice I’d rather be oversensitive than not sensitive enough.  Increasingly, “ethnic” verbs such as “to welsh” (to avoid payment); “to gyp”(to cheat) and “to jew” (to bargain) are also avoided and rightfully so. And in the aforementioned word “chink” I am aware that the word is probably used around 99% in its pejorative sense as opposed to its meaning as a fissure but I’d like to believe that people who are playing this word game are aware that it also has the latter sense.

And where does it end? I would never use the word niggardly even though it means miserly and bears no etymological connection to the N-word. There are several other synonyms I could employ. However, if I disagree vehemently with someone’s opinion, should I avoid stating that I find their argument  “fatuous,”  if they happen to be even moderately overweight?

The mind boggles.

 

 

 

 

THE WORDS OF THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS

 T

                              Why mama and papa?

                                              by

                                      Howard Richler

Around the globe, May and June represents the most common months that honour mothers and fathers respectively. Surprisingly, the near universality of recognition for parents is almost matched by the similarity that many languages have for these two words.

In the 1950s, the American anthropologist George Murdoch studied the words for mother and father on 470 languages scattered throughout the planet. His analysis showed that the word for mother contained a syllable similar to ma in 52% of cases whereas the word for father contained this syllable in only 15% of his languages. Conversely, the word for father has a syllable akin to pa or ta in 55% of his language sample, while these syllables occurred in the word for mother in only 7% of cases.

What accounts for these staggering proclivities?

One theory proposed is called the “Proto-World Hypothesis” which posits that the similarity of words in various languages for mother and father  can be explained by these words being present in the ancestral language of mankind  and that these words have simply survived on hundreds of languages in a similar form and with the exact same meaning.

But before, we examine the veracity of this theory, let’s look at some of parental words in various languages. Since Mother’s Day celebrations usually precede ones for Father’s Day and we have the entrenched expression “ladies first,” we will start with mother words. Most languages seem to have a word for mother that is either “mama” or has a nasal sound similar to mama, such as “nana.” Observe, Arabic ahm, Basque ama, Dutch, moeder, Greek, mana and Welsh, mam to name but a few.

On the paternal side of the equation we have Albanian, Mandarin & Turkish baba, Greek babbas, Hindi & Russian, papa, Italian, padre, Welsh, tad  and Xhosa tata.

Although what I previously referred to as the Proto-World Hypothesis sounds logical, it is wrong and doesn’t accord with scientific evidence which was first elucidated by pioneering linguist Roman Jakobson in 1959 in his article Why “mama” and papa”?  Jakobson explained that babies everywhere acquire language in a very orderly fashion. At first the vocalizations of a baby are done by crying or shrieking. After this, the infant moves to a cooing stage characterized by those distinct baby noises. In this period the young child is not making any recognizable speech sounds and is still in the pre-speak period. But it is the next phase – the babbling stage that something significant occurs. Here we begin to hear recognizable speech sounds in the form of vowels and consonants. The easiest vowel sound for babies to utter is ah because it can be made without doing anything or with the tongue lips.  And when the baby closes her lips as is done in transforms the ah sounds into mahs

             Very often these speech sound are repeated and the mah sound turns into  mahmah. Of course the baby isn’t really speaking, it is babbling, but is sounds like speaking to adults and as if the baby is addressing someone who most likely is the mother. Naturally, mom takes mama as meaning her, and when speaking to her baby refers to herself as mama.

               As anyone learning English as a second language knows, certain consonants are very difficult to learn such as the th sound in the beginning of words such as the and at the end of words like south, Even a three- year old child whose first language is English might have a problem with this sound and their think might emerge as fink. On the other hand, some consonants are quite easy to produce. These are the sounds that are made entirely with the lips such as m, p, or b. These are easier because they require no tongue work, all that is required for their production is placing the two lips together to release them. The m sound is the easiest and this explains why mama invariably precedes papa.

Papa is virtually ubiquitous for a similar reason. After a baby begins making the m sound with her lips, she is likely to make a sound that that involves slightly more than just the putting of her lips together which involves not only the putting the lips together, holding them in that position for a second or two and then blowing out a puff of air. This invariably produces a p or a b sound. Another possibility involves the a slightly more complicated procedure in which the baby plays  with their mouth a little further back from the lips and this elicits  a  t or d sound. The order in which babies acquire these sounds explains why the second- in-command caretaker to mama is usually called papa, baba, tata, or dada.

A happy mother’s day and father’s day to all  – even if your first languages features  words for parental figures that  diverge from this pattern.

 

 

 

Richler’s latest book is Wordplay:Arranged and Deranged Wit

 

 

 

Valentines-Falling in Love

 

                     The rise and fall of love

 

                                         by

 

                                 Howard Richler

 

                                 Wise men say

                                 only fools rush in

                                 but I can’t help

                                 falling in love with you

(Lyrics from Can’t Help Falling in Love written by Weiss, Peretti and Creatore)

 

 

Falling in Love, Falling in Love Again, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, When I Fall in Love, ‘Til I Fell in Love with You,…. The song titles featuring  the act of ‘falling in love” are seemingly endless. But hold on a second, lovers. Isn’t  “falling” a bad thing to do?”

 

My friend David posed  this dilemma to me   recently and  he inquired whence came  the expression “falling in love.”

 

So I checked the OED to see if it could provide an  adequate lexicographic answer to David’s query.  The phrase “falling  in love” is first cited in 1423 .  At first, though,  one didn’t merely  tumble “in love” but rather into “love’s dance.”  The citation comes from James 1-The King’s Quire and states, “So fare I falling into love’s dance.” It took  at least one hundred more years for the phrase to be shortened to “”falling in love.” This phrase has endured ever since as the quintessential  expression  of the dizzy loss of control of the lovestruck.

 

The OED has many definitions of the word “fall”, but two in particular are instructive of the sense implied in “falling in love.”  Fall(noun) is defined as “a succumbing to temptation, a lapse into sin or folly. It is first used in this sense in 1225.  Fall (verb) is defined as “to yield to temptation, to sin.”

 

By the way, the  concept of a fall into love is hardly restricted to English. In French  and many other languages  love causes a fall  and in the case of Icelandic it captures you.

 

Legend has it that  the romance associated with Valentine’s  Day  descends  from a custom in ancient Rome. On the eve of the Feast of Lupercalia,  which began on February 15^th,  the names of maidens were written on pieces of paper and placed in  a jar. These slips were then plucked by  young men who would partner with their selection for the duration of the festival.  Valentine’s Day owes its name to Saint Valentine who was beheaded  in the  second century A.D for marrying couples counter to the orders of Emperor Claudius 11.

 

Etymologically speaking  when a young lover is imbued with romance, the debt isn’t to love, but to Rome. The word “romance” comes from the Old French term Romans, a derivation of Romanus, “Roman.” The term was used to refer to the local dialects of Latin(which  later became the Romance languages) and was used to differentiate them from official Latin. The practice arose in France of writing  entertaining stories in the more popular spoken language and the term romans was used to refer to these adventurous tales.  It was in this sense that the word was borrowed into Middle  English. Because  many of these stories in  both English and French dealt with courtly love, ”romance” came to mean simply a “love story” and eventually developed the sense of a ‘love affair.”

 

Seeing that William Shakespeare  is the greatest word progenitor in the history of the English language, it is not surprising that several love words are associated with the Bard.  Shakespeare seems to have coined the term  “love affair” in Three Gentlemen of Verona in 1591 where Valentine  says “I part with thee, confer at large of all that may concern thy love affairs.”  There is an obscure reference  to “love letters” in the OED in 1240 but Shakespeare  popularized the term in Merry Wives of Windsor when Mrs. Page asks “I ‘scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of  my beauty, and  am I now a subject for them?”

 

Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe is credited with the first usage of “love at first sight” In Hero and Leander in 1593: “ Where both deliberate the love is slight; who ever loved,  that loved not at  first sight?”

 

The 16^th and 17^th centuries featured some  language of love that has vanished from our lexicon. The word muskin  was a term of endearment for a woman,  to halch was to clasp in ones arms, and  an amoret was a term that could refer to a sweetheart, a love sonnet or a love glance .The 17^th century was not noted as an age of gender neutralization as seen in the term mistress-piece which denoted a “masterpiece of female beauty.” A synonym for kiss was the term smick as is noted in the Bagford Ballad of 1685:  You smack, you smick, you wash, you lick, you smirk, you swear, you grin.”

 

And whence comes the word “kiss?”  “Kiss” is  a widespread Germanic  word, represented by the German  küssen, Dutch kussen, Swedish kyssa, and Danish kysse. It probably goes back to some prehistoric syllable that imitated the sound or action of kissing. There is not sufficient linguistic evidence to state whether our ancient Indo-European ancestors expressed affection to each other through the action of kissing.

 

Happy, Valentine’s Day, everybody.  Enjoy the dance.

 

Valentines-Kiss

 

            A kiss is not always just a kiss

 

                               by

             

                             Howard Richler

 

 

            Kissing and bussing differ both in this

We busse our wantons, but our wives we kisse.

(Robert Herrick in his 1648 collection of poetry Hesperides)

 

 

Lest you be misguided into thinking from the above ditty that it was 17^th century Englishmen who established the pedigree of kisses, be informed that the ancient Romans had formulated a hierarchy millennia before.

 

At the less lascivious end of the spectrum we find the osculum, (literally, little mouth) which rererred to an affectionate peck on the cheek.  Romantic kissing, however, fell into two categories. The basium was the direct lip-to-lip kiss between lovers and this Latin word is the source of the cognate words in most European languages –  bacio, (Italian); buss, (English); beso, (Spanish) and baiser, (French). The basium was the discussable[User1]  kiss [User2] and the one memorialized in the polite poetry of the time. The other kiss, the suavium, although often literally translated as "little kiss," was really the more passionate labio-lingual kiss that the French inherited from the Romans and that we, therefore, call the French kiss. It was always a prelude and an invitation to further interaction among intimates.

 

The word “kiss” dates from around the year 1000 and comes from the Old English cyssan which does not appear to have cognates in any other language.  By the time of Chaucer, one could also “ba” as seen  in Canterbury Tales (1386),  “Come ner, my spouse; let me ba thy cheke.”  Both “smack” and “buss” are first recorded in 1570, “smick” in 1572 and the Latinate duo of “suaviate” and “osculate” surface in 1643 and 1656 respectively.

 

“Smooch” as a noun and as a verb is only recorded in the 20^th century; however, in 1611 in his French/English Dictionary, Randle Cotgrave defines a baiseur as “a kisser, smoutcher, smacker.”

 

In The Lover’s Tongue, Mark Morton informs us that hugging often accompanies kissing, “but hugging was not possible until the mid-16^th century, when hug emerged in the English language. Prior to that lovers could only clip, halse {or halch}, lap or embrace.”  The oldest of these “hug” verbs is “clip” and one was able to “clip” at least fifty years before “kiss” entered the language. The word also surfaces in Canterbury Tales: “He kisseth hire and clyipeth hire ful ofte.” Morton could have included “cuddling” as one of the pre-hugging possibilities, as the verb “cuddle” arrives in the language around 1520. The OED describes “cuddle” as “a dialectical or nursery word of uncertain derivation.” Only towards the end of the 17^th century could the English “caress,” “snuggle” and “fondle”; the last two of these being adaptations of the adjectives “snug” and “fond.”

 

 Given that the ineffable f-word [User3] has been taboo for most of its 500-year history, you might wonder how gentrified folk referred to this activity without resorting to protracted euphemistic phraseology such as “go to bed with.”   Surprisingly, the word “conversation” referred to sexual activity in the early part of the 16^th century and only took on the sense of “chatting” towards the end of the century. At this juncture, one had to specify “conjugal conversation” if  either hanky or panky  [User4] was occurring.  Conversely, “intercourse” originally referred to communication and commerce in the 15^th century and is only used to mean sexual activity from 1798.

 

There were, however, many terms that preceded the f-word. The oldest of these are “sard”[User5]  and “wifthing” recorded around the year 1000. “Wifthing” is actually a compound of “wife” and “thing” but don’t be deluded into thinking that it is only sanctioning marital relations as the sense at the time of “wife” was merely “woman.”  The 14^th century sees two new additional terms to express full carnal embrace – “jape” in 1362 and “swive.” oft employed in Canterbury Tales two decades later. For example, in The Reeve’s Tale, a student crows, “As I have thries {thrice} in this shorte nyght swyved the milleres doghter bolt upright.” The verb “occupy” was also used  to imply sexual activity in the late 15^th century and the term was only purged of any carnal sense towards the end of the 19^th century.

 

One manner that the English language employs to euphemize bawdy terms is to Latinize them.  Hence the early 14^th century is graced by the term “fornication” which is derived from the noun fornix, “arch, vaulted chamber” because Roman brothels were often established in vaults. Surprisingly, it took until the middle of the 16^th century for the verb “fornicate” to develop from the noun “fornication.” “Copulation” is first recorded toward the end of the 15^th century and the verb “copulate” only follows more than a century later.

 

Despite a long and varied  history of etymological development, may all lovers be well occupied in deep, romantic conversation this Valentine’s Day.

 

---

 [User1] Not sure what you mean, here.

 [User2] Suggest « the kiss that could be spoken »

 [User3] Sudden change in topic – create a link.

 [User4] Which « former sense??? »

 [User5] You don’t explain this word.

BLACK ENGLISH

 

                                   Celebrating Black English

                                                         by

                                               Howard Richler

Every February,  in the United States and Canada, we  celebrate Black History Month to honour the achievements of black men and women throughout history. As such, in this month's column, I reflect on the speech patterns of blacks.

 

Throughout America history, the language used by blacks has been regarded as second-rate by many observers. For example, H.L. Mencken in his opus The American Language wrote in the 1920s, “The Negro dialect, as we know it today, seems to have been formulated by the song-writers for the minstrel shows; it did not appear in literature until the time of the Civil War…it was a vague and artificial lingo which had little relation to the actual speech of Southern blacks.” In the 1980s, pop grammarian John Simon ordained that “the constructions of black English are the product not of a language with roots in tradition but of ignorance of how language works.”  More recently, political commentator Tucker Carlson said that Black English is “a language where nobody knows how to conjugate verbs.” These opinions  are consistent with what is often called the linguistic inferiority principle  which posits  that the speech patterns of a socially subordinate group will always be interpreted as improper when compared with the socially dominant group.

 

However, it is now recognized by linguists that Black English is not inferior but merely another of the multitudinous flavours of English available on our planet. In fact, Black English contains some useful refinements not available in standard English. In an article some years ago in the magazine Discover, linguist John B. Rickford outlined some of the versatility of Black English in the verb “to run.”

1)He runnin. (“He is running.”)

2)He be runnin. (“He is usually running.”)

3)He be steady runnin. (“He is usually running in an intensive, sustained manner.”)

4)He bin runnin. (“He has been running.”)

5)He BIN runnin. (“He has been running for a long time and still is.”)

 

Linguist John McWhorter in his book Talking Back Talking Black  explains that a construction such as “She be passin’ by”  contains “much more than an unconjugated verb” and that the insertion of “be” is “very specific; it means that something happens on a regular basis, rather than something going on right now.”

 

Mc Whorter points out that arguably Black English is more complex than standard English. For example, in Black English the word “up” plays a special role when paired with a location. So  in  the Black English sentence  “We was sittin’ up at Tony,” we know that Tony is a friend as the usage of “up” is  a marker of intimacy. just as adding ed to a verb is a marker of past action.  Still another nuance of Black English exposed by McWhorter  is the way the word done is used to mark counter-expectation: “Whether it’s used in a sentence about 1973 or last week, a sentence with done is always about something the speaker finds somewhat surprising, contrary to what is expected.”

         

Most linguists believe that Black English has its roots in the creole language developed as a result of contact between West Coast Africans and European traders. Robert McCrum and Robert MacNeil In The Story of English relate that  “The African element in the English spoken by slaves on the plantation-known as Plantation Creole-was sustained for some time… On each plantation, there would be some esteemed slaves who spoke African languages.”

 

Not surprisingly, an African heritage resonates through Black English speech patterns. For example, many West African languages don't possess the problematic English “th” sound. The lack of this consonantal combo may thus lead to “them” being rendered as “dem” and “desk” as “des.”

 

It was once felt that as more blacks entered the mainstream that the dialect would greatly fade. According to linguists, however, the current generation of inner-city youth employs the black vernacular more than ever. The persistence of the dialect reflects an attitude that prizes cultural distinction. Black English endures because it fulfils a cultural need by enhancing black solidarity. On the other hand, the inability of a black person to speak and write in standard English can seriously impede his or her social and economic prospects.

 

School teachers used to devote themselves to correcting Black English usage under the impression that they were thus imparting proper grammar to the black student. Things are improving somewhat but have a long way to go. The Oxford Companion to the English Language states that “because Black English is devalued…many teachers with excellent intentions continue to denigrate it in favour of standard English. Few such educators…have learned about the history and nature of Afro-American English, and fail to appreciate its diversity and logical integrity as a long-established variety of the language.”

 

I believe that Black English should not be taught as a distinct language but rather should be used as a tool to improve the student's mastery of standard English.

 

Richler’s latest book is Wordplay: Arranged and Deranged Wit