learning English – saywhatblogger

Shh…Did you hear that?

Untitled design (68) Say what?

Did I hear you right? Many of the words and expressions which we hear may sound strange to us and we wonder “where did that expression come from?” Some of these quirky treasures are actually bastardized forms of another word or phrase that got distorted by being heard wrong and the substitution is an expression which has survived.

Telephone and eggcorn

An eggcorn, the term coined in 2003, is a name for a word or expression which people have created by changing something that they misheard. For example, “eardropping” has, in some cases, mistakenly been substituted for “eavesdropping”.

Now this is a simple substitution. But there are more deliberate and involved linguistic creations which came about for simplicity’s sake.

Why does this happen? Well let’s give the illustration of the game “telephone”. Let’s say you are in middle school. Let’s say you are at a party or better yet in a drama class. It is quite likely that you will end up playing “telephone”. Now for those of you who are not familiar with this game, I will explain. It’s not going on social media with your phone. It is not pretending to use an antique, dinosaur communication device of the 1980s and prior…(“how does this thing work??”) It is sitting in a circle with others, as one person whispers a phrase or sentence into the ear of the person next to them. This person then whispers what they hear to their neighbor and so on until the phrase has passed entirely around the circle. The last person says what they heard aloud. And of course 90% of the time it is completely garbled. However! It isn’t just gibberish which they say. No! Everyone wants to be right so they tweak the message with just enough sense to make it sound plausible. So, for example, “I like lots of ice cream.” becomes, “I eat chocolate ice cream.” And so the progression happens.

Green Grow

As these substitutions have occurred many times in our linguistic past, we have created new and colorful English expressions. One of my favorite stories of word substitutions is the origin of the word, gringo. A gringo is a Mexican slang word for a man from north of the Mexican border. The story goes that the homesick yankees, or American soldiers, during the Mexican-American war of 1846-48, would sing a favorite song based on a Robert Burns poem. The lyrics were:

Green grow the rashes, O
Green grow the rashes, O
The sweetest hours that e’er I spend
Are spent among the lasses, O.

The Mexican men who heard them singing the song thought that “green grow” sounded like “gringo” and thus this term for Americans was invented. You can’t beat this story for color and “scope for the imagination” as Anne with an E would say.

Hocus-pocus!

Hocus-pocus is the word which has been used to signal the transformation of one thing into another through magic, or slight of hand. The best explanation for the invention of this catchy phrase appears to be the corruption of Latin “Hoc est corpus” meaning “this is my body”, the words spoken by the priest when the bread is said to change into the body of Christ during the Catholic Mass. Obviously the Post-Reformation nonbelievers thought that the transformation was pure trickery and thus it became the catchword of the world of magic tricks. Magicians and entertaining tricksters, in days gone by, said it when making things disappear or appear, as in rabbits out of a hat.

Transformed Taverns

According to Samuel Pepys, 17th century member of the British Parliament, the pub is the “heart of England.” Pub is short for public house. The Romans, who happened to be occupying Celtic England until about 410 A. D., began the custom of setting up shops along the Roman roads. A “taberna”, or shop, was the forerunner of the tavern or pub. Later, these establishments were actually set up by the English government to provide refreshment and lodging for travelers. In the Middle Ages, travelers on these now British roads would likely be on pilgrimage to a holy site and indeed some of the pubs or taverns had religious sounding names. The locals, however, had their own way with the formal sounding tavern names. God Encompasses Us over time turned into the popular tavern, Goat and Compasses. A favorite restaurant even in the U.S., The Pig and Whistle, is derived from the Norse name Piga Waes Hael, or “Hail to the Virgin”. (So the curiosity about that favorite childhood eatery with the goofy name, Pig and Whistle, has been personally satisfied in this knowledge.) Lastly, Bacchanals, the name being a reference to Bacchus, Greek god of wine, became Bag o’ Nails and La Infanta de Castilla, after the Spanish princess, morphed into The Elephant and Castle. The English locals, especially after a few cold ones, were very creative indeed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

http://www.thejournal.co.uk/culture/restaurants-bars/pubs-the-heart-england-4414305

Shipley, Joseph T., In Praise of English. Times Books, 1977

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pub

Prissy Grammar

Copy of Untitled Say what?

We’ve come a long way since the usage of “shall” and “will” (when do you use which?) and other cumbersome grammar albatrosses. But wait! The fear of speaking like a commoner still exists. By trying to sound proper, people can actually use the incorrect forms of pronouns. It’s like trying to “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” so to speak.

For example, how many times do you hear people say something like, “They’re taking Brad and I to the game.” Well c’mon, if Brad weren’t going, you wouldn’t say, “They’re taking I to the game.” So you see it doesn’t fit there. It’s not an object of the verb take. It makes no sense. But somehow it sounds proper. It’s almost offensive to use “me” in polite company these days.

“I” is not just overused when supplied as a “direct object” of a verb. It’s also wrongly used as an object of a preposition. As in, “She gave the book to Paige and I.” Well darn it, if she wasn’t giving it to Paige as well, you wouldn’t say, “She gave the book to I.” That would be very prissy indeed.

I say celebrate “me”. After all, there are “Celebrate Me” events. There are generations of people identified as the “Me Generation” – baby boomers, generation X, generation Y. We’re all guilty. Let’s embrace our me – ness and use this comfortable and apt little pronoun!

Now, at the risk of offending further, I will venture forth into the pronunciation of “often”. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems that sounding the [t] in the word, smacks of grammatical elitism. Unless you were raised to sound the [t] in “often”, you probably added that pronunciation to your vocabulary when you decided you needed to impress the right people (ouch). Both pronunciations are acceptable according to Merriam Webster. But if you’re trying to sound like you’re using the “queen’s English”, keep in mind that even Queen Elizabeth I pronounced “often” without the [t] sound. I am sure that the daring Virgin Queen would be pleased to know that the famous excerpt from her speech at Tilbury, “I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.”, is quoted often.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/correct-pronunciation-of-often

The Journey Begins

Say what?

A short journey into the history of English…

Hey, what was that you said?

Have you ever wondered, as an English speaker, why you say the words you do? Most people never give it a thought. The words they use are just taken for granted as useful tools for everyday communication. There’s no interest in where these words came from, right?

I say wrong. DNA testing for ancestors is a very hot topic today, and I’m willing to bet that people will not only want to know where they came from, but where their words came from as well. And so I begin this blog.

Influence on Language

If you speak Icelandic, Spanish, or Finnish you are generally using the same words which have been spoken for centuries. You’d say these languages are conservative. Especially if a country is isolated, there is less opportunity for new influences on the language from non native speakers.

But what about English? The roots of the English language are deep and wide and the results are a unique, linguistic flowering, largely due to the influence of invaders. Take a look at England. It’s hardly isolated. In fact, the British Isles have been a target for invaders for thousands of years. Every invader, and eventually settler, contributed to the evolution of the English language.

Anglo Saxon Influence

“But what does this have to do with me?” you may ask. Well, what if you were to say, “Let’s go to your house. I need to get something to eat.” You would be speaking an evolved version of pure Old English, the speech of the Anglo Saxons. Every word in those sentences is from them. Their words are the “meat and potatoes” words, the words that glue our language together. The Anglo Saxons were Germanic raiders that acted and looked a lot like their more famous cousins, the Vikings. They found the island with it’s doors wide open as early as 450 A.D. and walked right in.

Vikings

And speaking of the Vikings, after plundering the British Isles, they eventually settled down and shared their language, Old Norse. If you wanted to choose some words spoken by that tough bunch of dudes, you might say, “Tuesday and Thursday I want to ransack the loft for that skirt!” They showed up in earnest in “Angleland” about 800 A. D.

Norman French

After the second millennium rolled around, we had another batch of bad boys take over and bring their words with them. In 1066, William the Conqueror from Normandy battled Harold and the Anglo Saxon lords at the Battle of Hastings. After they dispatched Harold with an arrow through the eye, they set up their French government and eventually influenced the way their English subjects spoke. Now, remember you wanted to eat at your friend’s house before? Let’s suppose you’re still hungry but don’t want to go to your friend’s house after all. You’ve found out that all he’s got is three day old cheese sticks. You might say, “Let’s rendezvous at the restaurant. I’m famished!” Well, most of that is basically Frenchified Anglo Saxon, which soon after the Norman French takeover would have been dubbed – Middle English.

As English speakers, we have a rich treasure of words at our beck and call. Mmm… and where does that fun, little phrase come from? Stay tuned… there’s another English expression which bears looking into! We will explore more secrets of the English language in upcoming posts.

Mary Atwood, May 2018