Silent Schwa

Just a quick update:

I’m scheduled to defend my thesis–”Explaining Fukushima to Children: Cross-Cultural Study of Bodily Functions as Metaphor in Japanese”–next week.  I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

Just a quick bit of lexicon this morning:

Exonym [Greek - ἔξω, éxō, "out" + ὄνομα, ónoma, "name"]

An exonym is a name referring to an ethnic group (ethnonym), language (glossonym), place (toponym), or person that is used by people outside said group.  The United Nations defines exonym as the name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language is spoken, and differing in its form from the name used in an official or well-established language of that area where the geographical feature is located.

Endonym [Greek - ἔνδον, éndon, "within" + ὄνομα, ónoma, "name"]

An endonym is a name referring to an ethnic group (ethnonym), language (glossonym), place (toponym), or person that is used by people inside of said group.  The United Nations defines endonym as the name of a geographical feature in an official or well-established language occurring in that area where the feature is located.

Here are some examples of exonyms with their endonymic counterparts in English and their native languages:

China/Zhōngguó (中国), Dutch/Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts], Greece/Hellas (Ελλάς), Germany/Deutschland, Gypsy/Romani, Moscow/Moskva (Москва), Japan/Nihon/Nippon (日本).

This phenomenon is not, unique to English:

Korea is referred to differently, depending on which Korea is doing the talking.  North Korea refers to “Korea” as Chosŏn (조선), but South Korea refers to it as Hanguk (한국) or Namhan (남한, 南韓 – “South Han”).  The official Korean name for the Republic of Korea is “Dae Han Minguk” (대한민국 – “The Republic of Korea”).  (There are other variations, but you get the picture.)

America is called beikoku (米国) in Japanese and the English language is called eigo (英語).  In China, America is called měiguó (美国) and the English language is yīngyǔ (英语).

Many exonyms were born as a result of the namer not understanding the namee’s language.  In Russian and other languages, for example, the word for “Germans” is Немцы (Nemtsy), which is derived from the word немой which means “mute.”  The accepted folk etymology is that the German language appeared so unintelligible to the Slavs that they dubbed them “mutes.”

In addition to Russian, this word is also used in the Arabic, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, and Ukranian languages.  (Interestingly, a theory regarding the word “Slavic” suggests that it comes from slovo, meaning “word.”  This, again, differentiates between those with words and those without.)

Sioux is likely a shortened form of Nadouessioux, a proto-Algonquian word meaning “foreign-speaking.”  Berber comes from a Greek representation of gibberish (“bar-bar-bar”).  The list goes on and on.

Do you know any exonym/endonym combinations?  Please leave a comment and share them with us.

You’ve probably heard of synonyms (words that share the same meaning) and antonyms (words that mean the opposite of each other), but have you heard of contranyms?

A contranym is a word that has seemingly contradictory meanings.  Because of their two-faced nature, they are also sometimes referred to as “Janus words” after the two-faced Roman god.  In a nutshell¹, we’re talking about a word that is its own antonym.  Contranyms do not necessarily need to be spelled the same way; those that sound alike, but are spelled differently, are called homophonic contranyms.

Some examples in English are:

• ¹shell (hard outer covering/remove hard outer covering)
• Peanuts come in shells.
• These peanuts have been shelled (i.e., the shells have been removed).
• oral/aural² (speech/hearing)
• I have an oral (speaking) exam today.
• I have an aural (hearing) exam today.
• fast (speedy/not moving)
• This car is fast.
• Stand fast!
• oversight (to miss/scrutiny)
• That was an oversight on my part.
• This program is under strict Congressional oversight.
• strike (to hit/to miss)
• Strike one!
• He strikes the ball with the bat.

Another word that, through misuse, has become somewhat of a contranym is literal.  Some have (confusingly) come use the word to mean “figuratively” (e.g. “I literally died laughing”).  However, the original meaning also remains (e.g. “I am literally typing this on a MacBook Pro”).  Confusion ensues.  To mitigate this, I’ll sometimes write “literal-literal” and “figurative-literal” in blog posts.

While working on a translation today, I happened upon a contranym that appears to cross over linguistic lines:  yama.

Яма (yama): pit (Russian)

山 (yama): mountain (Japanese)

(Of course, because they are spelled differently, they are technically homophonic contranyms, but you already knew that.)

Do you know of any bilingual contranyms?  Please share them in the comments section and I’ll post them in a future article!

²Depending upon your regional dialect, you may pronounce these words differently.

My hometown paper, the Daily Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa, did me the honor of asking me to write an Op-Ed piece on why I think we should learn other languages. It’s a bit long, but they decided to run the full version with very few, minor cuts.

I hope you enjoy it! As always, I welcome any feedback you might have.

Why You Should Know More than One Language

Michael

Hoplophobia /hplfobi/ – From the Greek hoplon (weapon) and phobia (fear).  A fear of firearms or of armed citizens.  Firearms instructor and writer Colonel Jeff Cooper defined it as a “mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons.”

Obiter dictum /obdr dkt()m/ – [< classical Latin obiter dictum something said by the way < obiter OBITER adv. + dictum DICTUM n.]

An incidental statement or remark; something said by the way. Freq. (Law): an opinion expressed by a judge in discussing a point of law or in giving a judgment, which is not essential to the decision, and which therefore lacks binding authority.

Ever wondered how the ABC’s became the ABC’s?  Was English always written like it is today?  The answer is a resounding “Nope!”  The Alphabet of today has gone through a lot of changes over the centuries.  To catalog all of those changes would take a lot more time than I have available at the moment, so in this installation, I’ll just show you a couple of interesting things about Runes and their relationship to our current writing system.

The Runic alphabet is sometimes called “fuþorc” [futhorc] after the first 6 letters, much like our “ABC’s” comes from the first 3 letters and “Alphabet” comes from “Alpha Beta” from the Greek writing system.  Futhorc was used by the Anglo-Saxons to write Old English and other languages.  Can you see any similarities between the Runes and modern English letters?

Here’s a brief glimpse into the history of a couple of letters that are no longer used in modern English.

Pesematology – /pɛsəmətɒlədʒi/ – the science of falling

Believe it or not, there is actually a field of science called “feline pesematology,” which studies falling cats.

Emo Philips - master of paraprosdokian

Paraprosdokian - (from Greek: “para” meaning “beyond” and “prosdokian” meaning “expectation”) a figure of speech, often utilized in humor, in which a sentence or phrase ends in an unexpected in a way, causing one to reinterpret the first part.  I’m quite fond of using these, myself.

Here are some well-known examples:

• “Take my wife, please.” — Henny Youngman
• “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx
• “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.” — Henry J. Tillman
• “I like going to the park and watching the children run and jump around, because you see, they don’t know I’m using blanks.” — Emo Philips
• “I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time.’  So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. — Steven Wright
• “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.” — Mitch Hedberg
• “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.” — Will Rogers
• “If I am reading this graph correctly, I would be very surprised.” — Stephen Colbert
• “If I could say a few words, I would be a better public speaker.” — Homer Simpson
• “It’s too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.” — Jack Handey

Well… on American English, anyway.

Speciality?  Aluminium?  Can I get a Amen (or at least a cheeseburger)?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1284254/Britain-declares-war-words-snuck-skedule-.html