Category: Languages

Silent E is an interesting phenomenon in English orthography. It’s a letter, usually at the end of a word, that we don’t pronounce–as in the word "pronounce." That ends in an S-sound, not an E-sound.

Thing is, silent E didn’t used to be silent.

Our English-speaking forebears used to pronounce those Es, which is how they got into the words in the first place. Then, over time, they started droppin’ ’em (like I "drop" my Gs). But the letter in the written form of the word stayed, or "stay-ed" as our forebears would have said.

You can hear a reflection of this in the fact that converts often start by saying "Blessed art thou among women" and pronouncing "blessed" as "blesst" instead of "bless-ed."

So it seems that we can do without all those Es.

But can we do without the letter E altogether and still communicate meaningfully? It is, after all, the single most commonly-used letter in the English alphabet. just look at the number of times I’ve had to use it in this post to say what I wanted to say. Surely nobody could go on for, say, fifty-thousand words of meaningful text without using the letter E.

Oh, no?

CHECK OUT THIS NOVEL THAT IS TOTALLY E-FREE.

Would you expect to find languages using a form of the verb "to go" to express intention? . . . or a form of the verb "to have" to express obligation?

Well, English does. In fact, you just read a sentence (the title of this post) where forms of those words appear in those senses.

They’re somewhat strange senses. Consider:

1. I am going to Rome.
2. I am going to visit Rome.
3. I am going to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "go" has its normal, literal sense of moving from one place to another. In the last sentence it clearly has a metaphorical meaning. You may be sitting in the chair where you plan to study when you say it and may not be physically going anywhere at all. The middle sentence is actually using the same metaphorical sense as the last one, but you may not have noticed it since the topic under discussion was a visit, which would involve moving from one place to another.

Now consider:

1. I have a book
2. I have a headache.
3. I have to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "have" is in its original, literal meaning of possessing a physical object. In the last sentence it has a clearly metaphorical meaning that speaks of an obligation (to study now) as if it were a physical object that could be possessed. The middle sentence also involves a metaphorical sense since headaches are not physical objects that can be possessed, though this is somewhat masked since "a headache" is more obviously a noun phrase than "to study now" is (though, in actuality, "to study now" is a noun phrase since it is based on the infinitive "to study" and infinitives are verbal nouns).

Pretty weird, huh? There’s no necessary connection between the verb and the metaphor that is built out of it. That’s not to say that there is no logic in basing the metaphors on these verbs, it’s just that there is no necessity that the words be used in these metaphorical ways. We could not, for example, substitute synonyms for these verbs and have the resulting metaphors sound normal at all:

1. I am travelling to study now. (When you’re sitting in the chair where you intend to study)
2. I possess to study now.

Nor could you do the reverse:

1. I intend to Rome.
2. I am obligated a book.

With no requirement for "go" and "have" to bear the metaphorical meanings that English ascribes to them, most langauges (at least most languages I’ve studied) do not do this. To express intent and obligation they either use special words (their equivalents of "intend," "obligated," "must," etc.) or they may put the verb in a special mood. In any event, they don’t do what English does.

Imagine my surprise when I found a language that does.

Continue reading “I’m Going To Have To Figure This Out”

Would you expect to find languages using a form of the verb "to go" to express intention? . . . or a form of the verb "to have" to express obligation?

Well, English does. In fact, you just read a sentence (the title of this post) where forms of those words appear in those senses.

They’re somewhat strange senses. Consider:

1. I am going to Rome.
2. I am going to visit Rome.
3. I am going to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "go" has its normal, literal sense of moving from one place to another. In the last sentence it clearly has a metaphorical meaning. You may be sitting in the chair where you plan to study when you say it and may not be physically going anywhere at all. The middle sentence is actually using the same metaphorical sense as the last one, but you may not have noticed it since the topic under discussion was a visit, which would involve moving from one place to another.

Now consider:

1. I have a book
2. I have a headache.
3. I have to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "have" is in its original, literal meaning of possessing a physical object. In the last sentence it has a clearly metaphorical meaning that speaks of an obligation (to study now) as if it were a physical object that could be possessed. The middle sentence also involves a metaphorical sense since headaches are not physical objects that can be possessed, though this is somewhat masked since "a headache" is more obviously a noun phrase than "to study now" is (though, in actuality, "to study now" is a noun phrase since it is based on the infinitive "to study" and infinitives are verbal nouns).

Pretty weird, huh? There’s no necessary connection between the verb and the metaphor that is built out of it. That’s not to say that there is no logic in basing the metaphors on these verbs, it’s just that there is no necessity that the words be used in these metaphorical ways. We could not, for example, substitute synonyms for these verbs and have the resulting metaphors sound normal at all:

1. I am travelling to study now. (When you’re sitting in the chair where you intend to study)
2. I possess to study now.

Nor could you do the reverse:

1. I intend to Rome.
2. I am obligated a book.

With no requirement for "go" and "have" to bear the metaphorical meanings that English ascribes to them, most langauges (at least most languages I’ve studied) do not do this. To express intent and obligation they either use special words (their equivalents of "intend," "obligated," "must," etc.) or they may put the verb in a special mood. In any event, they don’t do what English does.

Imagine my surprise when I found a language that does.

Continue reading “I'm Going To Have To Figure This Out”

To the left is a screen capture of my weblog stats. Today, I met a goal that I’d had for a while: I wanted my "Average (hits) per day" to be 888 or more.

Unfortunately, despite its many excellent qualities, Typepad (my blog host) has really dinky stats that are much inferior to what other providers have. They’ve promised to improve these, but haven’t yet.

One of the problems is that "Average per day" isn’t your recent average (what you typically get on a given day recently) but an average based on all the time that has elapsed since you started the blog on Typepad. This means that those early days, when nobody was linking to you and you were first starting to build traffic, will forever pull down your "Average per day."

Thus you can see that I’m really getting a lot more than 888 hits per day. Above, for example, it says that I got 2980 hits "Today." But therein lies another problem: As Typepad reckons it "Today" is not the past twenty-four hours, it’s the period beginning yesterday at midnight, which means that "Today" is always 24-48 hours long, depending on what time of day you check. As you approach midnight, "Today" really includes the hits of two days.

I took this screen shot early in the day (when traffic is slowest), so I guess I got about 2700-2800 hits yesterday (including everything, such as people clicking into comment boxes), though one can never be sure, given the way this software works.

But why am I happy that the average is now 888? Because’s that’s the numerical value of the name of Jesus in Greek. Here’s how that works: In Greek "Jesus" is iEsous, and

Iota = 10
Eta = 8
Sigma = 200
Omicron = 70
Upsilon = 400
Sigma = 200

TOTAL = 888

SEE THE GREEK LETTER-TO-NUMBER EQUIVALENCES.

The reason that the Greeks (like Latin-, Hebrew-, and Aramaic-speakers) had numerical values for letters is that they didn’t have separate number symbols, so the letters did double duty. That’s why VIII is 8 in Roman numerals. In Latin, only a few letters have numerical values (I, V, X, L, C, D, M), so letters like B or R mean nothing. Originally Greek only used some of its letters for numbers, but by Jesus’ day they used all of them. This reduced the number of letters you had to use to write a number, so in Greek VIII was just the letter eta.

If you look at the table of Greek letter-to-number equivalences, you’ll note that the system has three letters you may never have heard of: digamma, qoppa, and sampi. These are letters that dropped out of the Greek alphabet. Digamma sounded like a w, qoppa like a back-of-the-mouth q (harder and darker than the k sound, like qoph in Hebrew, qop in Aramaic, or qaaf in Arabic). Sampi sounded like an extended s or like a ks combination.

If these letters hadn’t dropped out then, since sampi was the last letter, Jesus would be "Alpha and Sampi" instead of "Alpha and Omega" (or, as he is in Arabic translations of the New Testament, "Alif u-Hamza").

Down yonder, a commenter writes:

I remember that while living in Germany with some other America

students, we were speaking English as some of us were going out to see

a movie. I asked, "Are you coming with?" and the Texans giggled saying

"Your German is showing." That’s because in German, the phrase is

"Kommst du mit?" and in English it is "Are you coming with us/me?"

(mit=with) No dangling prepositions I guess.

In response, I looked at them strangely and told them that, and

everyone I knew in Illinois, routinely said, "Are you coming with?"

which seemed to flabbergast the Texans.

The linguist among us pondered for a bit and eventually decided that

the reason I spoke differently was that the massive number of German

immigrants to the Midwest affected the way people spoke English.

I had an English teacher once insist that it was not proper to end

sentences with prepositions and went into this discussion of Latin,

prepositions in Latin, grammar, and how it was impossible for

prepositions to not have nouns after it. I then mentioned that in

German, prepositions routinely ended sentences. He then informed me

wrily that that was German, not English. I then responded that since

English was a Germanic language, it made more sense for it to follow

German than to use a strict definition of a Latin word that describes

Latin grammar for a non-Romantic language. He did not seem pleased.

I have no beef against ending sentences with a preposition. That commonly happens in English. But I have to admit (as a Texan) that sentences like "Are you coming with?" sound incomplete to me.

I first encountered sentences of this sort on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which often has Minnesota/Wisconsin influence because of where it was filmed.

When I first heard Pearl Forrester (Mary Jo Pehl), as she was about to enter a black hole, tell Mike Nelson: "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You’re coming with!", I thought it was a cute phrase deliberately exaggerated for commedic effect.

Maybe not.

Down yonder, a commenter writes:

I remember that while living in Germany with some other America
students, we were speaking English as some of us were going out to see
a movie. I asked, "Are you coming with?" and the Texans giggled saying
"Your German is showing." That’s because in German, the phrase is
"Kommst du mit?" and in English it is "Are you coming with us/me?"
(mit=with) No dangling prepositions I guess.

In response, I looked at them strangely and told them that, and
everyone I knew in Illinois, routinely said, "Are you coming with?"
which seemed to flabbergast the Texans.

The linguist among us pondered for a bit and eventually decided that
the reason I spoke differently was that the massive number of German
immigrants to the Midwest affected the way people spoke English.

I had an English teacher once insist that it was not proper to end
sentences with prepositions and went into this discussion of Latin,
prepositions in Latin, grammar, and how it was impossible for
prepositions to not have nouns after it. I then mentioned that in
German, prepositions routinely ended sentences. He then informed me
wrily that that was German, not English. I then responded that since
English was a Germanic language, it made more sense for it to follow
German than to use a strict definition of a Latin word that describes
Latin grammar for a non-Romantic language. He did not seem pleased.

I have no beef against ending sentences with a preposition. That commonly happens in English. But I have to admit (as a Texan) that sentences like "Are you coming with?" sound incomplete to me.

I first encountered sentences of this sort on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which often has Minnesota/Wisconsin influence because of where it was filmed.

When I first heard Pearl Forrester (Mary Jo Pehl), as she was about to enter a black hole, tell Mike Nelson: "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You’re coming with!", I thought it was a cute phrase deliberately exaggerated for commedic effect.

Maybe not.

A reader writes:

I read an article that stated learning a second language in middle life is really good for the mind.  I was thinking of trying either German (I work with a few from time to time) or Japanese (as I really like that place and their food).  Any idea which would be easier?  Also do you have a suggestion on something I could buy for my PC or listen to in the car that would help me learn more quickly?  I am not really interested in being able to read or write the language at this point.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

I think I can be of help. I’ve had some experience studying both languages, so I can give you some info that might help you figure out which would be easier for you.

The main advantage of studying German is that it belongs to the same language family as English (English is a Germanic language), which means lots of common vocabulary words. Often, you’ll feel like you’re just saying a familiar English word with a funny accent. German word order is also similar to English word order (at least compared to some languages).

The disadvantage to German is that it has way more inflection in it than English does. Inflection is when words change their forms to encode grammatical information. English is a very low-inflecting language (even Spanish has more inflection than English does). There are only a few suffixes in English that encode grammatical information (e.g., -s, -‘s, -ing, -ed).

German has way more than English does. In fact, the noun system in German has cases, like Latin and Greek do. This means that every noun in every sentence will be changing form depending on the function it is playing in the sentence (e.g., is it the subject, the object, a possessive). Cases make learning the noun system of a language more difficult since we don’t have cases in English (except for our pronouns, which do change form based on case).

Now for Japanese:

The disadvantage to learning Japanese is that it is not from the same language family as English. (It’s a Japonic language, you may be stunned to learn.) This means that it will have very little vocabulary in common with English. Except for loanwords that we’ve swapped between the two languages, none of the roots will be the same.

What’s more, Japanese word order is very different from English. This is often thought to be the hardest thing to learn about the language (though I don’t think it’s that bad, myself, at least from what I’ve studied thus far). Here’s a concrete illustration of how the word order is different: They don’t have prepositions. They have postpositions.

Prepositions are tiny function particles that we put in front of words that show how they relate to each other. If I say "the king of Gondor," then the preposition "of," which follows "king" shows how the king is related to Gondor. We call them prepositions because we put them in front (pre-) of words.

Japanese, like some other languages, doesn’t put its function-executing particles in front of words. It puts them after (post-) them, so they’re called postpositions. For example, in the Japanese sentence "Nihongo ga wakarimas ka," the word "ga" is a postposition that, more or less, tells you that "Nihongo" (the word for "Japanese") is the subject of the sentence, which means (or can mean) "Do you understand Japanese?"

The advantage to learning Japanese is a big one: It’s got almost no inflection in it. This means very few word endings to memorize. Most words keep their form all the time, like in English, only moreso.

In some ways, Japanese grammar is even easier than English because it doesn’t encode all the information that English does in a sentence. It relies more on context to tell you things that you’d have to say expressly in English. For example, you often don’t have to do anything to a sentence to indicate what its subject is (e.g., are you talking about yourself or someone else). Context fills that in.

Overall, which language is easier? Hard to say. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. It depends on what you’re up for. Personally, I like learning languages that are as different from English as possible. At times I find the modern European languages a little . . . boring compared to Asian languages (though I plan to keep studying them). They’re not exotic enough for me. But if you make your own decision. Just remember: All your base are belong to us. You get signal?

Now, as to what study method to use, longtime readers already know what I’m going to say: Get Pimsleur. It’s an all-audio method that has no textbook and that gets you to speaking in conversational style immediately. You just drive around in your car and listen to the CDs, talking back to them. It makes learning languages incredibly easy and non-threatening.

The Pimsleur sets can be expensive (though discounts are available), though not compared to taking a course in the language, and they are far easier than typical courses. You might start with one of the tiny, introductory Pimsleur sets to see if you like a language before buying a big set. Some of the small "Quick & Simple" sets are so cheap (like $10-$20) that you can even get one for German and one for Japanese and see which you like better.

GET PIMSLEUR QUICK & SIMPLE GERMAN.

GET PIMSLEUR QUICK & SIMPLE JAPANESE.

A reader writes:

Mr. Akin,

 

Your post about coke-soda-pop usage

brought to mind a question I have about southern accents.  A friend told me

that while visiting up north a sales clerk asked her what part of Tennessee

she was from.  Connie was surprised by the question and asked the

clerk how she knew that she (Connie) was from Tennessee.  The clerk replied

that only people from Tennessee say "dudn’t", as in "He dudn’t like any kind of

ice cream but vanilla". 

 

As soon as Connie mentioned

it I realized that I also say "dudn’t".  However, I am skeptical

that it is only used in Tennessee.   I’ve lived in Louisiana and

Oklahoma and no one ever commented on my use of "dudn’t" so that makes me

suspect it is fairly common, at least in the south.  What do you

think?

The phenomenon you’re talking about is a common feature of Southern accents. It’s a feature of my own accent, as Fr. Vincent Serpa (Catholic Answers’ chaplain) pointed out to me. (Previously I had been unconscious of it.) Listen to the radio show sometime, and you’ll hear me using it.

What is going on here is that the /s/ and /z/ sounds (both sibilant or "hissing" sounds) are being dentalized (pronounced againt the teeth) in certain circumstances. Thus "wasn’t" > /wadn’t/, "isn’t" > /idn’t/, and "doesn’t" > /dudn’t/. ("Wasn’t" and "doesn’t" commonly uses /z/ in non-Southern speech, while "isn’t" commonly uses /s/.)

This shift isn’t surprising since the point of articulation for both sibilant and dental sounds is just behind the teeth.

The more interesting question is the circumstances in which this occurs. I don’t have enough data to tell for sure, but my guess is that it’s due (at least in part) to the /n/ sound that follows the /s/ or /z/ in the cited examples.

/n/ is a nasal sound (you may be stunned to learn), where the airflow is directed through the nose. If you’re gearing up to make a nasal sound like /n/, it might be a little harder to make a sibilant sound (where the airflow is directed through the mouth with the teeth in a particular configuration to allow us to hiss), and so a simplification of the situation might be to dentalize the sibilant in preparation for the nasal /n/.

Alternately, the speaker may be so focused on getting ready for the /n/ sound that what he is doing is omitting the sibilant, and the resulting pronunciation effort creates a de facto /d/ as he makes the transition.

Further research (or a professional linguist) could tell us for sure whether such conjectures are correct.

See, there’s this whole interesting world of pronunciation that occurs unconsciously to us most of the time, but linguists spend endless hours pulling apart transcriptions of what sounds people use when they speak and trying to figure out the arcane rules that we’re unconsciously obeying.

The study of these pronunciation schemes area is called "phonology," and each accent within a language is basically a different pronunciation scheme or set of rules that people unconsciously follow when pronouncing words. There’s even a different module in our brains that governs phonology (separate from the modules that govern grammar and meaning). If you’re learning a new accent, you’re building yourself an additional phonology module.

Kewl, huh!