Category: Languages

HISTORIAN JOHN LUCAKS ANSWERS THIS QUESTION.

As to why it happened, the nut of his answer is this:

Beneath these political and ideological sentiments there was the sense,

more or less apparent, of a general disappointment with liberal ideals.

There was the inclination, sometimes fatal, of liberals to take the

ideas of the Enlightenment to extremes: to propagate a public morality

devoid of, if not altogether opposed to, religion; to insist more and

more on institutionalizing the promotion of justice, at times even at

the expense of truth; to emphasize freedom of speech, often at the

expense of thought; to make abortion legal; to approve same-sex

marriages and affirmative action.

To an increasing mass of Americans, "liberal" began to mean — rightly

or wrongly — a toleration, if not a promotion, of what many considered

to be immoralities.

That’s why it happened, but the context of when and how it happened is most interesting.

CHECK IT OUT.

So . . .

HERE’S A STORY ABOUT NEW INTERNET TERMS

(Specifically, "monkeyfishing," "jump the shark," and "pajamahadeen.")

It correctly explains the origin and meaning of the term "monkeyfishing" (which, as an item of Internet jargon, refers to a form of excessive credulity, particularly in the media; offline it refers to using electricity or explosives to go fishing.)

He also gets the origin and meaning of "pajamahadeen" right (i.e., a term originating in the Dan Rather forged documents scandal meaning, more or less, "bloggers who aggressively fact check things").

But when it comes to "jump the shark" the author get it dramatically wrong!

He claims (correctly) that it has its reputed origin in a Happy Days epsidoe in which Fonzie goes water skiing and literally jumps a shark but he goes on to (incorrectly) explain its meaning as follows:

"Jumping the shark" thus came to mean any wildly
excessive activity designed to attract attention to a person or group
in a popularity tailspin. As, for example, "Aging poptart Britney
Spears finally jumped the shark by marrying a high school friend for
two days in Las Vegas."

Wrong.

Engaging in excessive activity to attract attention is something one can do in the act of jumping the shark, but that’s not what the term means.

Jumping the shark is the point at which a TV series (or something else) passes its peak of quality and begins to markedly decline in quality. This is, in fact, explained on the premier site devoted to jumping the shark, namely, JumpTheShark.Com:

It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on . . . it’s all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it jumping the shark.

And it’s not just those folks who say this. For example, check out Wikipedia’s discussion of the term.

In fact, if you check the dictionaries Onelook lists as having the term, they all agree on the "past its peak" definition.

So, what happend? Did the author of the column just not cross-check the story he’d got on the meaning of "jump the shark"?

Sounds like monkeyfishing to me.

I hope this paper hasn’t jumped the shark.

Call in the pajamahadeen!

Okay.

So I’m reading on WorldWideWords.Org and they have this section on (allegedly) "weird words."

On the page for hornswoggle, they state that it is "often assumed to be one of those highfalutin words like absquatulate and rambunctious that frontier Americans were so fond of creating."

WHAT???

I’ll gladly admit (in fact, I’ll proudly insist) that 19th century Americans had a real word-factory going, but by what set of criteria is rambunctious a "highfalutin" word???

That’s a real sockdolager! Those scalawags are trying to hornswoggle us on this one! I’ve a mind to absquatulate their web site and skedaddle! What a bunch of consarned snollygosters!

[DICTIONARY LINK FOR THE 19TH-CENTURALLY CHALLENGED.]

So I was watching this episode of DS9 where Dr. Brashir is whining about the fact he was salutatorian rather than valedictorian at Starfleet Medical (because, as revealed in another episode, he deliberately missed a question on a test [because, as revealed in yet another episode, he is a genetically modified human who didn’t want to blow his cover]).

And I get to thinking about the word valedictorian.

Obvious Latin roots.

Looks like it has the roots to mean "farewell" and "to speak" in it.

And, indeed, it does.

Latin: valedicere = vale (farewell) + dicere (to speak); to bid farewell.

A valedictory is thus a "farewell speech" and a valedictorian is the person who gives it at a commencement, usually the highest scoring student.

Then I started thinking about the word vale.

Where does it come from? Looks like an imperative form of valere. But what does valere mean?

"To be strong, to be powerful, to be healthy, to prevail, to succeed."

To succeed?

So "Vale!" might be translated as "Succeed!"

That’s (more or less) what Klingons say to bid each other as a farewell: Qapla’!

I wonder if on Qo’noS they call valedictory a Qapla’SoQ? (Qapla’ = success + SoQ = speech).

Probably the most combat-proficient student gets to give it.

So I was watching this episode of DS9 where Dr. Brashir is whining about the fact he was salutatorian rather than valedictorian at Starfleet Medical (because, as revealed in another episode, he deliberately missed a question on a test [because, as revealed in yet another episode, he is a genetically modified human who didn’t want to blow his cover]).

And I get to thinking about the word valedictorian.

Obvious Latin roots.

Looks like it has the roots to mean "farewell" and "to speak" in it.

And, indeed, it does.

Latin: valedicere = vale (farewell) + dicere (to speak); to bid farewell.

A valedictory is thus a "farewell speech" and a valedictorian is the person who gives it at a commencement, usually the highest scoring student.

Then I started thinking about the word vale.

Where does it come from? Looks like an imperative form of valere. But what does valere mean?

"To be strong, to be powerful, to be healthy, to prevail, to succeed."

To succeed?

So "Vale!" might be translated as "Succeed!"

That’s (more or less) what Klingons say to bid each other as a farewell: Qapla’!

I wonder if on Qo’noS they call valedictory a Qapla’SoQ? (Qapla’ = success + SoQ = speech).

Probably the most combat-proficient student gets to give it.

Y’all may remember a while ago I mentioned that when I go to the Japanese market for low-carb noodles, that–just to figure out what kind of product I’m holding in my hand–I often have to rely on tiny nutritional labels slapped on by the importer. Sometimes the product name on the label is kind of comically descriptive, like “Corn Snack.”

Well, I can’t eat Corn Snack (too high in carbs), but I just found one I can eat: Beans Snack!

I am so totally amused by Beans Snack. It has so many great things going for it.

1) With only six grams of carb per serving, and three of that fiber, I can indulge in Beans Snack . . . in moderation.

2) It has a really cool package with all these little green pea Japanese warrior-lookin’ dudes performing incomprehensible tasks. They are so cool! I wonder if they’re the Japanese equivalent of the California Raisins (remember those “Heard It Through The Grape Vine” commercials about fifteen years ago?). Maybe the Beans Snack pea-warriors are part of a major advertising campaign over there or something. I sure hope so.

3) The helpful English nutritional label was written by someone who speaks Japanese rather than English as his native language. You can tell because of the Engrish name of the product: “Beans Snack.”

Now, obviously that’s not what we could call such a product in English. We’d have fancy-schmancy made-up name like “Beanoritos” or something. But I assume that’s the case in Japanese, too. “Beans Snack” is probably an attempted description and not a translation of the product’s name (which I assume is either “Calbee” or “Saya Endo Sappari Shio-Aji”; probably the latter). Yet a native-English speaker wouldn’t have called it that, as you can tell by two things:

a) The principle ingredient of Beans Snack isn’t beans at all but green peas (hence the little green pea warrior dudes). A native English-speaker would know that green peas aren’t considered beans (at least the way they are popularly spoken of, regardless of what a botanist might tell you).

b) We’ve got a plural adjective here: “Beans.” The thing is, English doesn’t have plural adjectives. We pluralize our nouns, but not our adjectives. Thus we might have “a bunch of grapes” (“grape” functioning as a noun) but not “grapes soda” (“grape” functioning as an adjective). In Japanese, the rules regarding pluralization are very different: There isn’t any, at least normally. Japanese nouns (and adjectives) don’t inflect (change form) for number, so they are neither singular nor plural (or both singular and plural, depending on how you look at it).

The Japanese-speaking label-writer knew that English does have plural nouns and misinterpreted “bean” as a noun in this case. Since peas normally come in a group, he used what he thought was a proper English plural form, not realizing that here the word is an adjective and adjectives in English don’t inflect for number.

4) Beans Snack actually tastes good! It has a kind of . . . well, green pea taste. A little salty. A little sweet, but not very much. It has a nice, crunchy texture. After sampling it, I find myself thinking “Hey, I’d like some more Beans Snack now!” It’s one of those hard-to-eat-just-one snacks.

Low carb . . . cute package . . . comical and interesting language issue . . . good taste. What more could you want in a snack?

Three cheers for Beans Snack!!!

I wanted to thank everybody for taking the time to look at the experimental Latin lessons and leave feedback. I haven’t done an exact count, but the split seems roughly even between those who like format #1 and those who like format #2, with perhaps a modest majority for format #1 (though that’s just an impression).

Several have asked whether I’m working on a book or web site teaching Latin by this method, and the answer is “maybe.” I initially did the lessons as an experiment–just to see how this teaching technique would work and whether people would find it useful. The response has been quite positive (though that may be because those who didn’t like the lessons didn’t bother to write in).

As a result of the positive feedback, I’m continuing to develop new lessons using this technique. I’m not sure whether I’ll put them together as a book or a website or first-a-website-and-then-a-book. I’ll need to get a few more lessons done before I make that decision.

As far as formatting, I’ll probably continue to write in format #1, which is the easier format to write in. Then, afterwards, I can rearrange the information into format #2 if that turns out to be the way to go.

I’ll let y’all know how it goes, and will share some more lessons soon to get more feedback.

Much obliged, folks!

P.S. To touch on a few things folks raised in the comments boxes:

1) I *don’t* think that Latin needs to be learned before Greek. In fact, I find Greek grammar easier than Latin (the noun system in Greek is *half* the complexity of the noun system in Latin, e.g.), and there are much better Greek textbooks out there. For example, William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek is the best there is (at least until the one I’ve worked on off-and-on over the years gets published maybe someday).

2) I *loathe* John Collins’ Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin. It is the book I learned from, and its pedagogy is horrendous and seems to be designed to make things as difficult on the student as possible. You really need a good teacher if you’re going to get through this one, but it can be done. Unfortunatley, I don’t know of a better text on ecclesiastical Latin to recommend. I know there are some; I just don’t have them and so haven’t looked at them and am thus unable to recommend any. There is one that’s half-classical/half-ecclesiastical Latin that I like, but the author’s name and its exact title escape me at the moment (language textbooks tend to have such similar titles).

3) One person suggested using ecclesiastical texts in addition to Scripture in the course I’m designing, and I had been semi-planning to do that. After working through Mark a logical switch would be to the text of the Mass. Anyway, we’ll see.