Peter Harvey, linguist

Spanish possessive adjectives and menus

2013-05-23T15:00:08+02:00

On the Language Log Mark Liberman has found a Spanish menu. Such things are notorious, as I have described (here and here), but this has a new twist with squids in his (her, your) ink. As Mark points out, this is ‘the delightful consequences of someone's earnest reliance on a bilingual dictionary’, but how has it happened?

While English has separate possessive adjectives (his, her, its) for the three genders of the third person, Spanish has only one: su. On the other hand, unlike their English counterparts Spanish possessive adjectives change according to the number, and in some cases the gender, of the thing that is possessed: mi libro is my book but mis libros is my books, and nuestro/s libro/s is our book(s), but nuestra/s casa/s is our house(s).

The problem is that su corresponds to the three English third-person forms, but where does the your come from? In Spanish the polite form of address is usted, which takes a third-person verb because it is a contraction of vuestra merced, which is like Your Worship. Thus su/s is your (singular or plural you) as well as his, her and its. As well as that, it is also the possessive adjective for the third-person plural corresponding to their so in this menu Calamares en su tinta should be Squids in their ink. It follows that Spanish su/s has five English equivalents: his, her, its, your (polite) and their. Not surprisingly, this causes difficulty for Spanish-speaking learners of English.

Corpulence and false friends

2013-05-23T09:00:28+02:00

Once, my Spanish doctor described me as corpulento. Fortunately, as I discovered, this means according to the Gran Diccionario Oxford:

hefty, burly, heavily built;

not as the COED defines corpulent in English:

fat

That was many years ago but today in reporting on the Woolwich attack, El País describes this man as

un hombre negro y corpulento

It’s one of those tricky false friends. Some of them are obvious; it’s easy to know that Spanish carpeta (file, folder) has nothing to do with English carpet but some false friends are so similar in meaning that confusion can easily arise.

The Ballad of the Amateur Grammarian

2013-05-22T17:18:16+02:00

After what we’ve been through lately it’s surely time to revisit the Ballad of the Amateur Grammarian:

I am the very model of an amateur grammarian
I have a little knowledge and I am authoritarian
But I make no apology for being doctrinarian
We must not plummet to the verbal depths of the barbarian

The Stroppy Grammarian has the rest of this splendid poem here but as a tribute to Nevile Gwynne I will also quote these two lines:

When you crusade for good English, it’s not all doom and gloom you sow
The secret of success is: it’s not who you know; it’s whom you know

(Image – Wikimedia Commons)

Theatres for surgery

2013-05-22T06:56:52+02:00

Old operating theatre in London

In countries that follow the conventions of British English, the place in a hospital where operations are performed is called an operating theatre. In American English this is known as an operating room.

The British usage comes as a surprise to people not familiar with it but the reason is clear. In the early days of anatomy and surgery operations were infrequent and were seen as educational events, open to other surgeons and students and they were performed in a place where a good number of people could watch what was being done. Of course, in those days there was no concern for sterility, surgeons worked in their street clothes, and a prosperous surgeon could be identified by the blood stains on his clothing.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp, Rembrandt

(Images – Wikimedia commons)

British media and the English language

2013-05-21T14:58:00+02:00

In recent days I have written about the dreadful treatment of the English language in the British media (Telegraph, Guardian, Guardian, BBC). I dealt with the Times in 2008. Now Geoff Pullum takes on the Times again.

Articles about English grammar in UK newspapers tend to exhibit an almost incredible degree of stupidity. In no other subject could such self-contradictory idiocy be accepted, or subjected to so little fact-checking.

Unaspirated h

2013-05-20T16:25:13+02:00

There is – or was – a sort of rule that h was not aspirated (pronounced) in words where the stress was not on the first syllable, with the article an being used before words such as historical. Google Ngram Viewer suggests that this is not done now and that we can safely say that the well-known trio of heir, honour and hour (plus their derivative forms) are the only words with silent initial h.

historical

Nevertheless, on 6 May 2005 the BBC reported:

Tony Blair is heading for an historic third term in government but with a greatly reduced majority.

hysterical

habitual

I have a special interest in hotel. My father (born 1920) always spoke of an hotel, justifying this because it was a French loan word. Here I can see how unusual this was.

hotel

Of adders, oranges and doilies

2013-05-20T15:45:26+02:00

Language can be a messy business, to the exasperation of those who wish to impose rules on it. English has a convention that the indefinite article is a before consonant sounds and an before vowel sounds. I say sounds because this is a matter of phonetics. It has nothing to do with the spelling of the word. We say a European country, a useful idea; a one‑legged man because the first sound of these words is a consonant, and an honourable man and an FBI investigation because they start with vowel sounds.

Some words, however, have become confused. The only poisonous snake in Britain is the adder. It was originally called the nadder but the n moved from the noun to the article; a nadder turned into an adder in the Middle English period (1300 – 1500).

An orange was originally Italian narancia according to the OED:

It. narancia (Florio), now arancia (Venet. naranza, Milan. naranz), Sp. naranja, Pg. laranja, also med.Gr. νεράντζιον. The Sp. and Gr. are ad. Arabic nāranj, in Pers. nārang, nāring: cf. late Skr. nāraṅga, Hindī nārangī; also Pers. nār pomegranate.

In addition to the Portuguese laranja there is the Catalan taronja, showing that the first letter is subject to considerable variation.

Similarly, an apron was once a naperon, the same as modern French napperon for the English doily, and umpire comes from Middle English noumpere from Old French nonper (not equal).

The phenomenon worked in both directions. A newt was an ewt, with ewt being the same word as eft the word for a young newt. A nickname was an eke-name, where eke means addition. It is an archaic word for also and is presumably cognate with German auch. And finally, a ninny is a simpleton or fool, it being, in the cautious wording of the OED, perhaps an abbreviation of innocent.

(Images from Wikimedia Commons.)

Four once more: 20 May 2013

2013-05-20T06:00:00+02:00

Breathing life new into old posts. This blog started in 2005. As readership has grown since then I am reposting some of the older posts in batches of four at 06.00 CET every Monday.

Royalties and the language of Shakespeare Does a language generate royalties?

Ofsted (v. tr.) Stress patterns affect the doubling of consonants.

Frankfurt to Frankfurt Travelling from Frankfurt to Frankfurt.

Handle with passion An unfortunate mistranslation.

I would in the past

2013-05-16T12:56:47+02:00

Brian Barder recently sent me a mail he had received quoting the magazine of a British school:

It is quite surprising to remember that in the 1940s and 1950s, in each year two or three of the College’s 900 boys would die in the Sanatorium from such eminently curable diseases as pneumonia and appendicitis.

The figures turn out to be exaggerated but that is not the point here. The question is about the use of would die.

What does would die signify/imply in this context that is different from died? I can’t see that it implies any uncertainty but would die does have, does it not, a meaning other than died? But – in this context anyway –what? I have looked to see if Burchfield is any help, but I don’t find that he is. Can you help?

Brian considers but rejects the idea that there’s an implied conditional lurking there

If statistical evidence of the average number of teenage boys in the whole population shows x per thousand dying annually of pneumonia and appendicitis, then in each year two or three of the College’s 900 boys would [be expected to] die in the Sanatorium from such eminently curable diseases as pneumonia and appendicitis’ – nimbly skipping from “would die on that basis” to “did actually die”. But I don’t have enormous confidence in that explanation. Perhaps more likely would can express a tendency to do something repetitively at a specific time:

Every summer we would travel to Margate for our summer holidays.

which seems to describe it accurately if not entirely to explain it.

In this case would is indeed used to express something that is repeated and is usually described as being a habit. Dying of course is obviously not a habit but it is not hard to see how the idea of a repeated personal habit came to refer to a number of people all doing the same thing once. Wikipedia’s article on marriage has these examples:

Early nomadic communities practised a form of marriage … in which a wife would own a tent of her own.

If freely given and … made in the future tense (“I will marry you”), [a verbal promise] would constitute a betrothal.

As I say in A Guide to English Language Usage:

Would can also mean that an action was habitual. It is rather more formal than used to, it must be associated with time reference, and it is only used with dynamic verbs: When I was young I would play football every Saturday but not ~~I would live in Frankfurt in the 1970s~~.

There is an explanation. Would is a modal auxiliary verb in English. It is the past tense of will, though that is of interest only from the point of view of grammatical structure; it is not past in any chronological sense. On the contrary, its use in conditional sentences refers to future time. Grammatical tense and chronological time are concepts that must be kept clearly separate.

However, the use of will as an auxiliary for the future is not accidental. It originates in the meaning of the word as an expression of volition, as is seen in a will being an expression of what is to happen to one’s property after death, or in the phrase against my will. It is also clear through a comparison with modern German wollen, the normal (non-modal) verb for want. Ich will is I want and ich wollte is I wanted. That is the explanation of the phenomenon; it is the sense of volition that has led to these words being used modally to express future and conditional meaning. What you will is what will happen, as in the use of first-person will in the traditional shall/will distinction. It also explains why won’t can be used as an emphatic refusal: He simply won’t do what I tell him is not future; it is will not expressing a negation of will, i.e. a refusal. What is perhaps surprising, given the origin of the usage, is that in English it can be extended to inanimate objects. If you say My car won’t/wouldn’t start you are, in literal meaning at least, attributing free will to an inanimate object.

A similar pattern of present and past is to be found in shall and should. These correspond to German soll and sollte, a modal verb expressing obligation. It is also found with may and might, which correspond to German mag and mochte.

Muckle Hell, Poverty and Grimness

2013-05-14T09:40:56+02:00

Dull Flag,Tongue of Gangsta, Whirly, Muckle Hell, Poverty, Grimness, Rumblings, Gutterpool, Rotten Gutter, Grotsetter, Gorehouse, Doomy, Hyndgreenie, Insabysetter and many more place names from the Orkney and Shetland Islands can be found on the ever-fascinating Strange Maps blog.

Collective tunnels

2013-05-14T07:23:16+02:00

The search terms that people use can be rather odd, as Stan Carey has pointed out on Sentence First.

My stats have just informed me that someone in Australia has done a search for the string < collective noun for tunnels >* and that my post about the Guardian’s language quiz had come up as the No. 8 hit. I followed the link to google.com.au and found that in fact my post appears higher than the Guardian’s own article. It is true that the Guardian’s article is three days older and does not contain the precise string < collective noun > but even so I feel very happy with that result.

(Click to enlarge)

*If there really is a need for such a collective noun, I would suggest: A Switzerland of tunnels.

up with which we should no longer be required to put

2013-05-14T05:07:08+02:00

The BBC has got in on the act and has published a grammar quiz of its own.

Read this sentence carefully. “I’d like to introduce you to my sister Clara, who lives in Madrid, to Benedict, my brother who doesn’t, and to my only other sibling, Hilary.” Which of the following is correct?

1) Hilary is male.

2) Hilary is female.

3) It’s impossible to know from the context.

The correct answer is 1), though what purpose is served by such a question is anybody’s guess – as is the likelihood of anybody ever uttering such a dreadful sentence naturally.

Though the BBC doesn’t say so, this is an adapted version of the notorious one published by Nevile Gwynne in the Telegraph:

“I should like to introduce you to my sister Amanda, who lives in New York, to my brother Mark who doesn’t, and to my only other sibling, Evelyn.”

I have explained why the answer male is wrong for this version.

Question 5

“This is the kind of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put!” Which grammar rule was Winston Churchill supposed to have objected to?

seems to imply that the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition is valid. It is not!

Question 6

Sometimes you should use “that” and sometimes “which”.

Which sentence here is wrong?

1) The car which ran me over was speeding

2) The car that ran me over was speeding

3) The car, which ran me over, was speeding

brings us back to the that/which fallacy, which I dealt with here just the other day. Briefly, the notion that 1) is incorrect is quite mistaken. The explanation that is given:

“That” defines something, whereas “which” adds new information in a separate clause, often needing commas.

misses the point. A non-restrictive relative clause, which 3) is, adds new information; it must have which, it cannot have that, and it must be set off in commas. That does define something in a restrictive or defining relative clause but which can also be used correctly in such clauses. Sentences 1) and 2) are both correct. Sentence 3) is grammatically correct as an example of a non-restrictive relative clause, but precisely because it adds new information it presupposes that we know which car we are talking about. Without a context to define the car it is not a logically valid sentence.

Question 8

Which of the following is not correct?

1) I was sitting in the chair.

2) I sat in the chair.

3) I was sat in the chair.

Of course, the answer that they require is 3), its incorrectness being explained thus:

To use “was” requires the participle “sitting” after it.

Well, it does if we are talking about verbs used in the continuous aspect but in fact there is nothing objectionable about this sentence. Sit can be transitive as well as intransitive and as such can be used quite correctly in the passive voice. As the COED says (my emphasis):

sit

v. (sitting; past and past part. sat /sat/)

1 be or cause to be in a position in which one’s weight is supported by one’s buttocks rather than one’s feet and one’s back is upright.

This discussion is developed with reference to the BBC’s other questions in the comments below.

Four once more: 13 May 2013

2013-05-13T06:00:00+02:00

Posh

What is, and is not, the origin of this word?

First Impressions, by A Lady

Would Jane Austen have found a publisher nowadays?

Where hast tha been?

An article by the late Miles Kington prompts a discussion of polite and familiar forms of pronouns.

Hôtel St Claire (sic)

How brand naming can override linguistic correctness.

English and the Guardian

2013-05-12T13:09:11+02:00

Once again the Guardian writes about the English language. What we have here is some great distance from its disastrous test of English competence and a world away from that of the egregious Nevile Gwynne. Indeed, as an editor at the London Review of Books Thomas Jones is a man after my own heart when he says:

… it’s still the case that some ways of writing are clearer and more elegant than others, and some of the shibboleths are worth following for the sake of clarity, elegance and consistency. They’re conventions not rules, however, and different conventions apply to different kinds of discourse: constructions that are unacceptable in so-called Standard English and wouldn’t find their way into the LRB or the Guardian – a reinforcing double negative, say – are more than fine in other registers (e.g. “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more”).

Nevertheless, there are some points in his article that need expanding and some where he seems to have half-remembered things that he has been told but has not explored in depth.

1. Dangling (or unattached) participle

Jones says:

Dangling participles are best avoided because they can change the meaning of a sentence. And while it’s true that most readers will be able to understand what you’re getting at, it’s still worth saying what you mean.

I fully agree. Surely there can be no argument at all in favour of unattached participles.

2. That/which

Jones says:

“Which is appropriate to non-defining and that to defining clauses,” HW Fowler wrote in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) [using defining where we now say restrictive. PH]. “The dog that ran in front of my bike had floppy ears.” “The dog, which had floppy ears, ran in front of my bike.” It’s often a fine distinction, and was very possibly invented by Fowler, but it can nonetheless be useful.

Up to a point Lord Copper. The precise quotation from Fowler in which)(that)(who, 2 [Fowler’s own eccentric use of brackets] is

Let it be stated broadly, before coming to particular dangers that: (A) of which and that, which is appropriate to non-defining and that to defining clauses.

The “particular danger” that he goes on to warn against is illustrated immediately after this by the use of a nonrestrictive clause with which where a defining clause with that is intended.

Fowler’s view is that the distinction that he makes is ideal. Under that, rel., however, he states his usual more tolerant view.

What grammarians may say should be has perhaps less influence on what shall be than even the more modest of them realize; usage evolves itself little disturbed by their likes and dislikes. And yet the temptation to show how better use might have been made of the material to hand is sometimes irresistible. The English relatives, more particularly as used by English rather than American writers, offers such a temptation. The relations between that, who and which, have come to us from our forefathers as an odd jumble, and plainly show that the language has not been neatly constructed by a master-builder who could create each part of it to do the exact work required of it, neither overlapped or overlapping; far from that, its parts have had to grow as they could.

He then goes on to discuss the use of who and that for people and things and the problems with the genitive forms of these defective pronouns, commenting that

Such peculiarities are explicable, but not now curable; they are inherent in the relative apparatus that we have received and are bound to work with. It does not follow that the use we are now making of it is the best it is capable of; and perhaps the line of improvement lies in clearer differentiation between that and which, and restoration of that to the place from which, in print, it tends to be ousted.

There follows a paragraph on the “supposed and misleading distinction … that that is the colloquial and which the literary relative.” Only with that out of the way does he turn to the point at issue here.

The two kinds of relative clause, to one of which that and to the other of which which is appropriate, are the defining and the non-defining; and if writers would agree to regard that as the defining relative pronoun, and which as the non-defining, there would be much gain both in lucidity and in ease. Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the best practice of most or of the best writers.

To summarise: Fowler recognises that usage goes its own way whatever grammarians may say. On the general issue of relative pronouns he is strongly tempted “to show how better use might have been made of the material to hand” but accepts that the “peculiarities are explicable, but not now curable; they are inherent in the relative apparatus that we have received and are bound to work with”. On the issue of that and which as relative pronouns he again sets out his ideal and again shows that usage militates against its universal adoption.

Inevitably however, the internet has this from March 2008:

Happy Birthday, Henry Fowler: inventor of that/which rule is 150 today.

I have made plain my own view of this so-called rule.

But having said all that, we still have the question of why Thomas Jones chose the 1926 first edition of Fowler. Gowers's revision for the second edition leaves Fowler's words intact but Burchfield's much deeper revision for the 1996 third edition quotes Anita Brookner's A Family Romance (1993); with the ball-point pen which my father had bought for me … and comments that this

contains a restrictive clause led by which. It could have been replaced by that without change of meaning and without giving offence to any rule of syntax … the which clause defines and particularizes; and that would have done the work just as well.

This is put in the context of a second example of which used in a nonrestrictive (Fowler's non-defining) clause, showing that Burchfield rejects the that/which rule, accepting both for restrictive clauses.

To return to the Guardian article, while no-one would doubt that

The dog that ran in front of my bike had floppy ears.

is correct as a restrictive relative clause. But those of us who reject the rule about not using which in such clauses would also accept:

The dog which ran in front of my bike had floppy ears.

This example

The dog, which had floppy ears, ran in front of my bike.

is clearly a nonrestrictive clause, both from the punctuation with commas marking the parenthesis and from the intonation doing so in speech. But no-one doubts that restrictive clauses can have that and that nonrestrictive clauses must have which; Jones is dealing with an issue which is not a problem. I think that it is also worth mentioning that this sentence cannot stand independently; precisely because it is a nonrestrictive or non-defining clause (which does not “define and particularize”) the definition must be sought elsewhere. We must assume that the dog has already been defined and that we know from context which dog we are talking about.

In A Guide to English Language Usage I say that who and which are always correct (i.e. which is correct in defining clauses) but that that or zero pronoun may not be. While I accept that there may be certain stylistic objections to such usage in some cases, it is a helpful rule of thumb for non-native speakers, which will always avoid error.

3. Split infinitive

Jones says:

Split infinitives are worth avoiding to keep pedants at bay, but there’s nothing actually wrong with them, and a split infinitive is preferable to an inelegant alternative. “To boldly go” is resoundingly iambic, the alternatives – “boldly to go” or “to go boldly” – either flighty or leaden.

I agree. Indeed I make both points myself in A Guide to English Language Usage

… it must be said that there is still, rightly or wrongly, a considerable feeling among English speakers that a split infinitive is wrong. Sometimes it seems natural to do so but a decision to split an infinitive deliberately should never be taken lightly.

The reviewer in Modern English Teacher described this as “a sensible conclusion.”

I also make the point about the poetic rhythm of To boldly go.

4. Who/whom

Jones says:

Whom is on the way out, and won’t be much missed.

Agreed on both points.

5. Ending a sentence with a preposition

Jones says:

Like beginning a sentence with a conjunction, this is always completely fine. As Winston Churchill never actually said, it’s the kind of pedantry “up with which I will not put”.

The Churchill attribution is mentioned by Gowers in The Complete Plain Words with the introduction: “It is said that Sir Winston Churchill …” Whether this attribution had been made in print before that I do not know. The matter has been discussed and explained here.

6. Due to

Jones says:

The idea that “due to” is wrong, but “‘owing to” is OK is bogus. They’re both wrong if used to mean “because of” and both OK if used to mean “the result of”. “Due to unplanned engineering works, the train to Basingstoke has been cancelled” is a mistake. “The train to Basingstoke has been cancelled; this is due to unplanned engineering works” is fine. Still, “due to” is best avoided because it leads to formulations such as “due to the fact that”, which is a really clumsy way of saying “because”.

This is broadly in line with Burchfield’s Fowler though not with the 1926 edition, which says that due to is “often used by the illiterate as though it had passed, like owing to into a mere compound preposition.” The argument against using due to as a compound preposition is that due is a predicative adjective:

Then pay to Caesar what is due to Caesar, and pay God what is due to God. Matt 22:21 (NEB, 1961)

The train is due (to arrive) at 10.56.

and as such cannot stand alone to introduce a clause:

The cancellation of the barbecue was due to rain.

is acceptable but

Due to rain the barbecue was cancelled.

should be

Owing to rain the barbecue was cancelled.

Yes, well. Does it matter? As Burchfield says:

Hostility to the construction (due to used as a prepositional phrase in verbless clauses) is an entirely 20^th-century phenomenon. Opinion remains sharply divided but it begins to look as if this use of due to will form part of the natural language of the 21^st century.

As with relative clauses (above), my view as an EFL teacher is that the language is quite complicated enough and that any smoothing of its rough edges that does no harm to its capacity for fluent, stylish, subtle communication is to be welcomed rather than dismissed.

It goes without saying, I hope, that due to the fact that is a cumbersome circumlocution for because just as despite (or even in spite of) the fact that can and should be reduced to although or even though.

7. Greengrocer’s apostrophe

Jones says:

“Carrot’s” and “apple’s” are not so common, but almost everyone occasionally writes “who’s”, “it’s” and ”you’re” for whose, its and your. That’s the problem with following rules – such as the rule that possessives are distinguished from plurals by an apostrophe – sometimes they don’t apply.

Almost everyone? Well perhaps but who’s, it’s and you’re are not plurals. They are contractions where the apostrophe represents a missing letter. What he may be thinking of is that while nouns use an apostrophe to make the possessive form, pronouns don’t. The possessive pronouns are respectively: whose, its and your.

I have said that apostrophes in English are a menace and should be abolished. Little is heard now of the 18^th-century firm of greengrocers called Johnson & Pope, yet a well-known and highly respected dictionary published at that time has this quotation from a famous author:

Comma’s and points they set exactly right.

8. Different from, not to or than

Jones says:

There’s no very good reason for following this rule, but then there’s no reason not to, either.

Indeed. Consistency, as an editor would surely agree, is important. My own style is to use different from but I don’t get excited about the matter. Some people point to the similar opposite to, which has no alternative preposition, and ask why different to should not be acceptable by analogy. The origin for preferring different from is presumably that the Latin differens implies movement away from something. While I find that interesting, I do not allow it to determine the use of modern English.

As for different than, I say in A Guide to English Language Usage:

It is sometimes used with a clause, probably because of the similarity to a comparative adjective as in The city is different than (it was) fifteen years ago; The city is bigger than (it was) fifteen years ago. It seems unnecessary to rewrite the sentence as The city is different from what it was fifteen years ago.

The Oxford Dictionaries website says:

There’s little difference in sense between the three expressions, and all of them are used by respected writers.

That’s good enough for me.

9. Using the subjunctive in conditional clauses

Jones says:

And finally, another one that’s worth paying attention to, because altering the mood alters the sense. The subjunctive is used to describe a state of affairs that isn’t the case. “If the dog were hungry, it would run to the bone shop.” This means the dog isn’t hungry, as we can tell because it isn’t running to the bone shop. “If the dog is hungry, it will run to the bone shop.” This means the dog may be hungry, we’ll have to wait and see.

He appears to be confused. If the dog is hungry … is a first conditional and does indeed relate to present time. If the dog were hungry … is a second conditional, implying that the dog is not hungry. While it is true that were is subjunctive, the point about the use of the subjunctive is that many people would say If the dog was hungry … Was is the past indicative and it is the use of this mood in second conditional sentences that leads to discussion, with some people arguing that the subjunctive should be used. It has nothing to do with the first conditional, where the indicative is the only from that is acceptable today. Shakespeare wrote “If music be the food of love, play on” (Twelfth Night 1:1) but things have changed since his day.

Ultraconserved words.

2013-05-09T13:22:28+02:00

There has been a certain amount of comment lately about the theory of ultraconserved words. It is certainly plausible that the Indo-European languages share a common ancestor with other language groups, and it is not for me to question the methodology of this work but Sally Thomason on the Language Log is sceptical (“I think they have a serious garbage in, garbage out problem”.) I would be interested to see it compared with historical DNA sampling but this is all so theoretical, and relates to such a small number of words (23), that I wonder how much this really advances our knowledge of language history. The reconstruction of proto-Indo-European is already theoretical though the relatedness of the IE languages is beyond doubt.

As often happens, people are confused. One report has this:

The 15,000-year-old ancestral language that birthed English and Russian

In this study, a team of linguists from the University of Reading found clues that many modern languages — including but not limited to English, Russian, Portuguese, and more — descended from a single ancestral tongue some 15,000 years ago.

I don’t know whether the reference to Siberian languages has led the journalist to think of Russian, but Russian, like Portuguese, is an Indo-European language that has a striking similarity to other IE languages for those who know what to look for. The case declension of nouns and adjectives is immediately apparent but there are deeper similarities and surprising cognate forms. I have described how Russian cmo (pronounced sto) and English hundred are etymologically related.

Accents and tildes

2013-05-08T11:57:24+02:00

I am proofreading a series of biomedical research papers by Spanish investigators for publication in English. I found the names Hernandez and Garcia, which should be Hernández and García. While it is by no means unknown for such people to get the names of their research institutions wrong, it seemed strange that anyone should make an orthographic error in their own name.

On enquiry it seems that some Spanish academics choose to omit the accents from their names in work for international publication because they confuse people from other countries and English-language keyboards do not have them. In my correction I have also expanded the common Spanish Mª to Maria since the abbreviation will be incomprehensible to any non-Spanish speaker.

While I am on the subject of Spanish accents I might mention that in Spanish a tilde is any accent, the one on García for example, not just the mark on the letter ñ, which is a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet. The COED defines tilde as

· n. an accent (˜) placed over Spanish n when pronounced ny (as in señor) or Portuguese a or o when nasalized (as in São Paulo), or over a vowel in phonetic transcription, indicating nasalization. Ø a similar symbol used in mathematics and logic to indicate negation, inversion, etc.

– ORIGIN C19: from Sp., based on L. titulus (see title).

thus limiting it to the ñ. The bilingual Gran Diccionario Oxford has

tilde femenino

1 (acento) accent

2 (sobre la ñ) tilde, swung dash

while the Spanish Royal Academy’s Dictionary has

Virgulilla o rasgo que se pone sobre algunas abreviaturas, el que lleva la ñ, y cualquier otro signo que sirva para distinguir una letra de otra o denotar su acentuación. (Diacritic mark or stroke placed above some abbreviations, the one on the ñ, and any other sign that is used to distinguish one letter from another or to indicate its accentuation.)

In Spanish o (or) has an accent when it is used between numbers: 6 ó 7 (6 or 7) to distinguish if from a zero in handwriting.

I have written (in Spanish) about the former lack of an accent in the masthead of El País, though this was changed when the paper moved to electronic typesetting.

The biter bit

2013-05-06T15:45:00+02:00

Between them Caxton, David Crystal and Mark Liberman have said almost all that needs to be said about the letter sent to Michael Gove (British education minister) about English teaching. I would just comment on what Nevile Gwynne (whom I have mentioned before) says on his own website:

Interestingly, the only people in the room who had been completely “unphased” by how I had treated the children were the children themselves!

It should indeed be unfazed not unfazed as Caxton points out, but more than that he uses a sentence adverb (interestingly), something that is usually a taboo for such pedants. The controversy about hopefully typifies this attitude. Fortunately, when such pedants let themselves loose (they are never let loose) on the language it is simple enough for knowledgeable people to find their own blunders and hoist them with their own petards.

Four once more

2013-05-06T06:00:00+02:00

Breathing life new into old posts. I am reposting some of the older posts in batches of four at 06.00 CET every Monday.

Brits & languages. The problems arising from the British unwillingness to learn other languages.

Mechanical translation strikes again. How an Institute of Protein turned into the Squirrel Institute.

Eyjafjallajökull Blew Today. The Icelandic volcano with the impossible name inspired a sea shanty.

BBC English is not all it might be.

Are you swarve?

2013-04-30T08:50:14+02:00

A letter published in the Independent on 8 April says:

As for [British education minister] Mr Gove’s call for action on spelling, you rather prove his point for him on the next page, when you describe Clive Reader as “swarve”. Can we really ignore these things? I’m a frayed knot.

It refers to this, which was published on 1 April and has now been corrected.

It is up to you whether you see this as a blunder, as teachers and copy editors will say (and I ask for the umpteenth time why the written media don’t use spell-checkers), or as a non-standard form, in linguistic terminology. It is clear, however, that it is not the first French word to have had its spelling and pronunciation adapted on acceptance as an English word. Among many examples damsel is an adaptation of Old French damiesele being first recorded in its English form (as damsell) in 1400; apron comes from naperon with the n moving to the article by a process known as juncture loss. But that’s not all; the OED tells us that suave itself is a ‘learned’ formation which took the place of the ‘popular’ O[ld] F[rench]. soef, suef (suaif) and is cognate with sweet.

More startling perhaps is the realisation that Spanish cucaracha has turned into cockroach, adapted as the names of two other animals, neither of which it resembles in the slightest.

A cock and a roach make a cockroach (images Wikimedia Commons).

At one time no doubt this sort of adaptation made perfect sense but times have changed and the introduction of printing has led to greater standardisation, a process reinforced by internet searching. Nevertheless, I find that The Urban Dictionary has it:

1 (3 July 2003)

Posh
One who is stylish.
One who carries themself [sic] in a pimpish manner.
Also refers to inanimate objects.
Represents approval
IE:cool
Swarvellous refers to same meaning.
also see “stush”

Your jacket is swarve.
Mr. Rogers is swarvellous.

2 (31 December 2012)

a misspelling of the word ‘suave’, with the more colloquial definition, i.e., posh, swanky, classy, etc.

Leandra: “Yo Celine’s high tops look swarve”
Jake: “Yo Leandra you spelled ‘suave’ wrong but you said it right”
Leandra: “That’s quite swarve of you”

Maybe swarve is here to stay as a slang expression. This sort of thing is not new. I have mentioned sheek before on this blog.

The OED, unsurprisingly, does not admit swarve for suave but it does have three entries for swarve: two verbs, one meaning to be choked up with sediment, to be silted up and a variant of swarm as in swarm up a pole or rope. There is also a noun meaning to faint or swoon, itself a variant of swerve.

Four once more: 29-4-2013

2013-04-29T06:00:00+02:00

Breathing life new into old posts. This blog started in 2005. As readership has grown since then I am reposting some of the older posts in batches of four at 06.00 CET every Monday.

BBC English is one thing but should it be used at a press conference in Germany?

A good writer is confused about beer and commits a beery eggcorn

… of that ilk. What does it mean, what doesn't it mean, and how should it be used?

Sherlock Holmes said 'It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.' But when I write about a capital mistake I have capitalisation of words in mind.

Of that ilk is one of those expressions that has gained a new life meaning something different from what it meant originally.

I couldn't give a sausage

2013-04-25T17:06:10+02:00

The word 'Frankfurt' as in Frankfurter sausage is very difficult for Spaniards to pronounce or write correctly. It appears in many different forms …(click image to enlarge)

Dictionaries, academies and the Guardian

2013-04-23T16:33:41+02:00

Yesterday’s Guardian has an editorial about how browsing old dictionaries shows the ways words change over time. English is exceptionally versatile in its ability to use words in different classes because its nouns and adjectives do not change (except for plural nouns) and the verbal infinitive is unmarked, the OED clearly lists all historical changes in usage.

The Guardian has an example:

The word homosexual doesn't exist in a 1925 English dictionary. By 1962 it's an adjective; and in 2002's Oxford English Dictionary it's a noun – you can officially be a homosexual.

What is the word official doing there? English does not have a language academy and there is a widespread British belief that this lack represents British freedom versus continental tyranny, English-speakers can use the language the way they want while poor old French and Spanish people have to check the dictionary to see which words they are allowed to use. As I have said before the situation is far from being that simple:

It is easy for British people to criticise the Académie Française. I don’t know much about that institution, but I can say that the Spanish Royal Academy does a lot of good work. There are intrinsic differences between English and Romance languages that militate against complete standardisation of the English language; the formation of compound nouns and the associated use of hyphens is a case in point; so is the formation of phrasal verbs, which come, change, and go away as fashion demands. A Latin-based language is much simpler to standardise, and the Spanish Academy works with the academies in all Spanish-speaking countries (including the Philippines and the USA) to produce guidance that is valid worldwide. It is also worth mentioning that clear guidance from an academy could clarify some of the more egregiously stupid aspects of English spelling such as dependant (noun) and dependent (adjective), or practice (noun) and practise (verb), which survive because language snobs like to show off how clever they are. It might also allow us to do away with whom, which is quite useless but which hangs on.

The Spanish Academy, contrary to popular belief in other countries, is descriptive; it follows and reflects changes in usage. It can be, and is, criticised for some of its definitions and omissions, and for the slowness with which it works, but it has no official standing and no power at all to impose its standards for meaning usage any more than the OED and Fowler have in British English. It recognises alternatives; for example guion and guión are both acceptable as the word is pronounced in two ways, with a diphthong or with two syllables.

So, I ask the Guardian, which English dictionary do you consult in Britain before you know whether you can officially be a homosexual?

It is difficult to know what the Guardian means when it says:

It will be a long time before homepages can rival dictionaries to provide histories of the evolution of language.

Home pages are not intended to rival dictionaries. However, anyone who wishes to see the history of the evolution of the English language will consult the OED. The second edition was published in 1989 and it has been said that the third edition will not be published on paper. Given the size of the work (20 volumes), and thus its cost (£750.00), it is hardly surprising that the sheer convenience of searching it in electronic format, in ways that are impossible on paper, has won out.

And let's face it: a Kindle will never smell as good.

Why a newspaper that is boosting its own electronic version should be nostalgic about paper books over ebooks is somewhat of a mystery. As Stephen Fry said, “Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”

Sant Jordi, books and roses

2013-04-23T11:59:17+02:00

All bookshops in Catalonia have street stalls, offering a 10% discount on list prices.

Today is St George’s Day. It is called Sant Jordi in Catalonia, where it is celebrated massively as the Day of the Book and the Rose. Sant Jordi accounts for 8% – 10% of annual book sales, 1.5 million books sold, and sales of €18.3m in 2012. It is also traditional for men to give women roses today. Although it is not a public holiday, it is widely regarded as the Catalan Day (St George is the patron saint of Catalonia) and is much more of a popular festival than the official Day, 11 September, which is taken over by politicians making speeches. Town centres are packed with people buying books and also with groups of schoolchildren being led around the city by their teachers, as part of their school celebration of the day.

This day is World Book and Copyright Day. It is the anniversary of 23 April 1616, the date on which the writers Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega died. They did not all die on the same day however, as England had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar.

This woman is a regular street flower-seller but on Sant Jordi the streets are full of people selling roses, either commercially or on behalf of some association.

Pedantry, the Telegraph and relative clauses

2013-04-16T18:02:05+02:00

The British Daily Telegraph, as I have mentioned before, is the natural home of the language pedant who knows what’s right because he remembers (or thinks he does) what he was taught at school about the English language; and knows too that as a freeborn, educated person he can lay down the law on the subject. As Anthony Burgess said almost half a century ago in Language Made Plain.

In quarrels about words, people seem unwilling to see reason. Mercury, the rogue-god who presides over language, renders them blind to dictionaries and to experts. There is a general conviction that language is not a matter for experts. We all know about language because we all use language. No similar conclusion is drawn from the fact that we all use kidneys, nerves, and intestines.

Now, as the Stroppy Editor informs us, the Telegraph chooses to educate and amuse its readers with an English test compiled by ‘Nevile Gwynne, a self-taught teacher whose book on grammar and slot on Radio 5’s Up All Night have earned him a cult following which includes Prince Charles.’ It asks:

Which of these sentences is grammatically correct?

A) “Do you see who I see?”

B) “Do you see whom I see?”

While native speakers who do understand language goggle in astonishment, I have found that Google Ngram shows no records for “Do you see whom”. And for my readers who are not native speakers I can mention that while whom is indeed the object case of who, it is never used as the object of a question, being reserved essentially for use in relative clauses with prepositions – and even there its use is declining.

This mention of relative clauses brings me on to the main point of this post. The test also asks this question. (I should point out again for the benefit of non-native readers that Evelyn is a name that can be used equally for men and women.):

“I should like to introduce you to my sister Amanda, who lives in New York, to my brother Mark who doesn’t, and to my only other sibling, Evelyn.”

· Evelyn is male

· Evelyn is female

· Impossible to know from the wording of the sentence whether Evelyn is male or female.

According to Gwynne, the correct answer is male. This is purely and simply wrong. The rule, or convention if you prefer, is that a non-defining relative clause is marked off with commas to indicate the parenthesis that it actually is, whereas defining relative clauses have no commas. In this example the speaker has three siblings:

· A sister called Amanda. She lives in New York.

· A brother called Mark. He doesn’t live in New York.

· A third sibling called Evelyn. It is not stated whether Evelyn is a brother or sister, or where he or she does or does not live.

The absence of commas in

my brother Mark who doesn’t [live in New York]

makes it a defining clause, implying the existence of at least one other brother. The case is slightly complicated because it could be written

my brother, Mark, who doesn’t [live in New York]

with commas to indicate the apposition of Mark; but even so the comma after Mark is not, or at least not necessarily, indicative of a non-defining clause. By omitting the name we read:

my brother who doesn’t [live in New York]

That is clearly defining. Mr Gwynne has tripped up over his own rule. Although the brother Mark doesn’t live in New York we have no information about whether Evelyn is a brother or sister. He might be a brother who does live in New York.

The Telegraph writes of Nevile Gwynne:

It is astonishing that an elderly former businessman who has never been to teacher training college, worn an academic gown or taught in a school should be creating such a commotion.

If only it were astonishing that such a person could become known and respected as a teacher and usage guru! It’s the sort of thing that gets professional teachers and usage guides a bad name.

It also demonstrates the absurdity of relying on punctuation to make a subtle difference in meaning, not least because punctuation is only noticeable in writing; in speech – and this example is obviously spoken and is presented as such with inverted commas – the intonation provides the necessary information for clear understanding. It is of a piece with the silly, invented examples of apostrophes and commas that allegedly change meaning; it is not the way in which anyone would ever express themselves naturally. A sentence that relies on punctuation to make its meaning clear is badly written, not because punctuation is too weak to carry that burden but because it is not designed to do so. Punctuation is a guide to ease the reader’s path through what should be a clearly designed and well-constructed sentence. It is no more responsible for structure and design than a guide book to a city can be expected to ensure that the buildings don’t fall down on top of you if you take a wrong turning

I have mentioned the Guardian’s disastrous attempt to publish a language quiz.

Footnotes.

In 1928 the British author Evelyn Waugh married a woman called Evelyn Gardner. They were known to their friends as “He-Evelyn” and “She-Evelyn”.

The link above to Nevile Gwynne leads to a Telegraph article entitled ‘The glamour of grammar’. It is not widely known, and will come as a shock to many who have struggled at school, that these words are doublets – that is, they are variations on the same word, as the COED says of glamour:

glamour (US also glamor)
· n.
1 an attractive and exciting quality, especially sexual allure.
2 archaic enchantment; magic.
– DERIVATIVES glamorous adj. glamorously adv.
– ORIGIN C18: alt. of grammar, with ref. to the occult practices assoc. with learning in medieval times.

The Cambridge comma

2013-04-03T12:07:20+02:00

Louise at Glossophilia describes the Cambridge comma. It is an April Fool’s Day joke, 1 April being the day when people in Britain and some other countries play practical jokes, and newspapers and blogs join in.

The joke is based on the Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, which is a well-established aspect of English punctuation. It is the comma placed before the last item in a list; it takes its name from Oxford University Press, where it is the house style. It is also an extraordinarily controversial matter for reasons that I totally fail to understand. In my own style I use it if it seems appropriate. I would write that someone bought yoghurt, cereal, sausages, bacon, eggs and fruit, there being no need for a comma before fruit, but in a hotel brochure I would recommend writing that the breakfast menu includes yoghurt, cereal, bacon and eggs, and fruit. Pragmatic clarity seems to be the appropriate guide. I also tend to use it when dealing with phrases rather than one-word list items:

I spent the afternoon writing a complicated blog post, translating a publicity brochure for Megacomputers plc, and preparing material for tomorrow’s classes.

Sadly, however, nonsense like this pervades the internet.

It is an affront to common sense to suggest that there is any ambiguity in the sentences that omit the Oxford comma and, as is always the case, intonation makes the meaning perfectly clear (either way if you insist) in speech.

It is worth noting too that the ‘without’ example on the right is false. The list now has only two items (eggs, toast and orange juice), which must clearly be joined by and. To state that idea clearly, the sentence should be:

I had eggs, and toast and orange juice

or

I had toast and orange juice, and eggs.

Either way, however, the comma must be considered as an Oxford comma, coming as it does before the last list item.

I have already discussed the Oxford comma here. Unlike many people I am not dogmatic about it.

The Cambridge comma is a different matter. To quote Louise:

the Cambridge comma introduces a punctuated pause AFTER the word “and” in lists — i.e. before the final list item … An example of the new Cambridge comma illustrates the unexpectedly belated verbal interruption that it offers: “He packed up his books, cigars, teddy bears and, slippers.”

As a Cambridge man myself I have an interest to declare, but it seems to me that this is a remarkably useful way of indicating in print both the emphasis that the and has when it is spoken as a way of introducing a surprising element at the end of a list and also the pause that follows it. Commas are used to guide a reader in understanding a text; they are rarely necessary or incorrect grammatically though they are conventionally used to mark parentheses, non-defining relative clauses for example, in conditional sentences when the if clause (protasis) precedes the consequence (apodosis), in other cases where a subordinate clause preceding the main clause, and in lists. The tendency in English seems to be to minimise punctuation; Spanish, on the other hand, is heavily punctuated in comparison. In particular, it is very common in Spanish to find a comma between subject and verb. Though this is not approved of, it follows the common Spanish system of using commas for rhetorical purposes, representing pauses in speech.

Long live the splendid Cambridge comma! I look forward eagerly to seeing the University Press adopt it formally as part of Cambridge University’s continuing quest for wisdom, intelligence, research and, novelty.

e for umlaut

2013-04-02T18:46:41+02:00

In a post about German umlaut I explained that it is always correct to write an e after the letter that would take umlaut. I recently found an example in a Spanish online newspaper. The German finance minister is called Wolfgang Schäuble but here we see it written as Schaeuble. I am puzzled as to why this should be so. Spanish keyboards have an umlaut character.

London police learn languages

2013-04-02T17:16:37+02:00

The Independent reports that London police are to be given language lessons to help them deal with members of the public who don’t speak English. This is a laudable idea but what about the practicalities?

In the multi-cultural melting pot that is the nation’s capital, it is the sort of question that is bound to arise once in a while for London’s 31,000 police officers: how do you say “Which way did he go?” in Arabic? Or Polish. Or Spanish. Or Bulgarian. Or Vietnamese. Or Farsi. An increasing number of London’s beat bobbies will soon be able to answer such questions without reverting to a dictionary, or Google Translate.

Ignoring the erratic use of question marks and the improbability of a dictionary or Google Translate being available, let alone being of any use in pursuit of a fleeing villain, we are left with the fact that police are likely to be asking rather than answering such questions. And that means that they will face the classic phrasebook problem of being able to ask a question without understanding the answer.

The courses, which offer 40 hours of learning over six weeks, aim to offer a level of knowledge comparable to a GCSE, with vocabulary tailored to the needs of policing.

If that is true, either they have found a revolutionary new teaching method or GCSE is a ridiculously low level. Or the two are comparable in the way that chalk is comparable to cheese. Forty hours of language teaching, especially in a difficult language such as Arabic, Polish, Bulgarian, Vietnamese or Farsi, is practically nothing. A normal language school course is about 120 hours a year with about five years for Spanish speakers starting from scratch to be ready for Cambridge First Certificate.

What will they be learning? According to the Independent:

Spanish

How many drinks have you had today? Cuántas bebidas alcoholicas tomaste hoy?

Drunken Spaniards apparently being a common problem in London. Unlike Spain, where public drunkenness is practically unknown.

Put your hands on your head. Pon tus manos en tu cabeza

Stay back! Quedense por atras!

I am curious to know why the first two sentences are in the familiar tú form while the third is in the polite usted form. Also, Spanish does not use the possessive for parts of the body. It should be Pon (or Ponga) las manos en la cabeza. There should also be accents on alcohólicas and Quédense and inverted question and exclamation marks (¿ and ¡) at the beginning of the first and third sentences respectively. These are small points in themselves but I assume that this is copied directly from the police teaching material.

Italian

No, don’t worry, there is no mafia in London, we have very few drive-by shootings. Non ti preoccupare; non esiste la Mafia a Londra. Ci sono pochi sparatorie da macchina in corsa

A Google search for < drive-by shooting Italy > produces no relevant results for Italy. There are lots for the USA and even one from my home town of Crosby, Merseyside. But none for the Italian Mafia.

’Ello, ’ello, ’ello. Salve, salve, salve

Do the British police really say this? (For non-British readers, this is a cliché representation of the way British police officers speak.) And do Italians really say salve?

Russian

Yes, I agree, London in the snow doesn’t look that different from Moscow. Da, soglasen, pod snegom london ne tak otlichaetsya ot moskvy

Come along quietly. Tikho, tikho, poshli so mnoi

Put the handcuffs on. Nadet' naruchniki

Really?

Arabic

What did the suspect look like? Kaif kana shakl al mouttahham?

This is the point at which the police officer needs to understand the answer.

We would advise you to keep your iPad out of sight. Nansahuka biaan tatruk al ipad ba’idan a’an al-anzar

I am surprised to see ipad in the Arabic translation. While I cannot be sure about commercial names, I do know that Arabic has no p sound. When I lived in Saudi Arabia my name was transliterated into Arabic with the symbol corresponding to a voiced b, making my name rather like beater.

I repeat, it is excellent that the police should have language skills. However, something is going wrong with the way in which they are being taught. Or perhaps with the way in which the Independent has reported this process.

Some Italian artist or other

2013-03-25T11:38:58+01:00

Michelangelo

The other day I was checking a translation that had been done from English into Spanish for a company with a worldwide reputation for manufacturing products of the highest quality, the sort of company that is a byword for reliability and excellence, where everything can be expected to be perfect. My job was just to check that the original English text had been understood properly, especially some idiomatic expressions, and to answer a few specific queries – but I when I saw a reference to ‘Leonardo da Vinci's David’ I thought I would do the client a favour and change it to Michelangelo. It seems that even in a company such as this, and it is based in Europe, general cultural knowledge is not what it might be.

Leonardo da Vinci

On disappearing and being disappeared

2013-03-23T13:30:38+01:00

Over the years I have often explained to English-speakers that it is a mistake to say that people ‘were disappeared’ during the Argentinian dictatorship. This misconception, which sounds appropriately cynical in English, is based on a misunderstanding of how the Spanish language works. I have explained the linguistic aspects in detail here and do not wish to repeat them. Suffice it to say that in Spanish, unlike English, a past participle of an intransitive verb can have a passive meaning: el accidente ocurrido ayer is the accident that occurred yesterday; the inflections in Spanish avoid any doubt as to the meaning but because the forms of the English past tense and past participle are identical the accident occurred yesterday can have only one interpretation as an active verb voice. So, while the Spanish word desaparecido(s) is indeed the past participle of desaparecer (disappear), it is the usual word for people missing in accidents and natural disasters and has no special forced meaning. The implication in Spanish is simply that those people were missing. Nevertheless, the idea has taken hold in English. The string “were disappeared” has 91,300 ghits including 171 in a News search.

On 16 March 2013 Manuel Rivas wrote in El País (my emphasis):

En Córdoba, Argentina, se está celebrando el juicio por crímenes de lesa humanidad contra 44 represores, acusados de secuestrar, torturar y hacer desaparecer a cientos de personas en el campo de concentración de La Perla. (In Córdoba, Argentina, 44 oppressors are on trial for crimes against humanity: kidnapping and torturing hundreds of people, and making them disappear, in the La Perla concentration camp.)

The Gran Diccionario Oxford too shows the verb as intransitive with hacer desaparecer as the transitive use (my emphasis):

desaparecer [E3] verbo intransitivo

1 (de un lugar) to disappear; desapareció sin dejar huella he disappeared o vanished without trace, he did a vanishing trick o a disappearing act (humorístico); hizo desaparecer el sombrero ante sus ojos he made the hat disappear o [sic] vanish before their very eyes; en esta oficina las cosas tienden a desaparecer things tend to disappear o go missing in this office; see at mapa

2 «dolor/síntoma» to disappear; «cicatriz» to disappear, go; «costumbre» to disappear, die out; lo dejé en remojo y la mancha desapareció I left it to soak and the stain came out; tenía que hacer desaparecer las pruebas he had to get rid of the evidence

3 (de la vista) to disappear; el sol desapareció detrás de una nube the sun disappeared o went behind a cloud; el ladrón desapareció entre la muchedumbre the thief disappeared o vanished into the crowd; desaparece de mi vista antes de que te pegue (familiar) get out of my sight before I wallop you (familiar)

n desaparecerse v pron (Andes)

1 (de un lugar) to disappear; se desaparecieron mis gafas my glasses have disappeared

2 (de la vista) to disappear

In view of all that it was with considerable surprise that I read this sentence in El sueño del celta (The Dream of the Celt) by Mario Vargas Llosa (my emphasis):

… como polaco, [Joseph Conrad] odia a Alemania tanto como a Rusia, que desaparecieron a su país por muchos siglos. (… as a Pole, Joseph Conrad hates Germany as much as Russia because they wiped out his own country for many centuries.)

There it is: desaparecer used as an active transitive verb, not even the passive past participle, and if it is in a book that won the Nobel Prize it can’t just be dismissed out of hand. A look at the Spanish Royal Academy’s Dictionary is interesting. For desparecer it has:

1. tr. Ocultar, quitar de la vista con presteza. U. t. c. intr. y c. prnl. [Usado también como intransitivo y como pronominal]

2. intr. Dejar de existir.

That is to say, its first definition is of a transitive verb (to hide or remove from sight swiftly) that can also be used intransitively. It is not for me to argue with Vargas Llosa or the DRAE but I can say that I have never seen desaparecer used in this way before and a good writer in a good newspaper uses hacer desaparecer for a transitive meaning. Nor is this directly transitive usage of desaparecer mentioned in the GDO, presumably because it is so rare.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

2013-03-21T12:11:16+01:00

This morning I happened to come across the old chestnut

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

I was surprised (well, no I suppose wasn’t surprised really) to find that this sentence has its own Wikipedia entry listing no fewer than 11 possible interpretations:

(as an imperative) measure the speed of flying insects like you would measure that of an arrow - i.e. (You should) time flies as you would (time) an arrow

(imperative) measure the speed of flying insects like an arrow would - i.e. (You should) time flies by the same method that an arrow would (time them)

(imperative) very quickly measure the speed of flying insects - i.e. (You should) time flies as quickly as an arrow would (be or move)

(imperative) measure the speed of flying insects that are like arrows - i.e. (You should) time (those) flies (that are) like an arrow

(declarative, i.e. neutrally stating a proposition) all of a type of flying insect, “time-flies,” collectively enjoy a single arrow (compare Fruit flies like a banana)

(declarative) each of a type of flying insect, “time-flies,” individually enjoys a different arrow (similar comparison applies)

(declarative) each of a type of flying insect, “time-flies,” individually enjoys an occasional arrow when there is an opportunity (compare: “He prefers beer, but I like a martini”)

(declarative) the common metaphor “time,” moves in a way an arrow would (which, depending on the context of the phrase may mean “moves in a straight line”, “moves by parabola”, “its move depends on the wind”, etc.)

(declarative) a copy of the magazine Time, when thrown, moves in a similar manner to that of an arrow.

(declarative) time flees (attempts to escape) in the same way that an arrow does.

(declarative) The company responsible for publishing Time Magazine (via synecdoche) is fleeing like an arrow would.

Peter Harvey, linguist

Spanish possessive adjectives and menus

Corpulence and false friends

The Ballad of the Amateur Grammarian

Theatres for surgery

British media and the English language

Unaspirated h

Of adders, oranges and doilies

Four once more: 20 May 2013

I would in the past

Would can also mean that an action was habitual. It is rather more formal than used to, it must be associated with time reference, and it is only used with dynamic verbs: When I was young I would play football every Saturday but not I would live in Frankfurt in the 1970s.

Muckle Hell, Poverty and Grimness

Dull Flag,Tongue of Gangsta, Whirly, Muckle Hell, Poverty, Grimness, Rumblings, Gutterpool, Rotten Gutter, Grotsetter, Gorehouse, Doomy, Hyndgreenie, Insabysetter and many more place names from the Orkney and Shetland Islands can be found on the ever-fascinating Strange Maps blog.

Collective tunnels

up with which we should no longer be required to put

Four once more: 13 May 2013

English and the Guardian

Ultraconserved words.

Accents and tildes

The biter bit

Four once more

Are you swarve?

Four once more: 29-4-2013

I couldn't give a sausage

Dictionaries, academies and the Guardian

Sant Jordi, books and roses

Pedantry, the Telegraph and relative clauses

The Cambridge comma

e for umlaut

London police learn languages

Some Italian artist or other

On disappearing and being disappeared

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.