World Wide Words -- 06 Sep 03
Michael Quinion
DoNotUse at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Sep 5 18:09:24 UTC 2003
WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 357 Saturday 6 September 2003
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Editor: Michael Quinion, Thornbury, Bristol, UK ISSN 1470-1448
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Contents
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1. Feedback, notes and comments.
2. Turns of Phrase: Flash mob.
3. Weird Words: Bromopnea.
4. Book Review: Spoken Here.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.
C. FAQ of the week.
1. Feedback, notes and comments
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NORMAL SERVICE RESUMED, ALMOST Thank you all for your forbearance
during my extended semi-vacation in August. The patio extension is
complete and the manuscript of my new book has been accepted by the
publisher, so I can once again turn my attention to writing World
Wide Words. You will notice some small differences, mainly those of
omission rather than commission. Endnote has gone, as has the Sic!
section, because I felt these had run their course, at least for
the moment. I shall be trying to keep the newsletter a little less
long than it was before the break; the contents often sprawled, so
I hope to keep issues slimmer. However, like any other diet, this
one may soon fall victim to a lack of self-control. Comments and
suggestions welcome, as always.
2. Turns of Phrase: Flash mob
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In the middle of June, groups of people began to congregate in New
York without warning to carry out some daft action - the first was
in May, but the one that hit the news was on 15 June, when a crowd
of 200 materialised in Macy's department store in Manhattan,
supposedly in search of a $10,000 "love rug". The next, on 2 July,
formed in the mezzanine of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and did nothing
but burst into applause on cue. Such absurdist crowds are assembled
through instructions passed from person to person using e-mail,
text messaging and other instant media.
The figure behind these New Yorker "flash mobs" is known only as
Bill. His Mob Project aims periodically to create inexplicable but
peaceful gatherings somewhere in New York for just ten minutes at a
time. Copycat schemes quickly sprouted in big cities all over
America and the idea was soon exported to many other countries.
Was this just a manifestation of Silly-Season hot-summer madness,
or was there more to it? One pointer to its being rather more than
the fashion of a moment is that several verbal compounds of the
name have already been formed, including "flash mobber" and "flash
mobbing", as well as the abbreviation "mobber", always a sign of a
term that has hit the collective unconscious. Some commentators
argue that it is actually a reflection of a sense of alienation
among young people, while others fear it has been so successful an
idea that it will not be long before others adopt the concept for
less benign purposes.
The "flash mob" phenomenon is part sanctioned insanity, part
Seinfeld on the loose, part nonsensical wanderings through city
streets en masse.
[Christian Science Monitor, 4 Aug. 2003]
Even the usually staid Swiss are getting into the act. During one
recent flash mob scene at the Zurich railway station, flash mobbers
formed a long single-file line with hands linked, dividing the
station.
[Toronto Star, 5 Aug. 2003]
3. Weird Words: Bromopnea /'br at Um@U,ni:a/
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Bad breath.
You might instead call it malodor, halitosis or "fetor ex ore"
(which is just Latin for "bad smell from the mouth"), but this is
the most technically arcane term for the condition. If it reminds
you of the element bromine, that's appropriate, since both words
come from Greek "bromos", a stink (the element was given that name
because it has an irritating smell). A closely similar medical term
is "bromidrosis" for strong-smelling sweat. In our case, the second
element is from Greek "pnoe", breathing, which also turns up in
words such as "apnoea", temporary cessation of breathing, often
while asleep, and "tachypnoea", abnormally rapid breathing (and
"pneumonia" is a closely related word, from "pneumon", lung). In
the UK, these are still the common spellings, but the US forms in
"-pnea" are increasingly common, and "bromopnea" never seems to be
spelled any other way.
4. Book Review: Spoken Here
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Does it matter that languages are dying out? Should we worry about
them as much as we do about losing the giant panda or the Siberian
tiger? Some people would say not, arguing that a species that has
become extinct cannot be brought back, whilst a language that has
been recorded can be taught and so returned to life. That attitude
is surely horribly mistaken, making too much of the special case of
Hebrew, and it's one that Mark Abley's new book refutes.
When a language dies - and one is vanishing about every fortnight
on average at the moment - you also lose much of the environment
and the culture in which it existed and thrived. Though linguists
now dismiss the old Sapir-Whorf theory that the form of a language
determines what you can think and say in it, there's no doubt that
subtleties of observation, feelings and ideas are often easier to
say using one tongue than another, especially when they refer to
the environment in which a language community has grown up and
operates. You don't have to evoke the supposed 100 words for snow
in Inuit languages (actually a misunderstanding of the way those
languages work) to know this. Mr Abley mentions the Berinmo, a
hunter-gatherer people in Papua New Guinea, whose language doesn't
have separate words for blue and green, but which does have words
for two shades of yellow that outsiders can hardly distinguish, a
discrimination that's important to them in that environment.
The author is a journalist who has conservation in his blood and
knows the value of stories about human beings in bringing a topic
to life. So this is a very readable book, although its conclusions
are often sad. He points out that most nearly extinct languages are
poorly recorded (so revitalising them would be impossible, even
leaving aside any other factors), with the survival of many hanging
on the memories of a few very elderly men and women, often with
nobody to converse with (he recounts the frustration of linguists
who know of only two surviving speakers of one Aboriginal language
who, because one is male and one female, are forbidden by tribal
taboos to talk to one another).
There are some positive stories, too. There are active attempts to
revive a few languages, especially in the Celtic borders of the
United Kingdom. Welsh has clawed its way back into mainstream use
with some 25% of Welsh people claiming knowledge of it, a very few
people are fluent in Cornish for the first time in 200 years, and
Manx, the old language of the Isle of Man, is once again being
spoken by a few locals. It's too early to say whether these last
two represent a brief reappearance through efforts of enthusiasts
or a genuine grass-roots resurgence (I suspect the former and that
Mark Abley is being too optimistic in his reports; the influence of
English among minority language communities is all too great and is
likely to be even greater in those that lack a continuous oral
tradition to provide a foundation).
He travels from the Arctic Circle to Australia, covering on the way
Yiddish, the Native North American languages Mohawk, Yuchi and
Inuktitut, several Aboriginal languages, plus others such as Boro
(a tongue of north-eastern India). His chapter on the political
divisions among the speakers of Occitan in southern France - of
which some argue that a related language, Provençal, is merely a
dialect, while others equally fervently claim it's a language in
its own right - illustrates how language survival or revival often
has a political or parochial dimension.
Recommended.
[Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, was
published in hardback by Houghton Mifflin on 6 August 2003; pp322;
ISBN 0-618-23649-X; publisher's price US$25.00]
AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
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C. FAQ of the week
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