Assorted language nerdery

Hi there! Hope you’re doing well. The holidays are approaching, and with it the New Year. I’m bound to set and share some resolutions both for this blog and my language learning journey, but they’ll come at a later time. Today, I wanted to share a curated assortment of language nerdery that I used to feature in an old newsletter that didn’t really focus on languages but had a Language Corner section (BTW, if you’re interested in checking my essays and short stories, they’re all hosted here — www.theobservational.net).

Semantle: the Dark Souls Wordle clone. If you thought Wordle was frustrating, wait till you hear about Semantle! If Wordle takes 6 guesses max, Semantle will take you for a spin and have you guessing tens and hundreds of times. You get closer by guessing semantically similar words, and it’s nearly impossible to make progress without hints. I’m still not sure if it means flexing your abstract thinking or trying to think like a mindless NLP algorithm. [The Dark Souls comparison is unfortunately not mine. But do read the Washington Post article that coined it for more insights on why and how we play.]

How punctuation enters the spoken language. I don’t think you’ll ever see a person drawing a question or exclamation mark in the air, but one punctuation mark is already “in” our common parlance. Yes, I’m talking about air quotes, which are used to indicate that what is being said is ironic or mocking, or is not a turn of phrase the speaker would typically employ. As Lauren Gawne writes in her latest post on the Superlinguo blog:

Air quote gestures are weird. They’re weird because they have a really specific form and a specific use and meaning for people who use them. Most gestures that have these features are in a category of ‘emblems’, things like a thumbs up (👍), please sign (✌️) or fingers crossed (🤞). All of these emblems have a meaning and use even if there’s no speech. Air quotes, in contrast, need speech to make sense. So they’re weird.

Think about how weird and common it is the next time you air quote something. And if air quotes are still not a part of your arsenal, make sure to check this snippet from Friends for a primer on how to (not) use them.

The English word with the most senses. I struggle to contain myself when someone brings up the “Inuits have X words for snow” factoid. It’s more of a myth, really as most Inuit words for snow are derived from two roots.

Now that you have one fewer piece of linguistic trivia to share at dinner parties, let me offer a substitute. Apparently, the English word “set” has the most meanings, with 430 senses listed in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989. The word can mean “to thicken” (the color sets), “to pass below the horizon” (the sun sets), “to fit” (the coat sets well), and 427 other things! Maybe not as sexy as “little-known language has a boatload of synonyms for this one specific thing” but at least it’s true.

The wonders of transposition. In 1853, a writer to Notes & Queries observed that the third line of Gray’s Elegy can be transposed 11 different ways while retaining its sense:

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.
The weary ploughman plods his homeward way.
The weary ploughman homeward plods his way.
The ploughman, weary, plods his homeward way.
The ploughman weary homeward plods his way.
Weary the ploughman plods his homeward way.
Weary the ploughman homeward plods his way.
Homeward the ploughman plods his weary way.
Homeward the ploughman weary plods his way.
Homeward the weary ploughman plods his way.
The homeward ploughman weary plods his way.
The homeward ploughman plods his weary way.

Some forty years later, they’ve added 252 additional versions. Only shows how flexible the English syntax can be! I’ve learned this little piece of language trivia from Futility Closet - an Internet cabinet of curiosities that I recommend you follow, if you ever find yourself in need of a fix for fun facts.

Gerund = nonsense. Yerunda (Ерунда). Yerunda is a Russian word that found its ways into other languages in countries where Russian is spoken. It means “Nonsense” but it’s etymology is more than peculiar, as it stems from… gerund! As Russian doesn’t have a gerund form, seminary students would find it a hard concept to learn. And sometimes it made absolutely no sense, the word yerunda was born.

Think before you Ctrl+I. What do you when you need to integrate a foreign word into your text? In other words, do you go basturma, “basturma” or basturma? I never gave it much thought and would usually italicize words coming from other languages and cultures. Notably, not ALL words but those still not incorporated by the almighty dictionary. Words that sound exotic and other.

If you’re like me, The Case Against Italicizing “Foreign” Words by Khairani Barokka might provide some eye-opening insights. Like why do we do nothing to words like masala and falafel but feel the urge to italicize things like çiğ köfte (best Turkish vegan snack, trust me). As the author put it:

I’ve come to understand the practice of italicizing such words as a form of linguistic gatekeeping; a demarcation between which words are “exotic” or “not found in the English language,” and those that have a rightful place in the text: the non-italicized.

It’s an interesting aspect I haven’t considered before, and I’m not sure I agree 100%. After all, my own country was never colonized by an Anglophone force and highlighting Baltic and Slavic words and concepts (like khrushyovka) helps me add some spice and flair.

Happy to hear your take!

Word of the week. FRAMILY vs. FRENEMY. As my colleagues know, I abuse at least two substances: puns and portmanteaus. And while I feel no shame for my puns, any time I give birth to a new portmanteau term, I feel… dirty.

But not all portmanteaus are made equal. Some - like the word gerrymandering (Gerry + salamander, I’m not kidding) become so ubiquitous that we forget their ungodly origins. Others, like frenemy (friend+enemy) or brunch (breakfast+lunch) just sound sort of right, expressing a concept that exists outside of the word.

But there’s a category of portmanteaus that sounds forced, and words like FRAMILY (friends+family) fall into it. Corporate Lithuanian even had the word šeimanda (family+team, a snazzy HR term) introduced to it.

Taken from Messenger’s home page. Something a robot would approve of.

Painful portmanteaus are often concocted by corporations, advertisers and marketers. A great and timeless piece by Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times (written as a diss of Siemens Healthineers) says it all:

The second rule is to resist portmanteau names, in which respectable words — in this case health, engineers and pioneers — are cut up and glued together to create something monstrous.

Recent corporate examples include “innovalue”, “sustainagility”, “edgenuity” and “ideation”.

Interestingly, out of the 4 words there, ideation became something rather usable.

Anyway, I have more of these! Happy to share next time I’m out of ideas for something more substantial. Share your language trivia in the comments and babble to you soon!