I like language: talking, listening, reading, writing. As a language user (Enlgish only of the 6000 languages John McWhorter says there are), I enjoy learning about words and language. I listened to McWhorter discuss the history of English. Among other things, he explained the "meaningless 'do'". We say "Do you play soccer?" but most languages don't have such a construction and use something more like "You play soccer?" We picked up the do from Celtic languages, such as Welsh and Cornish, which are minor ancestors of English, being a member of the Germanic family of tongues.
The other day, we acquired The Secret Life of Words, a Great Course by Prof. Anne Curzan of the University of Michigan. I haven't started it yet, being occupied with another set of lectures by Steven Novella on how deceptive our minds are. Curzan's lecture titles are very good, such as "How "Snuck" Sneaked In "and "#$@%!—Forbidden Words". Her course is longer than McWhorter's and seems to pretty well cover the landscape of words in different areas, such as the words in romance and love and the words in sports.
McWhorter also referred to "snuck". He said in about 1920, most people would have said "sneaked" but by about 1960, it had changed to "snuck." I enjoyed the book "Out of Control" by Kevin Kelly and used it as a text in a course. He pointed out phenomena such as a flock of starlings or blackbirds that fly in a great mass, turning in the sky, without directions from a leader or other controls, yet working smoothly and without mishap.
I am intrigued that I lived during the last 7 decades and had schooling in English but right during that time, all around me, words were entering and leaving the language without a master authority and without very much disturbing our peace or comprehension. I don't know if my 10 yr. old self would have said "sneaked' or not but now I use "snuck". How and when did I learn that? What a snucky little word!
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
