Dante's Peek(etymonline.com)
etymonline.com
Dante's Peek
https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/dante%27s-peek
27 comments
As a native bilingual of Catalan/Spanish, who speaks some English and French, it's pretty awesome how much stuff is the same in all languages.
I love etymology and usually all the higher-language words come just from latin and are the same in all of them.
English might not sound frenchy, but it has a lot of words coming from it, (-ation, -tion, -ssion, -able, -isme, -if/-ive
I love etymology and usually all the higher-language words come just from latin and are the same in all of them.
English might not sound frenchy, but it has a lot of words coming from it, (-ation, -tion, -ssion, -able, -isme, -if/-ive
> Our English masks this because anciently it seems never to have had such a high-low division
What an odd assertion. There's a massive difference between "proper English" and how it's commonly spoken. Reading something like Trainspotting makes that evidently clear if you happen not to chat with ordinary people regularly.
What an odd assertion. There's a massive difference between "proper English" and how it's commonly spoken. Reading something like Trainspotting makes that evidently clear if you happen not to chat with ordinary people regularly.
"Proper English" i.e. Received Pronunciation is not a high dialect. It was not used in court or government before the development of modern English some 700 years ago. Before then, that role was filled by French, thanks to the Norman conquest - so the need for a high-low distinction never developed in English to its typical extent.
In general, English in England does not display the variety of dialect found in mainland Europe or elsewhere in the world. Despite a variety of accent, it is overwhelmingly homogeneous in grammar and vocabulary (outside of slang).
There is no equivalent for English to the difference between Hoch- and Plattdeutsch, or between Tuscan Italian and its other variants - in both of these cases, the overwhelming part of the population learns both their local low dialect and the high dialect as distinct "languages".
In general, English in England does not display the variety of dialect found in mainland Europe or elsewhere in the world. Despite a variety of accent, it is overwhelmingly homogeneous in grammar and vocabulary (outside of slang).
There is no equivalent for English to the difference between Hoch- and Plattdeutsch, or between Tuscan Italian and its other variants - in both of these cases, the overwhelming part of the population learns both their local low dialect and the high dialect as distinct "languages".
What is interesting though is that middle and old-english sound a lot more similar to German / Saxon.
Things like good morning is very similar in german, dutch and Scandinavian languages.
Things like good morning is very similar in german, dutch and Scandinavian languages.
I thought this strange as well. It makes me wonder if "proper English" is much closer to our various dialects than in these other high/low language pairs.
English definitely has two registers, that you might find in use in the same sentence. This becomes clear if you e.g. translate a scientific text into Dutch or German.
"Carbon" becomes "Kohlenstoff", and "metabolism" becomes "Stoffwechsel" in German.
These might be literally translated back as "Coal-stuff" and "stuff-change" but that is an unfamiliar way to say it in English because it remains in the lower register, not derived academically from old Latin and Greek.
"Carbon" becomes "Kohlenstoff", and "metabolism" becomes "Stoffwechsel" in German.
These might be literally translated back as "Coal-stuff" and "stuff-change" but that is an unfamiliar way to say it in English because it remains in the lower register, not derived academically from old Latin and Greek.
I don’t buy this argument. No one says “Coal-stuff” or “Stuff-change” in the Anglophonic world, so to the extent that those constructs form a lower register, the lower register isn’t spoken anywhere or by anyone. I can believe the idea that there is a gradient of formality that exists across the anglophonic world—I grew up in a rural area and my original dialect would be considered uneducated and low class, but I learned how to speak in a more educated manner in college (not deliberately mind you—I just adapted via immersion). There are probably more French-derived words in my “higher” dialect, but I don’t think that’s the biggest distinction between the two (probably the higher dialect has fewer irregularities and a larger vocabulary in general). Still, I get the impression that the author is describing an altogether different phenomena.
> I don’t buy this argument. No one says “Coal-stuff” or “Stuff-change” in the Anglophonic world, so to the extent that those constructs form a lower register,
I think you're missing the point entirely. Of course no-one says those. Did you miss the "that is an unfamiliar way to say it in English" part? We do say "coal" and "stuff", but we just switch up when talking about carbon, the stuff of coal.
The point is not that there are different dialects (although there are to an extent, but that's an entirely sperate discussion) It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.
This may be "an altogether different phenomena" to what the author is describing, though that should not stop you buying it. Equivalently, it should not impede your purchase of the concept that English does have some form of "high/low language pairs".
I think you're missing the point entirely. Of course no-one says those. Did you miss the "that is an unfamiliar way to say it in English" part? We do say "coal" and "stuff", but we just switch up when talking about carbon, the stuff of coal.
The point is not that there are different dialects (although there are to an extent, but that's an entirely sperate discussion) It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.
This may be "an altogether different phenomena" to what the author is describing, though that should not stop you buying it. Equivalently, it should not impede your purchase of the concept that English does have some form of "high/low language pairs".
You say that English can be sorted into two registers, but the example you give of a low register doesn't actually exist or get recognized or used, so I'm not sure how that is evidence that there are two registers and not just one.
> It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.
But the example you give is of English using the same word for common and academic context.
> It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.
But the example you give is of English using the same word for common and academic context.
English uses one register for some words, e.g. "coal, handbag" and the othe register for other words, e.g. "carbon", "metabolism".
You're missing the point of "but the example you give of a low register" - English does not use the lower register in that context. It's noticeable by contrast with other languages where that higher register is largely absent, which do use the standard register throughout.
This guy gets it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24981922 , for what it's worth. If you don't think if it's a significant point, then stop reading.
You're missing the point of "but the example you give of a low register" - English does not use the lower register in that context. It's noticeable by contrast with other languages where that higher register is largely absent, which do use the standard register throughout.
This guy gets it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24981922 , for what it's worth. If you don't think if it's a significant point, then stop reading.
Of course English doesn't use the low register in this context - which is why I'm wondering why it was provided as an example of English having two registers. And "coal" and "carbon" are not interchangeable besides for register. They just mean different things.
> If you don't think if it's a significant point, then stop reading.
My point is that I either don't understand the point, or the point is wrong. Not that I think it is an insignificant point. And that isn't a very productive way to share messages on a message board.
> If you don't think if it's a significant point, then stop reading.
My point is that I either don't understand the point, or the point is wrong. Not that I think it is an insignificant point. And that isn't a very productive way to share messages on a message board.
> Of course English doesn't use the low register in this context - which is why I'm wondering why it was provided as an example of English having two registers
If English "doesn't use the low register in this context", then that implies that there _are_ different registers for different contexts, right?
In English, that is. In Dutch or German or Swedish, there are not.
> And "coal" and "carbon" are not interchangeable.
Um? No one said that they were, and that's not the point in any form. We're talking about formation of (related) words. IDK if this conversation is worthwhile, to be honest. You seem to be actively evading the point.
If English "doesn't use the low register in this context", then that implies that there _are_ different registers for different contexts, right?
In English, that is. In Dutch or German or Swedish, there are not.
> And "coal" and "carbon" are not interchangeable.
Um? No one said that they were, and that's not the point in any form. We're talking about formation of (related) words. IDK if this conversation is worthwhile, to be honest. You seem to be actively evading the point.
I never argued that English only uses one register. I argued that you can't point to English having two registers by pointing out a usage of a single register and a non-existent example in another register.
e.g. "There are two ways for offense to score in American football. One is a touchdown. Translating a touchdown into soccer is equivalent of saying the ball is kicked past the goal line, but when you literally reconvert that back to American football, you can't score by kicking the ball across the goal line.". That does not prove that there are two ways to score in football. That proves that there is at least one way to score in football.
> IDK if this conversation is worthwhile, to be honest. You seem to be actively evading the point.
Bizarre coming from someone who just said "stop reading if you don't like it".
e.g. "There are two ways for offense to score in American football. One is a touchdown. Translating a touchdown into soccer is equivalent of saying the ball is kicked past the goal line, but when you literally reconvert that back to American football, you can't score by kicking the ball across the goal line.". That does not prove that there are two ways to score in football. That proves that there is at least one way to score in football.
> IDK if this conversation is worthwhile, to be honest. You seem to be actively evading the point.
Bizarre coming from someone who just said "stop reading if you don't like it".
I do think I'm missing your point, but it wasn't because I missed your 'unfamiliar' remark so much as it's confusing (how can a manner of speech be universally confusing unless it simply doesn't exist, and presumably you aren't arguing that it doesn't exist while also arguing that it does exist?).
> The point is not that there are different dialects (although there are to an extent, but that's an entirely sperate discussion) It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.
I don't understand the distinction you're describing in English. You give an example of "coal" and "stuff" and "carbon", but I don't understand why you're arguing that "carbon" belongs to a higher/academic register. Your examples seem to support the inverse of your argument, which is that German (and presumably other languages) has a distinction between a higher and lower register (one could choose between "Carbon" or "Coal-stuff") and English doesn't have this distinction (you must use "carbon" when talking about carbon and "coal" when talking about coal).
> This may be "an altogether different phenomena" to what the author is describing, though that should not stop you buying it. Equivalently, it should not impede your purchase of the concept that English does have some form of "high/low language pairs".
I don't disbelieve the author's premise, but that's not your premise. English doesn't have a single "high dialect" or a single "low dialect", but again, I don't think that's what TFA is talking about with respect to other European languages. Rather, I'm guessing the author is arguing that because Latin was the written language for continental Europe, and because the scribal class was markedly different than the illiterate masses, there was a considerable divergence between formal/written Latin and vulgar Latin which was persisted as vulgar Latin became the Romance languages--indeed, this division has deep historical roots into Latin itself (scribal/educated Latin was different than spoken Latin) and perhaps even earlier. On the other hand, in England, that educated Latin tradition never took root--the English vernacular quickly became the language of literacy hundreds of years before written French, Spanish, Italian etc came into existence (continental scribes were clinging to written Latin). Again, I'm not sure if that's what the author is driving at, but it seems that way to me.
> The point is not that there are different dialects (although there are to an extent, but that's an entirely sperate discussion) It's that English vocabulary can be sorted into these two registers, a common and an academic one, and that this distinction is largely absent in several other European languages.
I don't understand the distinction you're describing in English. You give an example of "coal" and "stuff" and "carbon", but I don't understand why you're arguing that "carbon" belongs to a higher/academic register. Your examples seem to support the inverse of your argument, which is that German (and presumably other languages) has a distinction between a higher and lower register (one could choose between "Carbon" or "Coal-stuff") and English doesn't have this distinction (you must use "carbon" when talking about carbon and "coal" when talking about coal).
> This may be "an altogether different phenomena" to what the author is describing, though that should not stop you buying it. Equivalently, it should not impede your purchase of the concept that English does have some form of "high/low language pairs".
I don't disbelieve the author's premise, but that's not your premise. English doesn't have a single "high dialect" or a single "low dialect", but again, I don't think that's what TFA is talking about with respect to other European languages. Rather, I'm guessing the author is arguing that because Latin was the written language for continental Europe, and because the scribal class was markedly different than the illiterate masses, there was a considerable divergence between formal/written Latin and vulgar Latin which was persisted as vulgar Latin became the Romance languages--indeed, this division has deep historical roots into Latin itself (scribal/educated Latin was different than spoken Latin) and perhaps even earlier. On the other hand, in England, that educated Latin tradition never took root--the English vernacular quickly became the language of literacy hundreds of years before written French, Spanish, Italian etc came into existence (continental scribes were clinging to written Latin). Again, I'm not sure if that's what the author is driving at, but it seems that way to me.
> I don't understand the distinction you're describing in English. You give an example of "coal" and "stuff" and "carbon", but I don't understand why you're arguing that "carbon" belongs to a higher/academic register. Your examples seem to support the inverse of your argument, which is that German (and presumably other languages) has a distinction between a higher and lower register (one could choose between "Carbon" or "Coal-stuff") and English doesn't have this distinction (you must use "carbon" when talking about carbon and "coal" when talking about coal).
Not the OP, but - in German and other similar languages, there is no equivalent to "carbon" as a term with a separate etymology. The word for carbon is "coalstuff" - it is the thing which coal is made out of. Similarly, oxygen is "acidstuff" - because it was originally believed to be the cause of chemical acidity.
If English had developed as other Germanic languages did, it would also use these kinds of terms for the elements, as well as in other parts of science, academia, and formal speech. Compound terms, which form a large part of common language (e.g. motor-way, hand-bag, table-cloth) would also be used in technical, political, and legal language.
Instead, the "high" part of English is derived from Latin and Greek. The English call it science, rather than "nature-wit-making", because of the use of Latin among early academics meant they already had the word "scientia" instead. Nobody felt the need to apply Germanic-style compounds in a realm where all the vocabulary already existed.
This results in two registers in modern English - that for words which are used in common speech, which are distinctly Germanic-sounding, and use lots of compounds; and that for words which come from academic, scientific, or political speech, which are Latin- and Greek-sounding, and largely lack compounds.
English speakers can mostly automatically use these registers to affect their communication: you can easily make something sound pompous with a lot of high-register Latin-based terminology, or alternatively make it sound plain and common with low-register Germanic compounds.
Not the OP, but - in German and other similar languages, there is no equivalent to "carbon" as a term with a separate etymology. The word for carbon is "coalstuff" - it is the thing which coal is made out of. Similarly, oxygen is "acidstuff" - because it was originally believed to be the cause of chemical acidity.
If English had developed as other Germanic languages did, it would also use these kinds of terms for the elements, as well as in other parts of science, academia, and formal speech. Compound terms, which form a large part of common language (e.g. motor-way, hand-bag, table-cloth) would also be used in technical, political, and legal language.
Instead, the "high" part of English is derived from Latin and Greek. The English call it science, rather than "nature-wit-making", because of the use of Latin among early academics meant they already had the word "scientia" instead. Nobody felt the need to apply Germanic-style compounds in a realm where all the vocabulary already existed.
This results in two registers in modern English - that for words which are used in common speech, which are distinctly Germanic-sounding, and use lots of compounds; and that for words which come from academic, scientific, or political speech, which are Latin- and Greek-sounding, and largely lack compounds.
English speakers can mostly automatically use these registers to affect their communication: you can easily make something sound pompous with a lot of high-register Latin-based terminology, or alternatively make it sound plain and common with low-register Germanic compounds.
That clarifies the argument, but I'm still not sure I buy it. I do agree that there are words that convey more pomp and that those words tend to be derived from Latin and Greek (typically by way of French), but I don't know that the distribution is particularly bimodal. Off the cuff, I would think it's more likely that "pomp" of a word is derived from its distance from the core of the lexicon, because these rarer words indicate more education. The core of English is based on Old English and Old Norse, so naturally there are a lot of these words that seem pedestrian, but on the other extreme there are other words very recently borrowed into English (and thus at the periphery of our lexicon) that tend to convey a lot of pomp--typically these are from Latin or French or Greek, but sometimes even from other Germanic languages (e.g., schadenfreude, hygge, etc). To restate my point, the distribution appears gradual rather than bimodal.
I think you've missed the word "anciently" in that sentence. He's talking about pre-modern English.
Well, they say "Our English masks this", which suggests they're talking about contemporary English and offering the lack of past division as an explanation for a lack of current division. I don't buy it. In fact, prior to broadcasting, the differences were greater I reckon.
Is it just me or does the article seem to end rather abruptly as if much more was intended and perhaps accidentally left off or just published before completion?
I was wondering if I missed some "next page" button somewhere
Aside: The Online Etymological Dictionary, to which this blog is attached, is one of the rare true gems of the Internet, and harkens back to the Early Web in both time and spirit.
It's a tool I make heavy use of --- the Mastodon toots hashtagged #OccasionalEtymology are only a very small fraction of these (https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/occasionaletymology https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/tagged/occasionaletymolo...)
And it's mostly a labour of love by Douglas Harper. Yes, there are some ads, but the Paypal, Patreon, and Swag links do help out. And if you can contribute to something on the Internet that Does Not Completely Suck, it would be a Good Thing.
https://www.etymonline.com
It's a tool I make heavy use of --- the Mastodon toots hashtagged #OccasionalEtymology are only a very small fraction of these (https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/tagged/occasionaletymology https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/tagged/occasionaletymolo...)
And it's mostly a labour of love by Douglas Harper. Yes, there are some ads, but the Paypal, Patreon, and Swag links do help out. And if you can contribute to something on the Internet that Does Not Completely Suck, it would be a Good Thing.
https://www.etymonline.com
Agreed, I love the site greatly as well. As a data point though, the one time I found an error there I mailed the maintainer a fairly detailed writeup with sources, but I never heard back and the entry never changed.
(The error was for "anime", which etymonline has being derived from French, but which Japanese sources widely agree is just an abbreviation of "animation".)
(The error was for "anime", which etymonline has being derived from French, but which Japanese sources widely agree is just an abbreviation of "animation".)
I've actually had a couple of email exchanges with Doug. Mail might have been caught in a spamfilter or just buried.
Absolutely. It’s one of those rare sites that I still enjoy “wandering around” on. It’s an archeological park of language and tattered remnants of stories.
> he might have added Hebrew and Yiddish
Unlike all other examples, these languages are not that close; it would have been Yiddish and German, or Ladino and Italian: both Yiddish and Ladino are basically German and Italian, respectively, only written down with Hebrew characters, with some words from it.
A better example would be Modern Hebrew and Torah Hebrew.
Unlike all other examples, these languages are not that close; it would have been Yiddish and German, or Ladino and Italian: both Yiddish and Ladino are basically German and Italian, respectively, only written down with Hebrew characters, with some words from it.
A better example would be Modern Hebrew and Torah Hebrew.
> Yiddish and Ladino are basically German and Italian, respectively, only written down with Hebrew characters, with some words from it.
Yiddish is basically German in the same way that Dutch is basically German: it's often possible to directly translate a word with some simple letter substitutions, but the choice of different letters in each language's orthography reflects an underlying difference in pronunciation.
E.g. אוי וויי is often transliterated as "oy vey" while the corresponding Standard German pronunciation would be "au weh". If you ignore the usual Hebrew letter values and pretend that it's actually an unorthodox orthography for Standard German (א glottal stop, וי au, וו w, יי eh), I've found written Yiddish quite easy to get used to as a native German speaker, but understanding it spoken aloud is much more difficult.
Yiddish is basically German in the same way that Dutch is basically German: it's often possible to directly translate a word with some simple letter substitutions, but the choice of different letters in each language's orthography reflects an underlying difference in pronunciation.
E.g. אוי וויי is often transliterated as "oy vey" while the corresponding Standard German pronunciation would be "au weh". If you ignore the usual Hebrew letter values and pretend that it's actually an unorthodox orthography for Standard German (א glottal stop, וי au, וו w, יי eh), I've found written Yiddish quite easy to get used to as a native German speaker, but understanding it spoken aloud is much more difficult.
"William Jones's astonishing paragraph" must be the following:
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jones_(philologist)#Sc...
Wikipedia says its "often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies".