Rooskee Yazeek

Fio will admit that she screamed "Dummkopf!" at Stephen Colbert last night when he mispronounced the Russian word for "Thank you." She loves her languages, especially Russian with its wonderful "zh's" and "kv's" and "rrrrr's." She hasn't retained very much of it, and she could never have carried on a conversation in it, even in her third year, because translation of a written text was the teaching emphasis back then. Maybe a fourth year would have helped, but the Linguistics Department at UT required two semesters of a non-Indo-European language, which meant Fio had to drop Russian and take up Telegu. Fio grew to love Telegu too, especially because, like with the rooskyy yazeek, she had to learn a new and different script. But again, she has lost most of the language. If you don't use it, you lose it.

And, by the way, "dummkopf" is German (Deutsch), which Fiorella had one glorious semester of.

Fiorella's Telenovela

Fiorella is so excited! Her faithful watching of El Color de la Pasion is beginning to pay off--she's actually understanding some of what is being said. Almost enough, in fact to follow the twisted and tangled plotlines.

There's a difference between being able to read and speak a language and being able to understand a language. With a five-year background in Latin, Fio has always approached new languages analytically, concentrating on how to read them, but with Spanish, she is concentrating on understanding the spoken word, leaving formal training till later.

Fiorella would love to tell you more about her language acquisition program, but you'll have to excuse her because El Color de la Pasion is about to come on. To bring you up to date, Marcelo has finally been sprung from jail, Lucia has discovered her stepmother caused the death of her padre and Marcelo's hermano, Daniela appears to be recovering from her near-fatal accidente automovilistico, and everyone is weeping or kissing or plotting or screaming. Adios for now!

Co-mingling

Bon jour, mia bella! Como esta usted sevodna? Neenu teluguloo maaTlaaDagalaru. Koennen Sie diese Sprache sprechen? Zdai chen!

Ave atque vale,
Fio, who's messing with you

A Woman's Work Is Never Done

Fiorella's Spanish studies have taken a back seat to the election, her book, and yard work these past two weeks, but now she's ready to swing back into linguistic action. She has several pages of new words to post all around the house, verbs and conjugations to learn, and maybe a class to take, if she can work it to her busy schedule. After all, she still has the election, her book, and the yard work to deal with.

Spanish vs. English

Fio picked up a Spanish-language newspaper (periodico) the other day and is working her way through the ads. Her vocabulary has increased and she's added some prepositions and a verb or two, but hasn't gone in for the kill yet--conjugations and declensions.  In the meantime, she's still watching Spanish-language TV, which is a story in itself.  Apparently being able to cry on cue is a prerequisite for the female stars. Last night was the crowner--five women weeping in a hospital room all at once.

Fio is fascinated by the contrast between English and Spanish. For instance, Spanish uses more syllables than English in pronouncing such morphemes as -ion and to to express a possessive construction (banquetta del piano vs. piano bench).  Spanish also avoids certain consonant combinations by adding in "extra" vowels (escuela vs. school).

All in all, because they are both Indo-European languages, English comes out sounding like a shorthand of Spanish. The difference is that English took the Germanic route and Spanish took the Romance route, which all goes to show you that you can take the girl out of linguistics but can't take the linguistics out of the girl.

Spanish vs. English

Fio picked up a Spanish-language newspaper (periodico) the other day and is working her way through the ads. Her vocabulary has increased and she's added some prepositions and a verb or two, but hasn't gone for the kill yet--conjugations and declensions.  In the meantime, she's still watching Spanish-language TV, which is a story in itself.  Apparently being able to cry on cue is a prerequisite for the female stars. Last night was the crowner--five women weeping in a hospital room all at once.

Fio is fascinated by the contrast between English and Spanish. For instance, Spanish uses more syllables in such pronunciations as -ion and to to express a possessive construction than English (banquetta del piano vs. piano bench).  Spanish also avoids certain consonant combinations by adding in "extra" vowels (escuela vs. school). 

All in all, because they are both Indo-European languages, English comes out sounding like a shorthand of Spanish. The difference is that English took the Germanic route and Spanish took the Romance route, which all goes to show you that you can take the girl out of linguistics but can't take the linguistics out of the girl.

Madalyn and Me

Has Fio ever told you about her encounter with prominent atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair?

It occurred in Fio's salad days, when she had taken a Christmas job hawking British Silver, a line of men's colognes, in a downtown department store. She wore a cute dress made of silver paper, smiled like crazy, and sold, sold, sold.  Then when the regular clerk was on break, she took over behind the counter.

One day, a face familiar from the newspapers appeared, and Fio asked Ms. O'Hair if she could help her. O'Hair gave her a narrow-eyed assessing stare and in a gruff voice, asked for "Wolf Brothers." Fiorella glanced over the stock, spotted Freres Loups, and handed it to her. La Madalyn was obviously taken aback, and Fio realized she had thought she was going to put one over on the vapid little salesgirl in the stupid silver dress.

What she didn't know was that Fiorella was a doctoral student in linguistics.

Linguisitic Puzzle

Fiorella is curious about which way the reduction of the English case system will go.  We've already subsumed the second singular thou into you, and now we are working on the first person.  Confusion reigns supreme right now, as in "Her and me are going to the store" or "Give it to she and I."

Language Madness Strikes Again

Fiorella can now read three Chinese characters: "person," "big," and "little."

Yes, your Fio is endeavoring to pick up yet another writing system.  She's rusty on them, but at one time she could handle Cyrillic, in which Russian is written; devanagari, the Sanskrit script; and the Dravidian script Telugu uses.

But, as with Chinese, she's never been in a situation to do more than dabble.

Sigh. Maybe in her next life . . . .

LIngo Across the Ocean

Fiorella, who, as you know, delights in all things linguistic, is fascinated by the news from British friend Suzy that Brits have been picking up all sorts of interesting idioms from American films, which appear to be all the rage in Queen Elizabeth's realm right now.  Serves'em right--think of all the British idioms we've been aping over here.  Just another example of communication making the world a smaller place.

A la Noam Chomsky

T(M)(have-en)(be-ing)V is the most powerful formula Fiorella has ever encountered.  It's linguistic talk for the construction of the basic English verb form.  "T" stands for "tense," either present and past.  "M" stands for "modal," of which there are five: may, can, will, shall, and must.  "V" stands for the individual verb form, like "eat" or "love" or "sing."

The formula is very easy to apply, and Fiorella taught it to all her composition classes.  First, choose a tense.  Past tense is represented by "-ed" and present by a "-0."  Then decide if you want to use a modal and, if so, which one.  Next, decide whether or not you want to use "have-en."  Same for "be-ing"--the constructions in parentheses are optional but must stay in the same order.  The final step is to select a verb.

Let's try "eat."

Using past tense and a modal--how about "can"--and all the bells and whistles, we get [-ed+can+have-en+be-ing+eat].  Now we leap-frog [-ed,] [-en,] and [-ing] to get [can-ed+have be-en+eat-ing]. The past tense of  "can" is "could," so we end up with the string [could have been eating].  Switch out past tense for present tense and we get [0-can+have-en be-ing eat; can have been eating].  Leave out the model and we get [have been eating] or [had been eating], depending on your choice of tense.  Leave out the [have-en] and you get [can be eating] or [could be eating].  Leave out the [be-ing] and you end up with [can have eaten] or [could have eaten].  Leave out the model and the [have-en] and you get [be eating] or [was eating.]  Leave out the model and the [have-en] and the [be-ing] and you get [eat] or [ate].  Duck soup.

Try your hand with "love" and "sing," remembering that [sing-ed] becomes [sang], [sing-en] becomes [sung], and" [love-en] becomes [loved].

This simple all-encompassing formula is the reason Fiorella majored in linguistics.








Also write about my method of defining use of apostrophe for possessive.

Coming and Going

As Fiorella used to teach her students, there are four major dialects of English: American, British, Indian, and Australian.  And, like tectonic plates,  these dialects are drifting further and further apart each year.  Eventually, they'll be four separate languages.  But there's a pull in the opposite direction too, and you can blame it on the media.  Yes, several sub-dialects used to exist within these four dialects, but we're all talking more like broadcasters and movie actors now. 

Babel Reconstructed

Fiorella, whose college degrees are in linguistics,  is all excited about the new study out that connects seven far-spread language families by means of twenty-two stable cognates.

The Google stories and abstracts are just teasers. Fio wants to read the whole study.  After all, she has experience with English, German, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Telugu, and now, Mandarin.

Speculative Etymology

Fio awoke this morning thinking about the courtesy address mizruz, which she always assumed was a misguided attempt to pronounce the spelled-out "Mrs.," but now wonders if it could be a dialectal derivative of "Mistress," from which the more standard pronunciation "missus" is descended.

Got all that?

Postscript:
Woke up the following morning thinking that mizruz could be an intermediary form between mistress and missus--"Mistress' with the t dropped, which would encourage the voiceless sibilant s to become a voiced sibilant z. 

Anagram Techniques

When Fio first got interested in the newspaper's daily anagram, she would write the letters down, cut them out, and test various random arrangements.  Stupid Fiorella--the first thing she looks for now are morphemes like er/re, ing, s and ed/de.  She also checks out  possible consonant combinations like sh, ch, th, sch, and ght.  She's also learned a few tricks along the way, like that doubled letters side by side in an anagram are usually separate when the word is decoded, and vice-versa. 

Take DONUH, for instance.  Fio knows English words rarely end in h unless it's in combination with c, s, or t.  She also knows ou frequently occur together  (as do ea, ai, and oi).  The answer is HOUND.

RREROT is fairly easy because Fio's also picked up the trick of  checking an anagram out by scanning it backwards.  TORERR alerts her brain to the obvious--TERROR.

STURHH.  Hmmm.  Just one vowel, which means just one syllable, and s is joined with t in the initial offering, which mean it should really be attached to one of the hs, which leaves the other h for the s.  Dawns the light: THRUSH,

And if all else fails, Fiorella writes the letters down, cuts them out and arranges them randomly.

Sinking Her Teeth into It

Fiorella came out of her dentist's office yesterday as high as the proverbial kite. Not only were her teeth x-rayed, bright and shiny, but she had used her meager Mandarin on the office manager, Dr. Ma's brother, and HE UNDERSTOOD HER. He also taught her how to ask where the bathroom was.

In addition, Dr. Ma taught her how to say "dog" and "my name is--."

Fio can hardly wait for the appointment when she gets her broken tooth fixed--and, more important, can practice her Chinese.

On the Rampage

So now Fio is hacked off. Some self-proclaimed language expert has a website on which she purports to teach the "correct" pronunciation of English. Fiorella doesn't know what neck of the woods the woman is from, but she actually tells people that "winter," "interview," and "twenty" are pronounced "winner," "innerview," and "twenny." Then she has the audacity to link them with the silent T phenomenon of the "often"/"soften"/"fasten" series, saying "ten" is the causative factor.

Fio's done a little etymological research, but she'd probably have to consult a Middle English expert to learn what's really going on with the silent T. One thing, though--she can guarantee you that "ten" is not the culprit. Look at some examples of true silent T: christen, moisten, glisten, Christmas, mistletoe, chestnut, hustle, rustle, bustle. Note that constant presence of the S before the T?

Linguistics Lady strikes again.

Lady Rebounds

Fio remembers the 1980's, when the brouhaha about the designation "lady" erupted. It was a women's lib thing. "Lady" was considered a linguistic symbol of stereotypical societal expectations of women. Females were not "ladies," but WOMEN. So the signs on the restroom doors changed.

Fast forward thirty years. Now everyone and their perra is a lady. A muscle-bound female athlete, the woman who cleans the toilets, the terrorist, the OctoMom--all are referred to as ladies. Although the designation of "gentleman" was never protested against, it too is applied in ways never originally dreamed of. Fio is especially amused when police officials refer to every "alleged" male perp--from joy rider to mass murderer--as a gentleman.

Language is always changing and endlessly fascinating. That's why Fio is in the business.

Listen Up!

Fiorella has become fascinated with words that feature a silent "t," words like "nestle," "castle," "listen," "often" and "soften." She's collected a fairly long list of them. Now she's wondering where they all come from.

Which just goes to prove that you can take the girl out of linguistics, but can't take the linguistics out of the girl.

Ever Wonder Why?

Ever wonder why we say "I am" and "he/she/it is" but "we/you/they are?

In older English, the pronouns were declined as follows:

singular first person: I (am)
singular second person: thou (art)
singular third person: he, she, it (is)

plural first person: we (are)
plural second person: you (are)
plural third person: they (are)

For some reason, English dropped the "thou" and extended the use of "you" to include the singular as well as the plural of the second person.

Since "you" is plural, it kept the plural form of the verb "to be." Thus we have ended up with the following conjugation of "to be:"

I am
you ARE
he/she/it is

we ARE
you ARE
they ARE