Language Trainers Blog

As someone who studied the classics (Latin & Greek) at university, I’m occasionally reminded of one of my favorite parts of my studies – the mythology. Some of the greatest stories ever told were immortalized in prose or verse in Greek or Latin by some of the greatest writers ever to have lived: take Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad as prime examples. True, many of these stories had their roots in the folklore of other civilizations, but most are remembered for their epic retellings in Latin and Greek.

There are many words and idioms in English that take their cues from characters and incidents from Greek mythology, a process known as eponymy. English inherits a lot of derivations from Greek and Latin, but some are direct links to the mythologies, and have similar names. Take a few examples:

Herculean: something particularly arduous or laborious. The word stems from the story of the 12 Labors of Hercules. The story is that Hercules was driven temporarily mad by the troublemaking goddess Hera, and in his state of insanity he murdered his wife and children. Once he had recovered and seen what he had done, he asked Apollo how he could ever make up for it, and the oracle told him to go visit the king of Tiryns and Mycenae, King Eurystheus, and serve him for 12 years. The king made a list of 10 seemingly impossible tasks for Hercules to perform, which, with the help of Hermes and Athena, Hercules completed (he was made to do another 2 because Eurystheus claimed he had cheated at two of them).

Promethean: something or someone that is boldly innovative. Prometheus was a Titan who is famous for stealing fire from Zeus (King of the Gods) and giving it to humans. He was then punished by Zeus, and had one of the several ‘eternal punishments’ – bound to a rock and having a giant eagle eat his liver every day, only for his liver to grow back before the start of the next day. The meaning of the word “Promethean” refers to his theft of fire rather than his punishment, but in fact several pharmaceutical companies have taken on his name to emphasize the regenerative nature of their medicine!

Aphrodisiac: something that arouses sexual desire. Most people know what this word means, but don’t associate it with the name of the Greek goddess of love, lust and beauty – Aphrodite.

Echo: a very common word, which takes its roots from a mountain nymph of the same name. Punished by Hera, she could only repeat the last few words of sentences uttered by other people. She also happened to fall in love with someone called Narcissus, which brings us to…

Narcissistic: meaning overly vain or self-obsessed. This stems from a character called Narcissus, who was so vain that he had only disdain for the girls that fell in love with him, but ended up falling in love himself… with his own reflection. In the original myth he was unable to tear himself away from his own beauty, and ended up wasting away and dying.

Mentor: again, a very common word, but with surprising roots. Mentor was actually an old, wise friend of Odysseus who gave him advice. Nowadays it is used to describe someone who is a trusted guide or counselor. But this brings us neatly to…

Odyssey: used these days to mean an epic adventure, this originally comes from the hero of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, Odysseus. His certainly was an epic adventure, and with continually changing fortunes.

Siren: generally refers to any loud sound that is supposed to attract attention or give a warning. This word actually derives from the Greek sea nymph, Siren, who would sit on a rock and sing sweetly to attract passing sailors. The sailors would be unable to resist the sweet sounds, and would head towards her. Unfortunately, their boats would usually be scuppered on the rocks.

This is just a small selection of words derived from Greek mythological characters – there are many more!

In the last 12 months, the Russian population of the popular micro-blogging site Twitter have multiplied sixfold, making it the fifth fastest-growing online resource for Russian users. The President, Dmitry Medvedev, signed up for the site last June, and this has inspired many other prominent Russian cabinet ministers and officials to do the same, adding further fuel to the fire. Many believe that this has been a catalyst for Twitter’s sudden burst of popularity in Russia.

In fact, Twitter has so taken Russia by storm that Russian bloggers are now pushing for a Russian interface for the site, which will help Twitter become even more popular in Russian-speaking countries.

A delegation consisting of several popular Russian bloggers and a handful of officials will be attending a meeting with Twitter’s staff later this month.

Source: washingtonpost.com

Here’s an amusing (yet semi-serious) column from the Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten, who blames the recent slipping of copywriting standards of American newspapers for the death of English. Since in his opinion the American media primarily dictates the standard for correct, up-to-date English language usage, the myriad of mistakes now found in publications across the country are spelling out the demise of the world’s lingua franca.

In the past year alone, as the language lay imperiled, the ironically clueless misspelling “pronounciation” has been seen in the Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Deseret Morning News, Washington Jewish Week and the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, where it appeared in a correction that apologized for a previous mispronunciation.

On Aug. 6, the very first word of an article in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal was “Alot,” which the newspaper employed to estimate the number of Winston-Salemites who would be vacationing that month.

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of “spading and neutering.” The Miami Herald reported on someone who “eeks out a living” — alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a “doggy dog world.” The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of “prostrate cancer.”

You can read the whole article here – well worth a read. It seems amazing that people who call themselves journalists could make such basic language errors; “doggy dog world” made me laugh out loud!

Since Engrish is always so much fun (when you can understand it), I thought I’d share some more funny photos I’ve taken while I’ve been in China. Enjoy! You can click on each thumbnail for the full-sized image.

Recently I attended this year’s EXPO in Shanghai, which was truly as impressive as it was crowded. Tens of thousands of people were milling around the various nations’ pavilions, and queues for the more popular pavilions (Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, UK etc.) were 3-4 hours or more. However, it gave me a great choice to enjoy some of the Engrish dotted around the huge purpose-built EXPO area.

As far as I could see, the vast majority of the visitors were Chinese, and almost everything was signposted in Chinese and English. As bad as some of the signs were, I shouldn’t really complain, and when it came to the literature and the individual pavilions of English-speaking countries, everything was perfect. And indeed, compared to a lot of Engrish that I’ve seen in China, even these mistranslations were pretty comprehensible. However, it just seems that they might have done with a couple more proofreaders for the more general things… here are a couple of photos!

Source: news.yahoo.com

A few months back I wrote a short post – like almost every other blogger on the internet interested in the English language in any way – about everyone’s favorite Alaskan ex-governor’s vocabulary faux-pas. Later she claimed she was coining new words, in the same vein as the great bard, Shakespeare.

Well, it seems that Palin’s gambit of messily mashing up “refute” and “repudiate” has paid off in some way or another – Merriam-Webster have recently revealed that the non-word “refudiate” as uttered by Palin has been their #1 search term this summer.

John Morse, the president and publisher of Merriam-Webster, has this to say:

“I think people immediately knew what she was trying to say because the words ‘refute’ and ‘repudiate’ were also being looked up very, very frequently. It’s an interesting blend, but no, ‘refudiate’ is not a real word.”

However, unlike words such as “bodacious” and “guesstimate” (portmanteaus of “bold/audacious” and “guess/estimate”, respectively), it seems that “refudiate” is not due to appear in any dictionary any time soon – straw-clutching allusions to Shakespeare or no.

But given the nature of English and the lack of any governing body meaning the transition from a fake or slang word to a real, bona fide dictionary entry depends primarily on popular usage, this could be yet another cause for Palin supporters to get behind. If enough people start using the word, dictionaries may be forced to add it.

Given the fact that “refute” and “repudiate” are virtually synonyms already (meaning ‘to reject something as untrue’), this would seem a pretty pointless exercise!

Let’s take a break from the norm and go for some random language trivia about our amazing language, English… how many of these things have you ever thought about?

• There are only 2 words in English where the five vowels (a, e, i, o & u) appear in order: abstemious and facetious
• There are only 4 words in English ending in -dous: horrendous, tremendous, stupendous and hazardous
• The only word in English with 3 consecutive double letters is bookkeeper
• The longest one-syllable word is screeched
• The only number with the same letters in the word as the number itself is four
• The shortest sentence in English that makes sense is “Go.”

Following on from my recent post about bad language delaying the sequel to the popular Dead Rising video game, it seems that bad language has crept into the mainstream news once again – this time sparking off a brawl during the Djokovic-Petzschner game at Flushing Meadows in this year’s US Open.

ApparentlyApparently, the fight broke out because the man pictured on the left in the photo had a lot of money riding on the outcome of the game, and was venting his frustrations when things weren’t going his way by cursing profusely – mostly using the “F” word.

The lady berated him for his language, and appeared to slap him, at which point the man told her to “Sit the f**k down”. Her father then weighs in, and after calming his daughter down he starts a scuffle that ends up in him tumbling down several rows of seats with the foul-mouthed tennis fan. What followed was mayhem, as other members of the crowd piled in to subdue the two scrappers, before security arrived to escort them from the court. Oh, and Djokovic won, in case anybody is interested.

This all goes to show how powerful language can be – it can unify strangers into a common goal, or it can end up making perfect strangers make total fools of themselves on live TV, and all over the internet. Speaking of which… here’s the video. Any lip readers want to post a transcript?

Source: news.cnet.com

When people use computers, they have to adjust themselves to working within the constraints of the system. Nowadays with the general computer literacy levels of the younger generations, this is an unconscious act – you’re doing what the computer wants you to do, so the computer can then do what you want it to do.

However, developer Marc Schroeder of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – an agency who standardize many online technologies and languages – has started work on EmotionML: a language that allows a computer to adjust to the user instead, by reading and interpreting their emotions using a camera or sensor.

From the article:

The idea is called affective computing in academic circles, and if it catches on, computer interactions could be very different. Avatar faces could show their human master’s expression during computer chats. Games could adjust play intensity according to the player’s reactions. Customer service representatives could be alerted when customers are really angry. Computers could respond to your expressions as people do. Computer help technology like Microsoft’s Clippy or a robot waiter could discern when to make themselves scarce.

“Rather than having to click the ‘no’ button on some touch screen, I would rather shake my head,” Schroeder said. “Without having to consciously decide to do so, I will show a puzzled and confused facial expression, and a human would know that I need advice and guidance.” Computers could adapt to this human communication style, he said.

This development could improve the entire user experience, and even pave the way for the as yet elusive all-knowing ‘robot butler’ that is a popular trope in science fiction movies and TV shows!