On his podcast "Lexicon Valley," John McWhorter illustrates language change by using Henry James' The Ambassadors, written in 1903. He kept finding about one word every page that didn't ring true, though it was usually understandable from context. Yet occasionally a whole flock of words would occur together, causing him to double back to parse it out. It was not always easy, as some meanings come into a language for a few decades and then fade out.
"I'm true, but I'm incredible; I'm fantastic and ridiculous; I don't explain myself even to myself."
Perhaps if I give a translation it will be easier "I am truthful, but I am not to be believed; I am given to fantasy and somewhat silly.*"
What it all came to had been that fiction and fable were inevitably in the air and not as a simple term of comparison but as a result of things said. Also, that they were blinking it all round and yet they needn't so much as that have blinked it. Indeed if they hadn't Strather didn't see what else they might have done. It's clear that some meaning of blink is going to be key here, and if we can just get that the rest might come into focus, though still with some odd word order, particularly at the beginning. From later contexts, McWhorter concludes that it means "pretend not to see." I note again that this is just a little over a century ago. I knew many people alive when it was written, yet it eludes us. Even with a probable meaning for blink it's tough.
Why then are some things in Middle English, six times as old, understandable with only a little help? (Not the poetry so much. The earlier versions of English seem more distant to us than they should, because poetic forms are more difficult even when written in our own era. Things meant to be simple instructions or letters to a relative go down more easily.) It is likely because even such a formal writer as James is giving us conversation, which is much more vulnerable to change. If we did not have writing, in fact, our language would change much more rapidly, as the idioms would be untethered from some standard meanings. It is still the case that villages a few kilometers distance apart even in Europe have trouble understanding each other, and this was even more the case when few were literate. It is not just slang that changes - the line between slang and idiom is fairly smudgy anyway.
Once we have learned a meaning we retain it and may even use it when it has gone out of fashion. Thus we understand movies from the 70s easily. We use the older meanings unconsciously, or as puns, even after they have passed on. Yet if we were to go back to that time and speak people would think we had had some kind of stroke or were affecting to speak a new language. I recall around 1980 amusing my coworkers with a telephone conversation I had had with a private therapist who used the phrase "I'm getting crunched for time and will have to dialogue with you in another space." We thought that was hysterical. California out of control. It seems much less strange now.
*"Silly" itself has gone through ridiculous (current sense) changes. I noted that a dozen years ago when writing about the duo "Silly Sisters," a Steeleye Span spinoff.
Silly: Cognate with German selig, meaning happy, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European, of course, or I wouldn't mention it. Related to hilarious in that way.O.E. gesælig "happy" (related to sæl "happiness"), from W.Gmc. *sæligas (cf. O.N. sæll "happy," Goth. sels "good, kindhearted," O.S. salig, M.Du. salich, O.H.G. salig, Ger. selig "blessed, happy, blissful"), from PIE base *sel- "happy" (cf. Gk. hilaros "gay, cheerful," L. solari "to comfort," salvus "whole, safe"). The word's considerable sense development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (c.1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable" (late 13c.), to "weak" (c.1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" (1570s).Shakespeare's sense in "Two Gentleman of Verona" is somewhere between the the innocent and foolish meanings, I think. Do no outrages On silly women or poor passengers.
6 comments:
"It's clear that some meaning of blink is going to be key here, and if we can just get that the rest might come into focus..."
I would like to point out that what you just said is approximately identical to Wittgenstein's special definition of "nonsense" in his later work. There's a break that is important between your statement and his, which is that we know for a fact that at one point the sentence did make sense to someone.
His example follows the form of 'I parked my Zonk in the garage.' Just as you, we infer that the sentence almost makes sense, and if only we can figure out what a Zonk is we shall understand it. Since the word 'Zonk' has no referent, however, it turns out that we have been fooled into believing something about the world that is not and cannot be true. He was worried that this happens all the time -- and he seems to be right about that. It's less that people make up words like 'Zonk,' but that they make up phrases that they assume refer to real processes or things in the world when they are actually fictitious ideas in the mind.
(Not only is he right about that, but he's so right that listing examples of them is hugely controversial: there will always be someone willing to fight for the idea that the phrase really does represent something real, and hugely important, a thing we have to solve or fix in the interests of justice or right or survival. Much of our politics is divisive because people believe in these phantoms. I will let the reader provide his or her own example of one rather than provide a list that would be provocative.)
The fascinating thing here is that a sentence passes from sense to nonsense even though it once did make sense. You can try to infer what he meant, but the grave danger is that you will do so wrongly -- and thus you will think you understand something when in fact your leap of logic lands you wrong. It's not a huge danger in literature, but it could be for historians or archaeologists, or those who are trying to draw lessons from the past to apply to the present.
Yes. And (gulp) also with scripture as well as literature, where we are quite sure we know what was meant at the time, but don't. This came up in email exchange with a friend this morning, talking about the evangelical (and others) need for Quiet Time as a spiritual habit every day. Jesus went to a lonely place to pray and seemed to come back refreshed, or empowered, or something. Yes, so we go away to pray, and he elsewhere talks about going to our private closet. But where does it say he was quiet? Maybe he went to a lonely place so that no one would hear him singing, or yelling at God the Father. Orthodox Jewish davening involves praying aloud and moving the whole body, after all. Yet as a cultural group we are Quite Certain we know what is meant - the still, small voice, or Be Still And Know. Yet those are quite isolated in scripture and could be context-specific. God is quite loud at other times, even deafening.
In Gethsemane Jesus was "a stone's throw away" from his nearest disciples but they heard what he was praying anyway.
In a 1972 "Peanuts" coming strip¹, Linus asks "How could anyone ban such a neat book as The Six Bunny Wunnies Freak Out?" after being told by the librarian that Miss Goodstory's most recent book had banned from the school library.
Later, Charlie Brown asks the school-board president "I have to know why you and the school board banned The Six Bunny Wunnies Freak Out . . ." at which question the board president faints and falls to the floor ².
¹ https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/October_1972_comic_strips?file=October_23rd_1972.png
² https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/November_1972_comic_strips?file=November_6th_1972.png
What a strange coincidence, Doulgas2: my mother was talking about that very set of cartoons just yesterday.
I read every cartoon in the Manchester Union Leader from 1960-1971, but when I left, I didn't see cartoons again until...I don't know when. So I missed this entirely.
Fascinating that books in the library, and especially cartoons in the newspapers are now banned for essentially opposite political reasons.
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