a minipost
My wife thinks it's funny when I'm talking with a native-speaking Montanan. After about fifteen minutes my accent shifts towards my almost hidden native accent. It's still there, buried under so many years living out of the state. The funny thing is neither I nor my Montanan friend notice what's happening. Similarly I can code-switch and fit into the culture of my parents church - at least over the phone as my beard and dress don't conform with the standards.
In high school I spent a lot of time in Alberta and became fascinated by Canadian English. I didn't realize Albertan, like the Montanan, was a dialect of its own. There were the obvious Canadianisms comedians emphasize, but my attempts at using them were unconvincing. Canadians tend to be unusually polite, but deep down inside they know your attempts are clueless. In college I ran into people from all over the world and quickly got to the point where many of the "rules" of spoken English didn't bother me like they did my k-12 teachers.
A friend happens to be a computational linguist specializing in the rhythm and sound of a language - the prosody of language. Getting this part right - good enough to begin to add the meaning in speech that's often missing in text - is one of those hard problems. I've read a few of the papers in her field and find them jargon laden and bewildering. Still, there's something very important that we just do naturally. There's another branch of linguistics that's more accessible. Sociolinguists studies how society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context impacts language. The good stuff all of us use and misuse. Aalthough nothing like earlier changes in the language, there's constant change. The Gen Z meaning of wholesome comes to mind as a recent shift in progress.
One of my most dramatic experiences with the sociology of language came as I was finishing my graduate work. A Chinese professor who didn't speak English was visiting the physics department. Not really an issue as there were several native-born professors and graduate students. I was working something out on a blackboard and didn't realize he was watching. He walked up, took a piece of chalk (yes -- we had lovely chalk back then), and gave me a look that asked permission to annotate what I was doing. It turned out he was interested in the same area. We went back and forth using drawings and equations that were part of the culture we shared and had a lovely conversation for about fifteen minutes. It occurred to me afterwards that we were relying on facial expressions and posture along with the chalk marks and never spoke a word. Afterwards I reproduced what remained on the blackboard in my lab notebook. Not that it was profound, but rather that it was such a nice chat. He was only around for a few more days, but there were grins every time we saw each other.
Two weeks ago a linguist (not the prosody expert) gave me a beginner's tour of sociolinguistics by Valerie Fridland: Like, Literally, Dude Arguing for the Good in Bad English. It's great fun! Learn where change in language comes from (hint - it's not upperclass/educated males), how text messaging is entirely different for teens and their 35 year old parents, why ums and uhs in speech are beneficial and much more. I'd go for the audiobook as she gives acoustic examples. I'm not good at communication, but now at least I'm a bit more aware.
there's no cow on the ice
A close friend and I have been exchanging emails several times a week for nearly thirty years. I hadn't heard from him in a week, so I asked if everything was alright. He replied with a single line:
Der er ingen ko på isen.
He's very Danish and, although I'm barely read-only in that tongue, I knew immediately there was nothing to worry about. The idiom means there's no cow on the ice. Danes happen to be a practical people. If your cow was on the ice, you'd have something to worry about.
Idioms mean more than the words that make them up are a wonderful window into a culture. They can come from different periods, subcultures, age groups, common experiences and so on. And they can hold on well past the time they were coined. 'Hun stikker ikke op for bollemælk' means 'she doesn't stick up for milk dumplings' and is still in use even though the farming references are lost on almost everyone.
Courtesy of a couple of Danish friends, I keep a list of Danish idioms and think I understand where they came from a bit more.1 I'm sure they don't think about where they come from, just didn't think about 'it's raining cats and dogs', until I heard the Danish equivalent which translates to 'it's raining shoemaker's apprentices'. We're like the fish who doesn't realize it's swimming in water.
A few years ago I started wondering about quantum leap/quantum jump - the idiom that is entirely different from what quantum [anything] means in physics and chemistry. Of course it's so wired in popular culture that it's completely displaced the original meaning.
Pulling out my tiny text two volume OED with its magnifying glass, I find an early use in 1649 referred to a share or allotment: “Poverty is her portion, and her quantum is but food and raiment.” In about 1870 it was first used in physics to describe the the smallest quantity of electric fluid. At the turn of the century Planck and Einstein started using it in the sense that light consists of small and measurable pieces of energy. Something very small. In the 20s as quantum mechanics developed the energy change in an atom or molecule was discrete - it was quantized. In physics and chemistry a quantum jump or leap represents a tiny amount of energy.
Quantum mechanics is the study of this tiny world that has properties that are counter to what we're used to experiencing. It includes particle/wave duality, superposition, entanglement and so on. By the 50s a deeper understanding had emerged. It was becoming clear the subatomic world could be more accurately described by fields rather than just particles and forces. That's what I think about when I hear quantum. To shift gears to culture outside of physics I must 'at sluge en kamel' - swallow the camel.
According to the OED (I had to resort to the electronic version in the library as my copy is too old) the first use of 'quantum leap' to mean 'very large' came in a 1956 document describing the US-Soviet balance of power:
“The enormous multiplication of power, the ‘quantum leap’ to a new order of magnitude of destruction.”
It had been used as its opposite and somehow it caught on. This isn't uncommon with words and phrases.. smart, nice, awful, awesome and many others have been turned around. There's probably a term for this.
I was going to write something the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment as it has also become an idiom, but that can wait as it's fascinating for other reasons.
Så er den ged barberet
__________
1 Note that I use English idioms to explain some of them
At stå op før fanden får sko på -- "get up before the devil puts on his shoes"
Spis lige brød til -- "have some bread with that" (telling someone to calm down)
Hold da helt ferie -- "take a whole holiday" (no way!)
Lokummet brænder -- "the toilet is burning" (there are big problems)
Der er ugler i mosen -- "there are owls in the bog" (something suspicious is going on)
Man kan ikke både blæse og have mel i munden -- "you can't blow and have flour in your mouth at the same time" (you have to choose)
Skægget i postkassen "beard in the mailbox" (caught red handed)
At gå som katten om den varme grød "To walk like a cat around hot porridge" (to beat around the bush)
Så er den ged barberet "The goat is shaved" (done with a big task .. big enough for a celebration)
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