Psychopath or Sociopath?

I was having a conversation on philosophy in a park in Birmingham the other day (yes I know, both random and pretentious!) and it somehow came to light that neither I nor my friend know the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. If you are wondering what that has to do with philosophy I can't actually remember to be honest, but it's one of those things which I have always wondered and never bothered to find out. So I thought I would make the effort to actually do some research.

As always my starting point is the dictionary, I don't have access at the moment to my OED, however according to Merriam Webster online (which seems to be one of the more reliable of the online free dictionaries, albeit in American English so with different spellings) psychopathic behaviour is: of, related to or characterised by psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder (of which more later). For sociopathic meanwhile they have: of, relating to or characterised by asocial or antisocial behaviour or exhibiting antisocial personality disorder. So far so very similar.

The history of these words is brief at best. Psychopath is a back formation from psychopathic and is recorded from 1885, psychopathic dates from 1847 and is from the German psychopatisch from the Greek psykhe (mind) + pathos (suffering). Sociopath was coined in 1930 by a psychologist named G.E. Partridge on the model of psychopath. The socio part is from the Latin socius meaning companion or associate which is where we get all of our social and socio words from.

Antisocial Behaviour Disorder is a condition characterised by a persistent disregard for and violation of the feelings and rights of others that lasts into adulthood. This last is very important as reading the list of behaviours associated with the disorder is quite like reading a worst case scenario of teenage behaviour, this list includes failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviour; deceitfulness, lying or conning others; impulsive behaviour and failure to plan ahead; irritability and aggressiveness; disregard for the safety of others; consistent irresponsibility and lack of remorse for the above behaviours. In order to be diagnosed with ABD the individual must have displayed some form of delinquency prior to the age of 15 and three or more of the behaviours on the list, as I already said they must also be over 18 which is just as well as being a teenager is hard enough. It is interesting though how closely teenage behaviour can match the diagnosis of a psychopath, the power of hormones!

Other behaviours closely associated with psychopaths are an ability to smooth talk, charm or manipulate; a parasitic nature, living off of others and emotional poverty, an inability to form lasting relationships with other people.

Most of the definitions I found of sociopath were very similar to those of psychopath: inability to conform to society, lack of regard for others and it is also closely associated with ABD. When they are directly compared the main difference between psychopath and sociopath tends to be given as the ability for psychopaths to at least appear to fit into society, they tend to be more organised and able to socialise than sociopaths (and yes Rache, that is exactly the opposite of what I thought, you were totally right!), however there is no one definition of either out there and no checklist of the differences. Probably this is down to the inevitably unquantifiable nature of psychology, people are individuals and therefore people's psychological conditions are never going to be exactly the same making a precise definition of either psychopath or sociopath impossible.

All of this does rather beg the question of why we use the term sociopath at all? It seems a bit surplus to requirements given that we already have the terms psychopath and Antisocial Behavioural Disorder to describe people with these behaviours and characteristics.

The answer as to why may lie in sociology rather than psychology. From what I can find on the subject a sociologist would claim that there is no such thing as a psychopath, that people with ABD are sociopaths as they display behaviours resulting directly from their social experiences. People who, due to poor parenting, opportunity or lack of socialisation, have not been properly indoctrinated into our society and so act outside of social norms. So to sociologists we are all born with the potential for sociopathic behaviour and we have this potential socialised out of us if we are lucky and reinforced and exacerbated if we are not.

Psychopaths are not necessarily murderers despite the common associations between psychopathic personalities and, in particular, serial killers. They are always associated with delinquent behaviours and are often very manipulative people who are dangerous to know, but inevitably the most famous examples are always the serial killers. People like Charles Manson who manipulated his followers into murdering others, Aileen “Lee” Carol Wuornos who robbed and murdered truckers, and Ted Bundy who murdered 30 girls over a 4 year period. Interestingly all 3 of these could arguably fit the sociological definition of sociopathy as a result of societal neglect. They were all victims of childhood neglect and abuse and so it could be argued that they were all in fact sociopaths.

Just to add to the confusion on the subject, I have seen Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin being given as famous examples of sociopaths. Given the lack of a clear division between the two conditions (and my lack of any kind of qualification in the field) I can't say that they were not, but it seems to me that both of these men might have been more likely to be psychopaths given that they were able to manipulate, control and often to charm people while showing complete disregard for others. I wonder whether the fact that they controlled whole societies has something to do with the diagnosis of Sociopath.

As far as I can tell there is no handy definition for either psychopath or sociopath, and perhaps my initial surprise at this hints at overindulgence in TV cop dramas, but given the unquantifiable nature of the human mind this really shouldn't be a shock. In any case I think it is fair to say that these are not people you would wish to know, although given that some psychopaths can blend into society and avoid detection it is very possible that you do.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf

Pardon My French

I should start with a warning for those of a sensitive disposition I suppose. There are a lot of potentially offensive words coming up, so if you don't like swearing or the subjects which swear words tend to represent (that is bodily functions, sex and sexual organs) then perhaps give this post a miss...

For those of a more robust constitution the reason for the title of this post is that I find it rather interesting that we English people use this expression. It seems strange that we insist upon foisting the blame for our foul language onto the French. Post 1066 the French language had a massive influence on English and a large proportion of our words come from French. One group of words which seem to have largely escaped this influence however are the words which we use when we wish to swear.

I suppose that sociologically this makes sense, if the French language was used by aristocracy and the upper classes then it would be more likely that the English words used by the poorer classes would acquire negative connotations and become taboo, however this is purely speculation on my part and is not based on any actual research.

The general consensus on why we use the expression is simple hostility towards the French and a basic desire amongst English speakers to palm off anything considered distasteful or rude onto them, as with french letters (condoms) and french leave (going AWOL). You can see a similarly xenophobic attitude toward other countries England has had regular wars with in the expressions dutch courage and to welsh on a deal.

So what of the words themselves? As I already mentioned, they are fairly easily categorised, to my previous list you could add blasphemous swear words. In English these tend to be considered relatively mild these days, words such as damn and hell are not likely to raise an eyebrow in most circumstances, although in the middle of a church related gathering they could still be considered a little inappropriate.

This leaves us with my previous list of sex, sexual organs and bodily functions. The BBC has a list of their top 25 taboo words which also includes words of discrimination which cause offence, such as spastic and nigger, but to my mind these are offensive insults not swear words. I am well aware that this is a random and personal division, but both language and blogging are fairly random and personal so I am not going to be discussing these words today.

Worst of the worst in terms of social acceptability is the word cunt. This is probably the only swear word which is still not used regularly on post watershed television. It is also the only one which has a genuine capacity to shock when used in public, although I think it is becoming more acceptable. Certainly it is a word which I hear used more regularly by my peers than I did 5 or 6 years ago. Cunt is a slang word for female genitalia, and it's origins are not entirely clear. One thing we can be fairly certain of though is that it is not French. It may have its origins in the Old Norse kunta, itself from the Proto - Germanic kunton, both of which also meant female genitalia. It is also possible that it has its origins in the Latin word cuneus meaning wedge.

The first known usages of cunt in English are from around 1230 in the name Gropecunt Lane: streets in both Oxford and London where prostitutes could be found. Given its appearance in both cities and the fact that the name seems to have been used as a form of advertising, or at the very least a very literal description of the services on offer, it would appear that the word had already been in common usage for a while at this point. Its use also points to the fact that this word had yet to acquire a taboo status, it would be unthinkable to intentionally insert the word cunt into a street name today. Cunt only started to be considered taboo in the 15th century when people began to avoid using it in public. By the 17th century it had acquired its status as an obscene word, and to the Victorians, for whom an ankle on show was too much like promiscuity, it came to be known as the monosyllable.

The monosyllabic nature of many English swear words is one of the great things about them. It makes it easy to spit them out vehemently, you can really mean them. Fuck! Shit! Crap! and Cunt! are all great examples. Although perhaps it's what you're used to, the French seem to do well with putain (whore) and the Polish with kurwah (also whore) still, I'm glad of the abundance of single syllable profanities in English.

Before I move on to another word, one interesting little swear word we have in English is berk. This is considered to be a mild and often affectionate insult roughly meaning idiot. Most people don't seem to realise (or choose to ignore) that it originated in the rhyming slang for cunt, Berkshire hunt.

Probably the most offensive of the male genitalia swear words is bollocks. This is from the Old English beallucas (testicles) and can be used to express frustration (bollocks!) or to dismiss something (that's a load of bollocks). The other contender is cock, the history of this word is fairly simple. It originates in the Old English word cocc which was used as a nickname for someone who strutted around like a cock (the bird) it was used in this sense up until the 1500's. Cock probably developed its usage as an insult from this usage and separately from its more recent meaning of penis which developed around 1610, although the word pillicock meaning penis is recorded from around 1300.

Over in sex category the f word is the clear winner in terms of offensive impact. Fuck is of uncertain origin probably because it has been considered a profanity from it's earliest use and so does not appear in very much published material. It is first recorded in 1503 in the form fukkit, while in its original form it first appears in a satirical poem of 1535. The most likely etymology seems to be from Scandinavia via Scotland as it is cognate with words in several Germanic languages including Norwegian dialectal fukka (copulate) and Swedish dialectal focka (copulate, strike, push) and fock (penis). There is a hint that the word fuck was once considered to be acceptable: there is a record from 1278 of a man with the name John Le Fucker, a bit of a worry given the fashion of the time to name people after their professions...


In the bodily functions camp the obvious winner is shit. Shit has a long history, it is from the Old English word scitan which itself is from the Proto - Germanic skit which meant split, divide or separate. Scitan was a verb and used in the sense of to separate, the noun scitte only took on its modern meaning of excrement around the 1580's and almost immediately became taboo. It was considered to be very offensive by the early 1600's Shakespeare who did on occasion use risque words never used shit and the word continued to be heavily censored right up until the 1970's when it was still being left out of some dictionaries (notably Websters).

While shit has its roots in Proto - Germanic, crap is from Latin, specifically crappa (chaff - as in the waste product of wheat) from this you get the Old French crappe (siftings) recorded in Middle English as crappe (grain that was trodden underfoot in a barn or chaff) around the mid 15th century. This meaning of waste product then attached itself to excrement. Finally one we can legitimately blame on the French!

Back with the list from the BBC I was surprised to see that their second most offensive word was motherfucker, partly because it's not the most common of swearwords here (too many syllables and sounds a bit awkward without an American accent) and partly because I would have expected shit and fuck to beat it. It is a word of African American origin and became well known in Europe during WWII as a result of its use by GIs. I have read that it originated with African slaves who used the term for slave owners who slept with their mothers, however this doesn't seem to be a well known theory.

As insults go the most commonly used swear words are probably bastard and bitch, these are used in a roughly similar way for the two genders but they have very different histories.

Bastard is the other word I found for which we can use the expression pardon my French. It is from the Old French word bastard (acknowledged child of a nobleman by a woman other than his wife) and is probably from fils de bast (a child conceived on a saddle - often used as an improvised bed while travelling). It wasn't always used as an insult, it could be advantageous to be a bastard child as it meant you were the child of a noble even if you didn't have a claim to a title. William the Conqueror was referred to in state documents as William the Bastard. The word has been used as a term of abuse for men since at least the 1830's but probably much earlier than this, as a swear word it was unlikely to have appeared much in print, but it is reasonable to assume that illegitimacy is something which could have been used as an insult from the earliest times, especially when used to suggest a noble didn't have the right to a title that he claimed.

Bitch meanwhile is from the Old English bicce (female dog) which is probably from the Old Norse bikkjuna (female dog, fox or wolf). It was applied to women as a word of contempt from the 1400's and as a development from this usage, as a sexually contemptuous term for men from the 1990's.

Swearing is a subject which could fill several books (and in fact has filled several books), I have only picked a few of the words which I consider to be the most useful in day to day life, there are plenty which I haven't mentioned not least the ones derived from religion and blasphemy. These words deserve a post to themselves, however I am mentioning them again as it is from the use of blasphemy as profanity that we derive the words we commonly associate with bad language.

The word profanity is from the idea of profaning the lord, from the Old Testament. Swear is from the Proto - Germanic swarjanan the root of which is the word swer (to speak or say). The Old English swerian (to take an oath) had by around 1430 developed the secondary meaning of using bad language, this meaning developed from the idea of swearing as invoking sacred names, presumably because people did so at inappropriate times. Curse is from the Old English verb cursian from which we get the late Old English curs (a prayer that evil or harm befalls someone). By the 1300's this meaning had developed to include language considered rude or offensive.

I am a big fan of swearing, Obviously there is a time and a place and it is always worth considering how other people are going to react, but to my mind a well timed swear word is a beautiful thing. We should reclaim our profanities from the French and be proud of them, they're fucking brilliant!

Photo by Ben Sutherland

ABC...

Where does the alphabet come from then?

I know that's what you've all been wondering. Me too.

As with so much that is useful in modern life it comes from the Romans, who got it from the Greeks, who got it from the Egyptians.

The first recorded scripts (series of symbols for communicating ideas visually) existed around the 4th Millennium BCE/BC and were found in Mesopotamia and in Egypt. The Mesopotamian script, known as cuneiform, consisted of logophonetic signs, which are signs representing a single word or concept, consonantal alphabetic signs which represent a single consonant sound and syllabic signs which represent a syllable sound. The Egyptian hieroglyphs were generally logophonetic signs which could be interpreted as different words or symbols depending upon the context.

The first (consonantal) alphabetic system is recorded in Egypt around 1,850 BCE/BC and is believed to have been developed to represent the language of Semitic workers in Egypt. This alphabet consisted of 22 hieroglyphs each representing a single consonant, along with a 23rd symbol believed to have represented a vowel sound at the start or end of a word. Because this alphabet was adopted by the Phoenicians who used it extensively, and because they were merchants who traded with people all over the ancient civilised world, later versions of it became known as the Phoenician alphabet.

Most modern alphabets appear to be descended from the Phoenicians'. The Aramaic alphabet which developed from it around the 7th century BCE/BC and was used throughout the Persian Empire is thought to be the ancestor of almost all modern Asian scripts including Hebrew and Arabic, although not Chinese and Japanese as they were already literate at this time and so they retain their logographic and syllabic scripts to this day.

Around the 8th century BCE/BC the Greeks started to adapt the Phoenician alphabet to represent their language. They were exposed to this system of writing because of trade with the Phoenicians, however the script didn't entirely suit the Greek language. The Phoenician alphabet was still a system which represented only consonant sounds. While this worked well for the the Phoenicians in order to be able to write clearly in Ancient Greek there had to be symbols which represented vowel sounds too.

The Greeks achieved this in the first instance by adapting the symbols which represented consonants that didn't exist in their language, such as the Phoenician letters 'alep and he which represented the glottal stop and the h sound. These became alpha (a) and epsilon (e). They were only able to adapt 6 of these symbols however, and as they needed 12 they invented digraphs.

A digraph is where two letters are combined to create a sound distinct from that of either individual letter, for example the ea sound in bread is not the sound for e followed by the one for a but rather a separate, distinct sound. Another good example is the sound created by the ch in child or the th in this, but there are many more, it is hard to write a sentence in English without using one.

Originally the Greeks wrote from right to left, by the time that the alphabet reached the Romans the direction had reversed, but not before going through an interesting phase known as boustrophedon in which writing runs from left to right and then back again so that when

eht ni etirw ot eunitnoc dna nrut uoy egap eht fo edis eno hcaer uoy

other direction.

If you think that is confusing they also reversed the direction of the letters so that every second line was in mirror writing. Unsurprisingly this didn't last for too long and it eventually settled into a left to right orientation.

The Greeks are also responsible for our dual case system of letters, lower case almost certainly developed from the effect of handwriting on letters. When we write quickly by hand the letters generally get rounder and tend to blend into one another, this informal handwritten variation of the alphabet gradually evolved into a distinct second case. The terms upper and lower case are a much later invention however and arrived during the 1400's with the advent of the printing press. Printers kept their letters in drawers in a case, and the lower case letters were literally kept in the lower case. The name stuck.

Although it is never a great idea to generalise it is fairly safe to say that two of the things that the Romans loved most of all were Greek culture and straight lines and in adapting the Greek and Etruscan alphabets to write in Latin they managed to improve one with the other. They took the alphabet and ordered it. Creating standards for letters and making straight lines and spacing a norm. Prior to the Romans writing had tended to be much harder to read both because of a tendency for the script to roam around the page and because of a lack of standardised lettering. The Romans in their usual efficient manner took the Greek/Etruscan alphabets and made it their own.

In fact the Romans did such a great job with it that there have been relatively few changes made to th alphabet in the 2000 or so years since they first got their hands on it. Obviously the sounds assigned to letters and digraphs vary greatly from language to language, but that is essentially irrelevant on the page. If you can understand what a word means it doesn't matter if you know how it sounds. The Latin alphabet is used world wide by speakers of many languages meaning that we have a global means of visual communication understood by the vast majority of literate people on earth, no small achievement and yet another example of the many ways in which the Roman Empire continues to affect our lives today.

But enough of my new obsession with classical history. There have been some changes. For example, the letter W is known as 'double U' because it developed from the Old English digraph uu. If you have ever wondered why it is that it is called 'double U' and not 'double V' then it is worth bearing in mind that V and U did not become distinctly separate letters with different sounds allocated to them until around the mid 1500's which is one reason why old writing can look very confusing. Another late addition was J which began life as a flourish at the bottom of the letter I and only became a letter in it's own right around the 1500's.

Even within English the sounds allocated to individual letters has changed a lot over time. We have also lost letters over the years. For example, the reason why ye gets used rather than the in those silly Ye Olde English pub names is that the Y actually represents a letter which no longer exists: þ or thorn was replaced by the digraph th around the 1600's, although as with most changes in language it was a gradual and natural one which occurred over time.

The word alphabet is from the names of the two first letters of the Phoenician alphabet: aleph or 'alp which was a pausal form of eleph meaning ox + bet meaning house. The letters had these meanings as they were thought to look like the objects they represented.

Our alphabet is incontestably one of the greatest ever human inventions and it is a tool which has survived for over 2,000 years with relatively few modifications and is still used daily by millions of people all over the world and to my mind that's pretty incredible.

Photo by Ky Olsen

Bread

This is my final installment of my 'jars in the kitchen' series of posts, and this one is, as the title suggests, on bread.

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that bread is the main reason why humans were able to form civilisations and that without bread the world today would be a very different place.

Before farming humans were hunter-gatherers who lived in small groups of up to about 30 people. The cultivation of wheat was the main factor which allowed us to abandon this way of life and start farming, which in turn lead to larger groupings of people. As towns and then cities grew people developed social structures and hierarchies. The various beliefs which had developed in hunter-gatherer groups became more formal structured religions. The upper echelons of these societies now had a large amount of leisure time in which to develop systems of writing and numeracy. Depending on your perspective bread is either the food which has underpinned the great civilisations of history, or it has a lot to answer for.

Originally bread would have been formed from roasted, ground up cereal grains mixed with water. As a food stuff this type of flat bread dates back to the Neolithic era and can still be found as a staple of many diets to this day; pitta bread, naan, chapati, oatcakes and tortillas are all examples of this kind of bread.

Leavened bread (bread with a substance added to it, usually yeast, which makes it rise) also dates back to prehistory. It was probably an accidental discovery as yeast spores exist naturally almost everywhere including on the surface of grains so that any dough that was left to rest for a time would probably become leavened without anything being added. The result would be a lighter, bigger loaf of bread.

In ancient history some societies added to their bread dough grains which had been steeped in wine and allowed to start fermenting. The Roman auther and natural philosopher Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls and Iberians added the foam from their beer to bread in order to make it lighter. The most common method of creating leavened bread though would have been to use a sourdough starter, this involves saving a piece of dough from a previous batch of bread to add to the next and is a method still used regularly today.

In medieval Europe bread was used as part of the table setting, it was standard to use a large slice of, often stale, bread as a plate on which the rest of the meal was placed, this would soak up the juices from the meat and was eaten at the end, or the more wealthy might give them to their dogs or to the poor. These bread plates were known as trenchers, and the name was retained for the wooden trenchers which replaced the bread in the 1600's.

It is possible that bread was the culprit in one of the most infamous events in American history: the Salem witch trials. For anyone not familiar with the story, in 1692 in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, Betty Parris, aged 9, and her 11 year old cousin Abigail Williams, started to have fits. These were beyond what might have been explained by something like epilepsy and closer to a scene from The Exorcist, as the girls contorted, crawled under furniture, screamed and complained of being pinched and pricked with needles. The doctor called to examine them could find nothing physically wrong with either of them. Over the next few days two more young girls became affected.

Initially 3 women were accused of performing witchcraft and causing the girls harm, however the situation quickly escalated, and over the 15 months from February 1692 to May 1693 150 people were arrested and imprisoned with at least 26 people being tried, all of whom were convicted. It has never been conclusively proven what it was that caused the fits in the little girls of Salem, however one of the most plausible theories is that it might have been the effects of ergot poisoning. This can be caused by the fungus Claviceps purpurea which grows on grains. The symptoms of ergot poisoning include seizures and hallucinations similar to those caused by LSD.

In Old English the word bread meant bit, crumb and morsel as well as having the meaning we use today. It may well come from the Proto-Germanic word brautham, the same root as the word brew, and refer to the leavening process, or it could be from the Proto-Germanic broudsmon meaning fragments or bits, as in pieces of food. In either case by 1200 it had replaced the earlier Old English word, hlaf (from which we derive our word loaf) to be the usual word for leavened and unleavened bread.

So bread, or the cultivation and farming of wheat for bread, directly led to society as we know it, science, religion, politics, art and philosophy amongst many other things. But there may be a twist in this tale. It is possible that the wheat was originally cultivated not for bread but for beer.

Apparently hunting, gathering and living in small groups enabled most people to have quite large amounts of leisure time, and so the desire to farm in order to produce food may not have been enough to drastically change social structures. However in order to be able to reliably produce alcoholic beverages on a regular basis you need to have a steady supply of the ingredients and it is quite likely that this was the real inspiration behind the shift towards farming and larger social groupings.

In other words all of modern society as we know it is based upon the prehistoric urge for a pint.

Photo by Rexipe.

Nadders and Juncture Loss

Writing the post on articles reminded me of a linguistic phenomenon I came across a while back known as juncture loss, this is a one form of a process known as rebracketing.

Rebracketing occurs when a word (or words) in a language alter in emphasis or meaning due to being broken or bracketed into different factors. As an example of what I mean by factors, the word teaching can be broken down into two distinct parts teach+ing this makes sense teach meaning to impart knowledge + ing, a suffix denoting verbal action. If it was broken down any differently, for example as tea+ching you have tea, a hot drink made by infusing dried leaves in boiling water + ching, an abrupt high pitched ringing noise, it no longer makes any sense at all.

Rebracketing occurs when there is a shift in the way the factors in a word or words interact. An example of this which is regularly used is our English word for a meat patty: burger. This is from a German word which has become rebracketed in English. It was initially broken into the factors of (ham+burg)+er and came from a ground meat dish apparently popular in the Hamburg area of Germany. On it's introduction to America the word quickly became rebracketed as ham+(burg+er) so that today we have the strange situation where we can (hopefully) expect a chicken burger to contain chicken, a cheese burger to have cheese in it and a beef burger to come from a cow but a hamburger has never contained ham.

The form of rebracketing which I was reminded of when writing about articles is known as juncture loss. This can happen in two ways: either the n from the start of a noun transfers itself onto the end of the a form of the indefinite article (if for example a neighbour became an eighbour) or the other way round (an apple became a napple).

One real example of this process is the word orange. Orange has its roots in the Arabic word naranj (from the Persian narang, from Sanskrit naranga meaning orange tree). In Old French this became arenge as the n was absorbed into the indefinite article and une narange became une arrange, so the word came into English without its original n, interestingly it was originally recorded in English as a surname (around 1296) only later appearing as the word for the fruit in about 1380.

Another word in which this process occurred is apron, which in Middle English was known as a napron (from the Old French naperon, itself from the Latin mappa meaning napkin, mappa is also the root of the word map as maps were originally drawn on cloths). Between 1450 and 1485 the n travelled from the start of the word napron to the end of the indefinite article a so that a napron became an apron.

One more example of the n attaching itself to the article, because this one always makes me smile is the only venomous snake found in the UK, the adder. When I was a kid I often wondered why a snake would be given a name which implies that it might be good at mathematics. Turns out that it wasn't. The snake was actually known in Old English as a naedre (around 950) as far as I can tell this simply meant a snake, and it originates in the Indo-European base sne meaning to wind, thread or weave which if you think about the way a snake moves makes a lot of sense. The n attached itself to the article between 1300-1400, and I think this is a good thing, snake venom is serious stuff and it is hard to take a creature called a nadder seriously.

My example of the n attaching itself to a noun is one which explains a confusing word. Without knowing about juncture loss the etymology of the word nickname isn't at all apparent, what is a nick? It isn't anything. The word was originally written a neke name, and an eke name was quite literally an extra name, the word eke was Middle English, meaning extra or additional and is still used today in the sense of making something go further than it should, to eke out.

Juncture loss is a process which often seems to occur when words are borrowed from other languages, presumably as it makes it much harder for the speaker to automatically hear where they are making a mistake. For example the word umpire is originally from the Old French nonper, meaning odd or not even (in reference to an umpire being an extra person), this came into English as a noumper around 1350 and in Middle English (around 1440) it became an oumpere.

Rebracketing and juncture loss are forms of folk etymology, or historical etymology, whereby a change evolves naturally in language and it is a process which most often occurs in societies in which communication is largely oral. It is less likely to happen in English today at least not as it is used in literate societies where a lot of communication is written, even so it is inevitable that languages do evolve so perhaps in the future we will use a ni-pod and play on an intedo wii.

Photo by Chris Cant

Writing wrongs

Yes, I know, very punny.

In the course of the last few weeks I have come across a two random subjects which I thought were quite interesting but don't really warrant an entire blog entry to themselves. Whether or not I am right about that remains to be seen, but this post is sort of a bubble and squeak of blog.

Firstly, in the coursework I have been doing recently I have been learning about some philosophical approaches to leisure including that of the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. The only way in which I had encountered him before was in the English words epicure and Epicurean which are derived from his name.

I had always understood these words to mean gluttonous or hedonistic, and so I was surprised by his theory on leisure which can be briefly (and inexpertly) summarised as follows: as humans are essentially a collection of random atoms they have no specific higher purpose; as we have no specific purpose our main goal in life should be to avoid bodily pain and mental anguish; the state which we achieve when we successfully avoid these things is pleasure; this pleasure is best derived from simple things and good, wholesome food in moderation, partially to avoid becoming dependent upon potentially transient luxury, partially because health and freedom from bodily pain are not achieved through gluttony and excess; he also advocated study, philosophy and exercise as routes to pleasure. This seems to be almost the opposite of what the words associated with his name have come to mean, although this misinterpretation seems to have been something which he suffered from even during his lifetime.

The OED defines epicure as: a person who takes pleasure in fine food and drink. The word had acquired negative connotations by 1556, as a description for someone who gives themselves up to sensual pleasure, in particular a glutton. By around 1586 it had also come to be a word for a gourmet, which while not exactly in line with Epicurus' actual philosophy is perhaps a step in the right direction. By around the late 1700's the word had lost it's more negative meaning and the sense of gluttony attached itself to the word Epicurean instead.

For Epicurean the OED has 4 definitions, all of which relate either to followers or students of Epicurus, or to epicures (in the sense of gourmet), what it doesn't have is any mention of the idea of Epicurean meaning gluttonous, which is strange because among the synonyms my thesaurus has listed for Epicurean are: hedonist, sensualist, pleasure-seeker, gourmet, gastronome; and for the adjective: decadent, unrestrained, immoderate, gluttonous. So it seems that there is not always agreement about what this word means, and it depends on whether your guide is the philosophy from which it derives or the history of the meaning which it has acquired.

While I can't say I agree with (or even know about) everything Epicurus said about leisure and pleasure I can't help feeling that linguistic history has done him a disservice. Regardless of whether you agree with the route he takes to arrive at his conclusions his advice on life, to avoid stress, eat moderately and to take exercise for the body and for the brain are all rather familiar, as they are still echoed in the health advice we are given today, and are about as far from gluttony and hedonism as it is possible to get.

Next up, sinister. I was listening to an interesting and informative podcast the other day, I can't remember what it was called nor what it was about, but I do remember one of the people involved in this podcast mentioned that the word sinister was originally a word meaning left handed, and because there was so much stigma attached to being a southpaw it came to have it's modern meaning: suggestive of evil or harm (thank you OED). I thought this was rather interesting but I wasn't totally convinced it was true and so I did a little digging (by turning to the s section of my various reference books), and it turns out to be kind of right, but only kind of.

The word sinister was first recorded in English in 1411 as sinistre meaning deceptive, false or dishonest, by 1474 it was being used to mean evil or corrupt. Given the spelling it is clear that the word comes to English from French; in Old French sinistre meant contrary, unfavourable, on the left or, directly from it's Latin root, left. But not left handed. It is just possible that sinister acquired it's negative connotations via distrust of left handed people, sinisteros in Latin meant left or on the left and was the opposite of dexteros meaning right or on the right from which we get our modern word dexterity (skillfulness) which almost certainly did get its meaning from its association with right handedness, however despite the fact that this seems like an obvious root it is not the widely accepted explanation.

That would be far too easy.

The Romans got their word sinister from the Sanskrit saniyan (more profitable, more advantageous), this word was cognate with the Doric Greek word anumes (we were reaching) ultimately from the same Indo-European root word seneu (achieve). So clearly the root words have fairly positive connotations. The Latin word sinister was used at one point to mean lucky, favourable, and its link with the direction left is assumed to come from the ancient Roman practice of facing south during the practice of observing omens, this meant that the person's left side was facing east and this was considered to be a fortunate quarter, so that omens coming from the east (such as birds) were on the persons left.

At this stage I should point out that I don't know very much about Roman practices so I am not clear on who would have been looking for omens and how the practice worked. But it is clear that, to start with, in line with the idea of profit and achievement sinister had the meaning of lucky and that it gained the further meaning of left from these rituals. The Romans though were heavily influenced by the Greeks and the Greeks faced north when observing omens, this lead to the word acquiring a negative meaning of inauspicious and unfavorable, as the left side when facing north is the west which was presumably a less lucky quarter. So the evolution of sinister seems to be from a word which meant lucky it gained the additional meaning of left, then when Roman practices changed it shed its original meaning and kept the association with the direction and then gained new, negative associations from the direction change leading to it's modern meaning.

So I guess that the podcasters weren't entirely wrong, as the word is certainly heavily associated with the left hand side, however I think we can use the word in it's modern sense without fear of seriously offending any lefty's out there, which is good because it's a lovely word.

So there you have my random blog offering, normal service (whatever that may be) will resume again soon, just as soon as I finish my final assignment for my current course.

Picture by Isaac Joo

Articles for my Friend

I am feeling blogger guilt as I haven't managed to post for a while, this has nothing to do with will and everything to do with time. Still, I'm here now.

So, articles. For native English speakers these little words (a, an and the) are generally taken for granted. Those who approach English as a second language tend to fall into two categories: people who's first language also has articles generally don't struggle to get to grips with them; while people who's first language doesn't use them often find the concept can be quite confusing, especially as knowing the rules of a language and actually putting them into practice are two very different things.

I have a friend who is rather brilliant, generally, has spoken English fluently, and studied (other subjects) in it for many years. But their first language is Polish, which is a language without articles, and this is the one area of English with which they still struggle. I said I would try and help, so that is the reason for today's post, but I'm not sure that I have anything new to add, I shall try.

As I already mentioned there are three words defined as articles in English. This is the simplest explanation, and I will go into the more complicated one later on, but to start off: a, an and the. The is the definite article, while a and an are indefinite articles. An is used before words which start with a vowel or with a silent 'h' as in an hour, a is used before consonants.

An article is a word that combines with a noun in order to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. This is not as complicated as it sounds, I promise. Articles express the grammatical definiteness of the noun, also less complicated than it sounds.

All this really means is that in English when you use a singular common noun (in the simplest terms a noun which is not capitalised) in a sentence you must indicate the definiteness of the noun, either it is a cat (just a cat, any cat), or it is the cat (that cat there, the cat we already discussed). So the indefinite articles indicate that a noun is less definite (a coat, an anorak, whatever) and the definite article indicates that the noun is a specific item (the coat, definitely). A or an is often used when the noun is first introduced, and once an item has been identified the can then be used, for example: I dropped a book on my toe: my foot really hurts, but the book is fine. This is pretty simple and generally most people could probably learn these rules and very quickly be able to identify the correct usage. The problem is that when we speak or write we don't generally stop to dissect each sentence, identify the noun and work out just how definite it needs to be.

I don't know if it is helpful to know the etymology of a, an and the but I like etymology, and it helped me when I was trying to work out how to explain how articles work. So over to my dictionary.

I will start with an. An originated in Old English as an unstressed form of the numeral an (one). A is a reduced form of an. The n was slowly dropped for words beginning with a consonant, starting in the midland dialect in England around 1150. The southern dialect held on a lot longer; as late as 1340 an could still be used before a consonant. For words that start with a w,y or an h it was even later, with an woman found in the 1400's, and an hundred as late as the 1600's, in fact this usage of an before an h in a stressed syllable can still be found occasionally to this day, I have heard an hotel before. This development of an a/an pattern is something which has developed in South German dialects and in Yiddish without any influence from English; in both cases this was also as a development from the word for one. In both the distribution is the same, with a before a consonant word and an before a vowel sound.

So a and an essentially mean one, which might be a helpful way to work out if it's a or the, since one denotes an amount but does not point to a specific item.

The is also from Old English. Before about 950 the words se (masculine), seo (feminine), and thaet (neuter) were used as demonstrative pronouns (roughly meaning the, the, that). The neuter form became our modern word that. Around 950 the masculine and feminine forms changed from s to th, influenced by the neuter, so that the masculine became the.

To recap: articles go before common nouns to distinguish if the item in question is one of it's type (a ball could be a basketball, football or bouncy ball) or if it is a specific item to which you are referring (the ball is a specific ball which has already been identified or is apparent to everyone, for example if you are playing football the ball is going to be the football)

To complicate things a little there are exceptions to this.

The first and most obvious in English is the zero article, this is where no article is used before a noun, and in English the zero article is used with all plurals and mass nouns. So while you would sing a song, you would sing songs.

The English language doesn't technically have partitive articles, these are articles which are used with a mass noun to indicate an indeterminate quantity, so while in French I would bois du cafe in English I just drink coffee, what we can do in English though is to substitute the French du with the English determiner some. While this word is not technically an article it does a pretty similar job to a partitive article and is the best we have, so a usual translation of bois du cafe would actually be drink some coffee.

Finally we have the negative article, this is a word which specifies none of the noun, and in English it is no, although it should be noted that some linguists consider this to be a determiner rather than an article.

To recap:

• Definite article: The glass of water
• Indefinite article: A glass of water
• Zero article: Water
• (Acting) Partitive article: Some water
• Negative article: No water

Clearly this is not a perfect example as the definite and indefinite articles refer to the glass while the following three refer to the water, however I think it will do to illustrate.

English students actually don't have it too bad when it comes to articles. In English there are just three choices, and of course we don't have the masculine/feminine distinction. Pity the students of German who must learn the definite articles: der, die, das and die; as well as the indefinite: ein, eine and ein and where and when it is appropriate to use them. Or worse (and this is one that is daunting me as I face the task of renewing my acquaintance with the language this summer) French where you have definite: le, la, l' and les; the indefinite: un, une and des; then there is also the partitive: du, de la and des. In contrast to French, or the even more complicated Italian (il, lo, la, l'i, gli,le, un, uno, una, un', dell, dello, della, dell' dei, degli, degl' delle - I will leave you to work out which is what and why) suddenly the English articles look a little more attractive.

Having said that articles are almost exclusively a feature of Indo-European and Semitic languages and even then by no means all of them. Latin doesn't have articles, nor do the Baltic languages, or most of the Slavic languages while Arabic and Hebrew only have definite articles. So if you really want to avoid the whole tricky subject it might be worth learning Japanese or maybe Hindi, Malay or Russian all of which are article free.

There are various resources online for testing your knowledge of articles, including these quizzes on the BBC website, but they are usually pretty basic. Unfortunately for the most part, as with every element of learning a language, once you know the rule you just have to keep practicing.

Photo by Brenda Clarke