What is the "th" in "the" called?

That was the clue in a crossword I was doing recently. (If you do crosswords while flying on Southwest Airlines and it's still August, 2013 when you read this, I am hear by serving you with a SPOILER ALERT). Let's put a picture here so that you have a chance to avoid this if so inclined.

(No longer the Southwest uniform, if it ever was.)



 To be honest, I had to maneuver my way around with all the other clues. Originally, I came up with something like "girrapa". However, eventually I learned that the correct answer was "digraph". Correct, but no wiser, I had to look this up.

A digraph is (most often) when a written alphabet has to use two letters to get across one sound, because it hasn't created a single letter for it. Mostly, this would be two letters that separately convey different sounds, like "t" and "h" do when not "th" or "c" and "h" do when not starting off words like "chair" or finishing off words like "beach".

There are plenty of other types of digraphs, though, and we don't even have to leave English to find them. The rh in "rhetoric" or, to be less high-falutin', "rhino" still just sounds like "r". Usually, these don't come about through mere whimsy, though. They represent traces of older ways of speaking, different dialects, or even attempts to write down other languages. Typically, digraphs become conventions of writing. Someone hits on a way to do it, and it becomes standardized.

There's a lot more that could be said about digraphs--as I type this, I can see almost nothing but, actually. Let's just concentrate on the "th" sound for a moment, though, since that's what brought us here. The Online Etymology Dictionary has some fascinating stuff about it. It tells us that the "th" sound is found mainly in words stemming from Old English, Old Norse and Greek: It was"unpronounceable by Normans and many other Europeans". The Romans couldn't do it either, which is why many of our "th" words come across as Italian and Spanish "t" words: teoria for "theory," teatro  for "theater").

Like a most famous theatre group in my neck of the woods, Teatro Campesino:

      
Germanic languages represented the "th" sound in two ways, neither one of them digraphs. One was "ð", which I'm familiar from Icelandic mystery writer Arnaldur Indriðason ( hear how an Icelandic person pronounces his name here), and the other is "þ", or thorn, which was originally a rune.  

Old English, unlike Old Norse did not standardize which symbol meant a hard "th" and which a soft one. The "ð" was lost from English first, though, when the digraph "th" returned to England with French scribes circa 1250. They apparently had the "th" as a carry over from the Greek letter θ or theta, but pronounced it "t", circa 1250. The "thorn" was harder to get rid of, and clung, thornlike, in words like þat, þe, þat, þe, þis,is, or that, the, this. Their, or should I say, þeir death knell was sounded when the age of printing began, and type, which had to be imported from Europe, had no letter font for þ.

People were reluctant to part with their thorny old friend, and for awhile they, especially those in Scotland, substituted the "y" because it looked somewhat like a þ. I was quite surprised to learn that "ye" was always pronounced "the", or so says Online Etymology, and when have they ever steered us wrong?

Actually, they did steer us a bit wrong, because there is a different path for the pronoun ye, as in "My lord, I pray ye, put off your doublet" and the article form, as in Ye Olde Shoppe. The first is from Sir Thomas More, an apocryphal text from William Shakespeare, the second, modern day claptrap. I guess they both might be claptrap, but the first is at least from the right era and used correctly.   

 

Play the gerrymander game

Remember my post on gerrymandering? Yeah, me either. Nevertheless, Slate has a fun gerrymandering puzzle which may be instructive in a more hands on way. Give it a shot.

 

This is, like, a filler post!

Not killer post--filler post. It's definitely an easier one for me to write up than most, because all I'm going to do is send you to Slate's website to read a short article by Katy Waldman called In Defense of Like.

I can remember my dad getting irritated over the use of the word "like" in this way. And perhaps it does sound a bit vacuous to some. But anything can be a verbal tick, after all. Yesterday, I was listening to a very well-informed and entertaining speaker, but at a certain point I became aware that everything he said was punctuated with a filler, "yeah", "yes", "right", or "that's right". Once I noticed this, I couldn't stop noticing. It's a very kindly sort of tic, but he could have lost about half of them and still not come across as disagreeable.

warlock

 

This is just a funny one that I had never considered before. I happened to be watching an old episode of New Tricks last night, where the stalwart if aging team finds itself investigating a Wiccan coven. Along the way, someone brings up the word "warlock". Just a male witch, right? I mean, we've all watched Bewitched at some point or another, so we know this one. But in New Tricks, warlock actually means "oathbreaker". Really, I thought. That seems odd, and not exactly what I'd call neutral. So I thought I'd dig a little deeper.

 

Remember Uncle Arthur?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "warlock" comes from the Old English wærloga, which is a combination of  the word for faith or compact, wær, and a noun related to the word leogan, to lie. Thus, traitor, liar, enemy. In other words, an oathbreaker. It was from early on related to the devil, and meant one in league with the devil from about 1300.

 

Interestingly, though, there is an alternate theory as to how the word popped up in our other sense of "male witch", which did not appear in print until 1560 and came from Scotland. This version says that it may come from the Old Norse varð-lokkur, which means "spirit-caller".  The Oxford English Dictionary says this is inadmissible, but who's to say they always get it right?  Here's an article that takes a dissenting view. You should just read it if you're interested, as it has a lot of detail, but basically the author wonders if there might just be something  in the old  spirit-caller theory. He (we'll assume for now that "Tony the Hermit" is a he) questions the Anglo Saxon origin of the word. 

 

"Moreover, if it is Anglo-Saxon, why do we find it nowhere in England but everywhere in Scotland, where the Anglo-Saxons and their language did not penetrate? That is a major problem, and one I decided to track down."

 

I rather like his argument that the migratory path of the Scandinavian peoples carried them (and their language) to Scotland, and that a line like "But the docksy auld laird of the Warlock glen" (which he doesn't mention comes from a poem called "It Was On a Morn" by Joanna Baillie) makes more sense if it refers to a place of enchantment--where the spirits are called--rather than a place where sorcerers gather for maleficent ends. Of course, witchcraft and pagan lore have mainly been treated with deep animosity in Christianizing Western culture. Sir Walter Scott's passage from Redgauntlet  (1824):

 

"I will delate you for a warlock to the privy council!" said Sir John. "I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a tar-barrel and a torch!"

 

certainly isn't giving those spirit calling glens much benefit of the doubt.

 

This video talking about the meaning of the word warlock is surprisingly close to the line taken in the above mentioned New Tricks episode, which if you're wanting to hunt it down is called "Wicca Work". Both take the line that a warlock is not a male witch but one who betrays the coven. BlazeLeeDragon is a little more understanding than some might be about how words drift, though.
  

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Drones Arrive at Steamer Lane--the video

I'm headed out for a few days tomorrow and though I'm not headed into the wilderness or anything, I doubt I'll be doing a blog post till I get back.

If you are diligent or bored enough to scroll down through the various blogs I write, you might notice one I put up called  Drone Off, which is just a round up of various drone news I hear. Basically, I'm agin' 'em. I think their deployment is morally corrosive to our government and ultimately to our society as a whole. But every once in awhile you come across some positive aspect of them.

Such is the case with this video which I learned about through our local paper, The Santa Cruz Sentinel. It's a very beautiful short film, somewhat dreamlike, taken from  a "quad copter" at one of most famous surf spots in Santa Cruz, Steamer Lane. More about the film and the film maker, Eric Cheng can be found here.

I'll be back with the usual barrage of ignorance soon.
 

Who put the "p" in comptroller?

I was watching Stephen Colbert interview Eliot Spitzer, who is running for the position of Comptroller of NYC, a few nights ago.(The broadcast was earlier but I almost never see the comedy shows on the night they are aired.) Colbert asked what a comptroller actually is, and though he of course turned the talk to Spitzer's scandal, Spitzer managed to get in a few words about the importance of the Comptroller's job.  I've embedded the interview below so you can hear it in his own words. 

Basically, though, the Comptroller of New York City is its chief financial officer. He or she advises the Mayor and City Council, as well as the citizenry on the fiscal health of the city. In practice, this means a lot of auditing and oversight. According to a Hunter College professor emeritus in political science, Kenneth Sherrill  the Comptroller acts as a form of check and balance on the mayor and council. As Spitzer points out in the interview, another very important function of the Comptroller is to oversee the city's big pension funds, worth about one hundred and forty billion dollars. It's through the use of this powerful tool that the Comptroller has some role and responsibility in overseeing Wall Street's tendency toward shenanigans as well. Of course, someone should really be overseeing the comptroller, as its a position ripe for corruption.

But all that is not why I fastened on this word. I was really just interested in why comptroller has a p in it. Wikipedia seemed to have a sensible answer: that it is a blend of the French compte, or count, and the Middle English countreroller, someone who checked a copy of a scroll, thus creating a useful word for someone who specifically checks financial sources.

However, other sources are having none of this. They, including the Online Etymology Dictionary, attribute the 'mp' rather than 'n' to all kinds of vices: "bad spelling due to influence of unrelated compte" (which in French sounded almost identical), "folk etymology", always bad in the minds of etymologists, though charming in the mind of someone like me, and so on. Personally, I think it's rather ingenious and wouldn't be surprised if that bit of word play was deliberate.

But if you want to get all New York 1896 on me, here's what the New York Times had to say back then:

We propose an amendment to the Revised Statutes of the United States, of the State of New-York, and of every State in the Union where the need of it exists. It is to this effect, namely:
 
That the official title Controller, in all laws, public records and documents, be spelled Controller, that being historically and etymologically the true and right spelling; and that the false and offensive form "Comptroller", born of ignorance and darkness, be discarded. (The full article is here.)

Eliot, Eliot--are you sure you want to plunge again into these murky New York waters?

(By the way, the image at the top of the post is by Paulo Barcellos, Jr., which he terms "Bladerunner style". He very generously puts his stuff up on Creative Commons, but you can catch more of his work HERE.

 

phatic

I know--this word just isn't something that comes up so much in everyday conversation. Because our everyday conversations are more like "Hi, how ya doing?" "Fine, how about you?". "Have a good day, then." "Thanks, you too."

Nevertheless, my friend asked me yesterday what phatic meant, and in the tried and true method of this blog, I did what I always do. I took a wild guess. "Having to do with prophecy?" I wagered.

Luckily I didn't bet any money.

"Phatic" turns out to refer to a form of speech, a form which I have cleverly already illustrated above. Phatic speech is speech that is used primarily in a social sense rather than to convey information. We all know what phatic speech is, but what we usually call it is "small talk". As is often the case, the Urban Dictionary perhaps says it best:

Small Talk: Useless and unnecessary conversation attempted to fill the silence in an awkward situation. Commonly backfires into feelings of loneliness and social discomfort. Usually is initiated by comments regarding the current weather, weather pattern of the past/future few days or major weather disturbances in the recent past.    

Since, until recently, I spent a fair amount of time working a cash register, I have apparently engaged in a lot of phatic speech, though all unwittingly.

Unlike many words, "phatic" came into the lingo at a particular time and via a particular person, Bronislaw Malinowski. If you're like me, you may have some vague recognition of Malinowski as an anthropologist, and even the fact that his work centered on the Trobriand Islanders may ring some very muffled bell. Malinowski  coined it from the Greek phatos, meaning spoken or that may be spoken.

Here's a relevant passage from his "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages". (I say "a" relevant passage because I did not read the whole essay. There may be others more pertinent.):

[Phatic communication] is a flow of language, purpose-less expressions of preference or aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious [there is] always the same emphasis of affirmation and consent. Are words in Phatic Communion used primarily to convey meaning, the meaning which is symbolically theirs? Certainly not! They fulfill a social function, and that is their principal aim, but they are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the listener. Once again we may say that language does not function here as a means of transmission of thought.

Malinowski himself understood that phatic conversation was far from the exclusive domain of "primitive languages", though like any good Western anthropologist, he probably didn't perceive the phatic in his own culture as easily saw it in others. Just a hunch.

I actually filched the quote entire from a very good post on a blog called Hearsay and Backtalk that I happened upon in my travels. The initial observation there is that many, many of the posts on Facebook and the like are actually forms of phatic communication. And the writer, who doesn't identify him or herself, wonders if social media hasn't proliferated phatic expression, and even spread its influence to other spheres. The 'like' button would seem to be crucial to this phenomenon.

As I read on through this thoughtful piece, which I do recommend, a couple of things came up. First, phatic speech isn't so empty of information as all that. Sometimes we really do want to know something about the weather, for instance. And a phatic question can quickly become non phatic. "How are you doing?" "Terrible--my wife just died." I actually just overheard a variant of this last just a couple of days ago and will attest how quickly the conversation becomes non-phatic, even to someone who is only just inadvertently listening in.

The other thing is that as the above mentioned blog post points out, even small talk has its place. The blog leads to a further link to a little piece by Danica Radovanović on phatic posts, which she takes from her own doctoral research. At heart, and I think "heart" is a relevant word here, phatic communication acknowledges that others exist and maintains connection with them. Not such a bad thing, all in all.


Oh, yeah--