chronic.linguist

I had a stroke of genius¹ on the bus ride home today. I realized: If I had a blog about Hebrew fonts/typography, I could call it…drumroll please…Serifim.

Unfortunately, this epiphany was in vain as I have no content for such a blog, except to say that David is my font of choice when typing in Hebrew. However, I was happy to find that someone who does know something about the subject has stepped up to the plate.

Naturally, thinking about serifs got me wondering where the word came from, and lexicographers seem at a loss to answer that question confidently. American Heritage posits “Perhaps from Dutch schreef, line, from Middle Dutch scērve, from scriven, to write, from Latin scrībere”; the OED simply says “Of obscure origin,” quoting from an 1841 printing dictionary as its earliest source with the term.

Unsurprisingly, in Hebrew it’s סריף [seʁif]. (Seraph, on the other hand, is שרף [saʁaf].)

Finally, I need to work on this habit of introducing every sentence with an adverb. :-/

Some new entries in my lexicon, thanks to the parks and the Oxford English Dictionary:

caldera

(kalˈdera) [a. Sp. caldera = Pg. caldeira, F. chaudière cauldron, kettle, boiler:—L. caldāria, pl. of prec.]

A deep cauldron-like cavity on the summit of an extinct volcano.

fumarole

(ˈfjuːmərəʊl) [ad. F. fumerolle (fumarolle): see FEMERELL [ad. OF. fumeraille altered form of fumerole = It. fumaruolo:— L. fūmāriolum, dim. of fūmārium, f. fūmus smoke.] .]

A hole or vent through which vapour issues from a volcano; a smoke-hole.

pika

(U.S. ˈpaɪkə, ˈpikə) [< Evenki piika.]

Any of various small rabbit-like mammals constituting the genus Ochotona and family Ochotonidae (order Lagomorpha), having short, rounded ears, reddish-brown or grey fur, and a very small tail, and found in the mountains and deserts of western North America and north-east and central Asia. Also called calling hare, mouse-hare, rock rabbit, etc.

rut

(rʌt) [a. OF. rut, var. of ruit:—pop. L. *rugĭt-um for L. rugītum, acc. of rugītus, f. rugīre to roar.]

1. The annually recurring sexual excitement of male deer; also, by extension, periodic sexual excitement in other animals, as goats, sheep, etc.

(Earliest citation, c1410): Master of Game (MS. Digby 182) ii, Þei [sc. harts] be in hir loue, þe whiche men calleth Rutte, aboute þe tyme of holy rode in Septembre.

travertine

(ˈtrævə[r]tɪn) [ad. It. travertine, older tivertino ‘a kind of stone to build withall’ (Florio):—L. tīburtīnus TIBURTINE. Cf. F. travertine, in Cotgr. trevertin.]

A white or light-coloured concretionary limestone, usually hard and semi-crystalline, deposited from water holding lime in solution; also called travertine stone; quarried in Italy for building. A less solid porous form is known as calcareous tufa.

snackcident

Alas, this one was missing from the OED. Luckily I have another source:

And for those of you who were wondering, the Grand Tetons are so called because the mountains were nicknamed Les Trois Tétons, “the three breasts.”

While browsing the New Books section of the library, I stumbled upon—what else?—a linguistics book. Guy Deutscher’s The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention is a fascinating account of how the evolution of complex structures in language can be explained using just a few very basic principles of language change. The first several chapters explain these principles with wonderful illustrations from a diverse set of languages, ranging from Akan to Akkadian to English. (Ever wonder how Proto-Indo-European dont became tooth in English? The answer lies in the famous sound change known as Grimm’s Law.) Since I’ve saved my Historical Linguistics class for next semester, many of these concepts were new to me, and I think Deutscher does an excellent job of elucidating each of them.

One of the coolest aspects of this book is that while it touches on some of the coolest features studied by linguists, it does not assume prior familiarity with linguistics. So all you non-linguists need to read it as well —it’ll give you an appreciation for how we all make use of such a complex and varied phenomenon.

If you’re interested, I’ve written summaries of the chapters in more detail:
(more…)

In class last week we read a review from a Hebrew newspaper of a book about common Israeli spices. “סיפורי תבלין” (Spice Stories) delves into the history and folklore of each plant—noting, for example, that the Egyptians believed that eating coriander would cause them to give birth to sons. So for our writing assignment on the mythology or folklore behind a plant, I wrote about the mandrake in the world of Harry Potter. Little did I know that my professor would come back the next day with a passage from the Bible (Genesis 30:14-16) which suggests that the mandrake was prized among our foremothers. So much so that they led to the birth of Isaachar. Mandrakes are also intertwined with sensual imagery in Song of Songs: “The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates [are] all manner of pleasant [fruits], new and old, [which] I have laid up for thee, O my beloved” (7:13). The Wikipedia article claims that the Hebrew word means “love plant”—indeed, דוד (from which דודא probably derives) means “lover.” Perhaps J.K. Rowling would have been better advised to plant (har) the Mandrake in Half-Blood Prince .