(Thumbs) Ups and Down of English Grammar Usage Change

Language and generation are closely linked.  By hearing the words and structure of a sentence, it is possible to know the approximate age of the speaker and, to a lesser degree, writer.  It is clear that since languages are living and dynamic, they will evolve in time. However, just as in regards to the changes in our mind and body as we grow older, we are entitled to our opinions about them.  Alas, as with our complaints about reduced vision, expanded stomachs, and disappearing hair, complaints don’t make any difference.  Still, it does provide some satisfaction to voice them.

The gradual disappearance of whom, the ithers, and the present perfect for emphasis saddens me for some reason.  I like the sound of phrases such as “To whom am I speaking” and “For whom it may concern” not to mention that classic Hemmingway title For Whom the Bell Tolls (Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia was a far superior book on the Spanish Civil War).  They simply have more character than “who am talking to”, for example. As for the “ithers”, hither, whither, and thither, the last surviving remnants of the Latin locative case in English are only expressed in two expressions: come hither and whither to.  For those younger readers, locative expresses direction as compared to location and thrives in Russian and Hebrew in such forms куда [kuda] instead of где [gde], сюда [syuda] instead of здесь [sdyess], туда [tuda] instead of там [tam] and לאן [la’an] instead of איפה [aifo], שמה [shama] instead of שם [sham] and הנה [hena] instead of כאן [kan] for where, there, and here in Russian and Hebrew, respectively.    Finally, Americans now commonly use the past simple instead of the present perfect in the following sentence: I just woke up instead I have just woken up.  The latter form, still preferred by UK speakers I am told, better emphasizes the fact that I don’t want to talk or make decisions until I drink my first cup of coffee or tea.  In short, it adds flavor and texture to the language, which is desirable in the right proportion.

So as not appear as a grumpy old man fighting progress, there are usage changes that I like, really.  The almost complete extinction of the word shall brings me great joy.  The only time I see it is in the legal texts I translate, which are archaic anyway and don’t count for measuring active use.  The reason for my joy is who in the hell could remember the stupid rule: Future: I shall, we shall, all the others “will”; determinative: I will, we will, everything else “shall”.  Moreover, why should we remember that rule?  I have the same sentiment to the long forgotten restriction of the word can to ability only and not permission.  I hated the elementary school teacher answer to the question “Can I go to the bathroom?”: Yes, you can, but you may not.”  Now it is much clearer: “you can’t” without the grammar lesson.

I just have one more small request for one word to disappear as fast as possible: awesome.  The sound of middle-aged sports announcers saying that the singing of the national anthem was “awesome” sounds like parents trying to copy their teenager’s language, i.e. pathetic and utterly unnatural.

So, language will change for better or worse, whether we like it or not.  Let me know if any change in your language that pains or gladdens your heart.

The (Galilee) Spice of Life

I am a resident of the Galilee, the part of Israeli north of the (relatively) crowded center of the country and southwest of the Golan Heights.  Its topography varies from sea and agricultural plains to hills and forested peaks.  Its climate also varies, generally depending on the distance from the sea and the Sea of Galilee, known locally as the Kinneret.  Many tourists visit Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Dead Sea, Eilat, and even the Bahai Temple in Haifa.  Generally they skip this highly diverse and interesting area.

One of its most striking features is its cultural diversity.  Residents of the Galilee include ultra-religious Jews, observant Jews, traditional Jews, non-observant Jews, Russian and Ethiopian Jews and sort of Jews, Messianic Jews, Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Druze, Circassians, Greek Orthodox, and complete atheists.  A sensitive observer can identify each group by its clothing or facial features.  The various forms of head covering are generally a sign of identity.  Locals can tell from the accent or last name to which group the person belongs.  Amazingly, the vast majority of time, people get along and work together perfectly fine.  Money is a wonderful social glue apparently.  For example, the town where I live, Karmiel, is the commercial center for this part of the Galilee.  Many of both the salespeople and customers are Arabs from the local villages.  Likewise, many Jewish inhabitants appreciate the quality and price of the Arab restaurants in the area.  So, this heterogeneity functions rather well on a day-to-day basis.

In terms of language, the Galilee is a Tower of Babel.  In cafes, the listener can easily distinguish five languages here: Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, and even Yiddish sometime, not to mention the occasional French or Rumanian.  More importantly, local Arabs speak Arabic inside Jewish towns without any hesitation.  The local Arabic is also quite unique, especially among the Christian and Druze population.  It is heavily sprinkled with Hebrew words, often because of the extensive intercommunity commercial relations and/or service in the IDF in the case of the Druze.  This leaking of Hebrew also affects Russian speakers, especially those that have been in Israel for many years.  They are almost incapable of saying a sentence in Russian without a Hebrew word or two.  So, the polyglot can truly enjoy the sounds of the Galilee.

The picture is not entirely roses.  Many younger Arabs and Jews, often due to their living in separate communities in my opinion, profess strongly racist and/or nationalist opinions.  These issues sometimes arise when groups of Arab boys come into Jewish town on Friday or Saturday nights and start trying to flirt with Jewish girls.  On a more serious note, every decade or so, an incident ignites riots among the younger Arab population in the villages, creating mistrust that takes many years to repair.  However, to be fair, even within the communities, tensions run.  Muslims and Druze in Rama, Moroccans and Russians in Karmiel, and religious and non-religious Jews in Zefat are some examples of intracommunity schisms.  Still, all things considered, the Galilee has some components of the American “melting pot” experience (which was never completely a melting pot in itself, to be honest).

So, aside from its beautiful physical features, the Galilee is a fascinating site for social tourism, i.e. seeing how other cultures live.  In this case, the visitor can see how each culture lives in itself and in combination with the other residents of the Galilee.  I strongly recommend the experience.

Hitting the Road

Driving, like eating, is a similar but unique experience in every part of the world.  Apart from the legal differences, i.e. making a right turn on a red light in Los Angeles, the pace and rhythm varies from country to country, often based on such factors as distances, density, kinds of roads, weather, and national character.  All together, it makes sitting behind the wheel a part of “feeling” the country no less than sitting on a chair in a café.

In the United States, a rather law abiding country despite all the TV shows to the contrary, most people actually follow the laws and are even polite.  Not only that, once you leave the crowded streets of the city, there is generally plenty of road for everybody.  Of course, there is a lot of space to cover, especially in the West where the states are much bigger.  For example, California from tip to tip is easily some 15 or more hours of continuous driving.   The meaning of this is driving in America, especially outside the cities, is actually quite pleasant.  Most roads are made for consistent high speeds (California highway 1 being an obvious exception).  The national tendency, outside New York City, of striving to be nice extends to the road.

Israel, well, is another story.  Israelis tend to tense and proud in all they do, including driving.  As for laws, they are merely suggestions for behavior, like at home.  Likewise, Israeli drivers tend to treat the road as if it is owned by their father, giving them extra privileges, such as not having to signal or let another car pass them.   As for red lights, time is money.  If you day dream for two seconds, you can be sure that the driver behind you already has his or her hand on the horn.  The speed limit and average pace on the road are often ignored, especially if you are less than 25 years of age. I live in the Galilee with a large Arab population.  Its driving style is quite interesting, generally too fast or too slow, with seat belts being a bit of a nuisance to the eight people in the car.  Sadly, the Arab population in Israeli suffers from a relatively high rate of accidents both to drivers and pedestrians.  If you are so unfortunate to find yourself in religious neighborhoods like Bnei Brak or many parts of Zefat, be very careful.  While it is clear that driving on the Sabbath may get you “rocked” in the wrong way, even on a normal day, the drivers and pedestrians alike travel in complete tranquility, oblivious to anybody else, apparently absolutely sure that God is protecting them.  On a good day, driving on Israel’s crowded roads in an interesting experience while on a bad day, you can imagine.

I would be interested in hearing other people’s description of driving in their country.

With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemies.

French and English look devilishly similar.  Many words like identical.  The meaning is obvious, right.  Like all booby traps, the first word booby meaning idiot, many has wise translator has fallen into the trap of the false friend, the word you thought knew what it meant and did not confirm its meaning.

I recently completed a translation of a service contract involving software, rather standard material.   As I carefully translated each sentence, one at a time, I often double checked certain words in my various resources to see if there was not some other meaning, unknown to me.  Here is a short list of the false friends I avoided:

L’object du contrat is the subject of the contract.

Le jour de signature du marché is the day of signature of the agreement.

Determiner la vacation is the set the hourly pay rate.

Le prix forfataire is the fixed price.

Article 25 est sans object means that is invalid.

Les delais de renumeration is the periods for payment.

Accuser reception is to confirm receipt.

Preparer un calandrier is to prepare a schedule.

Une copie du contract qui est retirée is a copy of a contract that is taken by the party.

I strongly believe that I missed all the traps, but it is often extremely hard to know who your real friends are in translation.  So, if you took French in High School and spent a summer in Paris, it does not mean you can translate a French contract into English.

Telling Boys and Girls Apart

In most languages, not including English, nouns have a gender, i.e. masculine, feminine, and sometime neutral.  The requirement to have adjectives agree with their nouns requires the speaker or writer to quickly identify the gender of the noun.  In speaking, a person can guess or fudge the sound.   This is not true in writing.  Alas, some languages are more user friendly than others.

Italian makes life the easiest.  If the noun ends in o, it is masculine; if in a, it is feminine.  So, Italians say uno bello carro but una bella casa.  If the ends in an e, it can vary.  You have to memorize those.  So, uno fabricante is masculine while una delusion is feminine.  All, it is not too difficult for the learner, as is typical for Italian in general.

French is a different story.  I personally have spent hours checking and rechecking the gender of nouns.  The only rule that seems to stay in my head is that nouns ending in ion and é are feminine.  To see the problem, look at this site: http://www.languageguide.org/french/grammar/gender/rule.html.  It reinforces my sense that the rules are only indications of probability.  A learner either has to have a good ear and memory and do what I do, check it in the dictionary.  La vie est dure sans confiture.

Hebrew is not too bad.  If a nouns ends in a consonant except for ת  (tov) or ה (heh), it is masculine, with only a few exceptions.  So,  כותבת(kotevet – address) is feminine while מכתב (miktav – letter) is masculine.   Hebrew is an easy language to learn in this sense.

By contrast, Russian is a challenge. It adds a third gender, neutral.  Moreover, whatever rules exist are more than equally matched by the exceptions.  The indications on this site, http://masterrussian.com/nounsandcases/gender_and_number.htm, are a bit misleading.  A comprehensive Russian grammar book can provide a rather long list of exceptions to every rule.  Sometimes I wonder if native Russian speakers get it right all the time.

Clearly, English is the easiest – there are no noun genders.  There are few feminine forms of professions – stewardess, waitress, and actress, to name a few.  However, those are fairly obvious.

So, not languages are equally kind to their learners.  Just having long hair and an a at the end of the word may not be enough to say whether it is a girl.

Right and Wrong

There is an American story, whose name I have forgotten, about a man who gets a parking ticket and refuses to pay it.  He asks for a trial, which orders him to pay the fine or go to jail.  Always claiming to be right and refusing to pay, he ends up in prison.  It is clear to all of the readers, or 99% of them at least, that how matter how “right” the man s, he is wrong, i.e. stupid.

On a larger and more tragic scale, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a similar theme.  It began on a small scale in the 1920’s, when Jews began to arrive in Palestine, first in trickles and then in tens of thousands in the 1930’s.  It is clear this entry of people from a different culture and religion would cause hostility.  The Jews were a clear psychological threat, whatever economic benefits their arrival brought.

This clash of cultures implied and still implies the impossibility of unity in terms of government.  According to a book that I am reading, The Palestinian Arab National Movement 1929-1936 by Y. Porth, the British in 1936 in one of their endless and futile attempts to make peace here, proposed a division of Palestine based on the population concentration at the time.  Specifically, the Jews would get the coastal plain, Tel Aviv, and Galilee.  Jerusalem and Tiberias would be administered by the British.  The rest would be run by Abdallah, King of Jordan.  While some of the Arab leadership was ready to accept the deal, the more active Palestinian leaders rejected it out of hand, rightly or wrongly.

 Jumping ahead, in 1948, the UN, the next organization to try to fix this mess, partitioned the country.  This time, the Jew would get the coastal plain, Galilee, Eilat, and half of Jerusalem.  This time, the Palestinians would have a country with the rest of the area.  After painful soul-searching, Ben Gurion and the Jewish leadership accepted this compromise.  The Palestinians, encouraged by Arab leaders, rejected this idea.  The result of the War of Independence was more land for Israel and no country for the Palestinians.

From 1948 to 1967, the Arabs and Palestinian leadership tried to use economic means to destroy Israel, refusing to negotiate.  The result was the 1967 war, which added the West Bank and Golan Heights, not to mention the other half of Jerusalem, to Israel. Of course, the Palestinians still had no state.

The Americans tried their hand as peacemakers.  The Oslo Agreement seemed to open the way to a Palestinian state, setting up a recognized Palestinian negotiating partner on sovereign territory.  Alas, the “all or nothing” mentality led to two intifadas and an extremist government in Gaza.  In the meantime, the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria has expanded, effectively expanding the size of Israel.

This is clearly a tragic story for millions of people on both sides of the conflict.  The responsibility for the Palestinian failure to accept, however grudgingly, a land compromise lies on the regional Arab leaders, local Palestinian leaders and, ultimately, the Palestinians themselves.  Just as the Irish people stopped supporting radical IRA and Protestant leaders and ended, however imperfectly, that “hopeless” conflict, so the Palestinians theoretically could one day have a viable state of their own. 

I am not so naïve as to believe in friendship in the next few generations, but it is time to end the validity of the famous comment “The Palestinians never miss any opportunity to miss an opportunity.”  Israelis and Palestinians are stuck together in a Catholic marriage.  Once that is accepted, a way to live together in harmony, if not love, can be found.  If not, it doesn’t make a difference what the policy of the Israeli government is.

Fungal Roots

Like Merry in Lord of the Rings and Alice in Alice in Wonderland, to name a few, I am fond of mushrooms, even picking them in the field with my partner.  Recently, I noticed that the word for these fungal growths is extremely different in each language, even among Indo-European ones.  Therefore, I looked in the sources of its name, which were almost all, surprisingly, quite obscure.

The English word mushroom comes from old French meisseron.  According to one article, located at http://www.fungi4schools.org/Reprints/Mycologist_articles/Post-16/Biodiversity/v03p088-090_word_mushroom.pdf, the root either means moss or, take a deep breath, mucus.  This old French root sounds quite similar for the ancient Greek word for slime.   Of course, it is impossible to prove; so you can choose that accept the more sympathetic connection between moss and mushrooms.

The French use the word champignon, which comes from the Latin campaniulis, field.  Since some mushrooms are found in fields, that is quite logical.  I am a bit confused why the Italian funghi, funguses, never transferred to French as in the much more modern espresso/expresso.

The Russian word call it гриб [grib].  According to one source, it appears to be derived from one of a few words describing a mound or hill, грести [gresti] or горб [gorb].  Again, the topographical feature, albeit different from the French, seems to be determining.

By contrast, the Hebrew word פטריות [petriot], mushroom, and its cousin תפטיר  [taftir], mycelium or spores, appear in the Bible.  It is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but actually posed an issue for the matter of blessing.  The decision was that mushrooms are not blessed like fruit and vegetables, not being sufficiently earthy.  Another theory is the root of these words is פטר  [ptor], which means break.  The logic is that mushrooms break the earth.  So, Hebrew takes a biological or agricultural approach.

The origin of the mushroom is like its nutritional value.  It may be poor or obscure, but that doesn’t stop people to adding it to salads, sauces, or omelets, to name a few.  Mushrooms are funghi to pick, prepare, and eat, wherever they come from.