Category Archives: Language

Thursday Crumbs

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Not long ago I had a pork cutlet at a Korean restaurant, done in the katsudon style I’ve encountered in Japanese restaurants and at home. This particular cutlet was remarkably large. So much so that I was inspired to take a picture.

Large, but thin, so it wasn’t overfilling. Overall, quite good.

At an Asian grocery store the other day — Asian grocery stores are endlessly interesting — I saw this on offer.

I have to say I’m intrigued. People believe outdoor markets ought to be part of any visit to non-OECD cities, for that all-important authenticity and to see the locals, but if you really want authenticity, grocery stores are the place to go in any country. Ye shall know them by their grocery stores.

More debris from the Saturday grilling and gabfest.

The caps to the bottles I posted the other day, arranged in the same order.

I had a shandy over the weekend and later, during a moment when I had much else to do, naturally decided to look up the word, the story of which I didn’t know. I know more now, after reading this.

Shandy, a shortening of shandygaff, origin obscure. Now that’s a fine word. If I were a brewer, I’d use it for my shandies. Radler is a good word to know too.

Had a curry doughnut today. I don’t eat that many of them, but when I do I enjoy them.

“In Japanese bakeries of virtually every stripe, you can buy a thing called a curry doughnut,” I wrote once upon a time. “What a discovery that was. No part of it is sweet. Browned by frying on the outside, it’s soft on the inside, and a spicy brown curry resides at its core. An enormous amount of fat, I’m sure, and heartburn later on, but boy they’re good going down.

“My favorite spot for curry doughnuts used to be the Cascade Bakery, near the main promenade of Hanshin Station, Umeda, in the heart of Osaka. Even now, I can get one in Arlington Heights, Illinois, if I’m so inclined. I know at least two Japanese bakeries in that town that sell them. But it’s been a while.”

I’ve been to only two Afghan restaurants that I remember. One was in New York City in 2005. The other was ca. 1987 in Chicago: The Helmand.

Writing in 2005, I said: “I can remember visiting an Afghan restaurant only once before, about 20 years ago, a place on the North Side of Chicago near Belmont Blvd., long gone now. Much later I learned that it was owned by relatives of Mohammed [sic] Karzai. I vaguely remember it being exotically good.”

I have a matchbook from the place even now. Can you get matchbooks at restaurants any more? My experience is you can’t. In New York in March I experienced a brief and very minor moment of excitement when I picked up what I though was a small matchbox advertising a restaurant. Matches! Turned out to contain toothpicks.

Whatever happened to Hamid Karzai? Having managed to survive the Afghan presidency, no small thing, he seems to be living in comfortable semi-retirement after his career in peculation.

Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler

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Found an interesting thing on Merriam-Webster’s web site the other day, a function called Time Traveler. It says: “When was a word first used in print? You may be surprised! Enter a date below to see the words first recorded on that year.”

Elsewhere on the site, the lexicographers are careful to point out that “the date most often does not mark the very first time that the word was used in English. Many words were in spoken use for decades or even longer before they passed into the written language. The date is for the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover.”

Still, that’s the kind of thing I find interesting. Naturally, vanity got the better of me, so I looked up words introduced to print the same year as I was introduced to the world, 1961. Quite a collection.

There are words that reflect scientific progress: ampicillin, dehydroepiandrosterone, isospin, lawrencium, messenger RNA, mid-ocean ridge, neurotransmission, radioimmunoassay, spark chamber (is that last one a milder version of a Star Chamber?)

There are also words clearly specific to space exploration: A-OK, biosensor (maybe), capcom, clean room, geostationary, low earth orbit, and probably solar panel.

There are hints of things to come, for good or ill: affirmative action, anti-harassment, Black Friday, compassion fatigue, computer science, Eurocurrency, fiber-optic, lip-synch, military-industry complex (hey, Ike), operating system, paparazzo, read-only memory, skyjack, SST, telenova, toaster oven, and wayback machine.

That last one popularized by Sherman and Peabody? The time would be right.

New things to eat and drink: Bibb lettuce, fettucine Alfredo, mai tai and, if necessary, your pot-bellied pig.

There are a few I would have guessed would be older, but apparently not: AA battery, black ice, hard-edge, no-holds-barred, no-win, race-baiting, redistributionist.

And what about chocoholic and wazoo? They’re on the list. I would have placed them later, as inanities of the ’80s.

I Promise to Put Hooligans in the Hoosegow

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With the Illinois primary only a month or so away, the political ad postcards are rolling in. Very many of them promise to “put criminals behind bars,” as if the candidates would pick them up like Underdog and drop them off in prison without a hint of due process.

Policy considerations aside, the term “criminals behind bars” shows a serious lack of imagination. While I was shoveling snow the other day — and this is the kind of thing I sometimes think of when doing that — I started a little list of synonyms for that tired old phrase. English is such a rich grab bag of words.

Criminals behind bars, or:

Felons in the slammer
Crooks in the pen
Thugs up the river
Blackguards in the stoney lonesome
Outlaws in the jug
Robbers in the lockup
Banditos in the cooler
Perps in the pokey
Hooligans in the hoosegow
Gangsters in the big house
Lawbreakers in the joint
Miscreants in the clink
Convicts inside
Malefactors in the correctional facility
Cons in the brig
Hoods in the bridewell
Delinquents in juvie
Desperados in stir
Culprits in quod

The Form Letter of Babel

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It’s a formality, a throwaway bit of corporate bureaucratese, this paper I found on my desk today. Things tend to get buried. Got it a few months ago from an insurance company that I deal with.

Or is it just a formality? For me it is. But it might contain important information for other people who received the page. It’s a list of languages that the company says it will assist people in, if need be.

It includes one sentence in each language, presumably saying the same thing as the first sentence, which is in English: For language assistance in your language call the number listed on your ID card at no cost. All together, counting English, the sentences represent 66 languages.

Maybe this is a government mandate. Not just the letter, but the assistance. Maybe that’s onerous and adds to the cost of insurance. And maybe this kind of thing would upset the Know-Nothings who’ve been emerging from under rocks lately, as they do periodically.

Still, you could also argue that the list is a marvel of the age. A speaker of anyone of 66 languages can pick up the phone and get some kind of specialized assistance. Considering the state of customer service by phone, it might be as uneven as it is in English.

Even so — what a thing, this complex, real-time linguistic offering. Would that have even been possible at the beginning of this century? Certainly not before that.

The languages are, in order, English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Tagalog, Navajo, German, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Bantu-Kirundi, Bisayan-Visayan, Bengali-Bangala, Burmese, Catalan, Charmorro, Cherokee, Choctaw, Cushite, Dutch, French Creole, Greek, Gujarati, Hawaiian, Hindi, Hmong, Ibo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Karen, Korean, Kru-Bassa, Kurdish, Laotian, Marathi, Marshallese, Micronesian-Pohnpeian, Mon-Khmer/Cambodian, Nepali, Nilotic-Dinka, Norwegian, Pennsylvania Dutch, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Serbo-Croatian, Sudanic-Fulfulde, Swahili, Syriac-Assyrian, Telugu, Thai, Tongan, Turkese [sic, I think Trukese is correct], Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Yiddish and Yoruba.

Thursday Codswallop

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Had about an 18-hour period of on-off heavy rain ending around dawn this morning. Till then, June had mostly been dry, with enough wind sometimes to blow dust off the ball field behind my back yard.

I looked up codswallop recently, curious about its origin, and was not surprised that Merriam-Webster says “source unknown.” I was surprised that the earliest known use was 1963. I’d have guessed 100 years earlier. Has a Victorian ring to it.

Not long ago I heard a song on WDCB’s Folk Festival that wasn’t exactly my idea of folk, but not bad, except that the singer kept mentioning the “some-or-other” blues. I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. After the song, the host said it was the fomo blues (or FoMO or FOMO): pronouced Foh-Moh, an acronym for “fear of missing out.”

I looked into it further. I find it hard to believe it’s a real thing, or very important if it is.

Not long ago I found that some of the animation work of the strange Harry Smith is on YouTube. Wonder if he had any influence on Terry Gilliam’s animation.

I’d never heard of a novelty song called “Crawl Out Through the Fallout” by Sheldon Allman until last week. Found it on YouTube as well.

The album, released in 1960, is called Folk Songs for the 21st Century, but the style of “Crawl Out” is more ’50s jazz. I checked a little more, and other songs from the record are also posted, including the amusing “Big Brother is Watching You.”

You’ll disappear in a wink
Unless you can doublethink

Allman’s voice reminds me of Tennessee Ernie Ford, which just adds a layer of strangeness. Now there’s a concept album: Tennessee Ernie Ford Sings His Dystopian Favorites.

More about Allman is in his 2002 obit. He composed the theme song for George of the Jungle. For that alone, he ought to be remembered.

Thursday’s This & That & Maybe the Other

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Last night was clear and below freezing. I was out at about 10 and noticed Orion out for his evening stroll, way off to the southwest. He’ll be gone for the warm months soon.
I suspect I might not ever see him standing on his head again. That was a marvel to those of us used to the northern array of stars.

Years ago, my friend Stephen Humble told me that Turkish, which he studied to entertain himself, had distinct words for “this” and “that” but also “the other.” I’ve never verified that. I don’t think I will. Absolute certainty about small things is overrated. I overrate it myself.

Here’s one way, among so very many, to realize how little you really know: watch a few episodes of Only Connect. Then again, some of the clues are like those given in crossword puzzles sometimes, so vague as to be worthless. At least that’s why I believe I’ve never had much use for crosswords.

For something completely different, listen to a few songs by the Chickasaw Mudd Puppies. I like that name. Apparently they had their moment in Athens, Ga., in the early ’90s. Their sound reminds me of some of the live music in Nashville in the mid-80s, which inspires a touch of nostalgia.

Today I read that there aren’t any Goodyear Blimps any more. Not really. Goodyear now markets itself with semirigid dirigibles, which will be called blimps anyway. I would ride in a semirigid dirigible, certainly, but that isn’t quite the same as a blimp, is it?

Sestercentennial

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As I was reading about the 250th anniversary of President Jackson’s birth today — reportedly Mr. Trump fancies himself like Mr. Jackson, but I doubt that the former has ever been in a single duel with actual pistols — it occurred to me that I didn’t know the term for 250th anniversary. Centennial, Sesquicentennial, Bicentennial, Tricentennial, those are well enough known. But 250?

Off to the lazy man’s fount of knowledge, Wikipedia, which lists “Sestercentennial” as the main answer, from the way the Romans said two and a half. Other suggestions include “semiquincentennial,” “bicenquinquagenry” (that’s not going to fly) and the unimaginative “quarter-millennial.”

Sestercentennial seems to have some currency, if you feed it into Google. At least two websites claim their purpose is to gear the nation up for its Sestercentennial on July 4, 2026. One seems faintly academic, the other a guy with a website and an odd dream.

Guess we’ll hear more about the 250th ca. 2024 and ’25. Entirely too much, if the Bicentennial is any guide. I’ll be 65 if I make it so long. On July 4, 1976, I was 15. It rained most of that day in San Antonio, so we didn’t go anywhere, not even for fireworks, which probably would have been at Fort Sam Houston. Or was that for Fiesta? Time muddles things.

Divers Content on a Freezing Cold Thursday

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Inspired by yesterday’s natterings, I stopped at the library and checked out River of Doubt (2006) by Candice Millard. Subtitled “Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey,” it’s about TR’s expedition into darkest Amazonia in 1913-14. As the book makes clear from the get-go, the journey nearly killed him. Even he-man action presidents have their limits, after all.

I didn’t know until today that Andrew Sachs died not long ago. There are many clips available of him in fine form as Manuel, such as this one or this one or this one.

I’ve had these glasses for a few years now. Bought them at a garage sale for (I think) a quarter each.

Coke Cans Make of Glass

They were clearly some kind of promotional item from Coca-cola but also McDonald’s, because three of them have McDonald’s arches on the bottom. The interesting thing to me is that they’re precisely the same size and shape as a 12 oz. soft drink can.

While writing about a hotel today, I encountered something in the hotel biz known as a “spiritual menu.” The concept isn’t exactly new, but I’d never heard of it. The following is from the Christian Post in 2008.

“A hotel in Nashville will be the first known in the nation to remove the standard Holy Bible from its rooms and replace it with a ‘spiritual menu’ that includes other religious books… Hotel Preston, a boutique owned by Oregon-based Provenance Hotels, will require guests to call room service to order their religious book of choice…

“The religious book list includes the Book of Mormon, the Qur’an, the Torah, the Tao Te Ching, The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, Bhagavad Gita (a Hindu text), books on Scientology, as well as the King James and New American Bible versions.” @#$%&! Scientology?

Hm. The Gideons can’t be too happy about being replaced. And the following lyric just doesn’t have the same ring: Rocky Raccoon/Checked into his room/Only to find a spiritual menu.

Brobdingnagian

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Bitter cold days ahead, especially after weekend snow. These things happen in December — this far north, anyway — but it still seems a little early. This is like late January. Are we going to get a break in late January? I have a feeling we won’t.
At least an ice storm isn’t being predicted for this weekend any more.

As an old writing pro, I don’t use too many words that I know the readers won’t understand, just to show off. That’s the mark of an amateur, or even a dilettante. Still, I occasionally float something to my editors to see if it will pass, knowing it won’t. This week, for instance, I wrote a sentence that ended this way:

… an investment firm that does nothing but manage the Brobdingnagian funds of X and his family.

A completely accurate way to describe that particular fortune, believe me. Moreover, Brobdingnagian is a fine word that needs more currency. After all, no one would think twice about using Lilliputian in a sentence.

But I knew it wouldn’t survive the final cut. I was right.

… an investment firm that does nothing but manage the enormous funds of X and his family.

I would have substituted “vast,” but that’s just a personal preference. Probably should have used that in the first place.

More on Swiftian coinages here. I never knew that Yahoo, as in the search engine and related tech-ness, is supposedly an acronym: “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” I too am suspicious that it’s really a backronym.

RIP, Susan Disenhouse. I never met her in person, but she was a professional acquaintance via phone and email.

Graduate Names, Abdulaahi to Zell

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Lately I’ve been able to look at the commencement program from Lilly’s graduation at some leisure. Most of it, of course, lists the names of the graduates. Interesting thing, a list of names. This one goes, in terms of last names, from Abdulaahi to Zell.

It’s a fine example of the American salad bowl of ethnicity. Some examples at random, though alphabetical: Admundsen, Bagaybagayan, Bjorkman, Campbell, De Ocampo, Fritz, Gonzalez, Hyc, Khan, Kopielski, McCoy, Muhammad, Patel, Son, Stribling, Stepanian, Uy.

Patel is the number-one most common name on the list, hands down: no fewer than 12 graduates have it as their family name. It’s the Indian equivalent of Smith, I said to Ann. Then she noted that there was only a single Smith on a graduate list. Hm. The list doesn’t represent the nation as a whole, after all. The Census Bureau still puts Smith as most common: more than 880 per 100,000 people. Then come Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller, Davis, Garcia, Rodriguez and Wilson.

I’m glad to report at least one other Lilly on the list, spelled that way, and a scattering of Anns, though more often than not it functions as a middle name, or a part of a combination first name. Wouldn’t want them to be too common.

A glance at the list tells me that not only are girls’ names of earlier generations gone, as you’d expect — the Berthas and Ethels and Ednas and Myrtles and Zeldas — so are perfectly fine girl names popular when I was born — the Barbaras, Cynthias, Deborahs, Lindas, Lisas, Karens, and Patricias of the world, and even the Marys are fairly scarce. A couple of years ago, during a conversation on names, Lilly characterized “Barbara” (for example) as an “old lady name.” Tempus fugit.

Boys’ names are more stable across the decades, but even so there seem to be fewer Johns, Michaels, and Roberts. Or Toms, Dicks and Harrys. I’m glad to see a Lars and a Homer and an Omar.

First names are a little harder to sort through, but I did pick out some interesting ones: Atyab, Breon, Da-Eun, Destinee (a friend of Lilly’s), Dwji, Heaven, Jax, Nuh, Yash.