Y Safle

Recently a discussion between friends on the history of Baptists in Radnorshire descended into a dialogue on Old English and German grammar (as they do!).

I (from my vast and in depth knowledge of grammar[sic]) gave the benefit of my insight that I think nouns are atomic, inasmuch as that you cannot both have a noun
“mayoroflondon” and still have the ability to divide it into its constituent parts. (The point at issue being whether an EDnglish noun phrase is the same as a compound noun).

Okay, enough of the boring stuff – I can see you nodding off already! Stick with it…

My friend wrote:
> Languages such as German and
> Norwegian do this sort of thing frequently.

I had to ask whether they do

Now I don’t profess to be an expert on German. The only German phrase that I profess to
have learned in school was how to say “My wombat is constipated”. I now
find I have forgotten even that snippet – useful a phrase as it has been
over the years.

But from my recollection, German uses compound nouns as nouns. Thus if the
German for dog is “Barkensniffer” then a dog catcher would be a “barkensniffersnatcher” and his van would be a “barkensniffersnatcherwagen”. If I recall correctly, one may continue compounding nouns until it is no longer possible to say the word without
pausing for breath!

But these are nouns that are compounded. Not noun phrases. (unless anyone knows better!)

For the pedantic – I know that the German for a dog is “hund”. The
above is from an obscure dialect of German spoken by villagers in a small
hamlet in the Black Forest. The village is well known both for its
wonderful layered cakes, as well as its curious lack of dogs.

And for the terminally curious, I have just looked up my one phrase of German. It seems that if your Wombat is having trouble with motion regularity, and you wish to ask a vet to intervene with appropriate medication (or a large bowl of prunes), you need to say:

Meine beutelmouse hat verstoppfung

So now you know.

(For my next trick I shall dredge from the depths of my memory how to say that the hovercraft is full of lobsters).

I admit it. I am a pedant.

A pretty sloppy pedant maybe, but a pedant all the same.

Many a time I have had to stop someone mid sentence because they have just spoken of “gender awareness” or “the two genders”. And many a time have I been filling in a form that asked me my gender, when to my frustration I find there is no “non edible vegetable” box.

And it is not just the word “gender”. I am apt to speak of two or more octopodes whenever I hear “octopi”, and by extension, platypodes when I see more then than one platypus (admittedly not often). Wrong plurals drive me nearly insane.

If one has more than a single virus on a computer, then these are viruses, not viri (men!) or worse virii (The plural of viri)!

And there are countless more examples. Plural of hippopotamus? Hippoipotamus I suppose! (As in “horses of the river”).

But back to the gender example. For the uninitiated, the word “gender” comes from the indo-european root word “gen” meaning “kind” (via Latin “genus” which translates Aristotle’s grammatical term, “genos”). “masculine gender” refers to the noun category in many languages, and many of these also have “neuter” as well as “feminine”. Furthermore, in languages such as German, a maiden is neuter, even though certain vegetables, including turnips, might be feminine!

But it turns out that there are many languages with classes of noun (and indeed other parts of speech) which are not masculine, feminine or neuter. In his book, “The unfolding of Language”, Guy Deutscher mentions the example of an Australian aboriginal language where the classes of noun include “edible vegetable” and “non edible vegetable”. It turns out that transportation, such as aeroplanes, are usually classed as non edible vegetable. This is presumed to be because dug out boats would be made from wood, and the classification has stuck.

Now as I am frequently primary transportation for my youngest daughter, I believe that my gender should also be non edible vegetable.

Survey writers be warned – if you ask me my gender and don’t give me that choice, I will write it in. If it is an electronic survey, I will not complete it.

Of course, if you want to know my biological sex, then just ask!

Although I feel duty bound to add the caveat that Guy Deutscher’s book describes the evolution of language as an inevitable thing, and pedants like me have as much chance of preventing that evolution as king Cnut had of stopping the tide come in. (Although on that point, Cnut never actually believed he could stop the tide. He was demonstrating the limitations of his power… see, I told you I was a pedant).

I’m looking forward to the day when people start talking about having “genderal relations”… then we will have to find another politically correct word instead!