Tidying Up

Long as my last post was, there were still ideas I wanted to present, as well as items related to it that came up after I hit the "publish" button.

You may be relived to know the ideas that didn't make the final edit have now slipped my mind, but not the things that came up out of the blue.

The first was a query to Quora, the random question and answer website. The question that caught my eye, was whether Hitler could speak English: 

Here's part of the answer, emphasis mine: 

German was the only language he was fluent in. In a very typical Hitler manner, he refused to study any other languages. His excuse? He believed he would only butcher the language and embarrass himself. Maybe this is true. Maybe he would have sounded absolutely ridiculous trying to pronounce the word “squirrel” and nobody would have taken him seriously ever again. 

If you recall, my last post was inspired by the question: "why does the squirrel inspire such funny names that are hard to pronounce in so many languages?"

Of course, there is absolutely nothing funny about Hitler which is why this response is so amusing. Adolph Hitler bringing up an animal so innocent and amusing as an Eichhörnchen, not to mention him attempting to say it in a foreign language, is so out of character for him, that the idea alone is hilarious. And the thought of him butchering the word squirrel causing him to never again be taken seriously, and by extension causing the downfall of the Third Reich, is something straight out of Monty Python.

There in one sentence is proof that I was on to something.

Hitler may never have brought up a squirrel in any language including his own in public, but he certainly talked an awful lot about vermin, many of whom are related to the squirrel. In my piece, I also wrote quite a bit about the squirrel's close cousin, the rat.

On the day I published the piece, during an unexpected trip to visit my sick mother, (she's better, thanks), I turned on the car radio in the middle of an episode of the NPR series This American Life. The particular episode, all one hour of it, was devoted to the rat. The segment I came in on was about a guy who during the Pandemic, became obsessed with keeping rats as pets, and at one point I believe had sixteen of them roaming about his apartment at the same time. In part of that segment, the narrator described in detail, scientific studies of rat behavior and it turns out, as the Ancient Chinese could have told you, that rats are very smart. 

I haven't gotten the chance to hear the entire episode but plan to do so tomorrow on my New Years Day holiday.

But you can beat me to it by clicking this link. 

Something else I alluded to in the post, but really didn't discuss in any depth, was the subject of Artificial Intelligence. If you read the piece, you probably noticed that much of what I wrote referenced queries I made of ChatGPT and other AI tools. In fact, the very premise of the piece, how our common names of animals reflect the roles they play in our lives, was inspired by ChatGPT's response to a my specific question about why the cute furry tree dwelling rodent inspires such funny names in so many languages, including English.

You can read the post to see verbatim the chat bot's response.

I can imagine many of you might be put off by my reliance on AI in putting together that post. 

Frankly, that was my intent. 

Unlike the subject of rats and especially the subject of squirrels, after all the horrific wars and the impact of the new world order caused by the extreme shift to the right on the pendulum of public opinion, Artificial Intelligence has been the news topic du jour globally. And much of the reporting is about how AI is going to change the world, mostly for the worse.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece in this space called CheatGPT? As the title suggests, the piece questioned how much of the use of AI constitutes cheating, especially in the academic setting. 

There is of course no question that having ChatGPT write a term paper is cheating, but as I argued, the person doing this is only cheating him or herself, as the purpose of education is learning something, or isn't it? 

AI, I insisted, is a tool which like all groundbreaking innovations from time immemorial, could be put to either good or bad use. Like a hammer for example that can be used to build homes, or it could be used to bash in someone's skull.

But this is a very simplistic viewpoint as historian/philosopher Yuval Noah Harari asserts:

The most important thing to know about AI, is that it is not a tool, like all previous human inventions; it is an agent. And agent in the sense it can make decisions independently of us. It can invent new ideas, it can learn and change by itself.

Also cited by critics are AI's effect on the environment, (as AI systems require tremendous amount of energy and with that, natural resources), and the automation of jobs. 

Beyond these existential threats to society and life as we know it are what AI has the potential to do and in fact is already doing to us, especially to our minds. One of the criticisms I hear all the time is that AI is leading to the ultimate destruction of critical thinking. 

Along those lines, here's an article in the Atlantic I came across the other day. It's called:  Aphoristic Intelligence Beats Artificial Intelligence with the subtitle: It’s not just okay for some things in life to be hard—it’s essential.

The article was s adapted from James Geary’s book, The World in a Phrase. : A Brief History of the Aphorism.

Aphorisms are little statements of wisdom that have been handed down through the generations, or could very well be if they are written or uttered today.

A good aphorism requires thought and reflection, rather than being advice that states the obvious. They're calls to action, not feel good assurances that encourage passivity. Here's the money quote from the article:

In some ways, aphorisms are perfectly suited to our era of short-form communication. They’re concise, catchy, easily consumable. But so much of our discourse, online and IRL, is anti-aphoristic—rage bait, trash talk, knee-jerk toxicity, gauzy affirmations, hashtag claptrap. And now comes that upstart other AI, artificial intelligence, promising to reduce our cognitive loads to zero by proffering frictionless friendships and sycophantic agreeability, and doing all of our creative thinking for us.

Aphorisms are different. They are the antithesis of the half-baked hot take and nothing like the machine-made flattery that’s now permeating so many informational environments. A platitude is a placebo for the mind; an aphorism is a wake-up call. Aphorisms provoke debate; they don’t promote dogma. Though they’re short, aphorisms spur considered reflection, not Pavlovian partisanship. At a time when polarization is so amped up, aphorisms can serve as psychological circuit breakers, interrupting our comfortable assumptions and prodding us to open our minds, unclench our fists, and think for ourselves.

Ah yes that upstart other, AI. Much of what is said about it is true and we should heed the warnings from Harari and so many others about the dangers and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence. 

At the same time, maybe we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, that is, being so wrapped up in in our anti-AI dogma that we reject it outright. After all, where is the critical thinking in that?

In my book, the best way to prevent Artificial Intelligence from living up to all the dark predictions is this: treat it with critical thinking. That's what I tried to accomplish in my last post. 

Bringing it all full circle, the original, original inspiration of that last post is the German word for squirrel, Eichhörnchen. I already knew the word but it was recently brought to my attention this month in a little book called German Short Stories, written by Sven Sebastian. The book is intended for adult learners of the language and is according to its author, written in the B1, or early intermediate level, pretty much where I'm at. Originally, I thought this book was a little basic for my needs but eventually realized that it was perfect as I could understand virtually everything except for certain key phrases which were conveniently translated on the opposite page. 

The stories tend to be in the vein of children's stories as all of them feature animals and are told in a style similar to Aesop's fables. 

Nevertheless, it's a lovely book.

One of these stories naturally featured a squirrel and was titled Das vergessenes Eichhörnchen, (The Forgetful Squirrel) Aren't they all? Other stories include Die Marathon-Schnecke (The Marathon Snail), Der Wanderkaktus (The Wandering Cactus), and Die Stadt die Tiere, (The Animal City).

But hands down my favorite story in the book is called the Die poetische Brieftaube (The Poetic Mail Pigeon). The hero of this story is Paula, the pigeon of the title, who has a job working for a company that employs pigeons to deliver advertising flyers to people's homes. She hated the job but hey, a job's a job, even for a pigeon I guess.

One day Paula delivered one of her flyers to the home of a retired school teacher. When he got the ad for this or that, he looked at Paula with a sad face and said: "Oh little bird, you fly all over the city every day, couldn't you for once bring something that warms the heart?

Taking what he said to heart, the next day instead of heading to work to collect her leaflets, Paula flew to the public library. There she found a book of poetry. (This next part will be disturbing to all my librarian friends so continue reading at your own risk). She took the book off the shelf and ripped out some pages containing inspirational words to deliver to her clients. 

To the retired school teacher she delivered a page with this splendid aphorism:

"Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht."

"Paths are made by walking them."

Pretty good words to close out 2025 don't you think?

Happy New Year!

I Smell a Rat

One of my New Year's resolutions last year was to minimize the number of posts devoted to politics. Looking through my archive on the right, I see I first broke that resolution on Inauguration Day, January 20. In fact, the first three posts last year were about politics. It seems I just can't help it, the current political situation in this country and the rest of the world these days is simply a subject too ripe with ideas for new posts. To put it mildly.

With that in mind, you may think given the title of this post, what follows is yet another screed against the current administration, but I assure you it is not. The rat in the title is not metaphorical but quite literal. Yes dear reader, this post is about rats and their rodent cousins.

But wait, before you stop reading, that's not all, it's also about other animals and their relationship to us, that is we animals of the species Homo sapiens.  

And what brings it all together is my favorite topic to write about these days, after baseball anyway, that is to say language, with a little stuff about AI thrown in.

Let's see if I can tie it all together.

To paraphrase Bette Davis from the classic 1950 film All About Eve:

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

OK here goes.

The inspiration for this post is the German word for one of the aforementioned cousins of the species Rattus norvegicus, see if you can guess which one, and extra points if you can pronounce the word.

Eichhörnchen

The German language gets a lot of grief. Someone I know recently declared that German just sounds angry to her. Of course, that's true if the only person you've ever heard speaking it is Hitler.

If you unfortunately are of that opinion, for a real eye opener please check this out, the opening scene from one of my favorite movies of all time *(1) featuring a poem by Peter Handke. 

Or this, in my opinion hands down the most beautiful Christmas carol ever set to music. *(2)

Merry Christmas by the way!

German is also known for its ridiculously long words like this one:

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften.

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften isn't the longest German word. But you won't find words like this in a dictionary, as they are combinations of words that describe a single entity. Where English describing the same thing would separate the words, in this case "insurance companies that provide legal protection", German eliminates the spaces between the words, which when you think of it, kind of makes sense as the term insurance companies that provide legal protection, does indeed constitute a single entity. On the other hand for me at least, it's easier to read the words separated by spaces instead of this: insurancecompaniesthatprovidelegalprotection,

But even German words that you do find in a dictionary can be impressive for their length. Consider the German word for speed limit: Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.

OK that's really two words, but the German for those two words, Geschwindigkeit (speed) and begrenzung (limit) are by themselves formidable.

Like Geschwindigkeitbegrenzung, Eichhörnchen is a compound word. "Eich" on its own means oak, as in the tree. Without the umlaut, "Hörn" means the same thing in English, and "Chen" at the end of a word indicates a diminutive. So together they mean. "little oak horn".

Figured it out yet?

When all is said and done, Eichhörnchen is a silly word for a very common thing, even German people would concur as the multitude of YouTube videos made by Germans on the subject would attest.

But German isn't the only language with a silly, hard to pronounce word for this particular animal. 

The French word for Eichhörnchen is Ècureuil, which in my book is even harder to pronounce than Eichhörnchen, as are most French words.

But perhaps there is no sillier, harder-to-pronounce word describing this cousin of the rat than the English version.

That word?

Squirrel.

If your immediate response to that last statement is "what's so hard to pronounce about squirrel?", then English must be your mother tongue, and you've been saying the word all your life.

For people learning English as a second language on the other hand, the word squirrel is a minefield filled with foreign consonant clusters, unfamiliar vowels and excessive articulations all packed within two mere syllables, sometimes only one, (like the American version that rhymes with girl), which makes the successful pronunciation of squirrel, a feat of vocal gymnastics. 

It turns out that words across the spectrum for cute, furry tree dwelling rodents with bushy tails are fairly divergent from language to language, complex when compared to words describing other animals, and are often difficult to pronounce.

Why is that?

That's what I wondered the other day when I turned to the genie inside my pocket, ChatGPT, and asked the app why this particular animal inspires such strange words in different languages. Rather then telling me to "get a life" as some of my human acquaintances would, ChatGPT, in one of its typical obsequious responses began with: "Ahh--excellent question."

I always fall for that.

Then it gave me a list of reasons, some of which made sense, while some were a little dubious when digging a little deeper, But the first was particularly enlightening:

Squirrels weren't major cultural animals, therefore their names drifted freely.

ChatGPT goes on:

Animals that are culturally important get short, stable old words:

• English: cow, pig, dog, deer
• German:  Kuh, Schwein, Hund, Reh
• French: vache, porc, chien, cerf

But squirrels?

They were never domesticated, hunted much, used for transport or mythologically central. This means their names were:

• less stable
• more susceptible to sound changes
• more likely to drift, lengthen, or become cutesy/diminutive

Languages don't "protect" them from becoming phonetic messes. 

We humans love to classify things. One of the most brilliant classification systems ever devised was the one invented by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, the modern system of classifying all living organisms.

Linneaus' system classifies organisms biologically, based on shared characteristics and evolutionary relationships. The system is divided into categories ranging from broad, Kingdom (plants, animals, fungi, etc), to general, Class (mammal, bird, reptile, etc) to specific, Species (Sugar Maple, Shitake Mushroom, Human Being, etc.), 

Until this week however, I had never thought of a system that classified organisms based upon their "cultural importance." You learn something new every day.

What dawned on me, is that the difference between these two systems of classification define our naming systems for living things: the common names which vary from culture to culture, and the scientific names which are rigorously consistent as well as universally accepted. 

So the words:

• cow, 
• pig, 
• dog,
• deer, 
• and of course squirrel, 

the English common names for a handful of mammals, speak at least as much about our  relationship with these animals as the animals themselves. Consequently the names we give them vary from language to language.

Very messy.

While their scientific counterparts:

• Bos taurus, 
• Sus scrofra domesticus, 
• Canus lupis familiaris, 
• Odocoileus virginianus. 
• and Sciurus carolinensis,  *(3)

the naming convention invented by Carl Linneaus, (always italicized, Genus first, capitalized, followed by species in lower case, followed if necessary by a subspecies) point to specific animals in relationship to other animals, with little regard to our feelings for them. 

Most important, there is a unique scientific name for each species. 

Just the facts ma'am.

Much as biologists classify living organisms. linguists classify languages using similar hierarchies of categories, including the category Family. Linguists assume that members of the same family of languages are all descended from a single prototype language. The family to which English belongs is the Indo-European Family, which as the name implies, includes most of the languages of India as well as Europe, but not all. And the prototype language that these languages are likely descendants of has the tasty acronym PIE, for Prototype Indo European, which linguists think existed around 6,000 years ago. 

Just like the leftovers from this past Thanksgiving's dinner, there are no extant remnants of this PIE, as it existed about one millennium before the invention of writing. We know it through the comparison and reconstruction of roots of common words in the extant Indo European language family. Linguists believe that PIE evolved into Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Latin, which in turn evolved over time into the current language members of the IE family, diverging into various branches including the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Germanic, Slavic, Hellenic, and Romance languages, among others.

It turns out that the English word squirrel has ancient roots. According to the sources I found, it goes back at least to the ancient Greek word σκίουρος" (skiouros), which like Eichhörnchen, is a compound noun. Skiouros (for convenience sake I'll stick here to the Latin spelling) consists of the roots skia (tail) and ouros (shadow), describing the animal's most conspicuous feature. Then Latin borrowed  the word turning it into Scurius, the word Linnaeus used to define the genus to which the nearly 300 different species of squirrels belong.

The part of the linguistic family tree on which English sits is the Germanic branch. In reality however, about sixty percent of all English words come from French, which itself sits on the Romance branch. If you're not familiar with your British history, this is a result of the Norman Conquest of Britain which began in 1066. As the Francophone conquerors took over much of the country, so did their language and today if you're an English speaker without a trace of knowledge of French and German, you're likely to be able to recognize more words from a French text than from the same text in German. 

The German that does remain in English mostly consists of words for basic things like body parts such as Hand, Arm and Finger which are the same in both languages, although pronounced differently and capitalized as all nouns are in German. Some German body part words that come close enough to English to be understood are Fuß (pronounced foos), Schulter and Knie.

There are also German animal names you'd recognize despite the difference in spelling like Maus, Fisch, Elefant and Kamel. Probably close enough are Bär, Fuchs and Kuh, while Löwe (lion) may be a bit of a stretch, but is still related. English doesn't typically use Schwein and Hund for pig and dog respectively but their equivalent words do come up from time to time so we can probably figure out what they mean. 

But we don't use Eichhörnchen. 

While it may not be immediately apparent, the  English word Squirrel is related to that silly French word we learned a little while ago, Ècureuil, The relation is more apparent when you consider that Ècureuil itself evolved over the ages having dropped the "s" in Escurueil. Adapted into the Anglo-French language that would become the basis for Modern English, the word became Esquirel, before eventually dropping the first vowel.

It may occur to you as it did me that since the French language didn't come to Britain until the 11th century, there must have been esquirels in Britain before then, there were, so they had to have had a name for them, which they did. That name was Acweorna. You may wonder why the Brits substituted the French inspired esquirel for the Germanic acweorna. I'll have to get back to you on that one.

According to ChatGPT, the words for squirrel in the languages of Europe (this post is already too long so I'll limit this discussion to Europe), mostly come from four different origins, each with its own description of the animal. 

We've already seen "little oak horn" which is found in many of the Germanic languages, English being an exception. Incidentally, the horn part describes the ears of European squirrels, (see the photo below). 

In addition to Eichhörnchen in German:

• In Dutch it's Eekhoorn.
• In Swedish it's Ekorre.
• In Norwegian it's Ekorn.
• In Danish it's Egern

and so on...

And we've seen there's "shadow tail" which many Romance languages as well as English inherited from the Greek.

In addition to Ècureuil in French:

• In Italian it's Scoiattolo.
• In Catalan it's Esquirol.
• And of course in English it's Squirrel.

Interestingly enough, in Modern Greek, the word  σκίουρος still exists unchanged, exactly as it did in the ancient language, unusual for names of animals.

The three other major Romance languages go in different directions:

In Spanish, the word for squirrel is the relatively humble Ardilla, which comes not from Greek through Latin but from a word dating back to the pre-Roman conquest of Iberia. Portuguese follows suit with Ardiha.

Romanian goes in a completely different direction, choosing the third  major European category defining the animal which comes from the western Slavic languages. According to ChatGPT, rather than a visual description, the origin of the word with its repetition of the first two syllables is possibly a play on the chattering sound that squirrels make. However another theory has the root coming from the proto Slavic word for climb. Take your pick.

In Romanian, the word for squirrel is Veveriţă.

A Transylvanian Veveriţă
Photo by Laura Vălean

• In Czech it's Veverka.
• In Slovak it's Veverička
• In Polish it's Wiewiórka.
• In Belarussian it's Вавёрка (vaviorka)

and so on...

The fourth European category for describing squirrels comes from the Eastern Slavic languages whose words describe the white underbelly of the animal, consequently their words for squirrel are based upon the word white, белый (belki) in Russian.

The word for squirrel in Russian is Белка (belka).

• In Ukrainian it's Білка (Bilka).
• ChatGPT claimed the Belarusian word for squirrel was Белка, the same as the Russian, but other sources I found say otherwise, see above. So I corrected ChatGPT and it admitted the error of its ways. For a geeky blast of fun, if you have the app, ask it what's the Belarusian word for squirrel. If it answers "Вавёрка", you can thank me.

There are other European words for squirrel that don't neatly fit into any of these categories but I think I've already belabored the point and you get the idea.

So how do the naming conventions for squirrel differ from those of other common animals? And given its tendency to err, are the assumptions of ChatGPT correct?

To test it, I thought I'd select three very different animals with three very similar English names, the cat, the bat and as promised, the rat.

Sounds like a Dr. Seuss story, didn't he write a book called the Bat in the Hat? I think so. Or was it the Rat in the Hat?

Anyway, using ChatGPT's criteria for rating "animal cultural importance", the cat, unlike the squirrel, is an animal of tremendous cultural significance, just ask our cat Ziggy. 

Our relationship with cats began about 10,000 years ago some archeologists believe, around the dawn of agriculture. They say that humans didn't domesticate the cat, rather it domesticated itself, as the grain that humans cultivated attracted rodents, which in turn attracted cats. The cats ate the rodents who were eating the grain, forming a symbiotic relationship between cats and humans, and the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

Cats were venerated by the Ancient Egyptians 3,000 years ago, and by crazy cat ladies today, checking off the status of "mythologically central" in ChatGPT's list of traits box marking cultural significance. Come to think of it, the only category on that list that doesn't apply to cats, is the part about being used for transportation.

Oh wait, I stand corrected: 

Therefore I propose that with the possible exception of dog, no animal has more "cultural significance" than the cat. Well maybe one other, continue reading.

And according to ChatGPT, animals with tremendous cultural significance get "short, stable names."

Let's see if that's true, using (for the reasons explained above) selected languages in the European branches of the IE tree:

Romance languages:

• French: Chat
• Italian: Gatto
• Potuguese: Gato
• Romanian: Pisică  (what the hell?)
• Spanish: Gato

Germanic Languages:

• Danish: Kat
• Dutch: Kat
• English: Cat
• German: Katze
• Swedish: Katt

Slavic Languages:

• Belorusian: кошка (Kochka)
• Bulgarian: котка (Kotka)
• Czech: Kočka (Kochka)
• Polish: Kot
• Russian: кот (Kot)

With the exception of one outlier, Romanian in this limited sample, there is a clear relationship between the common names for the species Felis cattus (and there it is in Latin), that transcends the IE language branches which is a very strong indication that the word has roots that go all the way back to PIE or even earlier.

And the fact that most cultures decided to keep the word underscores the significance of the animal to their cultures.

So far so good.

Now let's try Bat:

Romance languages:

French: Chauve-souris

Italian: Pipistrello

Potuguese: Morsego

Romanian: Liliac

Spanish: Murciélago

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Flagermus

Dutch: Vleermuis

English: Bat

German: Fledermaus

Swedish: Fladdermus

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: Кажан,(Kažan)

Bulgarian: Прилеп, (Prilep)
Czech: Netopýr
Polish: Nietoperz
Russian: Летучая мышь, (Letuchaya mysh')

Bat names on the other hand, with the exception of the Germanic branch are all over the place, even more than squirrel names. Does this mean bats are even less "culturally important" than squirrels? 

Like squirrels, bats don't make good pets, they're not very tasty (at least from what I hear), and don't provide much in the way of transportation, unless I suppose you're a flea.

But they more than make up for all that in terms of mythological centrality.

Consider the following, ripped off another AI source:

• Bats are often associated with darkness and the underworld in various cultures.
• In Chinese mythology, bats symbolize good fortune and happiness.
• Native American tribes view bats as symbols of transformation and rebirth.
• In European folklore, bats are linked to witchcraft and the supernatural.
• Some African myths depict bats as messengers between the living and the dead.
• In Mesoamerican cultures, bats are associated with fertility and the night.

Like squirrel names, bat names are largely compound words describing physical attributes of the animal. My second favorite of these is the wonderfully descriptive, if not biologically accurate German, Fledermaus, or in English, "fluttering mouse." Die Fledermaus is also the name of a famous opera by Johann Strauss Jr. As it's the holidays, here's a link to its jubilant overture.

The Slavic names listed above also play off the riff of flying mouse, culturally independent from each other. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising when you consider how unusual bats are in relation to other mammals. It's not hard to imagine the first human of every culture to lay eyes on one and saying to his partner, "Look Shiela, a flying mouse!"

The Spanish name for bat originally came from the Latin Mus caeculus meaning "little blind mouse." Over the centuries as Classical Latin spread throughout the Roman Empire, it was absorbed by the different populations and morphed into Vulgar Latin (or Latin of the people), which further morphed into what we now call the Romance languages. 

In the case of mus caeculus according to ChatGPT, "sounds shifted, vowels weakened, and the phrase became a single lexical unit." The shift was so radical that eventually Spanish speakers no longer heard the word as little blind mouse, but just plain Murciélago, for my money, the coolest bat name around.

Over in France, bats aren't blind, they're bald. Why bald? One theory for the French word for bat is that the word was originally Chouette-souris meaning owl mouse, which makes way more sense, although as my wife just pointed out, owls eat mice. Anyway, according to the theory, at some point Chouette was replaced, perhaps inadvertently with Chauve (bald) which is the moment when the French bats all lost their hair. 

And in Italy, Pipistrllo which certainly gives Murciélago a run for its money on the coolness scale, comes from the Classical Latin word for bat, Vespertillo, literally "evening bird". From there, courtesy of Google AI, Verpertillo evolved

through Old Italian vipistrello, with a possible influence from pipistrella (a small cape/overcoat), suggesting a "winged little creature" or "cloaked one" meaning.

Here's my rather uneducated take: perhaps because of their uniqueness, intriguing mysterious nature and mythological significance, bats capture the human imagination more than most other animals, which is why they inspire such cool names, just as squirrels, by comparison rather playful and silly animals, inspire playful, silly names.

It's just a thought.

OK the moment you've all been waiting for, on to Mr. Rat:

Romance languages:

French: Rat

Italian: Ratto

Potuguese: Rato

Romanian: Sobolan

Spanish: Rata

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Rotte

Dutch: Rat

English: Rat

German: Ratte

Swedish: Råtta

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: пацук (pacuk)

Bulgarian: плъх ,(plŭkh)
Czech: Krysa
Polish: Szczur
Russian: крыса (Krysa)

The etymology of the various words for rat is super interesting, as of course is the animal itself.

Seriously.

Given the information presented above, if you just consider the Romance and Germanic branch lists with their consistent names for the animal, (with the exception of the typically contrarian Romanian), you could reasonably assume that the word rat has roots going back to PIE. But when you look at the Slavic words, there is no relation at all.

So what gives?

It turns out that the Latin name Rattus, came on the scene relatively late, perhaps in the third or fourth Century CE (AD if you prefer). Before that, Latin didn't distinguish between mice and rats, their word Mus sufficed for both. All that changed as the Black Rat, Rattus rattus, originally native to the Indian subcontinent, began to appear in Europe as trade routes were established with Asia. Uninvited, the rats hitched rides aboard ships headed westward and planted stakes in Europe.

The Black rat quickly proved itself to be an unwelcome guest wherever it landed.

Here's a quote from a fascinating book I read several years ago called: Rats: Obeservations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan:

Rats generally wreak havoc on food supplies, destroying or contaminating crops and stored foods everywhere, Some estimates suggest that as much as one third of the world's food supply is destroyed by rats. 

I probably don't need to mention that serious as the problem rats caused the food supply, it got much worse. Again, quoting Robert Sullivan, rats...

carry diseases that we know of and they may carry diseases that we do not know of-in just the past century, rats have been responsible for the death of more than ten million people...

And that's just in the last century. In the Middle Ages, the Bubonic Plague pandemic (the Black Death), caused by the Yersenia pestus bacterium transmitted by fleas who hitched rides (also uninvited) aboard the backs of rats, took perhaps 100 million human lives, over one third of the population of Europe, during the course of two years.

Small wonder they had to come up with a new word to distinguish these intruders from their meeker cousins. No one knows exactly where the name Rattus comes from, some speculate it was a slang term invented by sailors, just like aargh and shiver-me-timbers. And as the rat problem persisted throughout much of Europe, the name rat spread along with the animal.

It is speculated that the name rat didn't catch on in Eastern Europe however as there, local names already existed that separated mice from rats.

 
The Black rat was eventually displaced in Europe by the larger Brown Rat, Rattus norwegicus,*(4) originally native to China, which first arrived in Europe in the 18th Century. Ironically, the displacement by the larger rats coincided with the end of the major plague waves leading some researchers to believe that the two events were related as the Brown rats' preference for the subterranean life led to less exposure to humans meaning fewer transmissions of the disease. 

Other scientists however speculate that rats' contribution to the spread of the pandemic was vastly exaggerated in the first place. *(5)

Regardless, our relationship with the pesky rodent has been strained to say the least. It's probably safe to say that rats are among the most vilified animals in existence. On the other hand, unlike bats and squirrels, rats are domesticated both as pets (rat fanciers insist they make fantastic pets), and perhaps more significantly as laboratory animals.

So where do rats fall on the "cultural importance scale"? 

• Domesticated? yes.
• Hunted much? yes, in parts of Asia and Africa where eating the animal is not considered taboo.
• Used for transportation? well like bats, only for fleas so I'll have to give this one a no, at least for humans.
• Mythologically central? Absolutely. Just for starters, the first animal on the Chinese zodiac is the rat. *(6)

And while it might fall under the category domesticated, ChatGPT's cultural relevance scale doesn't really mention work animals like dogs, oxen, sheep and a whole slew of other animals whose services we have historically depended upon. As such, their service to us as research animals (ethically challenging as that may be), makes rats to this day invaluable to human beings. 

Considering these categories, I'd say that rats are indeed culturally important animals. And when you add into the equation the negative traits (which as we've seen may be a bit exaggerated) that have affected human civilization for millennia, I'd say that rats are off-the-chart culturally significant.

So take that, cats, who are nowhere to be found in the Chinese zodiac.

CODA

To be honest, while it is entirely relatable, I'm not crazy about ChatGPT's use of the term "cultural importance" when it comes to describing animals, because it seems to convey a value judgement. That is to say an animal that is not "culturally important" must therefore be unimportant. Of course this defines human relationships with animals from time immemorial, in other words, if we're able to exploit an animal for our needs, it must be important. 

On the other hand, it works both ways. As we've seen, it was the cats who originally exploited humans. While there was mutual benefit in the relationship, this article claims that humans didn't really see a need to exploit cats in kind until the Egyptians did it, some 7,000 years later. 

It could also be argued that human exploitation of animals works to the animals' benefit, at least in a Darwinian sense. It may not work out so well for the individual, such as animals raised for food, but the relationship with humans all but insures the survival of their species. That's the subject for another post, or perhaps an entire book.

But in the grand scheme of things, no animal is unimportant as each and every species plays a role in the ecology of the planet. Consider that every time you stand before a mighty oak tree in the forest and realize that tree is there because at some time maybe a couple hundred years ago, a squirrel forgot where he buried his prized acorn. 

Or consider when you're sitting outside enjoying a lovely summer evening, that a single brown bat can consume up to 1,000 mosquitos per hour..*(7)

And beyond their indisputably crucial role in the ecosystems in which they are native, (messed up only when humans get involved), if you or a loved one has ever been treated for a disease that may have otherwise had serious consequences, you can more than likely thank a lab rat for its contribution to finding a cure. 

In short, no animal, plant or any living thing for that matter, is insignificant, ever.

NOTES:

*(1) Himmel über Berlin, (Wings of Desire) directed by Wim Wenders.

*(2) Es ist ein Ros entsprungen set to music composed by Michael Preatorius.

*(3) Cow, the female gender of Bos taurus is a word often used in contemporary English to describe Cattle of both genders. Why that is, is probably a worthwhile subject for an entire post.

Sus scofra domesticus and Canus lupis familiaris as their names imply, are the domesticated cousins of  Sus scofra (the wild boar) and Canis lupis (the grey wolf) which have evolved enough through their domestication to be considered sub species of their natural, i.e.: untouched by human hands cousins in the wild.

The common name "deer" is very broad, encompassing about fifteen genera. Odocoileus virginianus is the scientific name for the most common deer found in the Americas, the White-tailed deer.

Squirrel is an even broader term encompassing over 50 genera. The common English name for the species Sciurus carolinensis, Eastern grey squirrel, one without the big horny ears, is the most common squirrel in the United States. 

*(4) The Brown rat, among other things, is often referred to as the Norwegian rat because it was originally assumed the species arrived in Great Britain aboard ships hauling lumber from Norway. The English naturalist John Berkenhout bought into this myth, thereby preserving it for the ages as he's the one who christened the species with its scientific (binomial) name, Rattus norwegicus. So my assumption that scientific names have nothing to do with human feelings about living organisms, is itself a fallacy.The scientists who gave them their scientific names, were only human after all.

*(5) It should be noted that rats also die from exposure to the Yersenia pestus bacteria. Typical outbreaks of Bubonic Plague were proceeded by the discovery of large die-offs of the rodent. With their hosts dead, the fleas carrying the bacterium search for other hosts including humans. There were no such notable recordings of rodent die-offs before the Black Death suggesting that the pandemic had sources other than rats. 

*(6) Here's an assessment of the rat from a website I found on Chinese astrology:

Ranking the first in the Chinese zodiac, rat represents wisdom. Personality traits for the people born in the year of the Rat are intelligent, charming, quick-witted, practical, ambitious, and good at economizing as well as social activities. The weaknesses are that the Rats are likely to be timid, stubborn, wordy, greedy, devious, too eager for power and love to gossip.

*(7) There's a killjoy in every room. This article claims to debunk the "myth" concerning bats and mosquitos. But the gist of the article is that mosquitos only account for a small amount a bat's diet, and that bats alone are not the "solution" to the mosquito problem.  What the article does not deny is the number of mosquitos consumed by bats, and it also fails to mention that without bats, there would certainly be far more mosquitos.

Alles in Ordnung

Another lifetime ago it seems, I was on the mother of all art courier trips, bringing a major photography exhibit from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (its first ever photography exhibition), to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. The trip involved a truck drive through the Russian/Finnish border, an adventure in itself, an overnight stay in Helsinki, an overnight ferry across the North Sea to Lubeck, Germany, then back on the truck for the final leg of the journey to Hamburg. 

That trip was just slightly less eventful than the first leg of the adventure when I originally brought the show to St. Petersburg from Chicago. I could write a book on that one. One of the greatest pleasures of the first trip was meeting Hessu, the Finnish truckdriver with whom I spent in addition to the time it took to drive from the Finnish capital to the magnificent city on the Neva, eight hours at the aforementioned border in the middle of the night in the middle of a Finnish winter, waiting in a several mile long line of other trucks trying to get into Russia. 

We had lots of time together Hessu and I, obviously, and we became fast friends. I can't describe my joy when later that year, waiting for my ride while standing in the courtyard of what was once the Winter Palace of the Russian Tzars (until the Bolsheviks stormed it on October 26,1917), and learned that it would be none other than Hessu, driving my cargo and me from Russia to Germany, 

Hessu's job took him far and wide. Like every Finn who expects to spend time outside of his country, he spoke a number of languages, although I don't recall him being able to speak Russian. There, what seems to have become the lingua-franca of much of the world, English had to suffice, which was really helpful for poor, pitiful, mono-lingual me. 

Truly an international man, much of our conversations centered around his adventures hauling freight throughout the continent. He wasn't shy talking about the characteristics of people from the various countries he spent so much of his life in, including his own, where it seemed he spent the least of his time.

In our day and age, we tend to shun ethnic stereotypes. I'm not talking about cartoonish depictions of say the drunken Irishman, the penny-pinching Scot, or the Italian with mob ties, although those things do indeed exist. But the reality is, stereotypes don't come out of thin air, and people tend to in one degree or other reflect the values, customs and traditions of their cultural identity and the place they come from. 

Why wouldn't they? 

Perhaps because of their connection with the events surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust, one group that no one seems to have problems stereotyping are the Germans.

Germans, the cartoonish stereotype goes, drink copious amounts of beer, the men wear lederhosen, the women dirndls and everyone socks with sandals, they are humorless, strictly efficient, punctual to the second, and above all, have an almost religious devotion to rules. The latter of these traits many believe, is a contributing factor to the rise and acceptance of Nazism and the Holocaust in the 30s and 40s. I don't necessarily buy that but it's a subject for another post.

Hessu's take on the Germans was their almost super-human efficiency. He pointed out the German expression that he felt defined the German people more than any other: "alles in ordnung." Literally it means "everything in order" but it is used in several contexts including asking someone if they're OK as in: "is everything in order?"

Well as they say, in a case of life imitating art, when we reached our destination in Hamburg and unloaded the nineteen crates containing the exhibition, we asked the person responsible for packing at the museum if we could help him place the crates in storage. He politely declined saying that he had a detailed plan on where the crates would go and it would take too much time for us to hang around to implement it. He then showed us his plan which was an intricate to-scale drawing, created by the hand of someone who was obviously a grand master champion of Tetris, with each crate tightly interwoven into its own place, leaving no room for error. Which meant that if one of the crates had been measured wrong, even by an inch, the whole plan would have to be scrapped. Unfortunately, the crate sizes provided to him were not complied by another German, so.... We didn't stick around to check how it all turned out, but hopefully for the best. 

I have another little anecdote of an experience in Germany. My wife and I were visiting friends in Frankfurt. From there we were headed to Prague and our friends helped us find the trains that would get us there. In this particular itinerary, there was to be one stop where we would need to switch trains. I asked how much layover time there would be between trains, assuming it would be about an hour or so. It was four minutes. "Isn't that cutting it a little tight?" I asked my friend, "...what if our first train runs late?". "Don't worry" was his response.

Well, it turned out our first train was indeed running late, by about a minute and a half, which is why the efficiency of the trains is a constant source of frustration for most Germans. I was sweating bullets fearing that we wouldn't have enough time to de-board our train, then find the track of our next train to make the connection. 

Turns out we had plenty of time.

As I mentioned in several previous posts, I've been studying German for the past year or so. I've discovered over the years a very useful resource for language learning is YouTube videos. In several of the German videos I've been watching are references to stereotypes about Germans and how in fact, a lot of them are founded in reality. According to them, and these videos are made by Germans mind you, most German people are indeed obsessed with punctuality, tidiness, order and rules. So just deal with it OK?

But I stumbled across another video, this one in English and made by an ex-pat Brit living in Germany named Benjamin Antoine. That could be the reason that his YouTube channel is called "Brit in Germany". The aim of his channel as you can imagine is to describe the cultural differences between Germany and especially the UK, but also other cultures, that expats living in Germany might experience. 

The title to this particular video is Freedom Isn't the Point Here and in it, he points out that there is a much deeper meaning to all the perceived rigidity found amongst the Germans. 

Here is a link to the video.

I won't go into details because I highly recommend you watch the video, but the point of his thesis can be summed up in the following "money quote": 

Germany isn't structured around individual freedom, it's structured around shared responsibility.

In other words, all the rules, regulations, personal habits and the rest, do not exist out of some irrational compulsion, but out of a sincere desire, to make society work for everyone. 

Here's more from the video's notes:

There is a core difference to how German society is structure as opposed to American or British society. It all comes down to the individual vs. the collective. In Britain and the US, the self comes first. In Germany, the structure and the system come first. 

Now of course I am generalising here but American values and to a lesser extent British values prize autonomy. German values prize reliability. And neither is right or wrong. But they produce very different lives.

As an example, Antoine points out in the video something I was already well aware of, that the Germans are diligent about recycling. Unlike Americans at least here in Chicago where if we do bother to recycle, we just throw all our recyclable material into one bin where someone in a recycling center allegedly sorts it all, the general public in Germany is expected to sort out their own recyclable material by type and if plastic, by color, then thoroughly clean it before depositing it into the appropriate container. I'm not sure if there is a law that regulates this, but one can rest assured that if you mess up, a neighbor will be more than happy to point out the error of your ways.

Contrast that to a family outdoor family gathering held in the backyard of my cousin's house a few years ago. When it came time to clean up after the meal, I asked her where she deposited her recyclable material. Her response which I'll never forget was: "I am very proud to say that in this household, we do NOT recycle." It was almost as if I had asked her where her altar for animal sacrifices was. 

Another unfortunately typical American attitude was highlighted by the uproar during the COVID pandemic, where tens of millions of Americans were aghast by the requirement for everyone to wear masks in public, Claiming it was a violation of their rights, people expressed the idea that it was their God given right to get sick if they so chose to do so. Of course what they failed to take into account was the real reason to wear masks, avoiding spreading the infection to others. That plea largely fell upon deaf ears, at least among the anti-maskers. Small wonder that the COVID mortality rate in the U.S. was higher than any other nation in the world. 

Another more mundane German obsession is punctuality. When you think about it in the terms brought up in Antoine's video, being punctual is really more about showing consideration to others, than a rigid mandate, although it's that too. The same with laws against making excessive noise after 10PM and on Sundays, and a whole slew of other regulations designed to make life a little more livable for the Gesellschaft, society.

In my studies of the German language, I've noticed that German can be very specific when it comes to describing things. For example, German can have many words to describe something where English might only have one. But these German words are not interchangeable, they each have their own slight variation or nuance that English simply does not bother with.

But there is an example in reverse, where German has one word that describes something English recognizes as two entirely different concepts. 

That word is rücksichtlos, and it can be translated into English as either ruthless or reckless. 

Here's a brief English definition of ruthless:

having or showing no pity or compassion for others.

And here's one for reckless:

without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action.

To a native English speaker, one could be ruthless but not reckless, as self-gratification is the essential quality of ruthlessness.

Likewise, a person could be reckless but not ruthless, as self-gratification is not essential to reckless behavior, in fact more often than not, it's just the opposite.

It's when you get to the literal meaning of rücksichtlos, that you begin to see the connection between the two and with that, start to gain an insight into the German mind.

Rücksichtlos literally means without regard. German, at least here, does not distinguish between regard of oneself or regard of others, just like all the things in Antoine's video, what matters most is the regard itself.

In that vein I differ a little from Antoine's assessment of Germans not valuing individual rights. As I see it, Germans do value individual rights, as long as they don't interfere with the rights of others. 

In one of my last posts, I mentioned creating flash cards to help learn words. Instead of writing down the English translations of the words I'm trying to learn, I often substitute pictures. As rücksichtlos describes two English words, I had to make two cards. The picture I chose to represent ruthless was easy, you more than likely know it. It's the picture of four of the most ruthless people I can imagine, Jeffery Epstein, his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, the current president of the United States and his current wife.

It was harder to come up with a picture to represent reckless, so I just googled the word "reckless" and looked for accompanying images. The first image to come up  (which I used), was a picture of a chimpanzee driving a car.

I think the Germans are on to something. *

*My apologies to chimpanzees for that crude comparison.

Who's the Guy?

My intention for this post was to take a brief respite from the serious (understatement of the year), news of the day. What after all could be less serious than the word "guy"? It's the very definition of casual non-commitment, a word describing someone not distinctive, but rather ordinary, mediocre and average. After all he's just a guy. 

Little did I know there are people who take the subject of the contemporary uses of the word deadly serious. I'll get to that in a bit. 

Like casual words or expressions in any language, its precise etymology is not one hundred percent certain, but the common explanation is that guy derives from a historical figure, Guy Fawkes. If you don't happen to be British, you still may have heard of him as he is ironically memorialized every year by the holiday bearing his name that takes place on November 5. Fawkes was a 17th Century English Roman Catholic mercenary who participated in a plan to assassinate King James I in order to restore a Catholic monarch to the British throne. 

In the plan, not only was the king to be done away with, but so was the entire Parliament and the lion's share of British nobility. The deed was to be carried out by the detonation of 36 barrels of dynamite positioned in a room directly beneath the chamber of the House of Lords on the Fifth of November 1605, coinciding with the State opening of Parliament. This "Gunpowder Plot" was thwarted when Fawkes was discovered among the barrels of dynamite, ready to light the match.

As you can imagine, Fawkes and seven co-conspirators met ignominious ends, they were all sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, the standard punishment for treason at the time. Their immortality was sealed however by the British government who decreed that the failure of the Gunpowder Plotters would be commemorated every year as a national day of Thanksgiving, which continues to this day.

The celebrations are more like American Fourth of July than our Thanksgiving, featuring rowdiness, fireworks and bonfires which consume life-size effigies of Guy Fawkes and any other unpopular figures of the day. The effigies became known as guys. Eventually the meaning of "guy" would expand to be used as a pejorative term referring to men of shall we say, less than stellar attributes. 

The word guy made the Atlantic voyage to the New World where, shed of its original context, came to be used a generic term for men. That is to say, in our egalitarian society, you could either be a good guy or a bad guy. 

But wait friends, there's more!!!

If you're a native English speaker learning your first foreign language, you've no doubt noticed several grammatical concepts in the new language that are well, foreign to you. You may even be tempted to believe that the language you're studying is a bit strange. It's only when you start learning a second and third foreign language when you realize that in fact, English is the peculiar language.

Take for example the second person, personal pronoun. 

Many languages use different pronouns depending upon whom you are speaking to. If you are addressing a friend, family member, or child, you most likely would be using the familiar pronoun. If not, you would address the person with the formal pronoun. The line between the two varies from culture to culture, adding extra confusion when learning a new language along with the different cultures where it is spoken.

Most languages distinguish between the second person singular and the second person plural . In other words, if you are addressing one person, you would use the singular pronoun. If you're addressing more than one person, you'd use the plural pronoun.

English does not have any of these distinctions; we have only one word that covers all the options, "you".

Compare that to Spanish. In Spain, they have four words for you:

• tú - translation: you, singular, familiar.
• usted - translation: you, singular, formal.
• vosotros - translation: you, plural, familiar.
• ustedes - translation: you, plural, formal.

In Latin American Spanish, they've dropped vosotros so there is just one second person plural pronoun, ustedes, making life there a bit simpler, in that sense anyway.

Regardless, in Spanish and most languages of the world, there is no ambiguity between addressing one person, or a group of people.

In English, we have to rely on context to distinguish between the singular and the plural you. We also have ways of speaking which distinguishes between formal and informal speech, usually by the use of certain words.

Enter the word "guy". In American English, "guy," by making it plural and preceded with a "you" makes it function as a pronoun, sometimes.

In other words, "you guys" has become the go-to plural familiar second person pronoun, or if you prefer, the vosotros of American English.

Here's an example, if I were telling friends that I plan to accompany them to the store I might say:

Voy de compras con vosotros (in Spanish Spanish) = I'm going shopping with you guys. (in American English).

"You guys" obviously is plural, and it's also informal, you probably wouldn't address strangers who are older than you as "you guys".

But wait a minute folks, you ain't heard nothin' yet!!!

In the last God knows how many years, at least in this context, "you guys" has evolved to become gender-neutral. It can refer to males, females, or any combination of both, just like vosotros. 

However the gender-neutral "guys" is used in another manner which differs from vosotros, that is, in greetings.

In English if you walked into a room filled with friends you might say informally: "Hey guys." whereas in Spanish you wouldn't say "Hola vosotros", at least I've never encountered it.

Instead you might say something like: "Hola chicos" or in Italian, "Ciao ragazzi", which both literally translate to "hi boys." If it were a room filled with women you might say: "Hola chicas" or "Ciao ragazze", literally "hi girls". What if the room is filled with men and women? Spanish and Italian both default to the male-centric "Hola chicos" and "Ciao ragazzi" respectively, even if the crowd is comprised of one thousand women and only one man. That might be changing at least in some circles. One fix is being more inclusive by saying "Hola chicos y chicas" for example, or "Ciao ragazzi e ragazze" which can be a bit cumbersome, especially in an informal context. 

By contrast, "guys" has no generally accepted contemporary female counterpart. Probably the closest is gals (once-upon-a-time filling the bill), which sounds to my ears hopelessly antiquated, although some folks are trying to bring it back. 

It seems to me that our culture is striving to be ever more inclusive, gender-neutral and informal. In that vein, "you guys" would seem to be the perfect second person familiar pronoun.

Not everyone agrees. 

I recently came across a 2018 article in The Atlantic called "The Problem With 'Hey Guys'". Apparently, some people don't find the gender-neutral "guys" to be acceptable. As the piece points out in its introduction:

it’s a symbol of exclusion—a word with an originally male meaning that is frequently used to refer to people who don’t consider themselves "guys."

OK, point taken.

But the problem is that language seldom works as it should work, but rather how people want it to work. As I pointed out in another post, how else do you explain that the expression "I could care less" means the opposite of what the words indicate, and that we have to invent a new word for "literally" because literally, literally doesn't mean literally anymore. 

The Atlantic article goes on to suggest some more PC, gender-neutral alternatives to "you guys", such as "friends", "folks", "people", "team", and the ever popular "you all", in speech typically shortened to "y'all". 

The problem with these is they all fit into their own niche, carry some amount of baggage, and are not nearly as flexible as "you guys". For example:

• "Friends" has a disingenuous ring to it. It sounds like something that would come out of the mouth of a televangelist or a used car salesman. 
• "Folks" implies that what follows is bad news such as: "I hate to tell you this folks, but your pet ferret has COVID." 
• My father always used to address us with "hello people". As English was not his first language, I'm not quite sure what he intended to convey but "people" has a very authoritarian/dismissive ring to it as in: "What were you people thinking?"  
• "Team" sounds like someone is trying too hard. 
• "You all"/"y'all" both make perfect sense as both a greeting and as a plural pronoun. The problem is both are SO identified with the language of the American South and by extension, Black American English, that anyone who uses those terms and is not a member of either of those groups, sounds phony.

And on and on and on...

Which brings us back to "you guys". 

Thanks in part to popular culture where so much of our casual speech originates, (think of the opening to the 1970s children's TV show The Electric Company featuring the great Rita Moreno), "you guys" has become enshrined in the American English Hall of Fame. 

I think it's really going against the grain to not accept that in certain contexts, "you guys" has evolved into a truly gender-neutral term, just as it evolved centuries before from exclusively describing an object, to describing people. 

As a generally accepted gender-neutral term, "you guys" has the advantage over its equivalents in other languages as we saw above, where you have to reverse engineer them in order to be inclusive, making them less informal in the process. And as we also saw, "you guys" has less baggage than its alternatives in English.

"You guys" has become so ingrained into our American English lexicon that whether we like it or not, it's going to be around for a very long time. 

The other day at Thanksgiving I noticed my very proper (linguistically speaking) ninety something, former elementary school principal mother using "you guys" to address her equally persnickety eighty something female friends who found no offense in it.

Just try to pry that bone away from those formidable ladies, I dare you (guys).

I Could Care Less, Literally

My mother bless her heart, is a stickler for grammar. This shouldn't come as a surprise after a long career as a teacher and public school administrator. To my mom, there are two forms of English, proper English, and everything else. 

The biggest bee in her grammatical bonnet is the confusion people often make of the English first person singular personal pronouns, that is to say, "I" and "me". The mistake usually occurs at the end of a sentence when folks refer to themselves along with another person as the objects of the sentence. So instead of saying "my mother gave a lecture on grammar to my sister and me" as is correct, they say "to my sister and I".

This drives my mother bananas. She inevitably responds: "you wouldn't say 'she gave a lecture to I' would you?, Then why would you say 'she gave a lecture to my sister and I'?". 

I've heard this so often in my life that I have to say this mistake sets off a little bell in my head as well, though I try to keep it to myself, except occasionally to members of my thoroughly ungrateful immediate family.

The rule is pretty basic, "I" is a subject pronoun, used when the speaker is performing the action described in the sentence. "Me" is an object pronoun, used when speaker is the recipient of the action.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that incorrectly using "me" instead of "I" seems rather crude, while the opposite is usually not. "I" gets more respect that "me", even though the two are technically not interchangeable. So I suppose most people figure: "when in doubt, use I."

Consider the signature phrase from everybody's favorite monster: 

"Me want cookie." 

Even a person with a rudimentary understanding of the English language knows that's wrong, which is what makes Cookie Monster so endearing. 

And yet, "me want cookie" is perfectly understandable, it's as unambiguous as giving something to "my sister and I." And intelligibility is the basic goal of any language right?

So really what's the big deal?

As with the question I posed a couple posts back about the difference between a language and a dialect, this is an extremely loaded question fraught with much peril because in two words: language matters.

In the business of foreign language learning, the teaching of grammar is a hotly debated topic. If you've ever studied a foreign language in school, as I believe most people in the United States have at one point or other, you probably got a large dose of instruction in the grammar of that language. Today many language teachers believe this is the reason why kids who study languages in school in this country may know the grammar like the back of their hand, but rarely come away with anywhere near an acceptable level of fluency in that language. 

They point to the most successful language learners in the world, children learning their first language and say that no one learns the grammar of their own language until they are able to speak the language. That is true for obvious reasons, imagine giving a one year old a lecture on the difference between subject and object pronouns and the correct usage of "I" and "me." 

But children learning their first language have several advantages over people learning a second language:

• As I discussed in an earlier post, young children have an incredibly strong motivation to learn to speak the language that everyone around them is speaking but they're not. 
• Every waking hour for them is devoted to language learning because it is built into all their other activities. 
• Children learning their first language don't have another language to fall back on.
  
• Young children haven't learned yet to be embarrassed by making mistakes, and learning from our mistakes is perhaps the single most useful tool we possess in language learning. 
• And yes as people like to point out, the mind of a small child is particularly well suited, some would say designed to learn languages.

Yet I would point out that people (including older children) learning a second, third and beyond language have a few advantages over small children. They already know what language is and have a good idea on how language works. Another advantage is that most people over a certain age know how to read and can put that knowledge to good use, even if the alphabet of the target language is different from that of their first language. (I'm not sure however if this applies to learning a completely different writing system such as going from English to Chinese or vice versa).

In essence, grammar is to a language what architecture is to a building. When we think of architecture we usually think of superficial things like how a building looks, what materials it's constructed of, how it fits into its environment, etc. These are all essential, but the most important element of architecture, combined with engineering of course, is how a building works from the most basic, will it be able to stand, to how it accommodates the people who will use it, how well it is suited for what it was intended and countless other more mundane issues relating to function. 

Like architecture, grammar has its fine points, such as the difference between "I" and "me", which are the superficial parts of language. But grammar also serves as the foundation of any language; with just words scattered about aimlessly and no grammar to serve as a blue print on how to put them together, no language could function.

Consider this list of phrases:

1. Marcus hit the ball.
2. The ball hit Marcus.
3. Hit Marcus the ball.
4. Hit the ball Marcus. 
5. The ball Marcus hit.
6. Marcus the ball hit.

These represent all six possible combinations of three words (I'm counting "the ball" here as one word).

Despite the same words appearing in each phrase, each phrase means something different, unless you are speaking to Yoda, in which case number one and number six mean exactly the same thing.

Now here are numbers 1 through 4 again, this time with their Latin translations:

1. Marcus hit the ball - Marcus pilam pulsavit.
2. The ball hit Marcus - Marcum pila pulsavit.
3. Hit Marcus the ball. - Marco pilam pulsa.
4. Hit the ball Marcus. - Marce pilam pulsa.

As we see, syntax, or word order in English gives each sentence a different meaning, while in Latin the word order (which here I've deliberately kept consistent) does not change the meaning of the sentence. What does change in Latin are the endings of the words which indicate how each word functions in its sentence. 

From above, the most obvious change in Latin is the name Marcus whose function is different in each sentence. In the first, Marcus is doing the action (he's hitting the ball), so he's the subject of the sentence. In the second, it's the ball that's doing the hitting. What's getting hit? Poor Marcus, he's the direct recipient of the action so this time he's the direct object, hence he gets a different ending. The next two sentences are commands and in Latin (like many other languages), the verb changes "conjugations", here from pulsavit (to be technical, the indicative, third person singular, past perfect, active form of the verb to hit) to pulsa (the imperative, yadda yadda yadda). As for Marcus, again he's the object, but this time it's the ball that is the direct recipient of the action, it's getting hit, while Marcus, the intended recipient of the ball that's been hit, is classified as the indirect object, and gets yet another ending. Finally in sentence four, Marcus is being addressed directly by the speaker, so here Latin requires us to use a special case and ending for our friend, called the vocative.

What this little exercise illustrates is that learning fundamental grammar like this is essential to both speaking and understanding any language. In the case of English, it is essential to understand how word order effects the meaning of a sentence. In Latin, as well as contemporary highly inflected languages such as Czech, Hungarian, Arabic and scores more, it is essential to understand how the "inflection" of words changes their function.  

Otherwise you have no idea who's doing what to whom.

Anyway, I said a few paragraphs back that the difference between "I" and "me" is superficial in English, but that wasn't always the case. Long ago, English, like Latin was a highly inflected language with nouns, pronouns and adjectives  "declined" to indicate the function of the word. In Old English the equivalent of "I" (Ic) was the nominative of the first person singular pronoun, and "me" (spelled the same way then) would have been the "accusative (direct object) declension, as well as the dative (indirect object). Then there was a third declension as well, the genitive "min", the equivalent of today's "my".

That hasn't changed. 

But English gradually stopped declining its adjectives and nouns, except in the case of the genitive where a noun like "John" becomes "John's". In modern English, only pronouns are declined beyond the genitive case, and then inconsistently. "You" for example is the same in the nominative, accusative and dative cases, but changes to "your" in the genitive. And while "he" declines just like "I", from "he" to "him" to "his", the genitive form of "she" is "her", which is the same as the accusative and dative cases.

Go figure.

Because of this, English is categorized as a lightly inflected language but in reality, if you're declining some words but not others, the whole point of inflection is lost. In order to understand who's doing what to whom, what has taken the place of inflections are the addition of extra words, chiefly prepositions whose function was once implied by the different declensions, and you guessed it, a strong emphasis on word order. So the few and far between instances of inflection in English are merely vestiges (a good word borrowed from Latin) of Old English that no longer serve any functional purpose. 

The same goes for verb conjugations. The children of Latin, aka Romance languages, also gave up on noun declensions eons ago, but they still conjugate their verbs. In a language such as Spanish which has about 100 different conjugations for each verb, verbs function as the heart of a sentence, telling us not only what the action is, but also who the subject is, when the action takes place, the duration of the action, the likelihood of the action taking place, the mood of the speaker, and lots of other things. To do the same thing in English which takes a higgledy-piggledy approach to verb conjugation, again we need to add extra words to serve all those purposes. Consequently the few verbs we do conjugate fully, such as the verb "to be", is done out of tradition, style and habit, rather than function.

In other words, saying something like "I be hungry", is no less intelligible then saying "I am hungry."

If language were based purely upon logic and common sense, English would have lost these remaining vestiges of the old language centuries ago. We'd all be saying "I be hungry", and no one would bat an eye at "she gave my sister and I something", because me and I would be interchangeable.

But hardly anything about the evolution of language is logical, it's all about the way people talk. Look at the two examples I give in the title to this post, one expression and one word that have come to mean in our day, the exact opposite of what they seem. Even my language fussy mother sees no irony in saying "I could care less" about something when what she really means is that she could NOT care less. And don't get me started on the word literally, literally not meaning literally anymore. 

I don't often say my mother is wrong, but I have to disagree with her on there being only one proper English. As we just saw, the rules regarding language apply, until they don't anymore. If a dictionary defines a word one way, and a critical mass of people speaking the language defines it another way, the dictionary doesn't stand a chance. The same goes with grammar. When was the last time you heard someone saying (not in jest), the grammatically correct, "It is I"? 

Languages evolve. If languages were were immutable, they'd still be speaking Latin in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Romania.  And we'd be speaking God knows what here in the Anglosphere. 

Furthermore, language is more than a means for mass communication. I have a friend who has developed one of the least common languages in the world, only she and her brother speak it. I heard it once, and for all I could tell, the language was related to Martian. Some other languages may be more common than my friend's, but are still not intended to be in the domain of the general public; think of the Navaho code talkers of WWII.. Don't get me wrong, there's a good reason to have a "standard" language around such as the one I inherited from my mother. Lot's and lots of people speak it, therefore lots and lots of people can communicate with one another. But it's important to remember that languages such as the standard English of Britain and the US, get to be "lingua francas", not because they are the highest examples of linguistic art, moral virtue or intellectual fortitude, but purely out of chance, power and influence.

Beyond that, the way we talk, speaks volumes about who we are, where we come from, and what we want people to think about us.  

In a 1975 television interview, (at the 8:45 mark of the linked video), John Lennon told Tom Snyder that the one and only axe the Beatles ever had to grind was their insistence, despite a great deal of resistance in Britain, on maintaining their working class identity and the most salient symbol of it, their distinct Liverpool accent. This brought up an interesting discussion on the nature of  "standard languages," giving away no trace of the speaker coming from anyplace in particular. 

Below you can see Lennon ten years earlier, reading from his book, A Spaniard in the Works. Between the gibberish, the cheeky malaprops, and Lennon's intentionally exaggerated accent, his reading takes a little effort to comprehend, even for fluent English speakers. In the clip you can compare  Lennon's Liverpool "Scouse" accent, with the standard British "Received Pronunciation" (RP), otherwise known as "BBC English" of the program host, BBC personality Kenneth Allsop. 

 

 

At this late date it may be hard to appreciate how truly radical and influential the Beatles were as far as the English language is concerned. After they hit the big time and refused to conform to the accepted standards by changing their accents to RP, others followed suit. If you listen to the BBC today, you'll find a healthy variety of British regional accents that would have been unthinkable before the Fabs came on the scene. 

Across the big pond at the same time in the US, the Civil Rights movement was gaining full steam and with it came the another debate on the language of a group far more marginalized than the British working class, Black Americans. 

Black American English is a profoundly complex subject so I'll let someone who knows what he's talking about, American linguist and social commentator John McWhorter deal with it in this interview from 2018:

If you don't get a chance to watch all 54 minutes of this interview, one of Dr. McWhorter's main themes that he has written about often, and which he states succinctly toward the end of the video, is that ways of speaking outside the realm of standard languages such as RP British or General American English, are not by any means degraded forms of the mother tongue, but bona fide dialects in their own right, with their own complicated vocabulary, syntax and grammar. He emphasizes that people like the interviewer who can easily navigate between the languages they grew up with at home, in their community, and the standard language of the country where they live, are actually the norm around the world. People like me who learned the standard language from the start, are the exception. And as I pointed out in my penultimate post, multi-lingual people have a distinct advantage over monolingual people.

However I would challenge the opinion expressed by some of the questioners in the Q&A portion, who imply that disdain toward black English (which certainly exists) is purely racist. Some lament for example that it is unfair that full-blown black English, (vocabulary, syntax, grammar,etc), would not be acceptable in a job interview. After all, why can't people talk the way they want, whenever and wherever they like?

The truth is, regional accents and dialects exist all over the world including in this country, the most extreme of which are found in rural and working class areas where there is not a great deal of mobility and contact with outsiders. The full-blown version of these dialects are often unintelligible to those who are not a part of the community, not making them very useful for communicating with the rest of the world. 

Probably the most familiar American regional dialects are the rich variety of those found in the American South. It's no secret that among many people, there is a bias against people speaking with a Southern accent, even among Southerners. But just about every large Northern American city has an accent/dialect associated with it as well, from Boston to New York, Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee to yes, Chicago. 

The linked video is a good indication of the distinct accent heard in parts of  this city, but like black English, it's more than just an accent. Full-blown Chicagoese consists of its own vocabulary, syntax and grammar as well. 

Like any good regional dialect, Chicago has slang that wouldn't be understood elsewhere. For example, we have a popular local supermarket chain called simply, Jewel. But most people here refer to it (as I do) as "the Jewel", or even "the Jewels". Jewel is so tied into our local culture that the word has become a generic term for grocery store, just as "Coke" has become the generic word for soda in the South. By the way, we call soda, soda pop, or more commonly just "pop" around these parts. 

 

And while Standard English does not provide a plural form of the second person pronoun, Chicagoese does: "yous."

Now if you were to ask some friends to accompany you to a grocery store in Chicago to purchase some beverages, you might say something like this:

Ey dere, I'm goin' over by da Jewels t'get me some pop, j'yous wanna come wit?     

My guess is that type of speech wouldn't fly too well at a job interview either. 

So we adapt our language to fit the situation. We all do it, well maybe not my mother, but just about everybody else. And you don't even have to give up your local accent. Think of Anthony Fauci and his strong Brooklyn accent. Or the greatest former president we ever had, Jimmy Carter and his Georgia drawl. Or Martin Luther King who had as great a command of standard American English as anyone, but no one would ever question judging by  his voice, that he was black.

. 

In that sense, language is like fashion where we adjust what we wear to the time and the occasion, but maintain our sense of style (or lack of it) just the same. You wouldn't wear a tank top and shorts to a job interview, or at least I hope you wouldn't. Nor would you wear a top hat, white tie and tails or an evening gown. The same goes with language, you wouldn't speak at an interview the same way you speak to your close friends, nor would you speak as if you were delivering the eulogy at a funeral. 

That shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

The idea of commonly understood languages being separate from local dialects has been around for thousands of years. The more languages one knows the better, better still to know at least one language spoken by a plurality of the people you're likely to come in contact with. 

In a perfect world, no one would ever judge another person by the way they speak, period.  It' is all about communication after all. Folks would if they wanted, speak the language they learned as children at home with their families, the language they learned on the playground with their friends, and at least enough of the standard language of their country to get by (to the extent they desire) in the society in which they live. The cherry on top of all that would be to learn lots of other languages as well. Except for the judging other people part, this is how the world has worked for millennia.

It's true that the language of the masses (take your pick) came to be that way because of power and influence, it might even be the language of oppression.  But it doesn't have to remain that way. Language doesn't belong to the establishment, or to the people who write the grammar books and the dictionaries, and especially not to the colonizers. A language belongs to the people who speak it.

Not only does contemporary English have roots in Old German and Norse, the languages of the Celts, and Latin, much of that via French, but it also strongly influenced by the languages and cultures (from the minuet to hip hop and everything in between), of the people of all races and ethnic backgrounds who live anywhere English is spoken. 

As such the English language changes every day, as it always has.

And dat my friend, is a beautiful ting. 

If you don't like that, if you think your language should never change, remaining eternally immutable, well to paraphrase Rick Blaine from Casa Blanca: 

 

"We'll always have Latin."