English's Diversity and Complexity

It's quite interesting that Simon Horobin starts his book How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language with a reference to an adjective "English" that Samuel Johnson made in 1755:

----------
ENGLISH. adj.
Belonging to England; thence English is the language of England.(Dictionary of the English Language)
----------

By citing Johnson's, his aim is to demonstrate how the concept of "English" has changed over time. Horobin continues:

----------
"Samuel Johnson's straightforward identification of English as the language of England hardly begins to capture the diversity and complexity of the language's use in the twenty-first century."
----------

Johnson's definition "hardly captures the diversity and complexity," the one that is not easy to apply to in our present times. It tells how the meaning of the word changes quite in an unpredictable way. Even the gigantic figure in the field of lexicography would not have doubted English is the language of England!

Perhaps the closer to our sense of "English" is the one that first appears in 1910 according to the OED:

----------
2d. As a count noun: a variety of English used in a particular context or (now esp.) a certain region of the world; (in pl.) regional varieties of English considered together, often in contradistinction to the concept of English as a language with a single standard or correct form.
----------

Doctor Johnson would be surprised to know that English is, above all, "a count noun"!

One would say that the time is pretty much closer to the end when people takes English "as a language with a single standard or correct form," as the OED puts it.

These are the ideas that lead up to the very interesting question posed in "Old English, a different language?

Works cited:

Horobin, Simon. How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Study of "Sake"

Hidetoshi Nakata, who was one of the worldly-famous football players, has now become a professional “Sake” promoter. After retiring, he began to travel across the world, and it has been years since he launched a journey across the countries of Japan: he is studying and enjoying traditional performance art and craft, especially the ones firmly rooted in each local place.

I respect his global viewpoint and incredible ability to communicate borderlessly with people, as well as his multiple language command. It is this worldwide field of vision and skill that cast his eyes back into the things unique in Japan. In the middle of these local experiences, he finally took a tremendous interest in “Sake,” a Japanese alcoholic drink made from fermented rice.

Joined with a certain company, he contributed to producing a very interesting app named “Sakenomy.” What a fantastic name it is and how outstanding his sense of language is! “Sakenomy,” available to Japanese, Italy, and English, provides information on more than a thousand kind of Sake.

"Sakenomy" is a nice pun. In English, “nomy,” attached to the word ending, forms nouns referring to the science or study of a subject specified by the first element. Ultimately from from Greek, so many lexicons come into a stock of English vocabulary, such as astronomy, economy, taxonomy, gastronomy.

“Nomy” in Japanese means an act of drinking and there is a phrase that sounds exactly like “sakenomy.” The expression often refers to a person who constantly drinks and loves Sake. So this overlapping of both senses is what makes the app really fascinating!

"Shy Man"

----------

A: Thank you for arranging such a party like this today. I really enjoyed it!

B: Did you talk to everybody?

A: Yeah, except one guy who seems so shy. Who was he?

B: Oh, he is a new member to our community. He told me "I am a bit shy in nature so please forgive me if I give a bad impression at first." I think he is just nervous among unfamiliar folks. 

A: I see. Hope he gets used to it soon!

. . . Then time for the check. 

People split the bill and paid their own. The man in question was not able to pay his, because he was also shy with this.

----------

In the nonsense story I made up, I wonder how an adjective "shy" develops into the sense of "lack in the amount of money."

OED defines this "shy" as one of the transferred uses of sense of timidity, recording the first use in 1895, in which the sense of shortage appeared in the context of betting: "to be shy a dollar in the pool"

It's interesting to observe the way the original sense of word develops and transfers in various ways. As for "shy," it's easy to imagine the situation in which "shy" is applied to the sense of "lack" when people, diverting themselves with betting, shout to others "don't be shy! Pool!", out of which the meaning of "shy" becomes common.

Encountering "elf" in yourself

One of the key characters in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is Gandalf. He is a wise and erudite wizard, playing a leading role in an adventure of Hobbits throughout the series. This bearded old man played by Ian McKellen also leaves a huge impression on us.

J. R. R. Tolkien, a creator of this Middle-earth sagas, loved stories from Old Norse and got so much influence and inspiration from such ancient mythology and tales. This tells that Gandalf was far from being a fictional figure out of Tolkien's wild imagination: the name was actually recorded in medieval Scandinavian manuscript, showing historical presence of such kind of entity.

“Gandalf” is the word combined with Old Norse (one of the Germanic languages) “gandr” (meaning “wand, staff, cane”) and “alfr” (meaning “elf”), literally meaning “wand elf.” Although they do not belong to any creature on Middle-earth such as elf, dwarf, man, or orc, his name indicates his connection with the elvish race! “Elvish” elements loom so large in the Germanic mythology, and, come to think of it, “alf” is often in the first component of personal names, such as Alfric and Alfred.

Then I embark on finding other hidden presences in daily life.

For example, you often bump into “elves” when you read books: they are on the “shelf.”

Then I realized I have an “elf” much closer to me.

That is “myself.”

I was overjoyed to have met them within me!

There are so many “elves” in a daily landscape. Though the last ones are a mere “pun”, (so the fake etymology), it can suggest that rational creatures (defined based on our modern thinking) are not able to live without the creature of what we usually deem as being "fantastic."

Colorless Green Ideas 02 - an attempt for interpretation

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

Many have attempted to construe some sense out of this nonsensical sentence.  Finding sense in everything is something that humans always try to do. We humans just cannot leave something senseless or "non-categorized". The sentence can come to some understanding if we can make some sense out of the "colorless green" and "sleep furiously". Let's try interpreting it here.

<colorless>
without color or very pale / not interesting

<green>
having the color of grass or the leaves of most plants and trees / not yet ready to eat / young and lacking experience

So "colorless green ideas" can be understood as "monotonous immature ideas".

"Sleep furiously" is a little more difficult to interpret. The agent in the act of sleeping is in an unconscious state, which contradicts with the state of "furiously" where the agent actively and aggressively take part in the action. But how about having  a nightmare? You are sleeping but you are having a frightening experience in your dream, I consider that similar to 'sleeping furiously'.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.　
                     ≒　
Monotonous immature ideas have a nightmare.

Is it now comprehensible?

Colorless Green Ideas 01 - what takes us 'above reality'

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously".

This is a famous sentence made by the distinguished linguist Noam Chomsky demonstrating the distinction between syntax and semantics. The sentence is grammatically correct but semantically nonsensical. One can read it but cannot derive any meaning or understanding from it.

I first saw this phrase in a text book of linguistics I was reading in graduate school. It is said one cannot derive any understanding from it, but it sort of blew me into the world of "Alice in Wonderland." I like the phrase very much, it is simple, poetic, and me with my wild imagination it is easy to imagine "ideas sleeping furiously". Some might say 'how can green be colorless?' or 'how can you sleep furiously?' and I would just answer, 'Why not?'

This sentence shows that syntax and semantics can operate independently in people's minds, and I think this is how metaphors, poetry and fantasy are born, people have the mind to appreciate them and why there are surrealists. The autonomy of the functions are the source of our creativity, what take the human mind 'above reality'

Muslim Free Hospital

I found an article on Huffington Post about a a very special hospital in Myanmar. It was founded and was funded (and still is) by Muslims in Myanmar in 1937 when the country was still called Burma. The institute provides medical care for the poor people free of charge, and welcomes all people of any religion. As the article says, it is remarkable that the hospital is run so for 80 years considering the status of the Muslims in the country. In Myanmar, the majority of the population is Buddhist, while Muslims are only 4%/.The Buddhist monks openly incite violence to Muslims. The article tells how remarkably the institution is run till today even in such disadvantageous condition. I am awed by the people keep this institution running.

What surprised me linguistically is not the content of the article but the naming of the hospital.

Muslim Free Hospital

I wondered where the word FREE falls on. If it was working like a suffix, Muslim-Free, the institute would turn into a really discriminative one, not accepting any Muslims (look at the definition of the suffix in Roki's article Smoke-free.) And thinking about the proportion and the condition of the Muslims in Myanmar, the possibility of that cynical reading could not be ruled out.

Since there is no hyphen linking Muslim and Free, it can be read 'Free Hospital',  and it must be read like that.

Comma or hyphen could have done a job to make a clearer understanding. Punctuation does matter.