BS: Philology

Subject: RE: BS: Philology
From: freda underhill
Date: 05 Feb 11 - 12:11 AM

Words have a history in themselves. An analysis of Balinese gravestones (their only written record prior to more recent times) showed through words used on the stones that the Portuguese had been in Bali a couple of centuries earlier than previously thought. Similarly, some Australian aboriginal languages on the west coast of Australia have Portuguese words in them for words related to boats.

Subject: RE: BS: Philology
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Feb 11 - 12:00 AM

It seems to me that the American use of Amber Alert as an anotonomasia from the name of a missing girl in 1996 is an obvious backformative use of an already extant phrase. Amber has always meant "Caution, teke care, go steady, be ready for emergencies" here, from our traffic light sequence of Red Amber Green = Stop Caution Go. In US, the amber tends to be omitted from a continuous on-peak sequence, but left on permanently at off-peak times to indicate a junction where caution would be appropriate ~~ tho, as with most things American in our observation, there will be State &/or regional variations.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Philology
From: josepp
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 09:57 PM

But how did Amber end up a girl's name the same as Elektra centuries earlier? Were people of that time aware of the Greek connection or was this something subconscious--people who were familiar with the properties of amber saw the same female aspect in this substance that the Greeks did?

Subject: RE: BS: Philology
From: josepp
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 09:48 PM

The Amber alert was named for Amber Hagerman who was abducted and murdered by some stupid asshole some years back.

Subject: RE: BS: Philology
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 09:44 PM

Topsie -

In the US an "amber alert" currently has a very specific meaning.

Laws were passed in many states following a sensational kidnapping and murder of a young girl named "Amber." These laws were frequently given the name "Amber's Law" as their "common name" both during and following passage.

Advocates for the laws have persuaded the FCC to allow special alerts by broadcasters when certain conditions indicating a kidnapping of a child has occured, and these are called "Amber Alerts." They are accompanied by a truly obnoxious noise and an announcement that "a chid has been kidnapped and is in danger. Your help is needed in locating them."

While a number of children have been located after they were reported missing in an Amber Alert, there is little evidence that significant number have been located because of an Amber Alert; but the possibility that one might help is probably sufficient to support continued use of the method.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Philology
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 07:05 PM

I always thought an 'amber alert' was a warning about something not as immediately dangerous as a 'red alert' - as in traffic lights where amber means 'be prepared'.

Subject: RE: BS: Philology
From: gnu
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 06:46 PM

Cool stuff!

I thought this might be about Dr. Phil. In the spirit of this thread, I profer that the "Dr." in Dr. Phil is an abbreviation from the ancient Texan script meaning "dumb redneck".

Subject: BS: Philology
From: josepp
Date: 04 Feb 11 - 06:03 PM

I'm reading "History in English Words" by Owen Barfield and it's quite a refreshing look at how words we use everyday have our history locked up inside them going back thousands of years. He shows how to extract information from a word. As an example, Barfield mentions the word "electricity." It comes from the Greek "elecktor" which means "gleaming" or "the beaming sun." That gave birth to the word "electron" which means "amber" because amber, as we know, becomes attractive if we rub it. It's strange because we have appropriated the Greek word for the particles that orib the nucleus and those are the particles responsible for amber becomes attractive when we rub it.

Barfield points out that we can deduce a few things from this--that English scholars bygone centuries knew Greek, that the Greeks did not have electricity and that we relate electricity with amber. The reason we know the Greeks did not have electricity was because if they did, we would have used their word for it rather than using their word for "amber."

Another thing that' strange is that Amber is a girl's name just as we have the Amber Alert in the States. It was named after a missing girl whose name was Amber. In Greek, Elektra is a female name. You may remember her as the sister of Orestes. Her name was also Amber. Why the word is related to femininity I am not sure of. Perhaps because of the attractive force of amber is like the attractive power women have over men.

That brings up another point that Barfield makes--that our knowledge of electricity either invented new words in our vocabulary or modified old one to be used in new ways. As examples, he mentions battery, broadcast, conductor, current, force, magnet, potential, tension, terminal, wire, etc. For example, if someone claims to have found a hitherto unknown letter written by Shakespeare and it mentions high tension existing between himself and another playwright, we would know the letter is a forgery written centuries after Shakespeare's life because the term "high tension" came from our experiments with electricity and was originally used to describe the state of the space between two electrically charged bodies. Only later was it used metaphorically to describe a type of human relation.

When I was learning to play Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen," I wondered what he meant by a "nation sack." I found out it was a term used in hoodoo. "Nation" is related to "natal" and deals with birth. In fact, the Latin term for "birth" is "natio." The term is linked to a woman's genitalia because the nation sack is a female charm bag or mojo hand worn around the waist in front so that it is near the wearers genitals which are the supposed source of its power. So when we call the country we live in a nation, we are likening it to a womb in which we live and grow and are protected from outside sources. Our nation is our protective mother.

One word that most of us know the meaning of is "consider." It translates as "with stars." When you're told to consider something, you're actually being told to consult with the stars on this particular subject or issue or proposal. It indicates that at one time, things we are told to consider were things that the ancients actually did consult about with the stars or with other celestial bodies against the fixed positions of the stars.

Another example of Barfield's is "attic." It derives from the capital of the Ionians--Attica. About the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the Ionian culture was the flower of Hellenic artistry. Attic came to mean "a peculiarly finished work of art or an exquisite literary style." In the architecture of that era, it was considered asthetically pleasing to place smaller order over larger order and hence the little space at the top of the house is called an attic.

Language is like a fossil record of past concepts and customs except the fossils aren't dead, they are still living because the language which has encompassed those ideas and thoughts is still living. When the you break the words open, all this hidden history and evolutionary record of consciousness spills forth.