Language & Grammar discussion

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What a brilliant article.....reassuring to know that nothing is really new.....just quicker!

"Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle." When the language shakespeares, it's a lovely thing.

Heehee

Yes, it's always a quandary when it comes to deciding what is the effect of English reinventing itself, and what is just plain sloppy usage.

Anna wrote: "I'm currently reading Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English and one of his assertions is that English has always verbed nouns. In fact, the process of verbing i..."

Just read a very long review of this by Manny. Very interesting. He makes some interesting comparisons between Swedish and English. Since I'm a native speaker married to a Norwegian who's interested in linguistics, I put this book down on my list as a possible gift for him.

You may be interested to know that the Yoruba language, found in West Africa, tends to do the same thing, but the other way around. That is, it turns verbs into nouns.
So aja = dog = a + ja = that which bites; ori = head = o + ri = that which sees; and ata = pepper = a + ta = that which stings. The fact that you can derive nouns from verbs in this manner (and indeed guess the derivation of nouns in other ways too) provides the basis for various kinds of poetry, not least medicinal incantation. The power of plants to cure illness (and do other things too) is often supposed to be hidden in the plant's name, and this power is revealed in medicial incantations. Of interest too is the fact that a name may have different meanings in different poems.

Anthony D wrote: "You may be interested to know that the Yoruba language, found in West Africa, tends to do the same thing, but the other way around. That is, it turns verbs into nouns..."

English does that as well, but it is less controversial, so I can't think of any examples off hand (and am catching up on too much post-holiday stuff to track some down).

Anthony D wrote: "You may be interested to know that the Yoruba language, found in West Africa, tends to do the same thing, but the other way around. That is, it turns verbs into nouns..."

In English, "jump" started off as a verb and was adapted to be used as a noun (16th century), as happened with the verbs "run" and "walk" (15th century).

Didn't "swim" start off like that, too? And "golf?"

"Swim"? Maybe, but "golf" is barely a noun even now: you might watch "the golf", but generally you talk about "a game of golf", don't you?

We watch golf on TV. "The golf" must be British usage. I've never heard it said here.

That particular colloquialism occurs with other sporting events, but, as indicated by "the", it usually refers to an event that all participants know of, either because it is a major event (a world cup final, perhaps) or it has already been mentioned. So, at the moment, lots of people are watching the rugby on TV, and next summer they'll be watching the Olympics.