An Attempt to Correct False Impressions

I realize, after re-reading the post from the other night, that I might very easily have left a false impression. I did not mean to state or imply that I need to relearn all the stuff in my lecture notes. I'm pretty sure that you could hand me a piece of chalk and stand back. I could get along pretty well without much help and with only the occasional glance at my notes. It's not so much the stuff of long ago that I forget. It's mostly the stuff that has happened in the past few weeks or even in the last year or so. Reading my own journal would be of some help, but only of limited usefulness, because I remember most of that stuff, too. IT is in the far past. But stuff that I wrote in my journal a couple of weeks ago or which I re-read from an email that's a couple of weeks old might really NEED to be re-read.

I've felt this creepy disease creeping up on me for many years. I've told all three wives that I was afraid I'd get Alzheimer's and that I often felt I already had it. I meant it flatly and with neither exaggeration nor minimizing. I meant exactly what I said and I think I was right.

I remember looking at things from 1979, the first year of my journal, in the mid to late eighties and being stunned that they ever occurred. Then again, I can still read many things in my journals which feel as though I'd just written them minutes ago. The brain's a funny thing, and mine's funnier than most.

So, what kinds of bridges and shelves was I talking about building in my last post? I believe that I was alluding to creating a new set of tools for locating what I have forgotten and a new set of storage bins or shelves for keeping things in such a way that I can locate them more accurately and much more quickly. I've probably called a few of you to ask for a word. I'll hassle you with about 200 synonyms or homonyms; sometimes we'll get it figured out. Sometimes we won't. But it always eventually comes to me, because I always put it on a back burner and when I pass across it in reading or conversation, I'll instantly recognize it as the one perfect word I needed some days (or even weeks!) back and I'll immediately inform some poor unfortunate that this was the word I was looking for when we were talking about such-and -such. A terrible fate for the person I've been nagging for help in finding some old word I'd known since I was 9, but a wonderful blessing for me to have grown up with the one language which has so many different words and phrases to mean essentially the same thing, each with a slightly different shade of meaning or with a special extra meaning attached to it.

Now when I use the term "the one perfect word," I only mean that, because English is such a strong language with dozens and sometimes dozens and dozens of synonyms, we have the luxury of choosing the one synonym which most accurately says what we want to say. What makes English so strong? It has been formed over many centuries by different conquerors, all of whom spoke different languages. The mixing of these languages has given us several versions of the same word, allowing us to pick the one which pleases us the most. OK, lets make with the examples.

The Celts, a group of groups, really, settled in many places, from Northern Italy and France ("the Gauls", ) to Spain to Austria, to the coast of France, to Ireland, to Briton (Brittania as the Romans mispronounced it) to Scotland to Wales to the Isle of Mann. When he was still fairly young, Gaius Julius Caesar was the first to really hassle the Pretannii in what he called Brittania. The people who came running down the hill naked as jaybirds, painted blue, and yelling like nuts to meet him were Celts. He killed a bunch of them, but eventually had to go home and cross the Rubicon and spend a few years breaking all the traditions of Republican Rome before stopping a lot of knives on 15 March 44 BC. He obviously had a very full plate. So Rome didn't fully conquer the Britons until the time of Clau-Clau-Claudius after the "Christian Era" had begun, so far as the world knew. So, for about 3 centuries, the Britons gradually began to speak Latin more than their original Celtic language.

Then the Hunnic peoples of the mid-east started riding through Europe without so much as a "by your leave." This pushed lots of Germanic tribes up against the borders of Roman Empire lands. These borders had names like the Rhine and the Danube. For a while, Rome's well-organized legions held them back, but there were so many of them that they began having to make compromises with them and even give up some places which Rome had controlled with forts and legions for several centuries. Eventually, Germanic and Spanish generals, who had done favors for Rome in exchange for citizenship, became actual emperors over Rome! Imagine! A person not born into citizenship has become the leader of Rome. Thank goodness we don't have to worry about anything like that just now, eh?

Well, when the many different Germanic tribes get through running from what's chasing them, they have invaded and taken over all of the Western half of Rome and its holdings. Four tribes in particular, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Frisians, have conquered Latin-speaking Britannia, and the place gradually begins to mix a heavy content of German with a lot of Latin and a few words (maybe 11 or 12) of the original Celtic. This is why the Brits today and many of us are still called "Anglo-Saxons." For a couple of centuries, this stew of languages simmers until, about the end of the seventh century, the North Men (Vikings) begin to make an annual summer raiding season into the coasts of France, the Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium, etc.) and England along with the Irish and the Scotts. They are raiding for anything they can steal that isn't nailed down. Sons (for slaves,) daughters (to produce new little Vikings,) gold, silver, food, and the pure fun of burning down churches and cutting up people. After a couple of centuries of these raids (see Hagar the Horrible) a few of the Vikings begin to settle down rather than just making the round trip from Denmark (the Dane's March) or Sweden or Norway every year. Their language, not too dissimilar from the old Germanic, mixes in still more words, phrases, usages, expressions, and accents.

Now the North Men or Vikings who had settled along one coast of France and stayed and begun to rule it, became known as the Normans. After a couple of centuries, they were well-known and quite powerful. In 1066 (which predates me by a couple of years) William, Duke of Normandy, announces his intention to storm England (Angle-land) and take away from Harold the Saxon all the land which both of them claim. But Harold has a little problem in that his brother has also made a claim up north somewhere, so Harold has to double-time march up there, kill off his brother and his troops, then run back just in time to great William as he comes up onto the beach. Naturally, Harold and his boys are very tired after all that marching and fighting, but they do a pretty good job of holding the Normans down from the high ground until lunch time. But I'm thinking that someone slipped some dumb pills into the Saxons' lunch, because they started talking over their tuna sandwiches and said, "Hey, look how great we're doing at holding all these French-speaking Vikings down off the high ground! We're doing great up here on the high ground. I'll bet we could sweep them back into the surf if we charged down onto the beach where they are after lunch." Or some dumb cluckery to that extent.

Well, of course, you know what happened. The Bayeux Tapestry shows several scenes from the battle including the part at the end of the day which shows Harold lying there, his horse lying nearby, his sword close to hand, and his head about a yard off. Let us not add insult to injury (fairly serious injury, unless I miss my guess) by repeating as fact the old legend that Harold actually died while looking UP at a shower of Norman arrows, carefully catching them one of them in his eye socket as a keepsake. Most historians agree today that this is only an example of humans picking on the losers down through the centuries. It probably never happened. But it was still being taught that way the first time I took it.

OK, now. So where are we? Ah, yes! Time to do the addition, stir counterclockwise, and wait about 5 centuries. The Normans (French-speaking Vikings) will add about 10,000 French words to Angle-ish (English) and the winner's language will become the dominant language and the language of government, courts, high class parties, etc. Only some loser of a Saxon or Angle or Frisian or Jute would ask for a slab of cow in a restaurant. Heavens, no! You want to use the language of the winners, those who still had their heads at the end of that important October day in 1066. So you asked for beef. You could ask for Swine or as your Germanic ancestors probably said it, "Schwein." But you'd be looked down on a lot less if you said "Pork" like the winners. The Germanics didn't just give up after losing one battle. They kept trying for a century or so to regain control of their island, or at least to minimize the dominance of the Normans. This behavior gives rise to the legends of such Saxon heroes as Robin of Lockesly (a real guy) and Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe (purely made up, as best I can tell, but he looked good with that Jewish girl in the movie version, didn't he?)

Anyway, by the time a kid named Will Shakespeare was born, he was dealing with a language which the Celts, the Romans, the Germanic tribes and the French could not have begun to understand. AND YET ALL OF THEM HAD CONTRIBUTED TO ITS CREATION! So that's why English is so strong in that there are so many ways of saying something in it. Each might have a slightly different meaning. Some might even be sarcastic. But they all say essentially the same thing. I pity those whose language is crammed into a little, tiny dictionary. When they get Alzheimer's how do they signal to someone else what family of words they are momentarily lost in and in which they hope to find just one which means so-and-so but with a little more country flavor?

Now, just to fool some folks into reading this (or at least starting it,) I'm going to put a few pictures up on top. Pretty cold-blooded, eh?

.................................................