Nuts and Bolts: Athabaskan.

We all owe a lot to the Athabaskan languages.

There are about forty five of them. Most of them are spoken in Alaska and northern North America, but some are spoken in areas as far south as Mexico.

They're about as different from each other as the Indo-European languages are: as different as English and Greek, for instance (though just as obviously historically connected). In fact, in some ways they're more different than English and Greek because some of the Athabaskan languages use tone (where the pitch of the voice makes a word mean different things) and some don't.

Several of the Athabaskan languages are terrifyingly close to extinction: Han and Holikachuk, for example, have recently each been down to only twelve speakers. Twelve! 

One great problem with - or perhaps great glory of - the Athabaskan languages is that their grammar is very difficult because they're distinguished by an inconvenient habit of breaking their own rules. Personally, I admire this in a language.

Why do we owe them so much?

Well, the Athabaskan languages were used by the linguist Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) as proof that culture isn't constructed by language (there were people arguing at the time that Europeans were best because they had the best language) because Athabaskan speakers belong to very different cultures.

It's been an important principle in supporting native languages throughout the world. It was important in showing the Europeans are best people to be ignorant and wrong, too.

So, yes: we all owe a lot to the speakers of Athabaskan.


Alaskan Athabaskans c 1851

Word To Consider Today: Athabaskan. This word is an anglicised version of the Cree name for Lake Athabasca in Canada, and means there are reeds one after another.

Thing To Do Today: be demure.

The Autumn is approaching here in England, and all the woollies and raincoats we're going to be wearing will make it quite easy for us to be demure.*

Well, it's not easy in a bikini, is it?

Anyway, I recommend the pleasures of quiet self-containment. Of reserve. Of curbing all that gushing energy, whether aggressive or hilarious, in favour of a sedate and courteous shy charm.

(I don't think I've ever heard the word demure used of a man, but think it might be worth a try. I suspect its attractiveness to the female sex might prove to be absolutely staggering.)



Thing To Do Today: be demure. This word might come from the French demorer to delay or linger, and is perhaps influenced by meur, which means ripe.

*Although, today, typically, the forecast is suddenly for 30 degrees of heat. Pah!

Spot the Frippet: muse.

Ah, yes, the muses: they were the Greek goddess-protectors of the Arts and Sciences, weren't they. 

I can only usually remember Thalia and Terpsichore, but the others are Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, and Urania.

(I can't imagine how I manage to forget Polyhymnia and Urania, but I always do. Perhaps I should have called my daughters after them. Polyhymnia and Urania Prue...

...hmm, perhaps not.)

Anyway, the trouble with spotting these lovely ladies is that if they exist (which must be extremely doubtful) they seem to be invisible at the moment except in works of art. I suppose it might be worth looking for them in a museum, which word comes from muse and means The Home of the Muses, but I'm afraid that even there your chances of an encounter are vanishingly slight.


This is Euterpe, the Muse of Music, from the Salle de Rameau, photo by GO69

Luckily, though, there are other sorts of muses.

One muse is a bagpipe (though nowadays we generally only remember this in its diminutive form, musette - and even then not very often), but another, much easier-to-spot muse is someone (usually female) who inspires a work of art.

This means that anyone can be a muse as long as you can get a poem or a sketch out of them. You don't have to know them or get close to them:

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!

was, presumably unknowingly, Wordsworth's muse, and so was Frances Cornford's fat white woman who nobody loves - and Cornford only saw her from a train.

So here goes, then. Look - see, over there? That lady in the leggings and T shirt?

Lady, straining at the seams
Behind your sad face
Sparkle dreams.

Have fun!

Spot the Frippet: muse. This word was in its Greek form Mousa.

Sunday Rest: humectant. Word Not To Use Today.

Photo of Crest Multicare Whitening Toothpaste by Scott Ehardt. Doesn't it look horrible?


Need to persuade yourself not to consume that pot of instant noodles, or that can of fizz?

Try reading the ingredients on the packaging.

Not entirely coincidentally, that's the most likely place you'll come across the word humectant. Other places you might come across it are in face creams and tobacco products, but you probably won't be much tempted to eat those..

The purpose of a humectant is to keep things just moist enough. Soft raisins will have been treated with a humectant, as will soft ice creams, chocolates with gooey centres, some sorts of cheeses, and the sort of cookies that bend before they break.

Toothpaste has them, too.

Now, I'm not saying humectant isn't a useful word. Humectants are, too, sometimes perfectly harmless things, like honey (though the possibly yummy and nutritious but definitely unappealing-sounding Sodium hexametaphosphate is one too). 

No. All I'm saying is that, especially for something that's found in food, it would be much pleasanter if it didn't sound quite so much like someone throwing up.

Word Not To Use Today: humectant. This word comes from the Lattin ūmectāre, wet, from ūmor, moisture. 

Saturday Rave: Never weather-beaten sail by Thomas Campion.

The Autumn is approaching in England, and perhaps that's what's turned my mind nostalgically to a poet with a flower name. 

Thomas Campion (1567 - 1619) trained as a lawyer, but was much more interested in poetry, music, and the stage. He never seems to have practised law, and in fact when his inherited money ran out he was so disinclined to be a lawyer that he went to France and trained as a doctor.

He did do some medical work, but his passion remained the Arts, and in particular the theory and practice of marrying words and music in song.

He was rather dismissive of 'ear-pleasing rhymes without art' and believed 'we ought to maintain as well in notes, as in action, a manly carriage, gracing no word but that which is eminent and emphatical.' - a sentiment which might almost have come from last week's poet, William Wordsworth.

Campion returned more than once to the problems of rhyme, which he saw very often as warping the work of inferior poets, saying 'the facility and popularity of rhyme creates as many poets as a hot summer flies'. It was a line which proved an excellent way of offending almost everybody.

Ah well. Here's his song O Come Quickly! first the words, and then a performance.

See how well you think he succeeded in marrying words and music while avoiding unnatural emphasis and reminding you of clouds of flies.

Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore,
Never tired pilgrim's limbs affected slumber more,
Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast:
O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest!

Ever blooming are the joys of heaven's high Parasdise,
Cold age deafs not there our eyes nor vapour dims our eyes:
Glory there the sun outshines; whose beams the Blessed only see:
O come quickly, glorious Lord, and raise my sprite to Thee!




Word To Use Today: campion. This word was probably originally a form of the word champion, because the plant campion, Lychnis coronaria:



 were used to crown athletic champions.

Word To Use Today: shenanigan.

Photo of foxes by Keven Law

Shenanigans are the means used to make (possibly illegal) mischief by way of a rather complicated plot.

If a teacher found his pupils stacking up chairs so they could reach the ceiling of their classroom he might ask what are all these shenanigans? 

If it was discovered that various people involved in a scheme had been meeting without telling one of the principals then they might be suspected of shenanigans, too.

Shenanigans is a marvellously vigorous word, and one whose origin has been argued over ever since it appeared in the 1850s.

It could be Spanish, German, Dutch or from a Native American language...

...but personally I don't think it's any of those.

Word To Use Today: shenanigan. This word comes from...well, no one's quite sure where it comes from. It first appeared during the California Gold Rush, and one problem is that as people rushed to the, er, Rush from all over the world, working out where the word shenanigan originated is jolly difficult. 

However, as shenanigan is commonly used in Britain as well as the USA, by far the most likely thing is that the origin of shenanigan is Irish because there were plenty of hard-working and quick-talking Irishmen working in both California and Britain. Irish (Erse) also has the lovely word sionnachaíonn, from sionnach, fox, which means to fox someone, or to play tricks. So it's very likely, I think, that the first shenanigans were Irish ones.

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Clapping: a rant.

The Women's Conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) in Solihull, England, has requested that instead of clapping, the audience responds with jazz hands, instead.

Jazz hands? Apparently that's putting up your palm outwards and with splayed fingers. The rapid shaking of hands from side to side is optional.

Clapping was, according to a Tweet from the NUS Women's Campaign 'triggering anxiety'.

Nona Buckley-Irvine, the general secretary of the London School of Economics (LSE) Students' Union (SU), said: 'Jazz hands are used throughout NUS in place of clapping to show appreciation of someone's point without interrupting or causing disturbance, as it can create anxiety...it does add to creating a more inclusive atmosphere.'

Gee Linford-Grayson, the LSE SU's women's officer said 'who doesn't like jazz hands?'

Well, I don't. 

In fact the mere thought of doing jazz hands is causing me severe anxiety. For one thing, they remind me of The Black and White Minstrels, and quite honestly I'd suspect myself of being racist.

In any case, you poor sensitive students, a conference is about conferring. 

And if you can't even cope with people agreeing with you in their own way then perhaps it isn't a conference you're running at all, but a series of lectures.

Thing To Do Today: clap. This word comes from the Old English clæppan. The word is an imitation of the noise.