OUR MOTHER TONGUE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR MOTHER TONGUE

RANDOM NOTES

BY PROFESSOR ARNOLD WALL

This iB Hip. first of .i scries of articles to be continued at fortnightly intervals. Their writer, Professor Arnold Wall, is Emeritus Professor of English in the University of New Zealand, having occupied for many years the chair of English Language and Literature at Canterbury College, lie graduated at Cambridge (fi.A.) and London (M.A.) and came to this New Zealand appointment about thirty years ago. lie has recently relinquished it, but maintains an intimate and vigorous touch with tho subjects of the chair. As a poet he has achieved distinction, and his articles on literature, published from time' to time, have had n wide welcome. Acquiring knowledge of New Zealand flora, particularly of alpine and sub-alpine plants, lias long been a beloved hobby. In these " random notes " he reveals his interest in a very popular subject—the etymology of surnames, doubtful pronunciations and kindred matters. He will be glad to answer queries on such subjects if addressed through the editor of the Herald.

" Behaviouristically." Our language is full of mongrels, halfbreeds or hybrids: this is an exceptionally fine example, being, in fact, a perfect verbal sandwich. The bread is English, all the rest is alien. The top slice of bread, " behav, " is pure AngloSaxon; below it is Latin butter, "iour," with a French flavour; then two slices of Greek meat, "ist" and "ic"; then, for the bottom slice, more Latin butter, "al"; and last of all the English bread "ly." The good philologist is supposed to disapprove of the formation of hybrids, but it. is wiser to accept the inevitable and rather rejoice that these haughty invaaers, Greek and Latin, are so willing to intermarry with the humble' and homely natives. By the way, the word, if word it be, is to be found in the writings of a certain school of philosophy, of American origin. Marmalade and Antimony This is not a recipe. One motto of the old etymologists was "when in doubt tell a story." Hundreds of anecdotes of this kind have found credence in the past and they die very hard. " Marmalade," said the ingenious inventor, is compounded of the French words " Marie and malade," " Mary ill." It was so called because Mary, Queen of Scots, used it as a remedy for sea-sickness on a voyage between Scotland and France. So there you are.

" Antimony," said another expert, is formed from tlio Greek prefix "anti," "against," and the French "moine," a monk (the word in French is "antimoine"). The story is that the famous 15th century German monk Basil Valentino (a very shadowy personage), who experimented in alchemy, noticed on one occasion that this stuff seemed to fatten the pigs to whom it had been thrown; he tried it on liis brother monks with the result that they all died, so he named it "antimoine," "bad for a monk." I need only add that both words are Greek and that "marmalade" represents, in good disguise, the Greek words for "honey" and "melon." Yet one feels that it is cruel to spoil a good story. " Try our famous butter, nobody can touch it," shouts the enterprising advertiser. Let us see how ho comes to blunder into such a pitfall. When we say that A "cannot touch" B as a speaker or tennis player or what-not, we unconsciously use a metaphor from foot-racing. A cannot pass B and cannot even come within touching distance of him. The racing Maori warrior, in Mailing's "Old New Zealand," could not catch his competitor but did just manage to touch his shoulder; "he will boast everywhere that he has touched the shoulder of the famous 'Sounding Sea.' " Unluckily for the advertiser, the word "touch" is also figuratively used in quite another sense. When we dislike the taste of something intensely wo say we "cannot touch it," implying that its nastiness is strong enough to affect our sense of touch-r-that we could taste it with our fingers. So while the merchant has in mind the first of these figures the reader only perceives the second. Hence these tears (of laughter). The moral "leaps to the eye." The use of the word "touch" in football, I may say incidentally, is not figurative and can only be explained by reference to the terminology of the original Rugby School game of which our modern sport is the descendant.

•' Satire " This is not one of those words which disturb the peace of households and even become the subject of heavy wagers; e.g., the two gentlemen who wavlaid Dr. Johnson in the street and called upon him to settle their twentyguinea wager upon the pronunciation of the word "irrefutable" (was it?). No, we all know how to pronounce "satire," and the modern pronouncing dictionary does not even offer us an alternative. But only a century or so ago things were very different, and the word was pronounced in four different ways according to the invaluable Walker, the best authority in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.. In the absence of any generally understood system of phonetic spelling it is not easy to make clear what those four pronunciations were, but wo can try. They might be thus spelt: "Sater" (rhyming with "waiter"); "satter' (with flatter); "say-tire"; and "sattier" (like "nattier"). Walker cites ten different authorities among his predecessors and considers the question at great length. He finds that the pronunciation "safer" is the most general, while "satter" is most favoured by the learned, and he decides in favour of "safer." The odd thing is that none of Walker's four has survived. The struggle for existence has been determined by a compromise and our modern pronunciation is a combination of his second and third competitors —a combination not apparently in the running at all. I should guess that the modern form established itself gradually during the period between about 1820 and 1850. Belcher Time has not. often been so unkind as in the case of this name. In the Middle Ages, when most surnames were established, many people had to put up with uncomplimentary names which, we must suppose, they deserved. In later days some men are so sensitive that they take legal steps to change their names, while others brave it out and continue to call themselves Mouldy or Hogg or Silly. Often the name is only comical, not opprobrious, yet many people dislike that and refuse to remain Pickles or Onions or Gotobcd. Pickles, in fact, is rather like BeMier in that it originally means something quite different from what it seems to mean now. Belcher is suggestive of, let us sav, homel.v manners, but it is n Northern French form of the very respectful name Belshire, which means "grandsire," and also exists among us as Bewshire and Bowser. Pickles is an innocent place name and probably meant "hill-meadows.'*