TRIVIA.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20630, 20 August 1932, Page 13

TRIVIA.

A fortnight ago, sub-editing a few State papers to show how regimental bandmasters achieved commissioned rank, sub regno Yictoriae, I said that Mr Miller of the Royal Marine Light Infantry was of course not War Office but Admiralty pigeon. The phrase slightly pleased me, -as phrases do when they have perched in the mind many a year, then suddenly and for the first time take wing. But a correspondent levelled his gun and had a pop at it. I have noticed of late that people have taken to spelling "pidgin" in tha same way as the bird, -with which, as I understand, tho word has no connexion. I se« that it wag bo spelt in last Saturday's "Trivia,' and I find that the Oxford Dictionary gives this as an alternative spelling, while at the same time it gives the usually accepted meaning and explanation. I am no auuiority in the matter, but 1 always feal put out when I gee the word spelt "pigeon" instead of "pidgin," and it seems to me likely to cause confusion and misunderstanding. Perhaps you might see your way to give us an authoritative note about it, and oblige— Yours vi-rv trulv, A.D.H. * Authoritative, no. For one thing, I have no copy of Webster's Dictionary, and for another I am no ipse-dixitarian, and for a third I really had connected the idiom—ls it: an idiom? 1 have read lately that "Take a chair" is an idiom, which has unsettled me. Perhaps I mean isobar—l really had connected it with shooting. ("That is your bird flapping towards us there, Sir Bichard, I think?"—"No, no, my Lord, your pigeon, definitely your pigeon!") But all wrong; because* Mr Fowler in his "Modern English Usage" says this: pidgin, pigeon. "Business English" wa» the name given by the Chinese to the AngloChinese lingua franca; but they pronounced business pidgin, and we have confused the meaningless pidgin with the significant pigeon; rf. AMUCK. Pigeon, however, is two centuries younger in print than amuck, so that there is not the same reason to protest agaitist pidgin as against amok. Nothing to do with shooting at all. But Mr Fowler (as so often) comforts the lapsarian. The Tightness of pidgin is not so remote that he will laugh at those who sternly stickle for it. Neither will he chide those who ignorantly and carelessly help to work the miracle which turns a Chinese elocutionary stumble into a familiar English bird in six letters, and damn the ratepayers. If only I had not thought it was a bird all the time. . . . Then I could have been safe and sound, proof against shock or surprise, with my money on the winner, which in these events is always Miracle, popular favourite, and Etymology and Strictly Pidgin nowhere. •Wr After all, these blind snatches at a meaning are often very happy. To hear the bell in "belfry" is a gain, though none hung in the word originally; and "cutlass" and "kirtle-nxe" rnake good, striking sense of the Irench "coutelas." It may offend zoologists but it helps everybody else to turn an i "ecrevisse" into a "crayfish" or a "crawfish," and if the little boys go one better and catch crawleys, I go. with them. At least, I went before them — but "Ou sont les nippers d'antan?" Mushroom, loosestrife, rosemary, and pennyroyal all rejoice in their transformation. An artichoke is less insipid when its baggage label, "girasole," ib misread "Jerusalem"; and the gillyflowor comes moT<? homely from the soil than any other possible version of "girofl6e." "To run tho gauntlet" has j lost nothin.'g in losing all connexion with [ the Swedish "gatlopp" [gata (a lane) and lopp ifa course)] and acquiring a vague one with the customs of chivalry. And if called upon to die at tho stake for saying "Christmas-anthems" with the common people or to live fat and honoured for jabbering of " 'mums" with the horticulturists, then I should frizzle, it not cheerfully, at least with fortitude. And the trumpets would sound for me on the other side.

Mr .Fowler said "cf. aMUCK." Very well: Amuck, the familiar spelling, due to popular etymology, but going back to the seventeenth century and -well estaWished, should be maintained against the DIDACTICISM amok. And his printing a word in capitals like that serves as reference to something pretty gorgeous written under that he&ding: DIDACTICISM. "So mortal but is narrow enough to. delight in educating othora into counterparts of himself'; tho statement is from Willielm Melster. Men, especially, are as much possessed by the didactic impulse as women by the maternal instinct. Some of them work it off ax officio upon their children or parishioners or legislative colleagues, if they are blest with any of these; others are reduced to seizing casual opportunities, and practise upon their associates in speech or upon the world in print. Tle Anglo-Indian who has discovered that the suttee he read of as a boy is called satl by those who know it best is not content to keep so important a piece of knowledge to himself; he roust have the rest of us call it B&ti, like the Hindoos (ah, no—Hindus) ana himself; at any rate, he will give us the chance ol mendin? our ignorant ways by printing nothing but satl and forcing us to guess what word known to us it m»V stand for. The orientalist whom histories have made familiar with the Khalif is determined to cure us of the delusion, implanted in our childish minds by hours with somo bowdlerised "Arabian Nights," that there was ever such a being as our old friend tho Caliph. Literary critics 3addened by our hazy notions of French do their best to l ea d us by example from nom de plume and morale to nom de guerre and moral. Dictionary devotees whose devotion extends to the etymologies think it bad for the rest of us to be connecting amuck with muck, and come to our rescue with amok. These and many more, in each of their teachings, teach us one truth that we could do as well without, and two falsehoods that are of some importance. The ono truth is, for instance, that KhaUf has a greater resemblance to Arabic than Caliph; is that of use to anyone who does not kno"v it already . The two falsehoods are, tho first that English is not entitled to give what form it chooses to foreign words that it has occasion to use; and tho second, that it is better to have two cr more forms co-existent than to talk of one thing by ono name that all can understand. If the firrt if not false, why do we say Germany and Athens and Lyons and Constantinople instead of Deutschland and the rest? or allow the French to insult ub With Londres and Angleterre? That the second is false not even our teachers would deny: they would explain instead that their aim is to drive out the old wrong form with the new right one. That they are most unlikely to accomplish, while they are quite sure to produce confusion temporary or permanent; see MAHOMET for a typical case. Seriously, our learned persons and possessor of special information should not, when they are writing for the general public, presume to improve the accepted vocabulary : when they are addressing audiences of their likes, they may naturally use, to their hearts' content, the fofms that ate most familiar to writer and readers alike; but otherwise tliev should be at Ibe pains to translate technical terms into English. A.nd, what is of far creator importance, when they do forget this duty, we others who are unlearned, an! naturally speak not in technical terms tint in English. ebould refuse to be either cowed by tho fear of seeming ignorant, or tempted by the hope of passing for specialists, into following their bad example without their real though insufficient escuse,. # We, see- Mahoinct: MAHOMET, MOHAMMEDAN. etc. Before making anv statement on these words, I asked a middle-aged lady whom-she understood bv tho Prophet of Allah; sho hesitated, suspecting .some snare, but being adjured to rerlv paid nuite plainly that he was Mahomet, and further called his followers Mahometans—thus fulfilling expectations. The popular forms are Mahomet fan); the prevailing printed forms are Mohanuuedl (an). ' The wor«t of letting the learned gentry bully us out of our traditional Mahometan and Mahomet (who ever heard of Mohammed and tha mountain?) is this; so sooner hats

wo tried to Ik- Rood and learn 'o say, or at least write, Mohammed, than they are fired with zeal to get ua a step or two further on the path of truth, which at present eecme likely to end in Muhammad with a dot under the b. The literary, as distinguished from tne learned, surely do good service when thev eide with tradition and the people against Beience and the dons. Muhammad should be left to the pedants, Mohammed to the historians and the like, while ordinary mortals should go on saying:, and writing in newspapers and novels and poems and such general reader's inattor, what their fathers said Wore them. The fact i» that we owe no thanks to those who discover, and cannot keep silence on the discovery, .that Mahomet is further than Mohammed, and Mohammed further than Mohammad, from what his own people called bim. The Bomans had a hero whom they spoke of as Aaneafi; we call him that/ too, but for the French he has become En6e; are the French any worse off than we on that account? It is a matter o! like indifference in itself whether the "Kuklish for the Prophet's name is Mahomet or Mohammed; in itself, yes; but where the words Aeneas' and Bnie have the Channel between them to keep the peace, Mahomet and Mohammed are forever at logger-heads; we want one name for the one man; and the one Bhould have been that around which tbe ancient associations cling. It is too late to recover unity; the learned, and their too docile disciples, have destroyed that, and given us nothing worth having in exchange.

Finally, we see Mr Fowler. Somebody in London once said, "Why doesn't anybody ever see himf Nobody seems to know him." Somebody else, whose initials are "G. 5.," 1 wrote to Mr Christopher Morley a year or two ago, describing a visit: tho flowery little Somerset village—unnamed; but I think Hinton St. George—the old ramblerbowered house, where Mr Fowler and his wifq lived in what he called "dual hermitry," a brilliant walled garden, a generous tea, Mrs Fowler's gaiety and goodness, her birds, and her husband —• "a sturdy, active, young-looking man of (I think) about seventy, with a moustache, greying hair, and twinkling glance." While the men were looking over his study, one of the ladies asked Mrs Fowler how he made dictionaries:

He gets up at five o'clock every morning, summer and winter. In wintfer he runs a mile and plunges into a pond, and then runs liome. Sometimes he has to break the ice on the pond. In the warm weather he doesn't do that, "because there's a nasty green scum on the pond." So instead he goes out into the garden in his bare feet and cuts the grass -with a scythe or works about the flowers. Then ho makes tea for himself and takes Mrs Fowler a cup, and goes to work until breakfast time. All the ■ forenoon he works in his study; at noon he eats a bread and cheese and fruit luncheon, and goes back to his_ work he stops for tea; and, finally, at dinner time, his day's work is done. After dinner he does all his reading. His chief contact with the outside world is through the "Westminster Gaaette." I should say was, as I believe that pleasant green paper is now no more. He said all his examples in the "Dictionary of Modem English Usage' were taken from that source. At nine o'clock he goeß to bed. He does this seven days a week. "If I think he is working too hard, I sometimes call him to help me do something about the house,''' Mrs Fowler said.

Mrs Fowler died two years ago. Last year Mr Fowler published " Rhymes of Darby to Joan: Being Flotsam from the good ship Felicity launched 1908, foundered 1930." This is one of them: A RONDEL VALENTINE. [The old "Westminster Gazette" offered prizes for valentines in rondel form: Joan, metri gratia, became Dolly.] At the instigation, Dolly. Of the "Westminster Gazette I bsssv an ancient folly; Did you know it lingered yet'. You I choose, not Sne or Bet. Madge, Euphemia, or Molly (At the instigation, Dolly. Of the "Westminster Gazette. ) What, dear? "Valentines are jolly Tommy rot?" I kno *C' m .? ?, e , ' 'Worso than mistletoe and nolly i But we do it, you forget, At the instigation, Dolly, Of tho "Westminster Gazette. ]4 February, 1911.

To switch back abruptly to "pidgin" or "pigeon." This debt to the East is not- wholly unpaid. Having been vigorously sworn at for many yeare by British sailors, the waterside workers of Yokohama now bear the inoffensive and indeed well-sounding name of Damurais. —J.HiE.S.