Happy New Year, Sort Of

The year of the rabbit has finally hopped along. Of course, as the consummate procrastinator, I have not chosen to mark this occasion till about the 19th of January. This is due in part to the fact that I'm still in slight disbelief that it is, in truth, 2011. It also has to do with the realization that I am just about coming up to my two year anniversary in Japan. So it was with a smirk of doubt and a bit befuddlement that I greeted 2011.

Japan, of course, is celebrating with strawberries. I wish I could tell you definitively why. I always connect strawberries with summer, but then again, we don't grow them in hothouses in the States. But Japan has been whipped into January strawberry fervor, and the ichigo has been popping up everywhere. In desserts and baked items, or as the flavoring for snacks of candies. Even all by their lonesome in the produce aisle in nice, compact 800 yen packages.

I have chosen not to celebrate the new year with overpriced fragaria, but by working six days a week.

The inactivity of this blog the past few months was due to work of a furious nature on graduate school applications. I did this all while working full time, and just when I was about to pull my hair out in frustration, the applications were due and I headed off for a much needed week long winter vacation in Hokkaido.

But applications and trips through the wintry wonderland that is Northern Japan are expensive. So I will be making up the difference by picking up some extremely lucrative overtime work.

This means I will only have one day off for a bit of time. But it also means that I am no longer writing essays and writing samples and will, finally, have time to write for myself. I also will not be frantic and stressed and waking in the middle of the night remembering one more thing I have to do And when the next few weeks are over, debts will be payed and I will even have a nice bit of extra cash in my pockets.

I have always been a generally positive person, and so it is with this attitude that I go into this new year. And though this week was long and exhausting, I still found time to find joy in a few simple things. Here is what I loved this week:

1. Cheap Mikan More commonly known as satsuma in the west, and unlike the strawberries, were super cheap this week. I saw three separate sales at three separate grocery stores for mikan, and I took full advantage each time. My fridge is now packed with the orange fruit, and just like the strawberries, I have no idea why the drastic change in price occurred. But unlike the strawberries, I have no desire to question why. Cheap fruit is so rare here, I worry any investigation will cause it to disappear like a beautiful fever dream.

2. Udo Kier's interview with The A.V. Club Who, you ask, is Udo Kier? Up until this week, I had no idea. Well, I did, but I only knew him as "that German guy in every movie." Take a moment to think of him. Picture his face? That's Udo Kier.

Well he gave an interview this week to the A.V. Club about his long and interesting career, and it is about as delightfully insane as I would expect it to be. I actually laughed out loud when reading through his answers. I nearly lost it completely when he compared auditioning to cleaning furniture in a department store, an analogy I still don't understand. It is just so amazingly bizarre it transcends the print. I would pay good money to have heard the audio. Just read it for yourself.

3. Angela Carter Specifically, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. I reread the collection of short stories this week, and ugh, my heart. I will cop immediately to loving fairy tales. I loved the sanitized versions as a tyke, and as a teenager, I discovered the originals in very large tomes hidden in random shelves at my local library. The ones with all the murder, incest, pecked out eyes and lopped off toes; every last dark psychological undertone and subconscious archetype left intact.

To call Carter's writing "adult fairy tales" diminishes what they truly are. It as if she stripped the stories to the core, extracted what makes them both scary and unfailingly relatable, and reworked them.

And on top of that, her prose is just achingly beautiful in places. It is the kind of writing that makes me both insanely jealous and weak in the knees. My favorite in the collection was probably The Company of Wolves, her retelling of Little Red Riding Hood (for if there was ever a tale ripe for Jungian analysis and feminist critique, it's the story of Red.) When Carter describes the Red Riding Hood character:

She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver. She has her knife and she is afraid of nothing.

And when she writes of the wolves themselves:

That long-drawn, wavering howl has, for all its fearful resonance, some inherent sadness in it, as if the beasts would love to be less beastly if only they knew how and never cease to mourn their own condition. There is a vast melancholy in the canticles of the wolves, melancholy infinite as the forest, endless as these long nights of winter and yet that ghastly sadness, that mourning for their own, irremediable appetites, can never move the heart for not one phrase in it hints at the possibility of redemption; grace could not come to the wolf from its own despair, only through some external mediator, so that, sometimes, the beast will look as if he half welcomes the knife that despatches him.

Like I said, my heart. The collection is far from perfect, but truly fantastic. Highly recommended, of course.

And that is what is making me happy in the new year. Simple joys in January to ring 2011 in right. Here's to hoping everyone out there has a fantastic 2011 as well.

English is Bizarre, Part III

Hello again. Been awhile since I sent one of these out. Last part, so why delay?

Where we left off last time: We learned that, despite what we saw in Robin Hood, Richard the Lionheart spoke French, spoke at length about meats, and discovered that the church is the reason you hated biology class (and not in the way you expected).

Part 3: Webster was a Workaholic

in which a bloodless linguistic revolution occurs, or an exercise in historical name dropping

This section is probably the most important for this is one that is not yet complete. This is English in its modern form, a language first used by Shakespeare and Marlowe and Donne and every great writer who came in the centuries to follow. The beginning of the tongue you and I speak; the emergence of the language I am composing this ever-increasingly long essay in.

Modern English was brought about by the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th century, which sounds more like a revolution than a linguistic change. But the effects were no less significant than any coup.

The death toll was devastating.

Long vowel sounds are the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and the Modern form. Until the 15th century, vowels in English were pronounced more like Continental European languages. But in 1450, the English began elongating the vowels of many of their words. Not the first nor the last time the Brits wished to distinguish themselves from the rest of the European continent, English speakers in the 15th century began changing their pronunciation. They continued to do so for the next three centuries.

Why, you ask? We have no freaking idea.

There were no invading hordes or power struggle between dynasties. The language just changed, and we don't really know why. Oh, there are numerous theories of course, and each is just as plausible as the next, but none are definitively true.

One reason put forth is the mass migration to Southern England of all its people after the Black Death devastated a large amount of the population. With people from all over the country forcibly living together in close quarters, everyone adjusted their voices to produce a more standard pronunciation.

Another possibility is connected to the nobility. In the early 15th century, the ruling class was finally speaking English. Perhaps unappreciative of the statement better late than never, though they were now speaking the same language of the peasantry, the hierarchy still needed to distinguish themselves as such. So they began shifting their words to create a prestige accent in English. They elongated their vowels to make them sound more French, or what they perceived as more English. Which is, in fact, two completely opposite scenarios, and yet for some reason no scholar can agree upon either.

A third possibility is the aforementioned political and social upheavals of the 15th century. With many people dying of the plague, people of lower birth, and therefore regional accents, were elevated to higher positions of society. As with most cases, language changed along with those in charge.

But whatever the reason, the shift did occur. And in the 15th and 16th century, English became a standardized language which a modern speaker can both read and understand, if not requiring the assistance of annotations.

Now if only someone could explain this whole hawk and handsaw thing.

But how, you ask, did it standardize? This I can answer.

For the very same reason all of language standardized during that time. It all had to do with a man living in Strasbourg by the name of Johannes Gutenberg.

Anyone who paid even the slightest attention in history class has heard the name Gutenberg. Even if we do not know exactly why, we vaguely remember he was really important to history. But it was not so much the man, but his invention that literally changed the world. For in 1440, Gutenberg invented the printing press.

You don't need a history degree to appreciate how big a deal the printing press is, but I will further hammer into your head why. Gutenberg's invention modernized learning, thought, and language in ways never before seen in the whole record of human history. He ensured that knowledge, and the sharing of ideas, was easier and more accessible than ever before. There is a very real reason that the time of enlightenment and the Age of Reason corresponded with the invention of the printing press.

Again, why? Because until the miracle of movable type, every book had to be made by hand. Most likely by monks, and most likely in Latin. This meant that books were not only extremely expensive, but also written in Latin. Very few could afford them, and even less could read them.

A printing press was revolutionary because it meant that anyone could publish anything, and in their native tongue.

Putting aside the intellectual ramifications for a moment, the printing press also had an understandably massive effect on language. With written works becoming affordable, and composed and printed in native vernacular, the widespread distribution of English texts created for the first time in history a cohesive English language.

With the printings of plays and books and treatises, the English people finally had an accessible, written record of their language. English practically exploded in the 16th cenury with new vocabulary and wordage, as people from all over the country were exposed to words they never before knew existed.

In fact, the first true English dictionary was put together in 1604 by a school teacher named Robert Cawdry.

Who no one has ever heard of, thanks to Samuel Johnson.

He was worried, quite kindly so, about people's confusion over all these new words. A justifiably understandable concern, as scholars say that during this period that Shakespeare invented anywhere from 700 to 1500 words.

It's a tricky concept, inventing words. For proof, look back to the beginning of this essay, and the kerfuffle over beamish. To this day, there's a scholarly debate over who "invented" words in his work. Some people want to attribute such words as eyeball and epileptic to him, while others want to say he just coined or reproduced them.

Whichever the case, the simple fact remains that he was definitely the first to put them down on paper. Modern English would not be the language it now is without Shakespeare, searing new words into the language with ink and parchment.

So the only question left is, what did they call it before?

So in terms of language, whether he was the true progenitor of these words are, to me, unimportant. He accomplished the much more difficult task of putting them into distribution.

Shakespeare was popular. His plays and sonnets were read by many. They were performed, printed, and passed around, and people heard the words. Whatever the true source, Shakespeare is the reason they went into common usage. And that is what's truly important.

Equally important during this time was the development of American English. As America as a nation was founded, and flourished, Modern English developed into two distinct forms, American and British.

American English, just like the language from which it deviates, borrowed many words from the Native people and their Spanish speaking neighbors. But the divergence between the American and British dialects goes beyond pronunciation and new vocabulary. The real difference is in the very spelling of our words, the largest departure from the original language.

We have Noah Webster to thank for that.

Webster, bascially, saw himself as the ultimate patriot. A young man when the American Revolution took place, he dedicated his life to releasing America from the "cultural thralldom" of Britain.

The last stranglehold of our oppressors.

Webster thought an intellectual foundation was essential to independent American thought. Though he began his greatest work as a Blue Back Speller to be used in schoolhouses, the book of words he produced became the first of many editions of Webster's dictionary.

In writing these volumes, Webster was attempting to rescue our language from the corruption of the British aristocracy. He saw America's imitation of the British system of studying foreign languages to learn English as ridiculous and pedantic. He once wrote that "...the whispers of common sense in favour of our native tongue, have been silenced amidst the clamour of pedantry in favour of the Greek and Latin."

So how did he fight our British subjugators? By eliminating all those superfluous u's that he himself used three times in that little excerpt of writing. With his dictionary, the American people would no longer be shackled by the u in neighbour, honour, and colour. Our center will not weigh under the oddly French looking centre. And by god, nothing says America like spelling defense, not defence.

Let Freedom Ring!

But all joking aside, Webster had a solid point. It made little sense to learn Latin to study English grammar. He spent 27 years working on his dictionary, "americanizing" words and creating a cohesive spelling system. Essentially, he standardized American speech, adding words that did not appear in British dictionaries like skunk and squash. He helped shape a uniquely American dialect.

And clearly ignoring his own advice, Webster also learned 26 languages just to fairly evalute the etymology of words, including Old English, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit. In 1828, the culmination of years of hard work come to fruition when he published the first edition of Webster's American Dictionary.

So in the hands of the British and the Americans, English was then attached to a people who went on to dominate most of the world. As the importance of the English speaking countries of North America developed, and the British empire expanded across the globe, by the dawn of the 20th century English had become the lingua franca of the modern world.

There of course have been little additions along the way. Each age brings new vocabulary, and things that were once nonce or nonsense words have been incorporated into our normal vernacular. Chortle is not just a portmanteau of chuckle and snort, but an actual word in our lexicon. Quark is no longer just a nonce words used by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake, but now a subatomic particle. And as new technology and the age of the internet has developed rapidly, words like tweet and friend have become verbs used in their own right.

Ones I staunchly refuse to use.

No one can claim that our tapestry is not growing. English is still evolving, flourishing with the times and its people. And though we move forward, adding new ribbons of cloth and color, we still can see the connection to our past. Our modern tongue, no matter how much it changes, will always be directly affected by that which came before it.

An unbroken whole composed of disparate parts, made all the more beautiful for it.

Clarke's Third Law

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic ~ Arthur C. Clarke

When I was a little girl, I used to explore my grandparent's basement.

It was a treasure trove to a child with an overactive imagination, and everything in it was ripe for discovery. My grandfather's workbench was a high tech mystery. Mechanical odds and ends warring with pieces of old radios and televisions, surrounded by tools that I knew none of their purposes. There were black and white family photos filling an entire antique suitcase. The frames whispered of undiscovered family stories, the players mere shadows in sepia tones. Odd geometric paintings my mother painted in high school that I used to puzzle over, trying to decipher the meaning. And then there was, to me, the pinnacle of the collection: my grandfather's National Geographics.

He had been collecting them since the late 60's. Lined up in a bookcase, a chronological archive of the last 30 years of scientific achievement and discovery. I used to browse them, and I remember the day I found the December 1969 issue.

Man Walks on Another World proclaimed the title. I sat there on the basement floor, unaware of the cold tile and the dim light, and poured over the old magazine. Interspersed between retro ads, I read the details of the first lunar landing, written when they were still fresh, exciting, and new. I marveled at the photos of the astronauts, the lander, the things they collected. I carefully read the transcript of the entire mission, the words that first traveled back from the surface of the moon.

And in the back of the issue, still untouched almost 30 years later, was an old 45. I found a record player, and listened to the bumps and beeps that emitted from the small record. Eyes closed and mouth open, huge retro earphones encasing my small head, I listened in awed silence to the recordings picked up from the first lunar landing. I was sitting down in a cramped basement, but surrounded by the the infinite sounds of space.

From very early on, I have been fascinated with the idea of space and space travel. Influenced, no doubt, by a father with a penchant for science fiction, I dreamed of space exploration. I was enamored by the idea of it; living and working in space, seeking out dangerous and unknown locations, exploring the very limits of what we already know. An adolescent fascination that grew into a mature love of the same subject matter.

I believe its my wanderlust that had fuelled my continued interest in space and planets. Or perhaps it was my childish fascination with the infinite of space that grew into a love for travel. But whatever the case, interest in space is, I believe, a natural consequence of a desire to travel.

Compared to even a mere 300 years ago, our world is small and constantly shrinking. The result of civilization and advanced technology. Categorization of the world means the limiting of uncharted territories and unexplored plains.

But in space travel, we can rediscover that excitement. When we do finally make our way into space (and I have no illusions of it being anytime soon) it will be as explorers. Like men who boarded billowing ships to sail to distant parts unknown 400 years ago. But we will replace the endless sea with the vaccuum of space.

Perhaps this is the child in me speaking again. An idealistic viewpoint at best. We are hardly anywhere near the technology for light speed travel, a necesity for realistic space travel, and our nearest star systems are light years away. Internal stability would also be necessary for organized space exploration, and there are too many problems on our own planet to worry about looking to others.

But perhaps that's the very reason why we should. With most news devoted to the usual round of economic troubles, political dissonance, and impending disasters, there was a story that flew under the radar a few weeks ago that brought out that little girl again. The one who used to watch Star Trek on her father's knee, and hide away in her grandparent's basement listening to recordings of space.

A mere twenty light years away, astrophysicists have discovered the first habitable planet outside our solar system.

Orbiting a nearby red dwarf star called Gliese 581, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institute of Washington have discovered the planet Gliese 581g, nicknamed Zarmina. A rocky planet about 4 to 5 times the size of earth, it orbits within the "habitable zone" around the star. In other words, a place where there is liquid water, temperatures friendly to life, and enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere.

Not that life there is identical to Earth. Gliese 581g is tidally locked with its star. This means that, not unlike our moon, during its 37 day orbit one side of the planet would always face the sun, while the other side would be locked in darkness. Neither is ideal, but there would be a terminator zone; an area of eternal twilight where night and day meet.

There, bathed in the reddish gold of dusk, would be the ideal conditions for life to thrive. Atmosphere enough to keep water liquid, gravity not too heavy, and a temperature we would neither freeze nor boil in.

But the ifs, whats, and hows pales in comparison to the significance of such a discovery. Definitive proof that planets that can support life, at least as we define it, exist elsewhere in the galaxy. And since there is one practically in our intergalactic backyard, it must mean that such a thing is fairly common.

And that is the seed of excitement, the core of the inspiration such an idea can produce. Since then, I have seen an outpouring from people about this new planet. An article in which a physicist proposed developing a type of engine that could get us there in about 6 years. People imagining colonies and human life aboard this planet. Every day people postulating and dreaming once again of space, and our future as an infinitesimal part of the awe-inspiring whole.

I am part of a time, and a generation, that looks to the next hour instead of the future. We live in the day to day. We save, selfishly worrying only about our own immediate future and comfort, and not what can lay beyond. Concerned only about the self, we are blinded to what we can achieve as a whole.

And something about that is a colossal shame. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a child in 1969, and feel like all of space and time was out there before me. To steal from an eminent writer, that is such stuff as dreams are made on.

Steve Vogt, the UC Santa Cruz astrophysicist who discovered the planet, gave an interview to the website io9. In it, he talked of the amazing odds against a planet like Gliese 581g even existing. I believe it also sums up why it is so awe-inpsiring:

It's hard to make this obvious in a soundbite but the universe is a vast place and most of it is totally unavailable for life as we know it. There are two things in the universe you can't get around: Temperature and gravity. So if you are in interstellar space you're at 2.7 degrees kelvin. Your atoms are hardly vibrating and you're not going to be alive. Life as we know it can't survive. So you have to be near a star. That's good, but stars have gravity and you can fall into them. Your only hope is to be near a star but not falling into it – you need an orbit. And that's magical.

And that is magical. Not only in its very existence, but also in what it can inspire in a generation that no longer thinks of space.

Hopefully it's enough for us to once again look to the stars, and dream of a future out there amongst them.

Steve Vogt's Interview with io9

English is Bizarre, Part II

Welcome back. You'll be hearing enough from me in a second, so let's get started, shall we?

Where we left off last time: Britain was being invaded (again), the Celts were being persecuted (again), the Vikings were causing trouble (again), and a whole lot of linguistic gymnastics occurred.

Part 2: Normandy Comes to Call

in which William earns his Moniker, or why we still hate the French

Oh, the Normans. Their influence on what England is today is unquestionable, and frankly, astounding. Music, architecture, law, property rights, military practices: name a discipline, and you'll find the Norman hand in it. They even brought us the Plantagenets, probably my favorite screwed up royal dynasty. (A category with stiff competition, for sure. But thanks to Eleanor, John, two Richards, and all three Edwards, their history reads like a particularly frothy soap opera.)

Or a 1968 Academy Award winning Film

But with all these advancements beginning in the 11th century, one of their greatest contributions was the radical change in the English language.

William the Conqueror, as his name implies, conquered England in 1066, a feat which has not been achieved since. Of course the Spanish and French have tried multiple times, as did the Germans, but William's campaign was the last successful one. Not bad for a man whose title before conquering a country was William the Bastard.

I like to think it's because he's such a dashing rouge and not because of illegitimacy.

That in itself is amazing, as is the fact that William united all of England under a single ruler and dynasty whose decedents still rule today. No one had done that prior to that point in time. We went from the Romans and the Celts squabbling in the 2nd and 3rd century, to the heptarchy of the 8th and 9th, rounding out with the Anglo-Saxons and Danes fighting a tug-of-war over the crown of England in the 10th.

But sailing across from the ducal of Normandy with a tenuous claim as Edward the Confessor's heir, the Norman-French William conquered both the warring factions of the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes. Laying a massive slap down at the Battle of Hastings and killing Harold II, he took the crown and united the country by force into a single kingdom. Scandinavian influence was banished from English politics indefinitely. Thus, England as we know it was born.

Harold, after he met William. He's the one with all the arrows in his head.

We also saw the biggest evolution of English since the advent of the language. For after the Norman Conquest, Old English developed into Middle English.

A simple statement, but take a moment to think of what that really means. The whole language evolved into something completely different. It was not something so simple as archaic words versus modern ones. Like reading a Regency Novel today and needing a dictionary at your side to find out what entailment means.

No, English became a whole new language. A large portion of the vocabulary, spelling, and usage completely altered.

And how could it not?

England now had a French speaking monarchy, aristocracy, and clerical hierarchy. One of the first orders of business was to remove all those who were English-born from every peerage and position of power. No one who ruled spoke English as their native tongue, and business was conducted in French. So of course English would adapt significantly along with the ruling class.

In 1080, this dictionary would not have been necessary.

Borrowing heavily from Norman-French vocabulary and spelling, the people of Britain anglicized numerous French words. English kept the same syntax of a Germanic language, but the vocabulary, the heart and soul of language, altered. In essence, the whole landscape of the language changed, based upon the class differences between those who spoke Old English and those who spoke Norman French.

I think this point is best illustrated with a simple example: our words for meats. If you speak English, you know we have different words for the animal when it's alive, and when it is served to us. A pig is served as pork, chicken as poultry, cow as beef, and sheep as mutton. We know this, but have never bothered to question why. In fact, we take for granted that very few other languages do this. This anomaly comes directly from Norman England.

The people slaughtering the animals, the farmhands and cooks handling the meat, called it by the old English names. Swīn (swine), cū (cow), cīcen (chicken), scǣp (sheep), etc. But when it arrived on the table of the French speaking hierarchy, no doubt lovingly prepared, they called it by the old French words: porc, boef, pouletrie, moton. They never saw it as an animal, but only as meat on their plates.

Thus, the Modern English words for animals are derived from Germanic roots, and the culinary term for the meat itself derives from Middle French.

Which is absolutely rocking.

Meat: both delicious and informative.

But English words do not have a basis merely in Germanic languages and French. Anyone can tell you that many words have a large basis in Latin. The various flourishes and embroideries on the section of our textile that is Middle English. Many words with Latin roots entered our lexicon during this time.

Why? The influence lies, as with most things in the Middle Ages, with the church.

Not exactly a time of widespread learning in Europe, the monks who did keep up scholarly practices did so in Latin, the lingua franca of the time. Since this was the case, when monks in England wrote in their own vernacular, what did they do when they did not have an English word for the term they were trying to describe? They fell back on the only other language they were used to writing in: Latin. That is why so many new words from that time were derived from Latin.

"We shall call this insect centipede, because hundred feet is simply ridiculous."

Therefore Latin, and to a certain extent Greek, became connected with education and learning. This connection never faded, and intellectual elitism continued the practice well past the middle ages. In fact, it is why it still continues today. It is the reason so many English words, especially those that are technical or scientific, are constructed based on Latin and Greek roots. And why biology class can be like a Latin lesson at times.

So there we were in the Late Middle Ages, writing in Latin and mixing in French. But as this time in history drew to a close, we saw the last great section added to our project.

In 1450, Modern English began.

Next time: Shakespeare, Gutenberg, Johnson, and a whole slew of people you might remember from history class.

English is Bizarre, Part I

It all started with beamish.

Not the concept of beamish, though a lovely notion. That whispers of bright things and blazing smiles. No, not the idea, but the word itself.

I think beamish is a beautiful, if not somewhat dated, word. I can't imagine using it in everyday speech and not sound like a transplanted Romantic poet, or at the very least an over-zealous drama student.

But I have always held a secret love for words. I use trifecta and quandary in casual conversation. Ever since I began writing poems in the third grade, the thesaurus has been a constant source of both information and delight.

(For those wondering, my first ever poem was called The Black Cat, about a mysterious cat at a Halloween party. It was about four stanzas long, had a simple ABAB rhyme scheme, and Mrs. Hempstead let me read it aloud to the class.)

And since that time of elementary school poetry, every word I come across seems like a new discovery. Old words, standard words, obscure antonyms and ones just entering the lexicon. Each and every one unique in the tapestry that is the English language.

To me, there is a certain beauty in the numerous variations and choices language affords. Despite the simplicity of a concept, there may be an abundant array of words to express it. From formal speech to casual slang to archaic expressions, the one you choose invariably colors the meaning.

The words used to put a name to an idea as varied and colorful as peacock feathers.

I love the way language rolls off the tongue; the harsh stops or gentle rumblings of dialect. Whether I understand it or not, I love the music of speech, as well as the life to it.

For language is alive, as much as anything else can be. Constantly changing, constantly evolving, adapting to the time and place in which it lives.

And the pieces that make up the whole are the words, original meaning and origin obscured by the commonality of use. Each one a small mystery, one whose secrets we whisper to each other every day.

Linguistics is, in my opinion, a fascinating discipline. It is a science that is also somewhat of an art, for a certain creativity is necessary to study it. A particular understanding of humanity, for it is a science of both sounds and people. And ever since I began teaching English, the observations of outsides had made me examine the words of my mother tongue in ways I never had before. But nowadays, I find myself explaining the latin roots of centipede, and that the anglicization of French words is why foyer is not pronounced the way it is spelled.

For history, and its people, shape language. No matter the science, the categorization, there will always be something deeply human about it. Even if you've never studied syntax or phonology, when a nonsense word is said, we just inherently know that it is wrong.

Which brings me back to beamish.

Beamish entered into the lexicon of Modern English in the late 19th century. It originated in the poem Jabberwocky, written by Lewis Carroll. Although a nonsense word, it has since entered into everyday use. Categorized as an adjective, it means beaming with happiness, optimism, or anticipation.

I find it interesting that nonsense words, if they sound phonetically correct, can enter into the language. But what I find even more fascinating is the misconception that Carroll invented the word. He didn't.

In fact, he was three hundred years too late.

Upon further research, it seems that beamish was actually already a word, originating from the 15th century. Perhaps Carroll made it as a portmanteau, as with many other words from the poem, but he did not indeed coin it. Even though, in my opinion, he believed he had.

So in simple terms, that means a man in the late 19th century re-introduced the exact same word that had already been in existence, but gone out of use, three centuries later.

Frankly, that is mind-boggling.

So the niggling of interest took hold of me. I was intrigued by English, with its abundance of words, and more exceptions than actual rules. And what did this interest become? Research, of course!

I claim no authority on the matter. I'm just a girl with an internet connection and an insatiable thirst for useless knowledge. But I take this time to warn you, reader, turn away now if you don't want to hear my love letter to the English language.

For English has as varied a history as its people. And in the same vein, it adopts, conquers, and adapts just as much as the people who have carried it across the world.

So without further adieu, I bring you a post in three parts, entitled:

A Very Abridged and (Most Likely) Biased History of the English Language

A Poor Man's Treatise on the Mother Tongue

(A few things before we begin: I may introduce a few boring linguistic terms that probably sound like alien species or medieval religious texts. But do not fear, they are actual words used in the study of language. I will provide a glossary at the conclusion. Also, since I am a student of history, I will of course connect everything back to the social changes of the time. And probably lovingly so, with a few historical in-jokes along the way. That's just how I roll.)

Prologue: Just like the Bayeux, but I'm No Nun

in which I introduce a solid metaphor, or way too much purple prose

It's easiest, I believe, to think of the English language as a long tapestry. A brightly colored cloth miles long, spread out across a long space. The kind that is faded with age and painstakingly embroidered by hand. The cloth begins varied, and roughly, as all projects do, before taking a general shape. As time passes, different people come along. Each and every one adds another layer to the fabric, stitching their influence with delicate thread work. A new square of cloth is therefore laid down every few years, borrowing from the patches that came before it, but making an undeniably richer design.

So as the years roll along, English stretches and shapes from one century to the next. Long and winding, but ultimately connected. An unbroken experiment in people and linguistics, whose roots and branches we can see as we walk along it.

But every tapestry, no matter how impressive, must start with a single thread. And our tapestry of English is no exception.

Part I: Teutonic Musical Chairs

in which Scandinavia gets restless, and the only real losers are the Celts

Imagine, if you will, a tiny green island in the North Sea. It is a fertile land, with lots of resources and waterways. The weather can be miserable, unless you particularly love rain, but there are much worse places in the North Sea to be. So although a very small place, it is highly sought after. And now, at this point in time, open for the taking.

It is the 5th century, and the Eastern Roman Empire is collapsed. Roman settlements are no longer around, and though a Celtic people still live on the island, they are scattered and divided. The island is practically defenseless against an organized invasion.

These conditions of opportunity of expansion, something that in hindsight seems entirely appropriate, brought about the advent of the English people and language.

English is a borrowing language. One of great flexibility, and over the last 1500 years it has truly cornered the market on sharing and copying vocabulary. The entire history of the language is littered with diversity. And no where is this more evident than in its very roots.

There is not one, but several dialects we now group together and term Old English. They were brought over in the 5th century by the Anglo-Saxons who settled on that green island, in what is now England and Southern Scotland. Though we term them Anglo-Saxons, these settlers actually came from three different Germanic tribes: the Angles and Saxons from where modern day Germany is, and the Jutes from the Jutland Peninsula in modern Denmark.

These lovable Teutons formed powerful kingdoms in post-Roman Britain. An Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, which is just as impressive as it sounds, four of which originated the distinct dialects of Old English.

First, there were the Anglian dialects of Mercian and Northumbrian. Then there was Kentish, derived from the Jutes. And lastly, and arguably the most important, was the Saxon dialect of West Saxon.

Why was West Saxon so important? Because it was the dialect of the Kingdom of Wessex, and Alfred the Great.

Alfred was one of the most important figures in Anglo-Saxon Britain, and definitely the only one who got the moniker of "the Great." He's also probably the only personage most people can name from that period of history, if one was so inclined to go around naming Anglo-Saxons. Unless, of course, they have a secret love for the monk Bede, or find Ethelred the Unready's name as hilarious as I do.

One has to wonder what he did to be forever branded as ill-prepared.

But with the influence of Alfred's reign, Late West Saxon came to dominate all of Britain by the end of the 9th century. It is also the language in which Beowulf, the oldest surviving text in English, was written.

Oldest surviving text...and the bane of my Junior year English class.

But the 9th century was not a peaceful time in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Alfred is known as a powerful king because he united the Anglo-Saxons in Southwest Britain. Not just for kicks, but out of necessity. He needed an army to combat the ever increasing Viking Invaders.

But invade they did, and the English language was forever changed by it.

At that time in history, Vikings were doing what they do best: invading the hell out of Northern Europe. Sure, they also traded, explored, and farmed, but that does not get the attention that their pillaging does. And starting in the 9th century, they turned their inaccurately-depicted horned helmets towards the burgeoning kingdoms of Britain.

Besides pillaging, Vikings also enjoyed industrious activities like animal husbandry.

With invasions by men with names like Cnut and Sweyn, the end result was Danelaw, a term used to describe the area in Northern and Eastern England where the Danes established Kingdoms.

But in the 9th century, being that both were Germanic languages, there was a mutual intelligibility between Old English and Old Norse. Meaning that the two languages were similar enough to be understood by each other. With such an easy understanding between two groups of people now sharing the same tiny island, both languages eventually changed. Therefore, Old Norse influenced many words in English that still survive today.

For example, the word law itself is an Old Norse word. As in, the word that is a basis for most of society. And remnants of the old relationship between Old Norse and Old English is evident in both Modern Danish and Modern English. In particular, both modern languages have the exact same words for sky and window, as well as the pronouns they, them, and their. (Which limits the sentences I can make in Danish, but a fun fact nonetheless.)

Danish: intelligible enough to be absolutely useless

So on the island of Briton, now like a siren song for conquering countries, Old English developed into a heavily influenced and constantly changing language. Malleable, but with a solid syntax and vocabulary.

And then the eleventh century came, bringing with it the biggest and most colorful addition to our tapestry yet. The Normans.

Next time: 1066, and all that.