It's Pleasant to Parler

John McWhorter of The New Republic gives short shrift to the value of learning French (or German or Italian or most other European languages, for that matter).  From a purely Benthamite perspective, of course, he is right: greater practical value can be had by learning Chinese, or Spanish, or Arabic, or arguably even Portuguese.

Then again....  I take a look at my list of languages on Facebook - French, German, and Dutch.  Hardly a practical assembly, I grant you.  But because I speak French, at least, I have had the inestimable joy of reading Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Balzac in the original.  I actually got to use my slender ability in German when I worked for a law firm in Philadelphia, and I enjoy being able to know what, exactly, Wagner's characters are bellowing at each other.

As for Dutch - well, when I go to Amsterdam, I always get smiles of surprise and genuine gratitude when I demonstrate that, hey, at least I bothered to learn some of your language.  And Dutch, while not pretty, is fascinating for an English-speaker; much as was once said about Latin, I studied Dutch and learned more about my own language.

Furthermore, learning other European languages can better connect us to our shared Western cultural heritage - in literature, yes, but also in many other intellectual and cultural endeavors.  China, of course, has a resplendent cultural heritage - but it's not ours, and the heritage of Italian is really much closer to us than the heritage of China, notwithstanding the former's present geopolitical irrelevance.  Reading Machiavelli in the original is going to provide more direct benefits to us, as Westerners, than reading Sun Tzu in the original.

Studying European languages teaches us about Europe, about the West, about the languages of the West - about ourselves.  This isn't chauvinism, or at least, it doesn't have to be - rather, it is merely venturing into new fields that, nevertheless, share our cultural substratum.  We can put down roots more quickly there.

Most fundamentally, studying foreign languages develops a person's intellectual capacities.  The choice of language - and the cultural doors opened by that choice - has consequences for the way and extent to which those capacities can be developed.  Cross-cultural communication is an important goal of language study, but it isn't the only one.  There are reasons other than strict, direct utility for learning a language.

Did I mention I also speak a few words of Irish?

Palin Knows Shit About [Blank]

Sarah Palin has received a certain amount of flak recently for using the word "refudiate," a mangling of the words "refute" and "repudiate."

Though I am a language maven, I'm not put out by this. Rather, I'm put out by the context in which she has most recently used this neologism. She is asking for "peaceful Muslims" (the adjective is an insult to Muslims) to "refudiate" the planned construction of a mosque not far from the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. I have commented on this view before, and found it wanting.

For this reason, I hereby declare that Palin knows shit about religious freedom, equal protection, and anti-bigotry. Raise your hand if you're surprised. No one? Bueller?

For Want of a Segue

...whole paragraphs have been lost. From the Wikipedia page for the French playwright Victorien Sardou:

In 1857, Sardou felt the pangs of actual want, and his misfortunes culminated in an attack of typhoid fever. He was living in poverty and was dying in his garret, surrounded with his rejected manuscripts. A lady who was living in the same house unexpectedly came to his assistance. Her name was Mlle de Brécourt. She had theatrical connections, and was a special favourite of Mlle Déjazet. She nursed him, cured him, and, when he was well again, introduced him to her friend. Déjazet had just established the theatre named after her. Every show after La Taverne was put on at this theatre. Then fortune began to smile on the author. Nine years after getting married to his first wife, she would pass away.

Emphasis mine. And for the record, that last sentence has a problem with pronoun/antecedent agreement. Did fortune herself die? Sloppy!

"Wild Asian Ass"

14 across, six letters. It's "onager." Why, what were you thinking?

Update: According to this site, "[t]he Asian wild ass is the most horselike of all the species of ass." Geez, poor onagers. It must suck to be the Ann Coulter of the animal kingdom. (Ka-ching!)

Update: How come no one has stated that looking up a word on the internet when trying to solve a crossword puzzle is, um, cheating?

Lame-Ass Portmanteau Words

I was reading a story about how Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was caught trying to sell access to her former husband, Prince Andrew. (That's right, I read stories about the British royalty because I am a closet monarchist and aristocrat who secretly loves the notions of nobility and completely undeserved privilege.) The first visible comment in the comments section read as follows:

Acting as the bagman for payola to the royal family?

The corruption never ends in the Unlimited Krimedom.

Yech. That got my knickers in a twist.

Portmanteau words are great, don't get me wrong. They can neatly encapsulate two concepts in one word, such as in "Reaganomics" (perhaps the most commonly used example). With words such as "Spanglish" or "Franglais," the blending of two words nicely parallels the blending of two languages.

But as soon as we veer into the political realm, it seems as though all aesthetic sense goes right out the window. Thus, we get monstrosities like "Unlimited Krimedom," "Rethuglicans," or "Dummycrats."

People who use these words think that they are being witty. Sadly, no - they are being inelegant, artless, and dumb. They should stop, and they should stop right now.

Greek to Me

A Greek word on a £1.3 billion building at Cambridge University has been - brace yourselves, pedants - misspelled.

Who cares that the building cost £1.3 billion, anyway? I'm sure the rest of the building works just fine. How much did a Greek letter cost?

Words I Didn't Know

On my previous blog, I would occasionally post definitions of new words (new to me, anyway). I'm going to keep that ball rolling on this blog. The first installment is (drum roll):

Pasquinade. (n.) A satire or lampoon, especially one that ridicules a specific person, traditionally written and posted in a public place. (tr. v.) To ridicule with a pasquinade; satirize or lampoon. [From the Free Dictionary.]

The word, it seems, is derived from the nickname - "Pasquino" - for a fragmentary statue in Rome. The statue, shown here, dates from the third century B.C. and was erected in a public

square in Rome in 1501. It supposedly depicts Menelaus holding Patroclus. (For those who slept through your Great Books courses, Menelaus and Patroclus were Greek heroes in the Trojan War.) Since the early sixteenth century, Romans have been in the habit of placing anonymous parodies and lampoons on the base of the statue; they can be seen in the close-up.

I came across this word while reading The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by the nineteenth century Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt. Burkhardt was the first eminent scholar to address culture as a proper subject of historical inquiry; thus, in this great work, he describes the intellectual and social life of Renaissance Italy, rather than the great men and great battles of that time. Burkhardt recounts the "unhappy reign" of Pope Adrian VI, who was elected in 1522 but who died within two years. Adrian was a Dutchman - in fact, he was the last non-Italian elected pope until John Paul II - and the people of Rome never forgave him for this infelicity. The poor Adrian was an early target of Pasquino's eloquence.