On the road

ON the way to Alexandra to speak about WordWays, so many things about language came to mind that I present them now as a journal.

Refereeing

The day began early with watching World Cup soccer: Iceland playing Croatia in Russia, with a Spanish referee.

Q: Granted that the love of soccer is universal, in what language would the referee explain his interventions, in the match’s many crises? A: By gesture, which is how the players protest to him (in melodramatic indignation). This reminded me of my script for Alex, the theory of Michael Corballis that gesture preceded words in prehistoric communication. As soon as we got up on our hind legs, our forepaws became available for gesturing.

Willows

The Southern Motorway is enlivened by the branches of roadside willows, which glow with an indefinite gold fuzz. We need a word for this phenomenon, most welcome in winter when the sun hides.

Colour words

Colour words differ from language to language: another topic for Alex. Russian has no one name for blue: siniy and

goluboy stand for different blues. Latin distinguishes colours which shine from the same (English) colour which is matt. Looking out for colours among the winter murk, and brooding on my coming talk, I felt the force of Saussure’s principle, that language is a system of signs, which differentiate; signs agreed within a language, systematically arranged.

Dreich

Willows apart, the drive was mostly dreich, Scotland’s own word for its own weather.

Indeed, it’s Scotland’s favourite word in one recent poll (ousting

numpty). For weather, it means dreary or bleak. It relates to a Middle English word for ‘‘patient, longsuffering (and Old Norse djugr, ‘enduring’)’’. How often words for our own moods or faces coincide with words for the weather: dull, bright, bleak, or

sunny.

Scotland

Regarding dreich, my wife observed that her own favourite Scots word was dwaibly. Is that the adverb from dwaible, an adjective meaning ‘‘pliant’’ or ‘‘weak’’? It sounds like wobble or

feeble. How few English words begin with that /dw/! Dwarf, dweeb, dwell, dwindle . . . Name

your own favourite dwword, and tell me whether dwang is going strong as a technical name.

Ages

I was on the road to address a branch of the U3A, the ‘‘University of the Third Age’’. What were the first two ages, then? Is there a fourth, fifth, sixth? Shakespeare’s Jaques proclaims seven ages of mankind. Anyhow, the spirit of U3A was voiced to me at the Mosgiel branch recently, by someone who had not attended university in her first or second age so was taking her chance through the Third. Formal education can be over specialised. As the poet said, ‘‘What do they know of England, who only England know?’’ For ‘‘England’’ substitute ‘‘English’’, ‘‘law’’, ‘‘physics’’, ‘‘logic’’ and so on. Long may the U3A thrive to extend us.

Sounds and meanings

Back to dwaibly: nothing connects all the words in dw. But why would it? Linguists say only some 1015 % of individual words make a sound that imitates or matches their meaning, like

whisper, buzz, rattle, and roar. The low percentage upholds Saussure’s emphasis, on arbitrary but agreed signage. Poets, therefore, to make speech come alive, must make their words mimic meaning, not individually, but in the phrase or the line. Here’s Shakespeare, slowing the pace of thought to reverie: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought/ I summon up remembrance of things past . . .