Nitpicky language

I've been watching BBC's the Great British Menu in bulk 5, episodes at a time. Amazing how much rubbish can be removed - I've turned 2.5 hrs into 1.5 by fast-forwarding through the "this is what we're doing this year"'s the "and these are all the ingredients I'll be using"'s and the "and this is how how chefs did something regarding this year's brief"'s. Oh and the format's still a mess given the supposed goal, but I'll stop digressing.

Last week we had the North East; or Nor Feast as it was called. I've no problem with accents switching "th" for "f" or droppin' end sounds, they're simply diverse sounds and one is really no 'better' than another, but the question that kept being asked was

"Do you think this is a dish what will make the judges laugh?"

Ouch. Try this "Do you know what is wrong with that sentence?". Both "Do" and "What" are questioning terms and I can split my query into "What is wrong with that sentence? Do you know?". Now try it with the chef's question "What will make the judges laugh? Do you think this is a dish?" Nonsensical. It could be saved by "What will make the judges laugh? Do you think this is such a dish?". But that's not really what the question was about. The chef was not asking what will make the judges laugh only if this was a dish that could cause them to do so. It wasn't two questions it was merely one presented in an inaccurate form.

Yes, yes regionalism, but it's sloppy, causes an upset to my English parsing, and is unnecessary.

Oh I suppose it could have been worse; he could have been asking "Do you think this is a dish what you could make perfect for a hundred guests?"

This post is classified.

I pointed out how I don't like the current use of the word "Tragedy" and Dan kindly pointed out that the OED has had the (IMO) wrong definition since the beginning; so I suppose I  can't blame people for using it to simply describe an unpleasant event even though I still hate it. I also mentioned "alternate" being used for "alternative", but hopefully the error in doing that is obvious to readers. This all got me thinking along these lines and I have another peeve - classified.

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Tragedy?

Via my news feed from the Shuttle

AS Wyre Forest prepares to remember its road accident victims this weekend, drivers are being urged to take extra care on dark nights and cold mornings to avoid further tragedies

Okay disclaimer yes I'm a pedant at  times, but I try to keep a lid on it as much as I can. This however just gets me annoyed* because of what it really means and how it is being used almost constantly to describe any unfortunate event.

The word "tragedy" is of Greek derivation used to describe a genre of play in which a mistake of the protagonist sets them down the path of misfortune. The mistake is supposed to be easily seen by the audience, but remain unknown to the protagonist. Moreover the audience is supposed to enjoy the play based on this premise. It's a form of schadenfreude; the taking of pleasure from the misfortunes of others.

What that means is if someone describes the death of someone as a tragedy or simple being tragic what they're saying is that they saw this death coming and did nothing to stop it because they gained more pleasure from being able to say "I told you that was going to happen" after the death.

Except they're not because tragedy now simply means "really bad thing" due to linguistic drift and evolution. We just seem to be losing the depth to our language due to simplistic definitions of words.

*Oh and don't get me started on the Americans' use of the word alternate instead of alternative in the SF genre. "Oh it's an "alternate universe" does that mean it changes back from one to another?"

Etymology of hamster and how misinformation propagates

Without getting into too many details I ended up reading a speech that was going to be given by a kid regarding hamsters. One little titbit of information that came out was that the word "hamster" derived from the German "hamstern" which means "to hoard".

Not something I knew and I was ready to add it to my mental database; first though the proof-checking. A quick visit to the Online Oxford Dictionary and their definition includes:

early 17th century: from German, from Old High German hamustro 'corn weevil'

Huh how odd if it was derived from "hamstern" I would expect to see that. Perhaps the German dictionary might offer something else? Nope just the same "hamustro".

Time for a Google search for "hamster hamstern" (no I didn't mean "hamster hamster") and a large number of pages all repeating that hamster derived from hamstern; except one. Much as I hate to have to link to such non-canonical sources this really was the best one. So from the Straight Dope forums and the user Holger:

Although my trusty Kluge etymological dictionary isn't quite explicit in the details, it indicates that the noun came first (describing the animal), and the verb "hamstern" (to hoard) was coined later, alluding to the hamster's behavior

Another quick check back to Duden and "hamstern" is noted as being "umgangssprachlich" or colloquia/everyday language.

In other words it came about the same way people can "squirrel something away" the naming word (noun) was used as an action word (verb) to describe someone/thing acting the same way. In the case of a hamster; its hoarding behaviour probably resulted in people being described as hamsters and thus their actions as the new word hamstern.


So use a dictionary and it'll give you hamustro; check various hamster sites (most likely a lot more popular with kids) and it'll give you hamstern. Which is more likely to continue to be spread about and quoted?

Waterstone's or Waterstones?

According to BBC Breakfast this morning Waterstone's is planning on dropping its apostrophe. With this in mind they sent a reporter out to discover if people really knew what this meant and illustrated it with a board stating

Breakfast at its best
Breakfast at it's best

and asking which was correct. Quite amusing really as this isn't quite the issue at hand. As the gentleman from the English Spelling Society pointed out the first sentence is the correct one, although there was a little mumbling when he mentioned the apostrophe and being possessive.

So where's the problem with using those sentences as a demonstration regarding the Waterstone's/Waterstones story? Well in the case of "Breakfast at it's best" the apostrophe is used to indicate a contraction, the omission of the letter "i", for Waterstone's the apostrophe indicates a possession "The store belonging to Waterhouse is Waterstone's store". But who cares and why bother? Allow me to demonstrate.

Consider getting breakfast for a dog that would be "The dog's breakfast" so far so simple, but what if there's more than one dog? That would be breakfast for the dogs and thus "The dogs' breakfast". The confusion lies in that speaking either sentence yields identical results.

If the apostrophe is dropped there is no indication of whether it is a singular or plural and the full meaning of the store's name is lost "Waterstone's book store".

It's not difficult -

Are you omitting a letter? - Use an apostrophe to indicate that letter.
Are you indicating that something belongs to something/one? - Use an apostrophe.
Otherwise - Don't use an apostrophe.

If in doubt consider the sentence without omissions or replace the possessive with his/her/its to see if it still makes sense.

"Breakfast at it's best" becomes "Breakfast at it is best - incorrect.
"Dog's breakfast" becomes "His/Her/Its breakfast" - correct.

Daybreak texting

I'm normally one for small print, but in this instance my attention was drawn by the interjection of Adrian on the Daybreak show. He had just invited viewers to text comments to the show when I imagine a producer bellowed "Terms and conditions" down his ear at which point he hurriedly read out was had just flashed up on the screen that the viewers had to be 18 and over. So what?

Well it means no-one can text in.

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