Personal Blogs

As I stumbled along the beach of life I came across an accidental tongue-twister, a sort of object trouvé, like the pebbles beachcombers collect.

Every day the Times of London has a Quick Cryptic Crossword.

Try saying the phrase out loud 10 times in rapid succession.

I've always adored tongue-twisters. My favorite is one I heard many years back on the radio. I don't know who invented it but I'm very grateful to them. It comes with a little backdrop story.

The late Queen Mother was going round a saucepan factory. Pausing by a workman she asked what he was doing, which lead to the following noblesse oblige conversation:

I've often wondered whether there is a theory of tongue-twisters. Could a computer design phenomenally hard ones? There must be some kind of analysis possible that would let us understand what makes a phrase hard to say repeatedly.

Step forward MIT. In 2013 a research team collected and analyzed a collection of speech errors made by experimental subjects. Based on this they devised a fiendishly difficult tongue-twister. Are you ready? Do you want to fetch a glass of water for safety's sake? OK here we go.

Call that tongue-twisting? Feeble, isn't it?

Science, successful in so many ways, flunked here. And commentators were too lazy to say so — or couldn't — or wouldn't.

In contrast, here is a real killer I was taught by a Polish friend. For background, Lola is a woman's name; loyola means 'is loyal'; 'nie' pronounced 'knee-ay' means not. But the meaning doesn't matter really. Just remember how 'nie' should be said. 10 times out loud remember.

The word tongue-twister is fairly recent it seems. The Oxford English Dictionary only records it from 1898, and in 1904 the Speaker offered this, which ain't bad

Favorite tongue-twisters anybody?

Last night in my local, the Moon Under Water, talk turned to how the Roman road known as Ermine Street, which runs near here, got its name.

One theory was that it was called after the animal, the stoat in its white winter coat with a black-tipped tail, and derived from this a heraldic 'tincture' which is a background of white with black tail tips arranged in a pattern .

Few saw easily what the connection could be though, and in fact the explanation is totally different.

Ermine street is a corruption of an Anglo-Saxon name Earninga Straete, which would mean "the Roman road of Earn's people", Earn presumably being a tribal leader.

The word earn is the Anglo-Saxon for eagle and survives today in the form erne, meaning the sea eagle (or possibly the golden eagle too). Probably the tribal leader wasn't actually called Earn, because Anglo-Saxon names tended to be dithematic — composed from two parts, such as Alfred, "elf counsel" or Mathilda, "mighty battle".

However these names often got shortened. To any Maddys reading: did you realize you were warlike? Alfs, did you think of yourself as guided by supernatural beings?

In a similar way Earn was perhaps short for Earnwald, "eagle power". In forms such as Arnold it remains a common name today. Arnie?

And where did Earnwald's people live? Probably somewhere near the Cambridgeshire village of Arrington, which lies on Ermine Street. In the Domesday book it is Erningtone, "Ern's people's farmstead", which lends support to this idea.

I wondered what the Romans called this road. We have no idea. It seems we know the Latin names of few, or no, Roman roads in Britannia, although names were certainly given to roads elsewhere.

To end on a Roman note: here is an example of true eagle power. Jupiter was supposed to ride a chariot pulled by eagles, as shown in this spirited engraving. Sorry it is a bit dark but there was a bit of weather about as you can tell.

Picture credit

Welcome images, via Wikimedia commons

Did Lancelot
Use his lance a lot
Or not?

Guinevere
Would whisper in our ear
If she were here.

These are the converse of Bertrand Russell's linguistic invention of the emotive conjugation, but still drawing attention to the way that language is both denotative and connotative (the meaning and the feeling) and how loaded language stops us thinking clearly. Plus they help you feel bad about yourself. To illustrate:

I am a worm.
Compared with me you are cool
She is a diva.

Here are some more I thought up, in my poor way.

I do not have a Phd
You do.
She is a professor.

I am no longer even moderately attractive
You have retained your appearance quite well, considering
She is photographed for the Daily Mail whenever she appears on a beach.

I am lazy.
You relax regularly, so you are fresh enough to maintain high standards
She has progressed beyond the workload illusion and founded a ground-breaking consultancy.

None of these are very good. You must be able to do better.

This form of word play is reputed to have been introduced first by Betrand Russell on the radio program The Brains Trust. One of his examples was

Russell seems to have been (at least partly) making a serious point about loaded language but these "emotive conjugations" have since been popular for their humorous content. The New Statesman featured emotive conjugations in one of its weekly competitions. My favorite entry was

Inspired by these I had a go at writing some, with the following results.

        I pay attention to detail; you are a little finicky, if you don't mind my saying; she is a pedantic monster.

        I employ a light touch; you are occasionally rather lax; she is negligent.

        I enjoy social drinking; have you ever thought of talking to your doctor? She is an alcohol abuser.

        I am a scholar; you have read widely; she will believe anything.

 Some underground definitions

Eftsoons the Lady Guinevere bethought her

That Lancelot hadde much ex kaliber.

Listen how

Each breath we take

Advances and retreats.

Breaking on a fragile shore—

The heart.

An Angel caught me by the throat.

"Is this in the rules?", I cried.

"No, but it's quicker", she replied.

Until the spellchecker intervened Bach had intended to be a composer.

Image credits

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach#/media/File:Johann_Sebastian_Bach.jpg