I shouldn't post much about language.

[conuly]

The truth is that descriptivism only hides my real feelings, which is that as a New Yorker my speech is utterly perfect and everybody else's can be judged by how much it diverges from what we say in New York. I know, I know, everybody secretly (or not so secretly) thinks this about their own dialect, but it's only here that we're right when you think that. The rest of you are merely being provincial because you can't accept the utter rightness of New Yorkers in this respect.

Not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not? Neither am I!

But seriously (seriouslier), I'm now in the position of talking over in one place about whether or not it matters if we have a number marker in a word that no longer marks a specific number (well, it's either that or give up use of the word decimate entirely, don't you think?) and in the other about whether or not we can have a word without a meaning. That conversation will probably be shorter, which is why I'm posting it for general consumption: Words without any meaning attached whatsoever - are they still words? Yes, no, kflipin?

Comments

[conuly]

I was reading one of the Opie's books, on singing games (that might actually be the title, come to think) and they mention that one such game had a nonsense refrain that had, in a certain town, eventually morphed into "kiss my toe". And so the children did, even though the instruction made no sense whatsoever. The song said to kiss their toes every verse, right?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Sure, why not? Children have to listen to a lot of nonsense.. When I was little, I thought the second-to-last line of 'Silent Night' was "Sleep in heavenly teepee", because y'know those little creches one always sees, like a lean-to wickiup? Obviously that's what BabyJesus was sleeping in, and it had an angel on the roof, hence the 'heavenly', so I didn't question it till I learned to read and discovered my error. Who knew, right?

In grade school I learned the Revolutionary War song 'Buttermilk Hill', which has this chorus:

Shule, Shule, Shule a roo
Shule a rack shack
shule a barbecue
when I saw my sally babby beel
come bibble in the boo shy lorry

... wasn't till I was grown up that I learned the original song, 'Siúil A Rún', the chorus of which is:

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún
Siúil go socair agus siúil go ciúin
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom
Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

... not that that's a bit better, but at least it does mean something in Gaelic, as opposed to meaning nothing in nothing because the American colonists didn't speak Gaelic but still had to sing something when the chorus came 'round.


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[conuly]

The chorus I learned runs mostly in English.

Shule, shule, shule agra
Sure, oh sure, and he loves me
And when he comes back we'll married be
Johnny has gone for a soldier.

Which is definitely a lot less silly than what you learned first.