The random etymology of the day

[Annie Subjunctive]

Latin is dumb.

[Jonathon]

So tell me, O Annie the Francophile, how many different stems are there in the verb aller?

[Annie Subjunctive]

That's not why Latin is dumb. Latin is dumb because there's really no need to learn it but there are still all those myths about it being the magic language of brilliance.

[dkw]

If one is studying a topic where many of the source documents are in Latin there is need to learn it.  The idea that every really educated person must learn it is, I agree, dumb.

[The Genuine]

If you're a computer programmer, is there no value in learning COBOL, FORTRAN, or C?

(I don't know—I'm not a computer programmer.)

[Annie Subjunctive]

Are you speaking in them?

[Jonathon]

I agree with dkw—it might be useful or even necessary to know Latin in certain fields, but there's nothing special about Latin per se. It's just a language.

[pooka]

Knowing latin has gotten me out of having to do a lot of other crap to pass as educmacated.  Also, the boys in my latin class were hot.

[Annie Subjunctive]

Well, that's a whole nother situation.

[pooka]

The idea of principle parts is that all the other verb inflections were pretty regular, but the principle parts were where any irregularities would show up.  So if you know the principle parts, and you know the rest of verb grammar, you know what you need in order to do anything else you need to do with that verb.  So in that way it is kind of an elegant concept, kind of like if you knew rules for visually differentiating makes of cars.

Some books used a three part pattern because it simplified matters for some verbs which only have three of the four principle parts, I guess. 

[Nighthawk]

If you're a computer programmer, is there no value in learning COBOL, FORTRAN, or C?

(I don't know—I'm not a computer programmer.)

No, No, and Yes.

COBOL would only be necessary if you intend to provide support for legacy systems (read: mainframes that are over 30 years old), and in that case you'll be severely outmatched by legacy developers that have been doing it just as long.

FORTRAN might help only as a conceptual language; it was used to teach some basic programming mechanics, but never had many practical applications in the real world. It's kind of like learning Prolog, Ada or LISP: It can teach you a few things, but don't expect to use it... Ever...

C is still sometimes used, such as in embedded systems. For example, some of the portable barcode scanners used in warehouse management require development in ANSI C.

Also, having a foundation in C helps for other languages, such as C++, C# and Java.

[Jonathon]

The other day Ruth asked me where the step- in words like step-father comes from. I had to confess that I didn't actually know, but I guessed that it signified that the relationship was a metaphorical step away from a biological one. But it turns out my off-the-cuff guess was totally wrong; it comes from a different root meaning 'bereft'. Stepchild originally meant 'orphan' (or a child who had lost at least one parent), and words like stepfather meant 'father to an orphan' and so on. The OED says, "The concept of orphanage has recently ceased to be essential to the meaning of the step- combinations. Consequently, the relationships of step-brother, -sister, etc., may be considered to refer reciprocally to children of a later as well as a former marriage: i.e. step-brother = half-brother, etc. A step-parent may be created by marriage to a divorced or a bereaved person."

[BlackBlade]

So it doesn't have any connection to babies being left on door steps, which is sort of the traditional way one becomes an orphan?

[Jonathon]

Nope. Or if there's any connection, it's only through folk etymology.

[BlackBlade]

So the word crotchety came up in a conversation I was having, and apparently it comes from the word crotchet, which can mean an odd or whimsical notion.

I wasn't able to figure out how it evolved from something that's sorta fun or different to, irritable, grumpy, or eccentric.  Or was its usage in the past already less fun than I am conceptualizing?  Also, I couldn't find where the word comes from.

[BlackBlade]

Apparently there is exactly one word from the Incan language that made its way to English.

Jerky.  The process of rapidly heating and cooling and reheating meat so as to preserve it was pioneered by Incas with llama meat.  The conquistadors picked it up and brought it back to Europe and the rest of the Americas.

[Jonathon]

So the word crotchety came up in a conversation I was having, and apparently it comes from the word crotchet, which can mean an odd or whimsical notion.

I wasn't able to figure out how it evolved from something that's sorta fun or different to, irritable, grumpy, or eccentric.  Or was its usage in the past already less fun than I am conceptualizing?  Also, I couldn't find where the word comes from.

I can't find anything that explains the development of the sense better that. And it looks like crotchet comes from the French crochet, meaning 'little hook'.

[Jonathon]

Apparently there is exactly one word from the Incan language that made its way to English.

Jerky.  The process of rapidly heating and cooling and reheating meat so as to preserve it was pioneered by Incas with llama meat.  The conquistadors picked it up and brought it back to Europe and the rest of the Americas.

It looks like there's actually a couple dozen. I had no idea that jerky was one of them, though.

[BlackBlade]

Apparently there is exactly one word from the Incan language that made its way to English.

Jerky.  The process of rapidly heating and cooling and reheating meat so as to preserve it was pioneered by Incas with llama meat.  The conquistadors picked it up and brought it back to Europe and the rest of the Americas.

It looks like there's actually a couple dozen. I had no idea that jerky was one of them, though.

I'll be writing National Geographic tonight, and letting them know that they have failed me.

[Jonathon]

Did you get that factoid from them? I'd like to see the original in context if possible.

[BlackBlade]

Oh it was my mistake, I actually need to write PBS!

[Jonathon]

Those liars and scoundrels!

[The Genuine]

Go to this link and click "Transcript."  It says:

Curiously, this is similar to how the local Quetchua people preserve llama meat. The result is "jerky," which is one of the few Quetchua words used in English.

[Jonathon]

Ah. Well, that's not so lying or scoundrelly after all. Call off the hit squad!

[The Genuine]

Well I guess that depends on your definition of "few."

So I found this:

How many words are there in the English language?

There is no single sensible answer to this question. It's impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word. Is dog one word, or two (a noun meaning 'a kind of animal', and a verb meaning 'to follow persistently')? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (e.g. dogs = plural noun, dogs = present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since it might also be written as hot-dog or even hotdog?

It's also difficult to decide what counts as 'English'. What about medical and scientific terms? Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used in martial arts? Do you count Scots dialect? Teenage slang? Abbreviations?

The Second Edition of the 20-volume  Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

I am now convinced that there are "few" Quechua words used in English.