When ideas fail, words come in very handy (Goethe)

When did you last talk to someone about the weather? Do you find yourself doing it often? With close friends or total strangers? We are all familiar with the myth about Englishmen, when meeting with a stranger they’ll eventually start talking about the weather.  True, English people do talk quite often about the weather, but they probably do that less often than we believe and not because they find climatic conditions such an interesting topic. They, like the rest of us, do that because finding oneself with a total stranger in a small place (let’s say, a train compartment and facing each other) can be quite embarrassing. Therefore by talking to the other person about a neutral topic (you guessed rightly: the weather!) one is making a connection - creating some kind of relationship - without putting too much effort. The other reason may be that by engaging in a conversation people learn things about each other (even if they only discuss the weather) and satisfy their curiosity. These two aspects of languages behavior are very important from a social point of view: first, the function of language in establishing social relationships and the second, the role played by language in conveying information about the speaker. So next time you hear two English (or any other) people talking about the weather, you’ll remember it is in fact all about sociolinguistics…

Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used.

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It is our pleasure to announce that yesterday a new coin was introduced into circulation in Israel, the 2 NIS coin. Unbelievable as it may sound and although this new coin is only one day old, we already have a new blend word for it: “Shnekel“. This is a result of blending the two Hebrew words: “Shney” + “Shekel” (= 2 shekels). You will have to agree that “Shnekel” is shorter, more creative and much more fun….. Welcome, Shnekel, to the Israeli monetary system!

What can be more exciting than turning WORDS into traffic? Check this link for more information:

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  All languages make up new words as they go along. Sometimes it happens because our life style changes and we suddenly need new words. Brunch was invented because we weren’t hungry enough at breakfast but couldn’t wait till lunch. So we blended the two words. Linguistics call this process blending. Motel is also a blended word (motor+hotel). We bet blog (web+log) immediately came into your mind, didn’t it?  

When we are not blending, we sometimes combine two words together. It’s called compounding. There is almost no limit to the kinds of combinations of words that occur in English: boyfriend, rainbow, landlord; newborn, undergo and sailboat are only few examples. At times of greediness we even make up three compound words, such as mother-in-law (god bless her) and sergeant-at-arms.  

Shortage of time leads to shortcuts, a process known as clipping. We say gym instead of the longer gymnastics; gas instead of gasoline; bike (bicycles), pop (popular) and math is short for mathematics. 

Acronyms can be viewed as other type of shortcuts. They are words which derive from the initials of several words put together to create a new word. Radar (Radio detecting and ranging); Laser (Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation); OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). 

How does the term “onomatopoeic words” sound to you? Too long? Hard to pronounce? Quite right! (let’s clip that one…) Anyway, it means words that imitate the sound of their meaning: cuckoo( Hebrew: Kukeeya – קוקיה ), bottle (Hebrew: Bukbook- בקבוק), boom, whisper (French: chuchoter) , splash, click, buzzer (Hebrew: zumzum - זמזם)  swoop, hiccup (Hebrew: sheehook - שיהוק) and the cat purrrrrrrs…. 

Can you guess what Fallopian tubes, boycott, July and August all have in common? They are all eponyms - words deriving from names of persons or places. A separate article will be dedicated to eponyms as there are many different types of them. 

What can be more exciting than turning WORDS into traffic? Check this link for more information:

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Language is a communication tool and the invention and addition of new words is an ongoing process in all languages of the world. 

Often enough we find ourselves misunderstood even when the listener speaks the same language. At times words get in the way, and at other times we can’t find the right words to express ourselves.  

So even if we all speak the same language there is no guaranttee that we will succeed in delivering our true meaning to the other person.

What happens when we try to talk with someone who doesn’t speak our language? Are we doomed to continuous misunderstanding? Not necessarily, although it could (and more than often does) lead to misfortunate mistakes, funny at times but hurtful at others.

I remember my experience as a nine year old Israeli residing in England. My name was mispronounced and very often I was called Piano or Pernina or even Pina instead of Pnina.  When I was asked how I wanted my eggs at dinner, I didn’t understand why my grandfather who didn’t speak any Hebrew didn’t know what an “eye egg” was. For me it was so obvious but I could see him  smiling at my new language innovantion. I kept saying “eye egg” and wasn’t understood. How was I to know that the expression is “fried egg”? In Hebrew it’s called “eye egg” because the shape of a “fried egg” resembles that of the human eye. Well, at least that’s how Israelis see it… How was I to know that English people saw things differently? I even remember pointing to my eye again and again to emphasize the meaning…..

And why did my teacher correct my spelling when instead of “breakfast” I wrote breakfirst? For me it was clear: breakfirst was the first meal of the day therefore I heard break first…..

And how was I to know that a boyfriend is not a friendboy………. who cares for word order, the important thing is to have one!!!

Many times the first sentence you learn to say in a foreign language is: “I don’t speak English/Dutch/French”. I remember on my first day at school my teacher, Mr. Kaufman, wanted to give me something to read and I said “I don’t speak English”, he didn’t appreciate the fact that it was the only sentence in English I knew, even if it sounded as if it was coming out of a native English speaker… 

That reminds me of two highway workers who were busy working at a construction site when a big car with diplomatic license plate pulled up.
“Parlez-vous français?” the driver asks them. The two workers just stared.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” The two continued to stare at him.
“Fala português?” Neither worker said anything.
“Parlate Italiano?” Still no response.
Finally, the man drives off in disgust.
One worker turned to the other and said, “Gee, maybe we should learn a
foreign language…”
“What for? That guy knew four of them and what good did it do him?” 

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We linguists engage, among other things, in comparing languages and exploring their histories, in order to find universal properties of language as well as to account for its development and origins.

Languages are sometimes genetically related, i.e.  descended from the same mother language. For instance, Italian & Spanish are “sisters”, having both Latin for a “mother”. The same goes for English and German, although these two are “cousins”, both belonging to the West Germanic branch. As you have probably noticed, genetically related languages belong to the same family and are described in terms used to describe family members.

Problem is, there are many cases where one identifies similarity between two languages and mistakenly assumes they are genetically related. For instance, the word “mucho” in Spanish and the English “much”, both sound quite similar and share the same meaning, yet English and Spanish are not genetically related.   

Comparing the vocabulary of the English language with that of French can be even more deceiving, as in fact almost 60% (!) of the English vocabulary is originated from French. This is due to the fact that during the Norman Conquest (starting in 1066) English was displaced by French, which became the language of the ruling class – of the Court, the nobility, the Church and the schools. During that era, a vast amount of French vocabulary entered the English language. That is called borrowing. Hence, “noble” (adj.), distinguished by rank or title, entered the English when it was called Middle English from Old French and from Latin before it. Similarly, the word “judge”, can be traced back to French and Latin.

Therefore, when trying to establish a genetic relation between two (or more) languages, one must not rely on comparison between their lexicons (vocabularies), although it’s very tempting to do so, because it may lead to the wrong conclusion.

Words in different languages may quite often sound the same. This has nothing to do with sharing the same origin or borrowing words form one another.  

Hebrew and English are certainly not genetically related. Once this is established,  we will reveal to you some words which sound exactly the same in both languages, yet have completely different meanings. Let’s start with the English “who” which in Hebrew is “he”; the English “he” is in Hebrew “she” and “me” is the Hebrew “who”. Are you laughing (crying) yet?.

Maybe it will be less confusing in table, as follows: 

English “who” is Hebrew “he”; English “he” is Hebrew “she” and English “me”  is Hebrew “who”.

Here are some more weird phonetic twins worth memorizing:

The English “sum” is “drug” in Hebrew.

The English “kiss” is “pocket” in Hebrew. (Save your kisses for me…)

The English “gun” is “garden” in Hebrew. (Was this the idea behind Guns N’ Roses?)

The English “butt” is “girl” in Hebrew. (Interesting???!!!)

The English “dear” is “shed” in Hebrew while the English “shed” is “ghost” in Hebrew.

The English “shore” is “bull” in Hebrew while the English “bull” is “stamp” in Hebrew.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to try and write a short paragraph composed of the above English words, and then translate it into Hebrew?

We live in a world where we are expected to be clear, coherent and anything but vague. It starts at early childhood. At school we are taught and told to speak up and to express ourselves clearly and as we grow up we learn how important it is to be accurate, quick and cut to the chase.

We learn to send short, concise CV’s because our future employer won’t have the time and patience to read more than a page, even if our professional history is long and amazing. We are surrounded by advertisements with short slogans that catch our immediate attention and yet contain crucial information. So we understand that it is important to know how to write rightly!!! 

At a certain stage in life, we also realize there are many advantages at being ambiguous.  Did you know for example that John enjoys painting his models nude? Naughty John(?!) Or maybe he’s a professional artist who specializes in nude painting? 

What is ambiguity and what is its role in language?  Language ambiguity occurs when a given sentence posses two or more distinct semantic interpretations. Our friend told us the other day that he saw a sign at his local launderette that read “please remove all your clothes when the light goes out”, we wondered how he chose to follow that instruction. See, “remove” can mean take off your clothes or take your clothes out of the washing machine. That’s Lexical ambiguity for you; when one of the words in a given sentence (either a noun or a verb) has more than one meaning.

But wait!, there are still two more kinds of ambiguous sentences. Joe, another friend of ours, did what his sister asked him to do: “he sent her kids storybooks.” Who do you think got the books? Joe’s sister, or Joe’s nephews? That’s Surface structure ambiguity which results when the words of a sentence can be grouped in two different ways.

Last but not least, we heard that “Flying planes can be dangerous”! What does that mean? That it’s dangerous to fly airplanes or that airplanes when fly cause danger? That’s Deep structure ambiguity, when two sentences differ in their deep structure and they merge onto a single sentence.  Many writers and poets use the double or multiple meaning of words to create humor, vagueness and sophistication in their writings and that’s what makes it so interesting. 

If language is very often ambiguous, how do we manage to understand each other? The good news is that our mind automatically processes the most suitable meaning using contextual clues in our mother tongue.  It’s most likely that John isn’t in the nude when he paints models but rather his models pose in the nude.

Ambiguous sentences can be a source of trouble to immigrants and tourists, for instance, who might find themselves in funny, embarrassing and at times even annoying situations, not being able to automatically identify the right meaning. Yes it’s always preferable to know what you’re talking about, isn’t it?