Running amok

English is known as a language that has adopted freely from other languages. Not only is our grammar Germanic and our vocabulary chiefly French, but we also have numerous words from Spanish, Italian, and many other languages. Some of our most remote adoptions come from Malay, which is spoken about as nearly on the other side of the world as one can get from America. Apart from various animals and plants (notably bamboo, dugong, and orangutan), Malay has given us two common nouns and one adjective.
  • amok: To run amok is to attack wildly in all directions. Apparently, some Malays occasionally snap and begin an actual frenzied attack on everyone around them.
  • boondocks: It surprised me when I learned that this word was Malay, because it sounds perfectly English, and I hear it most from country folk (who actually live in the boondocks), where older words tend to persist. This word must fulfill a lacuna in English, because the only equivalent words are the derivative "boonies" and the expression "in the sticks," which doesn't sound nearly as isolated. (I've always wondered what the "sticks" are supposed to refer to.)
  • ketchup: Perhaps the most interesting word of Malay origin, and certainly the most common, is ketchup. It comes from a phrase meaning "fish sauce," but not in the sense that you might think: it was not originally a sauce for fish, but a sauce made from fish. I learned this interesting tidbit from Mark Kurlansky's book Salt: A World History. Back when salt was needed to preserve food, and pickling was used on everything, pickled fish was used as a kind of sauce, like soy sauce. The English added tomatoes in the 18th century.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science and Philosophy, Part I: Hume and Popper

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions. One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human l
Read more

Country Music

I noticed a long time ago that there isn't much difference between the sound of country music and rock music nowadays. If I'm surfing my radio and I come to a station playing jazz, classical, or rap, I recognize it right away; but if I come to a country or rock station, I often can't tell which it is until the song is half over. Country songs often have screaming guitars that would fit equally well in a hard rock song, and only a minority have a recognizably country instrument such as a fiddle or a banjo. All the same, no one could listen to a country music station for more than a few minutes without realizing that it is definitely not a rock station. What are the differences? There are some stylistic differences. Country songs are more likely to have a boogey beat or certain western-sounding bass lines. They also tend to be more formulaic: if you can't predict how a country song ends, you probably don't listen to much country music. But those things aren'
Read more

What Are Pronouns For?

 Here's what I don't get about people defining their own pronouns (and I use "their" advisedly):  If I am talking to you, your pronoun is "you."  No one disputes that.  If I am talking about you to another person, the pronoun I use to reference you is none of your business.  I am in a conversation with someone else; you are not a party to it, and you are not entitled to impose rules on it.  Ideally, you will never know what we say -- but if you do find out, it doesn't matter because the pronouns I used were for my convenience, not for your feelings.  Heck, I may not even have met you, may not have any idea what you identify as or even what sex you really are (as sometimes happens when people have names like "Leslie" or "Ashley" that get used for both sexes, or foreign names that I am unfamiliar with).  So mind your business and there will be nothing to get offended about.
Read more