The Unknown English Language

Philology and etymology are two words everybody knows without knowing what they really mean any more than they know the meaning and history of any words they speak all day long. The object of this book is to give in an hour or two, a general understanding of a subject to which scholars have devoted their lives. No dull information - just the headline high spots - a sort of Van Loon treatment for all ages, with maybe a couple of diagrams. Nothing original except the presentation. Everything could be found in a large public library by anyone with years of leisure. roots and derivations
(I've been at it for 6 hours a day for years, just for love)

Part I is in the form of a long essay, newspaper style (I hope) and gives the history, the story of the English language - the most curious story any language has ever had. (Philologists claim English is the "grandest" language on earth.) I trace its age, evolution, processes, events, forces, accumulations and impulses, showing how the words spoken in the farthest American provinces go far beyond the British Isles; how they originated in the wealthiest family of all speech, the Indo-European, and how later their roots, sounds and structures lived on the Ganges, in Bagdad and in Athens and Rome; how latterly most of the words in English are not English at all; how the language nearly died and how it was resuscitated. I do not go into the mystical aspect of words, like Cardinal Newman and other Bishon Hutchinson, though I give several quotasions from these worthies that excite interest in my subject, if I'm not mistaken. Example: "Words are the judges of your thoughts, the landmarks of all interests, that are greater than mountains, have subdued kingdoms. Love and hatred and even life and death are in the power of the tongue."

Part II contains the following divisions:

① Curiosities of the languages - long list of curious words - such as sardonic, to give an example. This word first found in Homer's Odyssey. A poisonous herb resembling parsley grew in Sardinia. Whoever ate of it was supposed to die laughing. This list, believe it or not, is completely

omitted. Sanskrit has doubtless suffered less change, but even twin
sisters are not always precisely alike and in the course of many years
one may come to look younger than the other."

The Anglo Saxon language is that which was spoken before 1200. It
is the remains of one of three oldest English main dialects called
Wessex. The remains of the other two are very scanty. (Footnote. Of
the Old Northern, only Northumbrian versions of the Gospels and the *xk*
_glosses_ in the Durham ritual. Of Old Midland or Mercian dialect, glosses
exist to the "Vespasian Psalter", the "Corpus Glossary," etc. The
dialect
abundant remains of the Old Saxon or Wessex/*HANLAKKE*, the foundation
of our English language, were again divided into three dialects in the
middle period/English, 1200 to 1460 A.D., known as the Northern, Mid-
land and Southern.

Don't wish this book to be dry and rigorous in the reading. To
know truly this, our language, it would be necessary to give a lifetime
and be a scholar. This book is a question of headline information, ex-
citing like the front page of a newspaper, if you're so set up. It
skips the *xk* study hour, is meant to inform while entertaining you.
Hope no philologist ever lays eyes on it and sees that a word is taken
directly back to its source of meaning, rather than being led through
first, French, then old French, then late Latin, early Latin, late Greek,
early Greek, as is proper. Better busy people *xexx* skim than never
read at all. No one but busy people would agree with me, I know.

In the early life of our language it was vital. It grew words
from its own roots, instead of borrowing ready-made words, as plants
grow leaves, *xwforexw*tww*wxw*thw*xxw*xxw*xxx (Example: byrn-an, to burn,
grew brimstone, brandy, brand, brunt, brown, brindle.) After the
for
Norman invasion it lost this power. It was easier to borrow (and keep)
a French, Latin or Greek word. The genuinely English word fairhood was
put aside for the French beauty. (beauté) forewit was replaced with the
Latin caution; the Greek cemetery took the place of liche-rest. We
the Greek
could have had star-craft instead of/astronomy (astron, star, nemein,
arrange); word-hoard instead of the Latin vocabulary. Professor
Meiklejohn of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, used to tell his
pupils that some of our own native English words have become so strange
to us that sentences composed entirely of English words are hardly
intelligible and that we have to translate some of them into Greek or
Latin to understand the meaning.

4

Add paragraph page 1 The wise old man - because we live on the surface of our minds without rich roots to nourish us, to make pictures for our interior eye, like the eastern peoples. We are empty instead of each carrying about within himself a beautiful museum. Words hold all man is - they are the carriers of our inheritance, the fused result of the creative thought, history and experiences of the entire human race. Man does not leave his posterity books for their wisdom but some of which the words/they use in books. Even an episode of history can be contained in one word, as in case of sycophant. Sykon, fig + phainein, show, a fig show-er, one who shows figs. This originally referred to a soy informing on anyone who exported figs from a certain Greek province. Take auspicious, too. Aus, bird + AUREREERE specere, look at gives auspex, for omens bird inspector and recalls how watching birds/was once a profession in the days of oracles. Swinton called words, "medals of the mind." John Sterling at the age of nine discovered the real meaning of the word sincere and became a philologist. (I tried this on my nephew the other day but instead of running to a book he went back to his football) sincere (Footnote: Since you're not likely to find/it in an ordinary dictionary, here it is.: sine cera, without wax, referring to the old practise of filling up flaws in furniture with wax. Sincere or without wax came to mean pure, unadulterated. (More in notes) Add page 2

No understanding possible of words unless you consider their roots, a study full of interest and excitement. Note page A. The human race babbles out words, not realizing the history of effort and psychic struggle they contain of painful thought, the cost of each root, the intellectual triumph of each prefix, suffix. From the 5 primitive sounds that Max Müller considers were the base of all language, we have hundreds of tongues today containing millions of words - each one indicating mental progress of a group of people. (Shakespeare) Words - we use them and never think about them. If we did life would have a new and delicious flavor (flavor from yellow, Lat. flavus) and contribute to our thought instead of muddling it more. Thinking about each word is an education (leading, duco,) in itself. Nothing original about a book like this - except it happened through the author's having read the dictionary through for pleasure, that's original, I suppose. You can find out for yourself what is in it by reading dictionaries, everyone encyclopedias, the works of a dozen philologists. But will ANYONE take the trouble? No, hardly anyone who hasn't a passion for it. It will ever

84

Thursday

1936

(MM)

Dear Jane,

Your air mail letter just here. I did not write before
because until yesterday there was nothing to write. Also Gordon said
she had already told you he had no plans. I gather that he has already
spent the five hundred dollars she gave him for Alice because he was
again tapping the <u>caissière</u> at the Café de la Paix.

Yes, I had a charming visit with M. in one way - just to see her is charming. But there was no time for communication and we felt barriers of time, change, separation. Georgette looks weak and ill. As soon as I returned I went to the Café to ask G--f about her symptoms. He didn't wish to talk about her but I begged him to help my worry so he said that long ago he had "smelled" what would happen in her - he feared a screw was broken and analysed as well as he could from what little I could tell him. He didn't wish to examine her when she comes, but I told him some money would be paid for it and asked him to do this for me. Finally he consented. (Some days he is desperate for a thousand francs and I can certainly get that for Georgette.) I have such absolute faith in what he can read of illness in a person's face and "aura" that I will accept whatever he says about Georgette as the basis for the next try at curing her somewhere. No doctor yet has spoken of her kidneys, bladder, liver, heredity combinations as he did yesterday - and her "life" in connection with all of this.

Then we talked of MY inner life. The more I told him about the
complete absence in me of anything approaching a base, or any desirable
condition whatever, the more he seemed to be pleased. He said I had to
die in the first world to be ressurected in the second and then only
could I live in both. "Man has two worlds." He is fixing the first
foundation stone now, he said, then will place second gravity stone
and another afterward until there are seven.

Used

2

He said "imagination" had always been my enemy and weakness. I must now unquote it, forget it, hate it. Later I can have it again and use it. He said it was good thing I am so unhappy subjectively but that now I *could* be happy objectively, for I *was* past the stage of trying and now only *had* to DO. Told me to leave out everything in exercises except the words and the sensing. Also to sleep and rest as much as possible. He especially wanted to know how it was when I saw old friends. I told him all I could and he said it *wxxx* had to be like that, or his work would have meant nothing - all relations must change, people who used to like me must hate me now, I must see what everyone I knew is really like. I said these people are not like other friends and he said "I know the type of both."

He said seeing other people's merdeness would help me to see my own. It was certainly hard to take and he knew it, of course. He helped by explaining man has two mentations and I must now try to have the kind he has: : : He said only now are *being-data* being crystallized in me. In the past everything had rolled off me like water from back of goose. (Those accretions you used to talk about.) All fault of my emotional and "mental" life.

I had to see an old friend of Janet's and mine from America, here for one day, so could not lunch at his house, dinner instead. At four I went to see the Chaplin film with Katie, could not even follow it, I thought so old-fashioned and witless. Then to Café again, where he told Russian jokes and asked Katie to put down in Elizabethan for him the translation of a Russian prayer: "May God kill all people who do not make merde in the morning, make loud noise at noon and make So and So at in evening." "I not ask Kanari, she too naive." Not at all, I could also - but wouldn't especially wish to.

3

We went there at 8, read till 9:30 - Gordon, Katie and I. Dinner, "abundance," nothing interesting said except about his childhood life. He described the great storeroom for food in his home and how the food was taken care of, butter underground, fresh vegetables in sand, how he stole butter. He had a cold and bad fever, hardly ate.

Cable from Janet - she's sailing the fourth April, here the 10th.

If he says he's staying or going, I'll let you know at once - her
Gordon might be days late - as he told/last night she was in all things.