By J. L. Speranza, Esq.
for the Grice Club, etc.
We are discussing how to translate
"those spots mean measles"
to French.
"That depends a lot deal," Kramer suggests, "on the fact as to whether the French recognise that as some sort of disease". They do, but then we want to have 'mean' as 'vouloir dire'. Kramer thinks we should also translate it onto Spanish using 'querer decir':
"Etymology apart, querer is a nice word"
Let me see if I can locate his exact wording. (I'm afraid I could not find his exact wording).
But got me onto thinking.
"etymology apart".
I was thinking ... You strip the word of its etymology and you get a pretty bare thing!
So Kramer _should_, I hope, protest.
For the Greeks, etymon was 'the true'. None of the scholastic 'verum' silliness for them. "Etymon" was the true. So, suppose we analyse 'mean'. Kramer seems to be concerned (in an amusing sort of way) that 'mean' _is_ correlated, etymologically, with 'mind'. And so, if we say,
The recent budget means that we'll have a hard year.
The black-out of New York means that tomorrow we'll have to buy some candles, or something.
Or
that dark clouds means "I will rain soon!".
Grice considers this in connection with the decapitation of Charles II.
He writes,
"Surely to say that the cause of Charles II's death was his decapitation would be an otiose thing to say". "No wonder Hume objected to our careless talk of 'cause' like that".
For Hume found that 'cause' is connected, though not, even, etymologically, with 'will'. So that 'caused' is 'willed' (What caused his measles was that blooming virus). (What caused his spots is his measles). Etc.
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But if you take the etymology out of 'mean' how d'you mean? Etc.
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The way to build a cupola is to put up a center pole, connect quarter-circles to the pole, then take the pole away and let the quarter circles hold themselves up. So much for etymology.
ReplyDeleteMmm.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I don't know. Oddly, my father, who was an architect, thought the ONLY building worth constructing was Bruneleschi's thing in Firenze.
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I suppose we can elaborate on various types of 'etymological ignorance'.
I'm using 'grice' in the thread provocatively, since surnames are usually held to have no sense, only reference.
A man is called "Black". We don't care what the etymology of 'black' is. We find that a Hispanic man is called "Blanco", or an Italian man is called "Bianco". We are told that these are _etymologically_ related:
x es blanco ----- x is black.
This _is_ confusing. We are later told that it isn't because 'black' and 'blanco' (white rather than black in Spanish) are 'extreme' words for the extremes of the spectrum, as it were.
So this in a way is transparent, and explainable. To me, the roots of Romance languages is something I feel some responsibility to know about, but then I do have free time.
For Anglophones I can't expect that they'll invest the waste in learning about ultimate etymologies.
To some extent, if I can choose, as you say, between a learned Latinism in Spanish and an odd Indian word (e.g. "Mexican", "mexacli", "texacli", whatever), I'll go for the "Latin-oriented" latinism. Because it will be more transparent.
In this respect, words which are not Aryan in origin (Hebrew, Japanese -- 'geisha', Pacific -- 'taboo', or Native American, 'totem' leave me cold.
If ALL the words I used had obscure etymologies I guess perhaps I should commit suicide!
Then you father has surely explained to you that il duomo was the first large dome built without centering. It has no etymology. What a serendipitous example!
ReplyDelete