[Artemisia] Smalls and language

[Bruce Padget]

--- The learned Belladonna writes,

> While I agree with many of your points regarding
> calling children  
> "children," I cannot embrace it as a standardized
> term to replace all  
> others, and one of those "others" is smalls. 

Oh...please do not read me to urge standardization in
vocabulary.  I generally favor simplification, but
only with regard to my persona as I understand him. 
Which is also subject to change!  I used to say (as
Niccolo) that I didn't do math, I had people to do
that for me.   Very soon into my little Italian
adventure, I learned how very un-Genoese that position
was.

To me,
> although the  
> article I linked to seems to indicate that smalls is
> an acceptable  
> "period" term, albeit with a modernized noun
> declension, and although  
> linguistics and etymology are among my favorite
> pastimes, it's not  
> about authenticity. I speak modern at events all the
> time. In fact, I  
> can't speak Middle English, let alone period Italian
> to match my  
> persona. And even if I could, no one would
> understand me.

> My point is that we speak modern English, and I am
> for anything that  
> enriches our lexicon and against anything that would
> impoverish it.  

> In fact, I have some amount of difficulty
> understanding the many  
> arguments I see in the SCA that indicate we should
> have only a single  
> word for each concept. To bring up the
> oft-referred-to waster  
> conversation, I remember that several people in that
> conversation  
> proposed simply calling the objects "swords." Why
> not call a sword a  
> sword? Well, were we to go that route, we would have
> merchants at  
> events selling sharp objects made of metal called
> swords; we would  
> have grown men and women fighting with tape-wrapped
> rattan objects  
> called swords; and we would have people of all ages
> sometimes  
> fighting with foam and cloth objects called swords.
> We would  
> ultimately end up modifying the noun sword in order
> to distinguish  
> between these many "swords." We'd end up with "heavy
> fighter swords"  
> and "youth swords" at the very least. So why not
> head that problem  
> off, if possible, by keeping more nouns in our
> lexicon?

Context will generally make it clear what sort of
sword is called for.  If I'm in a gathering of folk in
doublets and mesh masks, a request for a "sword" will
rarely be answered by bringing forth wrapped rattan.

There is also a broader context.  Lately, I usually
find myself in discussions where we simply *must* have
terms that will distinguish all the various types of
swords.  What I am trying to say, in my very inartful
way, not to you but to the world in general, is, "Stop
dictating, stop parotting!  Create and discuss!"

> Why do we want to eliminate so many words from the
> English language?  

I do not know if you respond to me particularly or no.
 If to me, we are in greater agreement than it may
appear.

My particular grievance has been what I call the
"flattening" of adjectives.  While we (speaking of
moderns generally) use a wealth of adjectives, we have
somewhere decided they all resolve to "good" or "bad."
   As I court herald, I raised a few eyebrows
referring to my Kings  as "awful" and "terrible." 
(Both were compliments, and meant as such.) More
recently, I recall a retired English colonel who was
vilified by some NPR listeners because he called the
9/11 attacks "imaginative."  ("How dare he praise
criminals like that!)

> Is it not bad enough that we've already lost almost
> all declension,  
> conjugation, and the intimate second person
> singular? Do we not have  
> room enough in our Society for both people who use
> the word  
> "children" and people who use the word "smalls?"
> And, isn't it nice  
> to be able to use more than one word for something
> and possibly still  
> remain in persona?
> 
> Of course, "common understanding" is not my
> justification for very  
> much of my speech�particularly not my written
> communications. More  
> often, I am motivated by love of language. These are
> extremely  
> different motivators. The first would seem to
> require standardizing  
> on simple vocabulary, while the second requires
> quite the opposite� 
> expanding and embracing our vocabulary. I'd like to
> close with an  
> example of this difference.
> 
> I have an object in my house that I most often call
> a colander. I  
> grew up calling it that in my house, where my mother
> owned a similar  
> object. I also sometimes call it a strainer, which
> was another word I  
> commonly heard for it in my childhood, and which
> makes the object's  
> purpose quite clear. When I remember that I really
> like the sound of  
> the word "sieve," I call it that, just to hear the
> word. Finally, the  
> Lady Flora, of whose household I am a member,
> frequently calls this  
> object a noodle-stay water-go, which still makes me
> giggle after five  
> years.

If you were to render it as "noodlestaywatergo," the
German speakers would feel right at home, and I dare
say Italians might as well. :D

More impotant -- *this* is creativity.  Simple
repetition of a term -- no matter how charming that
term may be -- is not creativity.  I have been in
several discussions where newcomers were told that the
SCA term for children is "smalls" and the term for car
is "dragon."  

So far, this discussion -- like most such discussions
-- regards words in isolation.  If it is clear in a
conversation that "smalls" refers to children -- or
for that matter, to underwear! ("He saw me in my
smalls!" :D) -- objection on my part would just be
obstinate.  If someone is telling an SCA newcomer that
small is the word for children, that is jargon, rude
in my understanding of modern and period etiquette.

> Now, were I motivated by "common
> understanding," I might feel  
> compelled to call a household meeting and suggest
> that we all call a  
> strainer a strainer, since that seems like the
> clearest and simplest  
> of the words for this object. But I am motivated by
> love of language,  
> and I love having these multiple words for the same
> object floating  
> about. They tickle me.

As do I, actually.  (But I'm not ticklish.  No,
really. :D)  First, "common" was probably not my best
word choice, as it has other associations.  Let's say
"general" understanding.  

More important, _The Courtier_ (as I understand it)
does not encourage achieving general understanding of
language by prescription.  Rather, a courtier becomes
familiar with local usage, and, through this
experience, learns how to choose words most likely to
convey the intended meaning to the audience.  If the
courtier is alone with the prince, and happens to know
that the prince most likes to call children "blixle,"
then for the sake of understanding in that setting,
"blixle" they are!  

Also, the courtier does not limit language to
pragmatic understanding.  Wordplay is a major source
of amusement.  And if no existing word will quite do,
make up your own!  Witness "sprezzatura," the key
virtue of a courtier, which has largely defied
attempts define it in Italian or to render it in
English.  (My favorite translation of _The Courtier_
doesn't even try.)

> Of course, I think you will not be able to accuse me
> of poor  
> spelling, and I sometimes wonder who I might have
> been in another  
> lifetime around the 14th or 15th century to feel
> this way, but I have  
> issues with standardized spelling, too. This is
> especially true in  
> the SCA, since standardized spelling is definitely
> NOT early period  
> and was in its infancy throughout the end of our
> period. I know that  
> Shakespeare spelled his own name in at least two
> different ways,  
> apparently at whim, and yet our College of Heralds
> rejects names  
> based on spelling. I imagine our knowledgeable
> heralds have good  
> justification for this practice, but since I haven't
> discovered the  
> arguments and precedents for it yet, it still makes
> me wonder.

I have enough difficulty defending my positions, I
will not undertake to defend the Society's heraldic
processes.  :D  I went better than a decade between
the arms I first submitted and the arms that recently
passed Kingdom in Caid, largely because of
disagreeements with those processes.  (It was
interesting.  Master Bruce Draconarius didn't argue at
all.  He just gave me a look that made it quite clear
that he'd be hurt if I didn't let him help me design
arms.  Devastating!)

I believe it was Mistress Tanglwystl who made the
argument that our difficulty with spelling is that
moderns think of a name or word as a series of
letters, and period folk were more likely to think of
them as series of sounds.   For people living in the
transition between the two ways of thinking, there
would be many fun possibilities.  Not unrelated, I'm a
qualified fan of l33t-speak and txt-speak, the
qualification being whether one uses them out of
creativity or ignorance.

Regards,
Niccolo
bapadget at yahoo.com