The Mother Tongue (31 page)

Perhaps the most promising of all such languages is Seaspeak, devised in Britain for the use of maritime authorities in busy sea lanes such as the English Channel. The idea of Seaspeak is to reduce to a minimum the possibilities of confusion by establishing set phrases for ideas that are normally expressed in English in a variety of ways. For instance, a partly garbled message might prompt any number of responses in English: “What did you say?” “I beg your pardon, I didn't catch that. Can you say it again?” “There's static on this channel. Can you repeat the message?” and so on. In Seaspeak, only one expression is allowed: “Say again.” Any error, for whatever reason, is announced simply as “Mistake,” and not as “Hold on a minute, I've given you the wrong bearings,” and so on.

Computers, with their lack of passion and admirable ability to process great streams of information, would seem to be ideal for performing translations, but in fact they are pretty hopeless at it, largely on account of their inability to come to terms with idiom, irony, and other quirks of language. An oft-cited example is the computer that was instructed to translate the expression
out of sight, out of mind
out of English and back in again and came up with
blind insanity.
It is curious to reflect that we have computers that can effortlessly compute pi to 5,000 places and yet cannot be made to understand that there is a difference between
time flies like an arrow
and
fruit flies like a banana
or that in the English-speaking world to make up a story, to make up one's face, and to make up after a fight are all quite separate things. Here at last Esperanto may be about to come into its own. A Dutch computer company is using Esperanto as a bridge language in an effort to build a workable translating system. The idea is that rather than, say, translate Danish directly into Dutch, the computer would first translate it into Esperanto, which could be used to smooth out any difficulties of syntax or idiom. Esperanto would in effect act as a kind of air filter, removing linguistic impurities and idiomatic specks that could clog the system.

Of course, if we all spoke a common language things might work more smoothly, but there would be far less scope for amusement. In an article in
Gentleman's Quarterly
in 1987, Kenneth Turan described some of the misunderstandings that have occurred during the dubbing or subtitling of American movies in Europe. In one movie where a policeman tells a motorist to pull over, the Italian translator has him asking for a sweater (i.e., a pullover). In another where a character asks if he can bring a date to the funeral, the Spanish subtitle has him asking if he can bring a fig to the funeral.

In the early 1970s, according to
Time
magazine, Russian diplomats were issued a Russian/English phrasebook that fell into Western hands and was found to contain such model sentences as this instruction to a waiter: “Please give me curds, sower cream, fried chicks, pulled bread and one jellyfish.” When shopping, the well-versed Soviet emissary was told to order “a ladies' worsted-nylon swimming pants.”

But of course it works the other way. A Braniff Airlines ad that intended to tell Spanish-speaking fliers that they could enjoy sitting in leather (
en cuero
) seats, told them that they could fly
encuero
—without clothes on.

In 1977, President Carter, on a trip to Poland, wanted to tell the people, “I wish to learn your opinions and understand your desires for the future,” but his interpreter made it come out as “I desire the Poles carnally.” The interpreter also had the president telling the Poles that he had “abandoned” the United States that day, instead of leaving it. After a couple of hours of such gaffes, the president wisely abandoned the interpreter.

All of this seems comical, but in fact it masks a serious deficiency. Because the richest and most powerful nation on earth could not come up with an interpreter who could speak modern Polish, President Carter had to rely on Polish government interpreters, who naturally “interpreted” his speeches and pronouncements in a way that fit Polish political sensibilities. When, for instance, President Carter offered his condolences to dissident journalists who “wanted to attend but were not permitted to come,” the interpreters translated it as “who wanted to come but couldn't” and thus the audience missed the point. In the same way, President Nixon in China had to rely on interpreters supplied by the Chinese government.

We in the English-speaking world have often been highly complacent in expecting others to learn English without our making anything like the same effort in return. As of 1986, the number of American students studying Russian was 25,000. The number of Russian students studying English was four million—giving a ratio of 160 to one in the Soviet's favor. In 1986, the Munich newspaper
Süddeutsche Zeitung
investigated the studying of German as a foreign language around the world. In the United States, the number of college students taking a German course was 120,000, down from 216,000 in 1966. In the Soviet Union, the number was nine million. The problem is unlikely to get better. Between 1966 and 1986, 150 American colleges and universities canceled their German programs. In 1989, some 77 percent of all new college graduates had taken no foreign-language courses.

A presidential commission under Ronald Reagan called the situation scandalous. In 1987, in an effort to redress the balance Congress voted into law the Education for Economic Security Act, which provided an extra $2.45 million to promote the study of foreign languages—or a little over one cent per person in the country. That should really turn the tables. There is evidence to suggest that some members of Congress aren't fully sympathetic with the necessity for a commercial nation to be multilingual. As one congressman quite seriously told Dr. David Edwards, head of the Joint National Committee on Languages, “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me” [quoted in the
Guardian,
April 30, 1988].

Not only are we not doing terribly well at foreign languages, we're not even doing terribly well at English. The problem was well voiced by Professor Randolph Quirk, president of the British Academy and one of that country's leading linguistic scholars, when he wrote: “It would be ironic indeed if the millions of children in Germany, Japan and China who are diligently learning the language of Shakespeare and Eliot took more care in their use of English and showed more pride in their achievement than those for whom it is the native tongue.”

We might sometimes wonder if we are the most responsible custodians of our own tongue, especially when we reflect that Oxford University Press sells as many copies of the
Oxford English Dictionary
in Japan as it does in America, and a third more than in Britain.

13.

Names

T
he English, it has always seemed to me, have a certain genius for names. A glance through the British edition of
Who's Who
throws up a roll call that sounds disarmingly like the characters in a P. G. Wodehouse novel: Lord Fraser of Tullybelton, Captain Allwyne Arthur Compton Farquaharson of Invercauld, Professor Valentine Mayneord, Sir Helenus Milmo, Lord Keith of Kinkel. Many British appellations are of truly heroic proportions, like that of the World War I admiral named Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfulry Plunkett-Ernel-Erle-Drax. The best ones go in for a kind of gloriously silly redundancy toward the end, as with Sir Humphrey Dodington Benedict Sherston Sherston-Baker and the truly unbeatable Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraduati Tollemache-Tollemache-de Orellana-Plantagenet-Tollemache-Tollemache, a British army major who died in World War I. The leading explorer in Britain today is Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes. Somewhere in Britain to this day there is an old family rejoicing in the name MacGillesheatheanaich. In the realms of nomenclature clearly we are dealing here with giants.

Often, presumably for reasons of private amusement, the British pronounce their names in ways that bear almost no resemblance to their spelling. Leveson-Gower is “looson gore,” Marjoribanks is “marchbanks,” Hiscox is “hizzko,” Howick is “hoyk,” Ruthven is “rivven,” Zuill is “yull,” Menzies is “mingiss.” They find particular pleasure in taking old Norman names and mashing them around until they become something altogether unique, so that Beaulieu becomes “bewley,” Beauchamp turns into “beecham,” Prideaux into “pridducks,” Devereux to “devrooks,” Cambois to “cammiss,” Hautbois to “hobbiss,” Belvoir somehow becomes “beaver,” and Beaudesert turns, unfathomably, into “belzer.”

They can perform this trick with even the simplest names, turning Sinclair into “sinkler,” Blackley into “blakely,” Blount into “blunt,” Bethune into “beeton,” Cockburn into “coburn,” Coke into “cook.” Lord Home becomes “lord hume,” the novelist Anthony Powell becomes “pole,” P. G. Wodehouse becomes “woodhouse,” the poet William Cowper becomes “cooper.” Caius College, Cambridge, is “keys,” while Magdalen College, Oxford, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, are both pronounced “mawdlin.”

I could go on and on. In fact, I think I will. Viscount Althorp pronounces his name “awltrop,” while the rather more sensible people of Althorp, the Northamptonshire village next to the viscount's ancestral home, say “all-thorp.” The Scottish town of Auchinleck is pronounced “ock-in-leck,” but the local baron, Lord Boswell of Auchinleck, pronounces it “affleck.” There are two Barons Dalziel. One pronounces it “dalzeel,” the other “dee-ell.” The family name Ridealgh can be pronounced “ridalj” or “riddi-alsh.” Some members of the Pepys family pronounce it “peeps” as the great diarist Samuel Pepys did, but others say “peppiss” and still others say “pips.” The family name Hesmondhalgh can be “hezmondhaw,” “hezmondhalsh,” or “hezmondhawltch.” The surname generally said to have the most pronunciations is Featherstonehaugh, which can be pronounced in any of five ways: “feather-stun-haw,” “feerston-shaw,” “feston-haw,” “feeson-hay,” or (for those in a hurry) “fan-shaw.” But in fact there are two other names with five pronunciations: Coughtrey, which can be “kōtry,” “kawtry,” “kowtry,” “kootry,” and “kofftry,” and Wriotheseley, which can be “rottsly,” “rittsly,” “rizzli,” “rithly,” or “wriotheslee.”

The problem is so extensive, and the possibility of gaffes so omnipresent, that the BBC employs an entire pronunciation unit, a small group of dedicated orthoepists (professional pronouncers) who spend their working lives getting to grips with these illogical pronunciations so that broadcasters don't have to do it on the air.

In short, there is scarcely an area of name giving in which the British don't show a kind of wayward genius. Take street names. Just in the City of London, an area of one square mile, you can find Pope's Head Alley, Mincing Lane, Garlick Hill, Crutched Friars, Threadneedle Street, Bleeding Heart Yard, Seething Lane. In the same compact area you can find churches named St. Giles Cripplegate, St. Sepulchre Without Newgate, All Hallows Barking, and the practically unbeatable St. Andrews-by-the-Wardrobe. But those are just their everyday names: Oftentimes the full, official titles are even more breathtaking, as with The Lord Mayor's Parish Church of St. Stephen Walbrook and St. Swithin Londonstone, St. Benet Sheerhogg and St. Mary Bothall with St. Laurence Pountney, which is, for all that, just one church.

Equally arresting are British pub names. Other people are content to dub their drinking establishment with pedestrian names like Harry's Bar and the Greenwood Lounge. But a Briton, when he wants to sup ale, must find his way to the Dog and Duck, the Goose and Firkin, the Flying Spoon, or the Spotted Dog. The names of Britain's 70,000 or so pubs cover a broad range, running from the inspired to the improbable, from the deft to the daft. Almost any name will do so long as it is at least faintly absurd, unconnected with the name of the owner, and entirely lacking in any suggestion of drinking, conversing, and enjoying oneself. At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners—this is a basic requirement of most British institutions—and ideally it should excite long and inconclusive debate, defy all logical explanation, and evoke images that border on the surreal. Among the pubs that meet, and indeed exceed, these exacting standards are the Frog and Nightgown, the Bull and Spectacles, the Flying Monk, and the Crab and Gumboil.

However unlikely a pub's name may sound, there is usually some explanation rooted in the depths of history. British inns were first given names in Roman times, 2,000 years ago, but the present quirky system dates mostly from the Middle Ages, when it was deemed necessary to provide travelers, most of them illiterate, with some sort of instantly recognizable symbol.

The simplest approach, and often the most prudent, was to adopt a royal or aristocratic coat of arms. Thus a pub called the White Hart indicates ancient loyalty to Richard II (whose decree it was, incidentally, that all inns should carry signs), while an Eagle and Child denotes allegiance to the Earls of Derby and a Royal Oak commemorates Charles II, who was forced to hide in an oak tree after being defeated by Cromwell during the English Civil War. (If you look carefully at the pub sign, you can usually see the monarch hiding somewhere in the branches.) The one obvious shortcoming of such a system was that names had to be hastily changed every time a monarch was toppled. Occasionally luck would favor the publicans, as when Richard III (symbolized by a white boar) was succeeded by the Earl of Oxford (blue boar) and amends could be simply effected with a pot of paint. But pubkeepers quickly realized that a more cost-effective approach was to stick to generic names, which explains why there are so many pubs called the Queen's Head (about 300), King's Head (400), and Crown (the national champion at more than 1,000).