The Story of English in 100 Words (27 page)

Tok Pisin does much better. It has four different ways of saying ‘you’.
Yu
, on its own, means I’m talking to one person. If I’m talking to two people, I say
yutupela
(‘you two’). If I’m talking to three people, I say
yutripela
(‘you three’). And if I’m talking to more than three people, I say
yupela
.

The same system operates for the third person. If I say
em
, I mean ‘he, she or it’. If I say
tupela
, I mean ‘they two’.
Tripela
means ‘they three’. And
ol
means ‘they four or more’.

The first person is even more sophisticated, as, in addition to
mi
(‘I’), Tok Pisin allows speakers to distinguish how many people are included in the conversation. Imagine John and Mary talking to a group. John says, ‘We’re going to be late’. Does he mean ‘Mary and I are going to be late’ or ‘All of us are going to be late’? In English, it isn’t possible to decide without further exploration. In Tok Pisin, however, the distinction is clear. If John meant ‘one of you and me’, he would say
yumitupela
. If he meant ‘two of you and me’, he would say
yumitripela
. And if he meant ‘all of you and me’, he would say
yumipela
.

But he could do something else. He could also
say, addressing Mary,
mitupela
, which would mean ‘he or she and me, but not you’. If he said
mitripela
, it would mean ‘both of them and me, but not you’. And if he said
mipela
, he would mean ‘all of them and me, but not you’. Here he is excluding Mary, whereas with the examples in the previous paragraph he was including her. Standard English has nothing like this. All it has is the highly ambiguous
we
.

The vocabulary of the pidgin Englishes of the world contain tens of thousands of words. Many have a spelling which shows a clear link with the source language, such as
kap
(‘cup’) and
galas
(‘glass’). Other words are more difficult to interpret, such as
liklik
(‘little’) and
wantaim
(‘together’). Taken as a whole, along with the distinctive grammar and pronunciation, some analysts consider the differences from standard English to be so great that they think of pidgin Englishes as new languages. If they’re right, we now have an English ‘family of languages’ on earth.

Schmooze

a Yiddishism (19th century)

It’s the initial two sounds that give
schmooze
away as a Yiddish word. English words traditionally don’t allow the sound
sh
to appear before a consonant. A combination of
s
+ consonant is fine, as in
spin, still
and
skin
. But if anyone said
shpin
,
shtill
and
shkin
, we would think they had a speech defect – or were engaging in a bad imitation of Sean Connery.

Things changed in the late 19th century, when a new kind of loanword arrived from Yiddish. English previously had borrowed few words from this language –
matzo
(‘unleavened bread’) was a very early one, first recorded in 1650. But we don’t find much evidence of them in writing until the 19th century, when we get such words as
kibosh
(‘finishing off’, 1836),
nosh
(‘food’, 1873)
chutzpah
(‘brazen impudence’, 1892),
pogrom
(‘organised massacre’, 1891) – and
schmooze
(‘leisurely intimate chat’, 1897).

Schmooze
wasn’t alone as the century turned. Apart from its derived forms (
schmoozer, schmoozing
), it was accompanied by several other words beginning with
schl-
or
schm-
, such as
schlemiel
(‘clumsy person’) and
schmuck
(‘objectionable person’). During the 1920s and ’30s we find
schlep
(‘haul, toil’) and its related forms, such as
schlepping
and
schlepper
(‘person of little worth, scrounger’),
schnozzle
and
schnozz
(‘nose’) and
schmaltz
(‘melted chicken fat’),
schmaltzy
and
schmaltziness
, whose ‘greasy’ connotations led to the word coming to mean ‘excessive sentimentality’, especially when talking about writing, music and song.
Schm-
in particular seems to have caught on, because by the end of the decade we find it being used in a remarkable way, forming nonsense words.

‘There’s a crisis,’ says one person, and another disagrees. ‘Crisis-schmisis!’ The usage conveys scepticism, disparagement or derision. There’s no crisis, and the first speaker is stupid to suggest there is one. It’s a simple sound substitution, and it became hugely popular, especially in the USA. Spelling varies, with words often appearing with
shm-
, but all kinds of words have been modified in this way, as in
surveillance-shmurveillance, marathon-schmarathon, fancy-shmancy, baby-schmaby
and
holiday-schmoliday
. It even led to a proper name.
Joe Schmoe
is a fictitious name for the ordinary American guy.

OK

debatable origins (19th century)

The little word
OK
has a linguistic reputation that belies its size. Over a thousand words in English have an etymology which, in the words of the
Oxford English Dictionary
, is ‘origin unknown’. Nobody knows where
bloke
comes from, or
condom, gimmick, nifty, pimp, pooch, queasy, rogue
or
skiffle
. Theories abound, of course, some very ingenious. Did
nifty
arise as a shortened form of
magnificat
? Is
gimmick
from magicians’ use of
gimac
, an anagram of
magic
? But no word has attracted more theorising than
OK
.

Is it from Scottish
och aye
? Is it from French
au quai
(the goods – or girls – have safely arrived ‘at the quayside’)? Is it from Choctaw
oke
(‘it is’)? Is it from Wolof
okeh
(‘yes’). Is it from Latin
omnis korrecta
(‘all correct’, sometimes written by schoolmasters on homework)? Is it from the Greek letters
omega + khi
(an early incantation against fleas)? Is it from
Obediah Kelly
, a railwayman who used to authorise freight movements with his initials? There are dozens more.

15. Residents of an estate in Fulham, London, celebrate the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977. Decades later, the slogan shows no sign of disappearing. When Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, the
Mail on Sunday
carried the headline: ‘The Middle Class Rules OK.’

Thanks to a fine piece of research by American lexicographer Allan Walker Read, we now know that all of these theories are wrong. It first appeared in 1839 in a Boston newspaper, where there was a vogue for inventing humorous abbreviations using initial letters – an early instance of a language game.
KY
, for example, would be used for the phrase
know yuse
(= ‘no use’). And
OK
comes from
oll korrect
, a humorous adaptation of the words
all correct
.

Why didn’t it disappear, like the other abbreviations did? Because in 1840 it came to be associated with a totally different use – as a slogan during the 1840 US elections. It was the shortened form of
Old Kinderhook
, the nickname of President Martin Van Buren – Kinderhook being the name of his home-town in New York State. There was a
Democratic OK Club
, with its members called
the OKs
, and they had a war-cry: ‘Down with the Whigs, boys, OK!’

The combination of the two usages, in a very short space of time, resulted in the rapid use of
OK
as an interjection meaning ‘all right, good’. Other senses soon developed, such as ‘fashionable’ (
the OK thing to do
) and ‘trustworthy’ (
He’s OK
). A century on, and the word was still developing new uses, such as ‘comfortable’ (
Are you OK with that?
). In British
English, it received huge graffiti exposure during the 1970s, when the fad of saying that someone or something
rules OK
(= ‘is pre-eminent’) was seen on walls all over the country.

But
OK
has a linguistic reputation for a second reason: the number of variant forms it has accumulated over the years. There are variant spellings (
okay, okey
), a shortened version (
’kay
) and several expanded forms (
okie-dokie, okey doke(s), okey-cokey
). Today, I suppose it’s the basic
OK
form which is most often encountered, thanks to the dialogue button on our computer screens. Press
OK
and something will happen!

Ology

suffix into word (19th century)

Suffixes, unlike prefixes (
§87
), are reluctant to become independent words, so when we find it happening, it’s a notable moment.
Ology
is probably the most famous member of what is a very small club.

There have been
-ology
endings for a long time.
Theology
and
astrology
are two of the oldest, from the 14th century. More recent formations are
sociology
and
ecology
. Humorous and creative coinages abound, from James Joyce’s
codology
(‘hoaxing’) to the
dragonology
of some children’s books and the quirky titles of internet sites, such as
cheeseology
,
tattoo-ology
and (I kid you not)
fartology
. The ending means ‘the science or discipline’ of something, and comes from Greek
logos
(‘word’). It literally translates as ‘one who speaks in a certain way’.

Ology
, as a noun for a science, is first recorded in 1811, and by the time Charles Dickens was writing it was in common use. In
Hard Times
, Mrs Gradgrind reflects to her daughter about her headmaster husband, ‘a man of facts and calculations’:

You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all kinds from morning to night. If there is any Ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name.