More Useful "R" Words and some Afrikaans Words

Let's begin with the word rhotacism, which can also be written rotacism (though the former is much more frequently attested). It has two meanings, both relating to the pronunciation of the "r" sound. The Late Greek verb rhotakizein means "to make overmuch or wrong use of rho," and this definition points us in the right direction. Rhotacism can mean, first, an "too frequent use of 'r'," or "conversion of another sound, as 's,' into 'r'". One of the earliest uses in English (1847) has: "Neither the Spaniards nor Portuguese retain in their speech that strong Rhotacism which they denoted by the double rr." Thus, a person practicing rhotacism tends to roll or trill his/her words. But, a second definition ought also to be noted--"the inability or difficulty in pronouncing r." We have, from 1929, "'But I'm hungwy.' A pathetic little-girl's rhotacismus." Thus, whenever we have someone who has difficulty with "r," we can say that the person uses rhotacism.

Like An Oak

Before returning to more "normal" words, I want to take a detour on the picture created by one word that has reached deeply into the English language. Let's begin with the English word roble, which is one of the white oaks of California. In the town where I went to high school (Menlo Park, CA), there is a Roble Street. I never gave its name one moment of thought. Well, the Latin word behind roble is robur, an oak. We have the words roborant, meaning strengthening and roborate, meaning the same thing. In an old history of Cambridge University we have, "This Bull also relateth to ancient privledges of popes and princes, bestowed upon her; which herein are roborated and confirmed."

Something that is roboreous is either made of oak or is strong. But then we have a series of words derived from robust, which itself is also derived from the Latin robur. Something robust, of course, has strength and endurance. We also have the words robustly and robustness. Then, there is robustious. If you do something in a robustious manner, you either do it strongly or roughly or rudely. As with so many words, the original signification of robustious in English had to do with its root connection with strength or robustness. But it could also signify from early days (16th century) "violent, boisterous, noisy, strongly self-assertive." Shakespeare used the term in this latter sense in Hamlet: "O it offends me to the Soul, to see a robustious Pery-wig-pated Fellow, tear a Passion to tatters," III.ii.10.

So robust was the term derived from robur that it even became part of a verb which is in frequent use today--corroborate. We usually think of the verb corroborate as meaning solely to "confirm" something, as when we say that the eyewitness corroborated the story of the victim. But when we look at the word, we see that it consists of com, meaning "together," and roborare, meaning "strengthen," and so its root meaning is to "strengthen; make strong." So much is built on the little root robur, which is the word for oak. Thus, whenever you think of words so derived from robur, think of an oak. It will enliven your conversation.

A Few Afrikaans Terms

Ever since the National Senior Spelling Bee took place a few weeks ago, I have been corresponding with various friends from that "movement" about the bee and words in general. Scott Firebaugh, who participated and did well in 2006 but was unable to come this year, gave me a word that his daughter had discovered in the Unabridged as she was studying for the "kids bee" in 2006. This word got me thinking of some other Afrikaans terms I have run into on the net. Let's list the one in the Unabridged: blouwildebeesoog. Now that, under anyone's construction, is a mouthful. But if you take it apart, you can see how it means "a disease of domestic ruminants and horses consisting of exophthalmia and blindness." The three words behind it are "blue" and "wildebeest" and "eye." Oh, exophthalmia means a protrusion of the eye-ball. This disease occurs, for some reason, when a ruminant comes in contact with a gnu. I wish I knew that previously. Here is a web site that talks about the disease and its etiology and distribution.

Well, the same web site tells us that a synonym for blouwildebeesoog is uitpeuloog. It is, more precisely, an infection with Gedoelstia (flies of the family Oestridae) larvae leading to thrombophlebitis in animals, as well as to the bulging eye disease in cattle. Uitpeuloog has as many Google hits as blouwildebeesoog but it doesn't appear in the Unabridged. We have uitlander (foreigner, pronounced ATE lander) and uitspan (ATE span--to outspan), but no uitpeuloog. Indeed, one of the most difficult words to spell in the dictionary is a near neighbor: uintjie (pronounced ANE chee), which is the edible corn of various plants.

Let's keep going. The site also talks about the sweating sickness in ruminants, or sweetsiekte. It doesn't appear in the Unabridged, and there are fewer hits for this concept in Google. Then we have "rift valley fever," which is very well known in English (RVF), but which is slenkdalkoors in Afrikaans. Now the term slenkdalkoors is attested about twice as often as blouwildebeesoog, but most of the references are in Afrikaans sentences. It is a very widespread disease in South Africa, apparently. But it doesn't appear in the Unabridged either. Finally I ran into vrotpootjie which is elegantly translated as "foot rot." There are even more appearances of vrotpootjie than of slendalkoors, even though most of the appearances are in Afrikaans web sites. Since some of the web sites consider equine vaccination, I assume that the foot rot of which it speaks is in animals and not humans. It, too, doesn't appear in the Unabriged (oh, the OED wouldn't touch these words if you offered to give them a barrelfull of krugerrands). Finally, I came across rondavel, which is in all the dictionaries. It is a "round native hut of southern Africa." A picture is here.

My little section on these words is not to make you wish you knew Afrikaans. Indeed, I am pretty sure that Afrikaans is one language I will never learn. Yet it is to show the seeming arbitrariness of dictionary-makers. When and why does one recognized one word brought in from another language but then ignore several others that maybe are equally well-attested in that language and maybe useful in ours? My approach is that for every "foreign" word in the Unabridged (that is, derived from a modern foreign language), I should learn 5X that number of words from that language, just to show that I am not "limiting myself" to the words of the Unabridged.

Well, that is enough for one more night. Have a happy 4th of July!

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