French, Latin and Middle English have enhanced my life. I know never to order escargot a la Bourguinonne and in flagrante delicto is a phrase I use daily.
I lapped up Chaucer as a student and still enjoy his bawdy humour, especially in the original Middle English.
Surely you can’t resist at least a grin when you hear this line read in old-style English: "This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart, As greet as it had been a thonder-dent."
Modern translations give us something like, "Then Nicholas at once let fly a fart, As great as if it were a thunder-clap," but I prefer the original.
Hard to believe that we are governed by politicians who regard Chaucer as not worth spending public money on, but they would be well-advised to support courses which teach old-timers Modern English.
If you’re over 60 you probably have to constantly ask the meaning of words you come across in news stories. At least, I do.
Just a few random examples taken from a newspaper from the last few weeks will illustrate my dilemma.
"Career catfishing: why Gen Z accept job offers – then ghost their new employers," was a headline which left me none the wiser and the next 20 minutes was spent with online dictionaries.
Catfishing, I was told, "refers to the creation of a fictitious online persona, or fake identity (typically on social networking platforms), with the intent of deception, usually to mislead a victim into an online romantic relationship or to commit financial fraud."
How the word exists involves a rather tortuous explanation: "The term was introduced with the release of the 2010 American documentary film Catfish. The producer had developed an online friendship with a 40-year-old housewife presenting herself as an 18-year-old girl from the Midwestern United States. In the documentary, the woman’s husband compares her behaviour to that of a catfish being shipped with live cod."
Further digging explained the practice of placing a catfish in a tank full of cod for the purposes of shipping. The catfish is said to prevent the cod from becoming pale and lethargic, ensuring the delivery of a high-quality product.
And "catfish"? They are "a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Named for their prominent barbels, which resemble a cat’s whiskers."
They are also called "brown bullhead" and in New Zealand they are regarded as a pest to be eradicated.
"Gen Z"? I knew it referred to an age group but still had to check the details.
It refers to people "born between 1997 and 2012. They are the first generation to have largely grown up using the internet, modern technology, and social media."
Then we come to "ghosting." The dictionary said, "To cut off all contact with (someone) abruptly and usually without explanation."
A nice use of "ghosting", so perhaps I could have guessed the meaning.
Had the headline read something like, "Younger people gaining jobs with inflated qualifications are not turning up to work" I would have been saved a lot of trouble but, then, that headline wouldn’t have grabbed Gen Z, would it?
Worst of all, though, was the fact that the story never told us why this was happening. Perhaps they don’t teach "Why" at journalism schools these days.
That same newspaper told me that a flight attendant had been sacked for twerking on TikTok.
"Flight attendant" was clear and a reminder that "air hostess" is verboten. I had a vague idea that TikTok was a place sad people go to make up for their inability to communicate face to face with other human beings, but "twerking" was baffling.
It means "sexually suggestive dancing characterised by rapid, repeated hip thrusts and shaking of the buttocks, especially while squatting". Makes you wish you’d been there.
As it happened, there were no passengers on that flight, so the woman’s dismissal seems a bit unfair, but "twerk" provided another piece of fascinating word history.
Possibly a contraction of "to work", it emerged from the New Orleans bounce music scene in 1990 and is "a type of dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner."
Chaucer would have loved it.
It's worth noting that the paper I was reading was an overseas publication and although it took me half an hour’s research to find out what the hell they were writing about, I enjoyed it, but that government-funded course on how to handle New English would still be welcome.
It won’t happen, of course, but at least the government was paying when I discovered Chaucer 50 years ago.
