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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Language, language
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Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 17:37:16 GMT
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David Adrien Tanguay (dat@thinkage.on.ca) wrote:
> Why is it that a Latin derived word is okay but the equivalent English or
> French derived word is profane? 'shit' == 'feces'/'defecate',
> 'piss' == 'urinate', 'fuck' == 'fornicate'/'coitus'.

A long interesting story, I'm sure, as is usual with language. I've heard 
theories that it started (in English) with the Norman conquest; the 
Norman French vocabulary was upper-class, the court language, which made 
the older Anglo-Saxon lower-class by comparison -- "vulgar" in the 
original sense, "of the common people". 

That's not certain, however. The situation is more complicated than I've 
made it sound. It's certainly true, however, that our shortest, most 
common, most "primal" words are all from Old English: all the pronouns, 
all the conjunctions, words like "meat", "hand", "stop", "eat", you get 
the idea. I think the statistic was that of the fifty most common English 
words, all are from Old English; of the hundred most common, 85 are. 
Something like that. And a lot of legal and governmental terms are from 
French: "bailiff", "jury", "verdict", "president". 

(Although I've always been pleased that "sheriff" is straight out of Old
English "shire reeve", and meant a thousand years ago exactly what it
means today -- a local government official in charge of administering the 
law.)

The Latin connection, of course, is that Latin was the language of the 
medieval church, which meant medieval science. And scientists have to be 
able to talk about anything they want; you can't stop them, that's 
practically the definition. Again the distinction formed between educated 
language, which was proper between educated men, and "profane" language 
-- a telling word itself, since it originally was the opposite of 
"sacred", not of "polite". (Although certainly a large part of swearing 
is blasphemy, which is profane in both senses -- and vulgar, since an 
educated man was by definition a Church man, one way or another, and 
would never think of taking the Lord's name in vain. Theoretically.)

> Medaeival
> squeamishness wasn't successful at removing the old words for these things
> from the common (== 'vulgar') language.

I don't recall that medieval folk were particularly squeamish. 
Shakespeare and Chaucer, as I said earlier. Popular entertainment was 
full of fart jokes and women getting grabbed by the "queynte". The age of 
Bowdler was the *modern* age, the 1800's and still going strong.

> If the concept is acceptable (and
> it may not be, but that's a different issue), the choice of word shouldn't
> matter much. Arguing about 'piss' vs. 'urinate', in a technical context
> like this (as opposed to, e.g., 'piss off'), is mindless prudery.

No, there I disagree. This is written prose; the choice of word is more 
important than anything. That's why I'll use "piss" if it's the best 
choice for the sentence in question.

--Z (full of urine and *acetic acid*)

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
