David Profumo
Poking The Octupus
The Untranslatables: The Most Intriguing Words from Around the World
By C J Moore
Chambers Harrap 127pp £8.99
The good old English language enjoys a famously unstable vocabulary and an astonishing history of borrowing words from abroad. In Chaucer’s time, foreign loans accounted for practically half the lingo – and today that figure may be half as much again. Every time another dictionary appears, some logologists express their horror at the welter of new terms admitted, but, as prescriptive linguists since the time of Swift and Johnson have realised, any attempt to constrain and confine our mother tongue is like trying to cram a live octopus into a carry-on bag.
Thanks to our Norman overlords and their fancy ways, many of the early additions to Anglo-Saxon were from French, though any linguistic contraflow has been resisted (we have never been forgiven for English becoming the diplomatic language and the lingua franca of the airline industry). Le Monde, prosecuted
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Are iPhones ruining children's lives? A prominent American psychologist thinks so.
@tiffanyjenkins is not so sure:
Tiffany Jenkins - The Smartphone Pandemic
Tiffany Jenkins: The Smartphone Pandemic - The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an...
literaryreview.co.uk
India's 'festival of democracy', or general election, begins next month. Like every good festival, it looks likely to have its fair share of murders and arrests.
@OwenBennettJon probes the state of democracy in India:
Owen Bennett-Jones - New Delhi Confidential
Owen Bennett-Jones: New Delhi Confidential - The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India by Alpa Shah
literaryreview.co.uk
Where is the world's newest narcostate and why is it thriving?
@AdamBrookesWord investigates Asia's meth mecca.
Adam Brookes - Meth Comes to Myanmar
Adam Brookes: Meth Comes to Myanmar - Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Outwitted the CIA by Patrick Winn
literaryreview.co.uk