Since posting about apostrophes twice recently, I encountered two more usages which are plain wrong.
The first was in a legal document, discussing social conditions in a country which I can’t remember but is irrelevant to the point (warning, brief mention of abortion):
Continue readingOne of the choirs I sing in is rehearsing Monteverdi’s Beatus vir qui timet domini (Blessed is the man who fears the Lord) (Psalm 112). Among other things (verse 2):
Potens in terra erit semen eius
His – um – semen will be mighty in the earth
Except that Latin semen has more senses than in English, including seed (of plants), child, descendant, cause and essence (compare the seed of an idea or the seeds of doubt). Of the 55 translations on Bible Gateway:
descendents 26 descendants [ seed] 1
seed 12
children 9
offspring 5
[spiritual] offspring 1
zera 1
Zera is the Hebrew equivalent, and is used by the Orthodox Jewish Bible, “an English language version that applies Yiddish and Hasidic cultural expressions to the Messianic Bible”. That verse reads, in full, “His zera shall be gibbor ba’aretz; ; the dor (generation) of the Yesharim (upright ones) shall be blessed”. If you know that many Hebrew/Yiddish/Hasidic words (I don’t), you may as well read it in Hebrew anyway (I don’t). Various Hebrew dictionaries give a similar range of definitions as the Latin.
In English, the meanings of semen, seed and descendants/children/offspring have diverged. You can’t show a photo of your children and grand-children and say “These are my semen” or “These are my seed”. You probably can’t even say “These are my descendants/children/offspring”.
(I am reminded of the book/tv series Game of Thrones. In a quasi-mediaeval fantasy world, the king’s chancellor is investigating an important secret. His last message before he is killed is “The seed is strong”.)
The other places we find semen in English are seminars and seminaries, were seeds are (meant to be) sown, or at least scattered.
Not surprisingly, semen is found in a number of European, mostly Latinate, languages with either or both the seed or reproductive meanings, and as a noun and/or verb.
In other, unrelated languages, it has different meanings which might prove unfortunate if mixed up, including Indonesian, in which it also means cement, Maltese butter (from Arabic samn) and Mauritian and Seychellois Creole road, street (from French chemim), but those are all loan words.
See also the Russian speed skater Семён/Semion/Semen/Semyon Elistratov, who I mentioned in this post, whose name is the perfectly good Russian equivalent of Simon.
PS 14 June 2024: I didn’t mention that the same word occurs in the canticle The song of Mary/Magnificat Abraham et semini eius. The same choir is now rehearsing Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. The same text is used in Russian (tranliterated) Avrahamu i semeni yego.
It was probably inevitable that a married couple of songwriters named Noël and Gloria would write a Christmas song. Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne wrote Do you hear what I hear? (first recording, by the Harry Simeone Chorale) in October 1962.
Or maybe not, because his name was actually Léon, and he was hesitant to write a Christmas song due to the commercialisation of Christmas. Noël wrote the words, influenced by the then-current Cuban Missile Crisis and Gloria the music.
Gloria came into English straight from Latin, and also via Old French glorie to become Middle English glory. I couldn’t figure out what the origin of noël (or noel) might be, and would not have guessed that it comes from Latin diēs nātālis day of birth (compare nativity). French did drastic things to Latin (note also that glorie became gloire), but that one is a stretch. Noël is a relatively late arrival into English, dating from 1805-1815. The First Nowell was first published in 1823.
One song which is often quoted or alluded to when discussing pronunciation differences (and even differences of any kind) is “Let’s call the whole thing off“, by George and Ira Gershwin, first sung by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the movie Shall we dance?. The relevant part starts:
You say either and I say either,
You say neither and I say neither
Most versions of the lyrics online don’t help by not indicating the pronunciation (apparently, neither did the sheet music; Wikipedia reports that Ira Gershwin told the story of one singer who sang the song with the same pronunciations throughout), so I will write:
You say ee-ther and I say eye-ther,
You say nee-ther and I say nye-ther
This also doesn’t help by not indicating who is singing, therefore making it clear who says this and who says that. In the movie, he sings this part, so I will write:
| she says | he says |
| ee-ther | eye-ther |
| nee-ther | nye-ther |
The whole song can be summarised as:
| She says, likes, wears … | He says, likes, wears … |
| ee-ther | eye-ther |
| nee-ther | nye-ther |
| po-tay-toe | po-tah-toe |
| to-may-toe | to-mah-toe |
| pa-jam-mas | pa-jah-mas |
| lahf-ter | laff-ter |
| ahf-ter | aff-ter |
| Ha-vah-na | Ha-van-na |
| ba-nah-na | ba-nan-na |
| er-sters | oy-sters |
Never Pure and Rarely Simple 