there is an equivalent phrase in US English, and also spread via the military, the Navy in our case. if a situation has gone “pear shaped”, it has gone “cattywampus.” which means diagonally. I heard that it was deep south regional slang and came into parlance within the Navy due to southerners having an outsized presence in the submarine division.
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I think, though, that “Cattywampus” comes originally from “cater” or caton" or something like that, which meant “diagonally.” Like “cattycorner.” And the “wampus” meant “skewed beyond that” or something.
Ah, this is interesting:
First in the US in 1834, but as an adverb “cattywampusly” then by Dickens in 1843 used as we do today.
“Cattywampus” (1834) has held a variety of meanings and spellings, including as an adverb (catawampusly) meaning “completely/utterly/avidly,” a name for a fantastical imp-like creature or a mountain lion, and an adjective meaning “askew,” from obsolete “cater,” from the Greek prefix kata- (downward, toward), and perhaps from the old Scottish slang wampish (to wriggle or twist about.)
And at
Both source reference back to Greek.
Very cool!
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How else would they talk?
Have we still not found a better alternative to “mum” and “dad” for pet owners in the English language, btw? I can’t be the only one who finds that creepy and pathetic at the same time.
Interestingly enough, in German it is “Herrchen” and “Frauchen”, so “master” and “mistress”, but in the diminutive, which takes the sting out of it.
In Norwegian it’s “matmor” and “matfar”, “food mum” and “food dad”, which at least acknowledges the primary role of the owner.
I’d be interested to hear what those words are in other languages
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In Japanese, we use “otou-san” and “okaa-san” for parents, but you can also use the diminuitive -chan instead of -san for our own parents (and only your own parents). But only when addressing them directly. And maybe not even then if you aren’t particularly close. You can also drop the “o” at the beginning to make it even more informal, again only for your own parents.
The word “oyaji” is kind of like the English word “pop” or “pops,” which is more common in American English.
More reccently, Japanese also uses “mama” and “papa,” and this is generally what children will use.
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On an unrelated note: is there any good way to render a diminutive into English? It’s always one of the hardest problems for me when translating something into colloquial language. It’s such a big part of many European languages (and maybe others?) but basically doesn’t exist in English if you don’t count adjectives.
The closest I can come above is “wee master”, but even with the quirky substitution it just doesn’t have the same impact.
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We will add an adjective like dear, sweet, little (or even l’il) before somebody’s name, which has the same effect as a diminuitive in other languages. If interpreting or translating a transcript of a conversation, you can also use dear, sweety or honey as a noun in place of a person’s name (because we really do not use people’s names all that much in conversation unless to get somebody’s attention).
Wee is not used all that much in American English, but will be understood in context.
Other than that, some names have diminuitive forms. Robert can be turned into Bob, which in turn can be turned into Bobby (which is really patronizing unless the person prefers to be called that). Same with William, Bill and Billy. Not all names can do that, but you can always shorten names. People sometimes call me “Jess,” even though I hate that.
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I know, but I feel it comes closest to the original meaning, at least in the above example. As in “little, but also with connotations of cuteness and quirkiness”.
I also know that this is unfair to Scottish, as it really just means “small” in the original language, without any of these connotations.
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I think that “l’il” (pronounced like lill) fills that role in American English. It’s used in nicknames quite often.
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This is one of the reasons I prefer Early Modern English, where sentence structure was closer to other Germanic languages and you still had at least one diminutive suffix (-ling, as in duckling or lordling). I’m sure there were others as well.
I feel like one reason Shakespeare was so productive in coining new words is because the language still allowed it back then, rather than forcing the use of circumscribing sentence structures.
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Over time, English seems to have become more and more prone to tacking things on in front of words rather than at the end. The once-common “noun of noun” construction feels stilted and archaic these days.
Still, there’s always “mini” as a prefix.
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Helsingin Sanomat reports that although Finland still ranks high in the OECD’s Pisa assessment of schoolchildren’s academic performance, there has been a clear decline in literacy over the past decade or more.
According to the paper, 14 percent of Finnish ninth-graders read so poorly that it makes it difficult for them to function in society.
It is not clear why the reading skills of schoolchildren have deteriorated. According to the researchers, there is no one single reason for the learning crisis.
First of all, writes Helsingin Sanomat, we have to rule out one explanation that easily comes to mind: immigration. It is natural to think that for children from an immigrant background, the Finnish language creates difficulties and this is reflected in studies. However, according to researchers, this does not explain the general decline in reading skills.
“The impact of immigration is very small, because immigrants account for only five to six percent of the students,” said University of Jyväskylä researcher Arto Ahonen.
Around the same time as reading skills started to go into decline, the use of the internet and social media exploded, and they really began to compete with school as a source of information for young people, Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen, Professor of Education at the University of Tampere pointed out to the paper.
In the past, the role of school as the primary place to learn and get information was undisputed.
“Children and young people can now question why the information they get at school is necessary, when they can get it in other ways,” Vainikainen said.
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In Irish-English its common to tack -een onto the end of a word during conversation to indicate a diminutive (“he lives in that small houseen up the road”), but you would never do it in any formal writing. It too has a quirky connotation.
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