{"id":1011,"date":"2014-09-26T09:42:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T08:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2014-09-26T09:42:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T08:42:21","slug":"war-of-the-words-the-global-conflict-that-helped-shape-our-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=1011","title":{"rendered":"War of the words: the global conflict that helped shape our language"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The Guardian 26\/9\/2014) From genocide and kamikaze to radar and spam, the second world war had a dramatic effect on English<\/span><\/p>\n

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War: the mother of invention. The phrase (a tweak of the proverb \u201cnecessity is the mother of invention\u201d) refers to military technology. But a new book demonstrates how it is also true of language.<\/p>\n

The Word at War: World War Two in 100 Phrases<\/a>\u00a0is by Philip Gooden and Peter Lewis, who brought us the fascinating\u00a0Idiomantics<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a thrill-a-page tour of international idioms.<\/p>\n

Next year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war. It changed the way we think but also, the book demonstrates, the way we speak.<\/p>\n

The neologisms with which the second world war enriched our language range from the utilitarian to the racy: \u201cThe heightened conditions of warfare provide a boost to the human propensity to use jargon, slang and bad language,\u201d the authors say. \u201cIn warfare, the new and unfamiliar require fresh terminology, while fear and frustration provide plenty of excuse for (often surprisingly detailed and inventive) cusswords.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spam is a portmanteau of \u201cspiced ham\u201d and, developed in 1937, became popular warfare tucker for the ration-starved masses owing to its long shelf life. It was mocked for its gristly taste and has since become a byword for \u201comnipresent, instantly forgettable crap\u201d which is why our unwanted emails can be traced back to this wartime foodie portmanteau. Disparaging terms for gross food were common. \u201cShit on a shingle\u201d was minced beef on toast. Italians were issued with canned \u201csinewy slop\u201d emblazoned with the words\u00a0Amministrazione Militare<\/em>, but they used the initials to nickname it\u00a0asino morto<\/em>\u00a0(dead donkey) or the racist\u00a0arabo morto<\/em>(dead Arab).<\/p>\n

Among the new words that the 1939-45 war gave English are some borrowed from our enemies: kamikaze (the pilots that launched suicidal attacks \u2013 from the Japanese for \u201cdivine wind\u201d); flak (an abbreviation ofFliegerabwehrkanone<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 \u201cpilot defence gun\u201d) and ersatz (from the German for \u201ccompensation or replacement\u201d). Meanwhile, the prefix mega comes from the measurement of bombs (one megaton = one million tons of TNT). The unique enormity of wartime atrocities resulted in the gravest of neologisms: a new word would be needed to adequately reflect the scale and in 1944 the Sunday Times reported: \u201cThe United Nations\u2019 indictment of 24 Nazi leaders has brought a new word into the language \u2013 genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a lighter note, there\u2019s the word borrowed by a car manufacturer for its brand: Jeep derives from the initialism GP (general purpose) \u2013 used to describe the unrestricted function of a vehicle, reduced to a single-syllable word (say GP very fast). Other acronyms have also endured: radar is a US coinage from 1940, taken from the initial letters of \u201cradio detection and ranging\u201d. RDF \u2013 the British equivalent initialism \u2013 was quickly replaced by the catchier acronym. Others were simply inventive in their time: the pipeline laid under the Channel to convey petrol to France after D-day was called Pluto (pipeline under the ocean). Some initialisms were far from catchy: the US Commander of the Amphibious Force in the South Pacific was known as the Mary Poppinsesque COMAMPHIBFORSOPAC.<\/p>\n

Acronyms captured war\u2019s normalising of chaos: the American Snafu, Fubar and Susfu were colloquial code for, respectively, \u201csituation normal, all fucked up\u201d; \u201cfucked up beyond all recognition\u201d; and \u201csituation unchanged, still fucked up\u201d. They also played a key role in epistolary romance, from Italy (\u201cI trust and love you\u201d) and Holland (\u201chere our love lies and never dies\u201d) to Burma (\u201cbe undressed ready, my angel\u201d) and Norwich (\u201c[k]nickers off ready when I come home\u201d).<\/p>\n

The second world war is also responsible for the mugs, tea towels and numerous other souvenirs telling us to Keep Calm and Carry On. As Gooden and Lewis point out, the irony is that the original Keep Calm poster \u201cnever saw the light of day\u201d \u2013 2.5m copies were printed by the Ministry of Information but it decided not to use them because people had grown weary of \u201cthe strident voice of officialdom\u201d. The redundant morale-booster was resurrected by a Northumberland book shop in 2000; the rest is history. The writers praise it for reflecting the phlegmatic British spirit when faced with adversity but also for revealing \u201can admirable ingrained aversion to being told what to do by bumptious bureaucrats\u201d.<\/p>\n

The glaring oxymorons of war reflect its ultimate futility. We still see this today with insidiously dehumanising euphemisms such as \u201ccollateral damage\u201d. The Nazis surpassed themselves here:\u00a0feierabendgestaltung<\/em>(leisure time structuring) and\u00a0sprachregelung<\/em>\u00a0(prescribed terminology) underscore how deluded and controlling they were. The title of Martin Amis\u2019s new Holocaust novel,\u00a0The Zone of Interest<\/a>, was another disgusting euphemism \u2013 for Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

Gary Nunn is a regular contributor to Mind your language. His posts appears on the last Friday of every month. Twitter:\u00a0<\/em>@GaryNunn1<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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(The Guardian 26\/9\/2014) From genocide and kamikaze to radar and spam, the second world war had a dramatic effect on English<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,13,57,56],"tags":[172,151,33],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}