9. LATGLISH 2: FLIPPING THE TOGA?

(Part of a series based upon Stiles, The Anatomy of Medical Terminology (Radix Antiqua 2015; ISBN 978-1-988941-240)

            So "orth-odont-ist-s" rub shoulders with "dent-ic-ian-s," while "in-dent-at-ion-s" (and plain old "dents" in your fender) frolic among the "dan-de-lion-s"-- an earlier age might have called all these tooth-words "Latin-ish."  "Latglish," by contrast, is a word new and harsh enough to give offence--which the semantic problem we are talking about here ought to do.  For it is not just that 60% of our vocabulary consists of word parts inconsistently borrowed and stuck together from foreign sources; the real problem is illustrated by several contrasting features of Latin and English vocabulary, which (as I could put it if I wanted to baffle you with Latglish) Latglish vocabulary mediates nonsymmetrically:

LATIN WORDS                LATGLISH WORDS        "PURE" ENGLISH WORDS

mostly poly-syllabic               mostly poly-syllabic                mostly mono-syllabic

highly inflected                       partly inflected                        mostly un-inflected

both concrete and abstract     mostly abstract                       mostly concrete

            Don't be alarmed by the Latglish bafflegab.  In (mostly) plain English, let's say that observable contrasts in terms of three features (word-length, degree of inflection, and degree of abstraction) are distributed unevenly over a range of word-types which can be represented as follows (the added examples will with any luck make these observations clearer; note that "--" indicates that no word occupies this set of coordinates):

PURE                             PURE                    MIXED                   PURE

LATIN                       LATGLISH            LATGLISH             ENGLISH

crani-um                      crani-um                    crani-um/skull             skull

fract-ura crani-alis        crani-al fract-ure        skull fract-ure             skull break

carp-us                        --                               --                              wrist

os carp-al-e                 --                               carp-al bone              wrist bone

oss-a carp-al-ia           "carp-al-ia"                 carp-al-s                    wrist bones

--                                 skelet-on                   --                               --

            To guide you through this list, the first line reflects the fact that the Latin word "cranium" (borrowed early from Greek "kranion" and fully "Latinized") was borrowed into English where it can be used on its own (as a fully "Englished" word) or as a synonym coexisting with the native English word "skull."  Notice in examining the second line that while you can say "skull fracture" in a mixture of English and Latglish, you would normally say "crani-al fracture" rather than "crani-um fracture" in the very best Latglish; but you would never say "skull-ish break" even in the purest of English.

            Again, although Latglish "cranium" and English "skull" are used interchangeably (although an anatomist might give you an argument about this, in terms of the potentially different scopes of the two words), the second group of lines illustrates the fact that an English speaker wouldn't understand you if you called a body part the "carpus;" medical people actually do call the bones which make up the wrist the "carpals" but few of them would recognize "carpalia," and fewer still would understand that the word "carp-al-s" is using the regular English plural morpheme "-s" to translate the Latin neuter plural adjectival ending "-alia."

            Finally, if the latter sequence suggests that there might actually be three "grades" of Latglish (from purest Latglish to most English-ed, these would be represented by "carpalia," "carpals" and "carpal bones," respectively), the opposite extreme is exemplified by "skeleton," a Greek neuter adjective (describing a thing which is "dried up") borrowed almost directly into Latglish (though we usually call such words "Neolatin"), with no Latin or English equivalent at all.

            A shared feature of the Latglish nouns is that (unlike their English equivalents, where these exist) when they are used as adjectives their endings usually change: just as we would never call something a "wrist-y" problem in English, we would be much more likely to refer to skelet-al disorders than "skeleton" ones.  To mention one last complication in this particular context, however, this aspect of Latglish is changing in our lifetimes so that an increasing number of non-inflected adjectivalizations are becoming normal.  A few examples follow, showing this particular feature in terms of the "purity" of the Latglish:

PURE LATGLISH                      ENGLISHED LATGLISH

skelet-al problems                          skelet-on problems

cancer-ous tissue                            cancer research

muscul-ar dystrophy                       muscle tissue

hyperglycem-ic syndrome               hypercalcemia syndrome

            It bears repeating that this set of contrasts represents change-in-progress, in the same way as the plural forms of Latglish nouns are changing before our eyes and might invite all kinds of dispute: as, you might say "formulae" where I would say "formulas;" your "radiuses" are my "radii;" today I say "indexes" and tomorrow "indices;" and no one believes me when I get up on my pedantic high horse and assert that if it is one octopus then it must be two "octopodes," even though I might be quite happy counting my platypuses.

            This is all the more worth mentioning because, while the (mostly pedantic and therefore trivial) distinctions between Latin and English concrete-noun plurals rarely cause problems of interpretation, the blurred distinction between nouns and adjectives can be especially confusing, particularly in the case of polysyllabic abstract Latglish nouns, which as we will see by means of the next set of examples are both the most numerous and the most all-around troublesome of all Latglish words.

            Before proceeding, note in relation to the previous lists that while "cranium" and "skull" are in wide usage as synonymous terms, and while most people if they gave it a moment's thought would probably realize that "fracture" and "break" mean the same thing, it takes special training in scientific or medical terminology to recognize that the "carpal" bones (or "carpals") have anything at all to do with the wrist.  We might say, therefore, that there is no "pure English" word that can be called "interchangeable with" or "equivalent to" Latglish "carpals" (although of course we have a pure English "translation," namely "wrist-bones").  With this distinction in mind, let's look at another set of Latglish words, from which arise a further set of troubles:

LATIN                     LATGLISH          ENGLISH              TRANSLATION

WORD                       WORD           EQUIVALENT       OF THE LATGLISH

                                                                 WORD                      WORD

test-is 1                       --                                  --                       "a witness"

test-is 2                       test                                --                       "witnesser"

test-ament-um             test-ament                      --                     "a witnessing"

--                                test-amon-ial                  --                       "a witnessing"

in-test-at-us                 in-test-at-e                    --                       "un-witness-ed"

--                                in-test-ac-y                    --                       "un-witness-ed-ness"

pro-test-ari                  pro-test                         --                       "forth-witness"

--                                pro-test-or                     --                       "forth-witness-er"

--                                pro-test-at-ion-s            --                       "forth-witness-ings"

at-test-ar-i                   at-test                           --                       "toward-witness"

con-test-ans                con-test-ant                   --                       "together-witness-ing"

de-test-abil-is              de-test-abl-e                 --                       "down-witness-able"

--                                de-test-abil-ity              --              "down-witness-able-ness"

            Notice here among other things that while a few (mostly abstract) Latglish words do not have actual Latin antecedents (and many of the Latin antecedents that do exist are rare and/or late), none of them have obviously synonymous and commonly used English equivalents.  Notice especially that although the Latglish words listed here are only a small subset of all of the words in English made from this Latin root, no Latglish word "test" exists that easily anchors all of the compound forms: you cannot say, "the *TEST testified about the testimony of the protestor," you have to say "the WITNESS" did so.

            As for the word designating the kind of "witness-er" that you write to get into Law School, while it is a concrete enough word it's meaning has been abstracted far enough from the root idea of "witness" that it doesn't serve very well to clarify the meanings of the others in the group.  And how far would you get if you tried to figure out what the male body part called a "witness-let" or "witness-ling" (Latglish "test-icle," from Modern Latin "glandula test-icul-aris;" the Romans called the body part simply "testis," or "the witness," ) had to do with getting into Law School?

            Don't feel too bad if you don't have a quick answer, by the way; no one else does either. The two leading theories are that, 1) because women were not allowed to "test-ify" (to "make witness") in court, a quick flip of the toga--a flashing, as it were--might sometimes be required (the "testimony" of slaves was unadmissable too, unless of course they were tortured; but that's a whole different story); or 2) that since there were no bibles yet in the Roman world, the "test-ifi-er" would have to grab something or another, to swear by--take your pick!

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