This week: Special announcement! And then we talk about the birds and the bees. But not like that. Well, not entirely like that. Let’s get to it!
Announcement: Video! Language! Challenge! Go!
Tomorrow, in The Average Polyglot, you’ll be able to see Mathias and myself go head to head in Part One of a cross-newsletter language challenge. Then, next week in Learned, you’ll have Part Two, wherein I destroy Mathias at…no wait, that would be a spoiler.
Okay, it’s not that cut-throat. What it is is, a few weeks ago, my friend Mathias and I challenged each other to identify a language that neither of us speak. We each chose a language off Wikipedia’s list of most common languages and created a few hints. Then we fired up Zoom and tried to guess which language the other had picked. It was a lot of fun and we had a great discussion about the languages we had chosen.
As I said, in tomorrow’s edition (October 11th, 20221), Mathias will have a video where I challenge him to guess the language I chose and next week, I’ll have the video of his challenge to me. Here’s the link one more time:
Enjoy! And now back to our regularly scheduled Learned.
Birds and Bees
Nikko is a small tourist town just a short drive into the mountains from where I live. Over the summer, my family and I made several trips there as a way to get out of the heat and to, well, to do something a bit different. And Nikko really is a lovely spot in which to do something different. Lots of sightseeing, lots of hiking, and lots of great restaurants. Oh, and also some really pricey honey.
See, in Nikko, near the train station, right at the start of the main drag, is a small town square filled with the usual cafes and souvenir shops. And one of those shops sells nothing but locally2 produced honey. They offer all the top tier products you'd expect - manuka honey, honeycomb, and royal jelly, but their real cash crop is their flavored honies3. Yuzu, lemon, blueberry, apple, raspberry...the list goes on. If you're ever in Nikko and have a chance to try some, I highly recommend it4. But that's not what I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is a conversation that my daughter and I had after buying a metric ton5 of these flavored honeys. While she was sampling her 873rd flavor6 of honey, we talked about bees and how they make honey. As we talked, she asked me how we say "hachi-no-su" in English, which is beehive. This small factoid piqued her interest, so she started to play with it. If "hachi-no-su" is beehive, then logically, "tori-no-su" is birdhive and "kumo-no-su" is spiderhive. Right? Well, not quite, and oh my god no.
This is one of those cases where Japanese functions a little more logically than English. As you saw, the same word, su, or nest, in English, can be attached to several different kinds of animals; everything from the aforementioned bees and birds and spiders to mice and bears7 all use "nest" to denote where they make their homes. Ah, if only English functioned as logically.
Only, doesn’t it? After all, we have another word for beehive - apiary, and we have a similar sounding word for bird house - aviary. So, could that be extended into a pattern? Turns out, yes, but no.
Although they look quite similar, apiary and aviary stem from different words: The Latin word for bee is apis and the word for bird is avis. However, even though these are both Latin words, neither actually come from Latin. According to Etymonline, apis is
a mystery word unrelated to any similar words in other Indo-European languages.
while avis comes to Latin via PIE. And that should be the end of it. Only, enter the Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology, which says that the ~ary suffix means “pertaining to, connected with.”
Huh. While the OCDEE only draws a direct connection between aviary and ~ary, presumably, the same suffix accounts for apiary? To tell the truth, I still don’t know. I haven’t found anything that can confirm this, but, then again, I haven’t found anything to contradict this, so we’ll call it a plausible theory until it isn’t.
In the meantime, there is the small mystery of why the earlier Latin incarnations of both birdhouse and beehive, aviarium and apiarium, respectively, disappeared when aquarium, terrarium, and so on have been borrowed into English. Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to still have aviariums and apiariums?
It would, but that’s not how English works. Remember, English is all borrowed and kludged into place by guys who have mostly been dead for a few centuries. So, as near as I can tell, it’s because aquarium had a different meaning in Latin and didn’t become a fish tank until the 19th century when bored, rich guys started trying to impose Latin grammar and etymology on English.
But I digress. Back to apiary and aviary. If there is a pattern, it’s the one supplied by the Oxford Dictionary and that of an apiary being connected to apis and an aviary being connected to avis. So, what other words use the suffix ~ary and are any of them houses for animals? Lots, including confectionary, diary, and planetary, but no other animals, at least not in this list provided by Etymonline.
And that’s that: apiary and aviary, two interesting words for where animals live but also, two small words in a bracket all by themselves. So, not really a pattern. But, this is English and, as we know, the beauty of English is that we can do damn well whatever we please. So, from here on out, I propose we use ~ary every chance we get. Your dog now lives in a caninary, your cat in a felinary. Your goldfish swims in an aquariary and your pet rhino thrives in its rhinoary. And you, you live in a humanary!
Let me know what you think in the comments and make sure to check back next week for the language challenge!
Down the Rabbit Hole
So, with all the talk about birds and bees, how about the phrase “the birds and the bees?” Where did it come from? Here are a few interesting takes on it:
The LA Times - Birds Do It, Bees Do It, but Why’d We Say That?
Mental Floss - Where Does the Term "The Birds and The Bees" Come From?
From the Archives
Back in Learned, Volume Two, every week I would examine a different idiom or saying. During a conversation with some friends this week, I brought up how “Jack of All Trades” isn’t quite the put-down we think of it as. Which they hadn’t known. So, for them and for you, here’s my look at Jack of All Trades from April, 2019.
At least, that’s the date in my timezone. It might be the 12th depending on where you are.
If by “locally produced” you mean, “in Japan” and by “small,” you mean “international corporation with at least six companies in other countries.”
A lot of what we consider honey isn’t really. Or, at least, not in the way you think of it. Real, straight-from-the-hive honey is rare and expensive, so most of what we get in the stores has been processed and filtered to create a more consistent product. This particular store just owns up to it and advertises their products as honey derivatives, which I appreciate.
Also, I used their Yuzu Honey to make a variation on a Gold Rush cocktail this summer, and it was just about perfect: take one portion honey, two portions bourbon, and shake over ice. Muddle some mint into a copper or stainless steel cup and add ice. Pour the bourbon and honey over. Drink slowly.
At a conservative estimate.
Again, conservative estimate.
Bears and other large animals that find, rather than make nests get an extra word, ana, meaning hole. Nesthole, the new collection out now from IKEA!