Editor's Corner

As you may have guessed with my timing of the 12 Days of English and today’s topic (New Year’s resolutions), I’m not exactly on the same schedule as the rest of the world. Today’s article is from Wikipedia, and it is a brief explanation of what a New Year’s resolution is and where the idea came from.

I also want to congratulate Ron Harman for winning my lightly used copy of Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly. Enjoy!

A New Year’s resolution is a tradition, most common in the Western Hemisphere but also found in the Eastern Hemisphere, in which a person makes a promise to do an act of self-improvement or something slightly nice, such as opening doors for people beginning from New Year’s Day.

Religious origins

· The ancient Babylonians made promises to their gods at the start of each year that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts.

· The Romans began each year by making promises to the god Janus, for whom the month of January is named.

· In the Medieval era, the knights took the "peacock vow" at the end of the Christmas season each year to re-affirm their commitment to chivalry.

· At watchnight services, many Christians prepare for the year ahead by praying and making these resolutions.

· There are other religious parallels to this tradition. During Judaism’s New Year, Rosh Hashanah, through the High Holidays and culminating in Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), one is to reflect upon one’s wrongdoings over the year and both seek and offer forgiveness. People may act similarly during the Christian liturgical season of Lent, though the motive behind this holiday is more of sacrifice than of responsibility, in fact the practice of New Year’s resolutions partially came from the Lenten sacrifices.

The concept, regardless of creed, is to reflect upon self-improvement annually.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Good morning. I thought it would be fun to provide you with a list of the top words for 2014. However, when I searched for the top words of 2014 on the Internet, a news heading caught my eye. According to the 15th Annual Survey of Global English conducted by Global Language Monitor (GLM), the Heart emoji was the most used word of 2014, even though it’s not a word.

GLM analyzes how frequently words are used in global media channels, including the Internet, blogs, electronic and print media, and social media sources.

Per GLM’s website, “The English Language is now undergoing a remarkable transformation unlike any in its 1400 year history – its system of writing, the Alphabet, is gaining characters at amazing rate.” [sic]

Yes, the English language continues to evolve. However, the use of emoji’s or emoticons in business writing is still frowned upon. So, unless you are a 13-year old girl, it’s always best to use words. You never know who will end up reading your writing.

Jackie Solano | Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.542.6711 | Extension: 766711

The holidays are over, and I don’t know about you but I’m done with desserts (for a while). You might say, “I’ve had my just desserts,” but if you said that, you’d be wrong—not because I want more dessert, but because desserts is the wrong word to use in that context.

The correct word is deserts. However, it is pronounced the same way we pronounce the word that stands for those lovely sweets we eat too many of this time of year. You might be surprised to learn the several definitions of the word desert and to see their pronunciations:

[DEZ-ert] (noun): an arid place

[deh-ZERT] (verb): to abandon

[deh-ZERT] (noun): worthiness of recompense

So when we get our “just deserts,” we are not getting the sweet that we deserve, and we’re not getting an arid location, we are getting compensated (and it usually isn’t good). If you want to read a little bit more about this old adage, Maeve Maddox wrote an interesting article on Daily Writing Tips.

Donna Bradley Burcher | Technical Editor, Adv. | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Ext: 765432

To finish off the Editor’s Corner seasonal Twelve Days of English, I have another set of holiday music mondegreens from Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly, and Other Misheard Song Lyrics, by Gavin Edwards.

If you are interested in winning this lightly used book, send me an email with the words BUDDY HOLLY in the subject line by January 6. I’ll announce the winner and send you the book shortly thereafter!

Happy New Year!

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On the eleventh day of English

My true love gave to me

This article from Business Wee-eek.

Just kidding. It’s from Business Insider and it is called The 11 Most Common Grammatical Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. These items may seem familiar to you—probably because we’ve covered them before. In fact, you have two options today. You can click the link (above) to read the article, or you can go back and read the associated Editor’s Corner articles. I’ve listed the headings for the common grammatical mistakes here, along with our blog links.

1. "Fewer" vs. "Less"

https://episystechpubs.com/2014/05/14/editors-corner-fewer-and-less/

2. "It’s vs. "Its"

https://episystechpubs.com/2013/11/25/editors-corner-its-vs-its/

3. Dangling Modifiers

https://episystechpubs.com/2013/04/16/editors-corner-rule-5-avoid-dangling-modifiers/

4. "Who" vs. "Whom"

https://episystechpubs.com/2012/08/02/editors-corner-who-whom-the-who/

5. Me, Myself, and I

https://episystechpubs.com/2012/08/15/editors-corner-me-myself-and-i/

6. "Lie" vs. "Lay"

https://episystechpubs.com/2013/03/15/editors-corner-lie-versus-lay/

7. Irregular Verbs

KC – We’ve had several articles on this topic, but haven’t made any generalizations about irregular verbs.

8. "Nor" vs. "Or"

https://episystechpubs.com/2014/08/19/editors-corner-eitheror-neithernor-use-these-examples-instead/

9. "Then" vs. "Than"

https://episystechpubs.com/2012/11/15/editors-corner-then-and-than/

10. Ending Sentences with Prepositions

KC – Business Insider says “…don’t do it — usually.” We say, sometimes it sounds better—never say never. I can’t find our blog articles on the topic, but here’s a good response to rants on the topic, from our local grammarian and verbivore, Richard Lederer:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/jan/18/tp-readers-decry-the-use-of-terminal-prepositions/?#article-copy

11. Subject (and Possessive Pronoun) and Verb Agreement

KC – Again, we handle verbs on a more individual basis and edit subject/verb issues when we find them. Perhaps this is an article for the future.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

On the tenth day of English

My true love gave to me

A cool list of vocabulary.

Much of English is from Greek, Latin, and Germanic languages. This list from

Vocabulary.comincludes ten fairly common words we use, which are rooted in less common languages.

1. BUCCANEER

someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation

The direct ancestor of buccaneer is French for "user of a boucan"—boucan being a type of grill. But the grill itself and the word boucan both have their source in the indigenous peoples of Brazil, where the word in Tupi is rendered mukem.

2. LAGNIAPPE

a small gift (especially one given by a merchant to a customer who makes a purchase)

From New Orleans Creole, the origins of lagniappe are slightly murky. One popular theory has it deriving from Spanish la ñapa (one of the few words in Spanish to begin with ñ) which means "the gift." La ñapa comes from yapa, a word from Quechua, a native language family of the Andes mountains.

3. MAVEN

someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field

This word comes from Yiddish meyvn, which means "one who understands." It was a favorite of the late William Safire, a self-styled language maven.

4. BUNGALOW

a small house with a single story

The word entered English from Gujarati, spoken in India. The Gujarati word bangalo in turn comes from a Hindi word meaning "Bengalese, in the style of Bengal."

5. MAIZE

tall annual cereal grass bearing kernels on large ears: widely cultivated in America in many varieties

The indigenous word for "corn" entered English from Cuban Spanish maiz. Spanish got it from Arawakan, the language of the indigenous people of the Caribbean, where the form is mahiz.

6. HUBBUB

loud confused noise from many sources

The word was originally whobub, either from Gaelic ub! which was an expression of contempt, or an Old Irish battle cry, abu.

7. SLOGAN

a favorite saying of a sect or political group

This is another word from Gaelic and is also related to battle cries. Slogan comes from sluagh-ghairm, literally "army-cry."

8. COMMANDEER

take arbitrarily or by force

The South African language of Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, gave rise to this word. It comes from kommandeeren, Afrikaans for "to command."

9. ZENITH

the point above the observer that is directly opposite the nadir on the imaginary sphere against which celestial bodies appear to be projected

This word is originally from Arabic samt ar-ras, which means "the way over the head." The "m" in samt was misread as an "ni," so it became sanit when it was borrowed into Latin, eventually resulting in zenith.

10. SCHLEP

pull along heavily, like a heavy load against a resistance

This word is from Yiddish, where a schlepper is not just a dragger but a scrounger or loser, less worthy of pity than a nebbish. The nebbish has misfortune thrust upon him, whereas the schlepper has a hand in his bad luck. The verb schlep is first attested in English in James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922.

Jackie Solano | Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.542.6711 | Extension: 766711

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I hope you enjoyed the holiday! Just like English, our schedule is a little irregular. Here we continue with the ninth day of our “song,” on the 26th day of December.

On the ninth day of English

My true love gave to me

An article already written

For me.

The following nine words and their etymologies come from an article in Mental Floss about origins of English words that are related to animals. They aren’t partridges or turtle doves, but I think you’ll find these word histories interesting. Note: I have edited the list down to nine, but the original article contained sixteen words.

1. ARCTIC

The Arctic takes its name from the Greek word for “bear,” arktos. Oddly, the bear in question isn’t a polar bear but the Great Bear, or Ursa Major, the constellation that maintains a prominent year-round position in the northern sky. As a result, the adjective arctic originally referred to the celestial rather than the geographical North Pole when it first appeared in English more than 700 years ago. It wasn’t until the mid-1500s that it first came to be used of the northernmost regions of the Earth.

2. CANOPY

In Ancient Greece, a kanopeion—from konops, the Greek word for “mosquito”—was a chair or couch fitted with a mosquito net over it. As time went by, the name came to apply only to the net rather than the chair, which ultimately gave us the word canopy in the early 14th century. The French canapé is derived from the same root, and refers to the fact that a canapé’s filling sits on top of the pastry in the same way that a person sits on a couch.

3. CANTALOUPE

Cantaloupe melons take their name from Cantalupo, an ancient papal estate on the outskirts of Rome where the first European cantaloupes were grown in the early Middle Ages. In turn, Cantalupo took its name from the Latin words cantare, meaning “to sing” (as in chant and incantation), and lupus, meaning “wolf,” and probably originally referred to a place where wolves could often be heard howling or be seen gathering together.

4. DANDELION

Dandelion is a corruption of the French dent-de-lion, meaning “lion’s tooth,” a reference to the flowers’ jagged or “toothed” leaves.

5. EXOCET

An exocet is a type of marine missile first developed by the French Navy in the late 1960s. Its name is the French word for a flying fish.

6. FORMICATION

Formication is the medical name for a creeping, tingling sensation felt on the skin, similar to pins and needles, which takes its name from the Latin word for “ant,” formica; it literally describes a sensation similar to insects crawling over the skin. As a symptom, formication is associated with a whole range of conditions, from anxiety and general emotional distress to shingles, neuralgia, alcohol withdrawal, Parkinson’s disease, and even mercury poisoning.

7. HENCHMAN

The “hench”of henchman came from hengest, an Old English word for a horse. The term originally referred to a knight or servant who would accompany a nobleman on horseback on long journeys.

8. PEDIGREE

Although today it is used more generally to mean “lineage” or “heritage,” a pedigree was originally a genealogical diagram, like a family tree, showing relatives and their relations connected to one another by lines drawn from one generation to the next. It was these flat, broad, hooked lines that originally gave the pedigree its name, as scholars in Medieval France thought that they resembled a pied-de-grue—or a stork’s foot.

9. SNIPER

Dating back to the early 19th century, a sniper was originally someone who literally shot snipe. The birds have long been considered one of the hardest types of game to shoot due both to their speed in flight and their nervous disposition, making it necessary to shoot at them from a distance rather than risk disturbing them by moving closer.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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On the eighth day of English

My true love gave to me

A lovely little table of the

Eight parts of spee-ee-ee-eech.

Here is a table of the eight parts of speech including what they are, what they do, and some examples.

And articles, which we discussed on the Third Day of English, are considered by some to be the ninth part of speech. We’re going for the traditional eight here, however.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

On the seventh day of English

My true love gave to me

Seven definitions for the days of the week

And a ticket to sail the Black Sea.

Normally I would edit this down quite a bit, but as a student of English, a former student of French and Spanish, and a relative of Greeks and Italians, this information really floats my boat. (Note: I have not changed the punctuation to align it with our American standards.) This is from todayifoundout.com:

While different societies start the week on different days—usually Sunday or Monday—I’ll start with Monday, which was named for the moon. It could be translated as “Moon’s day”. This homage to the moon can be seen in several other languages as well. In Latin, it’s “dies lunae”, or “day of the moon”. In ancient Greek, “hemera selenes”, which means the same thing. In more modern languages, Monday is “lunes” in Spanish and “lundi” in French, both of which come from the root word for moon—”luna” and “lune” in each respective language.

Tuesday is the first to be named after a god. It was named for Tiu, or Twia, a lesser-known god of war and the sky from the English/Germanic pantheon. He is also associated with the Norse god Tyr, who was a defender god in Viking mythology. However, Tuesday does not translate the same in other languages. In Latin, it’s “dies Martis” or “Day of Mars” and in ancient Greek it’s “hemera Areos” or “day of Ares”. Both Mars and Ares were gods of war like Tyr and they lent their names to day of the week translations for other modern languages. Tuesday is “martes” in Spanish and “mardi” in French, both named for the Roman god Mars.

Wednesday can be translated as “Woden’s day”. Woden, associated with the Norse god Odin, was the chief god and leader of the wild hunt in Anglo-Saxon mythology. Directly translated, “woden” means “violently insane headship”, and does not put one in mind of the best of gods. Unlike the other days of the week, the gods named in the Latin and Greek days of the week – Mercury and Hermes — are not associated with violent leadership, but with travel, commerce, and theft. Both are messenger gods. It is for Mercury that Spanish and French decided to name Wednesday—”miercoles” and “mercredi” respectively.

Thursday is one of the easiest days to translate, meaning “Thor’s day”. Named for the Norse god of thunder and lightning. Thursday is also associated with Jupiter in Latin (“dies Jovis”) and Zeus in Greek (“hemera Dios”). All three gods are known for their storm-creating abilities, but while the English language took Thor as its god for Thursday, Spanish and French adopted Jupiter instead, naming Thursday “jueves” and “jeudi” which have roots in Jupiter.

Friday is associated with Freya, the Norse goddess of love, marriage, and fertility. The Latin, “dies Veneris”, and the Greek, “hemeres Aphrodite”, call upon the goddesses Venus and Aphrodite instead. The latter two goddesses are also patrons of love and beauty, and all three goddesses are called upon in womanly matters like fertility and childbirth. Following the trend of the other days, Spanish and French adopted Venus for Friday rather than Freya, naming their days “viernes” and “vendredi”.

Saturday in English derives from “Saturn’s day” which was taken from the Latin, “dies Saturni”. Saturn was a Roman god and, over different periods of time, associated with wealth, plenty, and time. The day in Spanish and French (“sabado” and “samedi” respectively) was named simply as it is the Jewish Sabbath- “sabado” deriving from the Latin “sabbatum”, meaning “Sabbath”, and “samedi” deriving from the Old French “samedi”, which in turn comes from the Latin “dies Sabbati”, meaning “Day of the Sabbath”.

Sunday is “Sun’s day”, translated in both Latin (“dies solis”) and Greek (“hemera helio”) as “day of the sun”. Interestingly, in Spanish and French (“domingo” and “dimanche”) it is more closely translated as “Lord’s day” or “Sabbath day”, pointing to more the Christian/Jewish God.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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On the sixth day of English

My true love gave to me

Six basic tenses

And a circus made up of fleas

You can regard this as a tale of English future, where we will cover these tenses and more in the year 2015. For now it is just a simple preview from my friends at the Purdue OWL.

Strictly speaking, in English, only two tenses are marked in the verb alone, present (as in "he sings") and past (as in "he sang"). Other English language tenses, as many as thirty of them, are marked by other words called auxiliaries. Understanding the six basic tenses allows one to re-create much of the reality of time in their writing.

Simple Present: They walk

Present Perfect: They have walked

Simple Past: They walked

Past Perfect: They had walked

Future: They will walk

Future Perfect: They will have walked

Problems in sequencing tenses usually occur with the perfect tenses, all of which are formed by adding an auxiliary or auxiliaries to the past participle, the third principal part.

ring, rang, rung

walk, walked, walked

The most common auxiliaries are forms of "be," "can," "do," "may," "must," "ought," "shall," "will," "has," "have," "had.”

That’s enough to absorb for now. Until next time, here’s to the South for coming up with a plural version of the second person.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory