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posted by cmn32480 on Friday October 30 2015, @06:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the thou-art-a-wanker dept.

Archaic words are making a comeback, thanks to hipsters' love of all things old. The Washington Post's wonkblog has an article examining how hipsters may be bringing back vintage language, and the effects it is having on modern culture. This may be a passing fad, as hipsters themselves are now making jokes about bespoke water; if they're not careful the charming anachronism may go mainstream and become unfit for hipster irony.

BTW, this submission was inspired by a comment thread here about craft/artisanal beers. Apparently, the old words are not just re-entering the hipsters' language but getting co-opted by marketers hoping to woo the hipster pocketbook. Some linguistic shift may result.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mendax on Friday October 30 2015, @08:41AM

    by mendax (2840) on Friday October 30 2015, @08:41AM (#256384)

    May Grendel come and eat you!

    Actually, we can get just a wee bit older:

    Owis ek’woi kʷe

    Owis, jesmin wl̥nā ne ēst, dedork’e ek’wons woghom gʷr̥um weghontn̥s - bhorom meg'əm, monum ōk’u bherontn̥s. Owis ek’wobhos eweukʷet: K’erd aghnutai moi widn̥tei g’hm̥onm̥ ek’wons ag’ontm̥. Ek’woi eweukʷont: K’ludhi, owi, k’erd aghnutai dedr̥k'usbhos: monus potis wl̥nām owiōm temneti: sebhei ghʷermom westrom - owibhos kʷe wl̥nā ne esti. Tod k’ek’luwōs owis ag’rom ebhuget.

    which is Schleicher's Fable [wikipedia.org], "The Sheep and the Horses", in the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language.

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
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    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Friday October 30 2015, @04:52PM

    by Hyperturtle (2824) on Friday October 30 2015, @04:52PM (#256541)

    Wait... I think I remember that from my time at Miskatonic Elementary School.

    Didn't it end with Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn?

    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday October 30 2015, @06:51PM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Friday October 30 2015, @06:51PM (#256607) Journal

      Let's be perfectly clear about this: archaic and vintage language is cool and all hipster. Made up languages (c'mon, the proto-Indo-European only dates from 1868!) like Klingon and all those Tolkien made up, and those on Game of Thrones, are nerdy. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Oh, and Esperanto, too. So I say, "Pshaw!"

      • (Score: 2) by mendax on Saturday October 31 2015, @12:08AM

        by mendax (2840) on Saturday October 31 2015, @12:08AM (#256734)

        I wouldn't call Proto-Indo-European a "made up" language. It's based on some hard linguistic evidence of consonant changes, vowel shifts, and various other patterns that are known to have occurred. Sure, the linguists don't know just how correct they are because there is no written evidence of any Indo-European language that old. However, we do have written evidence of a very old, very archaic language that is still spoken today: Greek. Written Greek (in the form of Linear B) goes back about 3500 years and we know with certainty how it was pronounced 2700 years ago. Furthermore, while Greek pronunciation has changed over the millennia and the grammar has changed and simplified, it's still pretty much the same language as sung by Homer.

        Let's also not forget Sanskrit, while not a living language is still a very old and quite primitive Indo-European language. Linguists know a lot about it.

        So, while the development of Proto-Indo-European required some guessing, it's based upon some hard science.

        --
        It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
        • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday October 31 2015, @08:57AM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday October 31 2015, @08:57AM (#256832) Journal

          Perhaps, and forsooth, I did overstate the point. Mayhaps I intended to say that a "made-up" language is one for which we possess no extant text? More a Classicist approach than that of an archaeolinguist, but one I would stick to. Are you saying that the completely fantastic created languages do not follow rules of syntax, grammar, phonemes and semantics? Of course they do. They are freer in regard to those than someone trying to recreate a proto language, but the parameters (hey! I just used "parameters" in sentence! And I think is is correct usage! Do I get extra hipster points?) are the same. And, Sanskrit is far from a "primitive" language. Has cases no one has ever used, just in case the opportunity should come up. And Linear B? Much like Linear A, the bastardized accounting language of the Minoan civilization! All Cretans are liars! And it is true because one of them said so! So there! Minoan bull-riding Minotaur feeding bastards!

  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday October 30 2015, @05:51PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Friday October 30 2015, @05:51PM (#256575)

    Remember, just bang the rocks together guys...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @09:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @09:14PM (#256675)

    DUMROMANIOMNESCAPITALISLITTERASSINEINTERVALLISUSIERANT