Fruit And Language

Fruit
It's that fruit time of the year and, like a dog with several tails, I'm making my usual mistake of going the rounds and buying too much of it. The problem is that it is all ripe and so lasts only a few days. Since I generally shop seriously only once a week, the fruit tends to go bad before I can eat it all. And all is a lot. This week I discounted apricots, white and yellow peaches, nectarines and melons in favour of the first greengages that are just in, plus some mirabelle plums. Then Steve and Jo came round to eat this evening and brought a kilo of greengages given to them plus a promise of more. I'll probably end up making another load of jam.

This is in addition to my own grape harvest which has been particularly heavy this year. I took a couple of bags full to the pizza evening last Monday and gave another couple of bunches to Patricia, my cleaning lady, today. I'm eating them all the time (as well as greengages, etc) but the trouble is that all my neighbours and friends have their own supply, so it is difficult to give them away. I'm hoping that some will stay unripe for long enough for me to take them back to England when I go in a couple of weeks time.

The Problem Of X
Neville, who came to eat with Steve and Jo this evening, is also a linguist, fundamentally in German but also with good French and Spanish. Conversation got onto Catalan, as Neville previously lived near Valencia. He had the same experience in trying to learn Valenciano as I had in trying to learn to speak Provencal; both are predominantly spoken languages and pronunciation and usage differ widely over quite a small area. So is it worth the trouble? Anyway, both of us, it seems, gave up.

The discussion brought up the problem of X in mediaeval languages. It appears in words with both Latin and Germanic origins and would seem to have been pronounced originally something like the sound of the last two letters in the Scottish word loch. Over time, this proved much too difficult for everyone (except the Scots) and it either hardened or softened to become like a more common g, which has both hard and soft forms in English. Thus the mediaeval (Germanic origin) xwerra softened in English to become shwar, with the opening letters eventually dropped, and guerre in French (guerra in Spanish). X is not now native to Spanish but appears frequently in Catalan (and Provencal) in its soft form. So far so good. The problem is that mediaeval scribes were wont to use X as an abbreviation for any set of letters that could be assumed to be understood. Much as written Arabic omits letters (vowels generally) that are assumed, so mediaeval scribes adopted the same practice, replacing what was assumed with an X. (It made me wonder, incidentally, if there was some cross-cultural connection here, Arabic being a major influence in mediaeval Europe.) Anyway, a problem in tracing back the development of X from mediaeval languages is to know whether, in any instance, you are dealing with a pronounced X or an X that replaces other letters. I've no doubt an expert etymologist could sort most of this out in no time but, meanwhile, it remains a good topic for after-dinner conversation.

Even The French Don't Agree
Yesterday evening I had Daniel, Patricia and Mana with me to eat. Alexis, Daniel's youngest son was due to come to but decided to leave the old fogies to themselves. In talking to Mana, I described Alexis as Daniel's 'fils cadet' (younger, youngest son), with which description Daniel agreed. Mana objected that a 'fils cadet' had to be the second son not the third (as Alexis was) and that therefore Alexis should be described as the 'benjamin'. Daniel backtracked and agreed. However, I was in no doubt that had Mana had not been there Daniel would have been quite happy with 'fils cadet' and that that is now common usage. I asked the obvious question as to what the fourth, fifth, etc son would be called and that led to a discussion which I had a hard time following but which, I think, involves terms that have long gone from common usage.