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Linguistics

Reza Aslan writes about his family sitting at the festive table at Christmas time. He is a Muslim from Iran, his wife is a Christian from Pennsylvania with one daughter who is a devout Muslim and another who is a devout atheist.

As their food got cold, the ladies argued about the merits of their beliefs and how people were different from each other because their religions, or lack thereof, are different from the others.

To try to teach them all a lesson, he told a Sufi parable:

"Four hungry travelers from different countries were trying to decide what to buy with the single coin they held in common.

The Persian wanted to spend the coin on angur; the Turk, on uzum; the Arab, on inab; and the Greek, on stafil. Confusion turned to anger as the four travelers argued among themselves. It took a passing linguist to explain to them that they all were, in fact, asking for the same thing: grapes!"

Speaking of linguists, I have started a Great Course on linguistics given by John McWhorter.  I've taken other courses given by him, and love his Podcast "Lexicon Valley."

Today he mentioned that English is one of only a couple of languages that use "do" as a "helper" word in a sentence.

"Do you like to read?"

"Why do you like to read?"

"Will you do me a favor?"

And we all use "up" as another "helper" word.

"Don't tie me up!"

"O.K. I give up."

"Beam me up, Scotty!"

What do those "do's" and "up's" mean?

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