Jude Connection

From Ancora Imparo

Today is both the Feast Day of Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, and it is also the date on which the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886. What's the connection? For starters, the efforts to find the funds to pay for the construction of the pedestal took close to a decade and came close to failing. In March of 1885, the project needed a final 100,000 dollars, and Joseph Pulitzer threw his newspaper, The New York World, into high gear. Over the next seven months, his committee collected 101,000 dollars from 121,000 contributors. 80% of those contributions were less than a dollar each.

Regardless of whether you believe Saint Jude intervened, the pedestal was completed, the statue put in place, and countless dignitaries attended the unveiling of the 151 foot tall statue on this day 122 years ago.

And although Emma Lazarus's poem The New Colossus had yet to be engraved in bronze and placed inside the immense structure on that date, we will close by commenting on the poet's choice of words. The original Colossus was a statue of the Greek god Helios. Originally, the word colossus named "a statue of gigantic size and proportions." It wasn't until the early 1600s that colossus came to name "a person or thing of immense size or power."

Can and May

From Ancora Imparo

As we remember Nicolas Appert, who was born on 23 October year 1752. Appert is honored as the father (or pere) of canning. He answered Napoleon's challenge to devise a method for preserving food for troops far afield; and, after more than a dozen years of work, took home the 12,000 franc prize.

We could talk about canning and its place in English language but we'd prefer to limit our can discussion to a candid look at where can fits into the continuum of power, possibility, and permission.

Schoolchildren learn the rule that can is used for ability (can I complete the homework assignment in less time than you?) while may is used to request permission (may I use the calculator to answer the question?). But language watchers know this rule is frequently left at the schoolhouse gate.

Why? Probably because can and may are frequently interchangeable in senses denoting possibility. Possibility, of course, plays into both ability (or power) and permission. Because the possibility of a person's doing something may (or can) depend upon another's acquiescence, both can and may are used—since at least as long ago as the 19th century—to denote permission. And although some commentators advise may for more formal contexts, you're in good company whichever word you choose.

The world's top 100 universities listed

From Ancora Imparo

Oxford University has slipped in the ­international league table of the world's top universities. I on the other hand should be happy and smile and happy, as my Alma Mater(Cambridge) has WON over time and switching for a better position from being no 3 to no 2; Top Best Varsity of the World. Praise to my hubby! for his Alma Mater has never change from being No 1, for i-dunno-for-how-many consecutive years!

In a study which shows the advance of academia in Asia that will soon pose a challenge to the Ivy League and Oxbridge.

The study, from Times Higher Education and QS Top Universities shows that overall the UK still punches above its weight, second only to the US. The UK has four out of the top 10 slots and 18 in the top 100. But there has been a significant fall in the number of North American universities in the top 100, from 42 in 2008 to 36 in 2009.

However, the number of Asian universities in the top 100 increased from 14 to 16. The University of Tokyo, at 22, is the highest ranked Asian university, ahead of the University of Hong Kong at 24.

The THES has given us permission to reproduce the table - and we want you to see what you can do to visualise it for us. DOWNLOAD HERE

Cheers up Columbian! we will take a lead for the next year ranked. finger cross babe!

Ululate, keen & hanker

A fellow who mused that this must be the days of whine and roses admitted to hankering after the story behind the words ululate and keen, and also, he said, behind the verb hanker too.

While folks who ululate and keen may well count on hankies to staunch their tears, we've been unable to tie these terms together; they are all over the linguistic map.

Ululate first appeared in the early 17th century. Meaning "to wail" or "howl," it traces back to Latin, and was coined in imitation of the vocalizations it denotes.

Keen comes from Old Irish "I lament, weep." The noun keen, naming a lamentation for the dead uttered in a loud wailing voice or sometimes in a wordless cry, first appeared in English print in 1830. 15 years later, the verb keen followed.

Are you wondering whether folks weren't lamenting, keening, and bewailing well before the 1600s? They were indeed. Wail came in around the 14th century. While wail hails back to Old Norse, its Middle English kin is suspected of being influenced by the now-archaic weilawai, an interjection used to express sorrow or lamentation.

As for hanker, that term meaning "have a strong or persistent desire for"; "yearn (after)," dates back to the early 1600s. Hanker is believed to come from the Dutch dialect hankeren, a verb whose original meaning was "to hang repeatedly."

Several fresh faces join Columbia Uni Admin

Administrative resignations and hires became a recurring feature of the 2008-2009 academic year, signaling a substantial turnover of Columbia’s leadership. By September, the University will see fresh faces in many administrative posts. Eight years after becoming president, Lee Bollinger has set himself up to lead an institution run by deans he has appointed—most deans are selected after a search committee presents several finalists to Bollinger. Which remained me on my recruitment as part of several team for Graduate School- which i may say very much complicated process!

After previous hires in the Medical Center, the School of International and Public Affairs, the School of the Arts, the Columbia Journalism School, and others, the selection of this year’s newcomers capped off a series of key appointments. In fact, Bollinger joked in a recent interview, “I think we’ll come to a point here where I will not have any more appointments to make.” But that will only apply once he announces who the new provost will be. We welcome the new provost (whoever is this person going to be!) and many more philanthropies to put in thier endowment in our trust.

Homemade Bread Day

Today is Homemade Bread Day, a time to look at breads from around the world. Not surprisingly, something that's been consumed by humans for so very long in so very many places goes by a variety of names. The Latin word for bread, panis, gave English both the noun paneity, meaning "the quality or state of being bread" and the adjective panary meaning "of or related to bread or breadmaking."

Now let's look at five varieties of bread. The flat Italian bread typically seasoned with herbs and olive oil is called foccacia(i practically can eat this and only this forever) after the Latin word for hearth.

Pan dulce entered English from American Spanish (where it literally means "sweet bread"). But the Americanized pan dulce names not the edible organs of an animal but such sweetened breads as raisin buns.

Then there's pumpernickel, whose German ancestors translate roughly as "goblin who breaks wind" and which may have gotten its name from its indigestible.

If that's too coarse for you, try some Sally Lunn, slightly sweetened raised bread baked as a thin loaf or muffins and eaten hot with butter. The original Sally Lunn was an 18th century baker.

Finally, there's naan, flat leavened bread associated with the Indian subcontinent. The word naan comes from the Persian, Hindi and Urdu word for bread.

DICTIONARY DAY

October 16, the birthday of Noah Webster, is Dictionary Day in America, born on this date in 1758. Lovers of big words know the 250th anniversary has a number of proposed names—semiquincentennial and bicenquinquagenary come to mind. Students of dictionaries know those terms aren't assured a place in the record books because they are not firmly established in the lexicon. And we know we'd rather talk about dictionaries and Noah Webster than about sesquipedalian words.

Old Noah was a bit of a visionary when it came to creating his dictionaries. He believed people living in the young United States had their own lexicon worth honoring, and he believed in simplifying pesky spelling issues. Some, but not all, of his spelling reforms caught on with the public. He argued that wimmen was the "old and true spelling" of women and the spelling that best indicates its pronunciation. That change didn't take, although his efforts to eliminate the u from mould and honour did succeed.

250 years after Noah Webster's birth, and 202 years after his first dictionary was published, the American lexicon continues to change and grow. Noah Webster's 1828 magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language, defined 70,000 words. The most recent edition of the Collegiate Dictionary has more than 225,000 definitions . . . and the lexicon shows no signs of stopping its growth.