Irvine Welsh, Jane Austen and James Joyce

FCM?

Actually there's a bit in that article about the historical linguistics of English that has already been debunked by the blog Language Log, which I found funny and interesting. Because, basically, what the article attempts to do is tie genetic heritage and language heritage together, which is a huge no-no in linguistic circles.

(Considering how often people from Parts conquer people from Other Parts, and convince them to speak a new language, languages travel at quite a different rate from genes, and in different patterns.)

(Also, it smacks of the history of tribalism/racism that linguistics tries to downplay, as it strives to be considered a formal hard science.)

One of the things Language Log points out is that we have Old English attestation as soon as about 800 CE, which means that Old English was being spoken (but not written down) for quite a while before that. that is always the trouble with historical linguistics -- the number of illiterate peoples in history about whom we can attest nothing.

Isn't Beowulf only around because of a single written version of it that was discovered in the 17th century?

Yes, and the original ms. was a wee bit charred at one point, having been rescued from a housefire. That's why there are "...and then something happened. Skipping ahead!" notes in the narrative.

The same is true of one of the six extant originals of the Magna Carta, which I saw under glass in the British Museum years ago. Five of the copies are all officious Germanic-looking lettering, presumably done with painstaking care by monks of some order; and the sixth is all screwy with the letters shrunk and sent sideways by the paper as it contracted on exposure to the heat of a fire. It got rescued before it actually burned, but, I think it is a good thing that fire-suppression methods are a major part of archiving and museum studies, these days.

I was looking at an edition of Raymond Chandler's notebooks during lunch.

It had some great stuff in it, including lists of similes that he'd go back and poach from. Some ones I remembered:

"A mouth like wilted lettuce"

"Lower than a badger's balls"

"A thready smile"

"He was a great long gallows of a man with a ravaged face and a haggard eye."

(Beautifu rhythm in that line too, hitting on the G's.)

There were also lists of slang for San Quentin, shooting craps ("Ada from Decatur" for eights, "Little Josie" for four.) and pickpockets ("Hanger binging" is stealing things from a woman's purse without taking the purse. Presumably while hanging from a strap in the subway.)

Which inevitably brings us to:

Write a Chandlerian Simile

Here I'll prime the pump...

"She had eyes harder than...."

::taps foot impatiently:: C'mon slackers.

"She had eyes harder than Karl Rove's heart."

"She had eyes harder than Chinese calculus." (a venerable old trope)

"She had eyes harder than an untenured English professor at a small state university." (to steal from myself)

"She had eyes harder than..."

"She had eyes harder than the ancient gum petrifying under the movie house seats."

[Dragging the concept over from Natter...]

She had eyes harder than Prince's guitar neck.

To go for the crudity . . .

She had eyes harder than what was in my pants.

Sigh.

"She had eyes harder than the Hope Diamond, and a history twice as cursed."