Bowland – Yain, Tain, Eddera, Peddera, Pit, Tayter, Layter, Overa, Covera, Dix, Yain-a-dix, Tain-a-dix, Eddera-a-dix, Peddera-a-dix, Bumfit, Yain-a-bumfit, Tain-a-bumfit, Eddera-bumfit, Peddera-a-bumfit, Jiggit

Weardale – Yan, Teyan, Tethera, Methera, Tic, Yan-a-tic, Teyan-a-tic, Tethera-tic, Methera-tic, Bub, Yan-a-bub, Teyan-a-bub, Tethera-bub, Methera-bub, Tic-a-bub, Yan-tic-a-bub, Teyan-tic-a-bub, Tethea-tic-a-bub, Methera-tic-a-bub, Gigget

Wensleydale – Yain, Tain, Eddero, Peddero, Pitts, Tayter, Later, Overro, Coverro ,Disc, Yain disc, Tain disc, Ederro disc, Peddero disc, Bumfitt, Bumfitt yain, Bumfitt tain, Bumfitt ederro, Bumfitt peddero, Jiggit

Coniston – Yan, Taen, Tedderte, Medderte, Pimp, Haata, Slaata, Lowra, Dowra, Dick, Yan-a-Dick, Taen-a-Dick, Tedder-a-Dick, Medder-a-Dick, Mimph, Yan-a-Mimph, Taen-a-Mimph, Tedder-a-Mimph, Medder-a-Mimph, Gigget

Tong – Yan, Tan, Tether, Mether, Pick, Sesan, Asel, Catel, Oiner, Dick, Yanadick, Tanadick, Tetheradick, Metheradick, Bumfit, Yanabum, Tanabum, Tetherabum, Metherabum, Jigget

There’s a whole load more varieties on wikipeddera-a-dix.

They bring to mind Eeny Meeny Miny Moe, although there is no element of choosing with yan tan tetherae – just counting. Eeny Meeny Miny Moe comes in many forms, so it is not that odd that I was brought up on a slightly different version to the one most people seem to know. I’ve not come across many people using this version, although I believe it is a South East/ South thing – this source suggests Warwickshire and is slightly different to the one I know, and this one suggests London, and I grew up in Oxfordshire, which would be in the middle. Interestingly, in the first source I mention, a version for the West of London rhyme has ‘kethera’ in it, which has clear phonetic similarities with the Northern rhymes. So, to conclude, does anyone else know this version at all?

eena deena dina dos

catler, weena, weina, woss more »

Journey: Stamford Hill Broadway to Brecknock Road
Bus: 253
Length of Journey: 19 minutes
Number of Stops: 18
Number of times announcement said ’253. To.    Euston’: 20
Number of times bus stop was announced: 18
Total number of announcements: 38

The pattern of announcements was this – on approach to bus stop announce stop name, on arrival at bus stop announce destination before opening doors (why?!), then once doors are closed and bus is pulling away, announce it again, for the benefit of passengers who have got on the bus and immediately forgotten which bus they got onto. There were a couple of stops where the destination was announced only once, but most of them got 2 announcements per stop. With the bus stopping approximately every minute this gives an average of 2 announcements every minute.

I’m not saying that this system doesn’t have merit – it is clearly quite useful in a number of ways, but it is excessively intrusive. Buses are quieter than trains, on the whole, so the announcement is clearer, and harder to tune out. I am fully convinced of the value of announcing the stop name, but announcing the destination is surely not as important, especially this frequently. I know it benefits people with visual impairments, but it’s not like they get on random buses then sit there waiting for an announcement that will let them know whether they’ve got on the right bus or not.  And people getting off a bus have no real need to know what bus they are alighting from.

My experiment also suggests that no one will sit next to you if you have an open notepad into which you record a tally.

Firstly – the hygiene issues surrounding ‘communal dipping’. I’m sure everyone is pretty familiar with this practice, unless you live in a cave or something. This New York Times article deals with a study about bacteria levels in dip, with what to me seem quite obvious results – that dipping the same chip twice into a pot of shared dip = more bacteria, although the article seems surprised by this result. The scientist’s general conclusion – do not eat dip at parties unless you’d also be willing to kiss everyone else there, as it (bacterially speaking) adds up to the same thing, a conclusion that makes me feel vaguely paranoid – what if everyone finds out about this study? I foresee situations at parties where eating dip is seen as a come-on, ie if you’re happy to eat the dip, you’re also happy getting off with whoever else is ‘dipping’.

Secondly – a food science challenge! The problem posed is

Can you find three foods such that all three do not go together (by any reasonable definition of foods “going together”) but every pair of them does go together?

(There’s more instructions and explanation under the link)

Anyone got any solutions?

There’s also some interesting possibilities for food science experiments, personally I’d love to see what Lemon Mole tastes like.

 UPDATE: This resource could also be handy here.

(all via kottke.org)

Halva is an acquired taste – I’ve never successfully convinced anyone who’s not had it before that it is nice, despite my efforts. I think it’s the uneasy marriage of bitter and slightly sickly. Last night I was wandering about a local shop looking for ricotta (nothing doing) when I stumbled across this – Helva’m produced by Sebahat. I had to buy some, I liked the shape of the container. It excited me to think I could possess it and have it in my house FOR ALL TIME.I got home and had a bit, as an appetiser before my wonderfully healthy dinner of tiger prawns, broccoli and asparagus (which I later spoiled, condiment wise, by mistaking the balsamic vinegar for the soy sauce. Aciiid!). But back to the helva. Halva. Whatever. It looked like Nutella. I dug down into it a bit expecting some beige strata at some point, but it was Nutella-y all the way down (usually when I eat  halva I like to pretend I am on Time Team, excavating a site. With a teaspoon). It tasted like Nutella without the hazelnuts – ie dull. Just plain Ella. I could just about get a hint of the sesame tones of halva, but very faintly. I am quite capable of eating stupid amounts of almost anything, often regardless of taste, but I couldn’t really see a point in continuing to eat the Helva’m.

It wasn’t the taste that finally stopped me, mind you – it was the consistency. You know how Nutella is spreadable, in a way that means however much you want to to eat it straight from the glass, you feel compelled to employ a bready mediator for the sake of decency? That’s a good thing. It’s useful to be able to spread spread. The picture on the Helva’m tub suggests a similar spreading fate for its contents, but the consistency is like a thick clay. You’d have to melt this stuff before it would spread evenly, and even then I’m not convinced it would work. So I figured it was meant to be eaten from the tub, because who’d be crazy enough to melt this stuff down each time they wanted a snack?! (Well, I say ‘I figured’; I was actually too lazy to bother doing anything else). I found myself having to bite the stuff off the spoon, which is not the intended consumption technique for spoons – I tried licking it, but the damn stuff was practically waterproof, like slightly softer plasticine. Once in my mouth it took a lot of mastication to get it to unstick from my palate. My neck muscles actually ached trying to swallow a spoonful. Then I got a headache. So, er, thanks Sebahat, for ruining halva for me. The name even connotes hesitation if you squint a bit – Helva?  Um ……no thanks.

Helva’m tastes of very little, is waterproof and incredibly sticky. I think I’m going to grout the bathroom with it.

1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.  
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.  
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.  
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.  
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition, which proves to be right.  
7. The detective himself must not commit the crime.  
8. The detective is bound to declare any clues upon which he may happen to light.  
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Here’s my somewhat haphazard thoughts on these points:

The general intention appears to be to establish a code of fair play – a notion that feeds into the idea that a massive part of the appeal of detective fiction is its ludic quality. Readers are entitled to feel cheated if authors do not play by the rules of the game. Rules are there to be broken though, and most detective fiction authors technically break most of Knox’ rules at some point. However, they usually adhere to the general ethos of fairness – I’ve rarely come across a detective story solved using a deus ex machina, for instance – such a device effectively undermines whatever plot has preceded it, and I can’t really see any author or reader of this genre being satisfied with such a solution. Point 10 raises a crucial point – we must be ‘duly prepared’ for anything which would otherwise act as a deus ex machina. It is not fair to suddenly introduce elements that are unlikely – such as the supernatural, twins, obscure poisons or a secret passage. It is like getting to the World Cup final and finding out that a country that hadn’t even qualified at group stage is being allowed to play. It’s just not cricket.

I’m not perfectly convinced by point 8 – I suspect what Knox meant is that the author (not the detective) must at least hint at all clues, so the reader can play the game and fashion them into a theory, should they spot them. The detective doesn’t need to explicitly relate the significance of clues at the same time as the reader, indeed this could have the effect of revealing the solution too soon. Knox’ insistence on transparency of the detective’s thought process and method is not helpful – yes it might make the game fair, but it makes for a rather poor storytelling experience. Good writers, I think, manage to balance game play and storytelling, so we feel we have had a good shot at solving the mystery ourselves, but also that we have allowed ourselves to be taken on a journey where we trust in the detective, even when they don’t show their working. Otherwise we may as well just play Cluedo.

Point 9 highlights a useful device of the genre – this enables the reader to position themselves between the ‘stupid friend’ and the detective – the detective is a few steps ahead of the reader, and the ‘stupid friend’ helps check the pace of the detective so the reader is not rushed, but simultaneously allow the reader to feel clever because they understand more than the stupid friend does. They also help the author to develop red herrings, and they question the competence of the detective. Hastings, Poirot’s flatfooted sidekick seems to spend a lot of time bemoaning Poirot’s lack of action whilst Poirot mulls things over. Hastings is pretty much always wrong, come the end, and the reader, who has always trusted in the detective’s approach, is vindicated.

Misdirections in detective fiction are often achieved by toying with these rules. There is at least one Agatha Christie story that stretches point 7 – the denouement reveals the killer to be the local policeman who has been closely involved in the investigation.  Written effectively, you are lulled into a false sense of security by attributing the immunity of the main detective (who usually is beyond suspicion) to any associate detectives, professional or otherwise - a misjudgement, as really, everyone, apart from the main detective is fair game, regardless of status.

Knox’ points provide an ok starting point for thinking about detective fiction but aren’t exactly a definitive set of rules for the genre, unsurprising really, given that the bulk of the writing in the genre came after their publication! In a later post I shall tackle Van Dine’s Commandments.
 
(The initial impression given by Point 5 is one of outdated racism, but there must be more specific reasons why Knox felt it necessary to make a point of it. I’d be interested in hearing what explanations people have for the exclusion of Chinamen from detective fiction).
*crime fighting priest = Father Dowling.

Overall I felt it was overacted, rammed into the audience’s ears a good few decibels louder than was comfortable. There was little subtlety to the proceedings – the actors’ delivery was at times larger than life, to the point of farce. Which brings me to my problem with this production – it sat itself inelegantly betwixt outright farcical comedy and serious crime fiction, resulting in it being none of these things effectively. It suffered from a common misconception about Christie – that her oeuvre was solely mass-market fare, awash with high drama and crime fiction clichés. The tension between these two opposing directions was detrimental in the main. If you’re going to be farcical and funny you have to go the whole hog, otherwise steer well clear, and stick to playing it straight. Christie’s stories can easily be done humorously/ farcically, but equally there is a wealth of subtlety and emotional depth that can be exploited if you wish to do it in a sober manner. This production fell down because it did neither – on one hand the jokes were awkward and a little clumsy, but conversely the emotion was stilted and undeveloped. It was also too fast paced – a lot of the appeal of an Agatha is that she will expand the backstory of characters evenly, a trait which allows her to play red herrings and misdirect the reader, meaning the reveal at the end can be a genuine surprise rather than obvious from the start. Here we had the customary fixed range of possible murderers, but because only a couple of their stories were fleshed out it was clear reasonably early on whom the murderer was. The twist was another matter, and here they got it right, providing a chilling surprise.

Of course these things aside it was great fun, Richard Blackwood (really poor website!) probably put in the best performance, although I couldn’t quite shake the memory of his involvement in Channel Five’s remarkable Celebrity Enema, sorry, Celebrity Detox, a problem I share with many, including Richard himself.

There are four basic word roots for ‘beer’ in European languages, found in the Germanic, Slavic,  Scandinavian (technically Nordic and Baltic), and Italic language families. The derivation of beer themed words from roots related to brewing/ or beer ingredients is common, for example ‘brew’ and ‘broth’ both come from indo-European ‘*bhru’, a word connected to heat and bubbling (asterisk denotes a word that’s been reconstructed theoretically, but has no direct evidence for its existence). 

Scandinavian languages use a word possibly derived from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word meaning ‘bitter’. English has a word from the same source – ‘ale’, from the Old English ‘ealu’ (OE was influenced both by Germanic and Norse languages). Ales bitter reputation stems from the bitter herbs, or gruit used in its preparation, and from comparison to the other popular sweet tipple of the time – mead. ‘Ale’ could also derive from a PIE word that had connotations of sorcery, magic, possession, and intoxication, and it has been suggested that Neolithic beers were flavoured with henbane – a poison that would cause the drinker to act somewhat erratically, so perhaps ‘ale’ dates from as long ago as that. Here’s the various Scandanavian words:

• Øl = Danish, Faeroese, Norwegian
• Õlu =Estonian
• Öl = Icelandic, Swedish
• Alus =Lithuania, Latvian
• Olovina  = Serbo-Croat
• Olut =Finnish  (technically a Uralic language) 

The Germanic for beer derives from the Latin ‘bibere’ – ‘to drink’. The Germanic languages are not descended as such from Latin, although they share a common parent in PIE. However the influence of Latin across many languages is well documented, so it is not odd to find Latin words in all sorts of places. What is peculiar is that the West Germanic people borrowed the Latin for ‘to drink’ rather than the Latin for ‘beer’, plus there was already a word for ‘beer’ in the Germanic tongue (which went on to be ‘Ale’). It is impossible to say at this distance in time as to the motive for this. It has also been suggested that the word could have come from the proto-Germanic ‘*beuwoz-’ from ‘*beuwo-’ meaning barley.

• Bier = Breton, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, German (high)
• Beer = German (low), English
• Biere = French
• Birra = Italian 

The Slavic word is derived from an old word for barley. Some sources say that this word is instead derived from the Germanic, which would, however, invalidate the connection to barley.

• Pivo = Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Russian, Slovak, Serbian, Slovene, Ukrainian
• Piwo = Polish
• Piva = Belorussian

Italic (or Romance) words come from Old French – ‘cervoise’ meaning ‘unhopped beer’, which is derived from a Medieval Latin word of Gaulish origin ‘cerevisia’. The origin of this word is hotly contested, but commonly thought to honour the Roman goddess of the harvest Ceres.

• Cerveza = Spanish
• Cervesa = Catalan
• Cervexa = Galician
• Cerveja = Portuguese 

English is a Germanic language, and it uses a Germanic word. Spanish and Portuguese, being Italic languages are actually conforming to type by using the Italic ‘cerveza’/ ‘cerveja’. However, French and Italian are also Italic languages, yet they use ‘biere’ and ‘birra’, which are clearly Germanic. French and Italian somehow replaced Italic lexical stock with Germanic. There are many reasons why languages adopt words from other languages, but it’s usually social reasons rather than internal linguistic motivations.

Although it’s uncertain why French and Italian adopted a non-Italic word it is possible to speculate. Beer production techniques are important here – the usurping of the older words for beer in France and Spain tie in with the spread of new brewing processes across Europe in the Middle Ages – specifically the use of hops in brewing, perfected in Germany in the 14^th century and introduced to Holland and England soon after. The French stopped using ‘cervoise’ (which meant ‘unhopped beer’) as the main word for beer in the 15^th century, in favour of ‘biere’, which meant ‘hopped beer’, and around the same time the Spanish started using ‘cerveza’ (Modern French still uses ‘cervoise’ but it’s semantically limited to ‘barley beer’). Hopped beer was introduced into France from Germany, reaching Northern France first. Medieval France was linguistically divided between the Langue d’oc of the south, and the Langue d’oil of the north, and out of these two it was the northern Langue d’oil that was more influential in the development of Modern French, which may have facilitated the Germanic ‘biere’ to spread throughout all of France. Another factor is the cultivation of wheat for beer production was more common in Northern Europe due to the more conducive growing climate, therefore the culture of beer drinking was better established in the north, so the Old French and Iberian words for beer would simply not have been used as much, making them more vulnerable to substitution. 

On the Iberian Peninsula prior to adopting ‘cerveza’, an ancient Iberian word ‘ceria’ or ‘celia’ (meaning fermented wheat) was used. Despite the phonetic similarity to ‘cerveza’ this word is unrelated etymologically – the now long extinct Iberian was seemingly a language isolate, possibly related to Basque, and was not an indo-European language. Spanish as a language established itself in the 15^th century, and is largely derived from Latin. How the Spanish came to take the French word is also unclear. 

The derivation of the Italic beer word is contentious and it involves the somewhat complex matter of the Celtic language family. Celtic was/ is found across Europe and parts of Asia Minor before the Roman Empire, and has a poorly documented history, prompting much argument among linguists. ‘Cerevisia’ is a Gaulish word. Gaulish is an extinct Celtic language found in parts of Western Europe, including northern France, as anyone who’s read Asterix knows. It’s reasonable that the Italic word should derive from this, as it was adopted by Latin speaking Romans during Gaulish invasions. It’s the link between Ceres, Roman harvest goddess and ‘cerevisia’ that is contested. The Romans were compelled to provide a classical etymology for words they took from barbaric languages, even when there was no such link, hence their reckless attribution of Ceres to the Gaulish word ‘cerevisia’ – easy enough given the phonetic similarities. The link therefore, between Ceres and ‘cerevisia’ is arbitrary, and relatively recent.   

A more plausible derivation of ‘cerevisia’ is a proto-Celtic word ‘*kurmi’, and PIE word ‘*kor-m’, – words which are also given as the root of the Latin words ‘cremor’ meaning ‘broth, thick juice’ and ‘cremo’ – ‘to boil, bubble’, bringing us back to the popular etymological theme of brewing methods, which gives credibility to this explanation. It’s also supported by the existence of other similar Celtic words – beer in Welsh is ‘cwrw’; Cornish ‘korev’; Breton ‘koref’; Irish ‘coirm’, and even an old Greek word for beer ‘kourmi’ (Greek is Hellenic, not Celtic, but once again, it is descended from PIE). The derivation would appear to have filtered down from PIE, making it pretty ancient and also widely distributed across languages.  

So,  ‘cerveza’ entered Spanish from Latin, and is essentially cognate with lots of other words for beer, just not ones in the main European languages and its real back-story is Celtic, and ultimately PIE.