“Pitkern”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mutiny_HMS_Bounty.jpg

The mutiny on the Bounty is a landmark of sea law, but it also has a curious linguistic sequel. After setting Captain Bligh adrift, Fletcher Christian fled to Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. With him were eight other crewmen, six Tahitian men, and 11 women. In order to understand each other, they developed a creole mix of English and Tahitian known as “Pitcairnese”:

English Pitkern
How are you? Whata way ye?
Where are you going? About ye gwen?
Are you going to cook dinner? You gwen whihi up suppa?
Would you like some food? Ye like-a sum whettles?
I don’t think so I nor believe
It doesn’t matter Do’ mine

The mutineers were a diverse lot, with origins from Scotland to the West Indies, so the mix is a linguistic hodgepodge. For instance, “whettles,” above, meaning food, is a throwback to the Old English victuals.

| History · Language

The Evils of Broadway

“With drunkenness, gambling, and dancing, theater-going dates from the beginning of history, and with these it is not only questionable in morals, but it is positively bad. Every one who knows any thing about the institution of the theater, as such, knows that it always has been corrupting in its influence. Not only those who attend the theater pronounce it bad, as a whole, but it is frowned upon by play-writers, and by actors and actresses themselves.”

— J.M. Judy, Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes, 1904

| Entertainment

A Field of Flames

Here’s one explanation for crop circles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hertforshire_Mowing_Devil.gif

This English woodcut pamphlet was published in 1678. It tells of a farmer who swore he would rather have the devil mow his field than pay the high price demanded by a laborer.

According to the pamphlet, that night his field appeared to be in flames, and the next morning it was found to be mowed to supernatural perfection.

Maybe so, but if that’s what causes these things, the devil’s been getting awfully fancy lately:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CropCircleSwirl.jpeg

| Oddities

Magazine Readability

Number of years of formal education required to understand selected magazines, according to the Gunning-Fog readability index:

  • Atlantic Monthly: 12
  • TIME, Harper’s: 11
  • Newsweek: 10
  • Reader’s Digest: 9
  • Ladies’ Home Journal: 8
  • True Confessions: 7
  • comic books: 6
| Language

Cecil Rhodes’ Secret Ambition

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Now remembered chiefly for establishing Rhodes scholarships, South African diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes left an alarming provision in his will — he hoped to take over the world:

To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.

“I contend that we (the British) are the finest race in the world,” he once wrote, “and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.”

| History