Advance each letter in the word ABJURER 13 places through the alphabet and you get NOWHERE:
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The Monster Study
In 1939, University of Iowa graduate student Mary Tudor began an experiment with local orphans, warning them that they were showing signs of stuttering and lecturing them whenever they repeated a word. The children became acutely self-conscious, and many began to stutter, fulfilling the theory that “the affliction is caused by the diagnosis.”
Sixty years later, when Tudor was 84, she received a letter from one of the orphans. It was addressed to “Mary Tudor Jacobs The Monster.”
“You destroyed my life,” it ran. “I could have been a scientist, archaeologist or even president. Instead I became a pitiful stutterer. The kids made fun of me, my grades fell off, I felt stupid. Clear into my adulthood, I still want to avoid people to this day.”
“I didn’t like what I was doing to those children,” Tudor told the San Jose Mercury News in 2001. “It was a hard, terrible thing. Today, I probably would have challenged it. Back then you did what you were told. It was an assignment. And I did it.”
True Enough
In Montana Salish, a Native American language of the Pacific Northwest, the word for automobile is p’ip’uyshn — literally, “it has wrinkled feet.”
The Nez Perce word for telephone, cewcew’in’es, means “a thing for whispering.”
The Seattle God Committee
In 1962, Seattle’s Swedish Hospital began offering kidney dialysis to outpatients. Because the program could accept only 17 patients, it turned to an “admissions and policy committee” made up of largely of laypeople: a minister, a lawyer, a housewife, a labor leader, a state government official, a banker, and a surgeon.
In order to narrow the field of applicants, the committee considered whether a candidate was employed, had dependent children, was educated, had a history of achievements, and had the potential to help others. In its deliberations it would also evaluate the candidate’s personality, his personal merits, and the strengths and weaknesses of his family. “The preferred candidate was a person who had demonstrated achievement through hard work and success at his job,” wrote sociologists Renée Fox and Judith Swazey, “who went to church, joined groups, and was actively involved in community affairs.”
As word spread, observers raised questions about the ethics of the program. In spring 1963, the Seattle Times presented a picture of nine dialysis patients on its cover, with the heading “Will These People Have to Die?” A committee member protested, “We are picking guinea pigs for experimental purposes, not denying life to others.” But in 1972 Congress established federal support for anyone needing dialysis, partly in response to these concerns, and today the “Seattle experience” is remembered as a formative case in bioethics.
Condensed Fiction
At 503 words, this is the shortest Sherlock Holmes story that Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote. It was inscribed in a book 1.5″ high and contributed to the library of a dollhouse built for Queen Mary, the wife of George V:
How Watson Learned the Trick
Watson had been watching his companion intently ever since he had sat down to the breakfast table. Holmes happened to look up and catch his eye.
‘Well, Watson, what are you thinking about?’ he asked.
‘About you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, Holmes. I was thinking how superficial are these tricks of yours, and how wonderful it is that the public should continue to show interest in them.’
‘I quite agree,’ said Holmes. ‘In fact, I have a recollection that I have myself made a similar remark.’
‘Your methods,’ said Watson severely, ‘are really easily acquired.’
‘No doubt,’ Holmes answered with a smile. ‘Perhaps you will yourself give an example of this method of reasoning.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Watson. ‘I am able to say that you were greatly preoccupied when you got up this morning.’
‘Excellent!’ said Holmes. ‘How could you possibly know that?’
‘Because you are usually a very tidy man and yet you have forgotten to shave.’
‘Dear me! How very clever!’ said Holmes. ‘I had no idea, Watson, that you were so apt a pupil. Has your eagle eye detected anything more?’
‘Yes, Holmes. You have a client named Barlow, and you have not been successful with his case.’
‘Dear me, how could you know that?’
‘I saw the name outside his envelope. When you opened it you gave a groan and thrust it into your pocket with a frown on your face.’
‘Admirable! You are indeed observant. Any other points?’
‘I fear, Holmes, that you have taken to financial speculation.’
‘How could you tell that, Watson?’
‘You opened the paper, turned to the financial page, and gave a loud exclamation of interest.’
‘Well, that is very clever of you, Watson. Any more?’
‘Yes, Holmes, you have put on your black coat, instead of your dressing gown, which proves that your are expecting some important visitor at once.’
‘Anything more?’
‘I have no doubt that I could find other points, Holmes, but I only give you these few, in order to show you that there are other people in the world who can be as clever as you.’
‘And some not so clever,’ said Holmes. ‘I admit that they are few, but I am afraid, my dear Watson, that I must count you among them.’
‘What do you mean, Holmes?’
‘Well, my dear fellow, I fear your deductions have not been so happy as I should have wished.’
‘You mean that I was mistaken.’
‘Just a little that way, I fear. Let us take the points in their order: I did not shave because I have sent my razor to be sharpened. I put on my coat because I have, worse luck, an early meeting with my dentist. His name is Barlow, and the letter was to confirm the appointment. The cricket page is beside the financial one, and I turned to it to find if Surrey was holding its own against Kent. But go on, Watson, go on! It ‘s a very superficial trick, and no doubt you will soon acquire it.’
J.M. Barrie, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, and Somerset Maugham also contributed volumes for the dollhouse, which is still on display at Windsor Castle. George Bernard Shaw declined to participate.
Spellbound
In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt directed the government printing office to adopt revised spellings for 300 English words. Wished would become wisht, calibre caliber, and though tho. “It is not an attempt to do anything far-reaching or sudden or violent; or indeed anything very great at all,” he wrote. “It is merely an attempt to cast what slight weight can properly be cast on the side of the popular forces which are endeavoring to make our spelling a little less foolish and fantastic.”
That’s about as far as he got. The House of Representatives called on the printing office to “observe and adhere to the standard of orthography prescribed in generally accepted dictionaries of the English language.” The New York Evening Post declared “This is 2 mutch,” and the Louisville Courier-Journal opined, “Nuthing escapes Mr. Rucevelt. No subject is tu hi fr him to takl, nor tu lo for him tu notis. … He now assales the English langgwidg, constitutes himself a sort of French Academy, and will reform the spelling in a way tu soot himself.”
Roosevelt rescinded the order but continued to use the new spelling himself. “I could not by fighting have kept the new spelling in, and it was evidently worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten,” he told Brander Matthews. But “I am mighty glad I did the thing.”
The Bouba/Kiki Effect
In 2001, USCD psychologist Vilayanur Ramachandran presented these shapes to American undergraduates and to Tamil speakers in India. He asked, “Which of these shapes is bouba and which is kiki?” Around 98% of the respondents assigned the name kiki to the spiky shape and bouba to the curvy one.
Psychologist Wolfgang Köhler had found a similar effect in 1929 using the words baluba and takete. “This result suggests that the human brain is somehow able to to extract abstract properties from the shapes and sounds,” Ramachandran wrote, “for example, the property of jaggedness embodied in both the pointy drawing and the harsh sound of kiki.”
Apple Piety
But my favourite example is a story told by the American linguist Charles Hockett, who reports that at least one Filipino father, during the American occupation of the Philippines, named his son Ababís — after the patron saint of the United States. But no such saint exists. So what happened?
Well, before the Americans arrived, the Philippines were a Spanish colony, and Spanish was widely spoken. In Spanish, the word for ‘saint’, when it occurs in a male saint’s name, is San — hence all those California place names like San Francisco, San José and San Diego. The Filipino father had noticed that American soldiers, in moments of stress, tended to call upon their saint by exclaiming San Ababís! — or something like that.
— Robert Lawrence Trask, Language: The Basics, 1999
“I once had a student named Usmail, which I at first thought was some Hispanic version of Ishmael,” writes CUNY linguist Leonard R.N. Ashley. “It transpired that he had been named for the only contact his family in a remote Puerto Rican village enjoyed with the outside world, the red-white-and-blue truck that came frequently and had painted on its side US Mail.”
“In Nyasaland, Africa, a native tribe got into the custom of taking names from a publisher’s catalogue which had fallen into their hands. Their Chieftain took for himself the name of Oxford University Press.” — Mario Pei, The Story of Language, 1966
Busy Man
When Saparmurat Niyazov became president of Turkmenistan, he commissioned a 12-meter gold-plated statue of himself that rotated always to face the sun. That was actually one of his more modest decrees. Others:
- He had his parliament officially name him Turkmenbashi, “father of all Turkmens.”
- He named streets, schools, airports, farms, and people after himself, as well as vodka, a meteorite, the country’s second largest city, and a television channel.
- He banned the Hippocratic oath and demanded that doctors swear allegiance to him.
- His autobiography, the Rukhnama (“book of souls”), was studied in schools and became a textbook in other subjects, such as history and geography. Libraries, now superfluous, were closed.
- Gold-plated statues to him were erected throughout the country.
- He banned ballet, opera, public smoking, lip syncing, beards, gold teeth, recorded music, health care in rural areas, and car radios.
- He planned the construction of a “palace of ice” and penguin enclosure so that residents of the desert could learn to skate.
- He decreed that the word old must not be applied to people — when one turns 61 he enters “the prophetic age,” and 73 marks “the inspired age.”
- He applied the name Gurbansoltan Edzhe (“the Turkmen heroine”) to his mother, a women’s magazine, the year 2003, April, and bread.
“I’m personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets,” he said, “but it’s what the people want.”
American Notes
It must be confessed at the outset that Oshkosh is not a beautiful word. Its pronunciation is suggestive of a man struggling with a mouthful of hot mush, and to the irreverent it is a perfect rhyme to ‘gosh.’ But, on the other hand, the word has its advantages. It is an ideal word for advertising purposes. Once heard the word cannot be forgotten. Furthermore, to say that one comes from Oshkosh is in itself a mark of distinction. To be sure, few persons do come from Oshkosh. They are afraid of being made fun of, but when they do wander from the Oshkosh fireside, they attract as much attention as the pachyderm contingent of a circus parade. In a drawing-room the citizen from Oshkosh is the cynosure of all eyes, and he need fear but three rivals–the man from Kalamazoo, the man from Kokomo, and the man from Keokuk.
— Rochester Post Express, March 26, 1911