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Two Thoughts on the English Language

January 8, 2009 10:06 PM

onday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were fairly busy days. At the beginning of the week, Wednesday in particular looked like it was going to be a bitch. You see, Wednesday was the day of a motion hearing that's been months in the making. And I really wanted to win. On top of that, I had to drive to the middle of nowhere for another fairly big hearing. Oh, and I knew that I was going to have to spend Wednesday night prepping for my trial on Thursday. Oh, and I still had to find some way to cram four client visits in there. I wasn't dreading Wednesday--in fact, I was looking forward to the hearings. But I knew that it would be a giant ball of stress.

So here's what I did on Tuesday night. I stayed up late reading. Then I had the strangest dreams. But here's the one that takes the cake. At around 4am, either while dreaming or awake, I thought about something and I just couldn't let it go. And here's what I was thinking of: why does English have the both the word "instantly" and the word "instantaneously"?

Think about it. English has lots of synonyms, but this set is completely different. We have many words that mean "big," for example, but each of those words comes from somewhere else. It's not like big, huge, large, titanic, or humongous all come from the same word in Latin or something. And here's the other thing: each of those words has a slightly different meaning. I think, for example, that something that's "humongous" is bigger than something that's merely "big." It's like "humongous" means "very big," almost.

But look at instantly and instantaneously. They come from the exact same word--instant. And they have the exact same meaning. It's not like something that happens instantly happens fast, but something that happens instantaneously happens faster. No. They both mean that this thing happens without the passage of any time at all. So why do we have both of these words? What possible function can one serve when we already have the other?

That's what kept me up Wednesday morning. Not all the things I was about to do that actually mattered, but the existence of two words at least one of which is completely worthless.

And here's my other thought about English: the letters Q and X are completely worthless. They are without worth. Each of those letters can be replaced with some combination of C, K, or S. But we keep them. Why? Why?

These things honestly bother me.



7 Comments


Lauren said:

I have no answer for "instantly" and "instantaneously," but Q and X are holdovers from Latin and Greek. Q was the Latin version of the Greek digamma (think a backwards F), I think, and the X is of course chi, which was distinguished from kappa because it was aspirated while kappa wasn't. Why have they persisted? Because Kween looks dumb.

January 8, 2009 10:36 PM



Dee said:

we need q x and for differentiating chinese sounds using horrible, crap romanization systems!

January 9, 2009 10:51 AM



Justine said:

I see what you are getting at, but are they really synonyms? Suppose my plane crashes into a mountain, and you say "Ms. Henin was killed instantaneously." Isn't that just wrong? Shouldn't it be '..was killed instantly'?

January 9, 2009 6:29 PM



butterflyfish said:

we need Q and X for massive points in Scrabble!

Also, I saw your comment on my long ago post about Questionable Content. Are you really hooked? I spent one or two really long nights reading the whole thing from the beginning.

January 9, 2009 7:24 PM



kristin said:

Actually, it would be "Ms. Henin was killed instantaneously."

Ismael, I hate to rain on your rage-parade, especially when the subject is complicated words that mean basically the same thing as simpler words. However, there is a slight but real distinction between the meanings of the two words. They're both adverbs, but instantaneously means that something (death) happened at a particular instant (the instant the plane hit the mountain) or with no perceptible passage of time. Instantly, when used properly, means something more like urgently or without delay.

I don't think this nearly meaningless distinction contradicts your main argument that the English lanuage is kind of stupid. We could easily give one of those words (I choose instantly) all those definitions and no one who had the context would be confused. But, I think you've overlooked worse examples. I would suggest "utilize," darling of corporate-speak drones everywhere. It means to make use of - so why not say "use," you pretentious, business-school fucks?

January 10, 2009 2:10 PM



Tisha said:

Got it! Thanks a lot again for hepnilg me out!

July 10, 2011 7:19 AM






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