19th Century Language

[Kristin Banyas]

Iwas wondering where and how scientists acquired those skills, or if this is a case where there is a nowadays unknown army of translators that facilitated the discourse and bridged the gap in that way.

Most of them learned languages at school. Or more precisely in a lyceum or gymnasium as these schools were called in French and German/Russian, respectively.They gave a strong training in languages (and also in history, geography and mathematics). The languages normally taught included Latin (everywhere, until 20 century), Greek (ancient, of course), sometimes Hebrew, and "Modern Languages" (English, German, French). This was considered a normal education until the early 20th century, and was called "classic education". In many countries gymnasium was a necessary prerequisite to be admitted to a university. In some countries (Germany) Latin is a common subject even now.

One of my relatives, for example, born in 1910 in an educated lower middle class family in Ukraine would normally go to a gymnasium. His father was a worker (a typesetter) and his mother a housewife. Because the normal way of life was interrupted in Ukraine in 1917, the parents would hire private teachers (mostly students). As a result, he was fluent in English, German, French, Latin, and Hebrew, let alone his "native languages" normally spoken in Ukraine at that time (Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish).He became a scientist, in medicine. As I understand this was a standard for an well-educated person, especially a scientist (except Hebrew and Yiddish). After that time, the standards in language education sharply declined. Most Soviet scientists whom I knew and who were born in the later epochs knew at most one foreign language.

If you read Tolstoy, War and Peace, (the action happens in the beginning of 19th century) you notice that the personages (Russian nobles) speak between themselves in French and German most of the time, sometimes in English. They all had "classic education".

All education of Julien Sorel (Stendal, Le Rouge et le Noir) consisted of memorizing a Gospel in Latin. This alone allowed him to feel himself a gentleman, to be treated as one, and to qualify for a suitable job (early 19th century).

Before the middle of 19th century, the primary education was mostly Latin (the native languages were not taught at schools!) An educated person in Europe was first of all distinguished by the knowledge of Latin. Greek and otherforeign languages were taught later.

ADDED. As promised in my comment I made a little poll in a German university math department. I asked 9 professors and one secretary about themselves and their children. All but one had Latin and English at school, but Latin was not mandatory in most schools. One had just to choose any 2 foreign languages. In some schools Latin was mandatory and this depended on the Land (state in Germany) and of particular school. So I was wrong and corrected my statement.

If these scientists were nobles or came from a wealthy family, they would have a done a big trip around Europe, when they are starting to become adults. This trip was called "Grand Tour" and was supposed to open the young minds to arts, sciences and languages.

Other than that, if these scientists were reknowned or were in societies (e.g. the Royal Society, l'Acadmie des Sciences, etc), they were frequently corresponding to other societies or to some monarchs (e.g. like the correspondance between Descartes and Kristina av Sverige).

Following its sartorial beginnings, flummadiddle began to be employed in other fashions; it comes up as a single-word headline for an article in a Massachusetts newspaper, The Salem Gazette, in 1829, without any apparent relation to the text of the article (which is about a walking stick); perhaps the editors of that paper simply liked the way the word looked.

It is not entirely clear which meaning of slumgullion came first, although it seems possible that it was the one having to do with a disagreeable drink, as there were newspaper reports in the early 1850s of a town with the curious name of Slumgullion Bar.

Highfalutin has a fine purpose, which is that it serves to describe behavior that is pretentious without making the person using it sound, well, pretentious. Were you to describe the high-flown speech of another using other adjectives available to you (grandiloquent, fustian, orotund) you might well be found guilty of the crime yourself.

There have been more than a few theories advanced as to the origins of sockdolager, ranging from a translation of some Latin phrase to a combination of sock and doxology. While anything is possible, we must caution readers that the majority of popular etymologies that have a charming and fanciful origin story are little-rooted in fact. Given that sockdolager appears to have appeared in print as a highly colloquial term in the 1820s, and has had more spelling variants than it has letters, it is unlikely that its true origins will be made clear anytime soon.

Slantindicular sounds a bit similar to a good number of other fanciful 19th century Americanisms on this list, and much like several of them it is a portmanteau. A portmanteau may refer to a large suitcase, or to a word that is formed by blending two or more distinct forms. One of the better-known portmanteaus (or portmanteaux) is smog, which is a blend of smoke and fog. Slantindicular, which is not one of the better-known portmanteaus, is a blend of slanting and perpendicular.

Jimberjawed (also occasionally found as gimberjawed, jibberjawed, jiggerjawed, jimmiejawed, among other variations) is thought to be a variant of gimbal-jawed, which means much the same thing (a gimbal is a device that allows a suspended body to incline freely in any direction).

Sarah married Amory Dwight Mayo in July 1846, and they had one daughter who was born in September 1847. Sarah died nine months later at the young age of 29 years. Following her death, her husband honored her memory by publishing a memoir entitled Selections From the Writings of Mrs. Sarah C. Edgarton Mayo: With a Memoir. The work contains many of her poems and prose. She had a deep connection and love of natural history, which is felt through her writings.

The four women featured here are among many other women and men who wrote language of flower works. The 19th century fascination with natural history and floriography offered numerous opportunities for writers and compilers to produce titles and editions in this genre.

Leora Siegel is the Senior Director of the Lenhardt Library, one of the treasures of the Chicago Botanic Garden. Its 150,000-volume collection encompasses resources on gardening, botany, plant conservation, and landscape design, in formats from rare books to e-books. Library initiatives focus on public engagement, collections, and collaborations.

Aside from etymology, one of my favorite language study activities before college was diagramming sentences. Consequently, I was delighted to be reminded of those good old days by this new (June 19, 2024) article in The Public Domain Review: "American Grammar: Diagraming Sentences in the 19th Century". This is a magisterial collection of crisply photographed archival works that you can flip through page by page to study at your leisure.

When I was in high school, we were still doing diagramming like that in Reed and Kellogg (1880), and I loved (almost) every minute of it, although sometimes it was vexatiously challenging to make everything fit in neatly and rigorously.

Visualization is a key component of Buddhist thought and practice, e.g., here. "Visual metaphors, visionary literature, and visualization practices are pervasive in Buddhist traditions. Vision and seeing are dominant metaphors for knowledge, awakening, and insight." Perhaps Western grammarians were also inspired by becoming familiar with this aspect of Eastern thought as well.

This blog post is for the purpose of listing possible 19th century Protestant phrases in Book of Mormon, not meant to treat this subject in depth. Here are a couple places for more info on the subject:

I used a little Secret Sauce to weight each component and provide a total score. The list at bottom is the 1-grams, 2-grams, 3-grams, and 4-grams in descending order of that score, arbitrarily cut off at a certain point so as to not go on forever. There are likely some important 3-grams and 4-grams that were missed.

First, to get the Book of Mormon flavor of how this phrase is used. Go here to search for your phrase in the BOM. If you come up with your own phrase and want to check if it appears in the KJV first, you can check here.

Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.

And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about the great and eternal plan of redemption.

And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also.

These three verses sound a lot alike. This is back to the Three Voice Hypothesis. Though this is quoting three different BOM prophets, all these voices should be considered as produced by the same creator. They are in the S portion of S (Sermon) vs N (Narrative) and the E portion of E (Early) vs L (Late).

Wonderful indeed is the plan of redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ. For when sin had entered into the world and man was become guilty before the Lord his just desert was everlasting banishment from the presence and glory of his Maker and all that is meant by the word DEATH. Had the Almighty according to strict justice cut him off as a guilty rebel where had been the glory of his MERCY. And if he had of his clemency forgiven the offence and restored him to a state of favour where had been the evidence of his justice truth and holiness. Had he required of Adam an atonement for his sin commensurate to the demands of justice that had been impossible for him to have offered. But in the gift of Christ justice and mercy met together righteousness and peace embraced each other.

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