Roots
Word wise
Deepti

IN all languages, there is a set of words that relates to the study of the language. English is no exception; there is a corpus of words that deals with the lexis of the language. The following words are some selections from that corpus.

‘Talkative’ or ‘chatterbox’ was the ultimate tag that one could give to people fond of their words. An inordinate fondness of words can also be labelled ‘logorrhoea’. This word is made up of the Greek ‘logos’ or ‘word’ and ‘rhoia’ or ‘flow’. Orthoepy refers to the customary pronunciation of a language and also to the study of the pronunciation of words. The origin of this word is in the Greek orthoepeia made up of ‘ortho’ that means ‘right or straight’ and ‘epos’ that means ‘word’. Thus, orthoepy literally means ‘correct speech’, so it can be used in both the above denotations.

When anybody uses a wrong word, term it an instance of ‘catachresis’ and get known as the person who loves difficult words. No, you don’t use the simple ‘malapropism’ when you can use a lesser-known word.`A0Catachresis means ‘the use of a word in a way that is not correct’. It comes from the Greek ‘katakhresthai’ or misuse’.

Today, English is the acknowledged lingua franca of the world. The original lingua franca was a mixture of Italian, French, Greek, Arabic and Spanish, used in the Levant. The Levant was the eastern part of the Mediterranean, comprising its islands and neighbouring countries. Levant was derived from the French ‘lever’, used as a noun in the sense of ‘point of sunrise or East’.

In order to communicate with one another, the people of this territory used a ‘lingua franca’ that was an Italian word that meant ‘Frankish tongue’, perhaps due to the strong French influence it displayed or, the Arabic custom of calling all Western Europeans ‘Franks’.

With the passage of time, the word ‘lingua franca’ came to mean ‘a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different’. Today, it is used in the latter sense, especially with reference to English.