Comic Relief

Last winter, I went on a bit of a movie binge. I saw lots of movies, but two, Cloud Atlas and Les Misérables, have a special place in my heart. They are both wonderful films, and are surprisingly similar when you really think about it. Both films have one over-arching theme told through many interwoven stories, both films have striking visuals and big-name actors, and both films are very, very emotionally draining to watch. Because of this last fact, both movies benefited tremendously from their use of comic relief. 

Here are some (non-spoiler) examples of the humor in both films:

Les Misérables relied on the hilariously inappropriate Thénardiers to allow allow the audience to catch their breath.

Cloud Atlas employed the pitiful Timothy Cavendish to get the same job done.

Without the occasional break in the heavy feelings that permeated these movies, both of them would have been absolutely impossible to watch. That, right there, is the job of comic relief. 

Comic relief is defined as being "an amusing scene, incident, or speech introduced into serious or tragic elements, as in a play, in order to provide temporary relief from tension." It is a story-telling device that has been used and documented since the Renaissance. I'm sure we all remember Ms. Hewsen's favorite instance of comic relief, the Porter scene in Macbeth. Comic relief was not always the norm, though. In classical Greece and Rome, tragedy and comedy were meant to be kept absolutely separate. Luckily, since then, the practice has caught on and almost everything, from Gone With the Wind to Star Wars, has featured some form of comic relief. 

I say luckily because that "relief from tension" is the only thing that allows me to watch movies like the ones mentioned above. Two hours of soul-crushing sadness is too much for me, and many other people, to take in. One and a half hours of soul-crushing sadness interspersed with a few instances of wacky shenanigans, however, is totally doable. Without the occasional breather, these films and their wonderful messages would be lost on a huge portion of the population. That's why comic relief, silly as it may seem, is one of the most important tools in storytelling that we have developed. 

Proto-Indo-European

A few months ago I found a video talking about the etymology of the word "bear." The video itself was interesting, but it was also the first place that I heard of the concept of Proto-Indo-European, which is beyond cool.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is a language that linguists believe was spoken around 6,000 years ago in the area of the Pontic Steppe. It spread throughout Europe from there, and is credited with being the ancestor of nearly every European and Slavic language family, including the Celtic, Germanic, Italic, and Balto-Slavic families. None of this, however, is really the coolest part about PIE.

The coolest thing about this language is that in the 18th century, when linguists first began to theorize of its existence, there was nothing left. There were no written records, no speakers, nothing. The only things to even suggest that it had ever existed were subtle similarities in seemingly unrelated languages. Philologists and linguists looked at individual words in all of these languages and, through the similarities, pieced together what their original form must have sounded like. They kept doing this until they had recreated an entire language. From nothing, from a hunch of a few very bright scientists, we now know what the world sounded like in 3700 BC. Our understanding of PIE has come so far that now, for the first time in 6,000 years, you can actually hear it spoken.

The whole idea of PIE is really a great example of what etymology and linguistics are capable of. Linking so many ancient languages also links their people's cultures, and shows us how the world must have interacted at those times. PIE's influence ranges from India to England, before anything like the Silk Road had existed to connect those places. Basically, PIE shows us one of the many ways that languages can shape the world.

The Days of the Week?

What's up with the names of the days of the week?

It seems like a pretty simple question at first; they're just names. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on. But why? None of them sound like other English words. And why are the names so different in different languages? How did the French get jeudi when the English got Thursday?

When looking at the names of the week, it's easy to start noticing a pattern:

• Monday- The English word can be traced back to the Old English word "mon(an)dæg," literally meaning "day of the moon". The French word, lundi, seems unrelated, but can actually be traced back to the Latin name "dies lunae," which means, literally, "day of the moon."
• Tuesday- The English name can be traced back to the Old English word "tiwesdæg," which means "Tiu's day." Tiu is the Germanic/English version of the Norse god Tyr, the god of war and the sky. The French word, mardi, is derived from the Latin name "dies Martis," meaning "day of Mars." Mars is the Roman god of war.
• Thursday- The English word for Thursday can be traced back to the Old Norse word "thorsdagr,"  meaning "Thor's day." Thor is the Norse god of thunder and lightning. The French word, jeudi, can be traced back to the Latin name "dies Jovis," meaning "day of Jupiter." Jupiter is the Roman god of thunder and lightning.
• Friday- The English word for Friday can be traced back to the Old English word "frigedæg," meaning "Freya's day." Freya is the Teutonic goddess of love and beauty. The French word, vendredi, is derived from the Latin name "dies Veneris," meaning "Venus' Day." Venus is the Roman goddess of love and beauty. 

It's true, not all of the names fit perfectly into this pattern. Wednesday is derived from "Woden's day" in English, and mercredi is means "day of Mercury" in French. Woden and Mercury are unrelated. However, there's enough similarity to raise the question of why they're like that. When did the Norse, Romans, and early Germanic tribes get together and decide to name the fifth day of every week after their respective thunder gods?

The answer is actually pretty simple. The Teutons were an Germanic tribe that migrated into Europe from Scandinavia. While the Teutons were making their way down from the north, the Roman empire was expanding up from the south. As you can see here (a map of Teuton invasions) and here (a map of the Holy Roman Empire), they had plenty of chance to bump into each other. The Teutons brought their gods, and the Romans brought theirs, and somewhere along the line they adopted the "same" names for the days of the week. The Teutons became Germans, who are in the same language family as English. The Romans became the Italians, Spanish, and French, who all share similar words for the days of the week. 

This is a great example of the way language evolves. The seven-day week is as old as the Babylonians, but these almost-standardized names aren't. Even though the Teutons and Romans were warring much of their time together, they still had enough contact to subtly blend their cultures. Languages still borrow from each other like this all the time. Kindergarten is German, valise is French, and bizarre is Spanish, just to name a few examples in English. That borrowing and blending is why we today can't understand Old English, and why people 1000 years in the future will have a hard time understanding our English. Language, and the way we use it, is almost like a living being; constantly changing, evolving, borrowing, or outright stealing from the other organisms around it to suit its needs. And frankly I think that's just the coolest.