Translingual words an east asian lexical encounter with english jieun kiaer - The newest ebook versi
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/translingual-words-an-east-asian-lexical-encounter-wi th-english-jieun-kiaer/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
English Collocations in Use Intermediate Book with Answers How Words Work Together for Fluent and Natural English Michael Mccarthy
Translingual Words is a detailed case study on lexical integration, or mediation, occurring between East Asian languages and English(es).
In Part I, specific examples from global linguistic corpora are used to discuss the issues involved in lexical interaction between East Asia and the English-speaking world. Part II explores the spread of East Asian words in English, while Part III discusses English words which can be found in East Asian languages.
Translingual Words presents a novel approach on hybrid words by challenging the orthodox ideas on lexical borrowing and explaining the dynamic growth of new words based on translingualism and transculturalism.
Jieun Kiaer is Associate Professor of Korean Language and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, UK.
Routledge Studies in East Asian Translation
Series Editors:
Jieun Kiaer
University of Oxford, UK
Amy Xiofan Li
University of Kent, UK
Routledge Studies in East Asian Translation aims to discuss issues and challenges involved in translation between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean as well as from these languages into European languages with an eye to comparing the cultures of translation within East Asia and tracking some of their complex interrelationships.
Most translation theories are built on translation between European languages, with only few exceptions. However, this Eurocentric view on language and translation can be seriously limited in explaining the translation of non-European literature and scholarship, especially when it comes to translating languages outside the Indo-European family that have radically different script forms and grammatical categories, and may also be embedded in very different writing traditions and cultures. This series considers possible paradigm shifts in translation theory, arguing that translation theory and practice need to go beyond European languages and encompass a wider range of literature and scholarship.
Translingual Words
An East Asian Lexical Encounter with English
Jieun Kiaer
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ languages/series/RSEAT
Translingual Words
An East Asian Lexical Encounter with English
Jieun Kiaer
First published 2019 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
The right of Jieun Kiaer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-8153-5762-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-10947-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my colleagues and students who have provided invaluable comments for this book. Anna Bordilovskaya, Danica Salazar, Niamh Cawley, Brittany Khedun-Burgoine and Derek Driggs helped me at key stages of its development. I am also grateful to Johannes Abeler for sharing his images of Japan.
I would like to dedicate this book to my late father-in-law, Stanley Kiaer (1931–2018), who proof-read the first version of this book. I miss him dearly.
Part I Birth of translingual words
Like people, words around the globe are constantly on the move, and there are countless examples of foreign-born words or words with foreign heritage in our daily lives. These words are becoming so common that most of the time they do not feel foreign to us at all. As well as becoming more numerous, the identities and lives of these words are becoming increasingly complex and diverse – resembling our own migration demographics. In addition, the amount of hybrid words with different lexical origins is also increasing fast, and widespread use of social media is bringing greater amounts of subcultural words into the main lexicon. As a result, the terms traditionally used to describe the transfer from one language to another, such as ‘borrowing’ or ‘loanwords’, are inadequate in describing words with such complex and diverse stories.
In the twentieth century, the primacy of national languages meant that debates around the protection of one’s national language were prominent across the globe (Phillipson 1992, 2003). As a result, foreign-born words or words with foreign heritage were often considered outsiders in their new home languages. However, in the twenty-first century there is less of a clear distinction between native and foreign words, owing to both the sheer number of foreign words, and the increase of multilingual and multicultural societies.
As the number of languages we encounter in our everyday lives increases, so does the complexity of the origins of our words. In order to capture the nature of these words with diverse origins and complex life trajectories, I introduce the notion of translingual words in this book. Translingual words are words that live across the borders of languages. These words constantly travel and re-settle in different languages. As a part of their adaptation processes, they gain local forms and meanings. The development of social media has made this adaptation process much more diverse than before. Individuals or groups actively participate in shaping forms and meanings of these words. Unlike the pre-social media era where
many people were limited to local forms of words produced by mainstream linguistic authorities or media, the advent of social media has opened the doors for ordinary people to participate actively in making, sharing, and spreading words of their own. Words on social media can have highly individualised forms and meanings, and the ease of access offered by social media has boosted large-scale communication across different languages. This large-scale communication provides crucial living environments for translingual words.
This book shows the need to shift from a monolingual lexical model into a multilingual, dynamic lexical model in order to accommodate the flexible, fluid and multi-faceted nature of the translingual words in our global lexicon.
In this book, we focus mainly on an East Asian lexical encounter with English. We aim to look at the situation in mainland China,1 Japan and Korea (mostly South)2 and additionally some data from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Large-scale lexical encounters between East Asian languages and English happened relatively late as we shall explore. However, it is now happening in an unprecedented scope and speed. China has been relatively slow in receiving English words compared to Japan and Korea for a number of socio-political reasons, but in recent years the English language has had a more substantial impact in China.
The lexical interaction between the non-Latinate, Sino-sphere world and the Latinate world is worth mentioning because this has caused extensive variation in the ways in which words are represented. These variations have been on the rise in recent years as ordinary people interact internationally through social media. In such cases, they tend not to follow setways of transcription but freely use their own means of exchange. In light of these ever-increasing variations, in this book I will use the Romanised forms of words which seem most suitable for the setting in which they are being used, rather than systematically following one or two Romanisation methods.
Unless otherwise stated, English here does not refer to a particular variety of English (i.e. US or UK English), but to varieties of English or global, international varieties of English (Crystal 2000). These varieties are not necessarily those from Kachru’s inner-circle English, but also outer and expanding circles of English. In this sense, therefore is the target of our discussion.
Tracing words’ lives: methodology
In this book I will use the following methods to trace the lives of the translingual words that I will discuss.
Using online databases
In order to justify the inclusion of a new entry or indeed, update a present entry within the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), OED lexicographers first aim to find evidence of widespread use of the word in its English form. Evidence is gathered through various means such as literary and non-literary texts, various databases, newspapers, journals, digital and print books, regional dictionaries, contributions from members of the public, specialist advice from various consultants, and even social media. In this book, using the OED’s methodology of tracing words, I am going to gather textual evidence by sieving through online databases such as ProQuest, Nexis, JSTOR, and Google Books to search for evidence of widespread use of words. ProQuest, JSTOR, and Google Books hold a massive collection of journals and ebooks while Nexis holds a similar database of (digital) newspapers from all over the world that can be cross-referenced when searching for keywords. Filtering through the online databases for the keywords has a twofold object – not only does it seek to find evidence of widespread use of those words in their English forms and date the first recorded instance that the word had been used in print, it also attempts to recognise how the word is being used, determining where it fits in the different parts of speech used in English (i.e. determining whether the word is used as a noun, adjective, conjunction, interjection, etc.).
Social media
Part of the methodology for this study will examine social media in order to trace the online lives of translingual words. This methodology will consist of content analysis of comments featuring the selected words made on popular social media platforms, with a particular emphasis on Twitter. Twitter is open to the general public for academic purposes and no identifiable information has been included in Tweets featured in this study. As Twitter allows users to search by hashtag and features accurate time stamping for each Tweet, we will be able to track any potential linguistic developments over the past ten years. As relatively less data is available pre-2008, we will be using data from social media from 2008 to the present.
Google Trends and Google N-gram
I will also use Google Trends and Google N-gram in order to trace the lives of translingual words in many varieties of English, not limited to the inner-circle speakers (Kachru 1985) of English. As we shall explore, many
subcultural words born in East Asia have entered into World English through Southeast Asian varieties of English. Making use of Google Trends and Google N-gram can help assess these usages in varieties of English found in the outer or expanding circle of English speakers, as they become increasingly more important in the diversification of the English lexicon.
Notes
1 In this book ‘China’ will refer primarily to mainland China.
2 In this book ‘Korea’ will refer primarily to South Korea, unless otherwise indicated.
1 Foreign words
Aliens and denizens?
James Murray (1837–1915), the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), referred to foreign words as ‘uncommon words’, and as ‘aliens and denizens’ of the English language. As a lexicographer working at the peak of the explosion of new words in the early twentieth century, he struggled with the question of how best to classify words that had entered English from other languages. Were they English words or not? On what grounds? Like most of the editors of the OED after him, he held an inclusive view as the following quote shows.
The English Language is the language of Englishmen! Of which Englishmen? Of all Englishmen or of some Englishmen? … Does it include the English of Great Britain and the English of America, the English of Australia, and of South Africa, and of those most assertive Englishmen, the Englishmen of India, who live in bungalows, hunt in jungles, wear terai hats or puggaries and pyjamas, write chits instead of letters and eat kedgeree and chutni? Yes! In its most comprehensive sense, and as an object of historical study, it includes all these; they are all forms of English.
(Murray 1911:18)
However, the decision for each word was not so straightforward. Murray himself proposed a model to classify the English lexicon (see Figure 1.1), in which he assigned literary, common, and colloquial words as the principal source of the English lexicon, and scientific, technical, dialectal, slang, and ‘foreign’ words as peripheral. This view, however, is somewhat problematic given that the majority of common words in the modern English lexicon are of foreign coinage. English is renowned for absorbing words from other languages, and would be hard to imagine as a complete language without these words of ‘others’ (Durkin 2014). Even words we have come to associate with quintessential
Figure 1.1 Murray’s ‘circle of English’: Murray (1888: xxv).
Source: credit: OUP.
Englishness, such as tea, marmalade, and cottage, were originally the words of others. This is particularly true of everyday culinary words –banana, bacon, coffee, potato, tomato, chutney, noodles, chocolate, yoghurt, ketchup, broccoli, celery, carrot, kiwi, and avocado are all examples of foreign words that have become native to the English language.
Foreign-origin words in the OED: really English?
In their 2013 book, Jones and Ogilvie depict how attitudes towards the entry of words of foreign origin into the OED changed from editor to editor, and how, contrary to popular belief, the early editors tended to favour the inclusion of foreign words in the dictionary. This was especially true of Murray, who was the chief editor from 1879–1915. Murray received suggestions from many contributors worldwide and he deemed words of foreign origin and world Englishes as ‘legitimate members of the English language’ (1888: xiv). Henry Bradley (1915–1923), Murray’s successor as chief editor of the OED, continued the inclusion of foreign words, but did not consider them ‘really English’. His opinion on Chinese words was particularly illustrative of this, with Bradley saying that ‘China has given us tea and the names of various kinds of tea; and a good many other Chinese words figure in our
larger dictionaries, though they cannot be said to have become really English’ (Jones and Ogilvie 2013: 39). Murray, on the other hand, felt that the definition of ‘Englishman’ should include all speakers of English around the world, regardless of variety, claiming that ‘they are all forms of English’ (ibid.: 60). This open attitude was an exception in Victorian academia, and Murray’s dictionary was criticised as ‘barbarous’, ‘outlandish’, and ‘peculiar’ (ibid.: 54). However, this openness towards foreign-origin words did not mean that Murray saw them as equivalent to native English words, and every word in the dictionary that was considered to be foreign was marked with so-called tramlines (| |).
However, the problem of how to define a word as foreign remains. Durkin (2014) shows that even pronouns like he and she have Scandinavian heritage, and that of the 1,000 most frequently used English words, just over half (529 words) are indeed loans. And of these, the vast majority (487 words) have their roots in French, Latin, or a combination of both. What this shows is that the foreignness of a word is more about perception and usage than actual origin, and that this makes classifying foreign vs. native words difficult or even futile. More than where a vocabulary word comes from, the level of familiarity of that word in daily life matters in defining its foreignness. Food words like banana or clothing words like pyjamas don’t seem foreign because they are so familiar, but this does not change the fact that they originated in different languages.
When words that are perceived as foreign represent a small minority, it is easy to think of them as the words of strangers or outsiders. Yet, as we shall come to explain in this book, this is a view that is hard to sustain in a super-diverse, multilingual era, as foreign-born words or hybrid words with foreign heritage increasingly become a major source of words in all world languages
Foreign words are now common
Foreign-born words or words with foreign heritage are increasingly common in languages around the world, and this trend is expected to continue and grow globally as our lives become more closely interwoven than ever before. Far from being outsiders, they are ubiquitous in our daily lexicon. Think of what we eat, drink, watch, or buy. These words may be mediated or represented through the local orthography and pronunciation of a community, disguising their foreign origin, but one may also be able to infer their foreign linkages from the semantic meanings of the words. Nevertheless, the spread of these words through the internet and social media, as well as their sheer number, means that it is sometimes hard to notice their foreign origin. For British or American nationals, for instance,
many words with Asian connections are as familiar as native English words. They do not feel words like Sudoku, Pokémon, or chop chop are particularly foreign – many would not even be aware of their foreign links.
Take, for instance, words like chicken tikka masala. According to the OED, tikka comes from Hindi, and masala comes from Urdu, but the compounding of the word was born in UK English. Because of the common nature of this food in the UK, British nationals may know the Indian heritage of this word, but they do not feel that the word is foreign or distant. Someone from the US, on the other hand, may feel a greater sense of foreignness about this word, simply because it is not as commonly eaten there.1 Similarly, in Korean and Japanese, most IT- or computer-related words are at least partially made up of English elements, but Korean and Japanese people nevertheless use them freely without any feeling of foreignness. Terms such as web, online, e-, bio-, or eco- are hard to label as simply English-origin words – the users of these words, regardless of which language they speak, will consider these words as their native words more than as foreign words.
The inspiration for this book came from a project I carried out in Oxford in the summer of 2014,2 which aimed to explore commonalities and diversities among contemporary words through newspaper analysis. Looking at eight newspapers from around the world – five from Europe (English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese), and three from East Asia (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) – we were astonished by the frequency of shared words across the globe, regardless of the languages spoken and geographic distance. The ‘migration’ of words is not new in human history, yet since the beginning of the twentieth century this migration has happened on an unprecedented scale and scope – transcending regional, cultural, and linguistic distance. Often, these words now live globally online through the medium of English, instead of moving from one place to another.
Colonialism in lexical interaction
Before the twentieth century, lexical interaction between East Asia and the Western world was relatively rare. But twentieth-century colonialism played an important role in lexical interactions between Asian languages and the English language. Through colonialism, people had language usage imposed upon them. In such circumstances, most people did not simply switch to the new language; they may have been educated in the colonial language, but often they continued to speak their original language in the home and other settings. This provided an ideal environment for languages to begin interacting and sharing vocabulary. After World War II and the end of colonialism, language usage was no longer imposed, but the
vocabularies of the languages themselves remained intertwined in lasting and irreversible ways (Schneider 2007).
Lexical interaction in the digital age
Before the current digital age, words entered into foreign lexicons much more predictably and gradually than they do now. Inter-state trade and war were the main sources of linguistic contact and borrowing (McMahon 1994), meaning that these interactions often involved no more than two parties at a time. Now, however, word migration often involves multiple parties around the globe.
Anthony Giddens famously defined globalisation as ‘the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa’ (1991: 64). His statement could not hold more true today, be it from a political, economic, cultural, or linguistic standpoint. Our increasingly global interests and outlook, as collectives and as individuals, have been in large part facilitated by the advent of the internet and the subsequent proliferation of technologies and platforms for sharing and disseminating information. Nowadays, all it takes is a click of a button or a tap of a screen to be able to access and contribute to transnational flows of knowledge, goods, and capital. If we also take into account the continuing rise of global migration and tourism, the sheer volume and variety of interactions taking place across national, regional, and cultural boundaries at any given moment would be impossible to quantify. In such a context, the birth of a global lexicon, shared by global citizens, is unsurprising.
Spreading words through social media
The opening of the digital era and the growth of social media play a crucial role in producing a common vocabulary of global words with diverse origins that is freely shared by people across the world. Whereas in the past the majority of people were simply unaware of words from other cultures, now words of interest quickly spread through the internet and social media from one region to the whole world. Lexical migration and settlement have never before taken place so quickly and across such large distances. For example, consider the term #MeToo. The term #MeToo was coined as part of a movement by women who had undergone sexual abuse and were choosing to be more vocal about their experiences. As an important social movement with a wide impact, the new term – which at face value has no particular meaning – spread around the world in a matter of hours. In some linguistic environments the term was translated, and in
Birth of
others it was transliterated. In Korea, for example, the transliteration mit’u (미투) was used; there was no inherent meaning to the sounds used, but context quickly supplied a definition for the new term. In a mere 12 hours after it began to be used on social media, people in countries all over the world were found using it – the term had effectively entered the global lexicon in less than a day’s time.3
It is interesting to note that the term #MeToo as coined in the #MeToo movement included a hashtag, and was written as one word with no space. Now, many news platforms do not even use the word ‘movement’ or any hashtag when discussing the term ‘Me Too’, but people tend to understand the meaning of the term even without any context.
Native words vs. foreign words in a multilingual era
We are used to the idea of having one mother tongue made up of native words belonging to that one language. Blommaert (2009), however, challenges this monolingual viewpoint on our native language and lexicon. He shows how Rwandan refugee Joseph Mutingira’s application for asylum was denied by the British Home Office because of faulty assumptions about language. Mutingira spoke poor Kinyarwanda, the language spoken in Rwanda, because his family had spoken English when he was young. This was not unusual in Rwanda, but the interpreter did not identify him as a native speaker of Kinyarwanda during the application process, leading to doubts about his country of origin. This case was a tragic example of incorrect assumptions of monolingualism and the failure to appreciate the complexity of words and language in a multilingual setting.
The linguistic, cultural, and ethnic landscape is changing across the globe. Multilingual, multicultural, and multi-ethnic realities are found not just in cosmopolitan centres or traditionally multilingual countries like Belgium or Switzerland, but indeed everywhere. For instance, the 2011 UK Census showed that the Asian/Asian British ethnic group category had one of the largest increases of any ethnic group since 2001, with a third of the foreign-born population of the UK (2.4 million) now identifying themselves as Asian British.4 It is not surprising to see many Asian-born English words in the English language given this demographic situation. People do not feel that these Asian-born English words are any more foreign than Asian British people. Most people do not seem to see a blackand-white distinction between native words and foreign words, and are in general open to foreign-born words.
As we shall return in Chapter 6, according to a survey I conducted of 100 students at the University of Central Lancashire, most young British English speakers not only recognised several words of East Asian origin –
sushi, karaoke, origami, kimchi, ramen, anime, kimono, sake, and karate, for example – but also considered them to be part of the English language (Kiaer and You 2016).
A pilot study of native Japanese speakers’ perceptions of Englishderived words produced similar findings, in that the respondents tended to think of words like apuri (short for ‘application’) as belonging to the Japanese language.5 Figure 1.2 shows the perceived nativeness of selected words, based on how many respondents said ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you think this is a Japanese word?’ This case is particularly interesting because of the use of different scripts to render foreign words and native words in Japanese, and suggests that an orthographical indication of foreignness was not the determining factor in a native speaker’s perception of a given word. In Japanese, all foreign words are written in Katakana
Figure 1.2 Do you think these words are Japanese words?
Birth
words
Similar patterns have been observed in native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, Korean, German, French, and Spanish.6 Such findings indicate that even native speakers do not necessarily all have the same perceptions of their native language and lexicon, and that the boundaries between native and foreign words are often blurred. The surveys show that some words may be naturalised more quickly and easily than others. For instance, words related to everyday items, services and IT/technology words (e.g. app, net, web) tend to be fully integrated into local languages in a relatively short period of time.
Complex identity of words: beyond borrowing and loanwords
The identity of foreign-born words in our time is complex, and difficult to explain in terms of ‘borrowing’ and ‘loans’. Is sushi an English word or a Japanese word – or perhaps both? The word sushi lives in most of the languages in the world. Is this Japanese, English, or a word that belongs to all languages? How can we explain the identity and status of these apparently foreign, yet so prevalently used words like sushi in our lexicons? In addition to words such as sushi, which have had a relatively straightforward linguistic journey, there are second-generation words and hybrid words, which are all locally made yet with foreign elements (Kiaer and Bordilovskaya 2017). For instance, the majority of infrastructure words in Korea and Japan are locally-made English words. It is hard to simply label them as borrowings or loanwords (see Chapter 9).
Whose words? Mediations in translingual journeys
The journey of a word from its language of origin to new ‘home’ languages is often far from straightforward. It often involves (a layer of) mediations by another language in spelling, pronunciation, and meanings too. Take the word coffee, for instance. According to the OED, the word coffee is believed to have entered the English language around 1600 from the Arabic term qahwah, mediated by the Turkish pronunciation kahveh. The majority of plant names that entered the English language around this time followed a similar trajectory. Potato entered English from Spanish around the 1560s, but was originally derived from the Haitian word batata. It is interesting to note that in East Asia this route is not commonly known, and the word potato is considered solely as an English word. This perception may be different in the US or UK, where many will realise potatoes were a direct import from South America.
Clearly, even in earlier periods, English words had a global identity, rather than belonging to a particular variety of English alone. Similarly,
English is used as a language for labelling words in other contexts that have a globally recognised identity, rather than a culture-specific one. As a result of the current prominence of English as a global lingua franca, words with diverse origins are constantly mediated through English. Words are often Romanised and hence become known according to spelling and pronunciation that follow English conventions. The source language(s), medium language(s), and target language(s) of these words have different identities. These words also constantly take on additional meanings as they settle in different languages and cultures.
Let us consider some examples from culinary terms. In Korea and Japan, the transliterated word chicken is used exclusively in reference to Western-style, mainly fried chicken. Likewise in English the word sake refers to Japanese rice wine, but in Japanese refers to alcohol in general. The word salada in Korean is originally derived from the English word salad, but has arrived into Korean via Japanese and refers to salad with mayonnaise dressing. For the other types of salad, the word salad (without an ‘a’) is used instead. Chicken has English heritage and sake Japanese heritage, but the meanings of these words in their new target languages are quite different from the meanings in their source languages. These semantic changes mean that the prevalence of words with English coinage, which initially seems helpful to the English-speaking learner, in reality becomes more a source of confusion than an aid to learning.
Threats or assets
Fling our door wide! All, all, not one, but all, must enter. (Frederick Furnivall 1862, Editor of the OED from 1861–1879)
The presence of foreign words can be a great asset in every language to build a fuller lexicon. Foreign-born words and their second-generation derivative words, however, have historically been met with mixed reactions. There have been times when particular foreign-born words were praised and welcomed – French words have often been used by English speakers in order to sound more sophisticated and intellectual, and the dawn of the twentieth century saw widespread use of English words among East Asian intellectuals keen to show off their education and intellect (see Chapter 8).
Nevertheless, linguistic purists and national language movements have often viewed foreign words as threats rather than assets, and policy makers may sometimes believe that keeping one’s lexicon free of foreign influence is a way to protect one’s language and culture. The French Academy (Académie Française) attempts to limit the influx of foreign, especially
words
English, words. North Korea long had a strong linguistic policy designed to protect its language from foreign – particularly Western – influences. English words of any kind were in principle translated and replaced strictly with native Korean words. Interestingly, Russian words were excepted and allowed to be transliterated. The word tractor in North Korean is transcribed as ttŭrakttorŭ, which is based on the Russian pronunciation of the word. Interestingly, the Russian word for tractor comes from the Latinorigin English word, which refers to the name of a device invented by Elisha Perkins, an American physician, and was first used in 1798, according to the OED. However, teaching English is becoming increasingly crucial even in North Korea, and the situation is thus changing. In North Korea’s official TV news or sports broadcasting, a few English words can now be spotted fairly easily. One North Korean defector now living in the United States explained that even English words like ice cream and computer are now commonly used in North Korea.
In the case of the UK, most OED editors have welcomed new words of foreign origin as long as they provide evidence of the words’ lives in written English. Furnivall’s words quoted above give an idea of this spirit of inclusivity. However, as Ogilvie (2012) argues, this all-welcoming agenda has not been free from controversy. She shows that about 17 per cent of the 1933 Supplement entries were deleted by Robert Burchfield (1923–2004), the fifth chief editor of the OED (Ogilvie 2012: Appendix 7). Some resistance, on the part of dictionary makers, towards the widespread adoption of foreign words is perhaps to be expected. Although the growth of outside words contributes to the growth of the lexicon of the home language, editors may also wish to limit the threat of foreign words becoming too dominant. So, editors may want to be vigilant and put some control over their growth. In particular, the OED is unique in that, once entered, a word’s place in the OED is secured for all time, even if usage of the word dies out. Nevertheless, the truth is that language policy cannot regulate the actual growth of foreign words. The amount of foreign words used will continue to grow as our lives become more globally interwoven.
Why do foreign words keep increasing?
Lexical migration and interaction keep increasing. Inevitably, we see many words from all over the world. However, one may wonder why people keep adopting new foreign words when they already have words of their own. For instance, why do English people adopt the word calamari when they have the word squid ? Why do Korean and Japanese people adopt the word chicken when they also have their own terms for it? There are two kinds of lexical borrowing: cultural borrowing and core borrowing (Myers-Scotton
1993, 2006). Cultural borrowing is borrowing to fill a gap in one’s lexicon. In the early twentieth century, huge numbers of Western, mainly Englishorigin words entered into the East Asian lexicon along with Western technology and ideas. Now, however, this is no longer the case. Perhaps there is little need for foreign words in one’s lexicon because any gaps have already been filled by translated words. Despite this reduced need for cultural borrowing, the amount of foreign words continues to increase because of core borrowing, in which foreign words enter another language not to fill a lexical gap, but in order to build a richer lexicon with which to communicate with the outside world. As we shall discuss, Japan and Korea in particular maintain multiple lexical strata: native words, words of Chinese origin, and words that are either entirely or partially made up of foreign – mostly English –elements. At first glance, the persistence of such a complex lexical structure may seem puzzling, but as we shall discuss later, this is a consequence of systematic efforts to build a lexicon that is expressive in nuance while maintaining communicability with the wider world.
Wherever we look, the general public is far more open to using foreignborn words and to coining new words with foreign elements than policy makers or dictionary compilers are, and they do not tend to have a clear distinction between their native and foreign words. Simply put, people do not care whether a word is of foreign coinage or not, and may even feel motivated to use more foreign words in different registers and contexts in order to better express themselves.
Notes
1 Many cultural vocabularies show great difference in terms of UK and US English. People assume that only spelling and pronunciation are different in the two countries, but migrants between the two countries discover that in fact their cultural vocabularies tend to differ greatly as well (Algeo 2009).
2 I am grateful to all the participants of the seminar, in particular those from different language backgrounds.
4 The census can be accessed online at www.ons.gov.uk.
5 Twenty-eight Japanese speakers aged 20–30 participated in the survey. It was a sample survey. The result, however, is backed up by large-scale survey conducted by National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) which we will look at in Chapters 8 and 9.
6 I conducted a sample questionnaire study in these languages. The number of participants varied but at least 30–40 people participated in the survey per language.
2 Hybrid words
Anomalies?
In this book I define hybrid words as the words which are composed of words with different origins. These words are more easily accessible by locals, probably because they contain native, familiar elements as well as foreign elements. In Korean and Japanese, these kinds of English words are more common than words with English components only. In the following, I will show that hybrid words are extremely common, but, especially when used in English contexts, that they are still faced with prejudice as ‘impure’ or ‘incorrect’ words. Perhaps this can be traced to misunderstandings of Kachru’s circles as a hierarchy of the English language. I will show how, in fact, hybrid words are an indispensable part of a multilingual society and may even be the greatest asset of our future lexicon.
Hybrid words are now common
Linguistic and cultural interactions between diverse groups of people across the world, and subsequent cultural hybridisation, makes the creation of etymologically or structurally hybrid words inevitable. We come across hybrid terms daily, and many of these have complex layers of meaning that pay testimony to the words’ translingual journeys taken across their lifespans.
For instance, the Mandarin and Cantonese term for egg tarts, Romanised as daahn taat in Cantonese and dàn tǎ or dan tat in Mandarin, is most commonly believed to have developed in Hong Kong in the 1940s as an adaptation of the Portuguese pastel de nata. The term dan tat is a hybrid of the Chinese word for egg (‘dan’ or 蛋1) and the English word tart.
The Japanese word katsu, which is a shortened form of the longer katsuretsu is transliterated from English cutlet, which is again derived from the French côtelette meaning ‘meat chop’. Katsu is now used to refer to a specifically Japanese-style cutlet dish, especially in the context of ton
Hybrid words: anomalies? 17 katsu as a hybrid word with the Chinese character 豚, meaning pork, that is pronounced in Japanese as [ton].
Kare (カレ ) is an interesting word as well. Curry was introduced to Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912) by the British, who already had a history of colonial dealings with India, where curry originated as a Tamil loanword, according to the OED. Thus, the term kare is a Japanese transliteration of the English curry, which is originally from Tamil. Now, however, the word is used in English in its Japanese form, kare, when referring to the type of curry from Japan. This term is often combined with other terms as well as in kare ton or kare katsu. Similarly, the word babycino, a hybrid of baby and -cino from the Italian cappuccino, refers to a hot drink of frothed milk, intended as a mimic cappuccino for children. Fusion culinary terms such as these are growing all over the world, not only in Asia.2
Not many would recognise that words like karaoke have English components. The word karaoke (カラオケ, meaning ‘empty orchestra’) is made up of the Japanese kara meaning empty and oke from the English orchestra. This word entered the English lexicon in the 1970s and later on was introduced into a number of European languages via English. Likewise, the word anime, which most English speakers recognise as a Japanese-origin word, is in fact made through back clipping or shortening from the English word animation, which of course has roots in Latin and has undergone significant semantic shift up until the present day There are many instances of words which are recognised as simply being Japanese or Korean, but in fact have complex, translingual identities that have been made through contact with English words of various pedigrees, as the examples of karaoke and animation demonstrate. As discussed previously, it is often difficult or meaningless to make judgements regarding the origin of words. Just as our lives become increasingly diverse and globalised, our lexicons become increasingly dynamic and fluid. Words end up as hybrid, translingual words. Indeed, many newly-made cultural or commercial terms are hybrid words with blurred identities.
A good place to start is brand and product names (see Chapter 10). Brand names such as Samsung, Sony, and Uniqlo may have some regional language connection in their naming, but no matter their original meaning, their ubiquity has earned them an international identity. They are frequently mentioned as names in languages around the world. Product names like Pokémon also have the same identity problem. The Japanese-origin Pokémon, a blend of the English words ‘pocket’ and ‘monster’, is now a truly global word, and is difficult to describe as either wholly Japanese or English. Much like foreign words, the hybrid words that are so prevalent in every language are hard to label as simple borrowings or loans. It is
18 Birth of translingual words
interesting to see the French acute accent symbol over the e in Pokémon This was inserted to avoid any possible ambiguity in the pronunciation of the e sound and to make sure the ke is pronounced as [kɛ], as in Japanese. More examples of this can be found in foreign branding (Chapter 10).
Prejudices against hybrid words
Hybrid words have long been perceived as anomalies – illegitimate words, accidentally created. Linguistic authorities have constantly tried to expel them, or have ridiculed the use of such words, based on ideas of linguistic purism. Like foreign words, hybrid words have often had trouble being registered in dictionaries due to their mixed, seemingly impure identity.
Ideology of the English language
This is reflected in the ideology of English languages too. Kachru (1985) famously summarised the situation of English in different regions of the world in his World Englishes (see Figure 2.1) model, dividing them into
Inner circle:
Australia
Canada
New Zealand
UK
USA
Outer circle:
Bangladesh
Ghana
India
Kenya
Malaysia
Nigeria
Pakistan
Philippines
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Expanding circle:
China
Egypt
Indonesia
Israel
Japan
Korea
Nepal
Saudi
Arabia
Taiwan
USSR
Zimbabwe
Figure 2.1 The three circles of English: Kachru (1985).
Hybrid words: anomalies? 19
‘inner’ – spoken in places where English is a native language (i.e. UK, USA, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand); ‘outer’ – where English is a second language (e.g. India, Singapore, Ghana, etc.); and ‘expanding’ – where English is a foreign language (e.g. Korea, Japan, China, Israel, Indonesia etc.). For Kachru, countries in the inner circle represented the canonically privileged users, who comprised ‘the traditional cultural and linguistic bases of English’, and countries in the outer circle represented ‘institutionalised non-native varieties’ of English, having ‘passed through extended periods of colonialisation’ . Countries in the expanding circle represented regions ‘where the performance of language are used in essentially English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts’ (Ogilvie 2012: 59). However, as English becomes a global lingua franca and numbers of speakers are constantly increasing, such a hierarchical and prejudiced view of English must be challenged.
Whose English?
The number of English speakers in the world has been in continuous growth for many years, and that growth is set to continue into the future as well. Even so, the primary makeup of the English-speaking population may be changing drastically. This is because, although the number of English speakers is increasing, the proportion of speakers for whom English is their first language is actually decreasing. In the mid-twentieth century, nearly 9 per cent of the world’s population grew up speaking English as their first language. By 2050, however, that number is expected to decrease to about 5 per cent. The mechanism behind the increase in numbers of the English speakers is not simple population growth of people who speak English as their first language but rather the explosion of English as a second language. The number of people who learn English as a second language is huge and ever growing. Graddol (2006) remarks that ‘Population growth amongst speakers of languages other than English’ has been growing, and many of those are learning English as a second language. The British Council in 2013 estimated that English was spoken ‘at a useful level’ by 1.75 billion people worldwide, and that two billion people would be using or learning English by 2020.3
As more and more people learn English as a second language, the existence of so many diverse English-speaking communities will continue to challenge the idea of who owns the English language. Just as divergence following population movements has resulted in differences between the Englishes of native speaking groups such as British and American speakers, so too should we expect differences between the Englishes of communities for whom English is a second language. It is difficult to predict the effect that technology will have, as interaction between speakers of different varieties
of English is easier and more frequent than ever. Crystal (2000) recognises the possibility of an ‘International Standard English’ developing which is ‘not recognisably British, American, or anything else’ for communication between communities, which speakers will have at their disposal in addition to a ‘variety of Standard English’ which they learn in school.
Even in countries where English is traditionally seen as the main spoken language, such as the UK and the US, more diversity is becoming common. In the US, the 2016 American Community Survey revealed that native speakers of languages other than English make up about 20 per cent of the population. In the UK, other languages are also common; as early as the 1970s, the Inner London Education Authority found that over 100 languages were being spoken at the homes of children attending school in the city. Such children in both the UK and the US may speak English at school, but they speak foreign languages in the home. Many of today’s assumptions about language, which emerged in the modern era with monolingual speakers grouped into distinct communities by the borders of nation states are likely to be challenged by ‘a new world order in languages’ that Graddol (2006) predicts will accompany the next stage of global development.4
The growing number of bilingual speakers and speakers of English as a second language inevitably leads to questions about what it means to be an English speaker in the twenty-first century. Indeed, Jenkins (2007) notes that speakers of English as a second language are often able to communicate better in English with other speakers of English as a second language than with ‘native’ English speakers, and in that context, she questions the primacy of any single variant of English and the place of native speakers. Further, whilst English is being established as a lingua franca, this doesn’t mean the world languages gradually become unified into English. English as a lingua franca (ELF ) sits alongside, rather than replaces, the local languages. Large-scale globalisation has contributed to an increase in multilingualism and the increased visibility of more languages. One result of the wider use of ELF is the more frequent adoption of translingual words as multilingual speakers from different cultural backgrounds incorporate words from other languages into English. The more frequent interactions between speech communities allowed by modern communications technologies also means that these translingual words spread readily from one group to another.
An anomaly? An incorrect word?
In the past, the varieties of English spoken in the expanding circle of Kachru’s model have often been condemned as incorrect uses of English. They have even been given their own derogatory portmanteau names: ‘Chinglish’ for
Figure 2.2 Konglish is the enemy of Korean?
Source: Chosunilbo.
China-born English, ‘Japlish’ or ‘Jenglish’ for Japan-born English and ‘Konglish’ for Korea-born English are just a few such examples. The key words associated with the word Konglish in Korean newspapers from 1920–1999, according to the Naver newspaper archive, were wrong, incorrect, painful, stupid, and frowned upon 5 Hybrid English words, which are often made outside the typical English-speaking world, are often perceived as errors or incorrect words, regardless of their daily use. Koreans consistently use these hybrid English words across registers, but still feel and think that this is a bad practice that needs to be purified or rectified. There are numerous articles in newspapers where people talk about Koreans’ wrong usage of English words. Figure 2.2 from Chosunilbo 20086 manifests this view. In the article, it says that the biggest enemy of the Korean people is not North Korea’s nuclear threat or the cheap labour force from China, but Konglish words. This sounds like a huge exaggeration, but it also shows the prejudice towards the Konglish words that is prevalent in Korean society.
Hybrid words are the best linguistic currency in a multilingual and cultural society
Hybrid words are not subsidiary or temporary words but are a crucial linguistic currency for those who are constantly exposed to multiple
Birth of translingual words
languages. Often the language that a diaspora community finds most useful and comfortable is not their original home language, nor the new home language, but a hybrid language made from elements of both. For people living on the border of two regions with different languages, it is often hybrid words that are most expressive and communicative. Spanglish words are a daily reality for those living in the Mexican–US border area, while Filipinos in Canada communicate not in Tagalog, Canadian English, or standard Filipino English, but a combination of all three. As a result, hybrid languages become the new home languages for such communities.
Creative uses of English fragments: Korean English words with -tel, -ting, -toon, and men-
Let’s consider some examples of English-Korean hybrids words made through blending. Koreans use t’el (텔, -tel from hotel) to explain various accommodation types. So koshi-t’el (고시텔), where koshi means a bar exam and t’el an accommodation, altogether means a type of accommodation where people who are preparing for the bar exam often study and live. This has now become quite a popular type of accommodation among students in the city due to the low rent. Other accommodation-related words with -t’el (텔, -tel from hotel) include the word wŏnlumt’el (one room + -tel). Wŏnlum ‘one room’ is already a Korean-made English word, meaning a studio flat. The added suffix -tel adds additional meaning such as luxury and comfort to the existing accommodation category.
-ting (팅, -ting from meeting) in Korean is another productive morpheme that is used in blending. Sogaet’ing (소개팅) in Korean was first introduced in 1994. This word is now even in the NIKL dictionary, which defines it as: ‘for a man and woman to be introduced to each other by someone’. Sogaet’ing is a typical example of blending, where the SinoKorean sogae is mixed with the somewhat unidentified English morpheme -ting, which is from the English word meeting. In particular, the meeting which -ting represents is a meeting between a man and woman – especially among students – often for a date. With the increase in internet chatting, -ting also sometimes means a meeting via the internet or in an online space.
-t’un (툰 -toon from ‘cartoon’) is also productive exclusively among Anglo Korean words. It means cartoon. Examples include wept’un (web+cartoon ‘web-toon’) serial cartoons on internet portal websites, sŭmat’ŭt’un (smart+cartoon ‘smart-toon’) cartoons among webtoons that are edited to be easily viewed on smartphones.
Another interesting recent example is the Korean word menbung (멘붕), which is a shortened form of ment’al punggoe (멘탈 붕괴;
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Recollections of James Anthony Gardner, commander R.N. (1775–1814)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Recollections of James Anthony Gardner, commander R.N. (1775–1814)
Author: James Anthony Gardner
Editor: Sir R. Vesey Hamilton John Knox Laughton
Release date: February 16, 2024 [eBook #72974]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Naval Records Society, 1906
Credits: Richard Tonsing, MWS, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF JAMES ANTHONY GARDNER, COMMANDER R.N. (1775–1814) ***
Transcriber’s Note:
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
SOCIETY
RECOLLECTIONS
OF J A G
RECOLLECTIONS OF James Anthony Gardner
COMMANDER R.N.
(1775–1814)
EDITED
BY
SIR R. VESEY HAMILTON, G.C.B.
ADMIRAL AND
JOHN KNOX LAUGHTON, M.A., D.L .
HON. FELLOW OF CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON
PRINTED FOR THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY
MDCCCCVI
THE COUNCIL OF THE NAVY
RECORDS SOCIETY
1906–1907
PATRON
H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES, K.G., K.T., K.P.
PRESIDENT
EARL SPENCER, K.G.
VICE-PRESIDENTS
B , A S C A. G., G.C.B.
D , T E , K.C.B.
F , P C. H., LL.D.
Y , S H , K.C.B.
COUNCILLORS
A , C. T.
C , C . S G S., K.C.M.G.
C , J S.
C , V -A S R N., K.C.M.G.
D , T E .
D , V -A S C C., K.C.S.I.
F , C A. M., R.N., F.R.S.
G , B. W., LL.D.
G , S A , K.C.B.
G , T H . G .
G , A , K.C.
L , T E .
L , R -A S L , B .
L , S A C., G.C.I.E.
M , A S A H., K.C.B.
N , H .
P , G. W., Litt.D., LL.D.
S , A F S E H., G.C.B.
S , C E J. W., R.N., M.V.O.
T , L A. H., R.N., M.V.O.
T , J. R.
W , S P , D.Sc., K.C.B., F.R.S.
W , C J. B , R.N.R.
W , S W H., K.C.B., F.R.S.
SECRETARY
P J. K. L , D.Litt., King’s College, London, W.C.
TREASURER
W. G G , C.B., Admiralty, S.W.
The C of the N R S wish it to be distinctly understood that they are not answerable for any opinions or observations that may appear in the Society’s publications. For these the responsibility rests entirely with the Editors of the several works.
INTRODUCTION
In many respects the present volume differs from the most of those which have been issued by the Society; there is in it very little history, as commonly understood. The author, it is true, lived in a stirring time, and was himself an actor in some of the incidents which have shed a glory on our naval records; but his account of these is meagre and of little importance. The interest which attaches to his ‘Recollections’ is entirely personal and social; we have in them sketches roughly drawn, crude, inartistic, and perhaps on that account the more valuable, of the life of the time; of the men who were his companions in the berth, or the gunroom or the wardroom; on deck, in sport or in earnest.
In all this, there is perhaps little that we did not know before in an otiose sort of way. We knew that the men of the time were often coarse in speech, rude in action; but it may be that the reality, as portrayed by Commander Gardner, exceeds anything that we had imagined. It seems to carry us back to the days of Roderick Random, and to suggest that there had been but small improvement since Smollett wrote his celebrated description. A closer examination will correct this impression; will convince us that there had, on the contrary, been a good deal of improvement; that the life was less hard, the manners less rude; and if the language does not show very much difference, it has to be considered that Smollett was writing for the public and Gardner was not; that Smollett’s dialogues are more or less literary, and Gardner’s are, for the most part, in the vernacular.
Occasionally, indeed, the language has been modified, or its undue strength merely indicated by a ——; but where oaths and expletives formed such a large part of the conversational currency between intimates; when ‘son of a bitch’ was the usual equivalent of
the modern ‘chappie’ or ‘Johnnie’ or ‘rotter’; when ‘damned’ was everywhere recognised as a most ordinary intensitive, and ‘damn your eyes’ meant simply ‘buck up,’ it has been felt that entirely to bowdlerise the narrative would be to present our readers with a very imperfect picture of the life of the day.
Independent of the language, the most striking feature of the portraits is the universal drunkenness. It is mentioned as a thing too common to be considered a fault, though—if carried to excess—an amiable weakness, which no decent commanding officer would take serious notice of. Looking down the lists of old shipmates and messmates, the eye is necessarily caught by the frequency of such entries as ‘too fond of grog,’ ‘did not dislike grog,’ ‘passionately fond of grog,’ ‘a drunken Hun,’ a term of reprobation as a bully, rather than as a drunkard, ‘fond of gin grog,’ ‘mad from drink,’ ‘insane from drink,’ and so on, passim. For the officer of the watch to be drunk scarcely called for comment; it was only when, in addition to being drunk, he turned the captain out at midnight to save the ship, that he narrowly escaped being brought to a court martial; ‘but we interceded for him, and the business was looked over’ (p. 217).
It is, of course, familiarly known that during the later years of the eighteenth century, such drunkenness was almost more common on shore than afloat; and when more than half the peerage and the most distinguished statesmen were ‘habitual drunkards,’ there was, from the social point of view, some excuse for the many of Gardner’s messmates. For good or ill, the navy has always been very conservative in its customs; and at a much later date, when hard drinking was going out of fashion on shore, except among very young men, it still continued prevalent in the navy. Some of our older officers will remember at least one instance in which a great public scandal was averted only in consideration of the social connections of the principal offender; and courts martial, bringing ruin and disgrace to the individual, long continued to be painfully frequent. Absolute reform in this direction was slow; but there are few things more remarkable than the change which has come over the service during the last quarter of a century.
But in the eighteenth century this hard drinking brought in its train not only the terribly frequent insanity, such as is recorded in so many of Gardner’s pages; not only the gross lapses, some of which
Gardner has indicated, but also numerous irregularities, which we may suspect where we do not know’, and of which, quarrels and free fights in the wardroom or in the steerage—such, for instance, as brought on the series of Phaëton courts martial (pp. 73–4)—were only one type. Coarse practical joking among men no longer young was another characteristic of the life which seems subversive of true discipline. Here, of course, we are met by the great change which has everywhere taken place; and the horse-play of Billy Culmer and his friends—stupid vulgarity as it now appears—can scarcely be considered more childish than the pranks and hoaxes of Theodore Hook or Grantley Berkeley twenty or thirty years later. But the very serious objection to such practices on board ship was that—as is now common knowledge—the most inveterate practical joker is the most annoyed when the tables are turned and he himself is made the victim of the joke; that quarrels are certain to arise, which, in a small society and among armed men, are both dangerous in themselves and detrimental to the service. It is, too, difficult to draw the line between practical joking, ragging, or ‘hazing’ and actual bullying. There is no doubt that they merge into each other, and, in the present state of public opinion, could not possibly be tolerated.
Gardner himself, so far as we can judge from his own story, was a good, capable man, who took the life around him as quite a matter of course, without falling into its worst characteristics. He seems, too, to have been a man of singularly equable temper; and it is worthy of special notice that, amid much to annoy and irritate him, he has preferred to say what is good, rather than what is bad, of his messmates and superiors. It used to be so very much the custom to speak evil of dignities, that it is quite refreshing to meet with a young officer to whom his captain did not necessarily seem a bullying, tyrannical blockhead; who could see that the senior might have a proper motive and have formed a correct judgment, even though he did thwart the junior’s wishes or act contrary to the junior’s opinion. Gardner had, for instance, no particular cause to love Calder, but he could still speak of him as ‘a brave and meritorious officer, and of first-rate abilities, a man that had the service at heart’ (pp. 101, 107). Leveson Gower he did not like—no subordinate did; but, though he relates several incidents, which of themselves are sufficiently damning, he does not seem to have set down aught in malice, nor has
he made any spiteful commentary. His worst remark is ‘I have said enough of him’ (p. 90).
First lieutenants were, of course, the natural enemies of a youngster; but with few exceptions his comments, even on them, are good-humoured. Of one only does he speak bitterly; it is Edward Hamilton (p. 172), whose celebrated recapture of the Hermione might induce us to suspect that Gardner was merely expressing the spleen roused by the loss of his kit, did we not remember that, at this time, Hamilton was only 23, and that he was but 30 when his active career was brought to a premature end by a court martial dismissing him the service for cruelty and oppression. It is true that he was specially reinstated six months later, but he never afterwards commanded a sea-going ship, nor, as an admiral, did he ever hoist his flag. It is indeed a remarkable fact, and one giving much food for thought, that other young captains, whose brilliant courage before the enemy won for them a reputation little, if at all, inferior to that of Hamilton, were also tried by court martial for tyrannical and excessive punishments. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that this was in great measure due to utter want of training in the art of command. The way in which the ships’ companies were raised, the vicious characters of the men, almost necessarily led to severity which easily might and too often did degenerate into brutality.
On all this, however, Gardner offers no opinion. He took the service as he found it, content to do his duty honestly and faithfully. The story of his career, which is related at length in the following pages, may be summarised from the memoir in O’Byrne’s Naval Biographical Dictionary, the first draft of which was almost certainly written from information supplied by himself.
James Anthony Gardner, son of Francis Geary Gardner, a commander in the navy, who died at St. Lucia in September 1780, was born at Waterford in 1770–1. Francis Geary Gardner, captain of marines, was his brother. Sir Francis Geary Gardner Lee, who began life as a midshipman (p. 202) and died a lieutenant-colonel of marines, was a cousin. Two other cousins—Knight and Lee—captains in the 17th regiment, are mentioned (p. 208), and yet another, ‘son of the late Alderman Bates of Waterford’ (p. 221). His grandfather, James Gardner, who died, a lieutenant in the navy, in 1755, was, in
1747–8, a lieutenant of the Culloden, with Captain, afterwards Admiral Sir Francis, Geary, the godfather of James’s son, who, on 2 February, 1768, married Rachel, daughter of Anthony Lee of Waterford, and niece of Admiral William Parry. It will be noticed that the younger Gardner, having been born in Ireland, son of an Irish mother, considered himself Irish, is especially Irish in his sympathies, and that throughout his ‘Recollections’ the word ‘Irish’ is very commonly used as denoting ‘exceptionally good.’
From 1775, when he was not more than five years old, Gardner was borne, as his father’s servant, on the books of the Boreas, the Conqueror, and the Ætna; and he might, according to the custom of the day, have counted these years as part of his time at sea. As, however, when he went up for his examination (p. 174), he had more sea time than enough, he only counted it from his entry on board the Salisbury in December 1783 (p. 41). Really, he first went to sea in May 1782 (p. 19) in the Panther, and in her, under—in succession— Captains Thomas Piercy and Robert Simonton, he saw the loss of the Royal George, and was present at Howe’s relief of Gibraltar and in the ‘rencounter’ with the combined fleets of France and Spain off Cape Spartel on 20 October, 1782 (pp. 24, 27, 30 seq.).
During the ensuing peace he served on the Newfoundland and Home stations, as midshipman and master’s mate in the Salisbury, 50, flagship of Vice-Admiral John Campbell (pp. 41–55); Orestes, 18, Captain Manley Dixon (pp. 56–63); Edgar, 74, flagship of RearAdmirals the Hon. John Leveson Gower and Joseph Peyton (pp. 64–96); Barfleur, 98, bearing the flags of Admirals Roddam, the Hon. Samuel Barrington, Sir John Jervis, John Elliot and Jonathan Faulknor (pp. 97–120), and Queen, 98, Captain John Hutt (pp. 121–5). After a further service, chiefly in the Mediterranean in the Berwick, 74, Captains Sir John Collins, William Shield. George Campbell and George Henry Towry (pp. 126–154); in the Gorgon, 44, Captain James Wallis, for a passage to England (pp. 155–171); and in the Victory, 110, Captain John Knight, at Portsmouth (pp. 172–7), he was promoted, 12 January 1795, to be lieutenant of the Hind, 28, Captains Richard Lee and John Bazely (the younger), on the North American and Irish stations, and in January 1797 was sent in to Plymouth in charge of a prize, La Favorite privateer, of 8 guns and 60 men (pp. 178, 202).
His next appointments were—8 March 1798, to the Blonde, 32, Captain Daniel Dobree, under whom he assisted in conveying troops to Holland in August 1799 (pp. 203–225); 13 April, 1801, to the Brunswick, 74, Captain George Hopewell Stephens, which, after a year in the West Indies, returned home and was paid off in July 1802 (pp. 226–249). After a short service as agent of transports at Portsmouth (p. 250), he was appointed, in January 1806, in charge of the signal station at Fairlight in Sussex, where he continued till 7 December 1814 (pp. 251–263). From that date he remained on half pay as a lieutenant, till on 26 November 1830, he was placed on the retired list with the rank of commander.
Reading this summary of Gardner’s service, in connection with the longer narrative, we are naturally inclined to say: Another instance of a good man choked out of the line of promotion by want of interest; there must have been something radically wrong with the system that permitted want of interest to shelve, at the age of 32, a sober, punctual and capable officer, with a blameless record and distinguished certificates. But would such a presentment of the case be quite correct? Gardner was excellently well connected, and had relations or good friends—including the comptroller himself (p. 97)— in many different departments of the public service. He must have had remarkably good interest; and we are forced to look elsewhere for what can only be called his failure.
The first reason for it—one, too, that has damaged many a young officer’s prospects—was his determination to pick and choose his service. This is apparent throughout. He wasted his interest in getting out of what he considered disagreeable employments. He quarrelled with Captain Calder and wearied Sir Henry Martin by his refusal to go to the West Indies, as it ‘did not suit my inclination’ (p. 97); he scouted McArthur’s suggestion to try his fortune on board the Victory (p. 148), and got himself sent to the Gorgon for a passage to England, only to find that his cleverness cost him five months’ time and the whole of his kit (pp. 172–3). The same daintiness is to be observed throughout. But if one thing is more certain than another in calculating the luck of the service, it is that a whole-hearted devotion to it, a readiness to go anywhere and to do anything, pays the best.
Later on, there was another reason for Gardner’s want of this readiness. He married early—on 11 December 1798—and his future career does not contravene the frequently expressed opinion of our most distinguished admirals, from Lord St. Vincent downwards, that —as far as the service is concerned—a young lieutenant might as well cut his throat as marry. ‘D’ye mind me,’ says the old song—
‘D’ye mind me! a sailor should be, every inch, All as one as a piece of the ship;’
and for a young man, with a young wife at home, that is impossible. His allegiance is divided; the wife on shore has the biggest share and continually calls for more, till the husband gets a home appointment —a guardo, a coast-guard, or a signal station—pleasant for the time, but fatal to all chance of promotion. No doubt there have been exceptions. It would not be impossible to cite names of officers who married as lieutenants and rose to high rank; but either under peculiar conditions of service, or because the wife has had sufficient strength of mind to prevent her standing in the way of her husband’s profession; possibly even she may have forwarded him in it. Exceptio probat regulam; but Gardner was not one. His direct connection with the service ended with the peace in 1814. It does not appear that he either asked for or wished for any further employment; but spent the rest of his life in a peaceful and contented retirement in the bosom of his family, at Peckham, where he died on 24 September 1846, in his 76th year. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Newington Butts, where a head-stone once marked the site of the grave. But the churchyard has been turned into a pleasure-ground, and the position of the stone or the grave is now unknown.
The ‘Recollections’ which by the kindness of the authors grandsons, Francis William and Henry James Gardner, we are now permitted to print, were written in 1836, and corrected, to some small extent, in later years. We have no information of the sources from which he composed them. He must have had his logs; and we may suppose either that these took the form of journals, or that he had also kept a journal with some regularity. Certainly it is not probable that, without some register, he could have given the lists of his shipmates, correct even—in very many cases—to the Christian
names. That their characters and the various highly flavoured anecdotes were matters of memory is more easily believed.
What is, in one sense, the most remarkable thing about the work is the strong literary seasoning which it often betrays. The manuscript is a little volume (fcap. 4to) written on both sides of the paper, in a small neat hand. This, of itself, is evidence that Gardner— leaving school, after six or seven broken years, at the age of twelve— did not consider, or rather was not allowed to consider, his education finished in all branches except in the line of his profession. Of the way in which it was continued, we have no knowledge. It is quite possible that Macbride, the drunken and obscene schoolmaster of the Edgar, may, in his sober intervals, have helped to inspire him with some desire of learning. The educational powers of Pye, the schoolmaster of the Salisbury and of the Barfleur, can scarcely have stretched beyond the working of a lunar. In the Berwick he was shipmates with the Rev. Alexander John Scott—in after years chaplain of the Victory and Nelsons foreign secretary—a man of literary aptitudes, who was ‘always going on shore to make researches after antiquities’ (p. 150), and Gardner may sometimes have been allowed to accompany him in his rambles.
However this may have been, it is very noteworthy that a tincture of polite learning was shared by many of his messmates. To those whose notions of life afloat are gathered from Roderick Random and other descriptions of the seamy side of the service, it will seem incredible that such should have been the case. We are not here concerned to prove it as a general proposition. It is enough to refer to the particular instances before us—that of Gardner and his messmates. He tells us that Macredie, who was with him in the Edgar, and afterwards in the Barfleur, was ‘an excellent scholar, well acquainted with Greek and Latin, ancient history and mathematics’ (p. 80), which must mean something, even if we allow a good deal for exaggeration. In the Edgar they were with that disreputable but amiable and talented sinner, Macbride; and it was also in the Edgar that the assumption of Homeric characters was a common sport, in which Macredie figured as Ajax Telamon, Culverhouse as Diomede, and Pringle won the name of ‘Ponderous and Huge’ (pp. 84, 93).
This does not, perhaps, go for very much; but it cannot be lost sight of that, as concerns Gardner, it was accompanied by a readiness
to apply quotations from Popes Iliad and from the Aeneid, sometimes in Dryden’s version, sometimes in the original. He was certainly, also, as familiar with Hudibras as ever Alan Quatermain was with The Ingoldsby Legends. Shakespeare he does not seem to have studied; and though it is but a small thing in comparison that he should have read Ossian and A Sentimental Journey, his knowledge of, his familiarity with, Roman history may be allowed as a makeweight, unless indeed—which is quite possible—it was drilled into him by Scott on each separate occasion. Thus, when the Berwick goes to Tunis and Porto Farino, he is reminded of the fate of Regulus (p. 136); he connects Trapani with the destruction of the Roman fleet under Claudius (p. 137), and knows that the concluding battle of the first Punic war—the battle which, as Mahan has shown, decided the result of the second Punic war—was fought off the Egades (p. 138). Incomparably more attention is nowadays paid to the instruction of our youngsters; but we are confident that very few of them could note such things in their journal unless specially coached up in them by a friendly senior.
In this, again, there have been exceptions. Until recently there has probably always been a sprinkling of officers who kept up and increased the knowledge of Latin they brought from Eton or Westminster[1] or other schools of classical learning; and Hannay, the novelist, who had a personal acquaintance with gunroom life of sixty years ago, has represented the midshipmen and mates of his day bandying quotations from Horace or Virgil with a freedom which many have thought ridiculous, but which, we must admit, might sometimes be met with. We were told by an officer who served in the Hibernia under the flag of Sir William Parker, that it was easy to fit names to all the principal characters in Hannay’s novelettes; and it may be assumed that what was true for the captains was equally true for the midshipmen.
Such familiarity with the Latin poets was, of course, very exceptional then; it has now, we fancy, entirely dropped out. The Latin which our present youngsters bring into the service must be extremely little, and they have no opportunity of continuing the study of it; and though English history and naval history form part of the curriculum at Osborne and Dartmouth, there is but little inducement to a young officer to read more when he goes afloat. But
there are certainly many of our older officers who would say that a sound and intelligent knowledge of history is more likely to be profitable to the average captain or admiral than the most absolute familiarity with the processes of the differential or integral calculus.
A considerable, and what to many will be a most interesting, part of the volume is occupied by lists of names and thumb-nail sketches of character. No attempt has been made to amplify these beyond filling in dates and Christian names [in square brackets] from Navy-lists and Pay-books. More would generally have been impracticable, for most of the names are unknown to history; and where otherwise, anything like full notices would have enormously swelled the volume, without any adequate gain. It has seemed better to add a mere reference to some easily accessible memoir, either in the Dictionary of National Biography (D.N.B.), Charnock’s Biographia Navalis, Marshall’s Royal Naval Biography, or O’Byrne’s Naval Biographical Dictionary; sometimes also to James’s Naval History, Schomberg’s Naval Chronology, or to Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs—all books which are quite common, and are or ought to be in every naval library.
It remains only for the Editors to express their grateful thanks to the Messrs. Gardner, who not only permit them to publish the ‘Recollections,’ but supplied them with a copy of the MS., typed at their expense; to the Very Rev. the Dean of Waterford, who has most kindly had all the registers at Waterford searched (though vainly) in the endeavour to determine the exact date of Commander Gardner’s birth; and to the numerous friends and even strangers who have so kindly helped them in answering the various queries which have presented themselves. These are too many to name; but the Editors must, in a special degree, mention their obligations to Commander C. N. Robinson, R.N., whose very exceptional knowledge of the byways of naval literature has been most generously put at their service. That some of their queries have remained unanswered and that explanatory notes are thus sometimes wanting will serve to emphasise the importance of the assistance referred to. What, for instance, is the meaning of the phrase ‘My hat’s off’ (p. 108)? Apparently ‘Not a word!’ but why? or again, what are ‘ugly podreen faces’ (p. 214)? To a mere Englishman the epithet looks as if it might be Irish; but Irish dictionaries and three competent Irish scholars are
