Global InformationUncleftish Beholding information
| Uncleftish Beholding | |
|---|---|
| Presented | 1989 |
| Author(s) | Poul Anderson |
| Subject | Atomic theory |
| Purpose | Linguistic purism in English |
"Uncleftish Beholding" (1989) is a short text by Poul Anderson, included in his anthology "All One Universe".[1] It is designed to illustrate what English might look like without its large number of words derived from languages such as French, Greek, and Latin,[2] especially with regard to the proportion of scientific words with origins in those languages.
Written as a demonstration of linguistic purism in English, the work explains atomic theory using Germanic words almost exclusively and coining new words when necessary;[3] many of these new words have cognates in modern German, an important scientific language in its own right. The title phrase uncleftish beholding calques "atomic theory."[4]
To illustrate, the text begins:[5]
For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.
It goes on to define firststuffs (chemical elements), such as waterstuff (hydrogen), sourstuff (oxygen), and ymirstuff (uranium), as well as bulkbits (molecules), bindings (compounds), and several other terms important to uncleftish worldken (atomic science).[6] Wasserstoff and Sauerstoff are the modern German words for hydrogen and oxygen, and in Dutch the modern equivalents are waterstof and zuurstof.[7] Sunstuff refers to helium, which derives from ἥλιος, the Ancient Greek word for 'sun'. Ymirstuff references Ymir, a giant in Norse mythology similar to Uranus in Greek mythology.
- ^ Anderson, Poul (1996). All One Universe. Macmillan. ISBN 9780312858735.
- ^ Omissi, Adrastos (11 July 2015). "Swear words, etymology, and the history of English". OUPblog. Archived from the original on 14 July 2015. Retrieved 20 February 2019.
- ^ Allén, Sture, ed. (1995). Of Thoughts and Words: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 92: The Relation Between Language and Mind (Conference publication). River Edge, New Jersey: Imperial College Press. pp. 217–266. ISBN 9781860940057. LCCN 96130659. OCLC 34912899.
- ^ "Uncleftish Beholding". Centre for Complexity Science, University of Warwick. 12 February 2014. Archived from the original on 12 November 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2019.
- ^ Anderson, Poul (December 1989). "Uncleftish Beholding". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Vol. 109, no. 13. Davis Publications. pp. 132–135.
- ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (August 1994). "Speechstuff and Thoughtstuff: Musings on the Resonances Created by Words and Phrases via the Subliminal Perception of their Buried Parts". Nobel Symposium 92. Stockholm. doi:10.1142/9781908979681_0023.
- ^ R.L.G. (28 January 2014). "Johnson: What might have been". The Economist. Berlin. Archived from the original on 20 February 2019. Retrieved 20 February 2019.