I wanted to post something about Habibi today, but i got sidetracked doing some checking in Robert Irwin's The Arabian Nights: a companion:
"Burton shared Payne's enthusiasm for Rabelias's Gargantua and Pantagruel. More specifically, Burton had a passion for the first three books of that work, as translated in 1653 by the eccentric Scottish Cavalier and linguistic theorist Sir Thomas Urquhart. Urquhart was an advocate of logopandocie- that is, readiness to admit words of all kinds into the laguage- and his translation of Rabelais took on the character of a verbal riot, something resembling a surrealist reworking of Roget's Thesaurus.Logopandocie. I had to check that elsewhere (as posted apropos of nothing by 'teapeebubbles' on a forum somehwere.
"the worthless word for the day is: logopandocieright, that'll be me back out the window. Habibi tomorrow maybe, if I don't get lost again.
The system of admittance to these hallowed grounds,
by reason of its logopandocie, may deservedly be
referred to as adfenestration."
Labels: the bloody English language
posted by Eddie Campbell at
06:01
2 Comments:
Anticipating "The Nine Billion Names of God," Urquhart wanted to start by creating a Universal Alphabet:
"Then is it, when, having couched an alphabet materiative of all the words the mouth of man, with its whole implements, is able to pronounce, and bringing all these words within the systeme of a language, which, by reason of its logopandocie, may deservedly be intituled The Universal Tongue, that nothing nothing will better merit the labour of a grammatical arithmetician then, after due enumeration, hinc inde, to appariate the words of the universal language with the things of the universe."
The "due enumeration" is a nice touch.
Word verification: "muledly"
"He died in August 1642, after an illness brought on by anxiety, and hastened to its final termination by the relentless persecution of his creditors."
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