After I use a phrase . . . On the origins of medical phrases

A plurality of nouns

I’ve beforehand commented on a strapline, revealed below the heading of a latest article within the on-line model of The Times newspaper titled “Methods to develop into a physician—a step-by-step information by those that’ve accomplished it.”1 It started “The entry standards is hard and the course even harder ….” Now pluralising English nouns will not be at all times as easy as you would possibly assume. Typically, after all, you simply add the letter /s/—physician/medical doctors, nurse/nurses, and so forth.

However what about phrases ending, for instance, in –ic? “Physic” was an archaic phrase for medical science, however, like logic, magic, and rhetoric, “physic” on this sense is a non-count noun, which may’t be pluralised. “Physics” is one thing else once more.

Which raises the query of phrases ending in –ics. Are they singular or plural? People appear to assume that arithmetic is singular—they abbreviate it “math”; however in British English it’s “maths.” After all that doesn’t essentially imply that the unique phrase is plural; we merely abbreviate it as if it had been. If we need to speak about multiple form of maths we now have to say one thing like “branches of arithmetic.”

Plural types of phrases that finish within the letter /f/ are additionally problematic, from calves and elves to wives and wolves; however what about handkerchiefs, oafs, proofs, and staffs? Or dwarfs/dwarves, hoofs/hooves, and wharfs/wharves?

Greek and Latin phrases pose completely different issues, significantly related to medical and different scientific phrases. Take phrases ending in /–us/. If an English phrase reproduces a Latin noun of the second declension, ending in /–us/, the plural ends in /–i/: fungus/fungi, uterus/uteri, though we would nonetheless say uteruses. But when it’s from the third declension, the plural ends in /–ra/: corpus/corpora, genus/genera. And if it’s from the fourth declension, the plural ends in /–makes use of/: prospectuses and sinuses. The plurals of phrases ending in /–us/ derived from Greek additionally finish in /–makes use of/: octopuses, not octopi, and viruses, not viri.

Then there are Latin phrases ending in /–um/ and Greek phrases ending in /–on/. They’ve plurals that finish in /–a/: from Latin, dictum/dicta, datum/information; and from Greek phenomenon/phenomena and sure criterion/standards.

So, to say “the factors is …” as The Instances journalists did, is a rank solecism, and one which a number of commentators on the article weren’t sluggish to level out derisorily. It’s a surprisingly uncommon error in biomedical publications, however it’s often seen.2 Even the World Well being Group will not be immune from making this error, as an extract from the textual content of considered one of its stories exhibits: “The person ought to confirm the efficiency of the choice inner requirements in personal laboratory to make sure the standard management standards is met.”3

And sometimes authors appear to assume that “standards” is concurrently each singular and plural. Listed below are two examples:

• “Equal weightings throughout all particular person standards—a check that displays a case the place nobody standards is extra necessary than one other.”4

• “Whereas current standards have been usually accepted as one of the best accessible on the time it was specified, this standards shouldn’t be thought of as forged in stone.”5

Evaluating English medical phrases with the overall vocabulary

It’s useful to know all this, as a result of Greek and Latin origins dominate medical phrases.

Even those that haven’t been educated within the classical languages will recognise this. In illustration of this, a comparability of medical vocabulary and basic vocabulary is instructive.

I’ve carried out such a comparability. So as to take action, I’ve taken 876 random headwords from Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, thirtieth version (2003), and 904 random headwords from The Chambers Dictionary, thirteenth version (2014). I did so just by selecting the ultimate entry on every proper hand web page. I then decided the principle language of origin of every phrase.

Right here’s what I discovered.

• about 76% of the medical phrases had been derived from both Greek or Latin phrases or hybrid combos: Greek 35.5%, Latin 33.3%, and hybrids 7.3%

• in distinction, within the basic vocabulary Greek or Latin phrases or hybrid combos contributed below 40%: Greek 11.4%, Latin 26.6%, and hybrids 0.8%

• within the basic vocabulary, Outdated English and Germanic derivatives had been widespread, at round 25%, in contrast with slightly below 6% of the medical phrases

• within the basic vocabulary, phrases coming from French, albeit usually with Greek or Latin forebears, comprised 12.5%, in contrast with about 1% of the medical vocabulary

• solely seven fashionable languages featured as originators of medical phrases (Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Malayalam, Portuguese, Spanish, and Urdu, 1.5% in all), in contrast with 23 as originators of phrases within the basic vocabulary (Arabic, Australian aboriginal, Azerbaijani, Berber, Chinese language, Czech, Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Malay, Maori, Moroccan, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Yiddish, 8% in all)

The event of the English language

The variations within the distribution of originator languages within the English basic vocabulary and the medical vocabulary will be understood by contemplating the historical past of their improvement.

A lot of the languages which have contributed phrases to English initially derived from an early language referred to as Proto-IndoEuropean. That such a language should have existed was first proposed by Sir William Jones (1746–94), an English choose who, having been appointed to a judiciary place in Calcutta in 1786, and already fluent in Greek and Latin, taught himself Sanskrit and reported, in an tackle to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, of which he was the founder and president, that “No philologer might study [Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin] with out believing them to have sprung from some widespread supply, which, maybe, now not exists.” Then Thomas Younger, discussing Johann Christoph Adelung’s Mithridates, oder Allgemeine Sprachenkunde (Quarterly Evaluation, October 1813), referred to as that widespread linguistic supply “Indo-European.” And in 1916 Carl Darling Buck launched the time period “proto-Indo-European” to explain the theoretical roots from which fashionable phrases are thought to have developed.

Take, for instance, the IndoEuropean root ​​PƏTER, and contemplate the phrases for “father,” which it meant, in languages apart from English:

• Sanskrit: पिता (pitaa)

• Greek: πατήρ

• Latin: pater

• Italian: padre

• Sicilian: patri

• Spanish: padre

• Catalan: pare

• Portuguese: pai

• French: père

• Occitan: pair

However consonants change, and, in keeping with Grimm’s Regulation, as languages develop, plosive /p/ in Greek and Latin kinds turns into fricative /v/ and /f/ in Germanic ones.6 Thus:

• German: Vater

• Dutch: vader

• Danish: far

• Norwegian: far

• Swedish: far

• Icelandic: faðir

• Outdated English: fæder

And we could subsequently perceive the way it took place that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father.

After incursions below the command of Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC, Roman legions, commanded by their emperor, Claudius, calling the land Britannia, invaded in 43 AD, and stayed for over 360 years, leaving in 410 AD. By then, Latin had develop into established because the language of Christian prayer and it noticed a resurgence in Britain on the finish of the sixth century, with the arrival of St Augustine the primary Archbishop of Canterbury, despatched by Pope Gregory to transform the English to Roman Catholicism. By then, within the late fifth century, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes had additionally invaded and had introduced their Germanic languages, establishing Anglo-Saxon or Outdated English (Ænglisc) as the principle spoken language.

The period of Outdated English dominance got here to an finish when the Normans invaded in 1066 and created Anglo-Norman, co-existing with Anglo-Saxon. The classical proof of that is in the way in which we use Anglo-Saxon phrases to call animals—pigs, cows, sheep, deer—however Anglo-Norman phrases, from Outdated French, to explain their meat—pork, beef, mutton, venison.

Greek phrases additionally entered the language as a result of many Latin phrases had been derived from Greek and in addition due to the affect of Greek science, arithmetic, and philosophy. Medical and scientific vocabularies had been subsequently significantly affected.

A last thought

Learning classical languages brings a number of benefits. It exposes us to classical thought in each the sciences and humanities. It teaches us about historical past. It helps us to amass a wealthy English vocabulary and to know how our language is constructed, specifically giving us a extra exact understanding of English grammar. It trains us in logic and systematic considering. Its literature is wealthy and extremely entertaining, particularly the mythology, and it’s significantly better learn within the authentic than in translation. Moreover, having learn it we’re higher outfitted to know the classical allusions that happen in later authors.

As John Cleese, taking part in the a part of Reg, a member of the Folks’s Entrance of Judea (or was it the rival Judean Folks’s Entrance?) in Monty Python’s Lifetime of Brian, reluctantly put it, “Aside from the sanitation, the medication, training, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the recent water system, and public well being … what have the Romans ever accomplished for us?” The reply was “Introduced peace,” nevertheless it might even have been “enriched our language.”

For individuals who need to discover additional the Greek and Latin origins of the phrases we use, each usually and medically, I’ve appended the titles of some books from which to decide on.789