Four years ago I took advantage of the ODI World Cup to write this, about the uneasy cohabitation of speakers of one language with athletes whose names don't use that (monolithic? monoglottal?) language's phonology; the chief stumbling point was the name 'Phelukwayo' (which doesn't start with a /f/):
<pre-script>
... Which brings me to /p/, which (in most English speech I've met) is aspirated in some contexts (the allophone ...
<2023-addition>
Slipped that one in. An allophone is a context-specific alternative way of articulating a phoneme (minimal meaning-bearing speech sound). The so-called "clear l" and "dark l" of 'leek' and 'keel', for example, are allophones of the /l/ phoneme.
</2023-addition>
...can be transcribed as [ph]) but not in other contexts. It's something speakers of English as a mother tongue [henceforth "FLES" for "First-Language English Speakers"] find hard to hear: " A p is a p, isn't it?". But if they know what to listen for, most FLESs can be taught.
<experiment>
Wet a finger and hold it in front of your lips as you say "pin". You should detect a little puff of air.<autobiographical_note>Next say "spin". There's next to no puff of air (I say "next to no" because the sound of the word involves the passage of air; but aspiration after the [p] is not a contributor).
When I first met this test, when the Cambridge Linguistics Department was a converted cricket pavilion in the early 1970s, no-one suggested wetting the finger. That's my own addition. The water makes the puff of air have a cooling effect, making the finger more sensitive.
</autobiographical_note>
</experiment>When a FLES sees "ph" at the beginning of a word, it obviously represents /f/ (as it does in English words). This brings us to Phelukwayo (not an English word). When, in early June 2019 cricket commentators started to meet it most days (he had been in South African teams before then, but June 2019 – the Cricket World Cup in England and Wales – was the moment when it first started to register on my mentions-per-day meter) the English commentators had to learn from the South African ones. Some were quicker than others. For example, in early June Jonathan Agnew was saying /felə'kwejəʊ/ (with the /fel/ of *phel [except that there's no such English word] and the /wej/ of English "way", but by mid-June he'd learnt. Some of the Test Match Special team have insisted on their Little Englander pronunciation. (No names, no pack-drill, but I bet they voted for Brexit.)
</pre-script>
Phelukwayo is still part of the South African team, but is less crucial in 2023 than he was in 2019; in most 2023 games he has just carried the drinks. But those presumed Brexiteers still haven't learned; I don't believe they ever will. And I don't think it's worth banging on about it; so I won't. But I reserve the right to DIE A LITTLE whenever this man's name is abused.
So this time around my linguistic focus is not on phonology but on etymology. I was struck last week when Steven Finn used the word 'juggernaut' with reference to India. I suspect that the word is unusually common in a cricketing context...
<tangent>
(Maybe being this specific is fanciful – perhaps a footbal team could be described in this way – but I'd guess that the cultural context of Indian religious practice (read on) favours the use of this image: which is not to say that India is the only team that can be a juggernaut. This India-based article from a previous World Cup makes Australia the juggernaut:
Colonial history introduced cricket to India, and India returned the favour by applying this metaphor in the cricketing context.
</tangent>
....
This extract from Etymonline shows both the derivation and the fact that the 'inevitable winner' sense is quite distant from the current 'idea, custom, fashion' definition:
I'm also intrigued by the 'apocryphally' bit. Hobson Jobson, primary source for information about Indian English during the Raj, seems quite unequivocal:
JUGGURNAUT, n.p. A corruption of the Skt. Jagannātha, 'Lord of the Universe,' a name of Krishṇa worshipped as Vishṇu at the famous shrine of Pūrī in Orissa. The image so called is an amorphous idol, much like those worshipped in some of the South Sea Islands, and it has been plausibly suggested (we believe first by Gen. Cunningham) that it was in reality a Buddhist symbol, which has been adopted as an object of Brahmanical worship, and made to serve as the image of a god. The idol was, and is, annually dragged forth in procession on a monstrous car, and as masses of excited pilgrims crowded round to drag or accompany it, accidents occurred. Occasionally also persons, sometimes sufferers from painful disease, cast themselves before the advancing wheels. The testimony of Mr. Stirling, who was for some years Collector of Orissa in the second decade of the last century, and that of Sir W. W. Hunter, who states that he had gone through the MS. archives of the province since it became British, show that the popular impression in regard to the continued frequency of immolations on these occasions—a belief that has made Juggurnaut a standing metaphor—was greatly exaggerated. The belief indeed in the custom of such immolation had existed for centuries, and the rehearsal of these or other cognate religious suicides at one or other of the great temples of the Peninsula, founded partly on fact, and partly on popular report, finds a place in almost every old narrative relating to India. The really great mortality from hardship, exhaustion, and epidemic disease which frequently ravaged the crowds of pilgrims on such occasions, doubtless aided in keeping up the popular impressions in connection with the Juggurnaut festival.
Perhaps my view of Hobson Jobson as authoritative is misplaced, or perhaps the Etymonline article meant its 'apocryphally' to apply to only that one occasion in Puri. An update may appear in the fullness of time. Not tonight though.
b
Update: 2023.11.05.10:25 – Added PS
PS: A final word about Etymonline's "(apocryphally)", which I don't think is justified (perhaps there is in it a tinge of the Etymological Fallacy – early accounts of the devotions at Puri share some of the characteristics of The Apocrypha [but that doesn't mean that nothing of the sort ever happened]).
Wikipedia holds that
Since the Middle Ages, Europeans had been fascinated by accounts of the Ratha Yatra ("Temple car procession") at Puri, which claimed that pilgrims threw themselves under the temple cars
Stories of the fanatical self-sacrifices date back to the account given by a thirteenth-century Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone.
The article goes on to say:
His account was an important source for the account of John Mandeville. Many of the incredible reports in Mandeville have proven to be garbled versions of Odoric's eyewitness descriptions.
...At least part of Mandeville's Travels and the life of John Mandeville is mere invention. No contemporary corroboration of the existence of such a Jehan de Mandeville is known. Some French manuscripts, not contemporary, give a Latin letter of presentation from him to Edward III of England, but so vague that it might have been penned by any writer on any subject.
OED says that by 1825
"That excess of fanaticism which formerly prompted the pilgrims to court death by throwing themselves in crowds under the wheels of the car of Jaganath, has happily long ceased"
As the OED is a major source for Etymonline, I think this explains Etymonline's "apocryphally" – which seems to me to be an assumption too far. Accounts of the devotees' fanatical suicides were embroidered, but this doesn't mean there isn't a germ of truth in them. Fanatical followers of religions do fanatical things.
But it's a lovely day, and there's still some end-of-season destruction to be wrought in the garden, so that's all.
b
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