"Old Long Since"

If you weren't sound asleep before the stroke of midnight last night (and who could sleep, with all those stupid fireworks going off up and down the street?), you might have heard--or maybe even found yourself singing--the above-titled song to greet the New Year. Of course you probably heard or sang it in some form of its original language, which is Scots. So you sang "Auld Lang Syne."

I did a little Googling this morning and learned that "old long since" is a literal word-for-word translation of the title. More loosely it means something like "old times" or "long, long ago" or "days gone by." I also found that "Auld Lang Syne" is one of the most-sung songs on the planet, especially at this time of year. This makes the third thing I discovered rather amazing, which is how few people actually know the lyrics. If you hear them sing it in a crowd, everything sounds pretty normal, because different folks know different parts, while they all take turns faking the parts they don't know. But get them to sing it one-at-a-time, and things turn to worm dirt pretty fast. One guy on CBS Sunday Morning today, when they shoved a microphone in his face, actually sang "Should old acquaintance be forgot . . . keep your eye on that grand old flag!" I'm not making this up.

The rest of today's post is a public service. To get everyone properly informed for next New Year's festivities, here are the words to "Auld Lang Syne" as written by Scotland's most famous poet, Robert Burns (who apparently got some of them from an old man he met in 1788, who might have heard them in another song written in 1711 or maybe other songs to boot--it gets a bit mysterious):

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

       and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

       and auld lang syne?

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo (or dear), for auld lang syne, We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,
       and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
       for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
       and pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
       sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
       frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
       sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere,
       and gie's a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
       for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

Here's a bit of good news for those who don't like to learn anything that's not going to be on the test: You can probably get through New Year's Eve with just the first verse and chorus. But I think being aware of the whole song will make you a more well-rounded person.

I also wanted to find a really nice version of the song on YouTube. Well--surprise!--there are scads of them to choose from. I finally picked this one by a popular Scottish singer named Dougie MacLean. It seems to track along with the above lyrics better than most, though he does switch some of the verses around and adds or changes a few words here and there. But at least he doesn't say "keep your eye on that grand old flag."

The more I listen to this, the better I like it. I hope you do, too. And I hope that you all have a happy, safe, and wonderful 2012.

No animals were harmed in the making of this picture.

How's that for a Christmas miracle? We hope your holidays are just as peaceful and laid back!

Today's Word

Our word for today is floccinaucinihilipilification. May you never have to use it in a sentence. Or spell it in a spelling bee!

As you might guess, my main dude, M, helped me with this post--starting by coming up with the word in the first place. It was in a novel he's reading by a famous comedian, movie actor, and banjo player named Steve Martin. The book, which is called The Pleasure of My Company, is about a man with a bad case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And in the story, the man actually does manage to use floccinaucinihilipilification in a sentence. This was a first for M, who had never heard of it before. He went straight to the online Oxford English Dictionary and found that it means "the action or habit of estimating something as worthless."

When he told me this, I thought that the word itself might be in need of some floccinaucinihilipilification. I mean, there are what--29 letters in it? But "estimating something as worthless," which is the main part of its definition, has only 30 letters, so you're basically saving one letter. And if you add up the syllables, floccinaucinihilipilification has 12, while "estimating something as worthless" has only nine. So which is the bigger waste of breath? I rest my case.

On our walk this evening, I asked M if our new f-word is the longest word in the dictionary. He did a quick computation and said it might be one of the longest, that it has one more letter than antidisestablishmentarianism, which was the biggest word he personally knew before today. But when we got home, we went back to the online OED and found that the biggest word it contains is this 45-letter monster: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.* According to the dictionary, this is "an artificial long word said to mean a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust."

Long? Can't argue with that! But artificial? Why not real? And "said to mean"? Said by whom? And for heaven's sake, why? It looks like some humans have forgotten (or never heard of) their own KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

*PS - While the above p-word is thought to be the longest "regular" word in the English language, the longest word of any kind found in Britain is the name of a village in Wales: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. This is usually abbreviated as Llanfair PG. Here is a picture of its railway station:

One of Life's Most Valuable Lessons:

When in doubt, use your snout.
Sooner or later you'll figure it out.

Another Public Service Announcement

M wants me to let you know that Paul Krugman's blog post today on "Interest Rates, Inflation, and the Way the World Works" is worth reading. He says it's not as "slightly wonkish" as Dr. K suggests, if you don't get too caught up in the graphs. It seems wonkish to me, probably because I'm--you know--a dog. But since many of my readers are humans, M thinks that they, especially, ought to take a look. He says some of the comments are pretty good, too. (Especially this one.)