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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| There should be some relationship between the letters in a word and its pronunciation. Should be, but sometimes isn't. There are places like that in the US too, but no one visits the US anymore, so it doesn't matter as much. Inhabited by a succession of Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians and Normans, Britain has spent centuries simmering into a confusing toponymic soup of counties, cities and castles. And that's one reason English itself is confusing. Over time, their names have further shifted and skewed, taking on their own idiosyncrasies and sometimes becoming utterly unpredictable. Happisburgh is “Haze-bur-ruh.” Cholmondeley is “Chum-lee”. Leominster is “Lem-stuh.” Some of these are just so the locals can instantly identify who doesn't belong there. As if having an American accent itself isn't enough. London loves to find ways to befuddle. At least most people get the pronunciation of London somewhat close. Except for the French. You know what they call it? Londres. We get even by calling Paris Paris instead of Paree. I'm only including a few of these here. The well-to-do neighborhood of Marylebone is commonly mispronounced. It has a picturesque etymology which has everything to do with a Mary and nothing to do with bones; it stems from “St Mary at the Bourne,” a church called St. Mary’s built on the banks of the old Tyburn river. Huh, and all this time I thought it was derived from mangled French. Oh, wait, it probably was,  maybe, though from a different root word than I was expecting. The word appears in the Scots language, too, meaning the same thing (stream). Of course, "burn" means something else in English, which may be why it fell out of favor. Then there's born and borne, which have entirely different meanings.I told you English was confusing. (Holborn) No doubt you’ve already guessed that it’s not “Hol-born”, because that would be too easy. What we’ve got here is “Ho-bun”, derived from “hollow spring.” And now we have another meaning of something that sounds similar to "burn." Yes, sometimes a spring becomes a stream, but that's still a different thing. Bicester and Cirencester Screw this; I'll just visit a different city. (Edinburgh} “Burg” is a common suffix for a number of European cities — think Hamburg in Germany, or Johannesburg in South Africa. It means “castle” or “fortified town,” and both of the above “burg”s (and many more besides) are pronounced as they’re spelled. Astute readers may note that South Africa is not, in fact, a European city. But Europeans spread out all over the planet, and named some cities like the ones they were used to. Hence, here in the US, we have city names like Harrisburg or Fredericksburg, neither of which are particularly fortified. To make matters more complicated, lots of US place names end in "-ville," also, which is, you guessed it, French in origin. (Frome) Picturesque winding cobbled streets welcome tourists to the Somerset town of Frome, although the locals must get exhausted correcting visitors whenever “Frome” leaves their mouths. And this has nothing to do with Rome, which doesn't stop the article from making a terrible pun: "...when in Frome..." (Beaulieu} One glance at “Beaulieu” tells you this is a French influence. The name of this idyllic Hampshire village — home to a 13th-century abbey and the National Motor Museum, which houses one of the vehicles from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” no less — means simply “beautiful place”. Très simple. Yes, except, for this native English speaker (albeit the American version), the French pronunciation is very difficult to wrap one's tongue around. Except that if you think the “beau” here is said how the French would say it, you’ve got another think coming. It’s “Byoo-lee”. That first part makes sense when you think of how we altered the word in, say, "beautiful," but the second syllable makes no sense whatsoever. And that’s not even the strangest bastardized French name: this honor goes to Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, which is pronounced… “Beaver Castle”. Meanwhile, here in Virginia, we have a Fort Belvoir (which is not in a burg), and that's pronounced closer to the French version. And don't get me started on the mangled French-origin towns in the Mississippi Valley, like New Orleans or St. Louis, or Terre Haute or Versailles. Llanfair... I've been informed that long words (or place names) break the site on mobile view, so I'm not typing this one out. You know the town. I've been there. The only thing notable about it is the name, which I still haven't mastered. Somehow, it's also derived from a St. Mary's Church, which is probably about as common in England as Notre Dames are in France, and for the same reason. Anyway, like I said, more at the link. I'd consider it required reading if you're planning to claim asylum in the UK anytime soon, for whatever reason. |
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