This 'n that
« previous post | next post »
A recent Elle Cordova short:
Many aspects of this skit deserve linguistic analysis — I'll focus on on two things:
- The semantic step from literal "this and that", referring to two specific things, to an expression that Wiktionary glosses as referring to "various unspecified things".
- The cross-linguistic variation in degrees of distance contrast in demonstratives.
WRT point (1), Wiktionary has no pages for ceci et cela or dit en dat or dies und das or esto y aquello — I'm not clear whether that's because the expressions are less (or not at all) colloquial in French and Dutch and German and Spanish etc., or just because those Wiktionary sections are less populated. Certainly a few examples can be found on line, e.g. the name of a grocery store in Toulouse… Reactions from readers will be appreciated, extending to whatever other languages you know.
There's a passage in St. Augustine's Confessions suggesting that a version of the analogous idiom existed in 4th century Latin:
(26) Retinebant nugae nugarum et vanitates vanitantium, antiquae amicae meae, et succutiebant vestem meam carneam et submurmurabant, “dimittisne nos?” et “a momento isto non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum” et “a momento isto non tibi licebit hoc et illud ultra in aeternum.” et quae suggerebant in eo quod dixi “hoc et illud,” quae suggerebant, deus meus, avertat ab anima servi tui misericordia tua! quas sordes suggerebant, quae dedecora! et audiebam eas iam longe minus quam dimidius, non tamquam libere contradicentes eundo in obviam, sed velut a dorso mussitantes et discedentem quasi furtim vellicantes, ut respicerem. tardabant tamen cunctantem me abripere atque excutere ab eis et transilire quo vocabar, cum diceret mihi consuetudo violenta, “putasne sine istis poteris?”
(27) Sed iam tepidissime hoc dicebat. aperiebatur enim ab ea parte qua intenderam faciem et quo transire trepidabam casta dignitas continentiae, serena et non dissolute hilaris, honeste blandiens ut venirem neque dubitarem, et extendens ad me suscipiendum et amplectendum …
(26) My old friends, utter frivolity and complete vanity, were restraining me. Beneath my garment of flesh they were pinching me gently and whispering softly, “Are you going to send us away?” and, “from that moment we shall no longer be with you forever” and, “from that moment you will not be allowed to do such and such ever again.” As for the things they were reminding me of, in that “such and such” I just referred to, what they were reminding me of, O my God, let your mercy turn it aside from the soul of your servant! What filth, what shame they were reminding me of! I was not even half-listening to them, and they no longer argued with me in an open attack. Instead they were grumbling behind my back and, as it were, furtively nagging me, even as I was abandoning them, to look back. They slowed me down as I hesitated to snatch myself away from them and shake them off, and to make the leap to where I was being called; for my impetuous habits kept calling to me, “Do you think you can cope without those things?”
(27) But that call of habit was now barely lukewarm, for from the direction where I had turned my face, and where I trembled to move across, there appeared the pure excellence of Chastity. She was tranquil rather than carelessly merry, she was frankly coaxing me to come on and not hesitate, she held out holy hands to support me …
(English translation by Carolyn J.-B. Hammond. It seems to me that "this and that" would work as well as "such and such" to translate Augustine's "hoc et illud", but the general idea is clear either way.)
Moving on to point (2), we note that the World Atlas of Language Structures distinguishes at least five type of "Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives":
I have some personal experience with one four-way contrast language, namely Somali, based on a field-methods course from which I took a simple morphology exercise for ling001 (see section 3(b)…). But I don't know whether Somali has a way of combining some of these demonstratives to make an idiom meaning "various unspecified things".
Update — Note that "so-and-so", in addition to normally being hyphenated, has a possible derogatory meaning, which Wiktionary gives as a second gloss:
But Elle Cordova's use of "so-and-so" in the cited skit is laudatory rather than derogatory.
"Such-and-such" has no analogous derogatory extension.
JimG said,
December 14, 2024 @ 7:10 pm
You sent me off on tangents:
AmEnglish commonly uses a 3-way expression, "this, that, and the other."
Spanish "tal y tal" translates as so-and-so (as in "he's such a so-and-so", or as in such-and-such.)
There are various languages that use a triplet for unspecified persons (e.g. Tom, Dick and Harry, or Spanish: Fulano, Mengano y tal)
Laura Morland said,
December 14, 2024 @ 9:46 pm
Re: "Wiktionary has no pages for ceci et cela …. I'm not clear whether that's because the expressions are less (or not at all) colloquial in French.
You nailed it. French people don't say "ceci et cela". (And in fact, they don't often say "ceci" these days, and "cela" is usually shortened to "ça".)
The one believable translation I was able to locate of "this and that" in French is the following:
Plus le soleil baisse plus je me sens bien seul sous mon casque a réfléchir à tout et à rien.
More the sun sets and more I feel good alone in my helmet to think of this and that.
("This and that" is offered here as a translation of "everything and nothing," which doesn't quite mean the same thing.)
Florent Moncomble said,
December 15, 2024 @ 1:00 am
French speakers don't say « ceci et cela », but they do say « ceci cela » :
« Il était au garage. Son garage. Une vieille torpédo qu'il avait. Il passait son
temps à la chouchouter et la repeindre, changer les pièces, graisser, perfectionner ceci cela dans le moteur. »
(Alphonse Boudard)
Mind you, there's no Wiktionary entry for either.
JPL said,
December 15, 2024 @ 1:42 am
"("This and that" is offered here as a translation of "everything and nothing," which doesn't quite mean the same thing.)"
Quite right, but did you mean that '"Everything and nothing"' doesn't quite mean the same thing as '"this and that"' in English, or that 'a tout et a rien' in French doesn't quite mean the same thing as what 'this and that' does in English, or that 'a tout a rien' in French doesn't quite mean the same thing as what "everything and nothing" does in English? (All true.)
I imagine that translating poetry probably does this kind of thing, looking not for lexical equivalence, but discourse equivalence of idiom. What you've got to do is to describe from a pragmatic point of view what is the equivalence in what is expressed by the two expressions in their respective discourse contexts. What is the "sentiment"? This is not a question for a flip or pat answer; it takes some thought, "describe", not "express". (Just saying "referring to 'various unspecified things'" is not enough.) For example, there is an :
"inner" logical relation common to the two, beyond the conjunction.
AntC said,
December 15, 2024 @ 2:23 am
a version of the analogous idiom existed in 4th century Latin
The Latin phrase that gave rise to the Languedoc vs Langue d'oïl opposites was 'hoc ille' . Literally 'this is it'. Which English got so overused (esp on a BBC radio satire show in the ?? 70's) as to bleach it of any meaning. If wikip is to be believed, it's since been resurrected.
Phillip Helbig said,
December 15, 2024 @ 3:51 am
Others have commented on French and Spanish (which I know less well). Never heard it in Dutch, In German, one does hear “dieses und jenes” in the same sense.
Originally, there were three demonstratives, corresponding to location: near the speaker, near the person being spoken to, far from both. Some languages (Macedonian, for example) has three corresponding definite articles. Swedish has a suffix for the definite article (like Macedonian), which is the general forrm. It also has “den här” and “den där” (or “det” instead of “den” for neuter) where the location (just two possibilities) is important. (Not sure whether colloquial English “this here” and “that there” are calques.)
In English, the three were this, that, and yon. Yon is archaic and yonder is colloquial. Obviously, dieses and jenes are cognates of this and yon. In English, the third, yon, has disappeared; in German the second, at least as far as declinable demonstrative adjectives go. For the undeclinable, the third has disappeared, leaving dies und das, like this and that.
DJL said,
December 15, 2024 @ 4:10 am
The phrase ‘esto y aquello’ is certainly common in Spanish, as in ‘sobre esto y aquello’ o ‘contra esto y aquello’ (there are at least two books by Unamuno with ‘esto y aquello’ in the title). The phrase ‘tal y tal’ means something else, as pointed out above. In Italian ‘questo e quello’ is not as common in my idiolect, but it’s the title of a well-known Spaghetti western.
Lukas Daniel Klausner said,
December 15, 2024 @ 5:40 am
In reply to Phillip, I'd say I more often hear “dies und das” in German, at least here in Austria. (But “dieses und jenes” is at least possible, even though it sounds a bit stilted and overly formal to my ears.)
Dorian Lidell said,
December 15, 2024 @ 6:06 am
Japanese has the same phrase constructed in the opposite order: あれこれ (are-kore), where "are" means "that (over there)" and "kore" means "this". The more various-sounding あれやこれや (are-ya-kore-ya) is also used, with the particle や contributing a sense of "and such"-ness.
David Morris said,
December 15, 2024 @ 6:09 am
I would suggest that 'such and such' points to one thing, while 'this and that' points to two ore even more. When my siblings and I were teenagers, we often asked our mother was was for dinner, and she'd reply either 'Wait and see' or 'This and that'. Neither of those was limited to two food items.
Jonathan Smith said,
December 15, 2024 @ 9:57 am
In Mandarin zhe4na4de 这那的 lit. "this-that" but this seems often to imply the "stuff" is pointless or tiresome. Perhaps cf. "this that and the third."
bi3ci3 彼此 lit. that (arch.)-this (arch.) is lexicalized and means 'each other, the both of us'
David Marjanović said,
December 15, 2024 @ 10:40 am
Literally "this that", or arguably "this it" at later stages.
In written German, der/die/das has indeed retreated to its function as the article. But as soon as you get slightly more colloquial, der/die/das is very much a demonstrative adjective as well, either (in the north) replacing jener/jene/jenes which has been gone from spoken language and a lot of written usage for a long time, or (in the south) replacing the entire system, leaving us with no contrast. Indeed, where exactly the limit between this and that lies in English has been difficult to learn for me.
You hear dies in Austria? I grew up without ever hearing it; it feels very northern to me.
I'd say irgendwas halt "well, something, anything" in most situations.
ulr said,
December 15, 2024 @ 5:12 pm
For me, dies und das is perfectly normal spoken standard German. And der/die/das seems to me more common in spoken German as a demonstrative pronoun (often accompanied by pointing gestures) than dieser/diese/dieses.
According to Georges' Handwörterbuch, the Latin expression was either haec et haec (citing Quintilian) or hic et (atque) ille (citing Horace). I am a bit surprised there is no citation from Cicero. (It seems the big 19th century Latin dictionaries – ultimately deriving from Forcellini's 18th century monolingual dictionary – had little interest in the language of the Christian writers of late antiquity (and the 20th century OLD ignores the Latin of late antiquity altogether).