Raggle-taggle and friends

First published 10 January 2011 @ just some words

Knock-knock, zigzag, hobson-jobson — words and phrases like these appear in English thanks to reduplication. According to Wikipedia, there are three types of English reduplication: exact, rhyming and ablaut (which is a fancy word for vowel permutation).

Exact reduplication is self-explanatory.

bling-bling	expensive and ostentatious possessions
chop-chop	quickly, without delay
goody-goody	affectedly or ingratiatingly good or proper
hush-hush	secret
no-no	taboo
so-so	average

We are often creating exact reduplications on the fly when we want to stress that something is “real” or “authentic” (as opposed to its pale imitation). For example, in an interview with Tomer Zvulun I read:

You’ve been Assistant and Associate Director here at Seattle Opera in the past. What’s it like to come back, now as Director Director?

Apparently, “Director Director” here means “real” Director.

Although their parts rhyme, rhyming reduplication may be not the best term for the phrases in the table below. They are not just rhymes — apart from the first consonant, they are identical.

bee’s knees	something excellent
hanky-panky	mischievous behaviour; sexual intercourse
heebie-jeebies	a feeling of anxiety, fear etc.
higgledy-piggledy	haphazard
hocus-pocus	(an act of) trickery
hodge-podge	a variety of miscellaneous things
hoity-toity	snobbish
hotchpotch	hodge-podge
holy moly	an expression of surprise
honey bunny	honey, sweetheart
hurly-burly	uproar, tumult
itsy-bitsy	teeny-weeny
mumbo jumbo	nonsense, gibberish
namby-pamby	insipid, sentimental, weak
nitty-gritty	details, nuts and bolts
palsy-walsy	being or appearing to be very intimate
ragbag	hotchpotch
raggle-taggle	motley, mixed
razzle-dazzle	glamour
roly-poly	short and plump (person)
super-duper	superb
teeny-weeny	minuscule
Tex-Mex	a fusion of Texan and Mexican (cuisine)
walkie-talkie	handheld transceiver
willy nilly	whether wanted or not

An amateur etymologist in me would like to see Latin nolens volens not only in Italian volente o nolente (that is kind of obvious) but also in Russian волей-неволей, English willy-nilly, Dutch willens of onwillens — of course, modified according to the law of Hobson-Jobson. But what about Albanian dashur padashur, Dutch goedschiks of kwaadschiks, French bon gré mal gré, Greek εκών άκων, Hungarian kénytelen-kelletlen, Malay mau tak mau, Polish chcąc nie chcąc or Romanian vrând-nevrând? It looks like we humans just love to rhyme.

A special case of rhyming reduplication is so-called shm-reduplication. It is often used to convey a dismissive or ironic feeling for a thus reduplicated word, as in metalinguistic, shmetalinguistic or forbidden, shmershmidden (courtesy of Bender Rodríguez).

In ablaut reduplication, it is the vowel (typically, the first vowel) that change. Many words formed this way are onomatopoeic.

bric-a-brac	knick-knacks
chiffchaff	a warbler, Phylloscopus collybita
chit-chat	mindless banter
criss-cross	move back and forth
flim-flam	fraud, deception
flip-flop	a type of footwear; to alternate back and forth
hip-hop	an Afro-American urban youth culture
jibber-jabber	blather
knick-knack	trinket
mingle-mangle	hodgepodge
mishmash	mingle-mangle
ping-pong	table tennis
pitter-patter	repetitive sound (of rain etc.)
riff-raff	rabble, common people
shilly-shally	to procrastinate or vacillate (“shall I?”)
sing-song	song-like
telltale	talebearer, gossip
tip-top	excellent
wishy-washy	wavering; watery

Both rhyming and ablaut reduplications can be further classified like this:

1. A combination of one meaningful word and its “mutated” form present for emphasis: jibber-jabber, super-duper
2. Apparently nonsensical combination of two meaningful words: bee’s knees
3. Apparently nonsensical combination of two nonsense words: heebie-jeebies
4. Meaningful combination of two meaningful words: telltale, walkie-talkie

One can argue that the latter case has nothing to do with reduplication because the both parts already existed on their own.

Phrases like creepy-crawly, hunky-dory and topsy-turvy are similar to reduplications (in that they sound like baby talk) but they are neither rhyming nor reduplications.

Rough Music

by Eliza Carthy

Sometimes knowing the language of the song adds nothing to my ability to enjoy it. Even worse: completely spoils it. The English-language songs I was happily humming along when I was a child now cause nothing but embarrassment — doubtlessly a side effect of my new relationships with the lyrics. This is true for most of jazz standards (corny), 1970s prog-rock (pretentious), contemporary R&B (dumb), Christmas songs (sickening) — the list goes on.

A few years ago I discovered, to my surprise, that I can tolerate English folk music even if I do understand the words. And if I had to single out an English musician to be held responsible for this discovery of mine, that would be Eliza Carthy. I think that this 2005 album is her best so far.

In the liner notes, Eliza explains the meaning of the term “rough music” but concedes that “we’ve tried to make the album a bit nicer than that”. What a typically English understatement. Rough Music is not “nice”. The whole thing is a work of beauty. Even so, my favourites are Mohair, Tom Brown and an instrumental Cobbler’s Hornpipe.

Chocolate: The Consuming Passion

by Sandra Boynton

This is, simply, the best book on the topic ever written, illustrated, and overresearched. The book of ultimate truths, so to speak. An inexhaustible source of quotes, any of them a surefire way to enliven a dull lecture. A perfect gift for a choc lover. A perfect gift for a lover. Even shorter: a perfect gift.

Whoever said, “The best things in life are free”, was, of course, just kidding. The best things go for $6.50 a pound and up. *

There always seems to be someone looking over your shoulder, just waiting for an opportunity to lecture on The Darker Side of Chocolate.

Chocolate was never meant to be shared.

Invariably, the chocolate department goes by a French name, such as “Le Chocolatier” or “Au Chocolat” or “La Maison du Bonbon”.

It is possible to overestimate the intrinsic value of hand dipping.

Chocolate is not a privilege; it is a right.

__________________________________________________

* So says my copy (first edition, 1982). In the 2015 edition of this book, the same passage reads “$65.00 a pound”.

Snow Country

by Yasunari Kawabata

To quote Wikipedia, this novel “established Kawabata as one of Japan’s foremost authors and became an instant classic”. I am sure it did; yet I failed to enjoy the book, thanks to clumsy translation by Edward Seidensticker. This is positively the worst English translation of a Japanese book I ever read.

“It was such a beautiful voice that it struck one as sad”

“The high, thin nose was a little lonely, a little sad <...> There was nothing remarkable about the outlines of her round, slightly aquiline face”

“A powerful black dog stood on the stones by the doorway lapping at the water”

“Her laugh, like her voice, was so high and clear that it was almost lonely”

“The shape of her slightly aquiline nose was not clear”

— you get the picture. Or maybe not. The plot, if there is one, is not particularly engaging: a wealthy playboy spends some time away from his family at the hot springs in company of a young geisha. So what? At the time, there was nothing shocking or even remarkable about this. According to Seidensticker himself,

In Snow Country Kawabata has chosen a theme that makes a meeting between haiku and the novel possible.

Well, “possible” is not enough to make a good reading. The poetry is lost, the conversations are utterly meaningless, I couldn’t care less about the characters — what a waste of time.

Seven Chances

a film by Buster Keaton

Just back from Saffron Screen’s annual celebration of silent film, with live piano accompaniment by Gail Ford. This time, it’s Seven Chances. A great film — and one of the most hilarious chase sequences I’ve ever seen.

Jimmy Shannon (Keaton), pursued by hundreds of brides, causes an avalanche of rocks.

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

by Yann Martel

So I wrote. I wrote another play — an absurdist pastiche, awful — before switching to prose. I wrote short stories — all of them bad — before writing a novel — equally bad — and then more short stories — none of them good. To pursue the violin analogy, I drove the neighbours crazy with my bad playing. But something drew me on. It’s not that I saw a future in it; to think there was a link between my scribblings and books on shelves was preposterous. I didn’t think I was wasting my time when I wrote — it was too exciting — but nor did I think I was building a life. The fact is, I wasn’t thinking at all; I was just doing, madly, like Paganini (without the talent).

Author’s note

It is a nonsense to compare this book of short-ish Borgesque stories (apples) with Martel’s magnum opus, Life of Pi (orange). Let’s concentrate on apples.

In 1986, two Canadian students (the narrator and his friend Paul) decide to write together a family saga. Each year of XX century, or rather, an event of choice of that year, corresponds to one episode from life of a contemporary Finnish family. We never learn much about Roccamatios though; that’s the part of the beauty. The saga is not going to be completed: Paul dies of AIDS around 1962.

In The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton (my, that’s a long name), the narrator attends a performance of Vietnam War Veterans’ orchestra and meets the said John Morton, who is working as a janitor. Probably the best story in the collection.

Just like the title story, Manners of Dying deals with parallel universes. A warden of “correctional institution” writes a series of letters to the mother of certain Kevin Barlow, sentenced to death. Each letter describes Kevin’s last hours, starting with his last meal. Details vary significantly, the outcome is always the same. In Manner of Dying 760, Kevin asks for pen and paper and writes through the night; the resulting pile of papers is “enclosed” with the letter but nobody (with the possible exception of Kevin’s mother) will ever see it.

The Vita Æterna Mirror Company: Mirrors to Last till Kingdom Come is the most magical story of the four. What is the secret ingredient of old mirrors?

Techniquest

If you happen to find yourself in Cardiff Bay, you could do worse than spending a couple of hours in Techniquest. The last time we were in Cardiff I didn’t get there, so yesterday I had (and used) a chance to correct that. I am not a museum-going type, so trust me: it is great. With 150 or so interactive exhibits, you definitely won’t get bored.