Thursday, November 17, 2011

A Finnegans Wake Up Call


There's a challenge and here's another list to help.

After some digging I came across this great guide to the Wake. The Wake he says and only a few lines into this post and not even the book bought; the temerity of this man.

Anyway the digging uncovered this behemoth of a word:

honorificabilitudinitatibus

(used in Ulysses)

that according to Wikipedia is

"the dative and ablative plural of the medieval latin word honorificabilitudinitas that can be translated as the "state of being able to achieve honours." It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost."

Costard is referring to two pretentious and pedantic idiots, Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel

"O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master has not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap dragon."

Flap dragon being a game involving terying to eat hot raisins from a bowl of flaming brandy.

Put that word in your pipe and smoke it. There's enough there for a couple of years.

Also this word only appears once in Shakespeare's canon so is a hapax legomenon. It comes from the Greek apax lenomenon meaning something only said once. Also it is the longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels.

Good advice about reading it is passed on by the digitarian on the list page FW page
"The best advice I've read about reading this is the first time you do, don't bother trying to make total sense of it. Just go with the flow. Read it to yourself out loud, in about half hour blocks. Just enjoy the fun of the language. I spent over a month on the first two pages before I opted for this advice. You start to get a sense of the "language" by the end of your reading, when it'd be a good time to go back and start again, as the opening and closing make it apparent you should."









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