Squaring the Circle

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Can't help it - I only just realized this. I stood thee on these very feet, saw it with these very eyes, and it never connected.

St Peter's Square is round http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter%27s_Square So okay, in Italian it is a piazza and the shape is no big deal.

But the Vatican has given the English and Anglophones of the world a circular square.

I could find a deep meaning or principle here, but I am still marvelling at the fact and my failure to see it.

The word "square" has several distinct meanings.

ruveyn

Homophone....isn't that the word for it?

I am surprised nobody has used "homophone" to mean someone who sounds gay.


Technically, no. [meet] "get together" and [meet] "fitting" and [mete'] "measure" and [meat] "comestible flesh" are homophones, different words that sound alike.

[square] "equilateral rectangle" and [square] "open public space" and [square] "person perceived as being like Philologos" and [square] "fair" are all ONE word, which happens to have some noticeably different meanings.

It is not clear to me as a historical linguist whether [to] "in the direction of" and [to] "infinitive marker" and [too] "excessive" and [too] "also" count in contemporary Englisg as a single word or several.

Presumably, early squares (meeting places) were square (shape).

Depends on where. In Europe, in those places where architecture was originally log based [stone and brick buildings copied the shape, the space left in the center of the cluster of important buildings - Chief house, God House, Chief's Guard barracks - was usualluy going to be roughly rectangular.

If you get into round buildings, or if you are on a small hilltop, not necessarily so.

But English architectural language tends to assume rectilinearity.

Now let's all laugh like Beavis and Butthead as we ponder alternate definitions for THAT word.
.....I'm so bored today.

Check the spelling, boyo. That [i] is NOT a typo for [a].

Why is the letter "W" called a "double U" when its obviously a double V?

On top of that we still have the English horn (which is niether English nor a horn), and the Holy Roman Empire (which wasnt Holy, wasnt Roman, and wasnt an Empire) to worry about!

The Holy Roman Empire is well explained in the lit. And if it was dedicated to God and endorsed by the church it was holy enough for anybody.

You should be able to find documentation on the English horn, Canadian bacon, the French disease, African violets and the turkey fowl.

But W is in my bailywick. The differentiation of u / v and i / j is pretty recent, expanding the Roman version of the Italic version of the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician version of the West Semitic alphabet. There had already een expansion, turning waw > Greek digamma into f while working with the v shape handling Latin u and the semivowel we write with w. Older docs just use the v shape.

In fact we now have FOUR waw derivatives - y [the shape the Greeks put in for the VOWEL equivalent, brough into Latin in Greek words] v [the prime Latin shape for vowel and semivowel], u [variant shape brought in for disambiguation, and w [innovation originall v + v] added after the v STOPPED being pronounced like w].

Are you up on Yiddish orthography?

We COULD have gone "double v" like in Spanish - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_v - But the pronunciation - a high back rounded semivowel - is closer to the pronunciation of [u] - the high back rounded vowel.

It may also be considered that "double v" involves a bit more effort to say.

I agree

Well, in French they call it "DO-blah-veh" ( dont know the spelling) which does sound like "double Vee". So they got it right!

Okay- explain Captain Kangaroo- who was neither a captian nor a kangaroo- mr. smartypants!

A. Please distinguish between "smartypants" and "knowitall". Different concepts.

B. I am NOT in fact a knowitall - I know a lot about certain subjects, quite a lot about a few subjects, little or nothing about many other subjects. Languages are central.

C. I was too old to watch Captain Kangaroo -and in my choldhood we rarely had television. But I believe I have seen pictures in which he wore a uniform of some kind.

D. I do not have any insight into the names of Captain Kangaroo, Big John and Sparky [where's my magic twanger?], Howdy Doody, Sesame Street, or any similar programs.

E. I can probably explain the Mouseketeers.

If we called it "double v", then we couldn't call Bush Jr. "Dub-ya". That's why.

V is U as in I CLAVDIVS, a well know PBS drama series.

ruveyn