History of Business Cards, Greeting Cards & RSVPs

For as long as I can remember, I've always had a fondness for history. When I was young, I was constantly digging through history books. When the History Channel first came to be, it was my favorite TV station (though it's gone downhill considerably since then). Most recently, I was a trustee on the board for the Rockford Area Historical Society.

So of course when I have the opportunity to combine history with writing, I run with it. While at Smartpress.com, I wrote a few blog posts about the history of some common printed items.

History of Greeting Cards. Though it might seem like holiday cards and greeting cards have only been around as long as Hallmark has been in existence, the first examples of what has evolved into today’s greeting card can be traced back to the ancient China and Egypt.

History of Valentine's Day Cards. Though Valentine messages haven't been around for quite as long, the oldest ones still in existence are almost 600 years old. They didn't really catch on until the late 1700s, and it wasn't until the 1800s that they started to resemble what we see today. 

History of the RSVP. RSVP is short for “répondez s’il vous plaît,” and translates into “reply if you please” or “please reply”. In that sense, the concept of an RSVP hasn't changed much since the 19th century, but how you respond to it (or don't respond) has. Let's just say the Francophones of the past may not be pleased if you didn't respond at all - yay or nay.

History of the Business Card. Ah, yes, the most ubiquitous piece of print in a professional's marketing arsenal. Seems like a modern invention that some Madison Avenue big shot created as way to advertise his expertise. But business cards roots extend back to Imperial China. That makes sense, when you consider that the Chinese are believed to have invented paper in the first place.

Yup, I love history. And etymology, which is basically the history of words and language. I also love science and politics, too. But before you get to thinking that everything around here is scholarly, I also love profanity. I'm excited to get back to writing about the things that I really enjoy exploring.

Sara Duane is a freelance writer in the Twin Cities area of the great state of Minnesota.  

Language of Work & Labor

A new glossary takes a look at the language and etymology of the words we use to talk about jobs and work.

"The Wage Slave's Glossary" by Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell is a guide to the language of labor. Though it includes a collection of interesting new words, like "cube farm" and "work-life balance," what I found to be most interesting were some of the older words.

For example, the word "downtime." It was a mid-century term that meant time when a machine is out of action or unavailable for use. And today, of course, this means that human beings who aren't working are compared to machines that being serviced, or robots that are being recharged. And the worst thing of all, is that many of us now use "downtime" to describe our own weekends and vacations.

And:

There used to be a term in the 18th century called the "after-dinner man," which was somebody who went back to work after they'd eaten their dinner. And of course at the time, that was considered a very strange thing to do -- dinner time's when you're supposed to be done with work, why would you go back? Either you're unhealthily addicted to work or you have too much of it. And of course today, we're all after-dinner men and we think nothing of the people who open their laptop after dinner and finishing up a Powerpoint or sending out some work emails.

Finally, apparently the word "boss" actually comes from Dutch plantations? A "work boss" was somebody who was the overseer of the slaves on the plantation, but now the word has come to mean "A person in charge of a worker or organization."

Though I haven't actually read the book, the interview with one of the authors and the excerpt on the American Public Media website has piqued my interest. I may just have to check it out!

Oldest Readable Writing in Europe Uncovered

Last week in the Mother of All Mother Tongues post, the earliest spoken languages and their evolution into modern day dialects were discussed. This week, a quick post about an ancient tablet found to have the oldest readable writing in Europe.


The tablet was created by a Greek-speaking Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350 B.C. The Mycenaeans dominated much of Greece from about 1600 B.C. to 1100 B.C. They were made legendary in part by Homer's Iliad.

Found in what's now known as the village of Iklaina, markings on the clay tablet fragment measuring roughly 1 inch tall by 1.5 inches wide are early examples of a writing system known as Linear B. Used for a very ancient form of Greek, Linear B consisted of about 87 signs, each representing one syllable.

The Mycenaeans appear to have used Linear B to record only economic matters of interest to the ruling elite. Fittingly, the markings on the front of the Iklaina tablet appear to form a verb that relates to manufacturing, the researchers say. The back lists names alongside numbers—probably a property list.

Excavations at Iklaina have yielded evidence of an early Mycenaean palace, giant terrace walls, murals and an advanced drainage system, but the tablet was a big surprise. According to dig director Michael Cosmopoulos and what is currently known about the civilization, the tablet shouldn't exist.

First, Mycenaean tablets weren't thought to have been created so early. Second, literacy was not widespread at the time and until now, tablets had been found only in a handful of major palaces (although the Iklaina site once boasted a palace, at the time the tablet was created the settlement was merely a satellite of the bigger city of Pylos). Third, because these records tended to be saved for a relatively short time, the clay wasn't intended to last and should have crumbled long ago.

These finance-related tablets weren't meant to be permanent. They were not baked to harden properly, only dried in the sun which made them very brittle. When whoever was keeping the record no longer needed it, it was thrown into the garbage pit. In this case, when the pit later caught fire, the heat hardened and preserved what was left of the tablet.

While the Iklaina tablet is an example of the earliest writing system in Europe, other writings are older. For example, writings found in China, Mesopotamia, and Egypt are thought to date as far back as 3,000 B.C.

Linear B itself is believe to have originated from an older, as-yet undeciphered writing system known as Linear A. Archeologists think Linear A is related to the older hieroglyph system used by the ancient Egyptians. As for Linear B, the ancient Greek alphabet eventually overtook it and later evolved into the 26 letters used in many languages today.

The study on this tablet was published in the April issue of the journal Proceedings of the Athens Archaeological Society.

Mother of All Mother Tongues

All the world’s 6,000 modern languages likely have origins in a single Mother Tongue spoken by early Africans about 50,000 to 70,000 years ago, a study suggests. The finding may help to explain how the first spoken language developed, dispersed among the population and helped to advanced to the evolutionary achievements of the human species.

The author of the study, Quentin Atkinson, is an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He has found the first migrating populations that left Africa laid the foundation for all the world's cultures by taking a lone language with them when they left.

About 50,000 years ago (though the exact timeline is debated) there was an abrupt shift in how humans behaved. This is when they first began to generate cave art, bone artifacts and more complex hunting tools. Many experts contend that this creative burst was probably caused by the development of language, which not only enabled abstract thought but also its communication to other people. The good doctor's work supports this idea.

"[Language] was the catalyst that spurred the human expansion that we all are a product of," Dr. Atkinson said.

His research is based on phonemes, distinct units of sound such as vowels, consonants and tones, and an idea borrowed from population genetics known as "the founder effect." That principle holds that when a very small number of individuals break off from a larger population, there is a gradual loss of genetic variation and complexity in the breakaway group.

Dr. Atkinson figured that if a similar effect could be recognized in phonemes, it would support the idea that modern verbal communication originated in Africa and then expanded elsewhere.

After examining 504 worldwide languages, Dr. Atkinson found that dialects with the most phonemes are spoken in Africa, while those with the fewest phonemes are spoken in South America and on tropic islands in the Pacific.

The study also found that the pattern of phoneme usage globally mirrors the pattern of human genetic diversity, which also declined as modern humans set up colonies elsewhere. Today, areas such as sub-Saharan Africa that have hosted human life for millennia still use far more phonemes in their languages than more recently colonized regions do.

"It's a wonderful contribution and another piece of the mosaic" supporting the out-of-Africa hypothesis, said Ekkehard Wolff, professor emeritus of African Languages and Linguistics at the University of Leipzig in Germany, who read the paper.

These conclusions are compatible with the reigning thoughts on the origin of modern humans, known as the "out of Africa" hypothesis. Boosted by recent genetic evidence, this theory alleges that modern humans first emerged in Africa alone, about 200,000 years ago. Then, approximately 50,000 to 70,000 years ago (you'd think they'd be able to narrow that gap a little), a fraction of the population moved out and colonized the rest of the world. They became the ancestors of all non-African populations on earth.

When it comes to the origin of the earliest languages, it's a lot harder to determine. Truly ancient languages haven't left much evidence for scientists to study because languages weren't written down until thousands of years later.

Only humans have the capacity to communicate with this language based on different grammar rules and in written form. It enables us to share ideas with others and even pass them directly on to future generations. Without language, culture as we know it wouldn't exist, so it's not hard to understand why scientists want to know more about it.

Read more about Dr. Atkinson's study.

Iron Age Hilltop Communication, Recreated

[My first "blog blurb," because I don't think I'll ever get to blogging more regularly until I master this type of short, concise post]

Forget cell phones, telephones or e-mail. A unique experiment has literally shed light on how Iron Age people communicated across vast distances from hilltop to hilltop about 2,500 years ago.

"It was a success," said archaeologist Erin Robinson. "It captured the public's imagination and we made extra links we did not think were possible."

"Most of the hill forts across the surrounding landscape can be seen from each other," explained Ms Robinson from Denbighshire's Heather and Hillforts project.

"The experiment was aiming to see if the glowing fires could have been seen across the hills and acted as a communication or warning system."

"It was fantastic," she said. "We saw all the way to a hilltop in Cheshire, which we weren't sure we'd be able to do."

Read the rest of the North Wales hillfort test of Iron Age communication.

Origins of International Mother Language Day

February 21 is International Mother Language Day. The observance is held annually worldwide to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. Though the first worldwide inception was proclaimed by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 1999, its history runs deeper and darker than its current state of celebration might indicate.

International Mother Language Day exists because of a battle over the right to speak a language. It originated as Language Movement Day, which has been commemorated in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) since 1952. During that year, a number of University of Dhaka students were killed by the Pakistani police and military during Bengali Language Movement protests.

The events that led up to that day started on 21 March, 1948, when the Governor General of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, declared Urdu as the only official language for both West and East Pakistan. The mainly Bengali-speaking people of East Pakistan (which is now Bangladesh) protested against it, starting the Bengali Language Movement. On 21 February, 1952, students in the present day capital city of Dhaka called for a provincial strike. The government declared a limited curfew to try and prevent this. Though the protests were tame and the students unarmed, the Pakistani police fired on them anyway, killing at least four. Four more were killed the following day.

The first anniversary on 21 February, 1953, was observed in the country as Martyrs' Day. More than 100,000 people assembled at a public meeting held in Armanitola in Dhaka. West Pakistani politicians exacerbated the situation by declaring anyone who wanted Bengali to become an official language to be an "enemy of the state." February 21st 1954 and 1955 were equally tense and as the movement spread through East Pakistan, the whole province came to a standstill.

The first peaceful observance of Language Movement Day was in 1956. The government had relented during the previous year. On 29 February 1956, Bengali was officially recognized as the second language of Pakistan. The country's constitution was reworded to say "The state language of Pakistan shall be Urdu and Bengali." Language Movement Day is thought to have been the start for the independence movement, which eventually resulted in the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971.

The observance spread beyond the young nation. International Mother Language Day has been observed worldwide every year since February 21, 2000. The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2008 as the International Year of Languages, to promote unity in diversity and international understanding through multilingualism and multiculturalism. On 16 May, 2009, the General Assembly called upon Member States "to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world".

Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing heritage and history that can date back thousands of years. Every action to promote the dissemination of mother tongues encourages linguistic diversity and multilingual education. Their study also helps to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world, inspiring solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

Ojibwe: An Endangered Minnesota Language

The Ojibwe language, spoken by the Ojibwe or Chippewa people, is one of the world's imperiled languages. It is also one of the early native tongues spoken within the territory now known as Minnesota. And this Monday, a documentary about the steps taken within the state to revitalize this dying language will debut on TPT 2.

Leech Lake Ojibwe Delegation to Washington 1899

Dr. Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, is not a native Ojibwe speaker, having studied and learned the language as an adult. But now he has dedicated his work to interviewing the last remaining "first speakers" or "functional speakers" - those for whom Ojibwe is their first language. It is estimated that there are fewer than a thousand of these fluent Ojibwe speakers left in the United States and most of them are older than age 70.

One of the main reasons that indigenous languages like Ojibwe have nearly disappeared throughout North America is due to early policies within the United States to assimilate Native Americans. After taking their lands, the government banned the practice of native traditional religious practices and established "English only" boarding schools which children were required to attend. The native languages that once echoed across the United States were being systematically scrubbed from the cultural landscape.

Chippewa baby at a Minnesota rice farm, 1940

Produced and edited by John Whitehead, "First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language," is a film that documents the rescue and revitalization of the Ojibwe language that is taking place in Minnesota. The film follows Treuer, and others like him, who are driving the Ojibwe language resurgence. Many of them studied the language at the University of Minnesota, Bemidji State University, and with tribal elders. They are working to undo some of the damage done to their culture by establishing Ojibwe language immersion charter schools. Some already exist in the state at in Leech Lake and in Minneapolis.

Through this model, it is hoped that a new generation of "first speakers" will be established, children for whom Ojibwe is a primary language. Then the language, and the culture, may not be lost and stand a chance of surviving, to be passed on to the next generation.

"First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language" is a production of Twin Cities Public Television and will debut on November 1 at 8 p.m. on TPT 2.

Additionally, Dr. Anton Treuer’s book “Ojibwe in Minnesota” was recently named as the “Best Read in Minnesota 2010” by The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Part of the “The People of Minnesota” book series, “Ojibwe in Minnesota” is just 122 pages, but is intended to help people understanding the complicated history of the Ojibwe people – their language, culture, economics and legalities.

[This article has been updated to include corrected information. Though Dr. Treuer is a main subject of the film, he did not produce it. It was produced and edited by John Whitehead. Thank you, John, for your comment!]

The Missing Language Link

A missing link in language history has been found. Its discovery connects one extremely endangered ancient language spoken only in Siberia with several other rare languages of Native North Americans. This knowledge may potentially rewrite human history.

The language of Canada's Dene Nation, along with the Navajo and Apache in the United States and many other "Athabaskan" dialects, have origins in the Ket language - an ancient and highly endangered language spoken by only a few people in Western Siberia. Initially written about two years ago by Edward Vajda, a linguistics professor at Western Washington University, the landmark discovery represents the only known link between any Old World language and the hundreds of speech systems among first nations in North America.

The new collection of articles by Vajda and more than a dozen other experts from the U.S., Canada and Europe details a multitude of clear connections -- nouns, verbs and key grammatical structures -- between the archaic language spoken by the Ket people of Russia's Yenisei River region and dozens of languages used by North American aboriginal groups, primarily in Alaska, Northern and Western Canada and the U.S. Southwest.

University of Alaska linguist James Kari says the discovery could rewrite the story of when, where and how ancient Asian migrants arrived in North America. It should also push research into new directions across disciplines beyond linguistics, including archeology, anthropology, paleoecology, biology and genetics.

The Bering land bridge joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the most recent ice ages. It is believed that a small human population survived the ice age in this region, called Beringia. Isolated from its ancestor populations in Asia, they expanded to populate the Americas sometime after 16,500 years ago, when the last glaciers blocking the way southward melted.

Researchers suggest that the Bering land bridge migration occurred 12,000 years ago and that every Native American is descended from those Eastern Siberians who migrated across the land bridge. This has been backed up by a unique genetic variant widespread in natives across both continents. Now it has also been backed up with language.

So, how was the link discovered? Vajda found that the few remaining Ket speakers in Russia and the native speakers in North America used almost identical words for canoe. They also used similar words for such component parts as prow and cross-piece. That combination, he thought, was beyond the realm of chance. It was the beginning of a linguistic journey that brought together communities separated by an ocean and more than 10,000 years of history.

Representatives of some North American nations believed to share a root language with the Ket traveled to Moscow in April to visit their new-found linguistic kin. The connection between the Ket and Athabaskan peoples could be hugely important. Arctic Athabaskan Council spokesman Danny Creswell said "Upon this base we can build cultural, economic and perhaps political links."

Ancient Language Deciphered By Computer

The lost language of Ugaritic was last spoken 3,500 years ago in the city of Ugarit, located in modern Syria. Today, it survives on only a few tablets, and linguists were only able to translate it with years of hard work and some luck. Yet, a new computer program deciphered it in just hours.

Created by Regina Barzilay, an associate professor in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Ben Snyder, a grad student in her lab, and the University of Southern California’s Kevin Knight, the computer program relies on a few basic assumptions in order to make intuitive guesses about the language's structure. One of the requirements for the program to work, the lost language must be closely related to a known, deciphered language. In the case of Ugaritic that relative language is Hebrew. Another requirement is that the alphabets of the two languages must share at least some consistent correlations between the individual letters or symbols. The program worked by looking for correlations and correspondences between the two languages, then it mapped the similarities between Hebrew and Ugaritic

The results were stunning. Of the thirty letters in the Ugaritic alphabet, the computer correctly identified twenty-nine of them. Of the roughly third of all Ugaritic words that share Hebrew cognates, the program figured out sixty percent of them, and many of the errors were only off by a letter or two. These results are particularly encouraging because the program still doesn't use any contextual clues, meaning it can't differentiate between the different uses of a Ugaritic word that means both "daughter" and "house", something that is (thankfully) pretty easy to identify in context.

After Ugaritic was first discovered in 1929, it remained untranslatable for years. It was only through happy coincidence that it ever was translated. The computer program, however, was able to get this far in simply a matter of hours. The possibilities this program offers for speeding up the translation process of ancient documents are readily apparent. Additionally, the program could help improve online translation software.

The Ugaritic language is a Semitic relative of Hebrew, though its alphabet resembles the cuneiform used in ancient Sumeria. The Ugaritic texts that survive tell the stories of a Canaanite religion that is similar to that recorded in the Old Testament. The differences between the two texts provide scholars a unique opportunity to examine how the Bible and ancient Israelite culture developed in relation to those found nearby.

Floriography: The Language of Flowers

It's almost Valentine's Day. That means flowers! I know it's the day before, but odds are there are a few people putting it of to the last minute anyway. There may not be a lot of roses available, but you can still send a message with other types of flowers through the little-known practice of floriography.

The language of flowers, or floriography, was a Victorian-era means of communication in which various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send messages in code. This allowed people to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken during this particularly frigid period of history. The arrangements were usually small bunches of flowers called tussie-mussies.

Floriography has roots in Persia and Turkey in the 1600s. At that time, the Turks used a simple language in which flowers replaced actual words. Arrangements of different flowers were used to convey a variety of messages.

The language of flowers later appeared in Europe in the 1700's. Seigneur Aubry de la Mottraye had learned of the flower language while living in exile in Turkey, describing it in his French memoir of 1727, which later became popular in England. It was also imported by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of England's ambassador to Turkey. Shortly after her death in 1763, all her personal letters were published, which included an outline of Turkey's language of flowers.

In the early 1800s, the flower language had arrived in Paris. B. Delachenaye's Abecedaire de Flore ou langage des fleurs was first published in 1810. Charlotte de la Tour wrote Le Language des Fleurs in 1818. An English version was published in 1819. Flower Lore: The Teachings of Flowers, Historical, Legendary, Poetical and Symbolic was later written by Miss Carruthers of Inverness and published in England in 1879. This was the book that made it across the pond to America, allowing Victorian-era lovers to whisper sweet nothings with sweet peas.

The bit of floriography that everyone knows is that red roses imply romantic love, but most other meanings have fallen out of popular knowledge. Around Valentine's Day when I was in school, we had the chance to send carnations to people for $1 a piece - red carnations for love, pink carnations for friendship, and white carnations meant secret admirer. Close, but according to "real" floriography, pink means "a woman's love" and white means "disdain." Huh. Some other flowers and their meanings:

Red Tulip - Declaration of love
Yellow Tulip - Hopeless love
Lily of the Valley - Trustworthy
Daffodil - Uncertainty, chivalry, respect, or unrequited love
Daisy - Innocence, loyal love, purity, faith, cheer, simplicity
Hibiscus - Rare beauty, delicate beauty
White Roses - Eternal Love, Purity
Yellow Roses - Friendship
Red & Yellow Roses Together - Joy, Happiness, and Excitement
Red & White Roses Together - Unity
Thornless Rose - Love at First Sight

Not so happy messages:

Yellow Carnation - You have disappointed me; Rejection; disdain
Striped Carnation - Refusal
Morning glory - Love In Vain
Lobelia - Malevolence
Love lies bleeding - Hopelessness
Marigold - Pain and grief
Black Rose - Death, hatred, farewell
Hydrangea - Frigidness, Heartlessness

These are just a few. There are literally hundreds of flowers with hundreds of meanings.

Additionally, there is a whole set of etiquette that went with Victorian floriography. Handing over flowers with the right hand meant "yes", while with the left meant "no." For example, if a beau gave red roses to a young lady, she might reciprocate by plucking one and handing it back with her right to reciprocate, or send him away with a bud from her left. Flowers could also be inverted in arrangements, which represented the opposite of the flower's usual meaning. But thankfully the etiquette aspect of floriography has been lost to the ages.

Japan has its own version of floriography called Hanakotoba. I couldn't find much information on it, though. One source said the floral practice in the East was older than that in the West. Another source said Hakakotoba has only been around since World War II. That I find hard to believe, since ikebana - the Japanese art of flower arrangement - has existed for 500 years. Ikebana is a little different though. Contrary to the idea of floral arrangement as a collection of blooms, ikebana often emphasizes other areas of the plant, such as its stems and leaves, and draws emphasis toward shape, line, form.

Floriography is a complex language of love. Thankfully we're no longer in the Victorian era and we can pretty much say whatever they want whenever we want. But to this day, flowers and plants continue to be symbolic of other messages, as they likely will long into the future.

Sara Duane-Gladden is a freelance writer in the Twin Cities area of the great state of Minnesota.