Almost Daily Cat Haiku

There are many things about modern English, both Their version and Ours, that are… well… odd. Sometimes, there are almost rational explanations; like why red onions and red cabbage are purple and not red (it’s because when English was young -what we call Old English- there were fewer words. Especially adjectives. The word ‘red’ referred to many different hues and shades of what we think of as red, from deep crimson to pastel pinks, even deep oranges and, yes, purples were all said to be “red”)  Or, why we drive on a parkway, yet park on a driveway. (Not as old as Old, but still not new; the original usages of the two words held true to their lexiconic definition. A “driveway” was the final length of driving to reach a house or estate after leaving a named roadway, and could be a mile or more in length depending on the size of the property and the proximity of other occupied lots. As settlements and towns would sprout up and homes would grow closer together, more named roads were designated and that last bit of driving shortened to eventually become just a spit of pavement between the curb and garage door. Similarly, a “parkway” was a stretch alongside a major route or highway where one could park their carriage and allow the horses to rest. Eventually as roads grew, that space would just merge into being part of the street, but the name would hold and become a cartographic suffix; synonymous to “avenue”, “street”, or “lane”) (but not “boulevard”, that means something totally differnt).

But other times there is no reason, rational or otherwise. Such is the case with “four” and “forty”. In case you don’t see it, “forty” doesn’t have a “u”. But “four” does. (You see it now? You’ll never unsee it.) And the wordologists don’t have an explanation beyond, “eh, people just stopped spelling it that way”. Really? The extra letter was a just a fad? A vocabularian whim? Yep. That’s all. You see, both “four” and “forty” derive from the really really old English, actually before the real Old English. And the spelling of words before Old English (the first five centuries of the commen era) and Old English itself (the next five centuries) depended an awful lot on phonetics (a word that didn’t exist until the 19th century). And since that whole part of Europe, was heavily mingled as a result of nomadic tribes like the Jutes and Saxons, and some of the more invasive type peoples, like the Anglan and the Saxons, and eventually they all kinda became Norman (or Saxon), well… what it comes down to is, everybody had an accent. And if you don’t really have a written language, and every town talks just a little bit funny compared to the next one, once some friar or monk decides to start writing things down, the words end up spelled based on those locational variations. So by the time “English” gets to 10th century, you’ve got “fawdy”, “fawrdy”, “farthy”, “fawrthery”, and about thirty other spellings for “forty”. By the end of the middle ages, it was down to a dozen, most of them closely paralleling their single digit brethren “four” (which had many of it’s own spellings). But it was somewhere during that five centuries, those medieval years, “fourty” just disappeared from written vernacular. Both “for” and “four” (among a couple others) were still being used to convey the number following three but before five. And it wouldn’t be until almost the 16th century before “for” turned All Preposition, leaving “four” in sole charge of numerical duties. But “fourty” was gone.

No one knows why. The word-nerds at Oxford and Webster might have theories, but they can’t say for sure. The 1500s is too early to blame Canada. The aliens had finished their work in Wiltshire almost three thousand years prior. And communism was a just a red herring. So we don’t even have a decent scapegoat.

And that’s why writing out “fourteen” bothers me. Because its not “four” or “forty” and I can never remember if it gets the forgotten “u” or not. But this is the naming convention I have chosen. And so, once, about two weeks into this project, and then every hundredth Haiku thereafter, I will force myself to contend with this conundrum. I will suffer through it. For you. My countless friends and family.  Countless, I say. Although it is probably only about fawerth-teen.

(Sidenote: I feel like I may have addressed some if this previously. I have had parts and parcels of this conversation in my head more times than I can count (way more than fawrteen), and I don’t remember if I have blurbled about it before. (Yes, this whole thought process occupies the grey mush between my ears almost frequently) So my most sincerest of apologies if this seems like a repeat to some of you. If it is a repeat, and you remember the first iteration, I also thank you for paying attention.)