Multilingual etymology

[pauamma]

My mind balks at compound words using roots from different languages. I got mostly used to "automobile" or "television" by dint of prolonged exposure, but I still find them slightly awkward. I find coinages like "dyscalculia" jarring, for all that the referrent exists and the word thus fills a glaring need. Is it just me, or do others experience this?

Comments

[conuly]

These are the dangers of a classical education. Most people without one neither notice nor care.

[madfilkentist]

I definitely agree with you. The worst is the politicization of "phobia."

[ex_flameandsong751]

It's not just you, it rankles me too. I enjoy the joke "Polyamory is wrong*. It's either multiamory or polyphilia."

Also gonna second the politicization of "phobia".

*am poly, pls don't flame me

[pauamma]

In the US and other Western countries, maybe. But I submit it would bother, confuse, and or puzzle any Greek speaker learning English or other languages with that wrinkle, classical education or not.

[pauamma]

By 'politicization of "phobia"', do you mean of the word itself?

[conuly]

I don't see why. The greek bit stays the same, and the latin bit is meaningless in Greek.

[pauamma]

The meaninglessness is a problem, IIRC, because both are meaningful in Greek, eg αυτοκινητό(stress?) and τηλεόραση. (I can't swear to it, as it's been over 35 years since I last spoke with Greek speakers, but I believe this came up at some point.)

[madfilkentist]

The root, and in particular its meaning in psychology. "Acrophobia," "claustrophobia," etc., are conditions of involuntary fear, and the person experiencing them may be aware that there's no rational basis. The people who come up with terms like "homophobia" (itself a horrible Greek-Latin mix), "Islamophobia," etc., are treating political positions and bigotry as mental pathology, which effectively stigmatizes mental pathology.

I'll grant that I've drifted a bit from the original point. It's the armchair psychological diagnoses which bother me, with the grafting of non-Greek terms onto "phobia" being a secondary issue. But the mixing of roots is an indication of how little thought went into the inventing of these "phobias."

[pauamma]

"Homophobia" itself isn't. It's the Greek "homo-" for "alike" (same as in "homogeneous"), not the Latin "homo" for "human" that gave us "Homo Sapiens". ("Homosexual" and "heterosexual" definitely have mixed roots, though.)

As for the rest of your point: I wouldn't call them "political positions", as they seem to me as disconnected from politics as from the nomenclature of mental pathology. (And Islamophobia at least is present throughout the political landscape IME.) I remember that 2 or 3 years ago someone suggested using -misia (same root that goes into "misogyny" and "misanthropy") instead, I believe for that reason, but it didn't appear to get much traction that I could see.

[firecat]

I quite like it. English is utterly bizarre and if I didn't celebrate that I'd quietly go mad.

[pauamma]

If it were only English I may be more able to tolerate it.