The Scarperer: Aarschgnoddle...

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Aarschgnoddle...

Made In America by Bill Bryson, is about how British English has been adapted, enriched, subverted, wrestled with and wrought into today's American English over the last 400 years. Much has been written about English, the common language that separates Britain and the US. However, nothing approaches the anecdotal and offbeat style adopted by Mr Bryson in his book.

American English has never restricted itself to adapting British English alone. A myriad of words have been introduced to American English by the waves of immigration through the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Everyone is aware of the words that the Italians, Irish and Jews brought with them and, I think most would agree, the American language would be all the poorer without them.

There are pockets of communities throughout the US who still speak their original native tongues. It's no surprise then to discover that these communities are still contributing to the vocabulary of American English, even hybrid communities such as Pennsylvania German (or Pennsylvania Dutch as it's sometimes known).

So it was, with keen interest that I read about how, in isolation, this language has drifted away from standard German. There are words they have for situations that other languages would require whole sentences to describe. For example, fedderschei - the condition of being reluctant to write letters and aagehaar - an eyelash hair that grows inwardly and irritates the sclera.

But there is one word that top trumps all contenders. In Mudderschprooch (as Pennsylvania German is known to its native speakers) that word is aarschgnoddle - the globules of faeces found on the hair in the vicinity of the anus.

And so, today's word of the day is aarschgnoddle. Repeat after me, aarschgnoddle. And your challenge today is to casually drop it into a conversation before the day is out...