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It was 1995, and I’d just started my new job writing SpeakUp Movies: booklets designed to make original-version commercial movies comprehensible to Spanish-speaking students of English. A large part of the work involved writing an English-Spanish glossary to the screenplay. This glossary was to include notes on anything that we thought needed explanation or clarification: jokes, puns, non-standard grammar, difficult sentences, idioms, regionialisms, slang, cultural references, and so on.
My first assignment was ‘The Remains of the Day’. I started to draw up the bilingual word list, not quite sure what needed explanation and what didn’t. Then one of the characters mentioned a ‘pop-up toaster’. The bilingual dictionary translated this as tostadora automática, and I could simply have copied this into the glossary and left it at that, since the toaster wasn’t relevant to the plot. But even though I hadn’t taught English for fifteen years, I could almost hear the chorus of puzzled voices: “What means pop-up? Why? ¿Por qué?”
Back I went to the dictionary. (I’d better add here that this was just before the advent of the Internet, before the pop-up became an everyday irritant to millions across the world). For ‘pop-up book’ it suggested libro móbil, (mobile book) or libro mecánico (mechanical book) or the definition libro con ilustraciones en relieve (book with illustrations in relief).
And that was the moment when the germ of the idea for a book provisionally called Love Your English, well, popped into being.
While ‘automatic’ or ‘mechanical’ obviously referred to the function of the toaster, the word ‘popup’ evoked a whole bunch of vivid visual and auditory impressions. A pop-up toaster is one from which the toast pops up (and, all too often, out and onto your messy counter or even the floor – or doesn’t, and proceeds to belch black smoke, setting off the spine-chilling squawking of the smoke alarm.)
Back in ‘95, I wrote: “To pop up is a good example of the kind of vivid phrasal verb English is so fond of. Pop (reventar, disparar) conveys the idea of rapid motion. The toast therefore pops up (sube disparado) from the toaster. Here the verb has been turned into an adjective.”
It’s clear that ‘pop-up’ in itself is an incredibly concise and vivid way of qualifying a toaster. But what I realised was particularly fascinating was where it came from and how: the dynamics of English word formation.
‘Pop’, the root, the original word, is from Middle English ‘poppen’, which is of imitative origin: it obviously expresses a small explosion, a bursting, a fast movement. Pop goes the weasel. Snap, crackle and pop. Balloons pop – or we pop them. In its fast movement sense, we pop in and out of rooms, houses and shops, we pop up and down the stairs, we pop around to our sick neighbour, we pop over to the park or the pub. We can do it to stuff, too: we pop pills, pop lunch in the microwave and the baby in its cot. Ideas or words or bits of music pop into our heads, our eyes pop out of our heads…
The lines between noun, verb and adjective get blurry. Popcorn is corn that pops. Popeye the sailor man. A popover is a roll made from an egg batter which swells or pops over the top of the muffin tin while baking. A pop-under is an ad that opens in a separate browser window hidden under your current browser window .
Native English speakers take all this for granted, but when you try to put over the nuances and sensory impressions and the spirit of these words in translation, you begin to appreciate just how concise, expressive, lively, vivid, creative, supple and versatile English is.
As the Pringles slogan goes: ‘Once you pop, the fun doesn’t stop.’
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24 Responses
Valerie,
I will just pop up to the top of this page and subscribe. I love your writing. So informative, you have an interesting life. I want to read more. Where can I get your Garlic book? All the best, Pamela
Thanks so much, Pamela. You should be able to get In The Garlic from Amazon.
What an interesting post! So glad I stopped by…
So happy you liked it.
I’ve often heard that English is the hardest language to learn. I enjoyed your post. (And by the way, Remains of the Day is one of my favorite movies.)
Blessings,
Joan
Yes, it has such a huge word store and so many nuances. I certainly found it difficult to teach!
Very interesting! It’s amazing how many different meanings and forms of one little word there are. I can see how it can become confusing.
Yes. It can be very confusing for learners.
What a funny and thought-provoking post! I enjoyed it immensely. Keep ’em coming!
Excellent article as ever. Entertaining, amusing and informative!
Great piece Val, a very lively example of those dreaded “phrasal verbs”! I think it’s general to Germanic languages though; certainly German has all those verbs where you can put auf-, aus-,ein-, ab- etc before the main verb. On top of it with German you have to know whether you can separate the prefix (as in English) or not, the dreaded separable and inseparable verbs.
@ Lyn: in German, can you use a phrasal verb in the adjective position?
Great fun – hoping for many more where this article came from!
I was so busy sending this post to my tribe of translators and language lovers that I forgot to comment.
What a crazy language ours! I think you British folks use the word pop more and differently than us Americans. You all “pop round” and “pop in and out” of places quite a bit, don’t you? It’s a pretty sweet word that pop.
Americans are very fond of pop tops and just the other day a friend said he was going to the store to get some pop. Soda pop! That one stopped me in my tracks. That must be from the 40’s no?
What a nice little semantic diversion for our day, Valerie. Thanks for the poop on pop.
(Sorrry, I couldn’t resist.)
Thanks, Jenifer. Yes, I think it is a Britishism.
Couldn´t agree more with your last words about how versatile English is. It´s little discoveries and realizations like these that give English the “street cred” it deserves!
I love this exploration and often wonder about the same things myself. Lately, we’ve had a rash of pop-up stores over here. A local one is titled “Meow, a pop up experience.” When I first read that, my thought was what the hell happens at that place? Do cats leap on you? I still have no idea what they do. Enjoyed this post.
I can see now it needs updating! Pop-up stores are all the rage here too. And I keep hearing about pop-up events and even workshops. I love your ruminations. I wondered too… it seems to be buzzwordese for ‘one-off’.
We have a lot of pop-up shops too, everything from spices to restaurants to craft shows. Pop rocks were a big thing, Pop is what I call my dad sometimes, and recently I popped my quinoa and added it to Brussels sprouts. I love where you take us with words.
Oh right – my dad always called his father Pop. When I was small l called him Procet Pop. No idea why.
Valerie, I always learn something new from your blog. English is hard enough for us native speakers; I can’t imagine explaining all of the nuances to English Language Learners.
That’s why I got burnt out 😉
The English verb turns into a noun.
An noun turns into an adjective.
An adjective turns into a verb.
Oh help! It’s hard enough to teach English to English-speakers. What a time you must have with second-language learners.
Loved the article!
Oh… those shapeshifting words… my obsession. Love them.