The etymology of secrecy and openness (Part 2)
Friday, April 22, 2016
The first thing we will notice, here, is the l to r sound-change when we compare the English and Setswana versions of the term – otherwise they pronounce exactly the same. This sound-change is linguistically well-known and examples of it are numerous (we will encounter some in this article).
The second thing to note is that it seems incongruous to associate ‘sly’ – which is understood to mean ‘clever, wily, ingenious’ – with ‘serai’ (dangerous)…but I noted that the Indo-European etymology of ‘sly’ emanates from the Scandinavian/Icelandic term slægur, which relates to the Afrikaans (i.e. Dutch) term sleg (dangerous). In turn, slæg (borrowed in Setswana as selaga) fundamentally connotes ‘a trap’ but has also come to mean ‘a device for slaughtering’ – which, effectively, is what a trap is. So, beforehand, a sly person was viewed as one who arranged cunning traps, mostly for slaughter, and was thus dangerous.
The contest had 10 beautiful young girls as finalists and unfortunately only one could wear the crown.The judges picked Anicia Gaothuse. To all those who feel their contestant should have won ahead of Anicia for whatever reason, hardly; the judges found Anicia to be the best among the best, so desist from disrespecting our newly crowned queen on social media or anywhere else, for that matter! Each of the 10 beautiful young women had supporters...