Re: Weekly Vocab 12 (Rihana-ye)

John Leland scripsit:

> NOTE: I have long had trouble with words meaning "write" and derivatives
> (including "history" and "record") because early on I decided that the
> word for "to write" (wivaro) was identical with the past tense form of the
> verb "to speak" (varo, past wivaro.)
This undoubtedly reflects an archaic state of society, similar to that
of early Republican Rome, in which writing is primarily a record or
aide-memoire to the spoken words which are truly significant.  Thus at
that time all contracts were oral, consisting of one party saying "Do
you promise such-and-such?" (Lat. _spondesne_) and the other saying
"I promise" (Lat. _spondeo_).  The second party would then exact the
reciprocal promise from the first party.

When written contracts were first introduced, they merely constituted
evidence, and not necessarily the best evidence, that the above ritual
had been complied with.  For example, evidence tending to show that
the two parties had been in different cities at the time given in the
written contract would overthrow it, since it meant that they could not
have exchanged promises orally.

In such a state of society, using "I have said" for "I write" seems
quite plausible, since writing indicates previous speaking.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British
Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence
of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1.  I doubt if
the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of
equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940

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