That year, using English as an example, they began the task of studying how languages grew, changed, morphed, multiplied, diverged, and converged. They studied sound changes; why the English knee had a silent k that was pronounced in the German counterpart; why the stop consonants of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit had such a regular correspondence with consonants in Germanic languages. They read Bopp, Grimm, and Rask in translation; they read the Etymologiae of Isidorus. They studied semantic shifts, syntactical change, dialectical divergence, and borrowing, as well as the reconstructive methods one might use to piece together the relationships between languages that at first glance seemed to have nothing to do with each other. They dug through languages like they were mines, searching for valuable veins of common heritage and distorted meaning.
It changed the way they spoke. Constantly they trailed off in the middle of sentences. They could not utter even common phrases and aphorisms without pausing to wonder where those words came from. Such interrogations infiltrated all their conversations, became the default way they made sense of each other and everything else.* They could no longer look at the world and not see stories, histories, layered everywhere like centuries’ worth of sediment.
And the influences on English were so much deeper and more diverse than they thought. Chit came from the Marathi chitti, meaning ‘letter’ or ‘note’. Coffee had made its way into English by way of Dutch (koffie), Turkish (kahveh), and originally Arabic (qahwah). Tabby cats were named after a striped silk that was in turn named for its place of origin: a quarter of Baghdad named al-‘Attābiyya. Even basic words for clothes all came from somewhere. Damask came from cloth made in Damascus; gingham came from the Malay word genggang, meaning ‘striped’; calico referred to Calicut in Kerala, and taffeta, Ramy told them, had its roots in the Persian word tafte, meaning ‘a shiny cloth’. But not all English words had their roots in such far-flung or noble origins. The curious thing about etymology, they soon learned, was that anything could influence a language, from the consumption habits of the rich and worldly to the so-called vulgar utterances of the poor and wretched. The lowly cants, the supposed secret languages of thieves, vagabonds, and foreigners, had contributed such common words such as bilk, booty, and bauble.
English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.
In addition to Etymology, they each took on an extra language that year. The point was not to attain fluency in this language, but to, through the process of its acquisition, deepen their understanding of their focus languages. Letty and Ramy began studying Proto-Indo-European with Professor De Vreese. Victoire proposed a number of West African languages she hoped to learn to the advisory board, but was rejected on the grounds that Babel possessed insufficient resources for proper instruction in any of them. She ended up studying Spanish – Spanish contact was relevant to the Haitian-Dominican border, Professor Playfair argued – but was none too happy about it.
Robin took Sanskrit with Professor Chakravarti, who began their first lesson by scolding Robin for having no knowledge of the language to begin with. ‘They should teach Sanskrit to China scholars from the beginning. Sanskrit came to China by way of Buddhist texts, and this caused a veritable explosion of linguistic innovation, as Buddhism introduced dozens of concepts that Chinese had no easy word for. Nun, or bhiksunī in Sanskrit, became ni.* Nirvana became nièpán.* Core Chinese concepts like hell, consciousness, and calamity come from Sanskrit. You can’t begin to understand Chinese today without also understanding Buddhism, which means understanding Sanskrit. It’s like trying to understand multiplication before you know how to draw numbers.’
Robin thought it was a bit unfair to accuse him of learning out of order a language he’d spoken from birth, but he played along. ‘Where do we start, then?’
‘The alphabet,’ Professor Chakravarti said cheerfully. ‘Back to basic building blocks. Take out your pen and trace these letters until you’ve developed a muscle memory for them – I expect it’ll take you about half an hour. Go on.’
Latin, translation theory, etymology, focus languages, and a new research language – it was an absurdly heavy class load, especially when each professor assigned coursework as if none of the other courses existed. The faculty was utterly unsympathetic. ‘The Germans have this lovely word, Sitzfleisch,’ Professor Playfair said pleasantly when Ramy protested that they had over forty hours of reading a week. ‘Translated literally, it means “sitting meat”. Which all goes to say, sometimes you need simply to sit on your bottom and get things done.’
Still, they found their moments of joy. Oxford had now begun to feel like a home of sorts, and they carved their own pockets into it, spaces where they were not just tolerated but in which they thrived. They’d learned which coffee houses would serve them without fuss, and which ones would either pretend Ramy did not exist or complain he was too dirty to sit on their chairs. They learned which pubs they could frequent after dark without harassment. They sat in the audience of the United Debating Society and gave themselves stitches trying to contain their laughter as boys like Colin Thornhill and Elton Pendennis shouted about justice, liberty, and equality until they were red in their faces.
Robin took up rowing at Anthony’s insistence. ‘It’s no good for you to stay cooped up in the library all the time,’ he told him. ‘One needs to stretch one’s muscles for the brain to work properly. Get the blood flowing. Try it, it’ll be good for you.’
As it happened, he adored it. He found great pleasure in the rhythmic straining motion of pulling a single oar against the water again and again. His arms grew stronger; his legs, somehow, felt longer. Gradually he lost his hunched-over reediness and acquired a filled-in look, which gave him deep satisfaction every morning when he glanced at the mirror. He started looking forward to chilly mornings on the Isis, when the rest of the town hadn’t woken up yet, when the only sound he could hear for miles around was the birds chirping and the pleasant splash of blades sinking into the water.
The girls tried, but failed, to sneak their way into the boat club. They weren’t nearly tall enough to row, and coxing involved too much shouting for them to pretend they were men. But weeks later, Robin began hearing rumours of two vicious additions to the Univ fencing team, though Victoire and Letty at first claimed innocence upon interrogation.
‘It’s the aggression that’s the attraction,’ Victoire finally confessed. ‘It’s so funny to watch. These boys always come out so strong at the front, and they lose all sight of strategy.’
Letty agreed. ‘Then it’s a simple matter of keeping your head and pricking them where they’re not guarded. That’s all it takes.’
In the winter, the Isis froze over and they went skating, which none of them save Letty had ever done before. They laced their boots on as tight as they could go – ‘Tighter,’ said Letty, ‘they can’t wobble, else you’ll break your ankles’ – and staggered onto the ice, clutching each other for balance as they teetered forth, though usually this only meant that they all fell when one did. Then Ramy realized if he leaned forward and bent his knees, he could drive himself faster and faster, and by the third day he was skating circles around the rest, even Letty, who pretended to be upset when he skidded in her path but who couldn’t stop laughing regardless.