GET BUSY!

Todos conhecem a palavra “business”, mas talvez nem todos saibam de seus vários significados, e de como é adotada por muitas línguas do mundo. Mas, por que se escreve com U e se pronuncia I? A resposta se cruza com as transformações do tempo ...

I popped in to see Pedro at the laundrette this morning. He was busy, busy, busy. Too busy to stop for a chat. That´s business, I guess. I phoned him later, but the line was busy.
“What a busy little word “busy” is!” I thought. Business originally meant simply being busy. As companies and industry became more commercial, it took on its current meaning: a profession, a firm, buying and selling goods and services.
English isn´t the first language to equate business with being busy. The Romans hated laziness. The Latin word for business means denying leisure: nego + otium = negotium.
Not only was Pedro busy, so was his phone. When a call can´t connect because the other person is using their phone, Americans say “the line is busy,” while Brits say “it´s engaged.”

CRAZY VOWELS
Pedro knows a lot about words. When you learn a foreign language, you sometimes understand its peculiarities better than native speakers. For example, if busy is spelt with a “u”, why does it rhyme with “dizzy” and not with “ Susy”? I asked Mr. Venn in the piano shop. “Easy,” he said, “because of the Great Vowel Shift.”
Our spelling and pronunciation comes from centuries of different influences on English. English began as a Germanic language: Anglo-Saxon. Viking invasions introduced Scandinavian accents, especially in the north and east. Then the Normans invaded speaking French. Vowels especially mutated – but the spelling often stayed the same.

THE PRINTED WORD
Then printing arrived. As books spread, English sometimes used the spelling from one place and the pronunciation from another. For “busy”, we used a western spelling, but the London pronunciation. The same combinations of letters were used to represent very different vowel sounds: mouse and soup; hear, bear and heart.
Mr. Venn also pointed out how many phrases and idioms “busy” and “business” are used in: “To do business means to carry out trade or commercial deals. If somebody means business, then their intentions are serious. In the acting world, stage business means action that is not part of the dialogue, such as lighting a cigarette”.

ANIMALS
“You can be busy as a bee,” or “busy as a beaver”. You can tell someone to get busy. Mr. Venn smiled, “but if a dog ‘does his business’ on the floor, it means defecating.”
Your own business means things that concern only you. When someone invades your privacy, we call them a busybody and say , “Mind your own business.”
The word businessman, however, is such a useful concept that it has entered other languages directly, such as Russian, for example. Perhaps this popularity comes from the memorable image of the English businessman: catching the morning train, with his hat, umbrella, briefcase and newspaper.

FONTE: Speak Up número 289 - Setembro 2011