Etymology from Memory, #4

Yoga and Yogurt

If I had to give one reason why I hate yoga, I would say I hate it because of the way it is spelled.

Now when I say I hate 'yoga', it must be understood that what I hate is only that distant descendant of a distinguished Indian ancestor, whose name in Sanskrit is not 'yoga' but योग. I hate 'yoga' most of all because it was made to begin with a 'y', that semi-letter that was always only an oo-sounding upsilon in Greek, did not even exist in Latin except in a few borrowings such as clyster, and would later come to serve the purpose of initial jotation only in Spanish, English, and in postmodern invented othographies such as Turkish. (Jotation, by the way, is the addition of a short iota sound to a word beginning with a vowel; if this technical term had come into English only after the golden age of Indo-European linguistics, it no doubt would have been written 'yotation'.) By far the preferred means of indicating initial jotation in Indo-European languages written in the Latin alphabet is, as one might expect from the word 'jotation' itself, by the letter 'j', which is alternately written as an 'i' (the two letters in fact were not distinguished in English dicitionaries until the 19th century, and geography provides numerous examples of their interchangeability, e.g., Jena/Iena, Iaşi/Jassy). In all versions of the Cyrillic alphabet other than Serbian, the jotation is contained within the same symbol as the vowel itself, rather than being an addition that precedes the vowel, thus 'я' is the jotated version of 'а', 'ю' is the jotated version of 'у' (pronounced 'u'), 'е' is the jotated version of 'э', and so on.

Now the Sanskrit word योग has as its root the verb 'to yoke', in the sense that it is that which binds or structures the position of the practitioner. This was a very important lexical item for the very mapping of the geographical range of the Indo-European peoples in the 19th century by the Brothers Grimm and others: because the Indo-Europeans were already pastoralists before they spread out from their homeland --somewhere, it is believed, in Ukraine or further east towards the steppe-- they already had a word for the tool that binds oxen together to plow the fields, and therefore the word for this thing, from India to Iceland, is generally only a variation on the same, original, hypothesized proto-Indo-European yugóm (or jugóm), thus the German Joch, French joug, Czech jho, and so on. In a figurative sense, this word also serves as the root of 'conjugation', which is to say a yoking together of different elements of a verb, person, number, tense, mood, etc., in order to remove it from its pristine infinitive state and make it a serviceable sign of an earthly happening. Naturally no one speaks of the conyogaison of French verbs: rather, the root is spelled and pronounced in accordance with the natural evolution of French phonetics. Not so with 'yoga'.

Of course it is just a curious feature of the evolution of English spelling that the Greek upsilon came to be used for jotation, so I suppose I cannot really complain, as an Anglophone, about the spelling of योग as 'yoga'. But why, I still want to know, is a 'yoga' studio in Berlin not a 'Jogastudio'? And why does a practitioner of 'yoga' in Montreal or Paris not write the word as 'joga', and pronounce it 'zhoga', in just the same way that 'soy' is spelled 'soja' and pronounced 'sozha'? In fact, I already know why: it's because 'yoga' has nothing to do with योग. 'Yoga' is not an ancient askesis at all, but only a consumer product --for which you can even purchase a 'kit' complete with mat, CD, and water bottle-- in a global economy of social distinction. As such, it is a practice that is most closely associated with the English language.

And don't tell me you haven't noticed it too: the recent marketing tactic whereby the fortuitous similarity between 'yoga' and 'yogurt' is used to sell yogurt-based products (and perhaps vice versa). Now yogurt, it might help to recall, is not an Indo-European invention at all, but a Turkic one, and its name is connected to the modern Turkish adjective yoğun, meaning 'thick'. Both words have at least something to do with the fact that ancient steppe-dwellers lived in close symbiosis with bovines, but the way these words came to have their initial jotations in English is only a case of convergent evolution, not shared ancestry, and to milk (so to speak) this convergence in order to make consumers believe that a new subvariety of Special K, say, is somehow connected to what they are doing in their yoga class is either the most cynical marketing manipulation imaginable, or a fine example of the survival of primitive thinking --wherein sundry and unconnected bits of the social and natural worlds are placed under the same totem (in this case, what? beauty? youth? weight loss?)-- in the consumption habits of the modern bourgeoise. I for one think of only two things whenever I hear a word, whatever its etymology, that begins with yog-: I think of thick, and I think of ox. These are not, I gather, the intended associations.

Comments

[Leon Garcia G]

Do you hate yogurt too?

[Leon Garcia G]

P.S.
Yo no.

[Justin E. H. Smith]

Yogurt's alright (actually I've been 100% vegan for four months now, though I doubt I would have been had I been born a Turkic pastoralist, and certainly enjoyed my share of kefir and ayran in Anatolia and Central Asia). But again, the reasons for 'yogurt' being spelled with a 'y' in English are quite different from the reasons why 'yoga' is spelled with a 'y' in, e.g., German.

[Justin E. H. Smith]

By the way, Leon, your wonderfully Spanish postscriptum reminds me of something I've been wondering about for some time, namely, the way in which 'y' came to be used for initial jotation in Spanish. I suspect it has something to do with the contraction of 'ii' or 'ij' (as you see in Dutch sometimes, where for example 'Snijders' gets written as 'Snÿders' and finally as 'Snyders'), and thus is independent of the history of the Greek upsilon. Do you know whether there are any old Spanish texts with alternate spellings of 'yo', such as 'io' or 'jo' or maybe even 'ijo'?

[Leon Garcia G]

Thanks, Justin.I was actually wondering exactly the same when I wrote it.
Castilian has been using the spelling "yo" for a long time, and I don't recall any alternate spellings, although one may be able to find some in old manuscripts, as the early language was very ortographically unstable . You can find "Yo" already in the medieval spelling of Cantar del Mio CId (12th-14th cc) As you know, the noun "Yo" derives from the Latin "eu" (ego). Both the old Galaico-Portugués of King Alfonso X (13th c.) and modern Portuguese conserved the latin spelling (eu), which phonetically is much softer than "Yo". Tuscan language, on the other hand, derived "eu" into a very sharp "io" (ee-ô). Having said this, I find that even Alfonso X was already using "y" for the initial jotation of "ya" ("already").
Then, early transliteration of the very old Arabic Jarchas into Castilian, also show that "y" was used to represent jotation, middle and initial. Here's one from the 12th century (""O, my dear mother, in the morning light, Good Abu-l-Haggag, his face of dawn":)

"Ya matre mia al-rahima, / a rayyo de manyana:
¡Bon Abu-l-Haggag, / la fage de matrana!"

Whether the initial Spanish jotation for "yo" is related to the contraction of "ii" or "ij", I simply don't know. It would be worthwhile to figure that out. However, it seems to me that Castilian Jotation is often marked and distinguished by a strong Arabic influence. The Castilian "J" (Jota) is a very strong fricative, and sometimes forces itself over the softer "y" . You wrote for instance about the common English and French spelling of the jotation in "Conjugation", which you correctly relate to योग. In Spanish the term "conjugación" is spelled also with middle "j", but the phoneme, unlike the French and English, is fricative, hard. Then, in Spanish the cognates "Yugo" ("yoke") and "conyugal" (which you spell "conjugal"!) are spelled with the soft "y" jotation...
In so many words, you can make the case that:
Iयोग>Yugo>Conyugal
shows that our common Indo-European ancestors took their pastoral customs from the steppes all the way into the bedroom!
Which goes to show that the oscilation between the askesis of योग and the काम (kama, pleasure) of the conjugal bond can be considered to be, at least linguistically, somewhat coherent, even if other aspects of marriage, of course, are not...
By the way, one of the reasons I've loved Hatha yoga for the past 30 years is that you really don't need any gear whatsoever to practice it, not even a soft mat. Just a clean, level spot. Like you, I also deplore that yoga has been made into a consumerist fad since the '90s-- but even if the askesis of योग has been conveniently abandoned in the American "studios", at least the by-products of the regular practice of Hatha yoga (health, beauty, calmness), are potentially very positive for the body social. And, mind you, there are people in some corners of America who are actually practicing the other yogas (Karma, Bhakti, Jnana) as well.
Even if you dislike yoga, I see that you love योग. I suppose that this is because the devanagari is not tainted yet with the abundant stigmata of yuppie-ness, but mostly because in reality you are an accomplished practitioner of ज्ञान योग-- Jnana Yoga.
In the end, the best definition of योग is found in the Bhagavad Gita (2:50)--
योगः कमस कौशलम (yoga karmasu kauÌalam):
"Yoga is skill in action."

[Justin E. H. Smith]

I can't get jotation out of my head!

I hadn't thought of it before, and would certainly have to check, but am now fairly certain that in both English and Spanish the initial 'y' preceding a vowel is a contraction or transformation of 'i' or 'j', and thus has no genealogical relation to upsilon, in contrast with medial vowel 'y's as in 'clyster'. Think, e.g., of the transformation of the Norse 'Jorvik' into English 'York'.

I'll leave it to you, Leon, to determine whether I'm a yogi or not, though I'm really glad you got my drift about the योग/yoga distinction. I confess that in the past I've come to greatly resent the attitude of some practitioners of yoga (in the narrow sense) in my life, who maintained that because they do yoga in the narrow sense, everything else they did was in some broader sense yoga too, whereas, because I do not do yoga in the narrow sense, nothing else I do is yoga either. And this seemed to me to boil down to the assertion: "Everything I do is sacred; everything you do is profane." Now I have no way to test the first part of the claim, but I do get the sense it's a bit too dichotomous, and it does make me want to say: "You do your yoga of the double dog and the sun salutation, I'll do mine of scratching my ass while eating handfuls of Cheetos over the sink." My point is that one could not say a priori what domains of action will sparkle with skill or excellence, and one ought not exclude any action outright from the domain of the sacred.

[Leon Garcia G]

Your hypothesis about the common origin of our use of the intial "y" makes sense, but it is up to the professional linguists to discuss this point with you más a fondo.
On the other hand, I wholeheartedly agree with you in that the attitude of many yoga practitioners is very pretentious, ego driven and outright stupid: all that yoga is NOT supposed to be! The point of the above quote from the Bhagavad Gita --and of the poem as a whole, really--is precisely that, like you say, "no action can be excluded from the domain of the sacred"-- as long as it is performed with what we may term here "a unified consciousness." In that sense, even scratching your ass while eating Cheetos may very well become your "royal road" to a philosophical Eureka, which would be as "sacred" as someone else's sitting all day on his ass chanting mantras ready to enjoy Nirvana. You will agree that this is about recognizing a semiotic yoke between Eureka and Nirvana, so to speak.
And I am not referring to the ass.
By the way, invoking ass-scratching as a response to the insufferable claims of some petulant practitioners of "yoga" is rhetorically very effective, so I appreciate that-- after all, the ass is a metaphor for all that is execrable and profane. However, speaking of the otherwise sacral character of the ass, I remember reading in the autobiography of Alain Danielou (a highly recommendable and amusing book, by the way), how he spontaneously achieved an ineffable, divine, ecstasy the first time that a lover penetrated his ass when he was a young student in an American college. Danielou goes on to say that years later he learned from a Tantra practitioner in India that anal penetration is one common method to achieve Samadhi, a fact that allows him to rail against the prejudices of his Catholic upbringing (his mother was a very famous French holy woman!).
But let's leave the ass behind (pun intended) and let me tell you that your other rhetorical trope, the Cheetos, reminds me of the following passage of the Zen monk RInzai:
"In Buddhism there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand."
"Yoga", "Tantra", "Zen"-- these Asian philosophical modes of existence have been devalued in translation --like so much else-- by the empty gestures of our consumerist culture. But in reality they all agree with you in that "one ought not exclude any action outright from the domain of the sacred."
Based on that statement, I can definitely determine that you are a very skillful jnana yogi. But let us invoke a more familiar Western source to help us dispel once and for all the false dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, something which we agree on. In the words of the immortal Groucho Marx:

"In the beginning, there was nothing. Then God said, 'Let there be light'. And there was still nothing but you could see it."

[Sophocles]

Seriously, don't worry about it.

[Acai berry]

i love yogurt... like i love my name, interesting post though