Aaronic, aba, abdomen, abdominal, ablaut, umblaut, absolute zero

Aaronic: pertaining to Aaron.  Ironically, Aaronic is not ironic. 

aba: [Arabic, a ba’] a fabric woven from the hair of camels or goats. 

abdomen: noun;  abdominal: adjective.   A source of confusion for me for many years…

ablaut [German, ab from laut sound] /ah’ blaut/  words with the same root but different vowels (sing, sang, song)

     Laut is also the German root of another interesting word…umlaut (two dots about a vowel to denote another sound.) 

     People can get very emotional about their umlauts.  Here is an article form the NTY’s, April, 2015):  

Lindström Loses Umlauts on Road Signs, and the Town is Dotted With Displeasure

            By Julie Bosman, April 16, 2015  NYT’s

         Some of the residents of Lindström, Minn., did not even realize that the umlauts were gone.

For decades, the cheerful twin dots had hovered over the “o” in Lindström on the green highway signs that welcomed visitors to the small hamlet — population, 4,442 — that had been settled by Swedish immigrants in the 1850s.

     After a highway project in 2012, the signs came down and were replaced with new ones. According to a city official, the Minnesota Department of Transportation denied the town’s request that the umlauts remain, citing a rule that road signs have only letters in a standard alphabet. So in a change that irritated some Sweden-adoring people here, Lindström became Lindstrom.

     But in an announcement that was indignant, a little quirky and very Minnesotan, the governor intervened on Wednesday, releasing a statement that promised that the umlauts on the signs would be restored, and fast. “Nonsensical rules like this are exactly why people get frustrated with government,” Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, said in the statement. “Even if I have to drive to Lindström and paint the umlauts on the city limit signs myself, I’ll do it.”

     Lena Norrman, a lecturer for Swedish and Scandinavian studies at the University of Minnesota, said that linguistically, the loss is significant. “These are not just two little dots,” said the Swedish native. “It’s a significant letter with its own sound. You can’t just take them away.” She added that while the term umlaut is often used, many linguists consider the “ö” in modern Swedish to be a distinct letter.

     (The New York Times generally uses accent marks only with French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German words and names. It does not use them for Slavic, Scandinavian and other languages that are less familiar to American editors and readers, as such usage would more likely lead to errors.)

     Minnesota wears its Scandinavian roots proudly, serving traditional foods like lefse on holidays, decorating homes with handmade Nordic crafts and cheering for its Vikings in football. Nearly one in three of the state’s 5.5 million residents claim Scandinavian roots.

     In Lindström, 40 miles from downtown Minneapolis and surrounded by lakes, the Swedish influence is unmistakable: a blue-and-white water tower near the highway bids visitors “Välkommen till Lindström.” The town was named after Daniel Lindström, its founder, and it still receives 3,000 to 4,000 visitors from Sweden every year.

     Vernon B. Lovdokken, an optometrist in Lindström, said he recalled, many years ago, “mentally making a note” of the umlauts in the highway signs.

     “I thought that was kind of neat because you don’t see that very often,” he said. “Then I remember seeing that they weren’t there anymore.”

     John Olinger, the city administrator, said that he did not see the umlaut situation, which became widely known in the town after The Star Tribune ran an article on Sunday, as funny or trivial. Restoring the umlauts, he said, “is a gesture of something we respect, our history. For us, history is important. We had a major contribution from a country, Sweden, which helped build us.”

     But he acknowledged that it was easy to make fun of the umlaut. To American eyes, it can appear superfluous or just silly. In an essay in The New Yorker in 2010, Nora Ephron riffed on the ubiquitous umlaut in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” conjuring a scene in which Mikael Blomkvist shows up at Lisbeth Salander’s apartment seeking help for an umlaut-related malfunction on his laptop. (“I need my umlaut,” Blomkvist said. “What if I want to go to Svavelsjö? Or Strängnäs? Or Södertälje? What if I want to write to Wadensjö? Or Ekström or Nyström?”)

     Kevin Gutknecht, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said the department would be “happy to make the change.”

     “It’s a very easy fix,” he said. “We can probably do it within a week.”

absolute zero:  exactly minus 459. 67 degrees Fahrenheit.  Exactly.