 Book
Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Wordwatching
By Julian Burnside
Scribe $32.95
 Thanks
to the federal government's immigration detention policies, Melbourne barrister
Julian Burnside, a noted human rights lawyer, has been having a busy time of it,
but being a renaissance man he has managed to find time for other pursuits. This
weekend will see him in literary mode at the Byron Bay Writers Festival where
he is a featured author on the strength of this highly amusing adventure into
the English language, whose splendid subtitle describes it as offering 'Field
notes from an amateur philologist'.
Certainly he proves that a close examination of words can be just as absorbing
as a distant glimpse of birds.
In a recent speech, Burnside mentioned having 'spent much of my life hanging
around artists... [whose] lives are generally marked by self-doubt, insecurity
and poverty.'
Noting that he had planned to be an artist, or at least 'toyed with the idea',
he explained that by 'the merest chance' in the second-last year at University
he was advised to become an advocate, and as a result a 'dozen words of flattery
altered the direction of my career'.
As well as his legal involvement Burnside is his state's president of Musica
Viva, a Victorian College of the Arts councilor, author of a best-selling children's
book, Matilda and the Dragon, and a staunch supporter of the importance of the
arts in modern society.
Wordwatching, an elegant hardback released late last year, joined the canon
of impressive little books about words and language that deserve a place between
the dictionary and the thesaurus. Others include former Keating adviser Don Watson's
Death Sentence and Weasel Words, Ruth Wajnryb's Language Most Foul and Lynn Truss's
Eats Shoots & Leaves, an unexpected best-seller.
Burnside's offering features a mix of amusing and amazing trivia: 'Bridal was
originally bride-ale... the ale drunk at the feast for a newly married bride',
he observes, while 'admirable' comes from the Arabic amir al bahr, or 'commander
of the sea'.
The chapter 'Holy Wars', about Arabic derivations, is most timely, as are his
cogitations on 'Haitch' and 'Doublespeak' - the latter doubtless a practice familiar
to lawyers - while the wonderful 'subagitate' is the only verb whose sole meaning
is 'to engage in sexual intercourse'.
- Julian Burnside will participate in panel discussions on 'The Refugee Issue'
on Fri. Aug 5. at 2.15pm and 'The English Language: the power and the pleasure',
sponsored by The Northern Rivers Echo, at 2.15pm on Sat. 6th
- Books available at Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore
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