So there I was at my workplace working quietly when a lady burst in with the leftovers of a cake on a platter in her hand. She put the platter in front of me and before completing the sentence "You like cake, don't you?" had already left the room. A quick look at the internal website did not bring up any clues as to who it was that was celebrating his birthday/namesday, but I was not too worried, as I had two nice slices of cake in front of me. I figured someone somewhere threw a party and had nowhere to put the leftovers after everyone had had more than enough. That was nice. The first step in my journey to consume the cake was to get a spoon, as I do not usually bring one with me everywhere (hmm, maybe I should). After consulting with the other person in the room, I was told that there should be some spoons in the local kitchen. Since I had not yet prepared anything more than a cup of tea while working, which had not required anything more than a short trip to the local watercooler, the kitchen was new territory for me. I had a faint idea of where it should be, so I embarked on the voyage.
The 10 second long walk to the other end of the hallway was not very eventful, and so was the rest of my working day, actually, if only for this one little thing. After entering the kitchen, I saw the usual things. There was a sink, covered in a layer of unwashed vessels and silverware, and there was a small table with an unopened pack of apple juice on top. What drew my attention was the instructions above the sink. It said "Īsa instrukcija kafijas biezumu utilizēšanā", which I understood as "Brief instructions on the utilization of instant coffee leftovers". Hmm, that did not sound right. In fact, that made no sense at all. Why would anyone want to use that muddy brown stuff again, apart from predicting the future (yes, they say you can predict the future from the brown mushy instant coffee stuff!!)? After just a split second it dawned on me that there was a huge difference in the meaning of the word "utilize/utilizēt" in English and Latvian. Due to the English form being a lot more popular in English than the Latvian form in Latvian, I started by applying the meaning of "to use" to the word, since in most cases words which sound like they are from English have a very similar meaning in Latvian to the actual word in English. But in this case, "utilizēt" means to get rid of, to dispose of, to abolish.
Not thinking about the cake anymore, I ran back to my computer to find out why there is such a disparity between the meanings. I have very little doubt that the Latvian word shares its roots with the English equivalent, so I wanted to know where the difference arose. Wiktionary nicely explained to me that the English
"to utilize" has only one meaning, that of "to use". It also states that the word came from the French
"utiliser" which means the exact same thing, which came from the Italian
"utilizzare" which, unsurprizingly, means "to use, make use of". So there, at this point, the word had no sign of having anything to do with disposal.
There was another explanation for this. Maybe the sign on the wall of the kitchen used the wrong word, and I had just convinced myself that I had heard it used in this context before. However, a quick
Google search confirmed that there were a lot of Latvians using this word with the non-English meaning of "get rid of". Among the first ten hits are peoples inquiries into the best way to dispose of old computer monitors and car oil, a couple of Power Point presentations on the effect of garbage and nuclear waste disposal, and a lot more talking about getting rid of things. There was no mistake. In Latvian, the word has a completely different meaning, and there is no telling why.
If I were to make an educated guess, I would say that some Latvian just randomly came up with the English "utilize" when searching for a very intelligent word with the meaning "to get rid of", and because nobody realized that the original meaning was not the same, the now corrupt meaning stuck with the Latvian "utilizēt".
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there truly is some better explanation. Let me know.
P.S. The cake was not too bad, but I have eaten better.
