The Penultimate

There are some words in English that just don’t sound like what they really mean. Like the word, “enervate,” which means “to exhaust,” but which sounds more like “energize”; fortunately, few people say, “Oooh, I’m enervated!” when they’re exhausted – more like, “I’m pooped!” so confusion is not exactly rampant.

The word, “penultimate,” on the other hand, is used more often – and a good portion of the time is used wrong. “Penultimate” is a Latin-based word whose meaning has stuck close to its roots and means nothing more than “second to last” in a series or sequence. For example, Spanish students are taught that words in that language are usually stressed on the penúltima,” syllable “as in “sombRERo,” or “tequILa.” Law students know that their penultimate year is their last chance to beef up their academic resumes before their final year places them in the real world.

Etymologically, the word comes from “paen,” meaning “almost,” and “ulimate” meaning “last” or “final.” In English, however, “penultimate” sounds like it should mean something like, “better than the best:”: When we say something is, “the ultimate,” it means that it’s the greatest; the Numero Uno; something close to divine – so saying something is the PENultimate, we (wrongly) reason, sounds like that particular something is even one little divine notch higher – the exclamation point on top of the icing on the cake, so to speak.

The funny thing about “penultimate” is that it is a sort of fancy-sounding Latin word not normally used in everyday speech, and the person using it is often striving for some more graceful turn of phrase. So it is not misused by your average Joe, but rather by those supposedly well-educated ones. Thus, the remaining portion of literate ones who actually know what “penultimate” means feel just a tad (or more) smug for catching the mistake.

I was reminded of this the other day while walking on the Upper East Side in front of two nattily dressed women, who were chatting away when I overheard one of them say to the other, “I mean, would you go to a concert run by people who don’t know what ‘penultimate’ means?” (The Language Lady antennae went straight up!)

Turns out, the San Francisco Symphony had used “penultimate” improperly in a recent program description of a certain Mozart symphony. With a little googling, I was later able to find the offending usage:

“All the otherworldly ability that Mozart possessed was brought to bear in the Jupiter Symphony, the final—and perhaps penultimate—symphony he produced.”

What the program meant, of course, was that Mozart’s final symphony was perhaps the “best of the best.” But given the actual definition of “penultimate,” the program unwittingly stated that Mozart’s final symphony was his second to last.

Personally, I feel two ways about this one word. Naturally, I applaud those who use words in the correct, standard usage. A British airline industry publication sticks with the standard definition with the headline, “Carlisle (Airport) clears penultimate expansion hurdle;” the text explains that though development plans for the airport were endorsed, the “final decision” was expected later. (Leave it to the verbal-savvy Brits to do it right.)

Cheers also to a Portland, OR high school history teacher named “Mr. Carlisle;” his blog is dotted with “penultimate” titles, such as “Dec 16 - The Penultimate Day Before Break!”; “The Penultimate Weekend!” and “The Penultimate Week of School!!” Based on the calendar of exams he gives on the latter, Mr. Carlisle is clearly trying to get his students to remember that “penultimate” means “next to last” – not “final” and not “better than best.” (Hurray for American public high school!)

Even a recent headline of the online tabloid, Examiner.com got it right: “Bob Dylan and Leon Russell – The Penultimate Show at Indiana’s Roberts Stadium,” with the first line stating that the two still-at-it rock stars played one of the stadium’s last concerts there that evening.

But what I don’t like about the word itself is that it sounds so fancy but doesn’t mean anything fancy at all. It’s like putting on airs for a pair of muddy sneakers. If we refer to a “penultimate” performance, it would be more uplifting for readers if the word actually meant his performance was the very-very last word in excellence, the crème of all his crème-iest performances – rather than just his next to last.

Misusing “penultimate” is understandable – maybe even desirable – because we could use a word to break through the crowd of “ultimate” spas, movie experiences, designer blue jeans, or even trendy cupcakes. How do we convey some breakaway experience that tops all others?

Native speakers of English tend to avoid the multi-syllabic Latinate words when shorter Anglo-Saxon ones will do: Why say “quotidian” when you can say, “daily”; “reflect” when you can simply “think”? Latin-rooted words usually give a deeper and a certain elevated meaning – like “sustenance” or “nourishment” (both Latin) over the Anglo, “food.”

In a way, “penultimate” could step up to the plate: it sounds like what we want to say – and with enough misuse, “penultimate” could change meanings, the way countless words have before it.

For example, “nice,” a 13^th century word that originally meant “ignorant,” morphed several times in meaning -- as wanton, extravagant, elegant, strange, modest, thin, and shy – until settling on “pleasant” or “agreeable” around 1750. Other common word changes include “girl,” (a young person of either sex), “quick,” (alive), and “sophisticated” (corrupt).

In his book, “The Unfolding of Language,” linguist Guy Deutscher sees the word, “wicked” as undergoing a bit of a sea change, with the word now used commonly among teenagers to mean “awesome,” or “cool:” as in “a wicked party;” or “a wicked new song.” That same meaning existed among teens from Boston back in the 60’s and 70’s - it was fairly local then and despite what Deutscher (who is British) says, local authorities (i.e. my kids) say “wicked” in the U.S. is still used only in the Northeast, not nationwide.

The words “awesome” and “awful” are two other examples of word change. “Awe” itself means a feeling of amazement mixed with fear, often coupled with a feeling of personal insignificance or powerlessness: as in, the “awe” one feels when gazing at the Grand Canyon; or to be “in awe” of someone. Yet somehow, “awful” (the combination of “awe + full”) came to mean, “terrible;” and “awesome” has more recently come to be used as a synonym for “amazing.”

If enough people start using “penultimate” to mean “better than the best,” then that too could be a new standard meaning for the word. In a Google search, “penultimate” already has support for meaning “final” and “better than the best:”

Australian TV reported a few months ago, “AMP clears penultimate hurdle to buy AXA AP,” which, the news presenter explained, meant that the corporation’s takeover bid had “cleared the final hurdles.” Here, the use of “penultimate” is as a synonym for “final”; I imagine the late-night editor not wanting to repeat “final” hurdle, and thinking “ultimate hurdle” was not right, thought “penultimate” was undoubtedly just the thing.

Curiously, the folks at iPad have developed a new application called “The Penultimate,” a play on words for an app that makes it look as though you’re drawing or taking notes by hand with a pen, though it’s actually your own finger. The app’s name implies “better than the best” -- and as one reviewer confirmed, “Penultimate is the ultimate notes app for iPad.”

So the San Francisco Symphony is not alone in using and misusing “penultimate” in its program. And Language Lady hopes MORE such misuse of this word continues. Ultimately, “penultimate” (as “second to last”) simply sounds pretentious; however, if the word’s meaning could change to “better than the best,” then calling a performance or experience “the penultimate” would be infinitely more fitting.

All who agree can simply start wedging the word into their writing, and then casually into their speech, especially when coming back from Europe or the Hamptons. In this case, a little snob value might help push “penultimate” into linguistic radar among the rest of us, and thus deliver a new and improved “penultimate” to the next generation: The penultimate in linguistic contributions.

Pronunciation Problems

Anyone who has ever studied a foreign language discovers not just different words, but different sounds in those words that can have us twisting our tongues and lips in ways that seem weird and embarrassing – and we still can’t say the word right. It takes practice, skill, nerve or luck – sometimes a lifetime of all those -- to overcome our own ears and tongues when it comes to mastering the sounds of another language.

For English speakers, this can mean trampling the delicate French dipthong (when two or more vowel sounds are next to each other in the same word) in “oeil” (“eye”) with a mere, “oy;” ditto for the spectacularly gutteral “chuchichästli” (“kitchen cupboard”) in Swiss German, which an American can squash to a humdrum “hooki-heshli”; while the famously trilled Spanish “r,” as in “perro” (“dog”), is often reduced to a simple “pair-o.”

As babies, we are wired to learn and say any sound in any language, be they Cockney glottal stops and French dipthongs or African clicks. But research shows that not long after age 9 or so, most children’s wiring simply conforms to the sounds of their own mother tongue; meanwhile, the brain’s language center puts all unused sounds in deep, deep storage, so they are much harder – and sometimes impossible -- to hear and produce later on.

This is how stereotypes of foreigners learning English are born – from the fact that some of our sounds in English do not exist in other languages and foreign speakers pick the easiest ways from their languages to approximate them. I remember receiving a birthday card (in pre-politically correct days) of a Japanese man in a straw hat wishing me a “velly, velly” nice birthday. At the time I was a regular follower of the Japanese crime-fighter cartoon, “Joe Jitsu,” on “Dick Tracy and Friends,” so I already knew (roughly) that the Japanese confused the “l” and “r” sounds. Joe Jitsu would say things like, “So solly!” and “One moment prease,” and, “Carring Dick Tracy!”

But what I have learned from working with Japanese students is that they do have an “r” sound in their language – as in “karaoke” – but it is produced by tapping the tongue on the upper palate, in much the same way the British Jeeves would say “veddy propah,” and not our flat American, “very proper.” When Americans say “very” our tongue is in the lower part of our mouth, and for Japanese, this position is closer to an “l”. When Japanese say words that start with an “r,” like “rice,” they sound fine – not because they’re saying the “r” the way we say it, but because in that position, our ears do not hear a big difference.

The “L” sound is not an easy one: Even native English-speaking children are not expected to say the “L” sound until age 4 or 5. This has been born out with my own name, with little children who call me “Weeze,” “Aweeze,” or “Bah-weeze” often up til kindergarten. And saying a consonant + “l” sound is also tricky; when my son was 4 years old, he and his best friend were pretending to play instruments and his friend stopped mid-play to exclaim, “I can say ‘FLUTE!’” Before that, it had always been “fWoot.”

For the Japanese, who do not have an “l” in their language at all, L-words are likewise a problem: Try saying, “Louise,” “close,” and “English,” and notice the slightly different position that the letter takes in each word, depending on the sound next to it.

In working with a Korean man, I was surprised to discover that they confuse the “f” and “p” sounds, which produces phrases like, “Ophen the door,” and “Would you like a cuff of coppee?”

Argentines (not all Spanish speakers have this difficulty) do not distinguish their “b” and “v” sounds; for either sound, their lips barely touch, rarely touch, or never touch at all. Their capital city is pronounced closer to “Wuenos Aires,” and a simple, “muy bien,” is said with the front teeth ever so lightly touching the inside of the lower lip, which is almost exactly the same spot used to say, “Viva Maradona!”

This is not a problem, of course, unless you are an Argentine working for an American food company in New York. An Argentine student of mine was the head of the Beverage Department of a major food and beverage corporation and could not say the word, “Beverage.” He could say, “beb-rich” or “vev-rich” but not the tricky combination using both sounds. One day, I walked into his office and he had post-it notes lined up all along his shelf with “B-words” and “V-words” and “BEV-erage” to help him practice what amounted to verbally patting his heading and rubbing his stomach at the same time.

The French have trouble with the “h” sound. A sentence like “Amy will take her to the airport in half an hour” can come out like, “Hamy will take ‘er to zee hairport in ‘alf an hower.” That is, they unconsciously reverse the appropriate h-word in every case. It’s very hard for them to switch from saying “h” to not saying it and then once they do, they apply it liberally. It seems generally easier to skip the first “h” in a phrase and then exhale, so that a phrase like “How old are you?” comes out “Ow hold har you?”

Of course, hands-down, the two most confounding sounds for foreign English speakers of almost any Asian, Latin, or Germanic origin are our two “TH” sounds: The soft “voiced” one, as in “this, mother, and breathe,” and the harder-sounding, “unvoiced” one in “thanks, nothing, and mouth.” (By “voiced,” I mean that to make the “th” as in “the,” requires using your voice, whereas the other “th” sound does not.) First, there’s the placement issue: No one wants to be seen sticking their tongue out of their mouths. Add to that the amount of times one or the other or both “th” sounds occur in a typical conversation, and it really seems cruel and unusual punishment -- especially the hard (“thanks”) “th” sound, perhaps because of the extra air required to push the sound through the front teeth.

And though I can live with a “z” being substituted for the “th” in say, “mother,” I do not like “f” being substituted for “th” in “something,” “nothing,” and “anything.” So I exert a little more pressure for students on that point, often with one forced viewing of 12-year-old Oliver in the 1969 movie “Oliver!” singing “I’d Do Anything” – a particularly painful rendition, even for this lover of American musicals.

For further practice of the hard (“thanks”) th sound, I have devised sentences like, “He is thin but he has thick skin” (and for the French, the sentence has that “h” problem too);” and “I think he thought about nothing,” which often prompts howls of protests. The thing is, it’s not that people can’t say these TH sounds – it’s more the effort and embarrassment of doing it -- it just feels so unnatural for non-native speakers.

Occasionally, I give students some well-appreciated, verbal relief: take the words, “clothes,” “months,” and “asked.” All of these have tricky consonant sounds next to a “z,” “s” or “t” sound. And I’ve realized that even we native speakers take certain shortcuts: For “clothes,” we skip the “th” all together and pronounce the word, “kloze;” for “months,” we say “munts,” and for the past tense of “ask” we say often just say “ast.” The reason is that the final sound is the important one, and not the deleted inner consonants.

So to everyone out there trying to speak a new language, just remember that those tongue-twisting sounds are universal – no one is spared. And for those of you with TH-troubles, you’ll just have to develop a sick skin – and some day you’ll sank me for zat.

Is Bad Language Good?

Swearing, or using crude or bleep-worthy words, is rare for The Language Lady. So this afternoon, when I found myself happily singing the catchy chorus, “F--- You!” to hip-hopster Cee Lo Green’s amusing current hit song of the same name, I wondered if bad language in everyday English had reached a new phase.

The current profusion of profanity heard and seen everywhere has acquired its own sort of WikiLeak transparency, where no feeling is held back, no vulgar word replaced by a neutral one. The rebellious Sixties seem to have been the starting point for knocking down the invective barriers – and now, here we are in the 21st century, with a woman of few expletives walking around singing the F-word.

What’s going on here? Or in contemporary parlance: WTF*?

*(Spoiler Alert: Due to the nature of this subject, The Language Lady will be using non-asterixed swear words – in the name of scholarship – in this article. Just so you know.)

Bad Language – i.e., those naughty, generally four-letter, Anglo-Saxon words signifying some sort of religious curse or bodily function; and also words that are not curses per se, but coarse words for body parts and the like – has traditionally been discouraged in so-called polite society. But polite society these days seems to be aggressively lenient, with vulgarities leaching into the kitchen, carpool, schoolyard, store dressing rooms, office cubicles, and executive suites. Face it: Have you ever said, or has any child in the last 25 years heard the phrase, “Say that again and I’ll wash your mouth out with soap?” How very retro!

So, is this a good thing – this openness? Have we won the Cause for Coarseness, or is it just an unimpeded lack of imagination?

Swear words now seemed to be used 1) for (The Traditional) quick, emotional reaction to pain, fright, or frustration; 2) to sound edgy and fun; 3) to add grit and emotion; 4) to describe something quickly, with sufficient disdain. All that means opportunity-aplenty.

But where all that was once mostly just spoken (or with ironic bleeps on TV) it is appearing more and more in print: of course, books do it; blogs do it; and even the venerable literary magazine, The New Yorker, has been allowing expletives into its fiction for years.

And now the word “ass” seems to be going mass-market – such as in recent billboard ads – ones up on high poles, looming over streets and highways, for Levis blue jeans: “Not all asses were created equal;” and the big, block-letter poster from K-Swiss sports that claims, “Tubes: So light they make your socks feel like a couple of fat asses.” I have no idea what socks have to do with my rear end, but it got my attention.

Of course, the f-word usage award goes to the British clothes company, FCUK, which started out in 1972 as “French Connection”. In 2001, they started branding their clothes, “fcuk” -- or, “French Connection United Kingdom” (wink, wink) and played on the resulting controversy with a t-shirt line with all kinds of slogans like, "fcuk this", "hot as fcuk", "mile high fcuk", "too busy to fcuk", etc.

Swear words have existed as long as language – the word “swear” has prehistoric, Indo-European roots; and a recent study has revealed that swearing actually relieves pain -- meaning that our evolution as humans includes outbursts of four-letter words.

“People need special words to convey emotion,” according to author and linguistics professor Deborah Tannen. “For those who use them, swear words are linked to emotion in a visceral way.”

The website, “How Stuff Works” explains that swear words came from the ancient belief that spoken words have power. “Some cultures,” the site says, “especially ones that have not developed a written language, believe that spoken words can curse or bless people or can otherwise affect the world. This leads to the idea that some words are either very good or very bad.”

But without the social taboo that once limited the use of vulgar language, modern, everyday English just sounds filthy. Not that that’s a bad thing, according to linguist John McWhorter, who sees all this nasty language as the natural outcome of a progressively informal society -- one that’s intent on breaking taboos and showing real life in all its crass glory:

“In a hatless America of T-shirts and visible underwear,” McWhorter says, “where what were once written speeches are now baggy ‘talks’ and we barely flinch to see nudity and simulated copulation in movies, what would be strange is if people weren’t increasingly comfortable using cuss words in public.”

But is this fun, funny, or cool? Isn’t suggestion funnier or more interesting? Think about it: What is sexier – seeing a big-chested woman in a tight t-shirt with a hint of cleavage, or seeing that same lady topless? Ok, after the initial shock – THEN what? Same goes for words.

Well, there is apparently still some ambivalence toward all this lax, earthy language. Witness the recent passing of two “sh*ts” in the proverbial night: that is, two industries (entertainment and financial) in opposing camps on the use of s-word usage – and it’s effect on business. Let’s take a look:

This past fall CBS premiered a new show called, “$#*! My Dad Says,” a comedy about the relationship between a crotchety, foul-mouthed dad and his twenty-something son. The show is based on the best-selling book, “Shit My Dad Says,” which was based on the author’s real-life twitter feed of the same name. And most of the stuff the dad says includes the s-word; stuff like: 'You don't know shit, and you're not shit. Don't take that the wrong way, that was meant to cheer you up." Or, “Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."

The popularity of the show, book, and Twitter feed clearly show mass acceptance of the s-word as “entertainment” – understandably, the s-word sounds edgier, more fun, and definitely more “real” than “STUFF My Dad Says” would have. And the TV show’s use of the symbols as substitutes for the s-word makes it look funny too – though the crassness of the original title is still there; however, since CBS is doing the show, no actual four-letter words have been used in the scripts. As for the show itself, film site Collider.com said, “Find out the real reason why $#*! is not only the title, but an apt description of the series …”

All this visual-verbal crassness might have pleased George Carlin, the late comedian known for his sharp, black humor, and who back in 1972 delivered the famous monologue, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV.” Carlin might now take indirect credit for the TV show title.

And Carlin might also take equal pride in the recent televised Senate investigation hearing into Goldman Sachs trades in the mortgage business, when the word “sh**ty” – not even bleeped out -- was read repeatedly by the Senate committee head grilling the traders:

“Boy, that Timberwolf was one shitty deal,” Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich) said, reading from a Goldman internal memo from a head trader to a fellow colleague; “shitty” described a certain deal, one worth millions of dollars, that the big investment firm had just transacted for a client. Senator Levin read the line each time he took a trader to task. This phrase was then copied in all media forms in news stories about that day’s hearing. Today, googling the words, “goldman shitty deal” brings up 827,000 responses.

It seems Goldman Sachs did not enjoy having its name tied to such a vulgar word: a July 29 article in the Wall Street Journal, titled, “George Carlin never would've cut it at the new Goldman Sachs,” reported that the firm had recently installed screening software to roust such vulgarities – even those with asterisks -- from all future company emails, calling that word, and others of that ilk, “unprofessional.” Let it be known, the WSJ added, “There will never be another s— deal at Goldman Sachs.”

It’s noteworthy that this multi-billion dollar firm sees bad language as bad for business. (Or maybe Goldman just wanted bad words to sound more reprehensible than questionable deals.) Could this mean the pendulum is starting to swing the other way?

I doubt it.

Everyday expressions are ever more gritty: “It sucks” has replaced “that’s too bad;” and “crappy” is the new “lousy.” There is a website called “absofuckinlutely,” which is actually pretty funny (people write in about their bad days); and even a hamburger joint on the Upper West Side claims sports a sign out front claiming it has “the best effin burgers in the city.”

Effin A!

Many people use the f-word as an adjective just to help describe some ordinary activity (“I can’t hang out now – got too much f**kin’ sh*t to do”), which they might think sounds tough, but actually seems lame. For some of those f-word users, it is a habit – like adding “like” or “y’know” -- they hardly seem aware they’re saying it. One of the crudest expressions, not in words so much as a visual turn of phrase, is used to express surprise at having accomplished something: “Boy, I really pulled that one out of my ass!” Yuck! Why not pour wet sewage all over the accomplishment.

Ultimately, bad language is offensive and shows a certain verbal lack of control – like word farts, if you will. Bad language goes along with our impatient, stressed- out society, one that’s caffeinated and on the run; we’re a society that enjoys breaking rules and taboos, and being a little out of control; And we’re all about choice – so we can all make our own verbal choices out of annoyance, anger, or just because -- and few will stand in our way.

When I was about ten and beginning to let slip a few nasty epithets in gym class, but well before my more linguistically coarse teen years, my dad gave me some advice: “Don’t swear unless you really mean it. When it’s not that important, just say ‘Beans!’” Beans?! No, Dad was not kidding. Though I never heard Dad say “Beans!” himself, he did seem to only swear once a year – the day he’d put our motorboat in the lake and try to start it up after the winter. And even then, he only swore at the motor, not at us kids.

Mom was equally good about not swearing. In fact, to this day, the only time I’ve ever heard her swear was one morning in middle school when I dropped the bacon on the floor (not the plate – just the 8 pieces of bacon, which broke into bits) and a “Damn!” thudded out of her mouth. And it’s still ringing in my ears.

So there is something to be said for holding back -- it makes the select moments more memorable and keeps ordinary air less verbally polluted. Besides, finding a way around swearing requires more ingenuity than letting it all hang out. Compare, for example, excerpts from Cole Porter’s 1928 hit, “Let’s Do It” and Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” (2010):

“LET’S DO IT” (1928):

And that's why birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love;

Cold Cape Cod clams, 'gainst their wish, do it
Even lazy jellyfish do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

I've heard that lizards and frogs do it
Lyin' on a rock;
They say that roosters do it
With a doodle and cock

Some Argentines, without means do it
I hear even Boston beans do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love.

VS.

“FUCK YOU” (2010)
I see you driving 'round town
With the girl i love and i'm like,
Fuck you!

Oo, oo, ooo

I guess the change in my pocket
Wasn't enough, i'm like,
Fuck you!
And fuck her too!

I said, if i was richer, i'd still be witch-ya
Ha, now ain't that some shit? (ain't that some shit?)

And although there's pain in my chest
I still wish you the best with a...

Fuck you!
Oo, oo, ooo.

Times change. Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It” is still clever, and in alluding to the big thing that we all do, it was positively risqué -- back in 1928, not in 2010. Cee Lo’s song takes a lighthearted tune while keeping in the gritty reality of love, letting listeners sing expletively away --

And George Carlin must be smiling down from his place in No Holds Barred Heaven, and singing with satisfaction, “F**k youuu!”

Troubled in Translation

There is a memorable bar scene (Note: Potential Spoiler Alert!) in Quentin Tarantino’s  “Inglourious Basterds,” where a German SS major, seated at a table with some other soldiers, asks for three glasses of scotch; the fellow Nazi he’s sitting next to helpfully flashes three fingers to the bartender. But when the major sees the Nazi’s hand gesture, he is jarred: The soldier has just given himself away. “You,” the major says through his teeth, “are no more German than the scotch” --
 
The tip off? The way the soldier made the number “3” with his fingers – the pointer, middle, and ring fingers standing tall, which is the American way; while a German or any European would have held up thumb, pointer, and middle fingers, ring and pinky folded down.
 
The English version of the current Swedish bestseller, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (the first book of the 3-book Millenium series) had many such jarring moments for me. “This sentence is not English,” I would think, as I read a random paragraph in the 600-plus page novel. The word choice or word order were either slightly off or waaay off, forcing me to reach for a pencil and wonder why the publishers had apparently hired a non-native speaker of English to translate.
 
The mystery-thriller’s sloppy punctuation and awkward phrasing started on Page 1, but I did not take that to mean the translator was foreign – just bad. It was not until Page 189 (of the small paperback edition) that the unintended mystery of the translator’s nationality became a leit-motif for me as I read:
 
“Did other people live at that time on the farm?” the text says.
 
Can you hear the mistake? Perhaps it’s subtle but the mistake is nonetheless non-English. It’s like saying, “He walked on Friday to work,” which is perfectly understandable and yet the natural way to say that is, “He walked to work on Friday.” English syntax, that is, basic English word order, puts “Place” before “Time.” (I discuss word order in my blog from January 2007, “Your Word Order, Please: http://thelanguagelady.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html)
 
As I continued, I started finding more “clues” that the translator was probably, (my assumption based on the book’s origin) Swedish. I flipped to the cover page and found that it was translated by Reg Keeland – a name that could be foreign, or not; and which could belong to a male or female, though I pictured a man.  Here are some more examples that seem to give away Mr. Keeland’s nationality:
 
Page 208: “I’m just so damn sick of the whole story. It’s poisoned our lives for decades, and it doesn’t stop doing so.”
 
“… it doesn’t stop doing so” should be “it HASN’T stopped doing so.” Explaining how to use the present perfect tense – as in, “I have written -- is one of the most difficult aspects of teaching English to non-native speakers; basically, the present perfect tense is used to express an action that started in the past that still relates to now. In the above case, a native English speaker/translator would have used this tense instinctively; however, other Western languages don’t have this tense at all (at least to the extent we use it in English) and generally use the present tense to express time passage:  “I am here four years,” instead of “I have been here for four years.”
 
Then there was the word “judgement,” sprinkled throughout the book and spelled with an “e” each time. This is the British way of spelling the word – Noah Webster dropped the “e” for Americans when he took the “u” out of “color,” around 1828 (from “Common Errors in English Usage” by Paul Brian); and since many Europeans learn British English in school, no doubt our Swedish translator was among them.
 
Page 248: “She had a rudimentary knowledge of the law – it was a subject she had never had occasion to explore – and her faith in the police was generally exiguous.”
 
Exiguous? Any translator who knows the vocabulary limits of his/her English-speaking readership, would never have put that word in that sentence. Exiguous? I’ve never heard of it -- never come across it, not even in old SAT practice sheets. But no doubt Herr Keeland found the word in his Swedish-English dictionary, and with the word’s Latin-sounding pomposity, it must have seemed an intelligent choice. But one blissfully nice thing about English is how it generally avoids Latin-sounding pomposity – and a better translation would have been, “and her faith in the police was meager, at best.”
 
Pages 319-320 have so many mistakes, I can almost see the poor Swede’s head bowed down on his computer keyboard in exasperation. There are problems with word order, word usage, and verb tense; and the passage in general has an awkwardness that just does not sound English. See if you agree:
 
“Gottfriend’s cabin … was the place to which Harriet and Martin’s father had retreated when his marriage to Isabella was going to the dogs in the late fifties … And here was also the place that Harriet had been to so often that it was one of the first in which they looked for her. Vanger had told him that during her last year, Harriet had gone often to the cabin, apparently to be in peace on weekends or holidays.”
 
First, “to which” and “in which” sound formal and strange – we just don’t use that construction unless absolutely necessary, and it wasn’t necessary. Secondly, the phrases, “here was also the place” and “Harriet had gone often” sound so distinctly foreign (adverb choice and placement, suffice it to say); the phrase “in peace” is not quite right, and then there is the strange, “… going to the dogs in the late fifties.” Here’s how I would have phrased it:
 
“Gottfriend’s cabin was … where Harriet and Martin’s father had retreated in the late fifties when his marriage to Isabella was going to the dogs … The cabin was also the place Harriet had been to so often, it was one of the first places they had looked for her. Vanger told him that during Harriet’s last year, she had often gone there on weekends or holidays to find some peace and quiet.”
 
But Mr. Keeland’s true “3-Finger” moment came with this, on Page 389:
 
“Norsjö was a small town with one main street, appropriately enough called Storgatan …”
 
Appropriately enough? Why was the main street, “Storgatan,” so “appropriately” named? Well, if you’re a Swedish translator and you forget for a moment that your English audience does not automatically know that “Storgatan” means “Main Street,” then yes – the name was perfectly appropriate.
 
The big surprise for me came on Page 644, the book’s final page, when I googled “Reg Keeland” and discovered that he is, in fact, an American man named Steven T. Murray, apparently the go-to guy for Scandinavian translations. He used a pseudonym for all three of the Millenium series books due to a “miscommunication” with the English publisher, who demanded the manuscripts before Murray had had a chance to edit his translation. So that may excuse, or at least explain, the muddled text, still mired somewhere between the original Swedish and unpolished English.
 
Slack editing aside, the book has taken the publishers (and translator too, no doubt) all the way to the bank. To be fair, though, I found the second book much improved. Appropriately enough.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Translations: Faithful or Fluent?

 

Anyone who has graced the inside of a bookstore in the past few months will no doubt have seen the display of the international, smash-hit trilogy from Sweden, “Men Who Hate Women,” “Flicken Som Lekte Med Eldren,” and “The Air Castle that Blew Up,” also called The Milliennium Series. You guessed it -- these are not the titles you’ll find at Barnes and Noble. You may recognize them as “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”

 

Translating books from one language into another is not an exact science, as shown by the differences between the above titles. And when a book is gobbled up by 30 million people in 40 countries, as this has been, there are bound to be differences between what makes sense – and more importantly, what sells – in one country, versus another. So, though translators can take credit for being an indirect part of the publishing phenomenon, so can book marketers. The author of the series, the late Swedish journalist, Stieg Larssen (who died of a heart attack at age 50, in 2004, just months before seeing any of this amazing success) gave his first book the title, “Men Who Hate Women,” which underscores one of the series’ core themes; however, I can just hear the book’s American marketer at the meeting:

 

Marketer: The title has to go -- stores will probably stick it in Psychology next to ‘Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus.”

 

Larssen’s agent: But Stieg wanted this title! It’s what he wanted to say about --

 

Marketer:  But that title won’t sell. We need something with …  with mystery, and something “now,” something hip -- body piercings or tattoos or -- anything. Men hating women is so Seventies.  No, it’s gotta be something about The Girl.

 

And the rest is history (well, recent history). But the result was that though some countries chose to be faithful to the original, “Men Who Hate Women,” plenty of others sided with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

 

So, having read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” myself, I checked out a few of the translated titles from around the world (thank you, Google Translator), and here’s what I found:

 

 “MEN WHO HATE WOMEN” VS. “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”

 

The French title, “Les hommes qui n’aimaient pas les femmes,” or “Men who didn’t like women,” followed the Swedish in spirit, differing only in verb choice and tense. What struck me about the French title, though, was how it showed what many of my French students do – which is to say what something is NOT, rather than what it is. For example, a French person seems often more inclined to say, “It is not sunny today,” rather than, “It’s cloudy today.” So it follows that French would “not like” women over “hating” them – never mind the qualitative difference between the two emotions.

 

And yet the Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese followed the French, though choosing the more amorous “did not LOVE,” over “did not LIKE”, as in “Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres,” and “Os Homens Que Não Amavam as Mulheres.” or “Men who did not love women.” I wondered if the “didn’t like/didn’t love* construction were particular to Latin-based languages, but the Italians (“Uomini che odiano le donne”) and the Portuguese from Portugal (“Os Homens que Odeiam as Mulheres”) went with “Men Who Hate Women.”

 

Another curious thing about the “did not like/did not love” construction is why the verb tense is in the past (imperfect) tense in these three Latin-root languages. The Swedish title is in the present tense – indicating a regular, routine activity, as in Men Who (always) Hate Women. Perhaps by putting the verb tense in the imperfect (which gives a sense of continuity in the past – more like, “Men who never liked/loved women; or men who used to never like/love women), the French, Spanish, and Portuguese reader can better sense that these are certain men and certain women in a certain time, as in a novel – as opposed to men in everyday life who routinely hate women.

 

And while the Finnish are reading “Men Who Hate Women” -- “Miehet jotka vihaavat naisia,” the Russians are trying a unique marketing strategy, with the first three words of the “Dragon” title in English, followed by the Cyrillic “Tattoowirovki Drakon-na,” as in "The Girl With The татуировки дракона". The Icelandic and Greek titles also did a little mix-and-match with: "The Girl með The Dragon Tattoo" and "Το Κορίτσι Με Το Dragon Tattoo."

 

Interrupting this neat little divide between “Men” and “Dragon” are the German titles (for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc.), which dispensed with “The Girl” theme entirely and went with, “Verblendung,” “Verdamnis,” and “Vergebung” for the three books: “The Blinding (or ‘Blending-in’),” “The Damnation,” and “Forgiveness (or “Redemption”).” Though Stieg Larsson may be rolling in his grave with these titles (they seem to suggest the outcome to each book), the alliteration of the titles is probably a book marketer’s dream.

 

Translations have always wreaked verbal havoc, or prompted many a laugh or cringe. Anyone who’s every sat through a movie with subtitles can relate. I mean, how do you translate Humphrey Bogart saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” to his long-lost love, Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca”? The French went with “à votre santé,” or “to your health,” even using the formal “your” – which not only seems stiff but so very un-Bogart. Maybe French audiences swoon when they read this line, as Bogart lifts his champagne glass, that certain look in his eye. A literal – and impossible -- rendering might conjure up: “Voici te regarde, cherie,” which would leave Parisians howling either in laughter or in pain at such mangling. (Maybe it does not even matter what Bogie says – his look may say it all.)

 

Being both faithful and fluent to the original text is an ideal not often achieved, except through luck, if both languages happen to have similar constructions or at least similar ways of conveying the same idiom or expression. The 17th-century French philosopher and writer, Gilles Menage, known in his time as a cultivator of wit and elegant conversation, thought the combination of faithful and fluent was “like women – either beautiful or faithful, but not both.” (Ah, zose French!)

 

The Language Lady’s next blog will look inside the pages of the English translation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” to see just how faithful and fluent – or not – the translator was. As I read “Dragon,” I found quite a few oddly worded passages, which had me guessing as to the translator’s nationality the whole way through, with the answer (googled as I hit the final page) almost as much a surprise as the actual ending.   A votre santé, kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Out About Phrasal Verbs

(When you see an * in the text, it means the two or three words next to it make up a “phrasal verb.”)

One of the most difficult aspects of English for foreign students to master is something we native speakers of English rarely even think about* or hear of*: phrasal verbs. On my shelf of books about English is a hefty volume entitled, “NTC’s Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs and Other Idiomatic Verbal Phrases.” There are more than 12,000 such entries in this tome. True, some entries are idioms (colorful expressions). But what ARE these phrasal verbs? Read on* and find out*!

Phrasal verbs – among the most basic phrases and expressions in our language -- take one base verb then add a word ‘particle’ (looks like a preposition but doesn’t operate like one grammatically) to express a certain meaning. A two-year-old can use phrasal verbs: “Pick me up” or “Go out now?” Even my cat understands “Get down!” or “Come in.” (That is, he seems to, though he’s better at “come in” than “get down.”)

The base verb alone, however, does not do the job; it’s the little particle that makes all the difference. Use the wrong particle – like “put OFF” instead of “put ON” and you either make no sense, or have said the opposite of what you meant to say. Such a small slip explains why most foreign languages use completely different verbs – like the French “chercher” for “look for,” and “regarder” for “look at” -- whereas English speakers just switch a little word.

Some phrasal verb particles are directional: sit down; stand up; go out; look up. But others create a meaning larger than the word’s regular use: take “off” for instance. If I take something “off” a shelf, I remove it. But if I walk, storm, run, or drive “off,” then I remove myself far into the distance and out of sight.

Think of* “turn” “turn around,” “turn in” “turn into” “turn in on,” etc. -- each one requiring a separate definition. This could make you turn against* English!

Think about* the difference between “cleaning” your room and “cleaning out” your room. Or “writing” a message and “writing down” a message.

And try explaining why “wind up” and “wind down” can mean the same thing.

Yet despite these intricacies, native speakers of English – even the most illiterate or grammar-phobic – rarely (if ever) make mistakes with phrasal verbs (or the phrasal nouns and adjectives derived from them).

There is so much to say about phrasal verbs, it makes me realize how concise that 12,000-entry phrasal verb dictionary actually is. But rather than risk losing readers with my enthusiasm for the subject, I will instead cut to* the inspiration for this blog - a recent letter to the Language Lady from Renee, an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in New York, who writes:

“Dear Language Lady,

One of my colleagues is teaching phrasal verbs and ran across* "find out" vs "find out about." Our whole troupe of teachers is stumped: We can't figure out* why it's “find out” the rules, but “find out about” volunteering. Both rules and volunteering are nouns so why do we need the preposition for one but not the other? (the two **added by The Language Lady)

Can you help?”


Thanks for asking, Renee.

The key here is the word, “about,” which means “concerning; in regard to;” “referring to different sides or aspects of something.”

The phrasal verb, “to find out” means to search and confirm or discover (“discover” is too big a word for the act, really, but it’s the closest either the dictionary or I could get) the answer to something fairly straightforward or already written down: We “find out,” for example, what the homework is; what time a movie starts; a person’s last name; and, as Renee asked, “the rules,” which given the context, are presumably ones already ones set down and recorded.

“To find out ABOUT” something changes the meaning; “about” implies that there is something bigger than a simple answer to confirm or discover. If someone asked you to “find out about” someone’s last name, you might look into* the name’s ethnic origin, meaning, change or spelling, etc. to uncover various elements “concerning,” “in regard to,” or “about” the name. So to “find out about” volunteering would involve several calls or queries to see how to go about* it, what choices there are, whom to contact, etc. In other words, finding out about something entails more than a pre-determined fact or answers, but a larger scope of different things to think about* or consider.

Just one more thing: why Renee is right when she says that both “rules” and “volunteering” are nouns. “Volunteering,” in the context of finding out about it, is a “gerund” – that is, a noun formed from a verb. And when a verb form follows a preposition (or phrasal verb particle), it almost always takes a gerund. This is why we say “to look forward to _______ing” (seeing, doing, meeting, etc.) or “from _______ing (listening, talking, running, etc.). To find out “about” something requires a gerund as well – hence, “volunteering.”

So keep on* coming up with* excellent questions and The Language Lady will happily follow up* and get back to* you.

St. Jude’s Gives No Thanks to Parallel Structure

While out Christmas shopping last month I noticed a small, green card at my local Ann Taylor store. It was from the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and it featured a beaming but bald child as part of its admirable outreach to raise money for children with cancer. I picked it up and read, “Give thanks for the healthy kids in your life, and give to those who are not.”

Hmmmm. Another case of some institution verbally mangling an ad campaign (see Language Lady’s “Citibank,” 12/31/09).

Of course, I knew what the card was TRYING to say, but there was something about the wording that was not quite natural – something amiss; speaking of which, a few days later I saw a youthful- if not exactly natural-looking, 72-year-old Marlo Thomas, deliver this same message on TV: “Give thanks for the healthy children in your life,” the St. Jude spokesperson said, adding in her vaguely croaky, “That Girl”-ish voice, “and give to those who are not.”

Oh, Marlo – can’t you hear that awkward syntax?

Apparently not. This was the sixth year of the research hospital’s “Thanks and Giving” campaign – big posters, small cards, TV ads, all asking us holiday shoppers to give, in effect, to ‘the HEALTHY kids who are NOT in our lives.’

I realize that is not what Marlo Thomas meant, and that most people understand the message: that we should be grateful for the healthy kids in our life, and to give money (via St. Jude) to sick kids.

Given that St. Jude’s foremost goal is to find a cure for childhood cancer, this is an understandable, and well-intentioned request. But the message is a mess.

The copywriter attempted to use a parallel construction, like Julius Caesar’s, “I came; I saw; I conquered.” See how each part repeats the structure of the one before? Julius is clear, strong, and concise – nice!

Twenty-year-old songstress Taylor Swift uses parallel construction in her current hit, “You Belong to Me,” when she sings: “She wears short shorts -- I wear T-shirts … She wears high heels – I wear sneakers.” Such parallel construction provides clear contrast between two statements.

St. Jude’s attempted contrasting statements, loosely interpreted, are: “Give thanks for healthy kids; give money to sick kids.” The trouble is, actually writing that sounds too crass. So the copywriter softened it up – but in doing so, he came up with two statements that have different grammatical structures – thus misaligning the key contrast between “healthy” and “sick”.

Tweaking for parallel structure (not meaning) would render the phrase as:

“Give thanks for the healthy kids in your life, and give to those unhealthy kids who are not in your life.” This makes no sense – but it’s at least parallel.

When taken apart bit by bit, the slogan’s flaws become clear:

• “Give thanks for the healthy kids in your life,”

The structure is Subject (an understood “you,” who should be giving), Verb (Give), Direct Object (thanks), Indirect Object (Kids – technically, object of the preposition “for” but in the bigger scheme, “kids” are the indirect object of someone’s giving), and the adjective phrase, “in your life,” modifying kids.

• “… and give to those who are not.”

Subject (understood “you”), Verb (“give”) --- and there the symmetry stops.

There is no direct object, and the indirect object, ”those,” refers to the “healthy kids” mentioned in the first part; and “who are not” corresponds to “in your life.”

But given that this campaign has been going since 2004 and I seem to be the only one whining in the syntactical wilderness, St Jude’s should give thanks to grammatically forgiving (or unaware) donors.

Still – why not try to say it right:

“Give thanks to the children in your life who are healthy, and give to those who are not.”