The Great Decider has done it again. This past Monday (Oct. 23, 2006) President Bush was interviewed on CNBC and asked whether he ever googled anyone or used Google. His response: “Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps.”
Does Bush do this on purpose? Did he know that saying, “One of the things I’ve used on the Google …” was going to be an instant email clip sent around the world for the next week, to be saved in special Internet files with his countless other gaffes? Typing in “bush ‘the google’” listed 2,130,000 site hits on Google and 1,840,000 on Yahoo. Does Bush really want that kind of publicity for himself? If Bush is of the belief that any publicity is good publicity, then it was another banner week for him. However, given his current standing, I think this latest gaffe was only great for Google.
Let’s just take a moment to analyze linguistically why the Googler-in-Chief’s statement caused such a reaction. Was it just the “the?” Not really. There were other things wrong with his sentence, so let’s take a look:
Bush says, “One of the things I’ve used on (Google)” is –
Now, right there, after “is,” we’re expecting to hear a NAME or type of NOUN (person, place, or thing) that Bush enjoys looking up. Instead, we get: “to pull up maps,” which is a verb phrase. Said all at once, (and leaving out “on the Google”), we get, “One of the things I’ve used is to pull up maps.” Do you see how the first half of the sentence does not complement the second? A carpenter in his workshop wouldn’t say, “One of the things I use is to hammer in nails.”
Semantically, it’s a mess; but that part is mostly unconscious to the listener. What is funny about the clip is hearing Bush say, “the Google.”
“The Google.” The last time “the” was so memorably attached to a proper noun was when Donald Trump’s first wife, the Czec-born, Ivana, called her hubby, “The Donald.” And by inserting the little “the” in front of Google, Bush set off a firestorm of blog responses -- mostly derogatory comments from the U.S. and around the world. One site I looked at, thinkprogress.org, had comments in Swedish, Polish, Spanish, German and Dutch, in addition to mostly English (from the U.S. and the U.K.) as well as a 10-second video clip leading up to and just past Bush’s saying, “the Google.”
The misuse of that one little, three-letter word seemed to act as a beacon, a come-on to anti-Bushers everywhere (who, granted, don’t need much prodding) as a justifiable chance to criticize everything from his intelligence and general character to the Iraqi war, and on down to his Texas accent. How could the word “the” be such a trigger? How could “the” mean so much?
In general, the comments on thinkprogress.org were not particularly insightful (“The Decider uses The Google to remind The Citizens he is The Dumbass.” Comment by MAN — October 27, 2006 @ 12:38 pm being one of the more concise). However, I thought this Comment by jon — October 24, 2006 @ 12:08 pm made a good point:
… I think it’s ironic that the dude leading our country during the coming of age of the on-line experience calls it the “internets” (Oct. 8, 2004) and refers to the largest search engine as “the google.” It reminds me of his father when he was campaigning for president and stopped in a grocery store to be dumbfounded by scanner checkouts. How can I put it more bluntly? OUT OF TOUCH.
No one calls Google, “the Google.” Or rather, no one ELSE does that except the leader of the free world, from whom we would all like to expect better. My husband thinks that Bush thinks computer-related things are unmanly, unsuitable for a dude who would rather be clearing brush on his ranch; whether on purpose or not, Bush uses the wrong terminology to put a distance between himself and the whole e-world. Perhaps. Still, as I have often said to my kids, “That may be a reason, but it’s no excuse.”
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
The Leaf Blower Awards
Following are some words and expressions that generally sound awful -- the verbal equivalent of that seasonal suburban nightmare: the leaf blower. For that reason, I will be awarding “leaf blower” points on a scale of offensiveness, with 4 being the highest.
“Irregardless” (4 leaf blowers)
(Q) One reader, Bev from Virginia, writes, “My pet peeve is the use of the word ‘irregardless.’ I hear it daily. It drives me nuts. I'm counting on you to set people straight.”
(A) Well, Bev, a lot of people agree with you: when I googled that one little word, up sprang hundreds of sites, many with page-long articles about how offensive and illogical “irregardless” is; how it is nonstandard and “humorous” English to be avoided in formal writing; and that we should blame some western Indiana dialect for first using it back in 1912, probably meshing “irrespective” (meaning, without regard to something) and “regardless,” (meaning, in spite of something). “Regardless” is the correct word.
Some individual sites claim that “irregardless” is not a word, while others say that given how long the word has been around, and how often it is still used in speech and print, that sadly, yes, it IS a word – albeit a second- or even third-class verbal citizen among the better informed.
What makes “irregardless” wrong is that it’s a double negative: the prefix “ir” means “not” and the suffix “less” means “without.” So if “ir” and “less” cancel each other out, what you have is “regard,” which is roughly the opposite of what you meant to say. English, in general, doesn’t do double negatives the way they do in, say, Spanish or French; in those languages you MUST use a double-negative to be correct:
Where we say, “I don’t have anything,” a Spaniard says, “No tengo nada” and a Parisian says, “Je n’ai rien,” which are both literally, “I don’t have nothing.” Not only does this sound uneducated in English, English speakers would reason that if you don’t have “nothing,” then you must have “something.” However, a Yale professor pointed out that we still use dictionary-sanctioned, redundant words like “debone” and “unravel” without any problem.
Linguistically speaking, what may make “IRregardless” so tempting to use is that the syllable stress of that word falls on “IR,” emphasizing the “not” aspect, while in “reGARdless,” the stress falls on the fairly meaningless, “GAR.”
Regardless of such temptations, better go with the standard word until further notice.
Recommended sites re “irregardless” (in addtion to American Heritage and Merriam-Webster Dictionaries, and Wikipedia):
- British etymologist and writer Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words (I once wrote him and he actually responded):
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-irr1.htm
- Get It Write
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/081002.htm
- Plus, the amusingly named, The Irregardless Café, in Raleigh, NC, which has been serving down-home food and disregarding illogical verbal constructions since 1975.
http://www.irregardless.com/cafe.html
“Nothing If Not” (3 leaf blowers)
A particularly faithful reader, my editor and husband, Bob, finds the phrase, “nothing if not,” meaning, “above all” or, simply, “very” -- as in “Bjork is nothing if not quirky” -- to be extremely over-used in writing these days (though, thankfully, people tend not to say it, which spared it a 4-star rating). “Nothing if not” is an old phrase, first coined c. 1600 in Shakespeare’s “Othello:” "I am nothing if not critical," Iago says in Scene 1. As for its over-use, Google listed no less that 1,290,000 different sites for the phrase, among them:
“If The Brown Bunny feels weirdly indulgent, it’s nothing if not a fiercely personal film …”www.deep-focus.com/flicker/brownbun.html
“Guatemala is nothing if not colorful! Here even the ever so mundane American school bus comes dressed like a Las Vegas showgirl … http://www.transportguatemala.com/chicken.htm
“Faulkner was nothing if not confused, and here, alas, the confusion damages the work. Where was that inner editor?
www.amazon.ca/ Light-August-William-Faulkner/dp/1561005886
But what none of this answers to Bob’s satisfaction is why? Are people using that phrase because it’s Shakespeare? (Doubtful.) Why waste one’s breath on the three words, “nothing if not,” if you can easily say the same thing without them? And what, really, does “nothing if not” mean?
Let’s take the sentence, “I am nothing if not perplexed.” Likewise, if I am not perplexed, I am nothing. But if I AM perplexed, then I am NOT nothing -- so I must be SOMEthing. So, in other words, “I am perplexed.”
Yes, “nothing if not” is another double-negative – but this one INTENDS to cancel both negatives, probably to emphasize the positive. Nice, huh? Leave it to Shakespeare. Which is perhaps something to keep in mind: the phrase was good for Iago – such phrases always sound so eloquent the first time – but for the rest of us, now 400 years later and with 1,290,000 site-hits and counting, “nothing if not” is nothing if not as spent as a firecracker on the 5th of July.
“At The End of the Day” (2 1/2 leaf blowers)
I hear this phrase said all the time, in many different contexts: business, between friends, on TV, and even my old linguistics professor, who said it so many times during class, I started to make notches on my notepad. But frankly, my dears, to paraphrase Rhett Butler, I just can’t get worked up about this. However, this attitude clearly sets me outside of the new group of conscientious objectors:
Cindy Adams, a gossip columnist for the New York Post, went ballistic in last Sunday’s (October 15, 2006) paper, suddenly waking up to what she considered the nauseating popularity and ubiquity of “at the end of the day.” Not the Les Miz song (“At the end of the day you’re another day older”) which stayed in my head til the end of the day, after I read Adams’s article; but the “at the end of the day” that means, “finally,” or “in the end,” as in Adams’s own examples: “At the end of the day, all you have is your family;” or “At the end of the day, it’s between you and your Maker.”
Well, we all have our verbal pet peeves and Cindy is certainly not alone with that one, even if she is a bit late in catching on to it: Google sites criticizing the phrase’s over-use go back at least 2 years. Columnist James Clark, writing for The (Johannesburg, South Africa) Star in 2004, said that in a newspaper survey readers voted “at the end of the day” as the Numero Uno, most irritating cliché.
My husband thought that the phrase was mostly used in business contexts, right up there (or down there) with “bottom line.” So I googled “bottom line” and “end of the day” in the same search box and it turned up 1,570, 000 hits. So, yes, Bob – good hunch.
Media Bistro, a site targeted to people in the media industry, had a piece in their August 15, 2006 posting, titled: At The End Of The Day, Study In Hot Pursuit Of Popular Press Clichés Reveals Low-Hanging Fruit. The article reported “a whopping 10,000 news sources, including the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and the Associated Press; in an analysis by Factiva of clichés used by the press, by far the most commonly used is ‘at the end of the day.’”
Apparently responding to the same Factiva analysis, on August 17, 2006, Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Jane M. Von Bergen wrote:
I get excited when people sound as if they are about to emit wisdom. That “end of the day” phrase tunes me up in anticipation of a “Tuesdays With Morrie” -- level insight, something meaningful, something important … Mostly, though, I'm disappointed … In fact, the more banal the thought, the more likely it is to be preceded with “at the end of the day.” You know what I think? I think ‘at the end of the day’ has come to the end of its day.
Okay, okay, so it’s a little over-used. It STILL doesn’t bother me as much as “with he and myself.” (4 leaf blowers)
“A Slight Quiver of the Upper Lip” (0 leaf blowers – it’s a family favorite)
“A slight quiver of the upper lip,” so integral to classic hackneyed romance novels, is a phrase I grew up using and hearing at home – not often, but often enough. It was a type of code used to describe the feeling just after something you wanted (especially, to eat) was suddenly snatched from your grasp. Mom and Dad loved telling the story behind this family classic, and here’s how I remember it:
In 1966, my globe-trotting parents were on a tiny boat on the Amazon tributary’s Araguaya River. The tour guide’s first mate was James, a 28-year-old, lean and rugged, British soldier-of-fortune-type, whose ad-hoc responsibility at the (literal) end of the day was to produce from the tiny, generator-run machine the precious ice cubes for the evening’s libations. These ice cubes, symbols of civilization out there in the steamy jungle, were doled out like gold doubloons.
But one evening, just as the last ice cube was going from Dad’s hand to his glass of scotch, something happened and the ice cube bounced off the rim of the glass, then slipped, skittered and slid – plop – into the muddy river. For a moment, no one spoke. James looked at my father’s face (somewhere between crestfallen and shocked) and, perhaps seeking to relieve the gravity of the moment, piped up, “I say, David! A slight quiver of the upper lip?”
Now there are few things (besides one or two ice cubes) that could make Dad’s warm scotch taste good – and a fine and well-timed cliché, with just the right hint of irony and levity, was one of them.
“Irregardless” (4 leaf blowers)
(Q) One reader, Bev from Virginia, writes, “My pet peeve is the use of the word ‘irregardless.’ I hear it daily. It drives me nuts. I'm counting on you to set people straight.”
(A) Well, Bev, a lot of people agree with you: when I googled that one little word, up sprang hundreds of sites, many with page-long articles about how offensive and illogical “irregardless” is; how it is nonstandard and “humorous” English to be avoided in formal writing; and that we should blame some western Indiana dialect for first using it back in 1912, probably meshing “irrespective” (meaning, without regard to something) and “regardless,” (meaning, in spite of something). “Regardless” is the correct word.
Some individual sites claim that “irregardless” is not a word, while others say that given how long the word has been around, and how often it is still used in speech and print, that sadly, yes, it IS a word – albeit a second- or even third-class verbal citizen among the better informed.
What makes “irregardless” wrong is that it’s a double negative: the prefix “ir” means “not” and the suffix “less” means “without.” So if “ir” and “less” cancel each other out, what you have is “regard,” which is roughly the opposite of what you meant to say. English, in general, doesn’t do double negatives the way they do in, say, Spanish or French; in those languages you MUST use a double-negative to be correct:
Where we say, “I don’t have anything,” a Spaniard says, “No tengo nada” and a Parisian says, “Je n’ai rien,” which are both literally, “I don’t have nothing.” Not only does this sound uneducated in English, English speakers would reason that if you don’t have “nothing,” then you must have “something.” However, a Yale professor pointed out that we still use dictionary-sanctioned, redundant words like “debone” and “unravel” without any problem.
Linguistically speaking, what may make “IRregardless” so tempting to use is that the syllable stress of that word falls on “IR,” emphasizing the “not” aspect, while in “reGARdless,” the stress falls on the fairly meaningless, “GAR.”
Regardless of such temptations, better go with the standard word until further notice.
Recommended sites re “irregardless” (in addtion to American Heritage and Merriam-Webster Dictionaries, and Wikipedia):
- British etymologist and writer Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words (I once wrote him and he actually responded):
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-irr1.htm
- Get It Write
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/081002.htm
- Plus, the amusingly named, The Irregardless Café, in Raleigh, NC, which has been serving down-home food and disregarding illogical verbal constructions since 1975.
http://www.irregardless.com/cafe.html
“Nothing If Not” (3 leaf blowers)
A particularly faithful reader, my editor and husband, Bob, finds the phrase, “nothing if not,” meaning, “above all” or, simply, “very” -- as in “Bjork is nothing if not quirky” -- to be extremely over-used in writing these days (though, thankfully, people tend not to say it, which spared it a 4-star rating). “Nothing if not” is an old phrase, first coined c. 1600 in Shakespeare’s “Othello:” "I am nothing if not critical," Iago says in Scene 1. As for its over-use, Google listed no less that 1,290,000 different sites for the phrase, among them:
“If The Brown Bunny feels weirdly indulgent, it’s nothing if not a fiercely personal film …”www.deep-focus.com/flicker/brownbun.html
“Guatemala is nothing if not colorful! Here even the ever so mundane American school bus comes dressed like a Las Vegas showgirl … http://www.transportguatemala.com/chicken.htm
“Faulkner was nothing if not confused, and here, alas, the confusion damages the work. Where was that inner editor?
www.amazon.ca/ Light-August-William-Faulkner/dp/1561005886
But what none of this answers to Bob’s satisfaction is why? Are people using that phrase because it’s Shakespeare? (Doubtful.) Why waste one’s breath on the three words, “nothing if not,” if you can easily say the same thing without them? And what, really, does “nothing if not” mean?
Let’s take the sentence, “I am nothing if not perplexed.” Likewise, if I am not perplexed, I am nothing. But if I AM perplexed, then I am NOT nothing -- so I must be SOMEthing. So, in other words, “I am perplexed.”
Yes, “nothing if not” is another double-negative – but this one INTENDS to cancel both negatives, probably to emphasize the positive. Nice, huh? Leave it to Shakespeare. Which is perhaps something to keep in mind: the phrase was good for Iago – such phrases always sound so eloquent the first time – but for the rest of us, now 400 years later and with 1,290,000 site-hits and counting, “nothing if not” is nothing if not as spent as a firecracker on the 5th of July.
“At The End of the Day” (2 1/2 leaf blowers)
I hear this phrase said all the time, in many different contexts: business, between friends, on TV, and even my old linguistics professor, who said it so many times during class, I started to make notches on my notepad. But frankly, my dears, to paraphrase Rhett Butler, I just can’t get worked up about this. However, this attitude clearly sets me outside of the new group of conscientious objectors:
Cindy Adams, a gossip columnist for the New York Post, went ballistic in last Sunday’s (October 15, 2006) paper, suddenly waking up to what she considered the nauseating popularity and ubiquity of “at the end of the day.” Not the Les Miz song (“At the end of the day you’re another day older”) which stayed in my head til the end of the day, after I read Adams’s article; but the “at the end of the day” that means, “finally,” or “in the end,” as in Adams’s own examples: “At the end of the day, all you have is your family;” or “At the end of the day, it’s between you and your Maker.”
Well, we all have our verbal pet peeves and Cindy is certainly not alone with that one, even if she is a bit late in catching on to it: Google sites criticizing the phrase’s over-use go back at least 2 years. Columnist James Clark, writing for The (Johannesburg, South Africa) Star in 2004, said that in a newspaper survey readers voted “at the end of the day” as the Numero Uno, most irritating cliché.
My husband thought that the phrase was mostly used in business contexts, right up there (or down there) with “bottom line.” So I googled “bottom line” and “end of the day” in the same search box and it turned up 1,570, 000 hits. So, yes, Bob – good hunch.
Media Bistro, a site targeted to people in the media industry, had a piece in their August 15, 2006 posting, titled: At The End Of The Day, Study In Hot Pursuit Of Popular Press Clichés Reveals Low-Hanging Fruit. The article reported “a whopping 10,000 news sources, including the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and the Associated Press; in an analysis by Factiva of clichés used by the press, by far the most commonly used is ‘at the end of the day.’”
Apparently responding to the same Factiva analysis, on August 17, 2006, Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Jane M. Von Bergen wrote:
I get excited when people sound as if they are about to emit wisdom. That “end of the day” phrase tunes me up in anticipation of a “Tuesdays With Morrie” -- level insight, something meaningful, something important … Mostly, though, I'm disappointed … In fact, the more banal the thought, the more likely it is to be preceded with “at the end of the day.” You know what I think? I think ‘at the end of the day’ has come to the end of its day.
Okay, okay, so it’s a little over-used. It STILL doesn’t bother me as much as “with he and myself.” (4 leaf blowers)
“A Slight Quiver of the Upper Lip” (0 leaf blowers – it’s a family favorite)
“A slight quiver of the upper lip,” so integral to classic hackneyed romance novels, is a phrase I grew up using and hearing at home – not often, but often enough. It was a type of code used to describe the feeling just after something you wanted (especially, to eat) was suddenly snatched from your grasp. Mom and Dad loved telling the story behind this family classic, and here’s how I remember it:
In 1966, my globe-trotting parents were on a tiny boat on the Amazon tributary’s Araguaya River. The tour guide’s first mate was James, a 28-year-old, lean and rugged, British soldier-of-fortune-type, whose ad-hoc responsibility at the (literal) end of the day was to produce from the tiny, generator-run machine the precious ice cubes for the evening’s libations. These ice cubes, symbols of civilization out there in the steamy jungle, were doled out like gold doubloons.
But one evening, just as the last ice cube was going from Dad’s hand to his glass of scotch, something happened and the ice cube bounced off the rim of the glass, then slipped, skittered and slid – plop – into the muddy river. For a moment, no one spoke. James looked at my father’s face (somewhere between crestfallen and shocked) and, perhaps seeking to relieve the gravity of the moment, piped up, “I say, David! A slight quiver of the upper lip?”
Now there are few things (besides one or two ice cubes) that could make Dad’s warm scotch taste good – and a fine and well-timed cliché, with just the right hint of irony and levity, was one of them.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Accent on America
Last week I talked about The Queen’s English, and received a bunch of interesting responses. One reader, Liz from Maryland, had this to say: “Actually, English spoken by the Royals/upper crust is beautiful to hear, don't you think? So remote, so refined, so....inbred.” Yes, Liz, I agree!
This week, I wanted to talk about accents in the U.S. Personally, I love the twangs, drawls, flat sounds, long sounds, double-vowels sounds and other regional variations that can mark our origins more precisely than any last name. There are a zillion American accents, one for every region and sometimes regions within regions. On the other hand, a lot of people speak a sort of general American English, with maybe a hint of an accent from their hometown. Maybe general American English could be called TV American -- it’s pretty much the same. Still – it’s the differences, the accents, that bring out the color in people and places and so here’s to them!
I spent two weeks every summer of my first 22 years making the annual pilgrimage from suburban Chicago to Enid, Oklahoma to visit my grandmother and a wide assortment of relatives and family friends. And I still warm to the sound of a good, southwestern, “Howdy!” “Hi Y’all!” and “How are yewwww?!” -- though living in NY makes hearing those sounds extremely rare. (Of course, I still get to hear the Queens English --- that is, Queens, New Yawwk!)
Anyway, during those annual trips south, I loved hearing the slow Oklahoma drawl – though I would have felt strange speaking that way myself. As a young teen hanging out at the Enid Tastee (the "Ta-i-Y-stee") Freeze drive-in (drahv-iyen) with my popular older cousins and their friends, my northern accent made me different, and helped explain (at least to me) the difference in our worlds: my world was Lake Michigan and bike-riding to town and friends' houses; my accent was short vowels and quickly-spoken syllables. In Enid, life was American Graffiti with a cowboy accent, cars of cheerleaders and their hunky boyfriends cruisin' on the Van Buren strip. I used to wonder, if I ever lived in Enid, how soon I'd be dropping y'alls and yer alls, and saying reaaaal slowww, “Y’all come over to MAH how-se!” Would I -- could I -- really do that?
Certainly, an accent marks you as from a certain place. So if you change your accent, you also paste over your past – and maybe that’s the point: Didn’t Cary Grant and Sean Connery come from working class families? You’d never know it by their movies.
Many people’s accents change naturally, as their lives and places they call home change. But a radical change of accent – is that the verbal equivalent of plastic surgery? Does an accent make a person, and does a new accent re-make them? I think so. What would Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig be like if they spoke like James Bond or a CNN TV correspondent?
Now let’s take a look at another accent, one that comes from …
MERLIN – that’s Maryland to the rest of us
“Merlin” is the local pronunciation of that smallish state on the mid-Atlantic coast. Now, this state, which Lord Baltimore called “Terra Mariae” in 1630, may once have been called “Mary Land;” we non-natives call it MARE-i-lnd; but the natives apparently call it “Merlin.”
The Merlin dialect is particularly strong in the triangle around the Chesapeake Bay, which, according to http://wilk4.com/humor/humorm221.htm “is bounded roughly by a line commencing at Towson's Toyota, then westward to Frederick Mall, thence following the western border of the cable TV franchise and the string of McDonalds along Route 50 to the Bay.”
Enthusiastic and informative Language Lady reader Liz, from Maryland’s Chesapeake Triangle, shares these tidbits on the local tongue:
BALMER
Maryland’s capital city, spelled Baltimore, is pronounced “Balmer.” As in the Balmer O’s, or Baltimore Orioles. There are two Balmers: Balmer City and Balmer County (also pronounced, “Canny.”) Balmer City is the locale for HAIRSPRAY – the movie/Broadway hit’s writer/director is John Waters, a native Balmerian, hon. The locals speak Balmerese. And you can’t speak Balmerese without this word:
HON
Hon is short for "Honey" and is added at the end of a sentence. A 7-11 cashier says, "Yer fly's open, hon.” or “Here's yer change, hon". (This is followed by deep, gutteral smoker's cough or laugh.) "Let's cheer fer de O's hon.”
DOWNY SHORE
“Downy shore” means "down to the shore.” The shore, or beach, is almost always Ocean (or, “Ay-shun”) City. So, “Let’s go to the beach” is, "Let's go downy shore, hon.”
NAPPLIS
Annapolis, home to the U.S. Naval Academy, is pronounced "Napplis," as in, "Gonna go see my doc in Napplis, hon."
WARSHTON
That’s the place, also called, “Washnin,” where the President lives.
Liz from Maryland is also one of the few people I know who has actually been to Bourbonnais, Illinois, a small city named after a 19th century French fur trader. Here’s what Liz had to say about her trip to my home state:
We're not going to discuss Illinois accents (Oh, really, Liz??)...We spent some time with my son’s baseball team in Bourbonnais,Ill. What fools we were at the hotel front desk to ask, "Is there a grocery store in Bourbonnais (pronounced as French word, Bur-Bohn-NAY)?" "YOU MEAN BER-BONUS? YEAH, THERE'S A WAL-MAAAART TWO MILES SOUTH". " BE CAYREFUL DRIVING INTO CHICAAAAAAHHHHHGO.”
"BER-BONUS." I think that sounds like a sexually transmitted disease.
Thanks, Liz! I’ll remember that next time I’m in Bourbonnais.
Actually, people from Illinois absolutely cringe when someone pronounces the “s” on the end of our state name. Never mind that we mangle the French pronunciation on the way to the “s” (Elll-en-OY, instead of “Illin-WAH”); but c’est la vie – or is it cest-lavvy?
(For a list of familiar French place names in the U.S., check out http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can/places/french.htm
and see why the French shrug their Gallic shoulders when it comes to Americans speaking French.)
AM I BOVVERED? (or, More Accents on England)
Meanwhile, Diana, an expat from England who lives in New York, sent me a link to the British comedian Catherine Tate.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=409893&in_page_id=1770>
Catherine has a repertoire of characters she has invented and one of them is surly, 16-year-old Lauren, whose catch phrase, “Am I bovvered?” has caught on big time among the Brits. “Bovva” is cockney, or Estuary English (see The Queen’s English 10/8/06) for “bother,” and Catherine’s phrase is, according to the link, the new “Whatever!” or more broadly, the embodiment of “couldn't-care-less adolescence.” So the big news is that “bovver” is being considered for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
Now, I know the OED is trying to keep up with current language trends and all. “Bovver” just might have some staying power in UK-speak, and might be appropriate for such an entry, especially due to the growth of “Estree English” in the past two decades (see my blog: 10/8/06). But that reminded me of the OED’s inclusion of “muggle” into the 2003 OED edition, and I’ve always felt the editors got a little too caught up in the whole Harry Potter Hysteria to include that word. I mean, I love the stories and all, but I have never heard a single soul of any age use “muggle” outside of Harry Potter.
J.K. Rowling’s “muggle,” means someone without magical powers; the OED editors, however, claim that the word has taken on an extended use to mean, “any person lacking a particular skill, or is seen as somehow inferior,” to merit the entry. (See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2882000/2882895.stm)
Can anyone vouch for that? I’d love to know if I’m wrong.
Likewise, my prediction for “bovver,” in the U.S. Surely, “bovver” will not make it into the OED American-English edition, as Cockney Cool has not made it here at all – and it may not get any farther than the backstage of some struggling English punk band playing a 2 a.m. gig in Queens, New Yawwk. But that’s just my opinion, hon.
This week, I wanted to talk about accents in the U.S. Personally, I love the twangs, drawls, flat sounds, long sounds, double-vowels sounds and other regional variations that can mark our origins more precisely than any last name. There are a zillion American accents, one for every region and sometimes regions within regions. On the other hand, a lot of people speak a sort of general American English, with maybe a hint of an accent from their hometown. Maybe general American English could be called TV American -- it’s pretty much the same. Still – it’s the differences, the accents, that bring out the color in people and places and so here’s to them!
I spent two weeks every summer of my first 22 years making the annual pilgrimage from suburban Chicago to Enid, Oklahoma to visit my grandmother and a wide assortment of relatives and family friends. And I still warm to the sound of a good, southwestern, “Howdy!” “Hi Y’all!” and “How are yewwww?!” -- though living in NY makes hearing those sounds extremely rare. (Of course, I still get to hear the Queens English --- that is, Queens, New Yawwk!)
Anyway, during those annual trips south, I loved hearing the slow Oklahoma drawl – though I would have felt strange speaking that way myself. As a young teen hanging out at the Enid Tastee (the "Ta-i-Y-stee") Freeze drive-in (drahv-iyen) with my popular older cousins and their friends, my northern accent made me different, and helped explain (at least to me) the difference in our worlds: my world was Lake Michigan and bike-riding to town and friends' houses; my accent was short vowels and quickly-spoken syllables. In Enid, life was American Graffiti with a cowboy accent, cars of cheerleaders and their hunky boyfriends cruisin' on the Van Buren strip. I used to wonder, if I ever lived in Enid, how soon I'd be dropping y'alls and yer alls, and saying reaaaal slowww, “Y’all come over to MAH how-se!” Would I -- could I -- really do that?
Certainly, an accent marks you as from a certain place. So if you change your accent, you also paste over your past – and maybe that’s the point: Didn’t Cary Grant and Sean Connery come from working class families? You’d never know it by their movies.
Many people’s accents change naturally, as their lives and places they call home change. But a radical change of accent – is that the verbal equivalent of plastic surgery? Does an accent make a person, and does a new accent re-make them? I think so. What would Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig be like if they spoke like James Bond or a CNN TV correspondent?
Now let’s take a look at another accent, one that comes from …
MERLIN – that’s Maryland to the rest of us
“Merlin” is the local pronunciation of that smallish state on the mid-Atlantic coast. Now, this state, which Lord Baltimore called “Terra Mariae” in 1630, may once have been called “Mary Land;” we non-natives call it MARE-i-lnd; but the natives apparently call it “Merlin.”
The Merlin dialect is particularly strong in the triangle around the Chesapeake Bay, which, according to http://wilk4.com/humor/humorm221.htm “is bounded roughly by a line commencing at Towson's Toyota, then westward to Frederick Mall, thence following the western border of the cable TV franchise and the string of McDonalds along Route 50 to the Bay.”
Enthusiastic and informative Language Lady reader Liz, from Maryland’s Chesapeake Triangle, shares these tidbits on the local tongue:
BALMER
Maryland’s capital city, spelled Baltimore, is pronounced “Balmer.” As in the Balmer O’s, or Baltimore Orioles. There are two Balmers: Balmer City and Balmer County (also pronounced, “Canny.”) Balmer City is the locale for HAIRSPRAY – the movie/Broadway hit’s writer/director is John Waters, a native Balmerian, hon. The locals speak Balmerese. And you can’t speak Balmerese without this word:
HON
Hon is short for "Honey" and is added at the end of a sentence. A 7-11 cashier says, "Yer fly's open, hon.” or “Here's yer change, hon". (This is followed by deep, gutteral smoker's cough or laugh.) "Let's cheer fer de O's hon.”
DOWNY SHORE
“Downy shore” means "down to the shore.” The shore, or beach, is almost always Ocean (or, “Ay-shun”) City. So, “Let’s go to the beach” is, "Let's go downy shore, hon.”
NAPPLIS
Annapolis, home to the U.S. Naval Academy, is pronounced "Napplis," as in, "Gonna go see my doc in Napplis, hon."
WARSHTON
That’s the place, also called, “Washnin,” where the President lives.
Liz from Maryland is also one of the few people I know who has actually been to Bourbonnais, Illinois, a small city named after a 19th century French fur trader. Here’s what Liz had to say about her trip to my home state:
We're not going to discuss Illinois accents (Oh, really, Liz??)...We spent some time with my son’s baseball team in Bourbonnais,Ill. What fools we were at the hotel front desk to ask, "Is there a grocery store in Bourbonnais (pronounced as French word, Bur-Bohn-NAY)?" "YOU MEAN BER-BONUS? YEAH, THERE'S A WAL-MAAAART TWO MILES SOUTH". " BE CAYREFUL DRIVING INTO CHICAAAAAAHHHHHGO.”
"BER-BONUS." I think that sounds like a sexually transmitted disease.
Thanks, Liz! I’ll remember that next time I’m in Bourbonnais.
Actually, people from Illinois absolutely cringe when someone pronounces the “s” on the end of our state name. Never mind that we mangle the French pronunciation on the way to the “s” (Elll-en-OY, instead of “Illin-WAH”); but c’est la vie – or is it cest-lavvy?
(For a list of familiar French place names in the U.S., check out http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can/places/french.htm
and see why the French shrug their Gallic shoulders when it comes to Americans speaking French.)
AM I BOVVERED? (or, More Accents on England)
Meanwhile, Diana, an expat from England who lives in New York, sent me a link to the British comedian Catherine Tate.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=409893&in_page_id=1770>
Catherine has a repertoire of characters she has invented and one of them is surly, 16-year-old Lauren, whose catch phrase, “Am I bovvered?” has caught on big time among the Brits. “Bovva” is cockney, or Estuary English (see The Queen’s English 10/8/06) for “bother,” and Catherine’s phrase is, according to the link, the new “Whatever!” or more broadly, the embodiment of “couldn't-care-less adolescence.” So the big news is that “bovver” is being considered for the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
Now, I know the OED is trying to keep up with current language trends and all. “Bovver” just might have some staying power in UK-speak, and might be appropriate for such an entry, especially due to the growth of “Estree English” in the past two decades (see my blog: 10/8/06). But that reminded me of the OED’s inclusion of “muggle” into the 2003 OED edition, and I’ve always felt the editors got a little too caught up in the whole Harry Potter Hysteria to include that word. I mean, I love the stories and all, but I have never heard a single soul of any age use “muggle” outside of Harry Potter.
J.K. Rowling’s “muggle,” means someone without magical powers; the OED editors, however, claim that the word has taken on an extended use to mean, “any person lacking a particular skill, or is seen as somehow inferior,” to merit the entry. (See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2882000/2882895.stm)
Can anyone vouch for that? I’d love to know if I’m wrong.
Likewise, my prediction for “bovver,” in the U.S. Surely, “bovver” will not make it into the OED American-English edition, as Cockney Cool has not made it here at all – and it may not get any farther than the backstage of some struggling English punk band playing a 2 a.m. gig in Queens, New Yawwk. But that’s just my opinion, hon.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Comments on Comments: Let’s Nuke Nu-kyuh-ler
All that talk about accents in my last posting (The Queen’s English, 10/8/06) stirred up some thoughts – not just from my chair but from others’ as well:
Danny from California said that English aristocrats weren’t the only ones putting the common touch in their English, by noting that our own President Bush may be doing the same thing every time he says, “nu-kyuh-ler,” instead of “nu-klee-ar.” But in that particular case, Danny also noted, it’s “more like the ignorant in high places taking pride in their ignorance – a classic southern phenomenon.”
Actually, Danny, the mispronouncing of “nuclear” is not, alas, just a southern (or southwestern) thing, since Gerald Ford from Michigan supposedly had trouble with the blasted word too! It’s not an accent problem, so much as just general inattention to syllables – and it’s the inattention to that detail that drives people nuts.
According to The Big Book Of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide For The Careful Speaker, author Charles Harrington Elster says that out of the 100 most often mispronounced words, the mangling of “nuclear” is the one that causes the most vehement reaction among listeners who have no patience for those users – particularly mis-users like Presidents of the United States both past and present who continually, and seemingly, stubbornly fail to say it right. Elster quotes lexicographer R.W. Burchfield (editor of the four-volume Oxford English Dictionary) who points out, “the spectacular blunder of pronouncing [nuclear] as if it were spelled nuc-u-lar” is the result of a tempting misassociation with the many words ending in-ular (circular, particular, cellular, secular, molecular, jocular, avuncular, etc.).”
The switching of sounds in a word has a long history in English: Think of “aks” for “ask,” “purdy” for “pretty,” or the classic childhood “pasketti” for “spaghetti.” In language circles, this is called “metathesis” (pron.: me TAA thah sis – see if you can work that into your next cocktail conversation …). (Our word, for example, “butterfly” is possibly a metathesis for the original, “flutter-by.”)
But metathesis or not, there’s just no excuse for mispronouncing such a fear-inspiring word when you’re President of the United States. Former laughingstock Vice Prez Dan Quayle is probably at home wondering what the big deal was about his not being able to spell “potato.” Next to nu-kyu-ler, that’s small potatoes indeed, and here’s why:
If a President of the United States can’t be bothered to hear and articulate the difference between “spectacular” and “nuclear,” then what’s his finger doing on the button anyway?
Danny from California said that English aristocrats weren’t the only ones putting the common touch in their English, by noting that our own President Bush may be doing the same thing every time he says, “nu-kyuh-ler,” instead of “nu-klee-ar.” But in that particular case, Danny also noted, it’s “more like the ignorant in high places taking pride in their ignorance – a classic southern phenomenon.”
Actually, Danny, the mispronouncing of “nuclear” is not, alas, just a southern (or southwestern) thing, since Gerald Ford from Michigan supposedly had trouble with the blasted word too! It’s not an accent problem, so much as just general inattention to syllables – and it’s the inattention to that detail that drives people nuts.
According to The Big Book Of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide For The Careful Speaker, author Charles Harrington Elster says that out of the 100 most often mispronounced words, the mangling of “nuclear” is the one that causes the most vehement reaction among listeners who have no patience for those users – particularly mis-users like Presidents of the United States both past and present who continually, and seemingly, stubbornly fail to say it right. Elster quotes lexicographer R.W. Burchfield (editor of the four-volume Oxford English Dictionary) who points out, “the spectacular blunder of pronouncing [nuclear] as if it were spelled nuc-u-lar” is the result of a tempting misassociation with the many words ending in-ular (circular, particular, cellular, secular, molecular, jocular, avuncular, etc.).”
The switching of sounds in a word has a long history in English: Think of “aks” for “ask,” “purdy” for “pretty,” or the classic childhood “pasketti” for “spaghetti.” In language circles, this is called “metathesis” (pron.: me TAA thah sis – see if you can work that into your next cocktail conversation …). (Our word, for example, “butterfly” is possibly a metathesis for the original, “flutter-by.”)
But metathesis or not, there’s just no excuse for mispronouncing such a fear-inspiring word when you’re President of the United States. Former laughingstock Vice Prez Dan Quayle is probably at home wondering what the big deal was about his not being able to spell “potato.” Next to nu-kyu-ler, that’s small potatoes indeed, and here’s why:
If a President of the United States can’t be bothered to hear and articulate the difference between “spectacular” and “nuclear,” then what’s his finger doing on the button anyway?
Sunday, October 08, 2006
The Queen’s English
As I sat on the subway yesterday evening, the woman asking me which stop took her to Soho had a definite accent -- a little Mick Jagger, a little Merchant-Ivory -- and I asked if she were from England (as opposed to Australia or South Africa). Turns out she was from Yorkshire, where the movie, “The Full Monty,” as well as the children’s book/movie, “The Secret Garden” take place. I told her I was about to go see “The Queen,” and she said over the years she’d seen the Queen several times herself. I said that I really just meant the movie, “The Queen” – we laughed and then joked about how funny it would be to see Her Royal Highness sitting and signing autographs in the lobby of the Angelika Theater.
Now cut back to London, 1997, “The Queen’s” starting point, when newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair is about to meet Queen Elizabeth. On the way up Buckingham Palace’s winding stairs, a staff person spouts off the protocol for being In Presence (that’s what it’s called when you’re with the Queen); and when the man tells Tony to call the queen “ma’am,” he emphasizes: “’ma’am’ that rhymes with ‘ham,’ and not ‘mahm’ that rhymes with ‘fahm’” (or farm). Apparently, minding his P’s and Q’s was not enough – the P.M. had to watch his “A’s” as well!
But that was just the kind of thing I wanted to hear: I had headed off to see this movie last night not only because I’d read the good reviews and usually enjoy period and historical movies -- and actually remember something of the time portrayed (the week after Princess Diana’s death); but an even more compelling reason to go was that I wanted to listen to the English accents. Specifically, I wanted to hear any evidence of a type of “down market” pronunciation that has reportedly been seeping into the speech habits of upper class English people for the past 20 or so years. (Confusing the “a” in “ham” or “farm” is not part of that phenomenon though -- maybe it just grates on the Queen’s nerves.)
Called Estuary English after the Thames estuary region in London and southeast England where this variety of English began, it was documented in 1984 by linguist David Rosemarne and his been the subject of much interest and debate ever since. My own research into this topic was inspired by a comment sent in by Icedink (see Language Lady, "Myself Misuse," 9/24/06). These particular pronunciation variations, found increasingly in and around London are partly adapted from Cockney and supposedly add a dash of working class/I’m-one-with-the-people sort of cache – the kind of thing that aristocrats might do to sound cool, or maybe just less remote, and politicians might do to better fit in with their constituents.
Still, the Queen’s problem in the movie was that she did not connect with her people through public displays of emotion, much less any subtle speech affectations to sound like them; in fact, trying to effect a more common accent would have been the last thing on the mind of Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth (and probably on the real one’s too). As for Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair, who definitely wanted to connect with the people -- and succeeded -- he nonetheless seemed to stick to his Oxford-honed English as he delivered his speeches to the mourning masses. And his upper class accent also supported him in his oh-so carefully chosen words each time he tried to persuade the Queen to leave Balmoral and come to London.
Yet my grand mission of detecting the down-market sounds of Estuary (pronounced "estree" according to Icedink) English in those upper class protagonists was ultimately flawed from the get-go: the attempt failed to take into account that I really don’t have any trained ear for the subtleties I was listening for. Okay, I listen to British-narrated books on tape. But other than that, I’m an American surrounded by Americans. What was I thinking?
If The Queen or the Prime Minister were Estuary English-dropping any t’s (making “butter” sound like “buh-err”) or turning “l’s” into “w’s,” (making “milk” sound like “mewk” and “will you” sound like “w-i-w you”), I didn’t catch them. Except I did think I once heard Tony say, “peo-puw” instead of “peo-pul” (people) – but I also kept forgetting to listen while I got caught up in the show.
However, if you plan to see the movie, perhaps you can do a better job than I did, and then let me know – especially re Tony and his staff. Also Cherie Blair, Tony’s wife, was portrayed as a strong anti-monarchist – did she use Estuary English at all? Again, I forgot to listen.
Still, I did notice other things, like:
Wow! Helen Mirren really captured The Queen as I imagine her. I remember hearing The Real Queen give her belated Princess Diana condolence speech – and remember now how high her voice sounded, and that I hadn’t expected it to sound that way. It was like her words were going through a sieve, morphing into shrill little bubbles en route from her mouth to the air. Helen Mirren captured that sound – which I think was probably due to nerves, because otherwise in the movie, the Queen didn’t sound so tinny. (Overly proper, stiff, etc. – but not tinny.)
The other thing that I remembered about seeing The Real Queen give that condolence speech was that she looked JUST LIKE our former housekeeper, Dorothy, who lived with us almost forever. Dorothy had the exact same hair-do as the Queen, the same pale complexion, full cheeks, and short stature. As I stared at the TV that day, I had a Separated At Birth moment, where it looked like Dorothy, not the Queen, was addressing the world. But how different Dorothy seemed with that accent! And how different the Queen would have seemed if she had spoken like a woman who grew up in McHenry, Illinois!
Which brings up the next Posting:
Do accents make people or vice-versa?
Think about it: whose accent would you want to have? Would that change you? Stayed tuned.
Now cut back to London, 1997, “The Queen’s” starting point, when newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair is about to meet Queen Elizabeth. On the way up Buckingham Palace’s winding stairs, a staff person spouts off the protocol for being In Presence (that’s what it’s called when you’re with the Queen); and when the man tells Tony to call the queen “ma’am,” he emphasizes: “’ma’am’ that rhymes with ‘ham,’ and not ‘mahm’ that rhymes with ‘fahm’” (or farm). Apparently, minding his P’s and Q’s was not enough – the P.M. had to watch his “A’s” as well!
But that was just the kind of thing I wanted to hear: I had headed off to see this movie last night not only because I’d read the good reviews and usually enjoy period and historical movies -- and actually remember something of the time portrayed (the week after Princess Diana’s death); but an even more compelling reason to go was that I wanted to listen to the English accents. Specifically, I wanted to hear any evidence of a type of “down market” pronunciation that has reportedly been seeping into the speech habits of upper class English people for the past 20 or so years. (Confusing the “a” in “ham” or “farm” is not part of that phenomenon though -- maybe it just grates on the Queen’s nerves.)
Called Estuary English after the Thames estuary region in London and southeast England where this variety of English began, it was documented in 1984 by linguist David Rosemarne and his been the subject of much interest and debate ever since. My own research into this topic was inspired by a comment sent in by Icedink (see Language Lady, "Myself Misuse," 9/24/06). These particular pronunciation variations, found increasingly in and around London are partly adapted from Cockney and supposedly add a dash of working class/I’m-one-with-the-people sort of cache – the kind of thing that aristocrats might do to sound cool, or maybe just less remote, and politicians might do to better fit in with their constituents.
Still, the Queen’s problem in the movie was that she did not connect with her people through public displays of emotion, much less any subtle speech affectations to sound like them; in fact, trying to effect a more common accent would have been the last thing on the mind of Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth (and probably on the real one’s too). As for Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair, who definitely wanted to connect with the people -- and succeeded -- he nonetheless seemed to stick to his Oxford-honed English as he delivered his speeches to the mourning masses. And his upper class accent also supported him in his oh-so carefully chosen words each time he tried to persuade the Queen to leave Balmoral and come to London.
Yet my grand mission of detecting the down-market sounds of Estuary (pronounced "estree" according to Icedink) English in those upper class protagonists was ultimately flawed from the get-go: the attempt failed to take into account that I really don’t have any trained ear for the subtleties I was listening for. Okay, I listen to British-narrated books on tape. But other than that, I’m an American surrounded by Americans. What was I thinking?
If The Queen or the Prime Minister were Estuary English-dropping any t’s (making “butter” sound like “buh-err”) or turning “l’s” into “w’s,” (making “milk” sound like “mewk” and “will you” sound like “w-i-w you”), I didn’t catch them. Except I did think I once heard Tony say, “peo-puw” instead of “peo-pul” (people) – but I also kept forgetting to listen while I got caught up in the show.
However, if you plan to see the movie, perhaps you can do a better job than I did, and then let me know – especially re Tony and his staff. Also Cherie Blair, Tony’s wife, was portrayed as a strong anti-monarchist – did she use Estuary English at all? Again, I forgot to listen.
Still, I did notice other things, like:
Wow! Helen Mirren really captured The Queen as I imagine her. I remember hearing The Real Queen give her belated Princess Diana condolence speech – and remember now how high her voice sounded, and that I hadn’t expected it to sound that way. It was like her words were going through a sieve, morphing into shrill little bubbles en route from her mouth to the air. Helen Mirren captured that sound – which I think was probably due to nerves, because otherwise in the movie, the Queen didn’t sound so tinny. (Overly proper, stiff, etc. – but not tinny.)
The other thing that I remembered about seeing The Real Queen give that condolence speech was that she looked JUST LIKE our former housekeeper, Dorothy, who lived with us almost forever. Dorothy had the exact same hair-do as the Queen, the same pale complexion, full cheeks, and short stature. As I stared at the TV that day, I had a Separated At Birth moment, where it looked like Dorothy, not the Queen, was addressing the world. But how different Dorothy seemed with that accent! And how different the Queen would have seemed if she had spoken like a woman who grew up in McHenry, Illinois!
Which brings up the next Posting:
Do accents make people or vice-versa?
Think about it: whose accent would you want to have? Would that change you? Stayed tuned.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Double-Izzers
What, you may wonder, is a double-izzer? For one, it’s a term made up by Paul (though he may not be the only one to have thought of it, he’s the only one I know who uses it), a recent acquaintance who requested this posting, and who brought the whole matter to my attention.
But what IS a double-izzer you ask.
Well, before I tell you, try saying the word again without looking at the spelling and you may just guess: the thing IS, IS we say often these two same words together, sometimes pausing (and using a comma) and sometimes just running them together (sans comma), without even realizing how it sounds.
Have you ever heard, or said yourself, “The thing is, is that …” or “What the problem is is that …” For more double-izzer options, you can substitute “thing” or “problem” with “point” or “reason.”
Paul googled and printed out a Linguist blog from January 1992, a Disc entitled, “Is, is” – so this is not a new issue. Different bloggers on that early Internet file pointed to studies dating to the 1970’s, and to hearing/using the construction as far back as the 1950’s. Paul himself said he currently notices double-izzers all the time, particularly on TV interviews with politicians … which brings to mind the most famous (or infamous) double-izzer of them all:
The one from Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial when he said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Of course, that context and usage is entirely different from the run-of-the-mill doubler-izzers but it’s still up there for sheer originality and quest for precision.
So the question is: Is this “is, is” construction “correct?” That depends on the meaning of the word, “correct.” One of the university linguists from January 1992 refers to a 1989 paper whose author, David Tuggy, says that “is, is” is (hey—a triple izzer!) an example of an ungrammatical construction becoming technically grammatical: that by making “What the problem is” the subject, and the double “is” the verb, the sentence is technically all right. (I think that’s the gist of it). But whether or not it’s a GOOD sentence is another question.
I think the problem is that using double-izzers is along the lines of adding “um” and “uh” to give you more time to think. Consider: “The problem is, (count: one, two) is that …” It could even be related to the “like-you know” stalling-for-time structure: “The problem is like, you know, that I …”
Paul and others would probably be less bothered by clean, orderly, and clear-thinking single-izzers as in, “The answer is that (for example) you don’t have to say, ‘WHAT the answer is, is;’ you can simply delete the “what” and de-glom the initial “is” and instead just head right for the point.
The thing is, is that that’s sometimes easier said than done.
But what IS a double-izzer you ask.
Well, before I tell you, try saying the word again without looking at the spelling and you may just guess: the thing IS, IS we say often these two same words together, sometimes pausing (and using a comma) and sometimes just running them together (sans comma), without even realizing how it sounds.
Have you ever heard, or said yourself, “The thing is, is that …” or “What the problem is is that …” For more double-izzer options, you can substitute “thing” or “problem” with “point” or “reason.”
Paul googled and printed out a Linguist blog from January 1992, a Disc entitled, “Is, is” – so this is not a new issue. Different bloggers on that early Internet file pointed to studies dating to the 1970’s, and to hearing/using the construction as far back as the 1950’s. Paul himself said he currently notices double-izzers all the time, particularly on TV interviews with politicians … which brings to mind the most famous (or infamous) double-izzer of them all:
The one from Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial when he said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Of course, that context and usage is entirely different from the run-of-the-mill doubler-izzers but it’s still up there for sheer originality and quest for precision.
So the question is: Is this “is, is” construction “correct?” That depends on the meaning of the word, “correct.” One of the university linguists from January 1992 refers to a 1989 paper whose author, David Tuggy, says that “is, is” is (hey—a triple izzer!) an example of an ungrammatical construction becoming technically grammatical: that by making “What the problem is” the subject, and the double “is” the verb, the sentence is technically all right. (I think that’s the gist of it). But whether or not it’s a GOOD sentence is another question.
I think the problem is that using double-izzers is along the lines of adding “um” and “uh” to give you more time to think. Consider: “The problem is, (count: one, two) is that …” It could even be related to the “like-you know” stalling-for-time structure: “The problem is like, you know, that I …”
Paul and others would probably be less bothered by clean, orderly, and clear-thinking single-izzers as in, “The answer is that (for example) you don’t have to say, ‘WHAT the answer is, is;’ you can simply delete the “what” and de-glom the initial “is” and instead just head right for the point.
The thing is, is that that’s sometimes easier said than done.
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