Correct language was A Must in my family as I was growing up. Subject matter was not so important, which is why our dinner discussions frequently centered on school lunch. Other families may have been discussing Vietnam or the break-up of the Beatles, but we heaped our passions on things like the vile cafeteria ravioli, served on plastic, pale yellow platters in the years when canned Spaghettios were all I otherwise knew of “pasta.” At our dinner table, no subject was too minor. But godfahbid you say something ungrammatical, like, “to Tom and I” and talk would instantly come to a standstill, while Mom and Dad detonated from opposite ends of the table:
Dad (fork clattering to plate, hand over heart): “Oh! Not Tom and IIIIII!” while Mom (fork clutched in midair while she leans into the table): “You mean, Tom and MEEEEEEE!” Confusing when to use “me,” “him” or “her” (object pronouns) instead of “I,” “he,” and “she” (subject pronouns) was an offense of such order that my sisters, brother and I (note that I did not say, “me, my sisters and brother”) mastered the rule fairly quickly -- so it’s not like the above example occurred more than once, but there were many other pitfalls we all fell into, with much the same reactions.
Now, many years later, one of my language-conscious sisters has asked me to address the Myself Misuse. That is, why people, particularly well-educated people, use “myself” instead of “I” or “me,” in sentences like “Jessie, Tom and myself are giving the presentation;” or, “He offered to talk to Julie and myself.” Yes, ouch. (There is also, by extension, Yourself Misuse, as in: “Hey, how are you?” “Fine, and yourself?” where a simple, “Fine and you?” would be fine.)
A multi-degreed history professor of mine at my Distinguished College was the first Myself Misuser I ever encountered, which is a perfect example of how the Myself Misusers tend to be highly educated. So why the misuse? In my opinion (as opposed to any research or fact), it’s because these Highly Educated People are aware that there are tricky pronouns out there that occasionally, if used inappropriately, cause people like Mom and Dad to burst; and yet these Misusers are not grammatically inclined enough to wonder how and why their usage might be wrong. Besides, they might think “Myself” has an air of importance about it, its two syllables lording it over the humble “I” or “me.” Say it: “Myself” – nice the way it stretches out, a veritable linguistic life raft AND such a seemingly neutral way to sidestep any potential pronoun landmines. What they don’t realize is that their “solution” is just creating one more landmine.
Isn’t it just perfectly natural to say, “I cut myself!” or “She bought herself a new dress,” or “You should consider yourselves lucky,” and so on. Those are the right uses for these –self or –selves words, called “reflexive pronouns.” They can also be used for emphasis: “Can’t you go there yourself?!” or, listen to any two-year-old: “I do it myself.”
What’s happening in all those examples is that the reflexive pronouns are referring to the subject of the sentence:
YES: Jim likes to take long walks by himself.
NO: Jim took a walk with Bob, Emily and myself.
YES: Jim took a walk with Bob, Emily and me.
NO: Bob, Emily and myself are here to talk about grammar.
YES: Bob, Emily and I are here to talk about grammar.
Now that you are Highly Educated about this matter, you can either spread the word against Myself Misuse – or not. I promised myself that I would try, but you, ahem, can suit yourself.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Sunday, September 17, 2006
"It’s like, you know…"
When I told my California friend, Angela, about my language blog, she immediately requested a blog on why people say, “like” so much. You know what I mean – not the, “I like popcorn,” kind of like, but the, “He was like, so amazing,” kind of like.
I tried googling for some information but Google was not with me on this one. There is probably some English doctorate out there, or some witty publication on the insertion of “like” into everyday speech but as neither of those is at my fingertips this Sunday morning, I’m going to have to, like, wing it. I would certainly welcome insights from anyone reading this -- including you, Angela! (Not her real name but she knows who she is).
Here’s something to think about while you read: Is LIKE an intensifier? i.e., a word (like “really” and “very”) that has little meaning except that, spoken with the proper pause accompanying it, it helps the speaker accentuate the next word. For ex: “He was, like, so gorgeous!” or “My boss is, like, so nice.” (In those cases, the pause is shown with a comma. But other times people say “like” without pausing: “There were like 24 people in my psych class.” That’s a case when a listener might ask, “Were there LIKE 24, or exactly 24?” and the speaker usually means exactly. When spoken like that though, I leave the comma out.)
Which makes me wonder: Has LIKE become a verbal crutch – like saying, “umm,” which gives you time to think while you’re still talking? Or is it a type of tic, or “verbal flavoring,” added unthinkingly, like salt to a hamburger?
Many people think the whole “like,” “you know,” and making-statements- sound-like-questions thing, as in, “So I went to the mall?” started with Moon Unit Zappa’s “Valley Girl” in 1982, which Moon Unit wrote and recorded at age 14 (very cool). But that would be like, totally wrong – because the culture had to already exist so she could make fun of it. (Check out the lyrics, though– they’re hilarious):
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/snd/valleygirl.html
By now Moon Unit has grown from Valley Girl age to that of the Ladies Who Lunch (I doubt she’s one of them, but she must be pushing 40), and “like” is still with us. I know I say it, as do my husband and friends – but we say it so naturally that I hardly hear it; still, I notice it in my teenagers and their friends, who say it as much as, or more than, any Valley Girl ever did.
My guess is that “like” and “you know” started with the Drug Culture (should that be capitalized??) in the late 1960’s, perhaps as hippies tried to describe to their friends the effects of the various substances they were on: “It … it … it like blows your mind, man,” or some other articulate description like that. (Even “blow your mind,” Angela told me, was a new expression back then -- also probably derived from the drug culture.)
Since I was still in middle school (or junior high, as it was called back then), I am not giving you an “I was there” report. But at least I was around. I know for sure (or “fer sher,” as Moon would say) that my parents’ friends, and even the milkman (yes, I remember having one—he and my parents were all part of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation); even the kids on TV (Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, etc.) did not say “like” or “you know” or even “for sure.”
Mom and Dad, who would not play bridge with Lorelei Gilmore’s snobby parents in the Gilmore Girls but would certainly know them from the Club, were the ones who brought this strange speech habit to my attention: I was at Northwestern, mid-to-late 70’s and it was during my weekly (or maybe not even that regular), pre-cellphone-era phone call home that they both interjected, “Louise! You’ve got to stop saying, ‘like’ and ‘you know!!’” I was like, confused, you know? What were they like talking about?
When I got off the phone I asked my roommate, Barb, to try to talk without saying “like” or “you know” and after a few attempts, we burst out laughing because neither of us could do it. I started listening for it in other people and it was definitely, completely pervasive. Insidious? Viral? Or just … language? Northwestern students, Barb and me included, were mostly from the Midwest – far from California’s Valley Girl culture – so there was not a direct influence. (And the varying Midwestern accents heard on campus were the stuff that Henry Higgins could sink his phonological teeth into). (But that’s another blog).
Anyway, by the time I got to New York in the 80’s, the “you know” element was less noticeable, but “like” in heavier use than ever. By then the verb, “to say” had a new alternative – “to go,” so you could say something like, “So I went like, ‘What did you say?’ and “She went like, ‘Nothing! I was like, so confused I like, didn’t like know how to react.”
Cut to 20+ years later, to last week, in fact, when Angela attended a reading at a new Borders store with an Internationally Best-Selling Crime Writer and Essayist. known for his minimalist way with words. Apparently even he had not escaped the “like” habit in speech: this could be due to his being 20 in 1968, and thus possibly among the first to start using “like” – even if not in the use cited earlier -- because the word is clearly catchy.
Still, maybe it’s time for a little LIKE Awareness. When The Author spoke at the reading, Angela said he said, “like” like every other word: “It was like” “I was like” and “She was like” and so on. That’s just so 21st century to have a famous, prolific and successful writer who’s still incapable of speaking without the L-word. It’s like … like, you know – well, I don’t, like, know – but …
I tried googling for some information but Google was not with me on this one. There is probably some English doctorate out there, or some witty publication on the insertion of “like” into everyday speech but as neither of those is at my fingertips this Sunday morning, I’m going to have to, like, wing it. I would certainly welcome insights from anyone reading this -- including you, Angela! (Not her real name but she knows who she is).
Here’s something to think about while you read: Is LIKE an intensifier? i.e., a word (like “really” and “very”) that has little meaning except that, spoken with the proper pause accompanying it, it helps the speaker accentuate the next word. For ex: “He was, like, so gorgeous!” or “My boss is, like, so nice.” (In those cases, the pause is shown with a comma. But other times people say “like” without pausing: “There were like 24 people in my psych class.” That’s a case when a listener might ask, “Were there LIKE 24, or exactly 24?” and the speaker usually means exactly. When spoken like that though, I leave the comma out.)
Which makes me wonder: Has LIKE become a verbal crutch – like saying, “umm,” which gives you time to think while you’re still talking? Or is it a type of tic, or “verbal flavoring,” added unthinkingly, like salt to a hamburger?
Many people think the whole “like,” “you know,” and making-statements- sound-like-questions thing, as in, “So I went to the mall?” started with Moon Unit Zappa’s “Valley Girl” in 1982, which Moon Unit wrote and recorded at age 14 (very cool). But that would be like, totally wrong – because the culture had to already exist so she could make fun of it. (Check out the lyrics, though– they’re hilarious):
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/snd/valleygirl.html
By now Moon Unit has grown from Valley Girl age to that of the Ladies Who Lunch (I doubt she’s one of them, but she must be pushing 40), and “like” is still with us. I know I say it, as do my husband and friends – but we say it so naturally that I hardly hear it; still, I notice it in my teenagers and their friends, who say it as much as, or more than, any Valley Girl ever did.
My guess is that “like” and “you know” started with the Drug Culture (should that be capitalized??) in the late 1960’s, perhaps as hippies tried to describe to their friends the effects of the various substances they were on: “It … it … it like blows your mind, man,” or some other articulate description like that. (Even “blow your mind,” Angela told me, was a new expression back then -- also probably derived from the drug culture.)
Since I was still in middle school (or junior high, as it was called back then), I am not giving you an “I was there” report. But at least I was around. I know for sure (or “fer sher,” as Moon would say) that my parents’ friends, and even the milkman (yes, I remember having one—he and my parents were all part of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation); even the kids on TV (Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, etc.) did not say “like” or “you know” or even “for sure.”
Mom and Dad, who would not play bridge with Lorelei Gilmore’s snobby parents in the Gilmore Girls but would certainly know them from the Club, were the ones who brought this strange speech habit to my attention: I was at Northwestern, mid-to-late 70’s and it was during my weekly (or maybe not even that regular), pre-cellphone-era phone call home that they both interjected, “Louise! You’ve got to stop saying, ‘like’ and ‘you know!!’” I was like, confused, you know? What were they like talking about?
When I got off the phone I asked my roommate, Barb, to try to talk without saying “like” or “you know” and after a few attempts, we burst out laughing because neither of us could do it. I started listening for it in other people and it was definitely, completely pervasive. Insidious? Viral? Or just … language? Northwestern students, Barb and me included, were mostly from the Midwest – far from California’s Valley Girl culture – so there was not a direct influence. (And the varying Midwestern accents heard on campus were the stuff that Henry Higgins could sink his phonological teeth into). (But that’s another blog).
Anyway, by the time I got to New York in the 80’s, the “you know” element was less noticeable, but “like” in heavier use than ever. By then the verb, “to say” had a new alternative – “to go,” so you could say something like, “So I went like, ‘What did you say?’ and “She went like, ‘Nothing! I was like, so confused I like, didn’t like know how to react.”
Cut to 20+ years later, to last week, in fact, when Angela attended a reading at a new Borders store with an Internationally Best-Selling Crime Writer and Essayist. known for his minimalist way with words. Apparently even he had not escaped the “like” habit in speech: this could be due to his being 20 in 1968, and thus possibly among the first to start using “like” – even if not in the use cited earlier -- because the word is clearly catchy.
Still, maybe it’s time for a little LIKE Awareness. When The Author spoke at the reading, Angela said he said, “like” like every other word: “It was like” “I was like” and “She was like” and so on. That’s just so 21st century to have a famous, prolific and successful writer who’s still incapable of speaking without the L-word. It’s like … like, you know – well, I don’t, like, know – but …
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Watch, Look, and See
One thing about teaching English to foreigners is that it sometimes makes you stop and wonder at your own language. Take LOOK , WATCH and SEE:
How do you explain the difference?
While separate words for “see” and “look” are found in most languages (Fr: voir and regarder; Sp: ver and mirar; Port: ver and olhar), the word – and whole notion -- for “watch” seems particularly Anglo-Saxon. Based on the small cluster of foreign language dictionaries on my bookshelf, it seems like the Latin languages simply make do with words and phrases they already have – such as the words for “attention,” “keep under vigil,” and “survey.”
Meanwhile, our words for “watch” and “wake” are both related to the Old English, “waeccan,” meaning to stay awake or keep vigil. The last names “Waite” and “Wakeman” come from the job of being “watchmen,” or the guards who kept awake and alert to enemies from outside.
In Norwegian and Swedish the word for “watch,” respectively, is “vakte” (pronounced vohkteh) and “vakt” (vahkt). In German, it’s “wachen” (vahken); in Dutch “waken” (vahken) means both “wake” and “watch.”
So it seems that WATCH, in addition to SEE and LOOK tips the scales of confusion for my students -- even for my German and Swiss students because they “see” TV (in German), instead of “watching” it.
I first noticed this confusion last spring, when I taught some young Argentine sisters how to play the card game, Go Fish; as they fumbled awkwardly with their cards, they would say to each other, “Don’t see! Don’t see!” This week, a Japanese investment banker said he needed to “watch his Blackberry;” a 9-year-old Swiss boy asked me to “watch” an illustration in a book; and a French actuary (he figures out insurance premiums) said he planned to go home and “see” TV.
My reaction to those first two mistakes was to expect the Japanese man’s Blackberry to have words jumping around in the message space, and for the Swiss boy’s illustrated bear to pop up from the page. I expected something to HAPPEN. So I am now newly aware that when we WATCH something, we expect that something to move or do something. It also means that the person doing the watching is standing or sitting, either observing or waiting for action somewhere near -- which perfectly explains why we “watch TV.”
“So,” the French actuary concluded when I explained all this, “ze people who watch TV are ‘watchers’?”
” No,” I admitted, “they’re “viewers.”
Meanwhile, the little Argentine girls now say, “Don’t look!” when they play cards (and, more recently, Clue).
LOOK requires a certain element of involvement – focus or attention, however brief – whether to look at another person’s cards and cheat at a game or to fasten one’s attention to something, as when someone shouts, “LOOK!” But it’s funny how quickly we can switch from “looking” at something to “watching” the very same thing:
“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No -- ” It may be Superman or just some geese (once so mysterious to me when they used to migrate), but it’s perfectly normal to say, “I looked up and watched (whatever it may be) fly out of sight.” Which means that a split second after you looked and figured out what it was, your mind sat back and just took it in. SEE?
SEE, used like, “Get it?” or “Understand?” requires a bit of perception –SEEING is one of the five senses, after all. (And “seers” are ones who have extra sensory perception.) Still, it seems like the most general of the WATCH-LOOK-SEE contingent. “I see you.” “Did you see that?!” “I haven’t seen you in so long.” Or William Steig’s immortal, “CDB.”
How do you explain the difference?
While separate words for “see” and “look” are found in most languages (Fr: voir and regarder; Sp: ver and mirar; Port: ver and olhar), the word – and whole notion -- for “watch” seems particularly Anglo-Saxon. Based on the small cluster of foreign language dictionaries on my bookshelf, it seems like the Latin languages simply make do with words and phrases they already have – such as the words for “attention,” “keep under vigil,” and “survey.”
Meanwhile, our words for “watch” and “wake” are both related to the Old English, “waeccan,” meaning to stay awake or keep vigil. The last names “Waite” and “Wakeman” come from the job of being “watchmen,” or the guards who kept awake and alert to enemies from outside.
In Norwegian and Swedish the word for “watch,” respectively, is “vakte” (pronounced vohkteh) and “vakt” (vahkt). In German, it’s “wachen” (vahken); in Dutch “waken” (vahken) means both “wake” and “watch.”
So it seems that WATCH, in addition to SEE and LOOK tips the scales of confusion for my students -- even for my German and Swiss students because they “see” TV (in German), instead of “watching” it.
I first noticed this confusion last spring, when I taught some young Argentine sisters how to play the card game, Go Fish; as they fumbled awkwardly with their cards, they would say to each other, “Don’t see! Don’t see!” This week, a Japanese investment banker said he needed to “watch his Blackberry;” a 9-year-old Swiss boy asked me to “watch” an illustration in a book; and a French actuary (he figures out insurance premiums) said he planned to go home and “see” TV.
My reaction to those first two mistakes was to expect the Japanese man’s Blackberry to have words jumping around in the message space, and for the Swiss boy’s illustrated bear to pop up from the page. I expected something to HAPPEN. So I am now newly aware that when we WATCH something, we expect that something to move or do something. It also means that the person doing the watching is standing or sitting, either observing or waiting for action somewhere near -- which perfectly explains why we “watch TV.”
“So,” the French actuary concluded when I explained all this, “ze people who watch TV are ‘watchers’?”
” No,” I admitted, “they’re “viewers.”
Meanwhile, the little Argentine girls now say, “Don’t look!” when they play cards (and, more recently, Clue).
LOOK requires a certain element of involvement – focus or attention, however brief – whether to look at another person’s cards and cheat at a game or to fasten one’s attention to something, as when someone shouts, “LOOK!” But it’s funny how quickly we can switch from “looking” at something to “watching” the very same thing:
“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No -- ” It may be Superman or just some geese (once so mysterious to me when they used to migrate), but it’s perfectly normal to say, “I looked up and watched (whatever it may be) fly out of sight.” Which means that a split second after you looked and figured out what it was, your mind sat back and just took it in. SEE?
SEE, used like, “Get it?” or “Understand?” requires a bit of perception –SEEING is one of the five senses, after all. (And “seers” are ones who have extra sensory perception.) Still, it seems like the most general of the WATCH-LOOK-SEE contingent. “I see you.” “Did you see that?!” “I haven’t seen you in so long.” Or William Steig’s immortal, “CDB.”
Sunday, September 10, 2006
"Famously"
The British are different from you and me: not just because they have cooler
accents (an American bias or personal opinion?) but because of their strange
use of adverbs ending in ly . Here are 3 examples from the Financial Times
of Tuesday, September 5; plus one from today’s ABC News webpage out of
London (all single and double quotation marks around specific words are my own):
Frontpage caption describing a Japanese Internet executive on trial: “a
self-made millionaire who “famously” never wore a tie;”
Page 13, describing an Austrian economist: “Mr (sic) Bernanke is “famously”
a student of the Great Depression …”
Page 23, and switching to a different adverb: “Starbucks … wants “massively”
to increase the number of coffee shops …”
Finally, from ABC’s Hilary Brown (whose “famous-famously “usage in the same
line also slipped past her editor) in, “What Princess Diana’s Butler Saw: He
describes the ‘famous’ White House dinner where she ‘famously’ danced with
John Travolta …”.
Get the picture? My teenaged kids talk a little like that: “I “totally” want
to see that movie,” or “She got “majorly” depressed when she saw her test
scores,” (the latter being from the American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, c 2000), but the dictionary makes clear that this is
slang.
What makes this usage, British or American, so slangy is that the words
really don’t make any sense technically or grammatically; it’s the type of
nonstandard speech you would expect from teens but not from the established
organizations quoted. How can a person BE famously, or WANT massively?
Shakespeare must be horrendously rolling in his grave.
accents (an American bias or personal opinion?) but because of their strange
use of adverbs ending in ly . Here are 3 examples from the Financial Times
of Tuesday, September 5; plus one from today’s ABC News webpage out of
London (all single and double quotation marks around specific words are my own):
Frontpage caption describing a Japanese Internet executive on trial: “a
self-made millionaire who “famously” never wore a tie;”
Page 13, describing an Austrian economist: “Mr (sic) Bernanke is “famously”
a student of the Great Depression …”
Page 23, and switching to a different adverb: “Starbucks … wants “massively”
to increase the number of coffee shops …”
Finally, from ABC’s Hilary Brown (whose “famous-famously “usage in the same
line also slipped past her editor) in, “What Princess Diana’s Butler Saw: He
describes the ‘famous’ White House dinner where she ‘famously’ danced with
John Travolta …”.
Get the picture? My teenaged kids talk a little like that: “I “totally” want
to see that movie,” or “She got “majorly” depressed when she saw her test
scores,” (the latter being from the American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, c 2000), but the dictionary makes clear that this is
slang.
What makes this usage, British or American, so slangy is that the words
really don’t make any sense technically or grammatically; it’s the type of
nonstandard speech you would expect from teens but not from the established
organizations quoted. How can a person BE famously, or WANT massively?
Shakespeare must be horrendously rolling in his grave.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
"Good Paying" Jobs
Now we all are aware that either George Bush hasn’t quite mastered the English language yet, or his handlers may at least want to make us think that (just google any of the hundreds of “bushisms” sites ); I spotted a mere grammar mistake (not a whole mangled phrase for once), but an annoying one for the person in charge of the free world in the local (free) "amNewYork" newspaper on Sept. 5, when the President referred to people having “good paying jobs.”
WHY can’t people have good paying jobs?
Because “good” is an adjective and adjectives describe nouns or pronouns. So, yes, you can have a GOOD job. But “paying” is an adjective describing “job,” and “good” is an adjective modifying paying – which you can’t have. Adjectives don’t modify other adjectives: That’s the adverb’s department. So you have to have WELL-paying jobs. Or jobs that pay well. Or, avoiding the whole adjective-adverb quandary, jobs that pay a decent salary.
Question: Is it that Bush, educated at Andover, Yale and Harvard, WANTS to sound less polished so he purposely says stuff like that? Back when Bush went to elementary and prep school, grammar was still part of the curriculum. Is he flaunting his bad grasp of language to get back at his obviously polished parents? Does Bush think a folksy, ungrammatical charm is going to make him look better to the masses?
WHY can’t people have good paying jobs?
Because “good” is an adjective and adjectives describe nouns or pronouns. So, yes, you can have a GOOD job. But “paying” is an adjective describing “job,” and “good” is an adjective modifying paying – which you can’t have. Adjectives don’t modify other adjectives: That’s the adverb’s department. So you have to have WELL-paying jobs. Or jobs that pay well. Or, avoiding the whole adjective-adverb quandary, jobs that pay a decent salary.
Question: Is it that Bush, educated at Andover, Yale and Harvard, WANTS to sound less polished so he purposely says stuff like that? Back when Bush went to elementary and prep school, grammar was still part of the curriculum. Is he flaunting his bad grasp of language to get back at his obviously polished parents? Does Bush think a folksy, ungrammatical charm is going to make him look better to the masses?
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