Band of Brothers, Household Words, and the Immortal St Crispin's Day Speech

“All things are ready if our minds are so.” — Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3, 

Wm. Shakespeare

October 25, 2015 -- tomorrow -- marks the 600th anniversary of a battle between the English and the French over a territorial dispute in northern France at a place called Agincourt. It was there that the scrappy but loyal English army — crazily outnumbered by the French armored knights — managed to pull off one of the most unlikely military victories of the Hundred Years War. Some 200 years later, William Shakespeare took this moment as the basis of his play, Henry V, and wrote the St. Crispin’s Day speech, one of the most inspirational speeches of all time.

For me, all this might have been lost without the movie, Henry V, made in 1989, or almost 400 years after the play came out; it stars the English actor-writer-director Kenneth Branagh as the 27-year-old King Henry V. This was perhaps King Kenneth’s finest hour:

In the film, King Henry rallies his troops moments before battle. It is October 25, 1415 and the sick, disheartened English soldiers are well aware of the 5-1 strength of the French army; Henry overhears his cousin, a noble named Westmoreland, wishing for more men to help their cause. The king responds, turning this wish around in a speech that captures each man’s desire for honor, glory, espirit-de-corps, and the chance that their names (i.e., his and some nobles’s but, whatever) would go down in history:

“Then will our names, 

Familiar in their mouths as household words*,

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, 

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester

Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red …

(*The phrase, “household words” originated with that line.)

The real Battle of Agincourt fell on the English holy day of St. Crispin/Crispian, which commemorates twin Christian martyrs who died on October 25 circa 296. In his speech, Henry uses this coincidence, saying, “This day is call’d the feast of Crispian,” adding that whatever soldier outlived the day’s battle would thereafter “stand a-tiptoe” when the day was named; and that every year on St. Crispin’s Eve any veteran of this battle would feast his neighbors and roll up his sleeve to show his scars, saying, “These wounds I had on Crispin’s Day.”

As King Henry nears the end of his speech, he makes every soldier feel privileged to be there, to be part of this special corps, saying:

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers …” 

But before I say how the line “band of brothers” has been immortalized in books and film, let’s first focus on the word “happy:”

King Henry is hardly calling his soldiers “merry” or “lighthearted” at that moment. The word “happy” is, like many adjectives in English, formed from a  noun with a “y” as a suffix. We see this in words like rainy, windy, salty, smelly, etc. Some words need a double-consonant before the y, like sunny, funny, skinny, etc., and “happy” falls into that bunch. 

The noun form, “hap,” by way of Old Norse, means “luck,” just as someone without luck is “hapless.” Meanwhile, “happy” has evolved to mean “content,” and is associated more with feelings of pleasure than luck. Of course, happy and lucky are often related, but the two are distinct as well. In any case, I think Shakespeare’s King Henry meant that his band was “lucky” to be together that day — a subtlety that adds a little more meaning (and sense) to the moment. 

As for “band of brothers,” this phrase has lived on — from Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson’s Battle of the Nile in 1798 to the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks HBO series, “Band of Brothers,” based on the 1992 Stephen Ambrose book of the same name. Just as King Henry implied in his speech, a band of brothers today still means a close-knit group of fighting men.

And the speech works wonders on King Harry’s troops: Click on the link below, which starts just prior to the speech, to hear it for yourself — but don’t click off as the band of brothers cheer; instead, wait until after the messenger brings word of the advancing French army and the once-complaining cousin says he’s ready to single-handedly take them on. You just might find yourself a-tiptoe and bellowing a hearty, “Huzzah!”

What I really want to toast today, this 600th anniversary of Agincourt’s savagery and mayhem over land titles and kingly pride, is the silver lining: a speech whose heart and soul can give hope to any of us with heavy odds to fight and the guts to stay the course — and win.

The speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Ulz-Qwnx8

#Stcrispinsday #shakespeare #bandofbrothers #henryV #battleofagincourt 

Pandering with Hillary’s God-Given Potential

At last week’s Democratic Debate Hillary finally showed herself as confident and natural, something the American media — and voters — waited for years to see. It may have been a performance, but it seemed real enough — except for a little linguistic crack in her veneer of confidence, and I want to give Hillary a tip: 

Ditch the words, “God-given potential.” 

What’s so wrong with those words? you might wonder. For one thing, no one says “God-given potential.” Usually “potential” is enough; if need be, we might add, “such potential,” or “enormous potential.” But “God-given potential” is just not natural — and thus, the crack in Hillary’s new natural persona. She’s pandering.

That pretentious word pair rang false each time Hillary said it, and she said it not just once, but three – three --  times, throughout the debate. It was excessive, shameless wording that targeted the religious, those wanting some sort of sign that Hillary is a woman of faith. What they heard sounded more like a golden calf.

In his “I Have A Dream” speech Martin Luther King ended with “God Almighty, we’re free at last!” And in that case, the usage was integral to his entire message. But that was over half a century ago. These days, it’s all about the polls and getting support from anywhere, any group. But I thought it was the Republicans who had the Super-Pac with the word, “God.”

Hearing Hillary go all-fake for a few (god-given) potential extra votes might be smart politics, but it’s cynical. Even the Bible doth protest (remember Matthew 6:5 about not blurting out prayers on street corners?) George W pandered and wooed — and look where that’s led! (#teaparty)

The offending words first surfaced in Hill’s opening statement when she said that each child should have the chance “to live up to his or her God-given potential.” Ditto the second time (re the criminal justice system) and again referring to children “living up to their God-given potential.”

Why did I keep thinking she was going to say, “goddam potential?” Was it the way she drew out her Midwestern twangy, “Gahd –“?

The third time, toward the end of the debate, she said, “And I want to make sure every single person in this country has the same opportunities that he (Bill) and I have had, to make the most of their God-given potential.” 

That time, I laughed out loud. Again, I thought she was going to use the curse word. And I realized it’s because when we use (a lower-case) “god-given,” it’s actually in a negative way, as in: “Who says it’s your god-given right to …” or “She thinks she’s got this god-given ability to …”  It’s an emphatic and strategic usage, deployed to strengthen an argument. 

So, Hillary — if you are trying to use that word to name-drop your association with the Almighty to reach religious voters, please stop. Godfahbid you come off as false after all that practice sounding natural.

#Hillary #firstdemocraticdebate #godgiven #pander

Where Have You Been? vs. Where Were You? Explaining the Difference

I’ve been everywhere, man, looking for someone … searching for someone … Where have you been all my life?

A shout-out here to the pop singer, Rihanna, whose 2011 hit song, “Where Have You Been,” has provided, perhaps, a key to explaining when to say, for example, “I saw” vs “I have seen;” or, in Rihanna’s case, “Where have you been” vs “Where were you.”

Native speakers of English might not be aware of the difficulty foreign learners of English have in understanding the “have been” verb tense, grammatically known as the present perfect. This is because that tense is either rarely used, or simply does not exist in many languages, including French, Latin American Spanish and Portuguese, and German. In those languages, the tense known as the “simple past” (saw, had, played, did, etc.) usually does the job -- “Did you already see that movie?” -- with another form of assist from the present tense that translates as: “I wait for you since two hours!”  

When Rihanna belts out the chorus, “Where HAVE YOU BEEN (caps mine) all my life?” she should be asking a new-found love why he has not shown up until now. (Note: Do not use this whole song as a good example – just the chorus.) The idea of “now” is key in the present perfect: this tense expresses an idea rooted in the past – in this case, why wasn’t Mr. Right around, say, five or ten years earlier – and relates to the present. But the happy fact is, Mr. (or Ms.) Right is there at last – now. Rihanna, born in 1988, is currently 26 years old; her man, let’s say, is 29. “Where have you been all my life” is a happy question, because there is still plenty of time for them to be together.

On the other hand, if Rihanna sang, “Where WERE YOU all my life?” the story would suddenly change: the verb “were” is the simple past tense, meaning an action is over, completed, finished. The simple past tense makes it sound like Rihanna’s life is just about over, completed, finished; that maybe she’s now 99 years old and has discovered her true love at the very last minute. “Where were you all my life?” suggests that there is little or no time left to enjoy this relationship.

In a less dramatic context, let’s say your company has transferred you to New York from France for three years. At first you are so excited, thinking of all the places you want to see while in the United States and that being here for three years should give you plenty of time to explore. The reality is, work is time-consuming, and for one reason or another, your first year flies by with your never having left New York City. You go to a party and someone asks you, “How do you like the United States?” You reply:

WRONG: I like New York but I didn’t go anywhere else.

RIGHT: I like New York but I haven’t gone anywhere else.

The “right” response relates to now. Since you have only been in New York for one year out of three, you still have two years left to see the Grand Canyon, Washington, D.C., or lie on a beach in Miami.

The “wrong” response would only be correct for when, after three years, you are back in Paris and someone asks how you liked the United States. At that point, your time in the States is over, completed, and finished.

The “have done”/present perfect tense does not focus on when you do something – it just cares whether you have done it or are still doing it. The simple past tense is all about “when”: last week, a minute ago, the day you were born, and so on. So the sentence, “I have seen that movie” is perfect for when you and a friend are trying to pick a move to see. But “I have seen that movie last week” is wrong, because “last week” is over, so the correct verb should be “saw,” or “I saw that movie last week.”

Native English speakers never confuse their tenses in the above situation; however, there are times when they do mix the two, such as in, “Did you eat lunch yet?” (It will probably sound like “Djoo-weet lunch yet?”) That sentence, and similar usages, are common enough to have become standard English – and yet technically the question conflicts with the “rules” of each tense: “Did you eat” = some point in the past, but “yet” = “up until now.” The truth is, native English speakers typically do not know the rules behind these two tenses (and probably wouldn't care if they did). The decisive factor here is that it’s quicker to say “djoo-weet yet” than “have you eaten yet” and since speed and ease of saying things often (and in other languages, too) trump being “correct,” the two forms of past tense have found a certain amicable co-existence.

Has this helped you? If so, just ask Rihanna where she has been all your life!

Lie vs Lay vs #MileyCyrus

Andrea, from Los Angeles, wrote recently to ask if I had seen the letter (posted on multiple media sites) from “rock Indie heartthrob” Sufjan Stevens to Miley Cyrus. I thought I could guess the topic, but, no, he was not taking Miley to task for her famously outlandish twerking at the VMA Awards. Instead, it turned out to be perhaps the first charmingly suggestive fan letter ever disguised as a grammar lesson.

Stevens opened by pointing to Miley’s use of “lay” instead of “lie” in her current song, “#Get It Right.” A quick reading of the lyrics revealed worse defects than grammar (lack of subtlety, for one). But Stevens’s concern was this:

“I been laying in this bed all night long

Don’t you think it’s time to get it on”

“Miley,” Stevens said in the letter, “technically speaking, you’ve been LYING, not LAYING; (laying is) an irregular verb form that should only be used when there’s an object, i.e., ‘I been laying my tired booty on this bed all night long.’”

Stevens, a forgiving guy, says, “But don’t worry, even Faulkner messed it up.”

Now, I assume here that Stevens is referring to William Faulkner’s novel, “As I Lay Dying.” However, I think Stevens has this one wrong: Faulkner’s title suggests a past form verb tense, and since the past form of “lie” is “lay” then both the verb and tense are impeccable. Whatever.

Perhaps too much Miley on the brain got Stevens momentarily muddled, because he was soon grammatically back on track, pointing out that #Get It Right got the verb tense wrong: “Surely, you’ve heard of the Present Perfect Continuous Tense (I HAVE BEEN LYING in this bed all night long …)?” Here, Stevens is absolutely right, if a tad school-marmish given the context and nature of the song.

The present perfect continuous tense that Stevens cites is used when we want to convey an action started in the past that is still continuing. (“I’ve been waiting forever!”) What Stevens neglected to mention is that few Western languages have this tense – and English is unique among the Germanic languages it’s a part of to have it (thank you, 5^th century Celts!)

Oddly, Stevens stays away from this wonderful bit of arcane linguistic history when describing the present perfect continuous. Instead, he uses the tense as a jumping-off point for combining verb tense knowledge, as well as what emerges as his own Miley-mania, all in one:

“It’s a weird, equivocal, almost purgatorial tense, not quite present, not quite past, not quite here, not quite there. Somewhere in between. I feel that way all the time. It kind of sucks.” (Go, Sufjan! You’re clearly taking this tense seriously.)

Then he gets personal: “But I have a feeling your ‘present perfect continuous’ involves a lot more excitement than mine. Anyway, doesn’t that also sum up your career right now? Present. Perfect. Continuous. And Tense. Intense?”

Honestly, if grammar were made this exciting in school, perhaps teachers might consider teaching it (first, most teachers would have to learn it, since English grammar stopped being taught in American public schools in the 1970s). But a Sufjan Stevens grammar class could clearly be a high school favorite.

As Stevens brings his note to a heated close, he drops his grammar lesson but still manages to bring parsing and passion together:

“Girl, you work it like Mike Tyson. Miley, I love you because you’re the Queen, grammatically and anatomically speaking. And you’re the hottest cake in the pan.

Don't ever grow old. Live brightly before your fire fades into total darkness. XXOO Sufjan”

Language Lady thanks this Indie rocker grammar-guy for bringing “lay,” “lie,” #Miley, verb tenses, and even personal tension to our attention; after all, attention to grammar is, ideally, Present. Perfect (well, rarely, even among those who try). And Continuous.

ADDENDUM

More than one reader responded to the “Such,” “As,” and “Such as by” article with thoughts that had occurred to me early on, but got ruled out the more I researched the exact meaning of “such,” “such as,” and “such as by.” 

The feeling among these readers, who thoughtfully went through my post with a fine-toothed comb, was that “such as” and “such as by” are legitimate legal phrases and that in the given document, “such as by” implies that there are more out ways possible than the examples given, whereas “as by” implies only the given examples.

Their concern was that perhaps by tweaking the legalese the way I did, I might have also changed the meaning. Any opinions or considerations out there?

Such As, By, and Such as by

The Language Lady has started going through her mail, and will address readers' questions in the next few entries. FIrst is one from Daniel, a lawyer in California: 

Q. Hello Language Lady,

The basic question is whether one must say “such as by,” or is it equally acceptable to say “as by”?  That is, do you need the “such”?  Consider this sentence: 

“If the recipient of the disparaging communication cannot act on the injurious words, such as by reducing or withdrawing his bid on the property, then no tort occurs.”

Would that sentence be just as good if I said “. . . injurious words, as by reducing ….”? 

A. Hi Daniel,

Good Point!  It’s great to know there are grammatically aware lawyers out there who want to eliminate unnecessary words; and you’re right in detecting that there is something unhealthy about that sentence. But it’s not just “such.”

Let’s start by paring the phrase down to its subject-verb-object essentials:

“If recipient cannot act on words, such as by reducing or withdrawing …”

The problem is with “such as.” Look what happens when we take "such as" away:

“If recipient cannot act on the injurious words by reducing or withdrawing his bid on the property, then no tort occurs.” Using only “by” shows the means by which the recipient might take action. “Such as” is extraneous because the phrase itself goes with things, not actions. For example:

“I eat fruit, such as apples and bananas.” Here, “such as” specifies what kind of fruit (apples and bananas). We don’t say, “I eat fruit, such as by peeling apples and bananas.” 

That is basically what is going on in your document: “such as” is modifying “injurious words” while the little preposition “by” is showing how the required action should be taken; i.e., “reducing” or “withdrawing” the bid.

Sticking “such as” together with “by” is thus a bit like mixing oil and water – each has its special purpose but should not be used together.

Your suggestion to go with “as by,” deleting “such,” would render the pared-down version to: “If recipient cannot act on words, as by reducing or withdrawing his bid …”  Does that sound natural to you?

How about “as by” in a different context:

“She gets to work quickly, as by taking the subway or riding her bike.” It doesn’t work, does it? Right: we don’t need “as.” That sentence should be, “She gets to work quickly by taking the subway or riding her bike.” Just using “by,” is perfectly efficient in showing how she gets to work.

Language Lady will close “by” proposing another version for your document, “such as”: “If the recipient of the disparaging communication cannot act on the injurious words and neither reduces nor withdraws his bid on the property, then no tort occurs.”

“Me and My Friend” : Another Rule Bites the Dust

“It’s Sunday evening and me and my friend Ruth feel like walking.” This was the first sentence in a front-page article I found in this week’s “West Side Spirit,” a weekly neighborhood paper written about and by generally educated and informed Upper West Siders in New York.

As the article unfolded, it was clear that this sentence was not intended to be dialect or deliberately slang-y; it was a serious article, a thought piece about the fallen World Trade Center and the Freedom Tower that is rising in its place. The author’s use of “me and my friend Ruth” (yes, devoid of commas, too) was simply his natural language, the same one my own 20-something children often use among their peers.

I’ve been hearing this kind of talk for years. Between the late 1990s and well into the 2000s (and probably yesterday), I typically corrected my young and later teenaged children when they said things like, “Me and James are going uptown;” I forced them to say the standard English, “James and I are going uptown,” before they actually did go uptown. I was not being a grammar snob – just a mom who wanted her children to know how to speak the language that would most help them get a good job and not be considered illiterate at the interview.

Well, them days is over: the writer of the article and that sentence, a man named Adam Berlin, actually teaches writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Mr. Berlin’s use of that phrase stood out to me as a sign that the language is changing. It was like hearing President Obama say, “with Michelle and I” (as I noted in a February 2009 blog).

When there is no more social stigma to a particular grammar usage, the fight is pretty much gone; what remains is a certain lengthy transition period – for instance, most Baby Boomers and I will be taking the traditional standard to our graves. (Me and my friends just don’t talk like that!)

And though the writings of one teacher do not immediately constitute an entire generational change, this seems like an example of an established linguistic theory of language change -- like a verbal stone dropped into a river that ripples outward. This particular change has been coming for pretty much my whole life; yet, though baby boomers and Gen Xers rebelled about certain things (the Vietnam War, civil rights, nukes, whales etc.), we pretty much accepted being corrected on that particular grammatical point.

Grammar changes are coming rapidly these days. Since starting this blog seven years ago this month, I have modified my stance on two other big grammar changes that I have come to accept, rather than struggle to uphold: “lie vs lay,” (blog post Sept. 2012), for which there is now no real distinction between the two; and then with the above-mentioned, standard grammarian’s long-decried “with her and I (or other such combinations), which would traditionally have been “with her and me.”

Me and you are probably wondering what will be next.

Accents & Dipthongs

Dear Language Lady, 

   I’m from Chicago and have a passion for languages and accents. I have a Polish friend who has an accent when she speaks English. Even her “hello” sounds different. Is this because she hasn’t mastered the diphthong sounds of our vowels? I’ve heard that the vowels in other languages are pure and ours are diphthong-y. Is this what gives her (and other foreign English speakers) an accent?

- Liz from the WIndy City

  Dear  Windy City Liz,

   Interesting question! But the reason your friend has an accent is not because she is unfamiliar with diphthongs (i.e., elongated vowel sounds) – Polish has those too. The reason your Polish friend has an accent is because she is inserting her Polish vowels and consonants into American words. So before going into diphthongs, I will first explain about accents.

ACCENTS

   Foreign accents – whether it’s Americans speaking another language or vice versa -- are the result of placing your tongue in the same position for a foreign word as you would for your own language.  This goes for consonants as well as vowels. For example: when you’re at a bar and ask for a Dos Equis using your American alphabet sounds, see how gringo you sound? That’s because Spanish speakers pronounce the letter “d” with the “th” sound we use for “the.” So if you say “Dos” using the Spanish “d,” your tongue is then in position to produce their shorter, tighter “o;” add an “s” and – olé – you might even sound authentic (well, until you get to “Equis”).

     European, Asian, Uralic and many other languages tend to keep the tongue in the middle of their mouth to say their vowels – this gives the vowels a certain tension. Try this: while keeping your tongue between the roof of your mouth and your jaw, say ah-eh-eee-oh-oo. Now do the same using our vowel sounds, and notice how your tongue lies naturally in the lower jaw. This is what elongates our vowels and gives them that distinctly American sound.

     For a foreign-accented “hello,” you start with your h-sound + short “e” (heh) in the middle of your mouth, where it naturally produces a clipped “e” sound; this in turn leads to a light, clipped “l” sound tapped quickly on the roof of your mouth, and ends with a tense “o” in the middle of your mouth: Heh-Lohhh! An American, however, would start “hello” with the tongue in the lower jaw, tongue behind the teeth. The “h” + relaxed “e” produced from the lower jaw then leads the tongue to slightly flatten against the roof of the mouth for a heavier-sounding “l” and ends with the “o” elongating in the lower jaw. Hel-LO-o-hhh!

 THONGS (Monoph-, Diph-, and Triph-)

     Thong is an unusual word – not just because we now associate it with the smallest piece of lady’s underwear ever invented. It’s because it’s not only Anglo-Saxon, going all the way back, pre-950 A.D., to the Old Norse word, “thvengr,” meaning “strap,” or piece of material or animal hide to secure something (as the middle piece of a flip-flop or thong-style sandal holds your foot in place), but also a Greek word meaning “sound.”

     The “diphthongs” (pronounced either “dip”- or “dif”-thong) that the writer from Chicago referred to in the letter above literally means “two-sounds,” which many English vowels have, even in a word of only be one syllable, like “day” or “lie.”  When you say the names of our English vowels – A, E, I, O, U – you are saying diphthongs, whose two-sounds can be heard in words like play, rear, fried, boat, and cute. “How” and “low” are diphthongs, too. What each of those vowel sounds has in common is that it forces your mouth and/or tongue to move to complete the sound:

     If you say, “boat,” “how,” and “cute,” notice how, after the initial vowel sound, your lips round together to complete it. After saying the initial sound in “play,” “fried,” and “rear,” your tongue arches upward to make a type of “y”- sound, making these vowels two-sounded. “Pure” vowel sounds, or monophthongs (“monof”thongs), on the other hand, do exist in English – in words like “pop,” “lend,” “please,” and “love.” They’re called “pure” sounds because there is no glide from one sound to another, but are relatively fixed from the beginning to the end of the word. (So, a monophthong is literally FUN!)

     But English hardly has a monopoly on diphthongs; they exist in all major Western languages and in tongues as varied as Estonian, Mandarin Chinese, and Zulu. For instance, diphthongs are why it’s so hard for us English-speakers to say “oeil” or “loi” or “soeur” (eye, law, sister) in French. “Rey,” (king) and “hoy” (today) are among the many diphthongs in Spanish, just as “meu” (my) “oi” (hi) and “muito” (very) are in Portuguese. Say “München” or any umlauted-u or o in German, and you have a diphthong.

     Finally, there’s the “triphthong” – as in the English words, “fire,” “iron,” and “hour” --where a vowel glides from one sound to the next and to another (3 times), all effortlessly with native speakers. You probably never even realized just how acrobatic and articulate your vowel sounds are – but that same speed and subtlety in someone else’s language is elusive to adult non-native speakers; and that will always, to one degree or another, keep the world swimming in foreign accents.

  

Apropos of absolutely nothing

 “Apropos of absolutely nothing” is an expression my dad used to say to bring up a subject unrelated to anything we had been talking about earlier, usually at dinner. Being Midwestern, he pronounced the first word, “APP-r’poh,” and made so little effort to connect the word to its French origin, that I remember as a little girl thinking he had said, “APPLE-poe” and I liked the sound of it. “APPLE-poe of absolutely nothing.”  But I have never found a way to say it naturally, except within the family, and even then I would preface it with, “as Dad would say…”

     I am bringing up this subject a bit apropos of absolutely nothing itself; but it’s a lazy summer evening and I was reading a book just now when suddenly, the author used that very phrase. Since my father passed away many years ago, the words had an immediate Proustian effect: childhood dinners at home flashed before me, and since my place at the table was always next to Dad, I could hear him talking to me and smiling as he said it. (He always gave some facial cue when using a big phrase that could otherwise sound pretentious so as to share the joke – like when he would say the British “SHedule”, instead of our “SKedule”). Nor did he ever say “Apropos of nothing;” with him it, it was always “absolutely nothing,” with “absolutely” stretching out the phrase and further accentuating how irrelevant it was to the previous conversation chain. But until reading that line a few moments ago, I had never read it nor heard anyone else say it.

     “Apropos” was adopted into English from the French “a propos” back in the 17th century and by now should surely not be a stranger. But its Latin roots do tend to relegate it to the back shelf of our linguistic cupboard because it’s just not as useful as other Anglo-Saxon-based, everyday turns of phrase, like, “Oh – you know what?” or in the more current, “This is sort of random but …”

     But if you do decide to use the word “apropos” by itself, you should be aware that it is frequently confused with “appropriate,” according to Bee Dictionary’s “Common Errors in English.” A remark may be apropos (relevant) to a situation, but wearing a tuxedo to a formal event is “appropriate” -- not “apropos.” Or maybe some linguistically-minded chef will invent a new seasonal dessert: the Apple Poe.

Au Jour de Hui and Yesterday: How Language Changes

Being on the cusp of a new year, it seems somehow fitting to write about change – namely, language change. But street change also provides a fitting metaphor:

Like yesterday - I got out of the subway at 86^th St and Lexington and headed toward the new Panera Bread café to meet a student. As I walked, I had a sudden memory of 86^th St in the mid-1980s, when there were still some wooden storefronts and even a few German restaurants, which were then just remnants of an earlier era when the whole neighborhood was filled with German stores and families. Now 86^th St is lined with the sleek, glassy storefronts found in any mall in America. This change was slow but steady, but now, from a sidewalk view, the street looks completely different from 25 years ago.

Language, as discussed by Guy Deutscher in his enthralling book, “The Unfolding of Language,” is subject to similar forces of destruction and creation that keep all living languages -- not just English – fresh and well, even despite heavy resistance: preservationists support neighborhoods as well as language (where they’re called “prescriptionists”), each group trying its best to maintain tradition and standards – succeeding, at times, for a while.

But change usually finds its way in the end.

In “The Unfolding of Language,” Deutscher shows how all languages constantly seek shorter and easier ways for speakers to express themselves; this is a principal part of the “destructive” element of language, while the “creative” aspect comes up with substitutes for old words as well as new words and expressions.

Grammatical patterns and easy rules are also key to language. Grammar mistakes are usually the result of something not fitting a pattern or having a rule not well understood. Young children make natural mistakes, saying, for example, “I writed you a letter,” following a past tense pattern they have perceived. My blog, “Between you and I” (4/28/2009) is an example of people misunderstanding the pattern (“You and I” as subjects vs objects) and grammatical rule (using object pronouns after prepositions); my blog, Lie and Lay (9/3/2012) is another case of people confusing patterns and rules, both persisting for decades until they are finally reaching a critical mass of acceptance.

To some, those changes above are still cringe-worthy. That’s because they’re new; but the older changes are ones we don’t even realize were once cringe-worthy to a different generation. Take regular English plurals:  the simple “s” or “es,” are standouts of clear patterns and easy rules. But back in Old English, when such Germanic-rooted counterparts as “men,” “women,” “children,” “mice,” and “geese” were normal plurals, a simple “s” no doubt seemed barbaric to the older generation. The “s” on plural nouns was not chosen in an alphabet lottery; rather, it is the souvenir of the plural “a-s,” once reserved for certain types of masculine nouns; gradually, new generations of English speakers began tweaking the rule so it resembled the system we have today.

Then there are case systems, where words have certain endings to show their function in a sentence. Modern Russian, German, and Hungarian have case systems, as did ancient Latin and Old English. Many Latin scholars have considered the case system as the pinnacle of form and structure and its destruction as linguistic doom. But linguist Deutscher points out that the case system itself was created through the same forces of tearing-down and building-up to make things easier:

For example, a noun like “store” would once have been followed by words meaning “to the” to express movement toward it; the “to the” words are called “post-positions” because they came after the noun, as in “I’m going store to the.” Gradually, the post-position words just became the ending to the original noun, so that “store to the” became “storetothe” –  as in,“I’m going storetothe.” This so-called case ending was simply linguistic evolution – but even that ultimately proved too confusing for use in modern Latin languages:

French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese have all done away with case endings, putting “to the” before the noun (as a prepositional phrase); even so, each of those languages developed a new shortcut: “a + le” = “au” in French; “alla” in Italian; “al” in Spanish, or “a” (with an accent) in Portuguese.

Another example of word-shortening that Deutscher gave was the French word, “aujourd’hui,” which means “today.”  The “hui” part of the word was abbreviated from what Deutscher assumes was the pre-recorded Latin “hoc die,” which meant “on this day.” By the time Latin was recorded, the word for today had been shortened to “hodie,” which Old French gradually pared down to “hui.”

But what happened to “hui” is like what happens when I write a thank-you note: somehow, “thank you,” or “thanks” just seems too short, so I usually add a heart-felt “so much” for emphasis. In the same way, “hui” felt a little short to the Old French-speakers, who began adding a more emphatic “on the day of” to “today,” creating, “au jour de hui” that eventually became the single (though awkward, I think) “aujourd’hui.” But now even that consolidation has new layer – with the informal French term, “au jour d’aujourd’hui” or literally, “to the day of to the day of today,” meaning “right now” -- instead of the more general “now.”

The point is, as we near January 1, time brings change – for better or worse, but hopefully more often for the better. On today’s streamlined 86^th Street, there are perhaps many who wax nostalgic for the old German place over Panera Bread (though the Heidelberg’s still there, on Second Avenue). But few English speakers today would want to go back to the knotty boughs of Old English. Rather, let us see English as a steady, flowing work in progress. Cheers!

Lie vs. Lay

 Lie vs. Lay:
These verbs are now synonyms, though some grammarians may disagree.
The big debate: According to the dictionary …

“Lie” means to be in a flat or horizontal position; or to be in a state of inactivity, concealment, or expectation (like “to lie in wait”). This verb is “intransitive,” or has no object:  A person might lie down on a bed; a dog might lie outside on the grass; a book might lie on the shelf; a tiger might lie in ambush. When a person or thing is lying down, there is no other activity connected to the subject.

“Lay,” is the “transitive” one – or the one that takes a direct object and is comparable to the word “set” or “put”:  “I always lay my keys on the table near the door;” “I laid the baby down in the crib;” “the cat laid his ears back, ready to pounce.”  In the phrase, “to lay down the law,” the meaning is “to apply.”

WHY THE LANGUAGE CHANGE

See for yourself – and spot the confusion. Here are both words in base form, simple past tense, and past participle:

LIE    LAY    LAIN

Vs


LAY  LAID   LAID


In short, it's messy: the past tense of “lie” is the same as the base form of “lay.” To fuss over these verbs has proven too much for most people -- particularly when the meaning is clear whichever verb is used. Whether a lion is laying in a tree or lying in one, the mental image is the same.

It is now decades since I first started hearing “lay” instead of “lie,” and people who now use “lay” instead of the traditional “lie” are educated, intelligent people
-- so there is no social stigma. “Lie” and “lay” are either used interchangeably – or with a preference for “lay” – in movies and on TV, in books and magazines, digital and print, and in everyday conversation. Noted linguist John McWhorter validates the synonymous meaning of the two verbs himself in his book, “What Language Is” (2011). In effect, the distinction is now lost well enough so that both are correct and no cause for further debate.
 

The Letter ‘H’ vs. The French

Hi, hello, and how are you today?

The “h” sound – so basic to English – is such a difficult sound for people whose language does not include it. The French, for instance, have a tough time with it. Though the letter “h” is included in their alphabet and appears in many words (heure, honneur, herbe, etc.), the breathy English “h” is simply silent in French.

The letter H goes back to the ancient Egyptians and archaic Greeks (800-450 BC), with its symbol thought to represent a fence or posts. From there, it passed into Old Semitic, Phoenician, Etruscan, and Latin, where it had the “ha” sound we recognize in English. H was likewise originally pronounced in early Latin-based languages but then lost over time. In Spanish, however, other h-sounding letters emerged – like x, j, and sometimes g; in current Portuguese, “r” sounds like “h” – with Roberto becoming “Hoberto” and rock and roll, sounding like “hock and holl.”

H is also found in Germanic languages, which includes English, and that’s where we get most of our h-words, like “house,” “here,” “how,” and “heart.” There are just a handful of h-words in English that have a silent h -- hour, honor, honest, heir, and herb – as a nod to their French ancestry. 

Of all the letters in the alphabet, the H stands out for being dropped and added and dropped and added again, or not, in such a wide variety of languages -- from dialects of Dutch, Norwegian, and Belorussian to cockney English and northern Irish. The standard English name of the letter itself (“eitch” – not “heitch”) reflects this ambivalence, since the H in its name is silent.

When spoken, H is actually a sound called a “fricative,” a category including f, v, and z; fricatives are produced by partially blocking the flow of air from the vocal passage; this tends to limit the amount of air let out of the mouth, which is a good thing. Treating H as an exhalation -- a natural tendency among French speakers learning English -- can lead to trouble: for example, exhaling the H’s in the line, “In Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen” (from the musical “My Fair Lady”) could easily induce hyperventilation.

Still, until I started teaching, I had never paid much attention to H. I hand it to my French students whose difficulty pronouncing h-words has highlighted the hidden havoc this particular sound can wreak. My longtime French friend, Helene (pronounced sans h, as “ay-len”) was the first to tip me off to this trouble when she would say, “I’ll see you in “alf an how’r” (not “half an hour”).

That is, Helene could say the h-sound but tended to place it where it was not wanted and not say it where it was. Such difficulties have become more apparent the more I teach. A sentence like, “Amy will take her to the airport in half an hour,” often comes out as, “Haimy will take air to zee hairport in alf an how’r.”
When a sentence starts with a vowel, such as in the “Amy” sentence above, adding the initial H seems instinctive; thus, a sentence like, “It’s nice to see you,” becomes, “Heets nice to see you.” But practice, focus, and a smidgen of breath-holding helps modify that particular tendency.

On the other hand, when an English sentence is supposed to start with an h-sound, Francophones tend to drop it: with “How are you?” or “Here he is,” for example, typically come out as “Eere ‘e his” and “Ow har you?” (“How” is doubly tough for the French because not only does the “h” sound not exist in their language, neither does the “ow” sound -- not even to express pain: when we say “Ow!” they say “Ai!”)

This “h-reversal” could be caused by the speaker’s attempting to make the h-sound by exhaling -- but who ends up inhaling before the h-word and exhaling on the next word instead. Problems arise when equal weight is given to each word – thus, each word becomes its own special landmine, with all the arrhythmic English words and exhaling and inhaling. A sentence like, “I burned my arm on the oven the other night,” which does not even have an h-word in it, can still produce several: “Hi burned my harm on zee hoven zee hozzerh night.”

One method I use for helping students suppress the unwanted “h” is to have them group the words as we say them – with some words and syllables stressed and others barely acknowledged, which sounds like: AMy’ll take’erto th’AIRportin HalfnOWr. To start, I begin with two-word combinations where the end-sound of the first word, when extended, can connect to the initial sound of the second: “how-w-are;” or “my-y-y-arm.” The long “e” sound, when extended, produces a “y” sound that is easily linked: “he is” becomes “hee-y-izz;” “the other” becomes “theee-y-other.”

The same method helps with other word combinations where the second word starts with a vowel, such as: “looked at” which becomes “look-t-at;” or “tried it,” which becomes “try-d-it.” This is similar to the verbal liaisons that we are taught when learning French: “Comment-t-allez vous?” and “Vous-z-etes;” and when done in either language, the result is more natural-sounding and fluid.

There are sounds in every language that confound non-native speakers. That’s partly what creates a foreign accent – and is also an eye-opener for the native speaker who takes the mother tongue for granted. Given that, I will end this piece with a question I found on Google that made me laff-f-out loud. To the French speaker who answered, I give a huge, heartfelt, high-fiving, “Hurray!”

Why can't French people say the "h" sound?
Q. Apparently, the sound does not exist in their language? Why is this so? What the hell kind of language doesn't have the "h" sound? It's the sound that humans make when they inhale and exhale. They make that sound when they laugh. It's intrinsic to the human species, so how can anybody not be able to make that sound? Why do they say 'ockey and 'amburger?

A. French people CAN make the sound. You are very right, we make that sound when breathing and laughing. When you are writing a text in French and you want to write the laughing sound, you do use hahahahhhaha because that is how it sounds.

However, French is a very flowing language. If they pronounced the 'h's French would sound terrible, all broken up like English. They simply do not say the 'h' because it sounds ugly with the beautiful flowing sound of French.

If you know someone who speaks French, get them to say ''J'ai joué au hockey en mangeant un hamburger'' the way a normal French person would, without pronouncing the ''h''s of hockey and hamburger. Then get them to say the sentence again, pronouncing the ''h''s. You will see that it will sound like an ugly mixture of German and French if they do.

So that is why they don't say the ''h'' sound.

Source(s):
Fluent French speaker with a good lot of common sense.
2 years ago

All About VOUS

“What right do you have to speak to me?!”

The above question, when spoken in French, and in France, and uttered with just the right blend of arrogance and disgust, has the verbal power of a swift kick in the Gallic family jewels, so it is said.

A French student of mine told me that when she was a young girl and beginning to travel about in Paris on her own, she was to demand that phrase (but in French, of course) of any stranger who spoke to her: “De quel droit m’adressez-vous la parole?”

Here in the semi-egalitarian U.S., we generally feel everyone has “the right” to talk to everyone else; it’s what comes out of the mouth that matters. And most of the time, what comes out are benign comments about the weather; a request for directions or to take one’s picture; or the inevitable shared eye-rolling and related chit-chat when standing in line at the post office or grocery store.

Wherever people go in the United States, we are constantly speaking and sharing off-the-cuff opinions or remarks with people we don’t know and may never see again. Partly, that’s the American culture – but the relative informality of our language helps us: for instance, unlike in other languages, English has only one “you” and speakers are not required to consider social status or age difference or even gender.

The French culture, by nature more formal and social-conscious than American, uses its language to keep strangers at bay, beginning with the strategically loaded pronoun, “you.” French has two forms of “you”: one informal, “tu,” for showing closeness to friends, relatives, children, and pets; and one formal, “vous,” for showing respect and formality to authority figures and elders; using “vous” also helps maintain a certain social distance – between not-so-close friends, and of course, those of a different class. The two “you”s help keep relationships clear, you could say.

Meanwhile, in our English “one-You” world, keeping such distinctions clear is not always possible - or necessary – such as in post office lines, the grocery store, asking for directions or offering help, etc. We are a people who love to comment out loud, and having someone to share a complaint about the weather with tends to give us a boost. And not having to think about what “you” to use gives us freedom to have such random exchanges – what may sound personal to foreigners are really just ways we connect in a light, non-personal way.

Just the other day, I was eating a banana while standing at a corner on Park Avenue (New York being a capital of schmooze), waiting for the light to change. The man next to me said, “A banana! Now you’re making me feel guilty – I just ate a hot pretzel!” I just laughed and chided him on his nutritional habits before we both went our merry ways.

Practically speaking, this sort of exchange is impossible in French. To begin with, what “you” could you pick? You couldn’t use “tu” – using “tu” with any stranger who is not a child is insulting for the person being addressed; nor would “vous” be any good for a casual, light-hearted remark when the pronoun is specifically designed for formality and distance.

Between French people, it’s a linguistic oxymoron to have an informal exchange with someone (i.e., a stranger) you need to hold at a distance. A French friend agreed that making casual remarks to strangers is extremely awkward – and if attempted at all, would come off sounding like an emergency, or just simply weird.

A French airline pilot who often visits New York says he enjoys hearing Americans share little remarks with each other when on the street or subway. “You are a country made from pioneers,” he said. “Your culture was formed by helping each other, and sharing. Ours was not.”

When a person walks into a store in Paris, “bonjour” (“good day”) is exchanged between customer and sales person. But in the US, sales people typical say, “Hello, how are you today?” This greeting, according to several college-age French exchange students in New York, both astonished and embarrassed them. “Why would a stranger want to know how am I doing? Only people I know well ask me how I am,” one of the students explained. 

Of course, there were times long ago when English was quite formal: in Shakespeare’s time and earlier, there were two forms of “you” – “thou/thee” for more poetic use as a single pronoun and spoken to family and close friends (as in, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”); the plural form, “you,” was the one used with strangers and authority figures. Over time, though, it was the less formal “thou” that got pushed out of everyday use, while the more formal “you” took over as the sole dominant form. Constant use dropped the formality of “you,” while “thou/thee” became perceived as formal, being used in only ceremonies, the Bible, and theater.

While today’s French may be much more informal than two hundred years ago, the rules regarding the use of “tu” and “vous” – and all the implications those rules represent – seem still very much in place. Thus, “vous” retains a strong hold in French manners – highlighting social distance and nuance in a way that Americans visiting France are generally excused for not understanding.

But see if you can find the “French” attitude in this English translation of a French joke:

A kangaroo walks into a café and asks for an espresso. He sits down at the counter, the barista gives him the espresso and the kangaroo pays 20 euros for the drink. The man next to him speaks up:

Man: Hello. How are you? (Bonjour. Comment allez-vous?)

Kangaroo: Fine … and you? (Bien...et vous?)
M: Pretty good. (Assez bien!)
K: But why are you talking to me? We don’t know each other. (Mais pourquoi m'adressez-vous la parole? On ne ce connaît pas!)
M: Well, it’s not every day a kangaroo comes into the café! (Bah, c'est que des kangourous comme vous on en voit pas souvent ici, dans ce bar!)
K: With espresso for 20 euros, that doesn’t surprise me! (Avec le café à 20 euros ça m'étonne pas!!)

If you caught the kangaroo’s line, “Why are you talking to me? We don’t know each other,” then you have grasped the essence of this blog. But just to make sure …

To fully test your new understanding of French street spontaneity (or lack thereof), try translating the following real-life dialogue between two random New Yorkers who don’t know each other. The setting is a chilly fall day that came after three warm days. A woman is walking along Madison Avenue, when a well-dressed man walking in the same direction speaks as he passes her:

Man: The one day I don’t wear a coat!

Woman (after turning to see that he is not crazy – just in need of a coat - says): Why not get a $5 scarf from the sidewalk vendor up the street?

Man: Good idea! Do you think beige would go?”

Woman: (Looking at his outfit) Perfect!

(The man stops at the table; the woman keeps walking.)

Now an imagined English version of the French, according to their cultural and linguistic parameters:

French man:

French woman:

If you realized that such an exchange could not ever take place, you are correct. The man is cold and under-dressed, but how could he possibly share this with a woman he does not know (and is not even interested in)? Words never even make it to his tongue.

For argument’s sake, though, let’s say the man starts to comment to the woman about the weather and how he should have worn a coat. The woman, suspecting he is either lecherous or crazy or both, lashes out, “De quel droit m’addressez-vous la parole?!”

The man slinks off to a café to warm up and finds himself sitting next to a kangaroo …

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.