It’s summertime, the livin’ is easy – right?
Well, it’s easy livin’ to some – but not to the poor semicolon, whose existence is fading as fast as the Polar Ice Cap but without a Live Earth Concert to protect it. (Witness the first line, above.)
The actual lyrics to the Gershwin brothers’ “Summertime” are, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.” The “and” between “summertime” and “the livin’” keeps the flow of the line going; it also links the first part of the sentence to the other.
There – did you see how I snuck in that semicolon?
A semicolon is perfect for when you have two related sentences without an “and,” “but,” or “or” to connect them; a semicolon tells you to give each related sentence equal attention – not just a comma’s worth of a pause – because a pause is sometimes just not enough:
Like in “Clueless” when Paul Rudd accuses Alicia Silverstone of driving through a stop-sign: “I totally paused!” she says in California-style self-defense. But, you see, a “pause” – whether on paper or on wheels -- is not the same as a more definite stop.
A semicolon between two sentences tells the reader that each part is sufficient to stand alone, but that there is a close relationship between the two parts that would get lost with a full-stop period. (A comma should not attempt to join two complete ideas – and I’ll get to that.)
In the excellent, humorous grammar book, “Woe Is I,” author Patricia T. O’Conner calls the semicolon “one of the most useful but least used punctuation marks,” and I have to agree. O’Connell also thinks people might be too intimidated to use semicolons, but I think that’s optimistic: (I put a colon there because a colon means, “now I’m going to elaborate.”) if people are thinking that semicolons intimidate them, then that means they’re at least thinking about semicolons. I don’t think most people even think about semicolons.
To those of us who remember watching “Leave It To Beaver” and “The Brady Bunch,” the semicolon probably dates back to some grammar lesson slept through years ago. Those born during the “Beaver” and “Brady Bunch” years probably did not even have a grammar class, so they now hardly recognize a semicolon’s existence -- except as a curiosity found in other people’s writing.
Willing as I am to accept that punctuation, like language, changes, losing the semicolon would indeed be a loss. Visually, semicolons carry more muscle than a comma. Commas don’t stop the flow – they simply regulate it, with changes of tone and pauses. Semicolons bring the flow to what O’Connell calls the “flashing red light” stage – a brief stop; they serve as connector-rods to strengthen a sentence.
The trouble is, people have found a way to live without them; but their writing suffers as a consequence. A semicolon is red meat, full of iron; a comma is lettuce – valuable, good for you, but light and somewhat flimsy, occasionally left to an author’s discretion or whim.
Transition words like “however,” “nevertheless,” and “anyway,” are always followed by a comma; commas separate asides, things that could also be put in parentheses; and commas, which are often forgotten in these cases, go before clauses beginning with “which.”
Commas also separate items in a list or series; but when that list already has commas and/or dashes in the items, use a semicolon. Like: Don’t forget to bring the popcorn, which I hid on the back shelf so no one would it eat before the picnic; the cream soda – mmmm; and a big blanket for the lawn.
Semicolons hold together two related sentences. A sentence, or “independent clause,” has a subject, a verb and a complete meaning. For example, “John reads” is a complete sentence, with a subject, verb, and complete meaning. Likewise, “Run!” is a full sentence, because it has all the elements of an independent clause: a subject -- in this case, an understood subject, which is “you;” a verb, “run;” and a complete meaning, which is along the lines of “You’d better get out of here fast!” In contrast, a clause like, “When you run” has a subject and verb but no complete meaning, so that is a “dependent” clause.
Newspapers articles tend to use periods, commas, and dashes. (We’ll get to dashes another time.) Semicolons are more often used in magazine articles and books. However, lately, in books or articles where there are plenty of properly placed semicolons, there are random paragraphs where they were left out. Either this is a dubious stylistic choice, or simply editorial neglect, I don’t know. For example:
*The book, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” is a perfect example of the spineless punctuation seen today. I could see if this were a list, like: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and semicolons are nowhere. But as it is, the title lacks the bite a nice semicolon would have provided.
See if you can find the missing semicolons in the following passages:
In Philippa Gregory’s, “The Other Boleyn Girl”: “Whenever I looked up the king’s eyes were on me, whenever I looked away I was conscious of his stare still on my face.”
In Nick Hornby’s “How To Be Good” the husband says to his wife over the phone, “Yeah. Molly’s here watching TV, Tom’s round at Jamie’s.”
And in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” a person quoted in an article in a Hogwarts newspaper says: “We’re not allowed to talk about it, don’t ask me anything.”
Moving away from literature and fixating on the warning on my cup of Barnes & Noble/Starbucks coffee, I see the following:
“Careful, the beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot.”
Now, why did the coffee-cup editor put a weak, little comma after a warning? An exclamation point, or at least a period, would have been more appropriate for preventing drinkers from burned fingers and potential lawsuits. Grammatically speaking, a full-stop would have been the correct choice too: “careful” is actually a command and thus an independent clause with an understood subject (you) and understood verb (be), with “careful” a complementary adjective. “You be careful,” is what the word really means.
On a daily basis, I find plenty of semicolonless emails like:
“Here is the report, I hope you can understand it;” or
“Thanks for the update on Shelia, I was wondering what happened to her.”
You might argue that those lines, punctuated with commas instead of semicolons, sound the way people speak. But to me they simply lack muscle, or definition; they’re just not going to last.
Printed interviews often take the same comma-or-bust approach, which robs the speaker of the expression and intonation he probably better conveyed on tape:
In an online interview with Eric Zala who, with his two friends and fellow “Indiana Jones” fans, spent seven years, between ages 12-19, remaking “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” said, “My mom had this big rambling house and a huge basement which was perfect for our makeshift soundstage, where we would later shoot the bar, the cave, the Well of Souls, the map room, and we listened to a bad horror movie sound effect records, two 12-year-old kids getting inspired about the idea of doing our own Indiana Jones movie.
Still, it’s not too late to start a Semicolon Survival Campaign; it just might work. We can start with a little grass roots effort and build awareness from there. And by Summertime 2008 we might even see ”Punctuationfests” carried by satellite right to your living rooms, Palm Pilots, cellphones and iPhones from semicolonless spots all over the world.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Why “Oui”?
I was lucky enough to be in Paris recently and after hearing, or responding with, the affirmative French word for “yes” for a few days, I began to wonder about that little word, “Oui.”
“O-U-I” is pronounced something like “we;” however, to sound more French, you must purse your lips tightly, then say the word while keeping your tongue as close to your front upper teeth as possible. (This gives “oui” a sharper, slightly breathy, and somewhat more nasal sound than the English “we.”)
But again, why “oui”? In France’s neighboring Latin-language-based countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal they say “si,” “si,” and “sim.” Is France’s reputation for being different rooted even in its ancient linguistic development?
Apparently, oui:
It was the 12th century writer, Dante Alighieri (of “Inferno” fame) who first put France’s regional language variations into three groups, each group defined by the way they said, “Yes.” In the south, they spoke “the Langue d’Oc;” in the central and northern parts, “La Langue d’Oil,” and closer to Iberia (later Spain) and Italy, “La Langue de Si.” In his essay, “On Vernacular Speech,” Dante noted, “some say ‘oc,’ (awk) others say ‘si,’ (see) and others say ‘oil’” (oh-eel) – and his groups were each named some form of “The Language of “Yes.”
“Oc” comes from Latin’s “hoc,” or “that;” whereas “oil” is a combination of “hoc ille,” meaning “that is it.” “Si” came from the Latin, “sic” meaning “thus.” The “Si” group was relatively minor; the main choice was between “oc” or “oil.” With Paris being for centuries the main power seat and located in the Langue d’Oil region, it’s easy to see that the Oil group would win out over the Oc one (and “oil” eventually changed to the standard French oui). There was a brief period in the 1200’s when the Langue d’Oc, in southern France’s Provence region, was the mightier, with Provencal considered the language of literature and the roving “troubadours” or minstrels. (War and politics changed all that.) Still, the name Langue d’Oc lives on in the name of the famous Languedoc wine region, and also in the adjective “occitane” (meaning, from the “Oc” region); in fact, the French-based, international luxury body lotion and bath oil stores called “L’Occitane,” now have put Oc back on the map.
As for “Si,” the French did not dispose of it completely. Where the Spanish, Italians and Portuguese found “si” and “sim” fit to mean a resounding, “yes,” the French found it a useful word for contradicting a negative statement: “You’re not going to the meeting?” “Si*! I’m going, and you?” (*In this case, “si” means neither “yes” nor “no,” but something like “of course.”)
Having a special word like “si” is found in other languages too: The Germans do this with “Doch (Dok);” and the Norwegians use “Jo” (Yoo). Those of us whose language doesn’t have such a handy word must hobble along with more emphasis in our responses: “Don’t you like the food?” “Yes, of course I like the food, and in fact, I’ll have seconds” – just to clarify our position.)
Just why the French went for the Oc’s and Oil’s in the first place and rejected the Roman “Si” can be found (in my opinion – not documented) in any “Asterix” comic book. This French comic book series, started in1959 and now translated into 100 languages, takes place in Gaul in 100 B.C., when Julius Caesar invaded and occupied the land (now France). Gaul was named after the early Celtish tribe of Gauls living there. (The adjective and noun, Gaul, in French is “gallois”– thus the name of the popular French cigarette brand). The series’ main character is Asterix (whose name comes from the Latin/Greek “aster” meaning “star” + “rix,” Celtic for “king”), who is a funny little Gaul; along with his equally funny and oversized sidekick, Obelix, the two have adventures and exploits throughout the 33-book series in trying to outwit the never-as-clever Roman soldiers.
Though I doubt the real Gauls had as much fun as Asterix and Obelix, they most likely did resent the Roman intrusion: in fact, it took some 500 years for early French to replace Gaulish – and this included their refusal to adopt the Roman word for “yes.” True, the Celtic word for “yes” was lost (or, if Celtic Gaulish was like the Celtic Gaelic, an exact word for “yes” may have never existed); so if the Gauls were going to turn to Latin for an affirmative, then perhaps they thought it should at least be a different word than the “si” used by the obnoxious occupying Roman soldiers.
That the north of France would differ for centuries with the south of France on whether “Yes” would be Oc or Oil is mere sibling rivalry (like the English “yes” vs. “aye”); and leaving “si” for responding to negative questions almost seems like a French-style (and long-lost) in-joke. Tres funny, oui?
“O-U-I” is pronounced something like “we;” however, to sound more French, you must purse your lips tightly, then say the word while keeping your tongue as close to your front upper teeth as possible. (This gives “oui” a sharper, slightly breathy, and somewhat more nasal sound than the English “we.”)
But again, why “oui”? In France’s neighboring Latin-language-based countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal they say “si,” “si,” and “sim.” Is France’s reputation for being different rooted even in its ancient linguistic development?
Apparently, oui:
It was the 12th century writer, Dante Alighieri (of “Inferno” fame) who first put France’s regional language variations into three groups, each group defined by the way they said, “Yes.” In the south, they spoke “the Langue d’Oc;” in the central and northern parts, “La Langue d’Oil,” and closer to Iberia (later Spain) and Italy, “La Langue de Si.” In his essay, “On Vernacular Speech,” Dante noted, “some say ‘oc,’ (awk) others say ‘si,’ (see) and others say ‘oil’” (oh-eel) – and his groups were each named some form of “The Language of “Yes.”
“Oc” comes from Latin’s “hoc,” or “that;” whereas “oil” is a combination of “hoc ille,” meaning “that is it.” “Si” came from the Latin, “sic” meaning “thus.” The “Si” group was relatively minor; the main choice was between “oc” or “oil.” With Paris being for centuries the main power seat and located in the Langue d’Oil region, it’s easy to see that the Oil group would win out over the Oc one (and “oil” eventually changed to the standard French oui). There was a brief period in the 1200’s when the Langue d’Oc, in southern France’s Provence region, was the mightier, with Provencal considered the language of literature and the roving “troubadours” or minstrels. (War and politics changed all that.) Still, the name Langue d’Oc lives on in the name of the famous Languedoc wine region, and also in the adjective “occitane” (meaning, from the “Oc” region); in fact, the French-based, international luxury body lotion and bath oil stores called “L’Occitane,” now have put Oc back on the map.
As for “Si,” the French did not dispose of it completely. Where the Spanish, Italians and Portuguese found “si” and “sim” fit to mean a resounding, “yes,” the French found it a useful word for contradicting a negative statement: “You’re not going to the meeting?” “Si*! I’m going, and you?” (*In this case, “si” means neither “yes” nor “no,” but something like “of course.”)
Having a special word like “si” is found in other languages too: The Germans do this with “Doch (Dok);” and the Norwegians use “Jo” (Yoo). Those of us whose language doesn’t have such a handy word must hobble along with more emphasis in our responses: “Don’t you like the food?” “Yes, of course I like the food, and in fact, I’ll have seconds” – just to clarify our position.)
Just why the French went for the Oc’s and Oil’s in the first place and rejected the Roman “Si” can be found (in my opinion – not documented) in any “Asterix” comic book. This French comic book series, started in1959 and now translated into 100 languages, takes place in Gaul in 100 B.C., when Julius Caesar invaded and occupied the land (now France). Gaul was named after the early Celtish tribe of Gauls living there. (The adjective and noun, Gaul, in French is “gallois”– thus the name of the popular French cigarette brand). The series’ main character is Asterix (whose name comes from the Latin/Greek “aster” meaning “star” + “rix,” Celtic for “king”), who is a funny little Gaul; along with his equally funny and oversized sidekick, Obelix, the two have adventures and exploits throughout the 33-book series in trying to outwit the never-as-clever Roman soldiers.
Though I doubt the real Gauls had as much fun as Asterix and Obelix, they most likely did resent the Roman intrusion: in fact, it took some 500 years for early French to replace Gaulish – and this included their refusal to adopt the Roman word for “yes.” True, the Celtic word for “yes” was lost (or, if Celtic Gaulish was like the Celtic Gaelic, an exact word for “yes” may have never existed); so if the Gauls were going to turn to Latin for an affirmative, then perhaps they thought it should at least be a different word than the “si” used by the obnoxious occupying Roman soldiers.
That the north of France would differ for centuries with the south of France on whether “Yes” would be Oc or Oil is mere sibling rivalry (like the English “yes” vs. “aye”); and leaving “si” for responding to negative questions almost seems like a French-style (and long-lost) in-joke. Tres funny, oui?
Monday, May 21, 2007
Coming and Going
The saying, “I don’t know whether I’m coming or going,” implies that there is a sense of confusion in the life of the speaker. It’s like not knowing if you’re arriving or departing. Come and Go. We all know the difference -- don’t we?
I thought I knew the difference until I tried explaining it to several transplanted students from South America of mine who seem regularly confused by the way we use the two verbs in English. When I’ve tried to explain the difference, I’ve end up so muddled, I haven’t known whether I’m coming or going myself.
I thought this blog would be a good place to work out the confusion. And for those of you who have never wondered at the difference, well, it’s perhaps time for you to do so.
Here are some familiar situations in English that take some form of “to come:”
* Your kids are calling you from the car, impatient to leave; you shout back, “I’m coming!”
* You call up a friend and ask, “Can I come over this afternoon?”
*You RSVP over the phone to an invitation to a party: “I’d love to come.”
In Spanish, each of those situations would be handled with the verb, “to go.”
“I’m GOING!” you’d shout to your kids in the car as you rush out the door. “Can I GO to your house?” you’d ask your friend. “I’d love to GO to your party,” you’d say.
That’s because the Spanish verb, “ir” or “to go” means (according to Diccionario.com) to move from HERE to THERE – the same as “to come” in English.
According to Dictionary.com, “to come” means, “to approach or move toward a particular person or place.” In other words: to move from HERE to THERE. So a mom shouting, “I’m coming!” as she heads from kitchen to car is exactly right by English standards, but the opposite in Spanish.
According to DIccionario.com, the Spanish verb, “venir” (“to come”) means, “to
move from THERE to HERE.” So the kids waiting in the car would call, “Mama, VEN! (informal command) or VENGA! (formal command),” because she would be going from the house (there) to the car (here). Likewise, someone from Buenos Aires throwing a party would ask guests to COME (there to here): “Pueden VENIR a mi fiesta?”
Where it gets confusing is that in English, we say, “I’m COMING!” in response to someone’s call (HERE to THERE) and “I hope you can you COME to my party” (from THERE to HERE).
This means that English speakers use “to COME” for both COMING and GOING.
On top of that, Dictionary.com says that in English, “to go,” means “to move or proceed, esp. to or from something.” In other words: “to go” can mean from HERE to THERE as well as from THERE to HERE. By definition, COMING and GOING apparently mean the same thing – but we know they don’t. In fact, there is almost never any misuse or confusion. So why is this subject so confusing?
Let’s look at this in real life:
Let’s say John has a business trip coming up. He says to his colleague, “I’m GOING to Peoria.” Fortunately for John, he has a friend in Peoria he wants to visit while there; so he whips off an email saying, “Guess what -- I’m COMING to Peoria!” In both cases, John is departing from, say, New York, and landing in Peoria; but in the first instance, he’s “going” and the second, he’s “coming.”
The difference is this:
In the first instance John is heading to Peoria but he’s not talking to a person in Peoria -- both colleagues are in New York – so, he says he’s GOING. In his email, John is talking to his friend in Peoria; John is here, but his friend is there
-- so he says he’s COMING.
The difference in the two uses is whether there is a person (or people) at the other end of your destination – be it a friend in Peoria; your mom who’s called you inside to take a phone call; or if you’re explaining to your teacher why you came late to class.
Some more examples:
Two people invited to a party will talk with each other about looking forward to GOING to the party. But if you talk about the party with the person giving it, you tell her you’re looking forward to COMING to it. A store clerk who normally GOES to work might tell his boss he’ll be COMING in late the next day. The difference is the person at the other end.
The words, COME and GO, are of Germanic origin, whereas IR and VENIR are thoroughbred Latin words. (The French word for “future” is “avenir” – to come; and the word “avenue” is another derivative.) And In Spanish, the definitions correspond exactly with the usage.
Clearly, the Germans were a bit less specific about the definitions, and over time, usage has carved out its own distinctions. Since these distinctions are not noted in the dictionary, allow me to do so here: Use “come” when there is a person on the other end; use “go” when there is no person on the other end.
Is that clear?
Which is not to say life itself is clear. But at least for now I hope we know if we’re coming or going – and why.
I thought I knew the difference until I tried explaining it to several transplanted students from South America of mine who seem regularly confused by the way we use the two verbs in English. When I’ve tried to explain the difference, I’ve end up so muddled, I haven’t known whether I’m coming or going myself.
I thought this blog would be a good place to work out the confusion. And for those of you who have never wondered at the difference, well, it’s perhaps time for you to do so.
Here are some familiar situations in English that take some form of “to come:”
* Your kids are calling you from the car, impatient to leave; you shout back, “I’m coming!”
* You call up a friend and ask, “Can I come over this afternoon?”
*You RSVP over the phone to an invitation to a party: “I’d love to come.”
In Spanish, each of those situations would be handled with the verb, “to go.”
“I’m GOING!” you’d shout to your kids in the car as you rush out the door. “Can I GO to your house?” you’d ask your friend. “I’d love to GO to your party,” you’d say.
That’s because the Spanish verb, “ir” or “to go” means (according to Diccionario.com) to move from HERE to THERE – the same as “to come” in English.
According to Dictionary.com, “to come” means, “to approach or move toward a particular person or place.” In other words: to move from HERE to THERE. So a mom shouting, “I’m coming!” as she heads from kitchen to car is exactly right by English standards, but the opposite in Spanish.
According to DIccionario.com, the Spanish verb, “venir” (“to come”) means, “to
move from THERE to HERE.” So the kids waiting in the car would call, “Mama, VEN! (informal command) or VENGA! (formal command),” because she would be going from the house (there) to the car (here). Likewise, someone from Buenos Aires throwing a party would ask guests to COME (there to here): “Pueden VENIR a mi fiesta?”
Where it gets confusing is that in English, we say, “I’m COMING!” in response to someone’s call (HERE to THERE) and “I hope you can you COME to my party” (from THERE to HERE).
This means that English speakers use “to COME” for both COMING and GOING.
On top of that, Dictionary.com says that in English, “to go,” means “to move or proceed, esp. to or from something.” In other words: “to go” can mean from HERE to THERE as well as from THERE to HERE. By definition, COMING and GOING apparently mean the same thing – but we know they don’t. In fact, there is almost never any misuse or confusion. So why is this subject so confusing?
Let’s look at this in real life:
Let’s say John has a business trip coming up. He says to his colleague, “I’m GOING to Peoria.” Fortunately for John, he has a friend in Peoria he wants to visit while there; so he whips off an email saying, “Guess what -- I’m COMING to Peoria!” In both cases, John is departing from, say, New York, and landing in Peoria; but in the first instance, he’s “going” and the second, he’s “coming.”
The difference is this:
In the first instance John is heading to Peoria but he’s not talking to a person in Peoria -- both colleagues are in New York – so, he says he’s GOING. In his email, John is talking to his friend in Peoria; John is here, but his friend is there
-- so he says he’s COMING.
The difference in the two uses is whether there is a person (or people) at the other end of your destination – be it a friend in Peoria; your mom who’s called you inside to take a phone call; or if you’re explaining to your teacher why you came late to class.
Some more examples:
Two people invited to a party will talk with each other about looking forward to GOING to the party. But if you talk about the party with the person giving it, you tell her you’re looking forward to COMING to it. A store clerk who normally GOES to work might tell his boss he’ll be COMING in late the next day. The difference is the person at the other end.
The words, COME and GO, are of Germanic origin, whereas IR and VENIR are thoroughbred Latin words. (The French word for “future” is “avenir” – to come; and the word “avenue” is another derivative.) And In Spanish, the definitions correspond exactly with the usage.
Clearly, the Germans were a bit less specific about the definitions, and over time, usage has carved out its own distinctions. Since these distinctions are not noted in the dictionary, allow me to do so here: Use “come” when there is a person on the other end; use “go” when there is no person on the other end.
Is that clear?
Which is not to say life itself is clear. But at least for now I hope we know if we’re coming or going – and why.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Pragmatically Speaking
For word-watchers, this past April was an interesting month to see what happens to people who don’t watch their words – and, in particular, the context in which they are spoken. Poster Boy for Blowing It Big Time was the radio shock-jock whose succinct, crude, and now notorious hyphenated adjective-plus slang plural noun so defamed the upstanding Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team that his show was first canceled for two weeks and then ultimately, forever.
Over in England, a mother’s hopes of having her daughter marry the prince were dashed, in part, by said mother’s unfortunate use of certain vocabulary words: These words were not monosyllabic, Saxon-sounding slurs or foul-mouthed interjections; rather, they were simply words and phrases (plus one action) that indicated that she was not “one of them” – which to the royals, raised the specter of an unhappy marriage due to irreparable class differences.
What these seemingly distinct cases have in common, however, is “pragmatics” – a branch of linguistics that studies how the meaning or interpretation of certain words can change according to context. Pragmatics is what guides our ability to change or modify our word choices and even gestures when speaking to a teacher, a friend, a baby, or a stranger who’s speaking too loudly on his cell phone. If you don’t pay attention to your audience, you may end up falling flat.
The morning that ex-radio host Don Imus spewed his gender- and racially charged remarks about the Rutgers women, he was talking by speaker phone to a male sports commentator as well as to the station’s listeners; he was also able to be heard by anyone who missed the show – including the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team –on the news and Internet. So, Imus’s audience, in the end, was actually men and women of all races in the New York tri-state area and, via the media and technology, the world.
The racist remarks he made that morning were not Imus’s first: In fact, the radio host had a track record that had been largely ignored in the past – mainly because he picked on people whose stature was big enough to handle the offense, not because it was any less offensive. But using those words to describe a team of hard-working, championship-playing young women athletes rightly – and finally! -- hit a nerve, and crossed a line. His nasty words sank like a slam-dunk into the wrong hoop.
Michael “Kramer” Richards of “Seinfeld” fame also needed a better understanding of pragmatics when he used racial slurs to lambast two African American audience members who annoyed him during his comedy act last November. Like Imus, he did not think pragmatically – and ended up sounding not like the edgy comic he possibly wanted to be – but more like Mel Gibson, who last summer made some equally offensive remarks about Jewish people, while being arrested for alleged drunk driving. The police officer, and object of Mel’s tirade, rightly did not appreciate those remarks – and Mel promptly landed himself not only in rehab but in a swirl of public outrage.
These days, course language is fashionably cool and hip. Movies, radio, TV, the Internet and email all use nasty words and blunt images. It seems like our society is Anything Goes – but it’s not. Filthy language is one thing; racist remarks, especially personal, racist remarks should not be tolerated and it was a boost to see society rise up and vanquish these perpetrators.
Meanwhile, the English mum, Carole Middleton, who had worked so hard to have her daughter, Kate, be the kind of girl to interest the English royal family’s Prince William apparently did not take her own words and actions into account.
According to a Royal Source quoted in the English newspaper, the Daily Mail (4/14/07), Carole Middleton “is pushy, rather twee* and incredibly middle-class. She uses words such as ‘Pleased to meet you,’ ‘toilet,’ and ‘pardon.’” (*Twee is a British word for dainty or pretty in an overdone and affected way.)
The Royal Correspondent for the Australian TV news show, News Idea, said that Mrs. Middleton, on meeting the Queen, should have said, “How do you do?” and not, “Pleased to meet you.” I’m guessing that even in proper BBC English, “Pleased to meet you” (and the reportedly pushy and socially ambitious Mrs. Middleton no doubt was pleased to meet The Queen) sounded a bit too chummy. “How do you do?” has such a nice, frigid sort of sound, and seems a more natural choice for people known for speaking about themselves in the 3rd person singular, as in: “One wonders if one ever thinks referring to oneself as ‘one’ sounds funny.’”
As for calling that sine-qua-non of necessary rooms a “toilet” instead of a “lavatory” or “bathroom,” well, the trouble with that word is simply that, according to the experts, upper crust English people over the age of 30 simply do not say it. Ever. Etymologically, there’s nothing crude about the word: the root is not “toil” or work, suggesting grunts or groans, but rather, the root is “toile,” (twahl) referring to a lacy cloth that was used to cover the dressing table, which the French called a “toilette.” Dressing oneself in French was called “to make one’s toilette,” and the word evolved from there. But at this point, even informal Americans go to the “restroom” or “bathroom” and only speak of the toilet when referring to the object itself.
Saying “Pardon” instead of “What?” was another of Carole Middleton’s verbal offenses, according to Sarah Lyall’s article in the New York Times. (Memo from London 4/26/07) Saying “Pardon?” makes a person sound like she’s trying too hard – and in the same way that, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” works, so does the idea that if you have to try to sound correct, you’re obviously, hopelessly not up to snuff.
And try – really, really try -- is what Carole Middleton did. Though her methods were different, Mrs. Middleton and the meddling, neurotic Mrs. Bennett, mother of the five eligible girls in Pride and Prejudice, could be distant cousins. News articles from the Daily Mail, The New York Times and others all cite Mrs. Middleton’s aspirations for daughter Kate, beginning with starting a mail order business twenty years ago – a business that catapulted the family from middle class to nouveau super-riche, enabling her three children to go to private school and on to any university that they could get into. Meeting Prince William seems not exactly unexpected on Mrs. Middleton’s part.
In fact, it was the perfect plan – and it almost worked (and that’s not to say it never will for Kate). But Mrs. Middleton, a coal miner’s granddaughter and former airline hostess, -- attributes that made mockery all too easy for Prince William’s upper crusty crowd -- neglected her pragmatics: and her lack of discretion coupled with the language of an arriviste were interpreted on the Royal Family’s side as strictly NOCD (i.e., Not Our Class, Dear).
"The irony is that Carole has been so busy pushing her daughter forward and doing her best to groom her for Royalty that she's rather missed the point that she might not fit in herself,” said the Royal correspondent for News Idea. He added that in addition to her language faux pas, Mrs. Middleton was seen at the formal Sandhurst Military College parade – the one in which Prince William marched this past winter -- chewing gum.
Chewing gum?! That is a type of body language that emanates the same strong message as its verbal counterparts – which is, that in the wrong context, such an activity is Just Not Done. At this point, it is probably a truth universally acknowledged that chewing gum is more than a tad tacky at formal functions. Did Eliza Doolittle slip a little Dentine into her mouth before the ball? Did Cinderella’s breath smell like Wrigley’s spearmint when she danced with the prince? Did Mrs. Middleton think the Queen wouldn’t notice? She could have at
least swallowed the gum before gushing, “Pleased to meet you.” One has to wonder.
Mrs. Middleton could have taken some tips from Nancy Mitford’s classic 1945 novel, The Pursuit of Love, a mostly autobiographical novel of growing up in an eccentric, aristocratic English family in the 1930s. Here is what the father (“Uncle Matthew” to the narrator/his niece, Fanny, who, unlike his own children, attends a regular school) thinks about formal education – and its influence on the decline of proper English:
“Education! I was always led to suppose that no educated person ever spoke of notepaper … Fanny talks about mirrors and mantelpieces, handbags and perfume, she takes sugar in her coffee, has a tassel on her umbrella, and I have no doubt that, if she is ever fortunate enough to catch a husband, she will call his father and mother Father and Mother. Will the wonderful education she is getting make up to the unhappy brute for all these endless pinpricks? Fancy hearing one’s wife talk about notepaper – the irritation!”
Coming to the rescue, Aunt Emily says, “A lot of men would find it more irritating to have a wife who had never heard of George III. (All the same, Fanny darling, it is called writing-paper you know-don’t let’s hear any more about note, please.)”
So you can see what Mrs. Middleton was up against. All the same, being British, didn’t she know? It’s not as if the English aristocracy has hidden their subculture or dialect from the world. In 1954, Ms. Mitford even compiled a glossary of Upper Class and Non-Upper Class words, which, though intended for a lighthearted article, nonetheless still carry the sting of reality for today’s wannabe royal mothers-in-law.
Upper Class Non-Upper Class
Bike or Bicycle Cycle
Dinner Jacket Dress Suit
Knave Jack (cards)
Vegetables Greens
Ice Ice Cream
Scent Perfume
They've a very nice house. They have a lovely home.
Ill (in bed) Sick (in bed)
Looking-Glass Mirror
Spectacles Glasses
False Teeth Dentures
Die Pass on
Mad Mental
Jam Preserve
Napkin Serviette
Sofa Settee
Lavatory or Loo Toilet
Rich Wealthy
What? Pardon?
Though it is now 50-odd years later and I am not sure what still applies to the general English verbal class distinctions today; however, the mere fact that such a list exists at all is unusual – and seems like something that could only happen on a small island nation with a fairly homogeneous society. How else to tell the social wheat from the chaff? But with all the changes going on there recently, perhaps this list will be completely obsolete in the near future. But for the moment, we shall have to leave it to the English to separate aristocrats from arrivistes through sofas and serviettes.
Over in England, a mother’s hopes of having her daughter marry the prince were dashed, in part, by said mother’s unfortunate use of certain vocabulary words: These words were not monosyllabic, Saxon-sounding slurs or foul-mouthed interjections; rather, they were simply words and phrases (plus one action) that indicated that she was not “one of them” – which to the royals, raised the specter of an unhappy marriage due to irreparable class differences.
What these seemingly distinct cases have in common, however, is “pragmatics” – a branch of linguistics that studies how the meaning or interpretation of certain words can change according to context. Pragmatics is what guides our ability to change or modify our word choices and even gestures when speaking to a teacher, a friend, a baby, or a stranger who’s speaking too loudly on his cell phone. If you don’t pay attention to your audience, you may end up falling flat.
The morning that ex-radio host Don Imus spewed his gender- and racially charged remarks about the Rutgers women, he was talking by speaker phone to a male sports commentator as well as to the station’s listeners; he was also able to be heard by anyone who missed the show – including the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team –on the news and Internet. So, Imus’s audience, in the end, was actually men and women of all races in the New York tri-state area and, via the media and technology, the world.
The racist remarks he made that morning were not Imus’s first: In fact, the radio host had a track record that had been largely ignored in the past – mainly because he picked on people whose stature was big enough to handle the offense, not because it was any less offensive. But using those words to describe a team of hard-working, championship-playing young women athletes rightly – and finally! -- hit a nerve, and crossed a line. His nasty words sank like a slam-dunk into the wrong hoop.
Michael “Kramer” Richards of “Seinfeld” fame also needed a better understanding of pragmatics when he used racial slurs to lambast two African American audience members who annoyed him during his comedy act last November. Like Imus, he did not think pragmatically – and ended up sounding not like the edgy comic he possibly wanted to be – but more like Mel Gibson, who last summer made some equally offensive remarks about Jewish people, while being arrested for alleged drunk driving. The police officer, and object of Mel’s tirade, rightly did not appreciate those remarks – and Mel promptly landed himself not only in rehab but in a swirl of public outrage.
These days, course language is fashionably cool and hip. Movies, radio, TV, the Internet and email all use nasty words and blunt images. It seems like our society is Anything Goes – but it’s not. Filthy language is one thing; racist remarks, especially personal, racist remarks should not be tolerated and it was a boost to see society rise up and vanquish these perpetrators.
Meanwhile, the English mum, Carole Middleton, who had worked so hard to have her daughter, Kate, be the kind of girl to interest the English royal family’s Prince William apparently did not take her own words and actions into account.
According to a Royal Source quoted in the English newspaper, the Daily Mail (4/14/07), Carole Middleton “is pushy, rather twee* and incredibly middle-class. She uses words such as ‘Pleased to meet you,’ ‘toilet,’ and ‘pardon.’” (*Twee is a British word for dainty or pretty in an overdone and affected way.)
The Royal Correspondent for the Australian TV news show, News Idea, said that Mrs. Middleton, on meeting the Queen, should have said, “How do you do?” and not, “Pleased to meet you.” I’m guessing that even in proper BBC English, “Pleased to meet you” (and the reportedly pushy and socially ambitious Mrs. Middleton no doubt was pleased to meet The Queen) sounded a bit too chummy. “How do you do?” has such a nice, frigid sort of sound, and seems a more natural choice for people known for speaking about themselves in the 3rd person singular, as in: “One wonders if one ever thinks referring to oneself as ‘one’ sounds funny.’”
As for calling that sine-qua-non of necessary rooms a “toilet” instead of a “lavatory” or “bathroom,” well, the trouble with that word is simply that, according to the experts, upper crust English people over the age of 30 simply do not say it. Ever. Etymologically, there’s nothing crude about the word: the root is not “toil” or work, suggesting grunts or groans, but rather, the root is “toile,” (twahl) referring to a lacy cloth that was used to cover the dressing table, which the French called a “toilette.” Dressing oneself in French was called “to make one’s toilette,” and the word evolved from there. But at this point, even informal Americans go to the “restroom” or “bathroom” and only speak of the toilet when referring to the object itself.
Saying “Pardon” instead of “What?” was another of Carole Middleton’s verbal offenses, according to Sarah Lyall’s article in the New York Times. (Memo from London 4/26/07) Saying “Pardon?” makes a person sound like she’s trying too hard – and in the same way that, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” works, so does the idea that if you have to try to sound correct, you’re obviously, hopelessly not up to snuff.
And try – really, really try -- is what Carole Middleton did. Though her methods were different, Mrs. Middleton and the meddling, neurotic Mrs. Bennett, mother of the five eligible girls in Pride and Prejudice, could be distant cousins. News articles from the Daily Mail, The New York Times and others all cite Mrs. Middleton’s aspirations for daughter Kate, beginning with starting a mail order business twenty years ago – a business that catapulted the family from middle class to nouveau super-riche, enabling her three children to go to private school and on to any university that they could get into. Meeting Prince William seems not exactly unexpected on Mrs. Middleton’s part.
In fact, it was the perfect plan – and it almost worked (and that’s not to say it never will for Kate). But Mrs. Middleton, a coal miner’s granddaughter and former airline hostess, -- attributes that made mockery all too easy for Prince William’s upper crusty crowd -- neglected her pragmatics: and her lack of discretion coupled with the language of an arriviste were interpreted on the Royal Family’s side as strictly NOCD (i.e., Not Our Class, Dear).
"The irony is that Carole has been so busy pushing her daughter forward and doing her best to groom her for Royalty that she's rather missed the point that she might not fit in herself,” said the Royal correspondent for News Idea. He added that in addition to her language faux pas, Mrs. Middleton was seen at the formal Sandhurst Military College parade – the one in which Prince William marched this past winter -- chewing gum.
Chewing gum?! That is a type of body language that emanates the same strong message as its verbal counterparts – which is, that in the wrong context, such an activity is Just Not Done. At this point, it is probably a truth universally acknowledged that chewing gum is more than a tad tacky at formal functions. Did Eliza Doolittle slip a little Dentine into her mouth before the ball? Did Cinderella’s breath smell like Wrigley’s spearmint when she danced with the prince? Did Mrs. Middleton think the Queen wouldn’t notice? She could have at
least swallowed the gum before gushing, “Pleased to meet you.” One has to wonder.
Mrs. Middleton could have taken some tips from Nancy Mitford’s classic 1945 novel, The Pursuit of Love, a mostly autobiographical novel of growing up in an eccentric, aristocratic English family in the 1930s. Here is what the father (“Uncle Matthew” to the narrator/his niece, Fanny, who, unlike his own children, attends a regular school) thinks about formal education – and its influence on the decline of proper English:
“Education! I was always led to suppose that no educated person ever spoke of notepaper … Fanny talks about mirrors and mantelpieces, handbags and perfume, she takes sugar in her coffee, has a tassel on her umbrella, and I have no doubt that, if she is ever fortunate enough to catch a husband, she will call his father and mother Father and Mother. Will the wonderful education she is getting make up to the unhappy brute for all these endless pinpricks? Fancy hearing one’s wife talk about notepaper – the irritation!”
Coming to the rescue, Aunt Emily says, “A lot of men would find it more irritating to have a wife who had never heard of George III. (All the same, Fanny darling, it is called writing-paper you know-don’t let’s hear any more about note, please.)”
So you can see what Mrs. Middleton was up against. All the same, being British, didn’t she know? It’s not as if the English aristocracy has hidden their subculture or dialect from the world. In 1954, Ms. Mitford even compiled a glossary of Upper Class and Non-Upper Class words, which, though intended for a lighthearted article, nonetheless still carry the sting of reality for today’s wannabe royal mothers-in-law.
Upper Class Non-Upper Class
Bike or Bicycle Cycle
Dinner Jacket Dress Suit
Knave Jack (cards)
Vegetables Greens
Ice Ice Cream
Scent Perfume
They've a very nice house. They have a lovely home.
Ill (in bed) Sick (in bed)
Looking-Glass Mirror
Spectacles Glasses
False Teeth Dentures
Die Pass on
Mad Mental
Jam Preserve
Napkin Serviette
Sofa Settee
Lavatory or Loo Toilet
Rich Wealthy
What? Pardon?
Though it is now 50-odd years later and I am not sure what still applies to the general English verbal class distinctions today; however, the mere fact that such a list exists at all is unusual – and seems like something that could only happen on a small island nation with a fairly homogeneous society. How else to tell the social wheat from the chaff? But with all the changes going on there recently, perhaps this list will be completely obsolete in the near future. But for the moment, we shall have to leave it to the English to separate aristocrats from arrivistes through sofas and serviettes.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Build-A-Word
Happy or unhappy? Filled with happiness or unhappiness? Taking on a lot of responsibility, or are you completely irresponsible?
You don’t have to answer those questions – but do take a look at how English builds words to mean one thing, and alters it slightly to mean its opposite; or to mean one thing as a noun, and another as adjective. We take a base word – like happy or responsible – and then add prefixes (little endings before the base word) or suffixes (after the base word) to make the proper changes and meanings.
What we don’t do much is to take full-bodied words or ideas and stick them together, two or three at a time, to come up with a single word. Germanic languages do this all the time. For example:
Got a safetystrikewood?
That’s the literal name in German for the little wooden stick whose rough, rounded end (dipped in a sulfur paste) creates a flame when struck against the textured surface of the little box it comes in. That’s right – a match, or a light. But in Berlin and Zurich and elsewhere in the Germanic world, safety matches are called Sicherheitszundholzer (zee-here-HIGHTS-ZOOND-holtser) – a name practically longer than the object itself.
And if you happen to be in Germany and feel the need for speed, you might want to drive on the Autobahn, or highway, where there is no Geschwindikeitsbegrenzung ((guh-SHVIND-i-kites-begrens-sung), or speed limit.
And speaking of driving with long words, some American friends of ours who have been living over in Holland report, “We routinely receive bureaucratic mailings with words of up to 25 letters in them, such as the pretty straightforward ‘vergunninghoudersplaatsen’” or “permission-holder-plate,” or ‘license plate.”
English could not possibly come up with such long names for anything -- we start choking on words longer than “surreptiously.” But our German and Dutch language cousins glom together nouns, noun endings, adjectives and other syllables to create a new word or give the old one an added meaning. This type of linguistic pile-on is what so astounds, assaults, and baffles English speakers trying to learn these languages. Mark Twain once said that some German words are so long they have a perspective, and for once he might not be exaggerating.
Nevertheless, Germanic long words should not be confused with English’s big words (last posting’s topic). Big words are the longer, less familiar words that can substitute for shorter, more common ones; these words can be fairly short but still sound inflated or pretentious: “obtain” instead of “get” Or a phrase like, “I recommend that we hasten our exit,” instead of, “We should get going!”
For length, even fancy, Latin-based English words, like “beautification,” “romanticism,” and “inauspiciously” are usually not more than 15 letters and four or five syllables long, being strung together with one base word plus a little prefix and/or suffix. In the end, English prefers language the way the crow flies – direct and fast, with the easiest words and the fewest syllables possible. Long words, like big words, are not really nurtured in our tongue.
Yes, long words exist in English, but mainly as scientific or medical terms. We take a Greek or Latin root – say, “derma,” which is Greek for “skin” and then add an ending, or “suffix” to describe, say, an expert in the study of skin -- and zing! --we get “dermatologist,” or “skin doctor.” To make that word longer, you might be able to become an expert in the study of elephants; for this word, English takes the Greek, “pachyderm” for elephant (which literally means “thick-skinned”), adds the proper suffix and we’ve got a “pachydermatologist.” Of course, if you wanted to be an expert in elephants’ skin, you could possibly then become a “pachydermadermatologist.”
The longest non-scientific word in English is “antidisestablishmentarianism; that 28-letter, 12-syllable whopper is not, however, a “ big word.” If that word is used at all (outside of a spelling bee or crossword puzzle), it is probably in some context referring to its meaning – a 19th century movement involving the Church of England. It’s just not something that can be switched for a more common term and dropped casually into conversation.
In fact, the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” does not really make sense: broken down, its 2 prefixes, “anti” and “dis,” are two negatives, “against” and “not;” + establish (a verb)+ment (making establish a noun) + arian (turning it into an adjective) + ism (turning it back into a noun, and specifically one meaning an action, process or practice – like terrorism or favoritism). So you’ve got the original establishmentarianism, and the movement against it – disestablishmentarianism; so if the antidisestablishmentarianists are against the disestablishmentarianists then are they PROestablishmentarianism? If so, they are merely the regular “establishmentarianists.”
Breaking down German words is easy in comparison. Let’s go back to “match” and “speed limit.” You might be wondering how Germans could take two such ordinary, everyday ideas and morph them into such consonant-crammed tongue-twisters. Here’s how:
Sicherheitszundholz:
Sicher (zee-here) means “sure” + heit (an ending, like “ness”) + zund (zoond) “strike” (as in the action with the stick against the box) + holz (holts) “wood.” So a match is a surenessstrikewood.
Geschwindikeitsbegrenzung:
Geschwind (guh-SHVIND) seems to start with the word, “Wind” (just like our own word); tack “sch” onto Wind for Schwind” which suggests “dizziness;” add “Ge” to “schwind” and you’ve got “fast” or “rapid;” + “ig” (a suffix, like speed-Y) + keit (an ending, like “ness” to make it a noun); meanwhile, Begrenzung comes from the word for “border,” which is “grenze;” and a “BEgrenzung” is a boundary. So “speedynessboundary” to them becomes “speed limit” to us.
It’s a whole different approach to word-making than English.
Let’s say you’re in the mood for something sweet; you go to the “Backer” (pronounced “baker”) whose specialties include pie crust (“Geback”) and pastries, or “Feingebackenes,” or roughly, “finebakedthings.” Let’s say you can’t decide what tasty treat to choose, so you ask for a finebakedthingsselection, or, “Feingebackenesauswahl.” (“Wahl” means “choice;” aus (out) + wahl = selection.)
Meanwhile, there are other languages with long words, including llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch; this 58-letter Welsh word means "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave.”
The longest place name in the United States is a little lake in Webster, Massachusetts with the official Native American 45-letter name of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg; locals say the name means, “You fish on your side; I’ll fish on my side, and no one fishes in between,” though no Algonquin expert exists to vouch for that translation.
And yet the Welsh and the Algonquins – separated not only by an ocean, but by completely different racial, linguistic, and cultural roots – both created specific place names by linking meaningful words together, rather than separating them with space or a hyphen; and behold – two names, both almost impossible to pronounce but which allow for no confusion as to which town, or which lake one was talking about.
Meanwhile, I challenged some of my Swiss German students to come up with some words longer than antidisestablishmentarianism, and they easily offered:
Fussballmannschaftsspielerinnen = football (i.e. soccer) + man + (“schaft” – a noun ending) = team + spiel (play) + er (player) + innen (feminine ending, plural) – (thank you, 8-year-old Sina!) 31 letters;
Hauptstrassentunnelabschrankunge = main-street-tunnel-barricades (for stopping traffic into a street’s tunnel) 32 letters;
And tied for first place with 38 letters each:
Schifffahrtsgesellschaftsangestellter = ship-travel-company-employee (aren’t those 3 “f’s” in a row fffantastic?!); and
Versicherungsgesellschaftsvorsitzender = insurance company big boss (or literally: the one who sits in front of everyone)
In Mark Twain’s 1880 book, A Tramp Abroad, he mentioned that a North German man had a word of thirteen syllables surgically removed from his throat, though ultimately the operation was not successful.
But what all languages do seem to share is the ability to break down and build up words as needed, through the adding or subtracting of different prefixes, suffixes, or word parts. It reminds me of those Build-A-Bear stores, where you can make your own stuffed animal. You begin with a lining (bear, tiger, or Hollywood movie tie-in product of the moment), add stuffing, a voice box (or not), and clothes. You make the choices and make the stuffed animal just the way you want it. Words are not so custom-built, but if they were constructed in a store like the stuffed animals, a typical morning workshop might go like this:
Shopper: I’d like a word – something that describes the process of making a neighborhood go from being a terrible pit to something … nice.
Clerk: We’ve got “pretty.”
S: No, that’s an adjective. I need something to describe the process.
C: Well, that would be a noun. Hmm. You could start with “beauty” but you’ll need an ending for that.
S: (looks dubious) And add what: i-f-y? Beautify? No, that’s a verb. How about adding f-u-l, for “beautiful” and then …
C: We’ve got a stack of noun endings right over here, fresh off the truck. Here’s your “m-e-n-t” pile; here’s “n-e-s-s” and “s-h-i-p” --
S: SHIP?
C: Yeah, you know – friendship, citizenship – Ah! here’s a great stack of “if-i-ca-tions.” Play around with them, and I’ll check back with you.
(a little later)
S: I’ve come up with “beautification” but it sounds too garden-y. My word has to express that the whole population of the neighborhood changed.
C: Populification? That’s not a real word -- but new words are on sale today.
S: No thanks.
C: Let’s try some other Latin form for “people” or “race” – gens, gentis. Gen … generation, general, gentry – ah ha! Here you go: try this: Gentri …
S: Gentri --?
C: Now, stick on the ending of your old word –
S: Gen-tri-fi-ca-tion? Yes! Gen-tri-fi-ca-tion! Perfect! I’ll take it.
Of course, in German, Algonquin, or Welsh that might be something like Peoplemoneyspiffupneighborhoodbringnewproblems. And bingo! A new word.
You don’t have to answer those questions – but do take a look at how English builds words to mean one thing, and alters it slightly to mean its opposite; or to mean one thing as a noun, and another as adjective. We take a base word – like happy or responsible – and then add prefixes (little endings before the base word) or suffixes (after the base word) to make the proper changes and meanings.
What we don’t do much is to take full-bodied words or ideas and stick them together, two or three at a time, to come up with a single word. Germanic languages do this all the time. For example:
Got a safetystrikewood?
That’s the literal name in German for the little wooden stick whose rough, rounded end (dipped in a sulfur paste) creates a flame when struck against the textured surface of the little box it comes in. That’s right – a match, or a light. But in Berlin and Zurich and elsewhere in the Germanic world, safety matches are called Sicherheitszundholzer (zee-here-HIGHTS-ZOOND-holtser) – a name practically longer than the object itself.
And if you happen to be in Germany and feel the need for speed, you might want to drive on the Autobahn, or highway, where there is no Geschwindikeitsbegrenzung ((guh-SHVIND-i-kites-begrens-sung), or speed limit.
And speaking of driving with long words, some American friends of ours who have been living over in Holland report, “We routinely receive bureaucratic mailings with words of up to 25 letters in them, such as the pretty straightforward ‘vergunninghoudersplaatsen’” or “permission-holder-plate,” or ‘license plate.”
English could not possibly come up with such long names for anything -- we start choking on words longer than “surreptiously.” But our German and Dutch language cousins glom together nouns, noun endings, adjectives and other syllables to create a new word or give the old one an added meaning. This type of linguistic pile-on is what so astounds, assaults, and baffles English speakers trying to learn these languages. Mark Twain once said that some German words are so long they have a perspective, and for once he might not be exaggerating.
Nevertheless, Germanic long words should not be confused with English’s big words (last posting’s topic). Big words are the longer, less familiar words that can substitute for shorter, more common ones; these words can be fairly short but still sound inflated or pretentious: “obtain” instead of “get” Or a phrase like, “I recommend that we hasten our exit,” instead of, “We should get going!”
For length, even fancy, Latin-based English words, like “beautification,” “romanticism,” and “inauspiciously” are usually not more than 15 letters and four or five syllables long, being strung together with one base word plus a little prefix and/or suffix. In the end, English prefers language the way the crow flies – direct and fast, with the easiest words and the fewest syllables possible. Long words, like big words, are not really nurtured in our tongue.
Yes, long words exist in English, but mainly as scientific or medical terms. We take a Greek or Latin root – say, “derma,” which is Greek for “skin” and then add an ending, or “suffix” to describe, say, an expert in the study of skin -- and zing! --we get “dermatologist,” or “skin doctor.” To make that word longer, you might be able to become an expert in the study of elephants; for this word, English takes the Greek, “pachyderm” for elephant (which literally means “thick-skinned”), adds the proper suffix and we’ve got a “pachydermatologist.” Of course, if you wanted to be an expert in elephants’ skin, you could possibly then become a “pachydermadermatologist.”
The longest non-scientific word in English is “antidisestablishmentarianism; that 28-letter, 12-syllable whopper is not, however, a “ big word.” If that word is used at all (outside of a spelling bee or crossword puzzle), it is probably in some context referring to its meaning – a 19th century movement involving the Church of England. It’s just not something that can be switched for a more common term and dropped casually into conversation.
In fact, the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” does not really make sense: broken down, its 2 prefixes, “anti” and “dis,” are two negatives, “against” and “not;” + establish (a verb)+ment (making establish a noun) + arian (turning it into an adjective) + ism (turning it back into a noun, and specifically one meaning an action, process or practice – like terrorism or favoritism). So you’ve got the original establishmentarianism, and the movement against it – disestablishmentarianism; so if the antidisestablishmentarianists are against the disestablishmentarianists then are they PROestablishmentarianism? If so, they are merely the regular “establishmentarianists.”
Breaking down German words is easy in comparison. Let’s go back to “match” and “speed limit.” You might be wondering how Germans could take two such ordinary, everyday ideas and morph them into such consonant-crammed tongue-twisters. Here’s how:
Sicherheitszundholz:
Sicher (zee-here) means “sure” + heit (an ending, like “ness”) + zund (zoond) “strike” (as in the action with the stick against the box) + holz (holts) “wood.” So a match is a surenessstrikewood.
Geschwindikeitsbegrenzung:
Geschwind (guh-SHVIND) seems to start with the word, “Wind” (just like our own word); tack “sch” onto Wind for Schwind” which suggests “dizziness;” add “Ge” to “schwind” and you’ve got “fast” or “rapid;” + “ig” (a suffix, like speed-Y) + keit (an ending, like “ness” to make it a noun); meanwhile, Begrenzung comes from the word for “border,” which is “grenze;” and a “BEgrenzung” is a boundary. So “speedynessboundary” to them becomes “speed limit” to us.
It’s a whole different approach to word-making than English.
Let’s say you’re in the mood for something sweet; you go to the “Backer” (pronounced “baker”) whose specialties include pie crust (“Geback”) and pastries, or “Feingebackenes,” or roughly, “finebakedthings.” Let’s say you can’t decide what tasty treat to choose, so you ask for a finebakedthingsselection, or, “Feingebackenesauswahl.” (“Wahl” means “choice;” aus (out) + wahl = selection.)
Meanwhile, there are other languages with long words, including llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch; this 58-letter Welsh word means "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave.”
The longest place name in the United States is a little lake in Webster, Massachusetts with the official Native American 45-letter name of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg; locals say the name means, “You fish on your side; I’ll fish on my side, and no one fishes in between,” though no Algonquin expert exists to vouch for that translation.
And yet the Welsh and the Algonquins – separated not only by an ocean, but by completely different racial, linguistic, and cultural roots – both created specific place names by linking meaningful words together, rather than separating them with space or a hyphen; and behold – two names, both almost impossible to pronounce but which allow for no confusion as to which town, or which lake one was talking about.
Meanwhile, I challenged some of my Swiss German students to come up with some words longer than antidisestablishmentarianism, and they easily offered:
Fussballmannschaftsspielerinnen = football (i.e. soccer) + man + (“schaft” – a noun ending) = team + spiel (play) + er (player) + innen (feminine ending, plural) – (thank you, 8-year-old Sina!) 31 letters;
Hauptstrassentunnelabschrankunge = main-street-tunnel-barricades (for stopping traffic into a street’s tunnel) 32 letters;
And tied for first place with 38 letters each:
Schifffahrtsgesellschaftsangestellter = ship-travel-company-employee (aren’t those 3 “f’s” in a row fffantastic?!); and
Versicherungsgesellschaftsvorsitzender = insurance company big boss (or literally: the one who sits in front of everyone)
In Mark Twain’s 1880 book, A Tramp Abroad, he mentioned that a North German man had a word of thirteen syllables surgically removed from his throat, though ultimately the operation was not successful.
But what all languages do seem to share is the ability to break down and build up words as needed, through the adding or subtracting of different prefixes, suffixes, or word parts. It reminds me of those Build-A-Bear stores, where you can make your own stuffed animal. You begin with a lining (bear, tiger, or Hollywood movie tie-in product of the moment), add stuffing, a voice box (or not), and clothes. You make the choices and make the stuffed animal just the way you want it. Words are not so custom-built, but if they were constructed in a store like the stuffed animals, a typical morning workshop might go like this:
Shopper: I’d like a word – something that describes the process of making a neighborhood go from being a terrible pit to something … nice.
Clerk: We’ve got “pretty.”
S: No, that’s an adjective. I need something to describe the process.
C: Well, that would be a noun. Hmm. You could start with “beauty” but you’ll need an ending for that.
S: (looks dubious) And add what: i-f-y? Beautify? No, that’s a verb. How about adding f-u-l, for “beautiful” and then …
C: We’ve got a stack of noun endings right over here, fresh off the truck. Here’s your “m-e-n-t” pile; here’s “n-e-s-s” and “s-h-i-p” --
S: SHIP?
C: Yeah, you know – friendship, citizenship – Ah! here’s a great stack of “if-i-ca-tions.” Play around with them, and I’ll check back with you.
(a little later)
S: I’ve come up with “beautification” but it sounds too garden-y. My word has to express that the whole population of the neighborhood changed.
C: Populification? That’s not a real word -- but new words are on sale today.
S: No thanks.
C: Let’s try some other Latin form for “people” or “race” – gens, gentis. Gen … generation, general, gentry – ah ha! Here you go: try this: Gentri …
S: Gentri --?
C: Now, stick on the ending of your old word –
S: Gen-tri-fi-ca-tion? Yes! Gen-tri-fi-ca-tion! Perfect! I’ll take it.
Of course, in German, Algonquin, or Welsh that might be something like Peoplemoneyspiffupneighborhoodbringnewproblems. And bingo! A new word.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Beware of BIG WORDS
In English, when we speak of “big words,” it’s generally not a good thing. “Big words” – words usually of Latin or Greek origin that are not instantly understood, are hardly ever spoken or even pronounced properly – are the verbal equivalent of fake jewelry trying to pass itself off as the real thing. Big words are out to impress, mislead, or intimidate – but most often they just confuse and annoy. Don’t get me wrong: I love a good, rich vocabulary – but big words are mere pretenders to the throne.
English, having been created by the peasant masses – not royalty or the upper classes -- is not a language where long, fancy words can safely camouflage themselves in daily conversation. Words like “get,” “have,” or “do” serve so many linguistic purposes, they’re like maid-butler-gardener-and-chauffeur all in one; the minute an “obtain” or “possess” or “accomplish” appears instead, it is quickly taken in for questioning: was that word necessary, or is the speaker trying to put on airs?
Big words happen when we forget who we’re talking to. A humorous, small business website demonstrates what happens when big words are left to their own devices:
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity.
(See: http://www.abcsmallbiz.com/funny/big-words.html)
Even with a plethora of English words to choose from, words like “plethora” stick out – anyone hearing or reading that word would think, “Why didn’t she just say ‘a lot’ or ‘gazillions’?” “Plethora” is the kind of word we learn when studying for the SATs but never really say. In general, English speakers prefer to hear and speak their language straight up with a twist, and easy on the high-fallutin’.
Speaking of pretension, Dictionary.com offers a Word of the Day to all interested in building up their word power. However, given some of their recent choices, I have to wonder if the motivated student wouldn’t be better off reading a checkout counter weekly, like the National Enquirer -- at least those deliver descriptive words you can use: a woman “seethes” with rage (when her 60-year-old husband runs off with his 18-year-old sister-in-law); a celebrity might “brandish” a broken martini glass at an intrusive paparazzi photographer; a well-known politician might have recently been accused of “perjuring” himself on the witness stand. Meanwhile, Dictionary.com offers such baubles as:
roborant
autochtonous
clerisy
animadversion
Most of us can go a healthy lifetime without ever using one of those words. (Or, anyone want to play “Dictionary”?) A few weeks ago, without having checked the link myself, I had recommended Dictionary.com’s “Word of the Day” to a motivated French student, a data technologist; in an email last week he asked how he could use these words, either at work or elsewhere. I told him that Harry Potter couldn’t even use them for spells, and to cancel his (free) subscription.
It’s funny, though, that “big words” in English are not especially long; the Dictionary.com words above have no more syllables than other, more regular words like beautiful, intelligent, and authoritative. What makes a word “big” is its lack of familiarity, and the reason it’s not familiar is probably because we have a shorter word or simpler phrase to explain the same thing.
For instance, most people would probably refer to “a 70-year-old man” before calling him a “septuagenarian.” Weathermen can talk about “precipitation” but we generally call it “rain;” just as a movie reviewer might call a movie “extraordinary,” “astounding,” and “magnificent,” whereas fans might just say it’s “great.” Still, if those words are used in a proper context and add color or meaning, they can come out as clean and clear as, well, “clean” and “clear.”
But using fancy terms to impress listeners invariably does just the opposite. In the mystery novel, “Death of a Bore,” by M.C. Beaton, a pompous, second-rate writer attempts to explain his craft to a room full of practical Scottish highlanders:
“Perhaps we will discuss linear progression,” the writer said.
“Do you mean plot?” called Hamish.
“Er, yes.”
“Then why not say so?”
There are times, however, when the formal phrase serves a purpose. One occasion is the written acceptance to a formal party, and the standard, Emily Post reply is downright Victorian:
“Clara Jones and Joshua Smith accept with pleasure the kind invitation to the …” (insert: birthday party, bar mitzvah, debutante ball or whatever), etc. Using this format might sound retro, but it is easy for the respondent, since you don’t have to think of anything clever to say yourself – and you can ad lib informally, if you like; it’s also useful for the party planner, since it immediately says who the potential guests are, and whether or not they can come; and yet the language and structure acknowledge the formality of the event in a way that “Yes, we can come!” simply cannot.
One of the first times I came across a big-word style expression was when I was about 10 years old and reading an Archie comic book. Smithers, the tuxedo-clad butler to spoiled, rich Veronica Lodge had apparently reached his limit and said to his boss, Mr. Lodge, “I wish to tender my resignation.” Tender his resignation? I figured Smithers meant, “I quit” but I realized with that fancy phrase that Smithers was, in short, keeping his cool. Saying, “I quit!” would have sounded angry and emotional, whereas tendering his resignation helped Smithers maintain his butler-ish dignity.
Still, there’s a limit on what we can tolerate, and some of the world’s worst writing appears not in our children’s research papers or book reports, as might be expected by fledglings, but in what could be considered the Capital Cities of Big Words: business, law, and government. There, big-wordy emails, memos, forms, and other documents can get so loaded with jargon and bloated verbosity as to make readers groan in pain.
One such intolerant reader was Martin Cutts, an Englishman who in 1979 stood in London’s Parliament Square and shredded official documents – the first act of the Plain Language Commission, for which Cutts is owner and director. Ever since the document-shredding, this organization has published books and articles, as well as provided writing services to companies worldwide – with the goal of clear, accurate writing.
(See: http://www.askoxford.com/betterwriting/plainenglish/?view=uk.) (In fact, language and grammar sites abound on the Internet – it’s just a matter of taking advantage of them.)
So how do you know when you’re using Big Words, and when you’re sounding erudite? A first step is to ask yourself if you understood what you wrote. Next, ask someone nearby to read what you wrote. Then try it on your boss. These are not full-proof steps, but they do provide an initial screening of sorts.
As you write, remember that some of the best writing and most treasured lines in literature were short and straightforward, though absolutely eloquent:
Take Abraham Lincoln’s three-minute-long “Gettysburg Address” (‘Four-score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”); or Jane Austen’s opening to Pride and Prejudice: (“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune should be in want of a wife.”); or Scout’s description of her town in “To Kill A Mockingbird” (“Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired, old town when I first knew it.”) No big words there. The first two samples are formal, but clear; the third, so easy to understand you can almost feel the flies.
In short, if big words are bad jewelry, then it’s better to keep your language plain and simple than to be caught casting swine before pearls.
English, having been created by the peasant masses – not royalty or the upper classes -- is not a language where long, fancy words can safely camouflage themselves in daily conversation. Words like “get,” “have,” or “do” serve so many linguistic purposes, they’re like maid-butler-gardener-and-chauffeur all in one; the minute an “obtain” or “possess” or “accomplish” appears instead, it is quickly taken in for questioning: was that word necessary, or is the speaker trying to put on airs?
Big words happen when we forget who we’re talking to. A humorous, small business website demonstrates what happens when big words are left to their own devices:
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity.
(See: http://www.abcsmallbiz.com/funny/big-words.html)
Even with a plethora of English words to choose from, words like “plethora” stick out – anyone hearing or reading that word would think, “Why didn’t she just say ‘a lot’ or ‘gazillions’?” “Plethora” is the kind of word we learn when studying for the SATs but never really say. In general, English speakers prefer to hear and speak their language straight up with a twist, and easy on the high-fallutin’.
Speaking of pretension, Dictionary.com offers a Word of the Day to all interested in building up their word power. However, given some of their recent choices, I have to wonder if the motivated student wouldn’t be better off reading a checkout counter weekly, like the National Enquirer -- at least those deliver descriptive words you can use: a woman “seethes” with rage (when her 60-year-old husband runs off with his 18-year-old sister-in-law); a celebrity might “brandish” a broken martini glass at an intrusive paparazzi photographer; a well-known politician might have recently been accused of “perjuring” himself on the witness stand. Meanwhile, Dictionary.com offers such baubles as:
roborant
autochtonous
clerisy
animadversion
Most of us can go a healthy lifetime without ever using one of those words. (Or, anyone want to play “Dictionary”?) A few weeks ago, without having checked the link myself, I had recommended Dictionary.com’s “Word of the Day” to a motivated French student, a data technologist; in an email last week he asked how he could use these words, either at work or elsewhere. I told him that Harry Potter couldn’t even use them for spells, and to cancel his (free) subscription.
It’s funny, though, that “big words” in English are not especially long; the Dictionary.com words above have no more syllables than other, more regular words like beautiful, intelligent, and authoritative. What makes a word “big” is its lack of familiarity, and the reason it’s not familiar is probably because we have a shorter word or simpler phrase to explain the same thing.
For instance, most people would probably refer to “a 70-year-old man” before calling him a “septuagenarian.” Weathermen can talk about “precipitation” but we generally call it “rain;” just as a movie reviewer might call a movie “extraordinary,” “astounding,” and “magnificent,” whereas fans might just say it’s “great.” Still, if those words are used in a proper context and add color or meaning, they can come out as clean and clear as, well, “clean” and “clear.”
But using fancy terms to impress listeners invariably does just the opposite. In the mystery novel, “Death of a Bore,” by M.C. Beaton, a pompous, second-rate writer attempts to explain his craft to a room full of practical Scottish highlanders:
“Perhaps we will discuss linear progression,” the writer said.
“Do you mean plot?” called Hamish.
“Er, yes.”
“Then why not say so?”
There are times, however, when the formal phrase serves a purpose. One occasion is the written acceptance to a formal party, and the standard, Emily Post reply is downright Victorian:
“Clara Jones and Joshua Smith accept with pleasure the kind invitation to the …” (insert: birthday party, bar mitzvah, debutante ball or whatever), etc. Using this format might sound retro, but it is easy for the respondent, since you don’t have to think of anything clever to say yourself – and you can ad lib informally, if you like; it’s also useful for the party planner, since it immediately says who the potential guests are, and whether or not they can come; and yet the language and structure acknowledge the formality of the event in a way that “Yes, we can come!” simply cannot.
One of the first times I came across a big-word style expression was when I was about 10 years old and reading an Archie comic book. Smithers, the tuxedo-clad butler to spoiled, rich Veronica Lodge had apparently reached his limit and said to his boss, Mr. Lodge, “I wish to tender my resignation.” Tender his resignation? I figured Smithers meant, “I quit” but I realized with that fancy phrase that Smithers was, in short, keeping his cool. Saying, “I quit!” would have sounded angry and emotional, whereas tendering his resignation helped Smithers maintain his butler-ish dignity.
Still, there’s a limit on what we can tolerate, and some of the world’s worst writing appears not in our children’s research papers or book reports, as might be expected by fledglings, but in what could be considered the Capital Cities of Big Words: business, law, and government. There, big-wordy emails, memos, forms, and other documents can get so loaded with jargon and bloated verbosity as to make readers groan in pain.
One such intolerant reader was Martin Cutts, an Englishman who in 1979 stood in London’s Parliament Square and shredded official documents – the first act of the Plain Language Commission, for which Cutts is owner and director. Ever since the document-shredding, this organization has published books and articles, as well as provided writing services to companies worldwide – with the goal of clear, accurate writing.
(See: http://www.askoxford.com/betterwriting/plainenglish/?view=uk.) (In fact, language and grammar sites abound on the Internet – it’s just a matter of taking advantage of them.)
So how do you know when you’re using Big Words, and when you’re sounding erudite? A first step is to ask yourself if you understood what you wrote. Next, ask someone nearby to read what you wrote. Then try it on your boss. These are not full-proof steps, but they do provide an initial screening of sorts.
As you write, remember that some of the best writing and most treasured lines in literature were short and straightforward, though absolutely eloquent:
Take Abraham Lincoln’s three-minute-long “Gettysburg Address” (‘Four-score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”); or Jane Austen’s opening to Pride and Prejudice: (“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune should be in want of a wife.”); or Scout’s description of her town in “To Kill A Mockingbird” (“Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired, old town when I first knew it.”) No big words there. The first two samples are formal, but clear; the third, so easy to understand you can almost feel the flies.
In short, if big words are bad jewelry, then it’s better to keep your language plain and simple than to be caught casting swine before pearls.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Gaelic Go Bragh!
We were talking about the CVS pharmacy chain at dinner the other night, and my 15-year-old son was extolling the stores’ amazing virtues, not least of which was that they seem to be found anywhere with a population over 500: “They have everything a person needs,” my son gushed. “Shampoo, aspirin, food, candy, magazines, wall-to-wall carpeting, and prescription drugs. And anywhere you go, every CVS is exactly the same!”
The English language could already be the CVS of the linguistic world: It’s got Latin, Sanskrit, Old Germanic, vocabulary from all over the globe, volumes from Shakespeare, American musical songs from Rogers & Hammerstein, rock and roll words, technology terms, old words with new meanings, new expressions with old words; and you can find English spoken just about everywhere; English is the common language of India and the corporate world in general; it is the principal language link between all foreigners; and it even serves as a link to people who speak the same language but with different accents, as in:
A French student of mine was once standing in line at the post office in Paris, while a man from the south of France was asking the clerk for what sounded like, “Taym-bra,” (instead of the more nasal standard French pronunciation of the word, “timbre”); the clerk, flustered, barked out, “Tell me in English!” and the southern French man immediately barked back, “Stamps!”
So, yes, in some ways English, like CVS, is wonderful -- convenient, safe, and certainly fills many needs. Still, aren’t we all a little disappointed when a store closes and we imagine what we’d love to see take its place … only to find out it’s another CVS (or bank or real estate office)?
At this point, most of us Americans take it for granted that people from other countries will most likely speak English, or at least be acquainted with it. And who can blame us? Think back to the Mayflower pilgrims for a minute. As the story goes, those pilgrims who survived that first horrible winter in the bitter wilds of the New World, where for thousands of years only thousands of Native American tribes had been living and speaking their tribal languages, were greeted in the spring by the Wampanoag native, Squanto -- who actually spoke English! (He had been kidnapped some years before and had spent time as a slave in England.) As my kids would say, “How random is that?!” And yet I’ve never read of Miles Standish’s amazement at this coincidence – did he simply cluck, “Quite right!” to himself and then ask about proper farming techniques?
So … as we arrive at the annual celebration of the Irish, St. Patrick’s Day, it’s time to give some thought to this day from both a cultural and a linguistic point of view – if only as a small, temporary antidote to the CVS-ization of American-Anglo language and culture.
The Irish, as the saying goes, are lucky: Even as somewhat goofy as St. Patrick’s Day is (though I love men in kilts playing bagpipes; and also love cupcakes with dyed-green frosting and dark green sprinkles), I can’t think of any other group of hyphenated-Americans that gets a whole national day of celebration as the Irish do every March 17 – parades, green beer, a dyed-green Chicago River, even green bagels – from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. As for St. Patrick the man – who’s he?! St. Paddy’s Day in the U.S. is about being Irish – even if you’re not. And though I have never bought a green carnation or a “Pinch Me, I’m Irish!” button in my life, to the whole event I say, “Erin Go Bragh!” (Irish Gaelic for “Ireland Forever!”)
The reason for my enthusiasm is, Ireland might be forever (or until the predicted effects of global warming wash the island out), but their Gaelic language might vanish far sooner.
At the moment, Irish Gaelic is on the list of Endangered Languages (http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html) Figures vary:
According to the UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages (last updated 1999) there are perhaps only 20,000 speakers of Irish Gaelic left; According to a 2005 book, “Beginner’s Irish” by Gary Rosenstock, there are 30,000 native speakers and 100,000 speakers who have learned it as a second language. This could mean renewed interest since the last UNESCO survey, or just … different figures. But one more thing: there are three Irish dialects (Ulster, Connaught, and Munster) of which most only speak one. Still, there is an Irish radio station catering to all three dialects and an Irish TV station (http://www.tg4.ie/).
In Scotland, according to the UNESCO report, more than 50,000 claimed to know the language, but less than half spoke it actively. Welsh, the healthiest of the Gaelic groups, might have up to 250,000 regular, active speakers. So though this doesn’t spell immediate doom for those Gaelic branches, either could die out in a generation or two if children do not learn the language. Though children are now being taught Welsh in school and more adults are interested in learning it, it’s too early to tell if this will stop the erosion completely -- but it’s a good sign. After centuries of being beaten back, Gaelic is finding some muscle.
Once upon a time the Gaelic language, culture and literature ranked just behind the Greeks and Romans. Though the Celtic tribes that spoke Gaelic were mainly fierce warriors and not too meticulous at writing everything down, they did have a strong oral tradition; and what they did manage to write down has been collected and treasured in their many Irish myths, as well as in the original legend of King Arthur, a 6th century Celt and Gaelic-speaking warrior himself.
Irish Gaelic’s fall began long, long ago with the English colonization of Ireland in 1169; Anglicization intensified in the 1500’s – King Henry VIII even issued an order to Ireland in 1537 entitled, “An Act for the English Order, Habit and Language,” which discouraged Gaelic. By the 20th century, children who slipped up and spoke Gaelic at school were punished. Even parents came to realize if their children were to succeed in the world, they had to speak English – not Gaelic. And once a language is no longer handed down to the next generation, its lifespan is severely limited.
David Crystal, a leading language authority, believes that of the world’s roughly 6,000 languages, a good half of them could vanish in the next century or so from the mere lack of speakers – some have fewer than 1000; those on the verge of extinction may have 100 or 10, or even just 1. And once those speakers are gone, the language is gone too. Two other forms of Gaelic, Cornish (from England’s Cornwall) and Manx (from the Isle of Man) have already died out.
What helps languages survive is having people believe that the language is important enough to speak regularly and properly and to pass on to their children. Cultural pride helps – and a national celebration like St. Patrick’s Day can nurture Irish pride, and interest in Gaelic might go along with that.
Gaelic, despite its strange spellings and difficult pronunciation, is an Indo-European language like English. Linguists more knowledgeable than I am can see a correlation in some of Gaelic’s words for words in Sanskrit, one of the bases of Western languages.
But Gaelic is different from other Western languages in many more ways than it’s similar. It only has 18 letters (no j, k, q, v, w, x, y, z); and most simple sentences go verb-subject-object: “Saw I a play last night.” Nor does the language have distinct words for “yes” and “no.” That’s why, in answer to a question like, “Are you going home for dinner now,” you might hear an Irish person say, “I am;” or, “I’m not.” Welsh Gaelic is said to be a particularly melodic language, and the influence can be heard in their English:
In the movie version of “My Fair Lady,” Professor of Phonetics Henry Higgins is astonished at the natural language ability that Eliza Doolittle’s boozing, panhandling father has; at one point, Mr. Doolittle, exasperated at not being able to explain why he wants a little money from the professor, exclaims, “I’m willing to tell you! I’m wanting to tell you! I’m waiting to tell you!” Higgins, moved by the rhythm and alliteration in “willing,” “wanting,” and “waiting,” says to his friend, Col. Pickering, “That would be the Welsh strain in him.”
But let’s go back to that prediction that of 6,000 languages in the world now only 3,000 will be spoken in a hundred years. I find it hard to even name more than 25 languages off the top of my head, you too might think that 3,000 languages are an absolute wealth of words. But language is not just about tourists or business people communicating with native speakers and other foreigners. It’s about diversity -- as much as is saving the snow leopard and blue whale. Animals have it over languages because you can see them – and when photographed by National Geographic, they’re often really cute. A language, on the other hand, particularly one down to its last dying speaker, leaves just an invisible breath; if that language is lucky, there might be a field worker’s notes on its grammar and vocabulary. Otherwise, a world simply evaporates.
So on this St. Paddy’s Day, consider treating yourself to a nice, green-frosted cupcake adorned with a small plastic shamrock, and take a moment to appreciate the Irish – or perhaps some other nationality or ethnic group – be they Laplanders, Outer Mongolians, or Cherokees. Every language reflects a unique spirit, history, even fashion sense. And imagine that every time a language is lost, a new CVS opens up in its place.
P.S. Three-quarters of what I know in Irish Gaelic has already been displayed with “Erin Go Bragh;” but walking up the Bowery the other day, I added one more word to my vocabulary -- thanks to an Irish bar by the name of “Slainte” (pronounced Slahn-tya, also in Scottish Gaelic), which means “Cheers!”
And in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here are some handy Irish Gaelic proverbs with English translations to keep in mind:
(Sorry, but the Gaelic pronunciation is anyone’s guess)
Is minic a bhris beal duine a shorn.
“A person’s mouth often broke his nose;”
Na diol do chearc la fliuch.
“Don’t sell your hen on a wet day;”
and
Maireann croi eadrom I bhad.
“The light heart lives long.”
A top o’ the morning to you all …. And Slainte!
The English language could already be the CVS of the linguistic world: It’s got Latin, Sanskrit, Old Germanic, vocabulary from all over the globe, volumes from Shakespeare, American musical songs from Rogers & Hammerstein, rock and roll words, technology terms, old words with new meanings, new expressions with old words; and you can find English spoken just about everywhere; English is the common language of India and the corporate world in general; it is the principal language link between all foreigners; and it even serves as a link to people who speak the same language but with different accents, as in:
A French student of mine was once standing in line at the post office in Paris, while a man from the south of France was asking the clerk for what sounded like, “Taym-bra,” (instead of the more nasal standard French pronunciation of the word, “timbre”); the clerk, flustered, barked out, “Tell me in English!” and the southern French man immediately barked back, “Stamps!”
So, yes, in some ways English, like CVS, is wonderful -- convenient, safe, and certainly fills many needs. Still, aren’t we all a little disappointed when a store closes and we imagine what we’d love to see take its place … only to find out it’s another CVS (or bank or real estate office)?
At this point, most of us Americans take it for granted that people from other countries will most likely speak English, or at least be acquainted with it. And who can blame us? Think back to the Mayflower pilgrims for a minute. As the story goes, those pilgrims who survived that first horrible winter in the bitter wilds of the New World, where for thousands of years only thousands of Native American tribes had been living and speaking their tribal languages, were greeted in the spring by the Wampanoag native, Squanto -- who actually spoke English! (He had been kidnapped some years before and had spent time as a slave in England.) As my kids would say, “How random is that?!” And yet I’ve never read of Miles Standish’s amazement at this coincidence – did he simply cluck, “Quite right!” to himself and then ask about proper farming techniques?
So … as we arrive at the annual celebration of the Irish, St. Patrick’s Day, it’s time to give some thought to this day from both a cultural and a linguistic point of view – if only as a small, temporary antidote to the CVS-ization of American-Anglo language and culture.
The Irish, as the saying goes, are lucky: Even as somewhat goofy as St. Patrick’s Day is (though I love men in kilts playing bagpipes; and also love cupcakes with dyed-green frosting and dark green sprinkles), I can’t think of any other group of hyphenated-Americans that gets a whole national day of celebration as the Irish do every March 17 – parades, green beer, a dyed-green Chicago River, even green bagels – from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. As for St. Patrick the man – who’s he?! St. Paddy’s Day in the U.S. is about being Irish – even if you’re not. And though I have never bought a green carnation or a “Pinch Me, I’m Irish!” button in my life, to the whole event I say, “Erin Go Bragh!” (Irish Gaelic for “Ireland Forever!”)
The reason for my enthusiasm is, Ireland might be forever (or until the predicted effects of global warming wash the island out), but their Gaelic language might vanish far sooner.
At the moment, Irish Gaelic is on the list of Endangered Languages (http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html) Figures vary:
According to the UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages (last updated 1999) there are perhaps only 20,000 speakers of Irish Gaelic left; According to a 2005 book, “Beginner’s Irish” by Gary Rosenstock, there are 30,000 native speakers and 100,000 speakers who have learned it as a second language. This could mean renewed interest since the last UNESCO survey, or just … different figures. But one more thing: there are three Irish dialects (Ulster, Connaught, and Munster) of which most only speak one. Still, there is an Irish radio station catering to all three dialects and an Irish TV station (http://www.tg4.ie/).
In Scotland, according to the UNESCO report, more than 50,000 claimed to know the language, but less than half spoke it actively. Welsh, the healthiest of the Gaelic groups, might have up to 250,000 regular, active speakers. So though this doesn’t spell immediate doom for those Gaelic branches, either could die out in a generation or two if children do not learn the language. Though children are now being taught Welsh in school and more adults are interested in learning it, it’s too early to tell if this will stop the erosion completely -- but it’s a good sign. After centuries of being beaten back, Gaelic is finding some muscle.
Once upon a time the Gaelic language, culture and literature ranked just behind the Greeks and Romans. Though the Celtic tribes that spoke Gaelic were mainly fierce warriors and not too meticulous at writing everything down, they did have a strong oral tradition; and what they did manage to write down has been collected and treasured in their many Irish myths, as well as in the original legend of King Arthur, a 6th century Celt and Gaelic-speaking warrior himself.
Irish Gaelic’s fall began long, long ago with the English colonization of Ireland in 1169; Anglicization intensified in the 1500’s – King Henry VIII even issued an order to Ireland in 1537 entitled, “An Act for the English Order, Habit and Language,” which discouraged Gaelic. By the 20th century, children who slipped up and spoke Gaelic at school were punished. Even parents came to realize if their children were to succeed in the world, they had to speak English – not Gaelic. And once a language is no longer handed down to the next generation, its lifespan is severely limited.
David Crystal, a leading language authority, believes that of the world’s roughly 6,000 languages, a good half of them could vanish in the next century or so from the mere lack of speakers – some have fewer than 1000; those on the verge of extinction may have 100 or 10, or even just 1. And once those speakers are gone, the language is gone too. Two other forms of Gaelic, Cornish (from England’s Cornwall) and Manx (from the Isle of Man) have already died out.
What helps languages survive is having people believe that the language is important enough to speak regularly and properly and to pass on to their children. Cultural pride helps – and a national celebration like St. Patrick’s Day can nurture Irish pride, and interest in Gaelic might go along with that.
Gaelic, despite its strange spellings and difficult pronunciation, is an Indo-European language like English. Linguists more knowledgeable than I am can see a correlation in some of Gaelic’s words for words in Sanskrit, one of the bases of Western languages.
But Gaelic is different from other Western languages in many more ways than it’s similar. It only has 18 letters (no j, k, q, v, w, x, y, z); and most simple sentences go verb-subject-object: “Saw I a play last night.” Nor does the language have distinct words for “yes” and “no.” That’s why, in answer to a question like, “Are you going home for dinner now,” you might hear an Irish person say, “I am;” or, “I’m not.” Welsh Gaelic is said to be a particularly melodic language, and the influence can be heard in their English:
In the movie version of “My Fair Lady,” Professor of Phonetics Henry Higgins is astonished at the natural language ability that Eliza Doolittle’s boozing, panhandling father has; at one point, Mr. Doolittle, exasperated at not being able to explain why he wants a little money from the professor, exclaims, “I’m willing to tell you! I’m wanting to tell you! I’m waiting to tell you!” Higgins, moved by the rhythm and alliteration in “willing,” “wanting,” and “waiting,” says to his friend, Col. Pickering, “That would be the Welsh strain in him.”
But let’s go back to that prediction that of 6,000 languages in the world now only 3,000 will be spoken in a hundred years. I find it hard to even name more than 25 languages off the top of my head, you too might think that 3,000 languages are an absolute wealth of words. But language is not just about tourists or business people communicating with native speakers and other foreigners. It’s about diversity -- as much as is saving the snow leopard and blue whale. Animals have it over languages because you can see them – and when photographed by National Geographic, they’re often really cute. A language, on the other hand, particularly one down to its last dying speaker, leaves just an invisible breath; if that language is lucky, there might be a field worker’s notes on its grammar and vocabulary. Otherwise, a world simply evaporates.
So on this St. Paddy’s Day, consider treating yourself to a nice, green-frosted cupcake adorned with a small plastic shamrock, and take a moment to appreciate the Irish – or perhaps some other nationality or ethnic group – be they Laplanders, Outer Mongolians, or Cherokees. Every language reflects a unique spirit, history, even fashion sense. And imagine that every time a language is lost, a new CVS opens up in its place.
P.S. Three-quarters of what I know in Irish Gaelic has already been displayed with “Erin Go Bragh;” but walking up the Bowery the other day, I added one more word to my vocabulary -- thanks to an Irish bar by the name of “Slainte” (pronounced Slahn-tya, also in Scottish Gaelic), which means “Cheers!”
And in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here are some handy Irish Gaelic proverbs with English translations to keep in mind:
(Sorry, but the Gaelic pronunciation is anyone’s guess)
Is minic a bhris beal duine a shorn.
“A person’s mouth often broke his nose;”
Na diol do chearc la fliuch.
“Don’t sell your hen on a wet day;”
and
Maireann croi eadrom I bhad.
“The light heart lives long.”
A top o’ the morning to you all …. And Slainte!
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Greening Up
I’m feeling green. And that’s not just because St. Patrick’s Day is soon; or that spring is suddenly in the air after a few weeks of a long-delayed winter. That’s using “green” in the traditional sense – green as in the color of grass or the face of the Wicked Witch of the West. Green from the Old English word, “grene,” which is akin to the ancient Indo-European word for “grow,” in the sense of “the color of living things.”
The green I’m also feeling – the one that has officially gone Hollywood, and therefore mainstream -- is a newer meaning of “green” -- that of being environmentally sound or earth-friendly. (Dictionary.com gives 16 other definitions for this adjective;) If you saw last week’s Oscar Awards, then you know that the event producers tried to be as “carbon-neutral” as possible; and that Al Gore won an Oscar for his global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” A few weeks earlier, Prince Charles and Camilla flew to New York on a commercial jet instead of a private one, in order to reduce their “carbon footprint;” and a recent picture of our Pro-Oil President George W. Bush smiling (albeit, uneasily) while – finally! -- holding up a vial of corn-grown ethanol (even though he held it as though it were urine).
Almost every day, I see something or read an article about our new “greenness”: on a recent trip to Boston, for example, I saw what looked like an oversized pine- colored garbage can that called itself a “solar-powered trash compactor.” And in my hotel room was “The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices” put out by the Union of Concerned Scientists – the first hotel literature I’ve ever seen to directly challenge the Gideon Bible for bedside table space. Personally, I find all this very heartening and long overdue.
Since the first Earth Day (April 22, 1972), anyone overtly environmentally conscious has been dubbed a “treehugger” or “a granola.” Though those terms still exist, they may start to fade, as concern for the environment becomes a part of everyday life and no longer a political statement. With that, I already hear a new vocabulary sprouting – with familiar words in new combinations or with new meanings to aid and abet our awakened awareness.
For instance, an environmental firm’s website uses “green” as a verb, describing how to: Green Your Home; Green Your Business; Green Your Event; Green Your Travel; and Green Your Building. I’m fine with making “green” a verb. The only thing I’ll add is that people will probably start to attach “up” to the verb because to green UP one’s home sounds more natural than to simply “green” one’s home.
In any case, the name of this green-as-verb company is the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, and it is from the BEF that the Academy of Motion Pictures purchased “renewable energy credits” to offset the 250,000-pound “carbon footprint” that it took to produce the Oscar Award telecast and the week’s related pre-show events. This footprint was measured by a “carbon calculator” that took into account the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the air from (I suppose) the gas and electricity used to bring people to the event; to produce and roll out the red carpet; spotlight the celebrities; beam the show into living rooms around the world; and afterward, to keep the stars’ champagne glasses both clean and filled.
A 250,000-pound carbon footprint, the BEF said, is like driving a car around the earth ten times – which is why the Academy purchased “carbon credits,” or “carbon offsets,” which go toward investing in renewable resources like wind, solar, biomass, and low-impact hydropower. (Wow: “Low-impact hydropower” – have you ever said that before? See what I mean about this new vocab?!)
In time, as “greening” becomes ever more integral to our lives, we may start hearing remarks that sound utterly pretentious now, but may lose that tone in the future. Remarks like:
“We considered buying a classic 90’s McMansion, but between the central air, tile floors*, and the cathedral ceilings, the green-up would have cost a fortune.” (*The newest thing in earth-conscious homes is to have hard-packed, dirt floors. See New York Times, Feb. 8, 2007, “Down and Dirty.”)
Or another: “Their wedding was totally green, but the carbon offset to honeymoon in Bali almost broke their budget.”
Savvy green consumers might start to see ads, say, from a garden store: “It’s our Happy Earth Day Sale-a-bration! Buy a solar-powered, all-natural diesel-enhanced lawn mower! 30% percent off and includes $100 in carbon credits.”
Restaurants might also get in on the act. Just as some restaurants now tout “heart-healthy” meals, we might start seeing numbers beside each dish detailing the number of “food miles” used to convey the food to your table. Or patrons might ask the waiter, “Could you tell me the carbon footprint of the house special cheeseburger?”
Packaging, from canned soup to staples, may have to carry carbon footprint details so that consumers can make more earth-conscious choices: locally distributed brands vs. national brands made in Sri Lanka, flown to California, and trucked to Des Moines, Chicago, or New York. Will “carbon footprint miles” become CFM, or “footprintage”? Keep watching.
Clothing stores may also one day reflect this new consciousness, since it takes 1800 gallons of water to produce the cotton in a pair of jeans, and 400 to make the cotton for a shirt (See ct.water.usgs.gov/EDUCATION/waterfacts.htm). Though I can hardly imagine any current stores, from the Gap to Ralph Lauren to Burberry saying this, perhaps stores of the future may brag, “These shirts are made from organically shade-grown hemp and produced with low-impact hydropower.” We laugh now – but didn’t we all laugh at Steve Martin in “L.A. Story” (1991) when he asked the waitress at a restaurant for a “half double decaffeinated half-caf with a twist of lemon.” Though his order sounded hilarious at the time, at this point, it sounds pretty reasonable.
Pretty much all of us can rattle off our cell phone numbers, email addresses, and/or cholesterol. So before too long, we’ll be calculating carbons as naturally as we count carbohydrates. And should your carbon footprint count be lower than mine, well … I’ll be “green” with envy.
Addendum:
After writing this posting, I discovered that this week’s Time magazine’s cover story is titled, “Forget Organic: Eat Local.” I know some of you word-watchers will want to know if “eat local” is grammatically correct, because it sounds at first like it should be “eat LOCALLY.” Normally, an adverb should describe a verb, and in a sentence like, “We rarely eat out and when we do, we eat locally,” locally is used correctly, as an adverb describing where they eat. But in Time’s case, “Eat Local” really means, “Eat Local (Produce),” with “produce” being the understood object; so “local” is an adjective describing the understood noun “produce,” which is fine. Phew! As Sesame Street’s Kermit the Frog once sang, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green” – or grammatically correct.
The green I’m also feeling – the one that has officially gone Hollywood, and therefore mainstream -- is a newer meaning of “green” -- that of being environmentally sound or earth-friendly. (Dictionary.com gives 16 other definitions for this adjective;) If you saw last week’s Oscar Awards, then you know that the event producers tried to be as “carbon-neutral” as possible; and that Al Gore won an Oscar for his global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” A few weeks earlier, Prince Charles and Camilla flew to New York on a commercial jet instead of a private one, in order to reduce their “carbon footprint;” and a recent picture of our Pro-Oil President George W. Bush smiling (albeit, uneasily) while – finally! -- holding up a vial of corn-grown ethanol (even though he held it as though it were urine).
Almost every day, I see something or read an article about our new “greenness”: on a recent trip to Boston, for example, I saw what looked like an oversized pine- colored garbage can that called itself a “solar-powered trash compactor.” And in my hotel room was “The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices” put out by the Union of Concerned Scientists – the first hotel literature I’ve ever seen to directly challenge the Gideon Bible for bedside table space. Personally, I find all this very heartening and long overdue.
Since the first Earth Day (April 22, 1972), anyone overtly environmentally conscious has been dubbed a “treehugger” or “a granola.” Though those terms still exist, they may start to fade, as concern for the environment becomes a part of everyday life and no longer a political statement. With that, I already hear a new vocabulary sprouting – with familiar words in new combinations or with new meanings to aid and abet our awakened awareness.
For instance, an environmental firm’s website uses “green” as a verb, describing how to: Green Your Home; Green Your Business; Green Your Event; Green Your Travel; and Green Your Building. I’m fine with making “green” a verb. The only thing I’ll add is that people will probably start to attach “up” to the verb because to green UP one’s home sounds more natural than to simply “green” one’s home.
In any case, the name of this green-as-verb company is the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, and it is from the BEF that the Academy of Motion Pictures purchased “renewable energy credits” to offset the 250,000-pound “carbon footprint” that it took to produce the Oscar Award telecast and the week’s related pre-show events. This footprint was measured by a “carbon calculator” that took into account the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the air from (I suppose) the gas and electricity used to bring people to the event; to produce and roll out the red carpet; spotlight the celebrities; beam the show into living rooms around the world; and afterward, to keep the stars’ champagne glasses both clean and filled.
A 250,000-pound carbon footprint, the BEF said, is like driving a car around the earth ten times – which is why the Academy purchased “carbon credits,” or “carbon offsets,” which go toward investing in renewable resources like wind, solar, biomass, and low-impact hydropower. (Wow: “Low-impact hydropower” – have you ever said that before? See what I mean about this new vocab?!)
In time, as “greening” becomes ever more integral to our lives, we may start hearing remarks that sound utterly pretentious now, but may lose that tone in the future. Remarks like:
“We considered buying a classic 90’s McMansion, but between the central air, tile floors*, and the cathedral ceilings, the green-up would have cost a fortune.” (*The newest thing in earth-conscious homes is to have hard-packed, dirt floors. See New York Times, Feb. 8, 2007, “Down and Dirty.”)
Or another: “Their wedding was totally green, but the carbon offset to honeymoon in Bali almost broke their budget.”
Savvy green consumers might start to see ads, say, from a garden store: “It’s our Happy Earth Day Sale-a-bration! Buy a solar-powered, all-natural diesel-enhanced lawn mower! 30% percent off and includes $100 in carbon credits.”
Restaurants might also get in on the act. Just as some restaurants now tout “heart-healthy” meals, we might start seeing numbers beside each dish detailing the number of “food miles” used to convey the food to your table. Or patrons might ask the waiter, “Could you tell me the carbon footprint of the house special cheeseburger?”
Packaging, from canned soup to staples, may have to carry carbon footprint details so that consumers can make more earth-conscious choices: locally distributed brands vs. national brands made in Sri Lanka, flown to California, and trucked to Des Moines, Chicago, or New York. Will “carbon footprint miles” become CFM, or “footprintage”? Keep watching.
Clothing stores may also one day reflect this new consciousness, since it takes 1800 gallons of water to produce the cotton in a pair of jeans, and 400 to make the cotton for a shirt (See ct.water.usgs.gov/EDUCATION/waterfacts.htm). Though I can hardly imagine any current stores, from the Gap to Ralph Lauren to Burberry saying this, perhaps stores of the future may brag, “These shirts are made from organically shade-grown hemp and produced with low-impact hydropower.” We laugh now – but didn’t we all laugh at Steve Martin in “L.A. Story” (1991) when he asked the waitress at a restaurant for a “half double decaffeinated half-caf with a twist of lemon.” Though his order sounded hilarious at the time, at this point, it sounds pretty reasonable.
Pretty much all of us can rattle off our cell phone numbers, email addresses, and/or cholesterol. So before too long, we’ll be calculating carbons as naturally as we count carbohydrates. And should your carbon footprint count be lower than mine, well … I’ll be “green” with envy.
Addendum:
After writing this posting, I discovered that this week’s Time magazine’s cover story is titled, “Forget Organic: Eat Local.” I know some of you word-watchers will want to know if “eat local” is grammatically correct, because it sounds at first like it should be “eat LOCALLY.” Normally, an adverb should describe a verb, and in a sentence like, “We rarely eat out and when we do, we eat locally,” locally is used correctly, as an adverb describing where they eat. But in Time’s case, “Eat Local” really means, “Eat Local (Produce),” with “produce” being the understood object; so “local” is an adjective describing the understood noun “produce,” which is fine. Phew! As Sesame Street’s Kermit the Frog once sang, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green” – or grammatically correct.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Is Anybody Listening?
In these times of heightened security, transportation hubs have had to come up with recordings to remind us of the ever-present danger in either watching another traveler’s bag, or having another traveler watch our bag while we go get in line for a latte or chase after a child. Such warnings are, I suppose, understandable, even if the danger feels remote at the time. The problem is that the language chosen to convey these loud, perfectly articulated, and oft-repeated admonitions reaches for such official sounding intonations that they end up mangled, and worse – ungrammatical!
For instance, I’ve just come back from a quick trip to Minnesota. Not surprisingly, my plane was delayed and, while in the waiting lounge of Hubert H. Humphrey Airport with about 200 fellow passengers, I was treated every few minutes to an overhead recording urging everyone to “patrol” their baggage: “All passengers should patrol their baggage at all times.” Can you imagine a waiting lounge with passengers “patrolling” their unmoving carry-on items, taking perhaps four or five steps forward past one’s briefcase or diaper bag, then four or five steps back? Talk about chaos!
My question is, if no one is laughing, or even making quizzical looks at each other on hearing such nonsense, is anyone really listening?
In Grand Central Station in New York, a similar recording is played equally often, and I always cringe at the word “attended:” “Atttention passengers: All luggage and packages must be attended at all times.” Personally, I thought people attended church or the opera. Dictionary.com agrees and adds that a nurse may attend (administer care to) a patient, and a fever may attend (or accompany) a cold. In each of those cases, “attend” is a transitive verb, which means it must take a grammatical object (church/opera; patient; cold are such objects in the sentences above). So that even if one can, say, “attend one’s health” (though I have never heard the word used that way -- somehow, “Put down that Big Mac and attend your health!” just doesn’t sound right) grammatically, it’s correct, with “health” being the object of “attend.”
Not so with “luggage and packages must be attended at all times.” In this case, luggage and packages are the joint subjects with no available object. That is why my ear is always straining to hear the little word particle, TO, following “attend.” It would be so nice to hear, “All luggage and packages must be ‘attended TO’ (to take care, give attention) at all times.” But, alas. It’s like listening for the final note in Beethoven’s 5th – Da-Da-Da (“Excuse me, sir, we need another “Da!”) and not getting it.
On my New York/Minneapolis flights (both to and from), more loud recordings, these recited in a deep, male voice following the slightest turbulence and upon descent, always jolted me from my half-sleep: “In compliance with federal regulations, please return to your seats.” The problem here is that “in compliance with federal regulations” is a phrase with nothing to link to – a lonely, dangling prepositional phrase; the subject of this particular awkward sentence is an unspoken, but understood, “you,” (“you” being the one asked to sit down). But where does “in compliance with” go? Does it describe the subject, “you” or the verb, “return”? Neither, really.
What the deep-voiced intoner means, I think, is, “TO COMPLY WITH federal regulations, please return to your seats.” But is anyone really listening? Or, (now I’m thinking of that Chicago song: “Does anyone know what time it is? Does anyone really care?”) Or are we just tolerating this mumbo-jumbo because we are passive passengers just happy to be aloft?
Still, these three announcements are perfect illustrations of why it’s important to say important things in plain, old English. If you want your message understood by people, then keep messages simple and avoid Latin-based words of more than two syllables. Why not have people write official-sounding warnings in plain English, with words and phrases that actually mean something, and with few or no Latin-based words allowed: “Passengers, please WATCH your bags; or – for variety’s sake – “Please HOLD ONTO your bags.” For in-flight requests, a nice, deep voice might advise, “Please get back to your seats – for your own safety.”
As my plane back to JFK stood at the gate before departure, I eased my seat back just a smidgen, for extra comfort. Within seconds, a sharp-eyed flight attendant had spotted my infraction and asked me to place it back in its full, upright position. Later, as I pondered the prerecorded announcement about compliance, I wondered if I, as Language Lady, were simply the verbal equivalent of that annoying flight attendant, ever aware of the slightest flaw. (Please – don’t feel you must comment! It was just a passing thought.)
In any case, in New York, we are exhorted on subway signs and commuter rail posters to speak up when we see something strange, with the public service campaign, “If you see something, say something;” and, in Spanish, “Si ves algo, di algo.” Perhaps we could do with a parallel public service campaign for catching strange uses of the English language while trying to warn people about strange somethings; this campaign could be called, “If you hear something, say something.”
In other words, we must band together and speak out against dangling prepositional phrases, the lack of objects with transitive verbs, and jarringly wrong words trying to sound more fearsome than the more natural choice. Watching our language , while making sure that it is concise – and above all, clear – could ultimately contribute more to our national safety than, say, 200 glassy-eyed passengers not patrolling their packages in compliance with federal regulations ever could. Do you hear me?
For instance, I’ve just come back from a quick trip to Minnesota. Not surprisingly, my plane was delayed and, while in the waiting lounge of Hubert H. Humphrey Airport with about 200 fellow passengers, I was treated every few minutes to an overhead recording urging everyone to “patrol” their baggage: “All passengers should patrol their baggage at all times.” Can you imagine a waiting lounge with passengers “patrolling” their unmoving carry-on items, taking perhaps four or five steps forward past one’s briefcase or diaper bag, then four or five steps back? Talk about chaos!
My question is, if no one is laughing, or even making quizzical looks at each other on hearing such nonsense, is anyone really listening?
In Grand Central Station in New York, a similar recording is played equally often, and I always cringe at the word “attended:” “Atttention passengers: All luggage and packages must be attended at all times.” Personally, I thought people attended church or the opera. Dictionary.com agrees and adds that a nurse may attend (administer care to) a patient, and a fever may attend (or accompany) a cold. In each of those cases, “attend” is a transitive verb, which means it must take a grammatical object (church/opera; patient; cold are such objects in the sentences above). So that even if one can, say, “attend one’s health” (though I have never heard the word used that way -- somehow, “Put down that Big Mac and attend your health!” just doesn’t sound right) grammatically, it’s correct, with “health” being the object of “attend.”
Not so with “luggage and packages must be attended at all times.” In this case, luggage and packages are the joint subjects with no available object. That is why my ear is always straining to hear the little word particle, TO, following “attend.” It would be so nice to hear, “All luggage and packages must be ‘attended TO’ (to take care, give attention) at all times.” But, alas. It’s like listening for the final note in Beethoven’s 5th – Da-Da-Da (“Excuse me, sir, we need another “Da!”) and not getting it.
On my New York/Minneapolis flights (both to and from), more loud recordings, these recited in a deep, male voice following the slightest turbulence and upon descent, always jolted me from my half-sleep: “In compliance with federal regulations, please return to your seats.” The problem here is that “in compliance with federal regulations” is a phrase with nothing to link to – a lonely, dangling prepositional phrase; the subject of this particular awkward sentence is an unspoken, but understood, “you,” (“you” being the one asked to sit down). But where does “in compliance with” go? Does it describe the subject, “you” or the verb, “return”? Neither, really.
What the deep-voiced intoner means, I think, is, “TO COMPLY WITH federal regulations, please return to your seats.” But is anyone really listening? Or, (now I’m thinking of that Chicago song: “Does anyone know what time it is? Does anyone really care?”) Or are we just tolerating this mumbo-jumbo because we are passive passengers just happy to be aloft?
Still, these three announcements are perfect illustrations of why it’s important to say important things in plain, old English. If you want your message understood by people, then keep messages simple and avoid Latin-based words of more than two syllables. Why not have people write official-sounding warnings in plain English, with words and phrases that actually mean something, and with few or no Latin-based words allowed: “Passengers, please WATCH your bags; or – for variety’s sake – “Please HOLD ONTO your bags.” For in-flight requests, a nice, deep voice might advise, “Please get back to your seats – for your own safety.”
As my plane back to JFK stood at the gate before departure, I eased my seat back just a smidgen, for extra comfort. Within seconds, a sharp-eyed flight attendant had spotted my infraction and asked me to place it back in its full, upright position. Later, as I pondered the prerecorded announcement about compliance, I wondered if I, as Language Lady, were simply the verbal equivalent of that annoying flight attendant, ever aware of the slightest flaw. (Please – don’t feel you must comment! It was just a passing thought.)
In any case, in New York, we are exhorted on subway signs and commuter rail posters to speak up when we see something strange, with the public service campaign, “If you see something, say something;” and, in Spanish, “Si ves algo, di algo.” Perhaps we could do with a parallel public service campaign for catching strange uses of the English language while trying to warn people about strange somethings; this campaign could be called, “If you hear something, say something.”
In other words, we must band together and speak out against dangling prepositional phrases, the lack of objects with transitive verbs, and jarringly wrong words trying to sound more fearsome than the more natural choice. Watching our language , while making sure that it is concise – and above all, clear – could ultimately contribute more to our national safety than, say, 200 glassy-eyed passengers not patrolling their packages in compliance with federal regulations ever could. Do you hear me?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Presiders and Deciders
With President’s Day just around the corner; and with more presidential candidates popping up daily – not to mention the media’s reminding us almost as often that the United States is now starting on the longest presidential campaign in our history, it seemed time to talk about things presidential. First off the list – and what could be more presidential? – is the word “president.”
I’ve often wondered how George Washington (one of this month’s two famous presidential birthday boys), came to adopt this term. Up until 1787 no ruling authority in any land had ever been called anything but some form of “king” (from the Old English, “cyning” (pron: kooning), which came from the ancient root, “gen,” for “family” or “kin”); or “queen” (derived from the Indo-European root, “gwen,” for “woman” – though in Old English, the word, “cwene,” pronounced “queen,” also meant both “wife” AND “prostitute.” Hmmm.) But our country’s founders felt that all monarchs were “inherently evil,” according to Jospeh Ellis in his “Founding Fathers.” In fact, the American Revolution had been fought to RID our country of such monarchs, so a new word for the position was absolutely imperative. “Republican king,” the original term, according to Ellis, was not it.
“President” according to Dictionary.com, goes back to the 14th century, when it meant “governor;” some scholar back then must have combined the Latin words, “prae” (in front of) with “sidere” (to sit) to define the job: “to act as head or chief.” In essence, a president is supposed to “preside,” or supervise, be in charge of, or officiate. (There were many more synonyms listed in Roget’s New Millennium thesaurus, but I did not see “wiretap without permission” anywhere on the list.)
Up until President Washington took on the title,, there had been college presidents as far back as 1464, and presidents of individual colonies starting in Pocahontas’s Virginia in 1608. But 1787 marks the first use of “president” meaning Chief Executive Officer of a republic.
Notice the verbal distinction between an authority figure meant to “preside” rather than “rule.” In preside, there’s an element of reasoned control rather than the often whimsical and selfish motives so often the legacy of kings.
Cut to 218 years later, however, and we have President Bush referring to himself as “The Decider,” a term he uttered at a press conference in April 2006, when he declared that as The Decider he would keep Donald Rumsfeld on as Secretary of Defense. “The Decider” still sounds funny, or stupid, or both. To me, it sounds childish – a three-year-old just learning how to speak might see that his mom cooks, so she’s the cooker; or that his dad shaves, so he’s the shaver. George Bush thinks, I decide – so I’m the Decider. In fact, most adults would have gone with the more standard “Decision Maker.” Better yet, how about The Presider – one who could emanate a quiet but confidant authority – something like a leader.
But now that the longest presidential campaign in history has begun, let’s take a Language Lady-look at what’s going on with two of the most talked-about candidates:
Rhymes with Iraq
At my fingertips as a I write is a February 9, 2007 copy of the German-language, Swiss newspaper supplement, Das Magazin, and I thought I’d share some of the terms the cover story uses to describe the newly announced presidential Democratic candidate from Illinois: The subtitle of the article says that this candidate is “jung” (pronounce “j” as “y” and it sounds just like our same word, “young”), schwartz (black) and perhaps the “nachste” (pronounced “next-eh”) Mann im Weissen Haus (man in the White House). Barack Obama, the magazine says, is “der Superstar” of “amerikanischen Politik” (American politics) and “bringt” (brings) “Schwitzen” (sweat) to, or rather, is making female Presidental candidate Hillary Clinton break out in a sweat.
Das Magazin reporter Peter Haffner then starts the main text by saying that the candidate’s first name rhymes with Iraq; that his middle name recalls that of a recently hanged dictator; and that his last name sounds similar to the most sought-after terrorist in the world; and that all together, Barack Hussein Obama is the phonetic embodiment of the American nightmare. And yet, the article adds, this man has a good chance of being President Bush’s successor.
Not only successor: The title of the article is “Der Erloser,” or The Savoir.” Yes, as in Jesus. I wondered, given how closely German and English are related, just how “Erloser,” with LOSER so central and prominent, could mean something so opposite. The German word, “losen,” with an umlaut over the “o” making it sound more like “loozen,” means to “untie,” or “loosen,” or basically, to come undone. But stick the prefix “er” on it and it makes it the opposite: to bring together, unite – or, in a bigger context, to redeem and save.
Now, In addition to calling himself The Decider, our current president --the most polarizing president in recent history – also claimed he was “a uniter” (In a May 1999 interview Bush said: “I showed the people of Texas that I'm a uniter, not a divider. I refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another.”) Well, I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t claimed to be anything more grandiose. Whether Barack – who openly refers to God and his personal faith in the Almighty – ever calls himself “The Savior” remains to be seen.
Rhymes with Pillory
Then there is Hillary. Last fall, prior to the November elections, our senator’s “Re-elect Hillary” posters and bumper stickers deliberately left off her maiden and married last name. With the single name, “Hillary,” she joined the ranks of such last-name-less celebs as Cher, Madonna, and (at least for now) Britney, Paris, and Lindsay; that way, we could almost forget that the former Hillary Rodham was married to the scandal-tainted, former President Bill Clinton. Hillary, it seems, wanted to be re-elected as Herself.
But now that Hillary has declared herself an official Democratic presidential candidate, the little words “Rodham” and/or “Clinton” are creeping onto her campaign posters and other paraphernalia. “Hillary” still dominates but perhaps she now wants the possible booster-connection to her hubby, who these days is widely seen as a post-Katrina humanitarian, a man of the people, and a down-home boy, whose intern-related disgrace nine years ago seems, after six years of Bush-patrol, pretty innocuous.
But whatever Hillary does, it seems she does the wrong thing. Her decisions seem so connected to polls or the majority opinion that, when those opinions change, she changes her stance faster than a driver trying to avoid a dog in the road. If she leaves Bill’s name off her posters one time, the next thing you know, she puts him on. If she puts on a strong, assertive front to win the senate seat, the next thing you know she’s being told she’s too masculine in her efforts, that she should take advantage of her femininity. Next thing you know, she’s in Iowa meeting with women in someone’s living room. If she’s told she’s too cold and ambitious, then she attempts warm and fuzzy; but when her official HillaryClinton.com website came out a few weeks ago, reviewers derided her as fake and a poor actor.
Maybe Hillary simply wants no enemies. But it comes off as is The Vacilator. Or the Greatest Common (and Power-Amassing) Denominator.
Just last week the fashion designer Donnatella Versace chimed in, saying that Hillary should stop wearing pants,* especially in blue, and go for knee-length dresses instead. No doubt Hillary will be soon sighted looking like some Breakfast at Tiffany’s “Hillary” Golightly in a not-so-sleek black, knee-length cocktail dress.
But even if Hillary happens to wear some tasteful, fitted suit, someone will no doubt make some crack about her having fat legs or fleshy knees, and she’ll revert to *trousers:” (Donnatella actually used the word, “trousers,” which the British seem to favor over our “pants;” “trousers” comes from the Scottish Gaelic “triubhas,” the name for the tight-fitting breeches worn (sometimes) under men’s tartan kilts).
You could say that Hillary is a real sucker for words – that is, other peoples’ words. It would be great if we could have a woman president, and one we could dub The Listener – who could listen to other experts and make well-informed decisions. What we don’t need is a Chief Executive Hearer. The difference between “hearing” and “listening,” as with “seeing” and “looking,” is a question of focus and attention. And we don’t need a President who behaves like a hearing aid that picks up all the background noise and none of the foreground.
As for Das Magazin’s jibe that Barack’s candidacy is making Hillary break out in a sweat, my father would have begged to disagree: “Horses sweat; men perspire; and ladies … glow,” he liked to remind me.
But back when ladies glowed, a women and a black man were not running for president. We’ve still got about 600 days to go, so it’s a bit early for any of us to be Deciders on Winners. So I say, Hail to the Chief Presider, whoever (s)he may be!
I’ve often wondered how George Washington (one of this month’s two famous presidential birthday boys), came to adopt this term. Up until 1787 no ruling authority in any land had ever been called anything but some form of “king” (from the Old English, “cyning” (pron: kooning), which came from the ancient root, “gen,” for “family” or “kin”); or “queen” (derived from the Indo-European root, “gwen,” for “woman” – though in Old English, the word, “cwene,” pronounced “queen,” also meant both “wife” AND “prostitute.” Hmmm.) But our country’s founders felt that all monarchs were “inherently evil,” according to Jospeh Ellis in his “Founding Fathers.” In fact, the American Revolution had been fought to RID our country of such monarchs, so a new word for the position was absolutely imperative. “Republican king,” the original term, according to Ellis, was not it.
“President” according to Dictionary.com, goes back to the 14th century, when it meant “governor;” some scholar back then must have combined the Latin words, “prae” (in front of) with “sidere” (to sit) to define the job: “to act as head or chief.” In essence, a president is supposed to “preside,” or supervise, be in charge of, or officiate. (There were many more synonyms listed in Roget’s New Millennium thesaurus, but I did not see “wiretap without permission” anywhere on the list.)
Up until President Washington took on the title,, there had been college presidents as far back as 1464, and presidents of individual colonies starting in Pocahontas’s Virginia in 1608. But 1787 marks the first use of “president” meaning Chief Executive Officer of a republic.
Notice the verbal distinction between an authority figure meant to “preside” rather than “rule.” In preside, there’s an element of reasoned control rather than the often whimsical and selfish motives so often the legacy of kings.
Cut to 218 years later, however, and we have President Bush referring to himself as “The Decider,” a term he uttered at a press conference in April 2006, when he declared that as The Decider he would keep Donald Rumsfeld on as Secretary of Defense. “The Decider” still sounds funny, or stupid, or both. To me, it sounds childish – a three-year-old just learning how to speak might see that his mom cooks, so she’s the cooker; or that his dad shaves, so he’s the shaver. George Bush thinks, I decide – so I’m the Decider. In fact, most adults would have gone with the more standard “Decision Maker.” Better yet, how about The Presider – one who could emanate a quiet but confidant authority – something like a leader.
But now that the longest presidential campaign in history has begun, let’s take a Language Lady-look at what’s going on with two of the most talked-about candidates:
Rhymes with Iraq
At my fingertips as a I write is a February 9, 2007 copy of the German-language, Swiss newspaper supplement, Das Magazin, and I thought I’d share some of the terms the cover story uses to describe the newly announced presidential Democratic candidate from Illinois: The subtitle of the article says that this candidate is “jung” (pronounce “j” as “y” and it sounds just like our same word, “young”), schwartz (black) and perhaps the “nachste” (pronounced “next-eh”) Mann im Weissen Haus (man in the White House). Barack Obama, the magazine says, is “der Superstar” of “amerikanischen Politik” (American politics) and “bringt” (brings) “Schwitzen” (sweat) to, or rather, is making female Presidental candidate Hillary Clinton break out in a sweat.
Das Magazin reporter Peter Haffner then starts the main text by saying that the candidate’s first name rhymes with Iraq; that his middle name recalls that of a recently hanged dictator; and that his last name sounds similar to the most sought-after terrorist in the world; and that all together, Barack Hussein Obama is the phonetic embodiment of the American nightmare. And yet, the article adds, this man has a good chance of being President Bush’s successor.
Not only successor: The title of the article is “Der Erloser,” or The Savoir.” Yes, as in Jesus. I wondered, given how closely German and English are related, just how “Erloser,” with LOSER so central and prominent, could mean something so opposite. The German word, “losen,” with an umlaut over the “o” making it sound more like “loozen,” means to “untie,” or “loosen,” or basically, to come undone. But stick the prefix “er” on it and it makes it the opposite: to bring together, unite – or, in a bigger context, to redeem and save.
Now, In addition to calling himself The Decider, our current president --the most polarizing president in recent history – also claimed he was “a uniter” (In a May 1999 interview Bush said: “I showed the people of Texas that I'm a uniter, not a divider. I refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another.”) Well, I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t claimed to be anything more grandiose. Whether Barack – who openly refers to God and his personal faith in the Almighty – ever calls himself “The Savior” remains to be seen.
Rhymes with Pillory
Then there is Hillary. Last fall, prior to the November elections, our senator’s “Re-elect Hillary” posters and bumper stickers deliberately left off her maiden and married last name. With the single name, “Hillary,” she joined the ranks of such last-name-less celebs as Cher, Madonna, and (at least for now) Britney, Paris, and Lindsay; that way, we could almost forget that the former Hillary Rodham was married to the scandal-tainted, former President Bill Clinton. Hillary, it seems, wanted to be re-elected as Herself.
But now that Hillary has declared herself an official Democratic presidential candidate, the little words “Rodham” and/or “Clinton” are creeping onto her campaign posters and other paraphernalia. “Hillary” still dominates but perhaps she now wants the possible booster-connection to her hubby, who these days is widely seen as a post-Katrina humanitarian, a man of the people, and a down-home boy, whose intern-related disgrace nine years ago seems, after six years of Bush-patrol, pretty innocuous.
But whatever Hillary does, it seems she does the wrong thing. Her decisions seem so connected to polls or the majority opinion that, when those opinions change, she changes her stance faster than a driver trying to avoid a dog in the road. If she leaves Bill’s name off her posters one time, the next thing you know, she puts him on. If she puts on a strong, assertive front to win the senate seat, the next thing you know she’s being told she’s too masculine in her efforts, that she should take advantage of her femininity. Next thing you know, she’s in Iowa meeting with women in someone’s living room. If she’s told she’s too cold and ambitious, then she attempts warm and fuzzy; but when her official HillaryClinton.com website came out a few weeks ago, reviewers derided her as fake and a poor actor.
Maybe Hillary simply wants no enemies. But it comes off as is The Vacilator. Or the Greatest Common (and Power-Amassing) Denominator.
Just last week the fashion designer Donnatella Versace chimed in, saying that Hillary should stop wearing pants,* especially in blue, and go for knee-length dresses instead. No doubt Hillary will be soon sighted looking like some Breakfast at Tiffany’s “Hillary” Golightly in a not-so-sleek black, knee-length cocktail dress.
But even if Hillary happens to wear some tasteful, fitted suit, someone will no doubt make some crack about her having fat legs or fleshy knees, and she’ll revert to *trousers:” (Donnatella actually used the word, “trousers,” which the British seem to favor over our “pants;” “trousers” comes from the Scottish Gaelic “triubhas,” the name for the tight-fitting breeches worn (sometimes) under men’s tartan kilts).
You could say that Hillary is a real sucker for words – that is, other peoples’ words. It would be great if we could have a woman president, and one we could dub The Listener – who could listen to other experts and make well-informed decisions. What we don’t need is a Chief Executive Hearer. The difference between “hearing” and “listening,” as with “seeing” and “looking,” is a question of focus and attention. And we don’t need a President who behaves like a hearing aid that picks up all the background noise and none of the foreground.
As for Das Magazin’s jibe that Barack’s candidacy is making Hillary break out in a sweat, my father would have begged to disagree: “Horses sweat; men perspire; and ladies … glow,” he liked to remind me.
But back when ladies glowed, a women and a black man were not running for president. We’ve still got about 600 days to go, so it’s a bit early for any of us to be Deciders on Winners. So I say, Hail to the Chief Presider, whoever (s)he may be!
Monday, February 05, 2007
Gender Specific
Back in the misty days of 7th grade, first-year French I remember a particular class somewhere in the middle of the year in which a boy, Willie C., raised his hand and asked, “Why are ‘question’ and ‘problem’ feminine but ‘book’ and ‘paper’ masculine?” This question seemed to hit a nerve: up until then we had obediently accepted this seemingly random categorization of nouns into male and female words but had not the faintest clue why. Willie’s question prompted an outpouring: who decided that ‘pen’ and ‘pencil’ were masculine, but ‘door,’ ‘roof,’ and ‘window’ were feminine?” Why was ‘the wind’ masculine and ‘war’ feminine? and so on. Ultimately, was this a boy-girl thing, or what?
The teacher calmly – but firmly – told us it was strictly grammatical, nothing personal. There was an edge in her tone that said, “Don’t ask me anymore.” (Perhaps she thought looking any deeper would stall the growing Women’s Movement?) A few years later I found out that Spanish had a similar masculine-feminine randomness but at least it was visually easier to tell male nouns from female nouns.
In college, when I started taking German, I discovered that language not only divided nouns into masculine and feminine, but neuter as well. I didn’t try to make sense of the categories – including why “girl” was neuter; instead, I simply tried to master the differences by color-coding my vocabulary sheets – I wrote masculine words in red; feminine in green; and neuter in yellow. (Bad idea: by the time I took my exam, I couldn’t remember if a word were green or red or yellow and botched the whole thing.)
But despite what my French teacher said, I am not convinced” that “gender” and “grammatical gender” have nothing to do with each other – why would they both be called “gender”? And if it weren’t a male-female thing, then why are nouns called masculine, feminine, and yes, even neuter – and not just Type A, B or C?
Some languages – including aboriginal Australian and Polish – distinguish between animate and inanimate things, in addition to the usual masculine, feminine and neuter. (And one aboriginal language even has a noun category for hunting weapons and dogs.)
Given that languages and their genders were formed in prehistory, the reasons for categorizing nouns and corresponding parts of speech into genders have been lost to time. My guess is that people began classifying each other as “masculine” or “feminine” and then started extending the classifications to other things, with each culture deciding what had male qualities and what had female or neuter qualities. Mixed in with spiritual beliefs as portrayed in say, Disney’s Pocohantas, -- i.e. that one’s ancestors could be reborn as animate or inanimate objects -- could have lent further chaos among those early “language deciders.” Imagine: “Tree is feminine – that’s my grandmother.” “Are you kidding? Look at that tree – big, strong, straight up! It’s masculine!”
Thus, for example, “tree” is masculine in French, Spanish, and German but feminine in Portuguese, and neuter in Norwegian. Different cultures, different perspectives.
Still, after a while people must have given up trying to see the “maleness” or “femaleness” or even neutrality of a noun and instead just randomly gave it a gender. That might explain why the Portuguese “tree” is feminine but their word for tree “trunk” is masculine – the Whatever! Syndrome no doubt set in.
English has a “natural gender” style – anything that isn’t a living-breathing male or female human, or domestic pet, is an “it.” What could be easier? Yet does that make our language and culture free of gender distinctions and contradictions – no way! The Women’s Movement has helped change a lot of words or terms that once defined roles or jobs that belonged predominantly to one sex or the other -- words like, “chairman” and “stewardess” have become “chair person” and “flight attendant.” Even “actress” and “waitress” – with French-inspired feminine endings – are beginning to be discarded in favor of simply “actor” and “waiter.”
The one pronoun English needs now is for a singular gender-neutral third person, singular, possessive, which would rid us of dilemmas in sentences like: “Each employee must fill out his/her own time sheet.” At this point, the choices are either the awkward “his/her” or the ungrammatical “their.” Linguists have come up with some suggestions but, just as English itself was formed, the masses will ultimately make the decision over time.
Women have already forged ahead with how they choose to be called in business when a courtesy title is necessary: Some married professionals go with Ms. and their maiden names; some with Ms. and their married names; some with Mrs. and their married names. All are accepted.
As more women appear in powerful positions in government – and sooner or later as leader of the Free World – it will be interesting to watch our genders change with the times: Madame President? (too French; and there’s the association with “madames” in “other” types of houses) Ms. President? or Mrs. President? Mr. First Gentleman? Or Mr. First Man? I guess we’ll cross that gender-bender when we come to it.
The teacher calmly – but firmly – told us it was strictly grammatical, nothing personal. There was an edge in her tone that said, “Don’t ask me anymore.” (Perhaps she thought looking any deeper would stall the growing Women’s Movement?) A few years later I found out that Spanish had a similar masculine-feminine randomness but at least it was visually easier to tell male nouns from female nouns.
In college, when I started taking German, I discovered that language not only divided nouns into masculine and feminine, but neuter as well. I didn’t try to make sense of the categories – including why “girl” was neuter; instead, I simply tried to master the differences by color-coding my vocabulary sheets – I wrote masculine words in red; feminine in green; and neuter in yellow. (Bad idea: by the time I took my exam, I couldn’t remember if a word were green or red or yellow and botched the whole thing.)
But despite what my French teacher said, I am not convinced” that “gender” and “grammatical gender” have nothing to do with each other – why would they both be called “gender”? And if it weren’t a male-female thing, then why are nouns called masculine, feminine, and yes, even neuter – and not just Type A, B or C?
Some languages – including aboriginal Australian and Polish – distinguish between animate and inanimate things, in addition to the usual masculine, feminine and neuter. (And one aboriginal language even has a noun category for hunting weapons and dogs.)
Given that languages and their genders were formed in prehistory, the reasons for categorizing nouns and corresponding parts of speech into genders have been lost to time. My guess is that people began classifying each other as “masculine” or “feminine” and then started extending the classifications to other things, with each culture deciding what had male qualities and what had female or neuter qualities. Mixed in with spiritual beliefs as portrayed in say, Disney’s Pocohantas, -- i.e. that one’s ancestors could be reborn as animate or inanimate objects -- could have lent further chaos among those early “language deciders.” Imagine: “Tree is feminine – that’s my grandmother.” “Are you kidding? Look at that tree – big, strong, straight up! It’s masculine!”
Thus, for example, “tree” is masculine in French, Spanish, and German but feminine in Portuguese, and neuter in Norwegian. Different cultures, different perspectives.
Still, after a while people must have given up trying to see the “maleness” or “femaleness” or even neutrality of a noun and instead just randomly gave it a gender. That might explain why the Portuguese “tree” is feminine but their word for tree “trunk” is masculine – the Whatever! Syndrome no doubt set in.
English has a “natural gender” style – anything that isn’t a living-breathing male or female human, or domestic pet, is an “it.” What could be easier? Yet does that make our language and culture free of gender distinctions and contradictions – no way! The Women’s Movement has helped change a lot of words or terms that once defined roles or jobs that belonged predominantly to one sex or the other -- words like, “chairman” and “stewardess” have become “chair person” and “flight attendant.” Even “actress” and “waitress” – with French-inspired feminine endings – are beginning to be discarded in favor of simply “actor” and “waiter.”
The one pronoun English needs now is for a singular gender-neutral third person, singular, possessive, which would rid us of dilemmas in sentences like: “Each employee must fill out his/her own time sheet.” At this point, the choices are either the awkward “his/her” or the ungrammatical “their.” Linguists have come up with some suggestions but, just as English itself was formed, the masses will ultimately make the decision over time.
Women have already forged ahead with how they choose to be called in business when a courtesy title is necessary: Some married professionals go with Ms. and their maiden names; some with Ms. and their married names; some with Mrs. and their married names. All are accepted.
As more women appear in powerful positions in government – and sooner or later as leader of the Free World – it will be interesting to watch our genders change with the times: Madame President? (too French; and there’s the association with “madames” in “other” types of houses) Ms. President? or Mrs. President? Mr. First Gentleman? Or Mr. First Man? I guess we’ll cross that gender-bender when we come to it.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Your Word Order, Please
Do you speak Starbucksian? I am not simply referring to the ubiquitous, upscale coffee chain’s now famous, and much-written-and talked-about words for their small, medium, and large cups (– i.e. tall, grande, and (trademarked) venti – words that many people find pretentious to use, but actually have some basis for being: for example, a “tall” is 12 oz., two ounces more than the usual New York coffee cup. (See “grande” and “venti” explanation further below).
What I’m concerned about today is word order -- the word order necessary to get the drink the way you want it: take what my daughter, Alice, ordered the other day: a tall, sugar-free, skim, 2-Splenda, no-whip, cinnamon Dolce Latte. Alice is 17 and has been drinking coffee for about a year – when did she acquire such verbal, “barista-speak” sophistication?
In 2005 Starbucks put out a free guide to their beverages called, “Make It Your Drink” – a tiny treasure I happen to own. Some of my foreign students back then would go to their nearest Starbucks but felt their English, and especially Starbucksian English, was too weak to order much beyond plain coffee or tea. (And as a Spanish-speaking student once explained – and marketing students, please take note: “I always order the ‘grande’ size because it makes me feel at home.” “Grande,” as you probably know, means “big” in Spanish and Italian and at 16 oz. is quite big; but the biggest size, “venti,” is 20 oz. and means “twenty” in Italian.)
The little booklet, however, offered a ray of linguistic light: first came the glossary that defined the various terms – doppio, shaken, Americano, macchiato, etc. It then explained the order in which it was best to say them: what type of cup (must specify for “iced”); what type of coffee (caf or decaf) and/or how many shots of espresso; what size cup; what kind of syrup (maple, hazelnut, vanilla, etc.); what type of artificial sweetener; what type of milk (whole, 2 percent, skim, soy, etc.) and what kind of drink itself – cappuccino, frappuccino, latte, etc. (Italian drink names add that panache that English just can’t match.)
So for one who prefers a simple and relatively inexpensive “tall Earl Grey,” I am always amused by others’ ability to rattle off such word-order-perfect drinks like “an iced, decaf, triple, grande, sugar-free vanilla, soy, 1 Equal, extra-hot mocha,” for roughly 75 cents per adjective.
Word order in general is interesting, because it is so unconscious. For instance, in my first sentence I called Starbucks the “ubiquitous, upscale” coffee chain. Why didn’t I call it the “upscale, ubiquitous” coffee chain? Do I hear, “Because it SOUNDS better?” Yes, but WHY does it sound better? Why does “one, big, red balloon” sound better than “red, big, one balloon?” It’s what your English teacher might have at one time (when they taught grammar) called “syntax.” It’s the set of internal grammatical rules that are rarely taught and mostly just absorbed through listening and speaking a language.
Still, linguists and grammarians have taken some pains to analyze English word order and, though they are not in total agreement, they have come up with some basic structural guidelines. Take adjectives: “One giant, fresh cup of steaming-hot, black, shade-grown South African coffee” is following the rule of “number, size, age, appearance, color, origin, material.”
Outside of places like Starbucks, we normally keep our adjectives limited to three, tops, to describe something: “the fabulous, new, Scorcese movie;” “a sleek, antique, red Jaguar;” “comfortable, worn-out, leather shoes;” these are examples of a general word order placement that goes: opinion, dimension, age, shape, color, origin, material. Sort of like the old Burger King ad: two, all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
Now let’s try word order of a different sort. Which (below) sounds better?
a) I take the train every day to work;
b) I take every day the train to work; or
c) I take the train to work every day.
If English is your first language, you probably, unhesitatingly picked c). If you picked b), you’ve got Germanic ancestors calling you; and likewise, if you picked a) you’ve got some Latin blood. Those languages have different word orders from English, which is what adds to the “foreign-ness” sound when we try speaking their languages, or vice-versa.
The subtle choices in those sentences above boil down to Place and Time. Although in English we generally say, “time and place” as an expression, when it comes to word order, we put “Place” over “Time.” That is, “I go to the movies (place) every Wednesday (time).” Try adding more detail, and the order remains: “I go to the movies in the city, down in the Village, at 13th and Broadway, at the Loew’s 4-story multiplex every first Wednesday of the month at 6 p.m.” Place-place-place-place before time, time, time, time, with each phrase getting more and more specific.
Anyone who has studied French, Spanish, or Italian knows soon after cracking open the textbook that adjectives normally go after the noun – as in “sweater red,” instead of our “red sweater.” They also put prepositions like “from” or “at” at the beginning of sentences where we have switched to putting them at the end, if at all: “Where do you come from?” and “What time is the train?” in Spanish come out, “From where do you come?” and “At what time is the train?”
Some of my young, elementary school students who have now been in this country long enough to master English word order have begun to unconsciously occasionally slip in English word order while speaking their native language – much to the amusement, shock, or horror of their parents.
So whether or not you speak proper Starbucksian, you now know basic Starbucksian word order – and probably even some Italian names for coffee drinks. And just knowing that should help you, if you’re ever in doubt, sidle up to the counter, give a venti-sized grin and ask for any big-beige-frothy-artificially sweetened-or-calorie-laden drink you want. Cheers.
What I’m concerned about today is word order -- the word order necessary to get the drink the way you want it: take what my daughter, Alice, ordered the other day: a tall, sugar-free, skim, 2-Splenda, no-whip, cinnamon Dolce Latte. Alice is 17 and has been drinking coffee for about a year – when did she acquire such verbal, “barista-speak” sophistication?
In 2005 Starbucks put out a free guide to their beverages called, “Make It Your Drink” – a tiny treasure I happen to own. Some of my foreign students back then would go to their nearest Starbucks but felt their English, and especially Starbucksian English, was too weak to order much beyond plain coffee or tea. (And as a Spanish-speaking student once explained – and marketing students, please take note: “I always order the ‘grande’ size because it makes me feel at home.” “Grande,” as you probably know, means “big” in Spanish and Italian and at 16 oz. is quite big; but the biggest size, “venti,” is 20 oz. and means “twenty” in Italian.)
The little booklet, however, offered a ray of linguistic light: first came the glossary that defined the various terms – doppio, shaken, Americano, macchiato, etc. It then explained the order in which it was best to say them: what type of cup (must specify for “iced”); what type of coffee (caf or decaf) and/or how many shots of espresso; what size cup; what kind of syrup (maple, hazelnut, vanilla, etc.); what type of artificial sweetener; what type of milk (whole, 2 percent, skim, soy, etc.) and what kind of drink itself – cappuccino, frappuccino, latte, etc. (Italian drink names add that panache that English just can’t match.)
So for one who prefers a simple and relatively inexpensive “tall Earl Grey,” I am always amused by others’ ability to rattle off such word-order-perfect drinks like “an iced, decaf, triple, grande, sugar-free vanilla, soy, 1 Equal, extra-hot mocha,” for roughly 75 cents per adjective.
Word order in general is interesting, because it is so unconscious. For instance, in my first sentence I called Starbucks the “ubiquitous, upscale” coffee chain. Why didn’t I call it the “upscale, ubiquitous” coffee chain? Do I hear, “Because it SOUNDS better?” Yes, but WHY does it sound better? Why does “one, big, red balloon” sound better than “red, big, one balloon?” It’s what your English teacher might have at one time (when they taught grammar) called “syntax.” It’s the set of internal grammatical rules that are rarely taught and mostly just absorbed through listening and speaking a language.
Still, linguists and grammarians have taken some pains to analyze English word order and, though they are not in total agreement, they have come up with some basic structural guidelines. Take adjectives: “One giant, fresh cup of steaming-hot, black, shade-grown South African coffee” is following the rule of “number, size, age, appearance, color, origin, material.”
Outside of places like Starbucks, we normally keep our adjectives limited to three, tops, to describe something: “the fabulous, new, Scorcese movie;” “a sleek, antique, red Jaguar;” “comfortable, worn-out, leather shoes;” these are examples of a general word order placement that goes: opinion, dimension, age, shape, color, origin, material. Sort of like the old Burger King ad: two, all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
Now let’s try word order of a different sort. Which (below) sounds better?
a) I take the train every day to work;
b) I take every day the train to work; or
c) I take the train to work every day.
If English is your first language, you probably, unhesitatingly picked c). If you picked b), you’ve got Germanic ancestors calling you; and likewise, if you picked a) you’ve got some Latin blood. Those languages have different word orders from English, which is what adds to the “foreign-ness” sound when we try speaking their languages, or vice-versa.
The subtle choices in those sentences above boil down to Place and Time. Although in English we generally say, “time and place” as an expression, when it comes to word order, we put “Place” over “Time.” That is, “I go to the movies (place) every Wednesday (time).” Try adding more detail, and the order remains: “I go to the movies in the city, down in the Village, at 13th and Broadway, at the Loew’s 4-story multiplex every first Wednesday of the month at 6 p.m.” Place-place-place-place before time, time, time, time, with each phrase getting more and more specific.
Anyone who has studied French, Spanish, or Italian knows soon after cracking open the textbook that adjectives normally go after the noun – as in “sweater red,” instead of our “red sweater.” They also put prepositions like “from” or “at” at the beginning of sentences where we have switched to putting them at the end, if at all: “Where do you come from?” and “What time is the train?” in Spanish come out, “From where do you come?” and “At what time is the train?”
Some of my young, elementary school students who have now been in this country long enough to master English word order have begun to unconsciously occasionally slip in English word order while speaking their native language – much to the amusement, shock, or horror of their parents.
So whether or not you speak proper Starbucksian, you now know basic Starbucksian word order – and probably even some Italian names for coffee drinks. And just knowing that should help you, if you’re ever in doubt, sidle up to the counter, give a venti-sized grin and ask for any big-beige-frothy-artificially sweetened-or-calorie-laden drink you want. Cheers.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
English as a Spelling NITEmare
A response last week from Dan from Los Angeles on the relative difficulty of learning Spanish vs. English:
There's a good case to be made that from the Martian perspective (someone equally unfamiliar with both languages), English is far more irregular and hence harder to learn. Look at our spelling: tough, bough, cough . . . lotion, ocean . . . lazy, daisy . . . Try explaining that to the Spanish.
Thanks for your insights, Dan. And Language Lady agrees with you and your Martians that, on the whole, Spanish is easier to learn as a foreign language than English, due to the regularity of Spanish spelling and pronunciation. The point I wanted to make last week was specifically about English GRAMMAR, and the verb declensions, which were simplified to accommodate all the various cultures living, conquering, or trying to do business in England hundreds of years ago; beyond that, the spelling, pronunciation, numerous verb tenses, and staggering amount of words alone all make me happy that English is my first language.
Dan’s comment (re tough, bough, cough, etc.) reminds me of a little ditty on the idiosyncrasies of English spelling and pronunciation written by an English author, T.S. Wyatt, in 1954 and often found in linguistics textbooks:
RECOVERING SOUNDS FROM ORTHOGRAPHY
BRUSH UP YOUR ENGLISH
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, though, lough (loch) and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead--it's said like bed, not bead.
For goodness's sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat:
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five.
Yes, English spelling is a notorious nightmare (though, as Wyatt pointed out, we do seem to learn it fairly quickly) – with most of our everyday words the orthographic results of some loose decisions made some 600 years ago. It started with a hodge-podge of West Saxon spellings and pronunciations; then post-Norman Conquest medieval monks changed certain spellings to look more like the new prestige language, Anglo-Norman French: for example, “cwen” became “queen;” then, around the 1400s people started pronouncing words differently: “great,” which was originally said, “gray-aht” became “great” as we know it, while “bread” changed from the Old English “bray-at” to Middle English “breed” and then to our current short-e’d “bread.” And those nasty “gh” spellings were trying to convey the gutteral Germanic “ch” sound, as in “Achtung!” But trying to understand the reasons for all English’s spelling conundrums doesn’t make it easier. We just have to accept that English spelling is what happens when conquest happens and no one is really in charge …
George Bernard Shaw, the famous English playwright, once wrote a plea for spelling reform by demonstrating that the way our language stood now, you could spell “fish” as “ghoti:”
“gh” as in “rough”
“o” as in “women”
“ti” as in “nation.”
Spelling reform has been tried at various times, but it just doesn’t work – at this point, there are too many English speakers with different accents and pronunciations. What if they standardized a phonetic spelling so we all pronounced words like Texans? And do you think the British could stand a phonetic alphabet that sounded like standard American? Or vice versa? It’s one thing for American spelling to remove the “u” in the British “honour;” another thing all together to try to force the Brits to say “On-er” instead of “on-ah.”
Which is not to say we won’t ever see any simplification -- advertising and commerce will see to that. The main spelling shifts I’ve seen in my lifetime have come about through just such routes. Take: donut, lite, nite. Triboro and thru. I credit Dunkin’ Donuts (born in the 1950s, part of mass culture by the 1970s) with the popularization of “donut” from the original “doughnut” – a variant sanctioned by the dictionary for over 25 years. “Nite” and “lite” are also listed in the dictionary as informal, simplified spellings of “night” and “light;” even so, the dictionary only recognizes “nite” as a noun -- as in TV’s “Nick at Nite” -- and not as an adjective -- as in Nite Lite, though there are now dozens of products, company names, catalogues, and TV shows with the name, “Nite Lite.” Meanwhile, the dictionary specifies that “lite” is mainly used in advertising to describe something with less substance or fewer calories – as in lite music and lite beer.
The words, “Triboro” and “thru” are also now commonplace, informal substitutes for “Triborough” (as in the bridge spanning three boroughs of New York City) and “through.” “Boro” is not in the dictionary but it may be soon: as part of a name, “boro” can be found in a bike tour group, a bar and grill, a bookstore, and so on; but “borough” is still the more standard --nor are we close to being thru with “through.” Still, perhaps with the speed that technology changes things, it will not be too many years from now that all “gh” words will be obsolete, and the variant forms the new standard ones. Perhaps in the future linguists will refer to the early 21st century as a period of The Great Silent GH Exodus.
For now, the word to watch is “you” (and “yours” and “your”): as text messaging and email are on their way to making this Y-O-U spelling look archaic to anyone under the age of 25; we can start watching to see when the dictionary accepts this second person pronoun’s variant -- the simple, lowercase “u”.
So keep ur eyes peeled! And good nite.
There's a good case to be made that from the Martian perspective (someone equally unfamiliar with both languages), English is far more irregular and hence harder to learn. Look at our spelling: tough, bough, cough . . . lotion, ocean . . . lazy, daisy . . . Try explaining that to the Spanish.
Thanks for your insights, Dan. And Language Lady agrees with you and your Martians that, on the whole, Spanish is easier to learn as a foreign language than English, due to the regularity of Spanish spelling and pronunciation. The point I wanted to make last week was specifically about English GRAMMAR, and the verb declensions, which were simplified to accommodate all the various cultures living, conquering, or trying to do business in England hundreds of years ago; beyond that, the spelling, pronunciation, numerous verb tenses, and staggering amount of words alone all make me happy that English is my first language.
Dan’s comment (re tough, bough, cough, etc.) reminds me of a little ditty on the idiosyncrasies of English spelling and pronunciation written by an English author, T.S. Wyatt, in 1954 and often found in linguistics textbooks:
RECOVERING SOUNDS FROM ORTHOGRAPHY
BRUSH UP YOUR ENGLISH
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, though, lough (loch) and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead--it's said like bed, not bead.
For goodness's sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat:
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five.
Yes, English spelling is a notorious nightmare (though, as Wyatt pointed out, we do seem to learn it fairly quickly) – with most of our everyday words the orthographic results of some loose decisions made some 600 years ago. It started with a hodge-podge of West Saxon spellings and pronunciations; then post-Norman Conquest medieval monks changed certain spellings to look more like the new prestige language, Anglo-Norman French: for example, “cwen” became “queen;” then, around the 1400s people started pronouncing words differently: “great,” which was originally said, “gray-aht” became “great” as we know it, while “bread” changed from the Old English “bray-at” to Middle English “breed” and then to our current short-e’d “bread.” And those nasty “gh” spellings were trying to convey the gutteral Germanic “ch” sound, as in “Achtung!” But trying to understand the reasons for all English’s spelling conundrums doesn’t make it easier. We just have to accept that English spelling is what happens when conquest happens and no one is really in charge …
George Bernard Shaw, the famous English playwright, once wrote a plea for spelling reform by demonstrating that the way our language stood now, you could spell “fish” as “ghoti:”
“gh” as in “rough”
“o” as in “women”
“ti” as in “nation.”
Spelling reform has been tried at various times, but it just doesn’t work – at this point, there are too many English speakers with different accents and pronunciations. What if they standardized a phonetic spelling so we all pronounced words like Texans? And do you think the British could stand a phonetic alphabet that sounded like standard American? Or vice versa? It’s one thing for American spelling to remove the “u” in the British “honour;” another thing all together to try to force the Brits to say “On-er” instead of “on-ah.”
Which is not to say we won’t ever see any simplification -- advertising and commerce will see to that. The main spelling shifts I’ve seen in my lifetime have come about through just such routes. Take: donut, lite, nite. Triboro and thru. I credit Dunkin’ Donuts (born in the 1950s, part of mass culture by the 1970s) with the popularization of “donut” from the original “doughnut” – a variant sanctioned by the dictionary for over 25 years. “Nite” and “lite” are also listed in the dictionary as informal, simplified spellings of “night” and “light;” even so, the dictionary only recognizes “nite” as a noun -- as in TV’s “Nick at Nite” -- and not as an adjective -- as in Nite Lite, though there are now dozens of products, company names, catalogues, and TV shows with the name, “Nite Lite.” Meanwhile, the dictionary specifies that “lite” is mainly used in advertising to describe something with less substance or fewer calories – as in lite music and lite beer.
The words, “Triboro” and “thru” are also now commonplace, informal substitutes for “Triborough” (as in the bridge spanning three boroughs of New York City) and “through.” “Boro” is not in the dictionary but it may be soon: as part of a name, “boro” can be found in a bike tour group, a bar and grill, a bookstore, and so on; but “borough” is still the more standard --nor are we close to being thru with “through.” Still, perhaps with the speed that technology changes things, it will not be too many years from now that all “gh” words will be obsolete, and the variant forms the new standard ones. Perhaps in the future linguists will refer to the early 21st century as a period of The Great Silent GH Exodus.
For now, the word to watch is “you” (and “yours” and “your”): as text messaging and email are on their way to making this Y-O-U spelling look archaic to anyone under the age of 25; we can start watching to see when the dictionary accepts this second person pronoun’s variant -- the simple, lowercase “u”.
So keep ur eyes peeled! And good nite.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
“Why Can’t Spanish Be More Like English?”
It was Sunday night, that notorious time when a student realizes that certain homework requirements have not been met. Thus, my disgruntled teenager, Nick, plopped himself down on the couch so I could quiz him on the Spanish past tense verbs. At that moment, Nick was pretty much “disgusted” (his word) with the whole language: “There’s like 25 ways to say one word,” he complained. Spanish verb forms, like the Latin ones they grew from, give each “person” (I, you, he, etc.) a different ending. English, on the other hand, simplified the whole thing long ago.
Compare:
To Speak (past tense)
I spoke
You spoke
He/she/it spoke
We spoke
They spoke
Not bad! As long as a person remembers that the past tense is “spoke” and not, say, “speaked,” getting it right is a sure thing. In Spanish, it’s a different case:
Hablar (To Speak, past tense)
(I) Yo hable
(You – familiar) Tu hablaste
(You – formal) Usted hablo
(He/she – there is no “it”) El/ella hablo
(We) Nosotros hablamos
(You, familiar & plural) Vosotros hablasteis
(You, formal & plural) Ustedes hablaron
(They, masculine & feminine) Ellos/ellas hablaron
Even if your eyes just skim over that last part, it’s clear at a glance that English takes home the Simplicity Prize.
Not that this simplicity came overnight: it took every bit of 300 years, and then some, to change the mind-boggling complexities of Old English grammar into the comparatively streamlined Modern English grammar. Old English was a West Germanic dialect spoken from roughly 400-1100 A.D. and had all the personal pronouns that Spanish still has, masculine and feminine nouns, and – most difficult of all -- five fully inflected grammatical cases; (if you don’t know what that means, you probably don’t want to know, at least right now.)
Suffice it to say, without the benefit of Old English as Second Language lessons, it was a hard language for foreigners to master. And for a good long while, England was a veritable polyglot nation. Norman French (native tongue of William the Conqueror, who sailed from Normandy, France and conquered England in 1066) was the language of the nobility, government and literature, and later science and commerce; meanwhile, Latin was the language of the Church. At the same time, there were parts of England where commoners still spoke the Danish or Norwegian from their Viking forbears. And each of the 25 English counties, from Berkshire to Yorkshire, had its own local Old English dialect as well.
All this multiculturalism took a toll on good ol’ Old English and got what I call the big Linguistic Shakedown. Basically, people crossing boundaries and language borders to raid, trade, marry or otherwise communicate started speaking the most basic English in order to be understood. Sort of like tourists do when they go to another country and can’t speak the local language. In time, the simplifications simply became standard. Just one “you”; no more case endings, no more adjectives that have to modify their nouns, and really easy declensions (I do, you do, etc), and adding “s” to make nouns plural – though some Old English irregular plurals have hung on – like men, women and children.
Of course, understanding why English grammar is comparatively easy compared to Spanish does not do Nick any good. Even if I tell him that Spanish is a dialect of Latin and took out some of the harder parts of that Mother Tongue, he is not going to feel any better. Spanish never got the Linguistic Shakedown that English did because it was adopted by the King of Castile, in Spain, and then established as the principal language of government and trade; later, explorers and conquistadors took Spanish overseas – to Latin America and other places, without any problem. It’s now one of the most widely spoken (close to 400 million native speakers worldwide) and widely studied languages in the world.
So … statistically, the chances that Nick will eventually master those past tense verbs are pretty good. But for now, Nick sees little future with the past.
Compare:
To Speak (past tense)
I spoke
You spoke
He/she/it spoke
We spoke
They spoke
Not bad! As long as a person remembers that the past tense is “spoke” and not, say, “speaked,” getting it right is a sure thing. In Spanish, it’s a different case:
Hablar (To Speak, past tense)
(I) Yo hable
(You – familiar) Tu hablaste
(You – formal) Usted hablo
(He/she – there is no “it”) El/ella hablo
(We) Nosotros hablamos
(You, familiar & plural) Vosotros hablasteis
(You, formal & plural) Ustedes hablaron
(They, masculine & feminine) Ellos/ellas hablaron
Even if your eyes just skim over that last part, it’s clear at a glance that English takes home the Simplicity Prize.
Not that this simplicity came overnight: it took every bit of 300 years, and then some, to change the mind-boggling complexities of Old English grammar into the comparatively streamlined Modern English grammar. Old English was a West Germanic dialect spoken from roughly 400-1100 A.D. and had all the personal pronouns that Spanish still has, masculine and feminine nouns, and – most difficult of all -- five fully inflected grammatical cases; (if you don’t know what that means, you probably don’t want to know, at least right now.)
Suffice it to say, without the benefit of Old English as Second Language lessons, it was a hard language for foreigners to master. And for a good long while, England was a veritable polyglot nation. Norman French (native tongue of William the Conqueror, who sailed from Normandy, France and conquered England in 1066) was the language of the nobility, government and literature, and later science and commerce; meanwhile, Latin was the language of the Church. At the same time, there were parts of England where commoners still spoke the Danish or Norwegian from their Viking forbears. And each of the 25 English counties, from Berkshire to Yorkshire, had its own local Old English dialect as well.
All this multiculturalism took a toll on good ol’ Old English and got what I call the big Linguistic Shakedown. Basically, people crossing boundaries and language borders to raid, trade, marry or otherwise communicate started speaking the most basic English in order to be understood. Sort of like tourists do when they go to another country and can’t speak the local language. In time, the simplifications simply became standard. Just one “you”; no more case endings, no more adjectives that have to modify their nouns, and really easy declensions (I do, you do, etc), and adding “s” to make nouns plural – though some Old English irregular plurals have hung on – like men, women and children.
Of course, understanding why English grammar is comparatively easy compared to Spanish does not do Nick any good. Even if I tell him that Spanish is a dialect of Latin and took out some of the harder parts of that Mother Tongue, he is not going to feel any better. Spanish never got the Linguistic Shakedown that English did because it was adopted by the King of Castile, in Spain, and then established as the principal language of government and trade; later, explorers and conquistadors took Spanish overseas – to Latin America and other places, without any problem. It’s now one of the most widely spoken (close to 400 million native speakers worldwide) and widely studied languages in the world.
So … statistically, the chances that Nick will eventually master those past tense verbs are pretty good. But for now, Nick sees little future with the past.
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