Grammar Guy

Is it a Change ― or is it a Goof? Part 2

2008-07-05T10:42:00.004-04:00

In “Is it a Change ― or is it a Goof?” I dealt with the topic of recognizing whether some items are actual changes in the language or just mistakes made by people who don’t know any better. I think this topic merits an additional look, and I hope you do, too.

Just to put some more perspective on this issue, let’s showcase the words apron and umpire. If you had wanted to look those words up in a dictionary back, say, in 1200 (imagining that such a thing as a dictionary existed at that time), you wouldn’t have found them listed under a and u respectively. They would have been listed under n. “Huh?” you say. Yep, both of them would have been under n. That’s because something really odd ― but also funny ― happened to those words. When people speaking Middle English said those nouns with the indefinite article, after enough time had passed, the /n/, which was the first sound of those two nouns, migrated over to the indefinite article, so a napron became an apron, and a numpire (originally numpere) became an umpire. Ain’t that a linguistic kick in the head! And that’s the way those words changed. From a funny mistake said often enough, napron and numpire got transformed and became real lexical changes. That’s accumulation of error at work, all right!

And it keeps happening. A rather recent example is livid. Its original meaning is “gray,” or “ashen” in color. The original expression was livid with anger or livid with rage. In other words, if you felt that angry, your color would turn something like ashen. Well, you can see what happened without my telling you: the "... with anger" or "... with rage" parts got dropped, and livid has come to mean “very angry” or “furious.” And that’s okay. That’s what happens to language.

But here’s something that drives me slightly nuts. Almost everybody now says the media is rather than the media are. I talked about this in my first piece on this topic, when English speakers don’t recognize any longer that the Latin and Greek neuter –a ending is really a plural. Well, so be it. If English speakers want to make that an acceptable change rather than just a goof, okay. But I think that if it’s a real change, it should be consistent whenever used ― and in this case, it isn’t. Read the following and think about whether or not you feel comfortable with it:

The horrendous earthquake that hit southwestern China and the terrible cyclone that hit Myanmar were well covered by television, but were they covered just as well by another media like radio?

“Another media.” Are you comfortable with that? Wouldn’t you probably opt for another medium? If your answer is yes, then we’ve got a troublesome inconsistency. On the one hand, you may go along with employing media as a singular collective noun (the media is), but on the other hand, you may feel you should say another medium instead of another media. That’s not consistent. Maybe this is a change that’s still in the process of taking place. Maybe that can explain the inconsistency.

And if that isn’t enough to question how this word is used, even though with a completely different definition, read the following sentence, which I copied down verbatim from a television commercial for a language-teaching program ― of all things ― called “Rosetta Stone.” This is the testimony given during the commercial by a satisfied customer: “I’ve used a lot of different mediums to learn a language, but …” Oh, my goodness! “A lot of different mediums”? Before I freaked out altogether, I ran to different dictionaries to check this out. Most said that when the meaning is a means of communicating or transmitting information, the “usual” plural is media. One dictionary, however, listed an alternative plural form as mediums. So I guess mediums isn’t used anymore just to mean people who claim to communicate with the dead. I just keep shaking my head more and more when I come up against things like this. Is a real change going on? Is that why one dictionary I looked at mentioned that media is still the preferred plural form, but that mediums is okay, too? Maybe the jury’s still out on this one. But being the kind of conservative speaker I am, I’ll stick with television is a medium and television and radio are media. And as far as I’m concerned, Alison Dubois, who can see dead people, is a medium, and she suspects that her daughters are mediums, too!

So let me end by asking you how you’d categorize the following. Do you see them as changes, or do you see them as goofs? I’ll let you know what I think later, so do feel free to comment. And what do you think about this whole issue? Let me know.

1. I think I’ll lay down for half an hour. Wake me up at 6.
2. This paint goes on real easy. / She does her work quicker than most of my employees.
3. If he didn’t move away from that tree, he would have been killed when the lightning struck.
4. “Do you know where’s the main office?” “Sorry, I’m not sure where the office is at.”
5. We utilize those logs in the fireplace during the winter to make the living room cozier.

May I Have a Word? Part 3

2008-06-28T00:36:00.003-04:00

For a conversation class for intermediate ELL students, I once had the seemingly innocuous idea for a theme of talking about foods that the students had never had before coming to the US. So I asked them to name some of the foods which seemed “exotic” to them.

“I love french fries,” exclaimed Mahmood from Bahrain. “When did the French invent them, Mr. Firsten?”

“They didn’t, Mahmood. French fries are American.”

“Oh?” interjected Pierre from Quebec. “They’re not French? Very interesting! Well, I love bread, and one of my favorites here in the US is English muffins. I really like them. I suppose they’re not English, eh?” he joked.

“Nope. They’re not, Pierre. They’re American, too.” The confused looks on the students’ faces said it all.

“You know, in my country,” said Clara from Peru, “we eat an animal that you have as a pet. I find that very strange. I don’t know the name in English, but in Peru they are cuy.”

“Cuy? Oh, those are guinea pigs,” I explained, a little proud of myself for knowing such a low-frequency Peruvian-Spanish word. “Yes, you’re right, Clara. Many children have them as pets in the US, but I myself ate one in a restaurant in Peru when I visited your country a few years ago. I must say it was very tasty.”

“What is the name in English?” Clara asked.

“Guinea pigs,” I said.

“Guinea . . . pigs?” she echoed. “Huh? But Guinea is a country in Africa. Do they come from Africa originally? I don’t think so. And what do you mean pigs? They are not pigs!”

“Yes, I know they’re not, Clara. They’re rodents.”

“Rodents?”

“Animals related to rats and mice.”

“Ugh! You eat rats, Clara?” asked Mahmood, looking totally shocked.

“Not rats! Cuys! They are very good to eat!”

Feeling confident that most of the students wouldn’t know what a guinea pig looked like, I googled it in my computer and found some good pictures to show them all. That turned out to be a mistake.

“My God!” shrieked Nuri from Curaçao. “They’re so cute! You eat them? Oh, my God! How can you eat them?”

Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about student participation in this conversation class. Everybody piped in with an opinion about Peruvian dining customs, and I was even mildly attacked for having participated in such an “uncivilized” act. I was very relieved when that class finally ended, I can tell you!

But it got me to thinking yet again about how nuts English vocabulary can be: french fries aren’t French; English muffins aren’t English; guinea pigs don’t come from Guinea ― and they certainly aren’t pigs. It’s unbelievable that I can stand there in front of my students and feel embarrassed about my own language, the language I’m teaching them! That’s why I’ve done a lot of thinking about English vocabulary and its strange paradoxes, and why I've written previously here about this topic, which seems to be a never-ending source of both amusement and angst.

So why shouldn’t I have you join me in pondering these imponderables? Some of the following come from my own musings, and once again, some come from author Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English*. I think I’ll let you share in my consternation over such thoughts as:

Why is it that things like trees can burn up and burn down at the same time?
Have you ever figured out the difference between sympathy and empathy?
Think about this: When an alarm clock goes off, it goes on.
Do you realize how crazy it sounds to say something was awfully good?
How can quite a few and quite a lot mean basically the same thing?
When you garnish food, you add; when you garnish wages, you subtract!
Is it reasonable for a language to be able to say that feet smell and noses run?

So ponder, people, ponder! And while you’re pondering and, I hope, joining me in this mild diatribe by sending in your own comments and observations, there’s one more gem I’d like to mention that kind of drives me batty.

To post a letter and to mail a letter are interchangeable, and until the politically-correct police got a hold of the following terms, postman and mailman were also interchangeable. So why isn’t it equally okay to say the post office and the mail office, or How much is the mailage? instead of How much is the postage? And finally, since we’ve got that relatively new expression going postal, can’t we also say going mailish? I ask you!

Well, before I go mailish over pondering too much, I’ll leave you to dwell on these thoughts and wait to hear what you’ve got to say.

*Richard Lederer. Crazy English. Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster, Inc). 1998

Passing It On

2008-06-25T21:46:00.003-04:00

I just received an email from Fiona King, who's let me know about a terrific article that's been posted on TeachingTips.com. It's entitled "100 Best Resources and Guides for ESL Teachers." I highly recommend that you head on over and check it out. You won't be disappointed with the wealth of resources they've made available!

Thanks for spreading the word, Fiona!

We're All Entitled, Part 2

2008-06-20T16:26:00.004-04:00

I think titles are fascinating. I’ve already shown this in Part 1 (“We’re All Entitled”) in which I discussed Mr., Mrs., Miss, Master, and Ms. But we’ve got lots more titles in English, titles that reflect our cultures and our linguistic histories, things well worth talking about. Some titles are used wherever English is the primary language; some are used exclusively in the UK. And some of the same ones are used differently, depending on the English-speaking country they’re used in.

For starters, there are some titles that are normally used “correctly” if a name goes along with them. Remember, I’m talking about titles, not job descriptions. Here’s a sampling of these
titles, normally used with a name:

Mr.
Mrs.
Ms.
Master (old fashioned, for a boy)
King
Queen
Prince
Princess
Lord
Lady
Sir (British English; a knighted man)
Dame (British English; a knighted woman)
President
Vice President
Attorney General
Ambassador
Doctor (a dentist or Ph.D., not an M.D.)
Uncle
Aunt

And we have two British titles that are used differently from all the others:

first name, Duke of Duchy/Dukedom (e.g., Prince Andrew, Duke of York)
first name, Duchess of Duchy/Dukedom (e.g., Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall)

There are some interesting things I’d like to say about Mr. before we move on. If used alone, it’s considered an unrefined or low-class way to address a man: "Hey, Mr! You can’t park there." I remember years ago, it was quite common to hear Mr. used with a man’s first name if he happened to be a hairdresser. In fact, it was basically a stereotype.

A current phenomenon I’ve noticed, at least in my part of the US, is to hear Mr. used with a first name, possibly because the speaker is ignorant of how the man’s last name is pronounced and too lazy or embarrassed to ask, or it may be cross-cultural interference. It actually bothers me when somebody calls me Mr. Richard, and I often correct the person and say my name’s Mr. Firsten, not "Mr. Richard." That may not bother others, but it bothers me.

In a similar vein, I don’t particularly like when a perfect stranger, like a salesperson, decides on his/her own to call me by my first name. Maybe the culture is changing more quickly than I am, but I still adhere to the rule that, when appropriate to do so, I should ask people if I can call them by their first names rather than assume I can. I think salespeople do that as a way of sounding chummy, making you think you’re among friends. Well, it doesn’t work on me.

Then, of course, there’s the opposite situation in which a colleague will continue to call me "Mr. Firsten" even after we’ve worked in the same place for years. I think that’s typical of the public school system. I finally get to a point where I say, “Please call me Richard.” I mean, you can carry formality just so far, don’t you think?

Moving right along, we also have titles that can be used with or without a name, including:

Miss
Madam
Judge
Doctor (an M.D.)
Nurse
Officer (policeman or woman)
Father (Roman Catholic priest)
Mother (Mother Superior, head of a convent)
Grandfather (very formal)
Grandmother (very formal)
Grandpa
Grandma
Sister (nun; also a nurse in the UK and Australia)
Brother (monk)
Cousin (without a name, considered archaic; with a name, considered old fashioned / doesn’t universally work for uncle and aunt, but among some ethnic groups, Uncle and Auntie are used without a name)
Reverend
Pastor
Preacher
Rabbi
Imam
Governor
Mayor
military titles such as General, Admiral, Sergeant
Captain (airline pilot)
Professor
Maestro
Ma (rarely used with a surname, but does occur among people in Appalachia and the Ozarks in the US; used without a name in many areas as a very informal way of addressing one’s mother)
Pa (rarely used with a surname, but does occur among people in Appalachia and the Ozarks; used without a name in Appalachia, the Ozarks, and some other areas as a very informal way of addressing one’s father)

And finally, there are titles that are normally used without a name, among which we find:

Your Majesty; His/Her Majesty; Their Majesties*
Your (Royal) Highness; His/Her (Royal) Highness; Their (Royal) Highnesses*
(Your) Excellency; His/Her Excellency; Their Excellencies* (Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops; foreign ambassadors; heads of state in some countries)
Your Eminence; His Eminence; Their Eminences* (Roman Catholic cardinals)
Your Holiness / His Holiness (the Pope or Dalai Lama)
Your Grace; His/Her Grace; Their Graces* (for a duke and duchess; the archbishop of Canterbury; sometimes a Roman Catholic archbishop)
Your Lordship / His Lordship; Their Lordships*
Your Ladyship / Her Ladyship; Their Ladyships*

*When addressing this person or these people directly, we say Your ___, but when talking about this person or these people, we say His/Her/Their ___.

Mr./Madam Prime Minister
Mr./Madam President
Mr./Madam Vice President
Mr./Madam Attorney General
Mr. Speaker (in the US Congress)
(Mr./Madam) Ambassador
Waiter/Waitress (quickly going out of fashion)
Driver (taxi, bus, limousine)
Steward (on a ship)
Your Honor (judge); His/Her Honor; Their Honors
Mother (very formal way of addressing this parent)
Mom [AmE] / Mum [BrE] (informal); Mommy [AmE] / Mummy [BrE] (usually what little children say)
Father (very formal way of addressing this parent)
Dad/Papa/Pop (informal); Daddy (usually what little children say; sometimes daughters of any age)
Pops (irreverent way for a younger person to address an older man)
Son (parent addressing a male child)
Daughter (parent addressing a female child, considered archaic)
Sister (for a sibling, considered archaic)
Brother (for a sibling, considered archaic)
My Son (Catholic priest addressing male parishioner, considered archaic in some places) Notice that My Daughter was never used for female parishioners.
My Child (Catholic priest addressing male or female parishioner)

You might not think that there could be so much to look at when it comes to titles, right? Well, I hope you’ve had fun looking over these lists. I know I have in compiling them! If anything’s surprised you, if I’ve left something out, or if you’ve got comments on this topic, I’d really enjoy hearing from you, Mr. Reader / Ms. Reader / Madam Reader – whoever!

Why Do We Say That? Part 2

2008-06-14T11:44:00.002-04:00

Awhile back I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about the etymology of some idiomatic expressions we commonly use in English (Why Do We Say That?).

Since the feedback I’ve received said it was so much fun and so interesting, I think it’ll be equally as much fun to delve into a few more oddities of the language. Amazingly, just last week a student of mine asked me why we call the trip that newlyweds take a honeymoon. That student, a Spanish speaker, mentioned that it’s even the same expression in Spanish, “luna de miel,” and it turns out that the same term or a similar one exists in other languages, too from Italian to Hebrew to Persian!

Well, for once I wasn’t caught in that awkward position of having to say something like, “Why? Because that’s English,” or, “Hmm… I’ll have to look into that and let you know.” One of the possible explanations behind this term really makes us linguistic archaeologists! Here’s why:

It seems to have been a custom in ancient Babylonia (ca. 1000 BCE) for the father of the bride to give his new son-in-law as much mead as he wanted for a whole month after the wedding. (Mead is an alcoholic drink made with honey and still produced today in some countries.) Since the Babylonian calendar was lunar, this happy period when the new husband could imbibe all the mead he wanted was called the honey month. (It’s interesting to note that the word month is related to moon.) So that may be how we came to call this period the honeymoon. How it got from ancient Babylonia to us is another story, but eventually the meaning got cut down to only the period right after the wedding when the newlyweds traditionally go off on a trip. So there you have it!

Now, what about a proverb like, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”? The proverb means basically that fools can sometimes try to rid themselves of a bad thing, but instead succeed in destroying whatever good there was as well. The proverb may be of German origin, going back at least to the 16th century. One theoretical story about its origin is that in the Middle Ages, bathing was not something commonly done in Europe, but when it was, it became a family affair. Customarily, a large tub was filled with hot water and the father had the privilege of taking the first bath. Heating such a large amount of water was not an easy thing to do, so the water would be reused. The father was followed by his sons, who were then followed by all the women in the family, the mother first, and then the daughters. You can imagine how the water kept getting dirtier and dirtier as each person got in and out of the tub! According to this customary pecking order for family bathing, the last ones to take a bath were the babies. (This seems logical as babies have been known to release their bodily wastes in the water – and nobody would have wanted to get into the water after that happened!) By the time they were placed into the tub, the water was quite murky and it was just about impossible to see down to the bottom. If you weren’t careful, you might not even see a baby in that water if you let go! So that may be a tongue-in-cheek explanation as to why people started saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” Isn’t that cool?

How about one more? Because I suffer from the occupational hazard of always thinking about words and phrases and remaining keenly aware of how odd they can be instead of just taking them for granted, I remember one day wondering about the word threshold. Our handyman had just put in a new kitchen door for us, and he also put in a new marble threshold. I suddenly began wondering where such an odd word came from and why we use such a name for that thing. Here’s what I found out:

Going way back to the time in Europe when royalty lived in castles, it was traditional for many of the floors of those castles and the houses of the rich to have smooth stone floors. (I suppose that was their equivalent of our ceramic tile floors.) The problem was that those smooth stones, like ceramic tile, can get very slippery when wet and therefore pretty treacherous. In the wintertime, it was hard not to have their floors constantly getting wet when people would track in the snow and ice that clung to their boots. To counter that, they spread a light covering of straw, also known as thresh, on the floors so people wouldn’t slip and fall. During the winter, they’d keep adding more and more thresh until finally the thresh would spill out the doors when they were opened. To stop the thresh from spilling out every time a door was opened, they started placing a strip of wood along the opening at each door, and that may very well be how we get the word threshold; it “held the thresh” from spilling out the door!

I just eat this stuff up, and I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I do. Now let’s see if you can do some linguistic sleuthing of your own. Take a look at the following goodies and see if you can discover some possible tales to explain why we say what we say. I'd love to get your results and post them!

1. Ah, poor old Mr. Riley. I hear he’s passed on. So when is the family going to hold the wake?
2. It’s wonderful how successful Karen’s been in business. Good for her! You know, I understand that her family was dirt poor when she was a kid.
3. Is that a bottle of tincture of violet I see on your bathroom counter? Isn’t that used to cure trench mouth?
4. I know my brother needed a new car, but I can’t understand why in the world he decided to buy a Jeep.

There you go. Four commonly used expressions or names that may have really interesting stories behind them. Here’s your chance to become a part-time etymologist and tell us why we say what we say. I think you’ll be very surprised at how these goodies may have come about!

It’s Kind of Self-ish

2008-06-06T22:24:00.003-04:00

I’ve noticed there are two little words in English that people don’t feel have enough oomph unless they add something to them. Those two little words are the pronouns me and you. Many people have just got to use the reflexive pronouns myself and yourself instead. The odd but common use of these reflexives appears to come from a deep-seated need to add to those one-syllable pronouns me and you, which don’t seem to be long enough to show some desired importance (me) or some desired deference (you). Look at these two conversations and you’ll see what I mean:

A: What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?
B: We’re going over to the neighbors. This is the first time they’ve invited Helen and me. We’re looking forward to it. So how about you? Any special plans?

A: What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?
B: We’re going over to the neighbors. This is the first time they’ve invited Helen and myself. We’re looking forward to it. So how about yourself? Any special plans?

Interesting, isn’t it? Oh! By the way, has it dawned on you that we only tend to do this for the singular yourself and not the plural form, yourselves? When the plural is involved, we say something like, “So how about you two?” or “… the two of you?” or “… you guys?”

I have a hunch that this interesting use of those two reflexive pronouns is related to a habit in Irish English of using himself or herself as a substitute for a person’s name as a way of showing a kind of irreverent respect for an individual:

Maid to Butler: Is Himself comin’ down for dinner this afternoon?
Butler to Maid: I t’ink so. Tell Cook to have everyt’ing prepared.

And then we’ve got the other extreme, when we should use those reflexive pronouns, but don’t. This time it seems that when we clearly want to emphasize myself or yourself and stress that element of a sentence, we can’t get the “oomph,” the “punch” that a one-syllable word affords us, especially when we’re juxtaposing the two elements. Just compare these two conversations:

Husband: A nice, relaxing vacation in some tropical location would be so great, honey.
Wife: Hmm… with you surrounded by Polynesian beauties, right?
Husband: I wasn’t thinking of myself; I was thinking of you! You’ve been working way too hard lately.

Husband: A nice, relaxing vacation in some tropical location would be so great, honey.
Wife: Hmm… with you surrounded by Polynesian beauties, right?
Husband: I wasn’t thinking of me; I was thinking of you! You’ve been working way too hard lately.

See how much more nicely me/you works in the second version than myself/you does in the first? Let’s listen in some more:

Wife: Oh, please! You want that vacation for yourself, not for us!
Husband: Nothing could be further from the truth!

Wife: Oh, please! You want that vacation for you, not for us!
Husband: Nothing could be further from the truth!

What do you think of these uses of myself and yourself, which many grammar books don’t include, or the omission of their use when grammar books say they should be used? Do you consider them correct, acceptable options, or just downright wrong?

It’s little things like these that can be so important to take into account when planning realistic grammar lessons for our students. I’d like to know your opinions about these quirks in the language, so please join in the conversation.

And the Answer is . . .

2008-05-31T11:35:00.003-04:00

In a previous entry entitled “Why Do We Say That?” we had fun with some of the odder idiomatic expressions that go a long way to embellish and enrich the language. At the end of that tongue-in-cheek entry, I left five additional idiomatic expressions unexplained to ponder over. I guess it’s time now to reveal their possible, interesting beginnings to explain why we say what we say. Some people call such explanations “urban legends,” but whatever we get out of these little tales, they’re certainly entertaining and may, after all, contain some truth. So here goes . . .

1. That husband of mine! He’s not well educated, but he always manages to bring home the bacon.
5. You want to know what we did last night? We just sat around and chewed the fat.

In the Middle Ages, people could sometimes obtain pork, which would make them feel really special since all meat, including pork, was considered a luxury item for the dinner table. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of some wealth that a man could bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests, and would all sit around and chew the fat.

2. Mildred always tips extravagantly at restaurants. She acts like she’s a member of the upper crust.

Again in the Middle Ages, bakers customarily divvied up bread among their customers according to their status. Workers got the almost-burned bottom of very large loaves, families got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

3. Good night. Sleep tight.

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. (I can testify to the veracity of that statement since I myself visited Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon and saw not only the ropes on his bed frame, but also the device used to tighten them.) When you pulled on the ropes, the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase, “Good night. Sleep tight.”

4. Here’s a rule of thumb for good cooks: Only add salt and pepper to meat right before cooking it.

The phrase rule of thumb is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb. (Aw, shucks!)

I’ve got to tell you . . . Whether those tales are true or just entertaining, my students have always enjoyed hearing them. And the most important reason for telling them these tales is that it always helps them remember the idioms and use them appropriately, so those tales definitely serve a good purpose!
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Moving right along, there are some juicy little sentences I left you with at the end of my last entry entitled “Is it a Change – or is it a Goof?” The idea was to see if you could spot the word in each of those sentences that’s open to debate about whether it represents an actual change in the language, or whether it’s just a mistake some speaker or writer has made. Here’s how I see them:

She’s an alumni of Duke University.

A goof: Here we go again with those Latin plural suffixes! To be technically correct, we should say, "She’s an alumna of Duke University." For a guy we should say, "He’s an alumnus," and for both of them we should say, "They’re alumni." Most people these days don’t distinguish between the Latin masculine and feminine singular suffixes, just lumping them together with alumnus, so he’s an alumnus and she’s an alumnus. But we still distinguish between the singular and plural forms and say, "They’re alumni" or "the alumni association."

The police found teeth marks on the victim.

A goof: I really don’t understand why this is happening, but some speakers don’t think it odd to say teeth marks. At first I thought it might be because of the irregular plural form (teeth), but I’ve never heard anybody say *feet prints, have you? So, if we don’t say *teethpaste or *a fine-teeth comb, why on earth do some people say *teeth marks? Weird, huh?

The media isn’t reporting this accurately.

A change: Here’s a perfect example of that phenomenon called “accumulation of error.” The singular is medium and the plural is media, but so many educated speakers and writers have continuously made the mistake of thinking that media is a singular noun that now it’s become acceptable to say the media is instead of the media are, so you hear both, although I do think the media is is winning out.

He shouldn’t talk like that about John and I.

A goof: Yes, I know you’ve heard lots of people say such phrases as “... about John and I," but I don’t think this is considered acceptable ― at least not yet. After all, John and I are both objects of the preposition about in this sentence, and as such, I needs to be in the objective case, me. We all should say He shouldn’t talk like that about John and me. I think people have been making that goof because they think John and I sounds more “educated” or “elegant,” but it’s really just the opposite, if you ask I ― I mean me. This is a case that will prove very interesting in the future as far as “accumulation of error” goes. It remains to be seen whether this goof becomes a change at some point in the future. What’s your guess?

“Do you mind if I sit here?” “Sure.”

A goof: This one throws me for a loop. It’s as if the meaning of that question has gotten lost to many native speakers. Do you mind if …? means something like “Does it/Will it bother you if …?” so the polite response should be “No,” which means “It doesn’t/won’t bother me.” The person replying to the question above is really saying, “Of course it will bother me.” Yikes! And yet that’s not what he means at all. Something tells me that if more and more native speakers keep forgetting the true meaning of this polite question which asks for permission to do something, it will become a synonym for saying something like “Is it all right if …?” And then, of course, one proper response will be “Sure.”

They hung Saddam Hussein in 2007.

A goof: I still don’t hear too many native speakers saying something like this. Most people still distinguish between the irregular past (hung) used to mean that something has been suspended from something else like a ceiling or tree branch or placed on a wall, and the regular past (hanged) used to mean “executed” with a noose tied around a person’s neck, etc.

So there you have it. We’ve taken a tongue-in-cheek look at the possible etymologies of some idiomatic expressions and scrutinized some oft-heard words under the linguistic microscope. There’s so much more that could be said, but so little time. Oh, well . . .

Is it a Change -- or is it a Goof?

2008-05-23T20:39:00.002-04:00

Ever feel conflicted about what is and isn’t considered “acceptable” in English? I know I do. (Guess what. I just used an adjective, conflicted, which wasn’t considered “a real word” some years back.) So we sometimes find ourselves in this awful gray area of language, which has got to be the most uncomfortable place for an English teacher to be. Do we teach this word is acceptable? Do we teach that word is unacceptable? Do we just shrug our shoulders, sigh, and leave it up to somebody else to decide? And if we go for that third choice, who’s that “somebody” supposed to be?

If you want to get some perspective on this issue, here’s a term for you: an accumulation of error. It’s a term used as a way of accounting for what the language has done with particular words or phrases over the centuries. If an error is made often enough and by enough people, it finally stops being an error and becomes acceptable. And going along hand in hand with this is the concept that if a word is a high-frequency item, chances are it won’t change much over the centuries. A case in point is high-frequency irregular verbs such as go, eat, and see. We use them so often that there’s no confusion about their past tense (went, ate, saw) or past participle forms (gone, eaten, seen) in standard English. But verbs that aren’t used quite so often have either gone through a complete transition from being irregular to regular (e.g., the past of help used to be halp; now it’s helped) or they’re in transition at this time (e.g., the past of dive is now dove or dived).

I have to ask myself, though, are some of the things I hear or read real changes caused by accumulation of error combined with low-frequency items, or are they just goofs that people make because they don’t know any better?

One example of this is a bunch of nouns we got from Latin or Greek. Those two languages have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. In Greek the ending on a neuter noun is –on in the singular and –a in the plural. With Latin neuter nouns the endings are –um in the singular and –a in the plural. So that’s why the Greek loan words phenomenon and criterion are phenomena and criteria in the plural, and that’s why the Latin words are datum and bacterium in the singular and data and bacteria in the plural.

The problem is, how many English speakers know this anymore? Not too many, if you ask me. And because there’s this gap in their linguistic awareness, they view data and bacteria as singular nouns rather than plural.

Funny how that problem never occurs with masculine singular words like octopus and cactus. For some reason, English speakers always recognize them as singular nouns. The only problem that came up was putting them in the plural. Do we really want to use the Latin masculine plural and say octopi and cacti? Nah! Sounds uppity:

A: Hey, Clem, how’s about you and me go to the nursery and buy us some cacti for the front yard? They’ll do great in this drought.
B: Yep, sounds like a good idea, Myrtle. Bet they’ll look mighty nice!

No, I just can’t imagine Myrtle saying “cacti.” It’s going to be cactuses for her. And why not? We’ve been regularizing the plurals of loan words for quite some time, so it’s cactuses and octopuses and hippopotamuses for Myrtle. But at least she recognizes that it’s one cactus and two cactuses. Not so with those poor neuter plurals like data and bacteria.

Okay, I’ll make a confession, owing to the fact that I tend to be conservative in my use of language. I find it jarring to hear somebody like a doctor, nurse, or TV journalist say a bacteria instead of a bacterium. But that’s just me. In fact, not only has bacteria become accepted as a singular noun, but it’s also been pluralized by adding an –s, so some people actually say and write bacterias. Yikes! We’ve now got a plural on top of a plural. It’s a linguistic “two-fer”: two plural forms for the price of one! Well, is this a goof or is this a change? I don’t think the jury’s out on this one. I think it’s a change.

Oh! By the way, speaking of a word like phenomenon . . . I was watching an American TV game show called The Phenomenon. (It didn’t have a long run.) Anyway, the host of the show, a young man from the UK, actually kept saying “phenomenom.” The first time he said it, I thought I’d just heard him wrong. But he said it three or four more times during the show: “phenomenom.” Unbelievable! But do you know what I found really scary? The fact that nobody from the script writer to the cue card guy to the director to whoever else was involved with that show ever corrected him on it. That’s what I found really scary. Now that was a goof, not a change!

So here are a few goodies to ponder over. The question is, are they changes or are they goofs? I’ll leave it to you to decide. They’re some of my favorites because they bother me. (Remember, I told you I’m kind of conservative.) Anyway, I’d love to know what you think of them. Are they acceptable changes or are they goofs? Any others you can think of to add to my hit list will be appreciated. Just let me know.

She’s an alumni of Duke University.
He shouldn’t talk like that about John and I.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” “Sure.”
The police found teeth marks on the victim.
The media isn’t reporting this accurately.
They hung Saddam Hussein in 2007.

Now ponder, dear reader, ponder. I’ll have more to say on this subject at another time.

When Two Wrongs Make a Right

2008-05-16T20:58:00.002-04:00

I remember learning a term in college: reactionary. It meant somebody who reacts negatively and strongly to any social or political change. I think we can apply that term to language as well. I’m not a reactionary, but I suppose I’m a conservative when it comes to language. I find I have to push myself into accepting a change in the language that I don’t like or don’t want to stay as a permanent fixture. I usually don’t really accept the change; I just swallow hard and say something like, “Well, since so many educated native speakers now say that, it’s become ‘acceptable.’” It sometimes hurts to say that, especially if I’m gnashing my teeth, but I take a deep breath and do so. The thing is, I find myself saying that more and more often, and that tends to disturb me. I suppose I’ll have to get used to it, though; it’s the nature of language to change.

Here’s something that’s becoming “acceptable.” I can’t tell you how vividly I remember finding a big red mark an English teacher of mine had put through the word why in a sentence I’d written in a composition. That why was part of the phrase the reason why. When I questioned my teacher about it, she explained it was redundant. She reminded me that why means the same thing as the reason: He told me the reason he had done that. / He told me why he had done that. “You see?” she said smiling. “If we can substitute the reason with why, it shows you that they mean the very same thing, so using them together is a redundancy ― and it’s silly.” I’ve never forgotten that. My teacher really opened my eyes to the world of redundancies, which I spoke about in a previous piece on this blog. And you can bet the ranch that I’ve never said or written the reason why again.

Well, as the saying goes, “That was then; this is now.” I hear educated people say the reason why every single day, usually many times a day. I still cringe a little whenever I hear it ― a reflex action, you know ― but I’m going to develop a tick if I don’t stop cringing. Almost everybody says the reason why these days, so does that mean I have to say once again, “Well, since so many educated native speakers now say that, it’s become acceptable”? I suppose it does. (Can you hear me sighing?)

Here’s another example. I remember being taught that we should use each other when speaking about only two of something and one another when speaking about three or more. Come to think of it, I was taught the same grammar rule for between and among. Well, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard educated speakers throw that rule to the wind and use one another for just two people and use between for three or more. I just shake my head and wonder. I’ve found that even dictionaries and fairly recent grammar books now accept one another in place of each other. (I’m sighing again.) So can the same laissez-faire attitude towards between and among be far off? Probably not.

And what about less and the least vs. fewer and the fewest? Awhile back I was watching a hit TV show called The Biggest Loser. They had some trivia questions for the television audience, among which (not between which!) was, “Which of the following kinds of pie has the least calories?” Yes! They said “the least calories”! The writer who came up with that question thought it was fine. The graphic designer who mounted it on the screen thought it was fine. The narrator who did the voiceover thought it was fine. I guess the director thought it was fine. Everybody thought it was fine ― except me! At least, that’s the feeling I got. Well, if nobody thinks there’s a problem with it, who am I to decry that use? Do you see why I wonder if I’m just a conservative or a true reactionary? And I don’t want to touch on what I should do in the classroom with my ESOL students. No, no, don’t even go there! I still have nightmares over being forced to deal with explaining why it was okay to say two coffees when the lesson in our antiquated grammar book clearly said coffee was only an uncountable noun. Ugh!

So what’s your take on all of this? Are you an ultraliberal as far as these kinds of language change go? Or perhaps you’re a conservative, or even a reactionary. I’d really like to know if I’m all alone or if I have colleagues I can commiserate with. Tell me what changes you’ve noticed that you find either completely acceptable or you would like to see disappear from common usage. Talk to me!

It's Just Not Enough!

2008-05-09T17:06:00.003-04:00

Something there is in human nature that makes us want to be absolutely sure others have understood what we’ve said. Something there is in our nature that makes us want to add unnecessary bits and pieces to our utterances just to make sure enough attention has been drawn to whatever our point is or because we feel an urge to stress our point. It’s a trait that seems to have always been with us and can be traced back even in writing to the ancient Egyptians.

Although most people don’t realize it, the ancient Egyptians actually had an alphabet, but never woke up to the fact that all they needed were the hieroglyphs that represented individual sounds, just as letters do today. One thing they did was add lots of hieroglyphs that worked together with their alphabetical symbols. Here’s a typical example. The Egyptian word for “beautiful” was nefer. They had a symbol for n (water), a symbol for f (a horned viper), and a symbol for r (an open mouth). They even had symbols for the vowels, but rarely used them, much as we see in Hebrew and Arabic today. So if they’d wanted to, the Egyptians could simply have written nefer, but they didn’t. What they did to make sure nobody would get confused was to add one symbol which, by itself, represented the whole word nefer (a heart and windpipe of a animal) and then repeat the f and the r. They didn’t pronounce it nefer-fer, though; they still just pronounced it nefer! They just didn’t feel right about using only the phonetic glyphs. They had to build in a redundancy to feel sure when writing down words.

I get a real kick out of finding all sorts of redundancies in English that basically satisfy the same need that the ancient Egyptians had. Take, for example, that final –s or –es on the 3rd person singular of verbs in the simple present tense. Why on earth do we need that inflected form? We don’t have any endings on the other persons, singular or plural, so why do we persist in keeping that one inflected ending? It’s a mystery to me, especially because it’s totally redundant. As soon as I say he, she, or it, you know who or what the following verb refers to (he like, she need, it go), so that’s why it’s redundant ― and silly.

I’ve got an idea! Can you recognize some typical redundancies you hear all the time? The thing is, most people don’t realize they’re being redundant when they say these things. Even though most writing teachers would consider their inclusion poor writing style, they’re firmly entrenched in how a great many people speak. So look over each of the following sentences, pick out the redundancy or redundancies, and send in your findings:

“Krueger National Park in South Africa is a very unique wild animal reserve.”
“The reason why he did it was unclear.”
“Make sure you remember your PIN number when you go to use the ATM machine.”
“Students from other countries who want to study at American universities will need to achieve a certain score on the TOEFL test.”
“Scuba diving in the Bahamas was the most unique experience I’ve ever had.”
“Let’s have tuna fish sandwiches for lunch.”
“The police were able to prove that the car had been stolen by its VIN number.”
“Watch an all new episode of Grey’s Anatomy next Thursday night here on ABC.”
“The police were able to return most of the stolen clothes back to the store.”

So how did you do? Did you find them all? Please let me know!

Whatever the reasons, it’s apparent that redundancy plays a role in language to satisfy some deep-seated need to make things clearer or to add an extra “oomph” to them. Whether they actually do or not I’ll leave up to you to decide. I’m looking forward to seeing if you find those silly little extras in the sentences I’ve cited. Happy hunting!

May I Have a Word? Part 2

2008-05-03T00:24:00.004-04:00

When I first started my blog, I thought it would be fun to delve into some of the challenging offerings of English vocabulary. I shared with you some of the more daunting questions about words and phrases that have caught my attention over the years. As I mentioned in that first piece, "May I Have a Word" (which is included in my first entry, "Welcome to My Blog"), there’s nothing quite as uncomfortable as being ambushed by a question such as “What’s the difference between electric and electrical?” (And please, let’s not add electronic to the mix!)

Well, I’m not finished. I still have lots of words and phrases that make me pause and ponder. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was asked by one of my students why it is that we have two words to distinguish some living animals from their meat, but we don’t do that for all of them. I stared blankly at my student, not quite sure what he was talking about. Recognizing that needy look on my face, the student offered an example: “You know, like cow and beef.” “Oh!” I said. “Now I get it!” So I listed the four most common domestic animals and meats as examples on the board:

cow → beef
calf → veal
sheep → mutton
pig → pork

That was all well and good, but could I explain the reason for this? It just so happened that I could! I remembered back to when I had taken a course on the history of the English language. The Saxon peasants served the Norman aristocrats in 12th century England, and the vocabulary from the two languages (Anglo-Saxon and Norman French) started to mix at that time. It so happens that when those animals were slaughtered, butchered, and their meat brought into the kitchens, the Saxon workers called them by their Anglo-Saxon names (cow, calf, sheep, and pig), but that when their meat was cooked and brought into the dining room for the Norman aristocrats to munch on, their Norman French names were used (beef, veal, mutton, and pork). That differentiation stuck through all these centuries, and that’s why we still have different words for those animals and their meat.

But then I got ambushed. Another student with a big grin on her face asked me, “Why is chicken the same word for the animal and the meat?” And another student piped up with “What about lamb and goat? Total silence fell over the room as the students awaited my answers. It was the kind of silence that precedes a great explosion or clap of thunder as a storm begins. I don’t particularly like being ambushed in class, but it’s an occupational hazard, I guess. So there I was, left holding the bag ― which, by the way, was an idiomatic expression I taught the students right then and there. It was one of those “teachable moments” I’d learned about in one of those education courses I’d taken so many years before.
Yes, I was left holding the bag. I had no idea how to respond to those questions. All I could do was fess up to my students and tell them I’d try to find the answers. Well, I still haven’t. If you’ve got the answers, please let me know!

Getting back to more of those words and phrases I’ve pondered over from time to time, here are more that I’d like to share with you, some of which come from my own head, and some from the head of authors such as Richard Lederer*. Please think about them. I think you should join me in wondering about these little gems of the language.

How do you distinguish between to die of something and to die from something?
Does quicksand really work quickly?
We ship by truck, but we send cargo by ship, right?
If the stars are out, they’re visible, but if the lights are out, they’re invisible!
Why do we recite at a play, but play at a recital?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
I know what a gate is; that opening in a fence that I can go through. And I know what a door is, too. Well then, why do we call the thing you pass through at the airport when boarding a plane a gate when it’s a door? I’ve never seen a fence there, have you?
If there are proper nouns, are there also improper nouns?
Grapefruit. A grape is already a fruit, so why is this called a grapefruit?
For that matter, if tuna is already a fish, why do lots of people say tuna fish? Does this have any connection by analogy to grapefruit?

Help me out here, folks. If you’ve got any sage responses to my ponderings, please send them in.

*Richard Lederer. Crazy English. Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster, Inc.). 1998

Tense about Tense

2008-04-25T15:58:00.002-04:00

Whenever I open an ESOL grammar book and look at the table of contents, I wince a little. I see things like "present continuous tense," "present perfect tense," "past perfect tense," and this terminology makes me tense. Although many people don't realize it, linguistically speaking, there are only two tenses in English, the present and the past. What I'm really talking about are the simple present and the simple past. That's it; two tenses. How can that be? Well, linguists explain that tense is only tense when it's created by just using the basic form of a verb, adding a prefix, infix, or suffix to a verb, or when there is an internal change to a verb. So when I say I work, she works, that shows tense, and when I say she worked, I've added another suffix to the verb, -ed, so that's tense. And, of course, with a verb like speak, if I want the past, I make an internal change and get spoke, which once again shows tense. So English only has two tenses according to linguists, unlike Latin. Now there's a language with oodles of tenses! Ego laboro (I work/am working), laborabam (I was working/used to work), laboravi (worked), laboraveram (had worked), laborabo (will work), laboravero, (will have worked). Latin's got all kinds of suffixes and all kinds of tenses.

So what are all those other forms of a verb in English if they're not tenses? Linguistically, they're called aspects, aspects of the verb. The present progressive is an aspect of the verb, and so is the present perfect and the present perfect progressive, and the past perfect, and the future with be going to or will -- and I could go on. Now, in a practical sense, is there really any benefit to thinking of these as aspects of a verb rather than as tenses? I think so. I think there really is a practical benefit. When I say I feel great or I'm feeling great, I'm not changing the tense (the time) of the verb feel; I'm simply applying a different aspect to that verb. And when I say He finished the job or He's finished the job, I'm once again applying a different aspect to the action of finishing something rather than a different time. I think that matters. I think that might help some students understand why we have forms like the present perfect and the role those forms play in English grammar.

The only other thing that makes me wince when I look at those tables of contents is some of the names I see given to those tenses and aspects. My reaction isn't based on the aesthetics of the names, but on the fact that they can be very misleading and end up confusing our students. I’ve already written a piece about the so-called “simple” present (“A Present for You”), but that’s the first one that comes to mind. Then there are the so-called “present continuous” and the “past continuous.” “Continuous”? What does that mean, continuous? Doesn’t continuous mean the action never ends? Is it like the earth is on a continuous orbit around the sun? If I were a student and saw that name, that's exactly what I might imagine. Kudos to the person who started calling this aspect “the present progressive.” Now that I can understand. It deals with an action that's in progress at that moment. Teachers can get that ― and so can their students. And we’ve got the so-called present “perfect.” What’s so “perfect” about it? Come to think of it, most teachers I know wish the present perfect didn’t exist at all because it’s so tough to teach and get students to internalize. Some perfection that is!

I think it would be nice to go back to using such terms as the “preterit” instead of the simple past, don’t you? It’s a nice, neutral name that carries no opinions about it. Let me judge for myself if it’s “simple” or not. If you’ve got any names for the tenses or aspects that you think would work better than the ones we’ve got now, let’s hear them. Who knows . . . We may just start a small ESOL grammar revolution! So let me hear from you, fellow rebels!

We’re All Entitled

2008-04-18T18:04:00.002-04:00

I’ve always found our most common titles in English quite amazing. Have you ever really thought about Mr., Mrs., Miss, and Ms.? (Come to think of it, does anybody use Miss anymore?)

I’ve wondered why we write those odd abbreviations for the first two I listed, but when we say them out loud, something that doesn’t quite seem related pops out of our mouths. Mr. is “Mister,” but what’s a mister? I’m familiar with a garden gadget that keeps plants moist; that’s a mister. But a man? Is a mister a man who mists plants? Naw, that couldn’t be the derivation. And Mrs. is pronounced “missez,” right? Well, what happened to the r? Maybe we’re really supposed to say “mirsez.”

I don’t like feeling ignorant, so I dug into where these titles came from. Mister is a funny pronunciation for master. So that means I’m really Master Firsten. Oh, but wait a minute. I recall that when I was a kid, some adults put the title master in front of a boy’s first name to distinguish a kid from a grown-up. In fact, I do remember grown-ups sometimes calling me "Master Richard." So somehow, master got changed to mister and mister got to be used for grown-up men. At least that seems to be what happened.

Moving right along, it turns out that missez comes from “mistress.” Mistress? Wait a minute! So my mother could have been called "Mistress Firsten"? Or maybe "Mistress Tess." Wow! I think my feisty mother would have liked that. It conjures up all sorts of interesting images!

The thing that rankles is how these nice titles can go from being formal and polite to downright common and even almost vulgar. How, you ask? Use them along with a surname when you address people and you’re nice and polite: “One moment, Mr. Pearson.” “Hold on, Mrs. Longman.” But drop the surnames (maybe because you don’t know these people) and suddenly you’re crude and boorish: “One moment, mister.” “Hold on, missez.” Ah, but you know how to get around that problem, don't you? You’ve got to substitute those two titles with two other titles if you want to stay polite, so you say sir and madam or ma’am: “One moment, sir.” Ooh, that sounds nice, and so polite! “Hold on, madam.” Uh . . . I’m not so sure about this one. Hmm . . . “Hold on, ma’am”? Yes! That sounds better. So what’s wrong with madam? I think we tend to use madam only when we’re annoyed or angry. To me it sounds exaggerated or overly polite, even sarcastic ― well, that is, unless you’re a butler: “Dinner is served, madam.”

But what if you’re addressing more than one man or woman? Then what? “One moment, sirs.” Nope, that won’t cut it ― unless maybe if you’re in the military. “Hold on, ma’ams.” I don’t even think ma’ams is a word! Now what do you do? Of course! You have to use two more different titles if you’re addressing more than one person: “One moment, gentlemen.” “Hold on, ladies.” (Is your head beginning to spin? Mine is!) Yes, ladies sounds nice as a plural title to use when the singular ma’am won’t do. Oh, no! I just thought of something. What about the singular, lady? "Hold on, lady." Oh, my goodness! We're back to crude and boorish ― almost vulgar ― and it can sound angry, too. So that means if you use ladies, it sounds refined, but if you use lady, you get the opposite result. (Are you shaking your head? I’m shaking my head.)

I think we need to recap: Mister comes from “master,” but that doesn’t mean he’s your master, and Master can be used with a boy’s first name if you want to be super-formal, although this title seems to be dying out. Now then, Missez comes from “mistress,” but that doesn’t mean she’s somebody’s mistress; it means she’s married! In addition, if we want to stay polite, we can’t address somebody as mister or missez without a surname, so we switch to sir or ma’am if we’re talking to one man or woman, and we switch again to gentlemen or ladies if we're talking to two or more men or women. And we’ve got to remember that we can use ladies, but we shouldn't use lady unless we're upset and want to sound low-class. Have you got all that? And to think, our students have to deal with this daunting stuff, too!

Oh! And speaking of a married woman or “the missez” as some low-class speakers might say, what about Ms., which we pronounce "miz"? Most people don’t know that it goes back to the 1700s as a sort of slurred way of quickly saying missez. Besides that, it’s always been a common way of pronouncing Mrs. in parts of the American South: “Mornin’, Mizz Davis.” Sheila Michaels, an American involved in the beginnings of the feminist movement, said there should be a title for women that didn’t divulge their marital status, just as the title Mr. doesn’t divulge that about a man. These days Ms. is heard much more often than Miss or Mrs. Does that mean those two titles may be on the way out?

So I was thinking and thinking about these common titles, especially the female ones, and it suddenly dawned on me: When addressing a top politician like a president or prime minister, we say "Mr. President" or "Mr. Prime Minister," but since we’re so au courant nowadays, if Hillary Clinton becomes the first female American president, how will she want to be addressed? "Mrs. President"? "Ms. President"? "Madam President"? Hmm . . . My money’s on "Madam President." It strikes me as a cut above the other two options. What do you think? And have your students mastered the use of Mr., Miss, Mrs., and Ms.? I’d love to hear any war stories you’ve got.

By the way, mistresses and masters . . . er, . . . ladies and gentlemen, please stay tuned, because I’ve got lots more to say about titles, but that’ll have to wait for another time.

Why Do We Say That?

2008-04-10T17:26:00.005-04:00

I thought I’d take a slight break from things strictly grammatical this week and talk tongue-in-cheek about a topic that’s always fascinated me, the etymology of words and names. Having been a history buff all my life, especially ancient history, I’ve found it interesting to discover where names come from or how idiomatic expressions got their starts. I mean, haven’t you ever wondered why we say It’s raining cats and dogs? That’s one of the early-on idioms many of us teach our students, but when a student once asked me why English speakers say that, I just gave him a blank stare and then quickly said something devilishly clever like, “Because that’s English.” See how quickly I can think on my feet? Hmm . . .

Well, okay, why do we say It’s raining cats and dogs? Here’s one of the most popular explanations, which may very well be what is commonly referred to these days as an "urban legend." In England during the Middle Ages, most commoners’ houses had thatched roofs. That was the place where animals could keep warm in the colder months, so the pets, like dogs and cats, and other small animals lived on or in those thatched roofs. When it rained, the roofs became slippery, and sometimes the animals slid and fell off the roofs. That may be where we get the idiomatic expression It's raining cats and dogs. Is it true? Well, maybe not, but it's certainly an interesting story!

I remember many years ago wondering about the origin of my own first name. I used to joke that Richard must mean “a rich man,” and that’s what my folks had wished me to become when I grew up. Well, I was wrong. It turns out that the name is made up of two Germanic words, ric and hard, and they mean “brave power.” Other male names ending in (h)ard are also Germanic in origin. Howard means “brave heart” and Leonard means “brave lion.” I think that’s neat!

My students have always been fascinated by the stories I can now tell them surrounding the possible origins of idiomatic expressions, and I get a big kick out of being able to tell them those stories instead of cleverly saying, “Because that’s English.” Those stories open up windows into what life was like hundreds of years ago. They’re like small archaeological dig sites, only made up of words instead of artifacts you can hold in your hand. That story about the origin of It’s raining cats and dogs is a perfect example.

Here’s one more creative explanation that you might find interesting. What’s wonderful about this story is that it explains two idiomatic expressions at the same time: Because land in England was at such a premium even in the Middle Ages, people started running out of places to bury their dead. So they would dig up coffins and reuse the graves ― a practice that's now illegal. Sometimes when reopening coffins, they’d find scratch marks inside. People quickly realized they had been burying some of their loved ones alive. To stop that horror from happening, they tied a string around the dead person's wrist, brought the string through the coffin and up to the surface of the ground, and tied the string to a bell that was mounted on a stand next to the grave. Someone would be given the charming task of sitting next to the grave all night to listen for the bell. If the bell started ringing, he’d run to get help to dig up the “dead person” before he or she really was dead! That’s why on the graveyard shift, they knew someone might be saved by the bell. Interesting, right?

When I tell one of these stories to my students, I feel like a camp counselor gathered with my kids around a roaring campfire. I find these tales, whether true or not, to be a great tool to increase my students' attentiveness, listening comprehension, and retention of the idiomatic expressions under discussion. Anything that works is fine by me!

As a change of pace, I’m going to list a few of my favorite idiomatic expressions. Let’s see if you can tell us how they came to be. Are you ready? Okay, let’s go!

1. That husband of mine! He’s not well educated, but he always manages to bring home the bacon.
2. Mildred always tips extravagantly at restaurants. She acts like she’s a member of the upper crust.
3. Good night. Sleep tight.
4. Here’s a rule of thumb for good cooks: Only add salt and pepper to meat right before cooking it.
5. You want to know what we did last night? We just sat around and chewed the fat.

There you go. Five commonly used idiomatic expressions with really interesting stories behind them. Let’s see if you can become part-time etymologists and tell us why we say what we say. I think you’ll be very surprised by what you may find out, and I can't wait to read your comments on these great idioms!

I Indefinitely Get It

2008-03-28T18:17:00.005-04:00

It’s more than likely that at one time or another you’ve heard that old philosophical question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” So now I ask you, which came first, a or an? Here’s about as basic an element of English as you can get, and yet I can’t figure out the answer to that question. I know, I know; people usually teach that the indefinite article is a and that it becomes an if the noun that follows begins with a vowel sound. Well, can’t the reverse be possible? Can’t it be that the indefinite article is an and that it becomes a if the noun that follows begins with a consonant sound? I wonder . . .

I also wonder about the term “the indefinite article.” I don’t think that’s right. I think it should be “the indefinite articles.” I don’t know about you, but I see two articles, an and a. Why do grammarians and teachers keep saying there’s only one indefinite article? I don’t get it.

Well, this has really bothered me from time to time, so now with all this modern technology and the “information highway” that we call the Web, I figured it might be fun to google an and a (I just love this new verb!) and see what I could come up with as far as whether or not there’s one indefinite article or two. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. What did I find? There are grammarians who say there are three indefinite articles! Not one, not two ― but three! (Am I being ambushed again?)

I found lots of hits on Google.com for “English indefinite article” (3,010) and more hits than I had expected for “English indefinite articles” (659), and among the links for the latter, I came across grammarians who consider some as an indefinite article, the plural equivalent of an and a. Now I’ve always considered that to be a determiner, and one link actually says that most people view it that way, but that didn’t stop the author from saying that he still feels some should be categorized as an indefinite article since it represents the plural form of an and a as in I have an onion. / I have some onions. I think using some in this sentence is more natural sounding than simply saying I have onions. Gee, I can see his point about considering some as an indefinite article. Can you?

But I’ve wondered about something else as well: How do we pronounce a? For me there’s only one pronunciation, the schwa sound [Ə], the same sound as the initial vowel in applaud. But then I know there are people who say [e] as in aim. Do they always say [e], or do they waffle between [Ə] and [e]? There may be times when some people say [e] with a noun just to emphasize it for one reason or another, but I’m not one of them ― at least I don’t think I am. Are you? So how do we teach the pronunciation of a to our students? Thank goodness we don’t have this conundrum with an or some ― if you go along with considering some an indefinite article rather than a determiner.

And did you know that because native speakers got mixed up between a and an at some point in the history of English that they actually changed at least a couple of nouns accidentally? Here’s how those words would be today if that confusion hadn’t screwed them up:

A: Hey, Milt, are we on for the softball game this coming Saturday?
B: Well, I hope so, but we have to find somebody to be a numpire. Gus has the flu.

A: Chloe, you’re going to the supermarket later today, right?
B: Yes, that’s right. Do you need something?
A: Can you go to the housewares aisle and pick me up a napron?
B: Sure thing, Phyllis.

Yep, believe it or not, the original words were numpire and napron, not umpire and apron! Somewhere along the line, people attached the [n] to the wrong word through a phenomenon called juncture loss. How weird is that!

So what have I come away with after wondering about an and a and the chicken-vs.-egg question? I’ve come away with realizing more than ever how complex even the so-called simplest elements of a language can be. I’ve also come away with a greater appreciation for how interesting it is to delve into an item of the English language that I would otherwise have considered pretty banal. Banal? Not by a long shot! I don’t say that I accept the idea that we have three indefinite articles in English even though I can see that point of view. I may not completely be a traditionalist, but I do hold on to some traditions I find hard to break, like only thinking of an and a as the indefinite articles in English. And yes, I do feel we have two indefinite articles ― even though I’m not quite sure how to teach the pronunciation of one of them. What’s your take on all of this?

What is Grammar?

2008-03-22T20:59:00.005-04:00

Before I get into this week's topic, I'd love to respond to the request that Rachel made in her wonderful observations and comments on my last piece, "It's Just a Formality." Rachel mentioned that perhaps I could guide her “… in the right direction about getting doctors to do the right thing” as far as how they address her as their patient. (And, by the way, Rachel, thank you for your terrific comments and observations!)

I’ve been in similar situations, and I’ve only found one tactful way to get my message across about not caring to be addressed by my first name when the person doing so is in a position that I feel could adversely affect my well being in one way or another. I just use that person’s first name, too. So if my doctor were to call me Richard, and I didn’t feel comfortable about him doing so, I’d simply start calling him by his first name, too, and avoid calling him “Doctor.” If my medical practitioner reacted negatively to that, I hope he’d get the message, subtle though it may be. But if he didn’t seem to mind, well, so be it. We’d both just keep addressing each other as if we were old pals. That would be fine with me ― as long as it were mutual.

I once had a principal who always called me “Firsten,” just “Firsten.” It used to drive me nuts. One day, out of total irritation, after he again addressed me as "Firsten," I called him "Leyva" (his last name). He was quite taken aback and actually came right out and said to me, “You mean Mr. Leyva, don’t you?” I retorted, “Then you mean Mr. Firsten, right?” He got the message, although with somebody like him subtlety didn’t work. But from then on, he called me “Mr. Firsten” and I called him “Mr. Leyva.” So that’s my suggestion, Rachel.
______________________________________________________________________________

Betty Azar posed a great question in her comments on my last piece. Betty wrote, “I have a question for you. People talk about there being a spoken grammar and a written grammar. When they say that, aren't they really talking about register and style being different? Isn't the underlying grammar the same no matter what the register or speaking/writing style?”

This question couldn’t have come at a better time. One of our wonderful members in the Azar Grammar Exchange, an EFL teacher in Saudi Arabia by the name of Ismael, posed a question to me that I told him would best be answered here on my blog. His question ties in perfectly with Betty’s. Ismael asked, “Is pronunciation a part of grammar?”

I smiled both when I read Ismael’s question and when I found Betty’s waiting for me, and here’s why. To begin, I’d like to quote a linguist’s definition of "grammar" to help answer these questions: The sounds and sound patterns, the basic units of meaning, such as words, and the rules to combine them to form new sentences constitute the grammar of a language. The grammar, then, is what we know; it represents our linguistic competence. To understand the nature of language we must understand the nature of this internalized, unconscious set of rules, which is part of every grammar of every language.*

We can tell immediately from this linguistic definition of grammar that pronunciation is indeed one of the integral parts of all the internalized rules that govern a language, and we certainly have “rules” that tell us which sounds are or are not acceptable in any given language. In fact, that’s what’s meant when we say that somebody has “an accent” in another language. It means that the speaker is imposing certain sounds of his native language onto the sound system of the other language he’s speaking. So, for example, if I use my rounded English /r/ when I speak Spanish, which has a trilled /r/, Spanish speakers will say to each other right away that I have “an accent,” an “English accent,” in their language. So that would be one part of the “grammar” of Spanish that I haven’t mastered. I hope that answers your question, Ismael.

As to what Betty has asked, I think the answer can get quite complicated. First, we probably don’t need to define what we mean by “spoken language,” but perhaps we need to do so for “written language.” I would venture to say that “written language” or “written grammar” refers to the standard, educated language and its rules used in writing and understood by all educated people who use the language in question in one specific country.

With that said, if we use the linguistic definition of a grammar, I imagine that we can say there’s a spoken grammar and a written grammar, since the standard ― and I stress “standard” ― written language doesn’t need to take pronunciation, intonation, or dialectal variation into account. Here’s one case in point: In certain parts of New England, it’s perfectly correct for Person B to utter the following response in this mini-dialogue:

A: I like nothing better than watching football on Thanksgiving Day.
B: So don’t I.

Now the standard way of responding to that comment would be to say, “So do I,” and I daresay that in the written language, that would be the only acceptable sentence. But "So do I" certainly isn’t the only acceptable sentence in the spoken grammar in that part of the US. So can we say unequivocally that Person B’s response is ungrammatical? I don’t think so, not in the spoken grammar.

So I don’t think those who claim there’s a spoken grammar and a written grammar are just talking about register and style. There seem to be some real differences that we can find if we look closely enough without even accounting for the areas of spoken grammar that don’t need to be dealt with in the written grammar. At least that’s my take on this topic.

I’d love to hear what others think about this issue. Have an opinion? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment. What you have to say is always most welcome!

*Victoria Fromkin & Robert Rodman. An Introduction to Language. 4th ed. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 1988