Language blog, CHICLE, The Chapel Hill Institute for Cultural and Language Education

I was listening to a Planet Money podcast, my relatively new obsession, and heard both better than I and better than me in just a couple of sentences. I've always been a little pedantic about this, usually just adding the "am" so that I can say better than I am without sounding too stilted.

For an really thorough discussion, visit Grammar Girl. The debate is between the prepositionists and the conjunctionists (me, usually). Here's a little bit of the discussion (paragraphs reordered by me). [Read More]

So the battle continues: the conjunctionists have history and the avoidance of ambiguity on their side, while the prepositionists have than whom and several counterexamples on theirs. Who wins? I believe Ken Wilson sums it up best in The Columbia Guide to Standard American English:

Than is both a subordinating conjunction, as in She is wiser than I am, and a preposition, as in She is wiser than me.... Since the following verb am is often dropped or "understood," we regularly hear than I and than me. Some commentators believe that the conjunction is currently more frequent than the preposition, but both are unquestionably Standard.

However, a thorn in the side of conjunctionists is the phrase than whom; both sides of the debate agree than who just sounds wrong and recommend than whom in all cases, as in the question You were faster than whom? Whom is an object pronoun, so if than whom is always correct, why not than him and than us? Score one for the people who think than is sometimes a preposition.

--JS-- [Read Less]

I got to stay home Monday for the Labor Day holiday, but the Latino crew working on the house next door to me didn't. Nor did the the crew working on the new buildings on Highway 54. However, it's good just to HAVE a job in these times, even if you do work on Labor Day. As a reminder of how hard things are, here is a recent press release from NCLR and a link to their report on Latino workers.

AS CONGRESS RETURNS TO WORK, MINORITY WORKERS STILL FACE HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT [Read More]

Washington, DC - Congress will return to work after Labor Day, but millions of American workers will not be so fortunate. Data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today showed that unemployment remains high, particularly for Latino and Black workers. In August, the unemployment rate rose to 9.7%, with Latino unemployment increasing to 13% and Black unemployment to 15.1%. For months, NCLR (National Council of La Raza), the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, has joined with other civil rights leaders, think tanks, and national policy organizations to call attention to these disparities. Following this week's release of a major report on Latino workers, Fractures in the Foundation: The Latino Worker's Experience in an Era of Declining Job Quality, NCLR underscored this message by focusing on the substandard conditions many Latino workers endure unnecessarily on a daily basis.

Latino USA in Chapel Hill

Latino USA had an excellent segment on NC Community Colleges and undocumented students recently. They interviewed Paul Cuadros and Graig Meyer as well as a Latina Chapel Hill High School graduate. It has a Purdue ad from the election (that misidentifies Pat McCrory as a "fellow democrat") that I hadn't heard before. I think it probably didn't play in Chapel Hill.

--JS-- [Read Less]

I manage to sound the Spanish rr sound correctly about 65% of the time. It's one of those things that makes us non-native speakers very self-conscious as we either overdo the roll or miss it completely. However, if you have been fortunate enough to hear school children's oratory in Central America or Mexico, you know your best roll falls far short! [Read More]

There's a list of suggestions on Spanish.about.com that's pretty good, but even better are some of the comments that readers have posted.

What helped me the most was to practice imitating the sound of a kid's bicycle when they put a card against the spokes with a clamp of some sort. When they go faster, more rapid the sound. For practice after that there is a rhyme that goes something like this, and it is a wonderful practice that all spanish speakers I have met know. RR con RR cigarro, RR con RR barril, Tan Rapido corren los carros de ferrocarril. When you master that, you will be congratulated by you spanish-speaking friends. -Guest niceguynga@yahoo.com

Just pretend you're a little kid playing in the dirt with your toy cars. Then make the "motor noise" with your tongue (RRRRR) as you "drive" the cars around. -Guest Linda

When I first began learning Spanish, I couldn't get a single r to roll. I tried and I tried and nothing worked - (let's say I'm trying to pronounce "correr") the "e" would just be super elongated and it would sound absolutely terrible! So, one day, when no one else was at home (so that I wouldn't embarrass myself trying to practice this out loud) I kept saying "erre" over and over again. Some of my rr's were elongated, some were short, but I kept doing this for about 5 minutes until - miraculously - a roll popped out of my mouth! After that, I was so excited that I could finally roll my rr's that I had a bit of a hard time controlling myself because I started to roll EVERY r...even when it wasn't necessary! Who knows - this probably isn't going to work for everyone; but I went from a non-roller to being able to roll my r's ever since. Just keep trying - it may take you longer than 5 minutes, but it certainly doesn't hurt to give it a try! -kepelek

--JS--

I've read three wonderful ones this vacation. The first two were recommended by my friend Mary Eldridge. I talked about The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett last week. It is wonderful -- the jacket describes it as "a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading." [Read More]

Map The second is also about literature and near-England. It is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It is a told-by-letters book about the occupation of the Channel Island, Guernsey, by the Germans in WW II. The letters are written just after the war and the protagonist is a lively writer from London who decides to write her next book about the occupation. This book is about the salvation power of reading.

Both of these books are very short and "quick read." Not so for my third recommendation. It's for Spanish readers only and titled La neblina del ayer by Leonardo Padura. I've now read all of his books, some in English and some in Spanish. I don't think this one has been translated yet. Padura is Cuban and writes about a Cuban policeman/ex-policeman. They are detective stories but also wonderfully descriptive about Cuba in the last twenty years or so. He writes beautifully and there were a lot of words I didn't know. There are some graphic sexual scenes -- more new vocabulary. This one is also about books and their importance to a culture.

(Although I usually link to Amazon so that you can see the book, I hope you often shop for your books locally!)

Channel Islands

This is a pretty long email so I'll just link you to information about Guernsey and about the German occupation of the island. All new to me!

Blueberry Pie

Finally, since I'm in Maine, here's the best blueberry pie recipe and the worst recipe presentation ever.

--JS--

It's not that often that I encounter a word I've never heard before in a book and this book is only 120 pages. (Less I sound arrogant, I do often encounter words that I've heard but am not sure exactly what they mean.) Wikipedia tells us that:

An opsimath can refer to a person who begins, or continues, to study or learn late in life. [Read More]

Opsimathy was once frowned upon, used as a put down with implications of laziness and considered less effective by educators than early learning. However, the opsimath population is increasing in the USA, and the emergence of "opsimath clubs" proves that opsimathy is no longer looked down upon,but is in fact desirable.

The book is The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett and I'm writing about opsimath as much to recommend that you read the book as to discuss the word. It is wonderful -- the jacket describes it as "a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading." (Although I usually link to Amazon so that you can see the book, I hope you often shop for your books locally!)

Polymath

Dr. Goodword sent this word a while ago and I didn't use it because I didn't find it fascinating. But now I do in conjunction with opsimath.

Meaning: A person of great learning in diverse areas of human knowledge; a Renaissance man or woman.

Notes: This good word is yet another in our series of words that are not what they seem. No, it is not someone who can solve several math problems at once but a person of broad learning. Someone who has knowledge of a variety of fields, though we tend to think of them, as we do Leonardo da Vinci, as excelling in those fields, too. The abstract noun is polymathy and the adjective, polymathic. I suppose a specialist would be a monomath, though this word has not emerged yet.

Word History: This excellent word is none other than Greek polymathes "knowing much" from poly "many, much" + mathein "to learn". --JS-- [Read Less]

For Spanish learners: we all struggle with gustar. I found a useful web page that explains the construction well and very thoroughly. While it is used to express "to like", it actually means "to be pleasing." That means that the subject in Spanish, which affects the form of the verb that is used in Spanish and that is frequently not explicitly stated, is "the thing that is liked", not the "liker." (Okay, maybe that's not a word. But it should be.) [Read More]

Last week's addendum was Duvet Days. It triggered a similar alliteration, Dog Days. I had no idea it came from the classical world. I'm really not gloating, but I'll be spending most of them in Maine. [Read More]

From Wikipedia:

The phrase Dog Days or "the dog days of summer", Latin: Caniculae, Caniculares dies, refers to the hottest, most sultry days of summer. In the northern hemisphere they usually fall between early July and early September whilst in the Southern hemisphere they are usually between January and early March. The actual dates vary greatly from region to region, depending on latitude and climate. Dog Days can also define a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant, or marked by dull lack of progress.

The term "Dog Days" was used by the Greeks (see, e.g., Aristotle's Physics, 199a2), as well as the ancient Romans (who called these days caniculares dies (days of the dogs)) after Sirius (the "Dog Star", in Latin Canicula), the brightest star in the heavens besides the Sun. The dog days of summer are also called canicular days.

The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The ancients sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" according to Brady's Clavis Calendarium, 1813 ....

In recent years, the phrase "Dog Days" or "Dog Days of Summer" have also found new meanings. The term has frequently been used in reference to the American stock market(s). Typically, summer is a very slow time for the stock market, and additionally, poorly performing stocks with little future potential are frequently known as "dogs."

A casual survey will usually find that many people believe the phrase is in reference to the conspicuous laziness of domesticated dogs (who are in danger of overheating with too much exercise) during the hottest days of the summer. When speaking of "Dog Days" there seems to be a connotation of lying or "dogging" around, or being "dog tired" on these hot and humid days. Although these meanings have nothing to do with the original source of the phrase, they may have been attached to the phrase in recent years due to common usage or misunderstanding of the origin of the phrase.

--JS--

Definition: A company-approved day off that employees can take if they feel too tired to work. [Read More]

Example Citation: 'Duvet days were introduced because we realise that everyone has those days when they just cannot face work,' explains Katherine Nicholls, HR manager at August.One. 'In the past, these may have been days when people would have called in sick or they may have had to be pre-planned as holiday. The beauty of duvet days is that they are not pre-planned and people do not have to pretend or feel guilty about calling in.' -Roisin Woolnough, "Don't Let Stress Make You Sick of Working," Computer Weekly, February 1, 2001

Earliest Citation: [Text 100] continues to operate 'people friendly' policies such as three-month paid sabbaticals, interest-free loans for the purchase of personal IT equipment, paternity leave and two 'duvet days' a year for when staff are unable to face work. -David Sumner Smith, "How to stay forever young," Sunday Times, June 28, 1998

The originator of the duvet day concept was a British PR firm named August.One Communications (the human resources manager of which is quoted in the above citation). They began offering these perks for the pooped back in 1997. Another company called Text 100 soon took up the idea, and they were the first to get press coverage, as shown above.

From Wikipedia:

A Duvet day is a formal allowance of time off given by some employers, most commonly in the United Kingdom and United States.

It can be stipulated formally in a contract of employment and is considered part of the remunerations package along with Holiday allowance. The term has also since become used by people to reference taking a day off work for no normally accepted reason (such as sick, grievance or holiday) even if they have no official "Duvet day" entitlement with their employer.

It differs from Holiday allowance in that no prior notice is needed. An employee receives an allocation of days where if he or she gets up in the morning and doesn't want to go to work for any reason, he or she can use a "Duvet day".

--JS--

A friend found a relevant definition in an online slang dictionary with regard to last week's addendum. It included:

There are some very funny words at this site and some not-so-funny ones. Here are a few I liked from the "O" page. Twenty-five letters left to go ... [Read More]

overcommasize: To use too many commas, in a section of speech, or writing.
Example: Elaine tends to frequently overcommasize, her papers.

outdacious: Outrageous, impertinent.
Example: What an outdacious suggestion.

onomania: An obsessive tendency to attach names to inanimate objects. Further symptoms include referring to objects using gender-specific pronouns. Origin is Greek's onoma for name.
Example: Have you seen my sock Billy? He's been missing for days now; I'm getting worried.

OMCD: (n) acronym for 'Old Married Couple Disorder', wherein two people have a strange, innate sense of each other-finish the other's sentences, know what the other one is thinking-much like an old married couple.
Example: Those two have only been going out for a week, but look at 'em-they seem like they've been together forever. They've got a serious case of OMCD.

obflusticate: vt/ To confuse, through the use of vague, convoluted language, to the point at which the listener either starts grinding his/her teeth, or flexing the jaw up & down in a flustered state. From the combination of the words obfuscate, fluster & masticate. Noun: obflustication.
Example: Mr. Lay's testimony obflusticated quite a few people.

obfuscatologist: Someone who makes things unclear or difficult to follow. (To obfuscate is to make obscure or unclear, especially if done in a circuitous or complicated manner.)
Example: Jim's a professional obfuscatologist; following his trail of excuses is unbelievably difficult.

obfuzzcate: The inability to read faxes due to poor print quality.
Example: Resend that fax since it was too obfuzzcated to understand.

--JS--

So, optics. It's a fairly common scientific word, no? But, in one week, I must have heard it used in a different sense at least five times. I think it has become journalistic jargon, used in political or economic articles. Please let me know if I'm wrong and just hadn't been jarred by it earlier. [Read More]

From the Atlantic Monthly:

"Optics is again posing a problem for Sen. John McCain on lobbying. Though there's no evidence that McCain did anything improper in investigating Boeing (which did seem to have the more wanker of a tanker) or in celebrating the awarding of a multibillion dollar tanker contract to EADS (Airbus), the public data raises questions about who is minding McCain's public image and why he would subject himself to associations that undermine his reformer's crest."

From the NY Times:

"Even if this was just an unvetted marketing blunder, The Post's reputation has taken a huge hit in terms of the optics. When you have Robert Gibbs joking about it, that's hugely embarrassing for the paper,' said Richard Leiby, acting arts editor of the newspaper."

From the Times again:

"Bank executives said they knew they faced a difficult political fight, given the soaring number of homeowners facing foreclosure.

"'We know the optics are bad," said Scott Talbott, vice president for government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade association in Washington. "If you are against a consumer regulatory agency, then everybody will say you're against consumer regulation.'"

When I went looking, I found a headline "EDITORIAL: Optics poor around raise" from the Mission City Record.

And, finally, listening to a Fresh Air interview with Wall Street Journal writer Kate Kelly, about her book, titled The Harder They Fall: The Last Days Of Bear Stearns, I heard "Optically speaking" and at least two other similar phrases.

I think I've proved my case. I guess this is how language mutates.

--JS--

I talked last week about the book Um ..., by Michael Erard. He says that "Uh/Um" are the most common type of pause filler in many languages and that the sounds take the least effort to pronounce. An interesting finding from the book: "...humanities professors said 'you know' and 'uh' more frequently than social science professors -- 4.85 'uhs' per minute to the social scientist's 3.84." [Read More]

A Spoonerism is an exchange of sounds between words to produce new words or an exchange of words. "Heft lemisphere"; "jawfully loined"; "with this wing I thee red"; (my favorite in the book) "Give three cheers for our queer old Dean" as Reverend William Spooner of Oxford University is said to have toasted Queen Victoria; "Must you stay, can't you go".

One last excerpt -- Erard talks about "Irish Bulls", "a remark which appears rotund and meaningful enough, until our apprehension actually arrives upon it, when there is simply nothing there, as Max Eastman put it. Example: 'May you never live to see your wife a widow'."

Wikipedia has some examples:

"These are your three Number One priorities." - Missy Jaroneski, former VP of IT (company undisclosed).
"If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive." - Samuel Goldwyn, movie producer (1882-1974)
"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours." - Yogi Berra, baseball player (1925- )
"Back to back, they faced each other" - Anonymous
"He'd be turning in his grave if he were alive today" - Anonymous
"Hold me back while I hit him" -Anonymous
"It would be a lovely day if it wasn't for the weather" -Anonymous
"He had a sword in each hand and a rifle in the other," -Anonymous

--JS--

Followup: We got an email from Michael Erard, author of Um ... It read "Thanks for talking about Um... and mentioning it on your blog. You should know about my next book, Babel No More, about language superlearners and the upper limit of the ability to learn and speak languages. There's a website: www.babelnomore.com. When I replied, asking him how he happened to see the mention, he responded: "It's a cocktail: Google + procrastination." I totally understand! [Read Less]

I heard this word used on my new favorite podcast, Planet Money. Realizing that it is one of those words I know only when I look up its meaning, I planned to use it here. But when I looked it up (Wikipedia), it seemed kind of boring. [Read More]

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that one's own mind is all that exists. Solipsism is an epistemological or ontological position that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a skeptical hypothesis.

So I decided to use something from Um ...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, by Michael Erard instead. It's an interesting book to browse.

But, then I got an email containing a snarky column by Maureen Dowd about (soon-to-be-ex?) Governor Mark Sanford. It reported on a wonderful verbal blunder (which is what Erard's book is about) and also uses solipsistic. So, here's this week's gem.

Marco [Sanford's alter ego], the libertine, wonders how they will ever "put the Genie back in the bottle." And in the sort of Freudian slip that any solipsistic pol like Mark would adore, Maria protests in Spanglish: "I don't want to put the genius back in the bottle."

More from Um ... next week.

--JS--

My granddaughter, Leah, and I went to see The Magic Treehouse Space Mission at the Planetarium last Sunday. She recommends it to all five year olds and I recommend it to other adults who are as ignorant as I am about space. And who never knew that spaghettification was a real word. [Read More]

From Wikipedia:

"In astrophysics, spaghettification is the stretching of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong gravitational field, and is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near black holes, the stretching is so powerful that no object can withstand it, no matter how strong its components are.

The word spaghettification comes from an example given by Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time, where he describes the flight of a fictional astronaut who, passing within a black hole's event horizon, is "stretched like spaghetti" by the gravitational gradient (difference in strength) from head to toe."

This triggered a search for the Spanish equivalent. After a lot of misspellings, I found it: espaguetificación. I love it! That triggered searches as to why so many words that begin with "s" in English begin with "es" in Spanish: school/escuela, Spain/españa, stress/estress, spaghetti/espagueti, status/estatus, state/estado ... I couldn't find anything on the web but Marcela Rengifo told me that "s" followed by a consonant is not something Spanish speakers say. I went to the very large Collins dictionary we have and, lo, under S, the only words that start with "s" followed by a consonant are foreign words.

It turns out there are very technical explanations for all this, using words like epenthesis and fricative. Even when a Spanish word has an s followed by a consonant in the middle of a word, like transcribir or cascada, the s is part of the first syllable and the c (in this case) part of the second.

--JS--

"They spoke the language of Shakespeare, Elizabethan English richly garnished with Middle English, leftovers from the time of Chaucer. Their shared language and regional expressions blended into the dialect of early Appalachia. Even today Appalachian speech is full of the remains of Elizabethan word form, spelling and grammar.

Emphasis on an added final t as in clifft or killt
Deletions: 'em, they'd
Heavy use of r sound as in far (fire) or har (hair)
Using a before verbs as in a-hunting and a-telling
Personal dative as in get me a ... or she wants herself a ...
Middle English use of done as in done forgot or done finished.

Even the word ain't was used in polite circles in England well into the 19th century. It comes from a series of changes to has not: has not-hasnot-hasn't-hain't-ain't."

jimmies This plus a short something I heard on NPR led me to the Dictionary of American Regionalisms. Wikipedia provides the best description of this gigantic project. Just as languages are vanishing, I assume that many regionalisms are also. But my northern ears still hear them often. May they thrive.

P.S. I just saw that jimmies is only Northern-speak. Jimmies are those chocolate things you sprinkle on ice-cream, known elsewhere as sprinkles. (How I would love to know who contributed this amazing page to Wikipedia!) Now where did the word jimmies come from? Google knows.

--JS--

This is for me and all other Weaver Street regulars who have been known to do it, often multiple times a day. I have often wondered about the word. Here's its meaning and derivation.

Notes: Today's odd Good Word is a back-formation from jaywalker (originally a jay walker), which is the agent noun of this family. The other members are regular Germanic formations: jaywalking is both the process noun and adjective. The hyphen is no longer necessary.

In Play: Finding metaphorical uses for today's word is difficult, so let's begin with the normal usage: "Jay Walker is aptly named-he remains unconvinced that traffic lights apply to pedestrians." Its primary metaphorical service is to indicate a relatively insignificant crime: "He absconded with company funds-that is a little more serious than jaywalking!"

Word History: This word comes from an era when jay had several metaphorical meanings, not all of which are still current: (1) a showy or flashy woman (or, perhaps, one of light character), (2) a person absurdly dressed, a 'sight', and finally, (3) a naïve person who doesn't know the ropes. Around the turn of the century, jay in this sense became an adjective, which attached itself to walkers under the assumption that jaywalkers were naïve of big-city laws. (Today we must thank Fiona Boneham who, I am sure, dresses demurely and never breaks traffic laws, for suggesting we explore this word.)"

I'm not really naive. I think I jaywalk because 85% of the time, cars stop for me and the drivers smile and wave me across. And every time, I think how lucky I am to live here! (I grew up in Boston where drivers are not renowned for their kindness.)

--JS-- [Read Less]

If you are interested in data about immigration and Hispanics, I suggest you subscribe to the Pew Research Center's updates. Their reports are excellent. The latest was triggered by the discussion as to whether Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic ever nominated to the Supreme Court or should Benjamin Cardozo, who was on the court in the '30s, be considered Hispanic. [Read More]

Here's my favorite section of the report.

One approach defines a Hispanic or Latino as a member of an ethnic group that traces its roots to 20 Spanish-speaking nations from Latin America and Spain itself (but not Portugal or Portuguese-speaking Brazil).

The other approach is much simpler. Who's Hispanic? Anyone who says they are. And nobody who says they aren't.

The U.S. Census Bureau uses this second approach.

Here's a quick primer on how the Census Bureau approach works.

Q. I immigrated to Phoenix from Mexico. Am I Hispanic?

A. You are if you say so.

Q. My parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico. Am I Hispanic?

A. You are if you say so.

Q. My grandparents were born in Spain but I grew up in California. Am I Hispanic?

A. You are if you say so.

Q. I was born in Maryland and married an immigrant from El Salvador. Am I Hispanic?

A. You are if you say so.

Q. My mom is from Chile and my dad is from Iowa. I was born in Des Moines. Am I Hispanic?

A. You are if you say so.

Q. I was born in Argentina but grew up in Texas. I don't consider myself Hispanic. Does the Census count me as an Hispanic?

A. Not if you say you aren't. ...

Q. So, bottom line: Is Judge Sotomayor the first Hispanic to be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, or not?

A. By the OMB's definition, yes - Cardozo's Portuguese roots (assuming he in fact had them) don't make him Hispanic. But by the Census Bureau approach, not necessarily - for it would depend on how Cardozo would have chosen to identify himself. However, there's an important historical footnote to consider. The terms "Hispanic" and "Latino" hadn't yet been coined for official data when Cardozo was alive. In the 1930 Census, the only effort to enumerate Hispanics appeared as part of the race question, which had a category for "Mexican." That scheme gave way to several other approaches before the current method took hold in 1980. In short, Cardozo would have had no "Hispanic" box to check -- and thus no official way of identifying himself as Hispanic. So, by the ever shifting laws of the land, Sotomayor would indeed appear to be the first Hispanic nominated to the high court. Case closed!

--JS--

I think some of this may be a repeat but I figure if I don't remember, you probably don't either. In case you were thinking learning Karen or Mandarin was a challenge, imagine learning English. [Read More]

Complexities of English

The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer line.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend.

"We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes;
but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
yet the plural of moose should never be meese
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice;
yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet,
and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
but though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.
If Dad is Pop, how come Mom isn't Mop?..."

From our 7/8/09 email: We want to share this great email we recently got in reference to our May 27 addendum. We need a publisher!

Hello,

A while back you had on your email you sent out quirky sentences that, because of the many pronunciation exceptions in the English language, are challenging to say for non native speakers.

It set me to thinking about this and, for the fun of it, I tried to come up with a sentence playing on the differences in English with the "_ow" words -- words that have both the "o" as in boat sound and "ow" as in ouch! sound -- that would be challenging but fun for non native speakers. For what it is worth I offer the sentence below.

Regards,
Zach Kelleher

...and Emily, now grown,
in her newly sewn gown,
and yellow bow in her crow-black hair,
in deference, slowly bows,
as the crowd below flows by,
not knowing how it got to be,
that it is she
who now will wear the crown.

--JS-- [Read Less]

Popcorn is one of those words that generate a lot of conversation among our Spanish teachers -- because there are so many ways to say it. It being one of my favorite foods, I plan to memorize them all. Let me know if there are errors or omissions. [Read More]

I may have described this word before, but I can never remember what it means. But it is such a great word. Maybe this will cause it to stick in my brain. [Read More]

Meaning: 1. A document written on a sheet or paper or parchment that has been used before, the earlier writing either scraped off though perhaps still partially visible. 2. Anything with more than one layer or aspect beneath its surface, anything multilayered.

The British and Americans cannot agree on the pronunciation of this word. In Britain it is pronounced [pah-lim(p)-sest] while the Yanks pronounce it [pæ-lim(p)-sest]. ... The adjective is palimpsestic [pæ-lim(p)-ses-tik].

In Play: Today's good word effortlessly settles into the description of any work of art: "The Little Prince is much more than a children's story; it is a palimpsest of the author's affairs, stormy marriage, and perhaps even a covert suicide note." Places or people whose history shows through a modern façade beg for it: "New York is a palimpsest of all the cultures that passed through Ellis Island in by-gone years."

House with layers Wikipedia shows a literal architectural example, copied here. Also check out Bruce Grant's palimpsest art. And if you google palimpsest or the Spanish/Portuguese version, palimpsesto, you'll find videos, books, more art, ...

--JS--

Having written about apostrophes here recently, I was sure the cake photo was incorrect. Wrong again. Here's some fascinating information on Mother's Day. To see when it's celebrated elsewhere, go to Wikipedia. [Read More]

The modern Mother's Day holiday was created by Anna Jarvis as a day for each family to honor its mother, and it's now celebrated on various days in many places around the world.

In 1912, Anna Jarvis trademarked the phrases "second Sunday in May" and "Mother's Day", and created the Mother's Day International Association. "She was specific about the location of the apostrophe; it was to be a singular possessive, for each family to honour their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world."

This is also the spelling used by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in the law making official the holiday in the U.S., by the U.S. Congress on bills, and by other U.S. presidents on their declarations.

Common usage in English language also dictates that the ostensibly singular possessive "Mother's Day" is the preferred spelling.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become and spent all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the celebration.

Later commercial and other exploitations of the use of Mother's Day infuriated Anna and she made her criticisms explicitly known throughout her time. She criticized the practice of purchasing greeting cards, which she saw as a sign of being too lazy to write a personal letter. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting against the commercialization of Mother's Day, and she finally said that she "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ...".

Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially-successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.

For example, according to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts-like spa treatments-and another $68 million on greeting cards.

--JS-- [Read Less]

This is one of those "of course" articles that I heard on Morning Edition on NPR. Something I knew without knowing I knew. I've excerpted the web version, which has more photos and more text. It's interesting to consider how those of us who grew up on genderless nouns fit into this theory. [Read More]

Yes, this is a bridge.

Look at it for a moment and ask yourself, "What three descriptive words come into my head when I look at a bridge?" This bridge, or any bridge. (You only get three.)

The first batch of words - such as beautiful, elegant, slender - were those used most often by a group of German speakers participating in an experiment by Lera Boroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University.

She told the group to describe the image that came to mind when they were shown the word, "bridge."

The second batch of words - such as strong, sturdy, towering - were most often chosen by people whose first language is Spanish.

Boroditsky proposes that because the word for "bridge" in German - die brucke - is a feminine noun, and the word for "bridge" in Spanish - el puente - is a masculine noun, native speakers unconsciously give nouns the characteristics of their grammatical gender.

Boroditsky suggests that the grammar we learn from our parents, whether we realize it or not, affects our sensual experience of the world. Spaniards and Germans can see the same things, wear the same clothes, eat the same foods and use the same machines. But deep down, they are having very different feelings about the world about them.

--JS--

Every little once in a while I listen to the Grammar Grater podcast, mostly when I can't bear any more political, economic, or financial analyses. I almost forwarded past the apostrophe discussion, knowing I knew all those rules. I think I actually somewhat masochistically delight in being wrong. To put a more positive light on it, I love to learn something new. Therefore ... [Read More]

"So it comes down to this: to indicate possession, add apostrophe-s. To indicate possession by a plural group - specifically, words ending in s, like carpenters, plumbers, the Andersons - just the apostrophe is added. Plural words that don't end in s-words like men, women and children—add apostrophe-s to indicate common ownership.

A tricky situation materializes when a person's name ends in s, like Chris. It turns out this is a long-standing puzzle. We talked with Chris Fischbach, senior editor of Coffee House Press in Minneapolis, and he said that in written form, using s-apostrophe - instead of s-apostrophe-s - was traditionally a way of saving ink and space in print journalism.

As for current advice on the rules, Lynne Truss, in her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, says that for words ending in s, always add apostrophe-s. The Gregg Reference Manual fleshes this out more to explain this rule is guided by how you would pronounce the word. For example,
Those are Chris's books

The same goes for place names:
We walked along Paris's boulevards.
Dallas's airport comprises five terminal buildings.

This rule doesn't just apply to proper nouns. For example:
The police obtained the witness's description of the suspect.

Lynne Truss notes that there are exceptions to the apostrophe-s rule. Those exceptions include names from the ancient world: philosophers, inventors and biblical names. These names just add an apostrophe to indicate ownership. For example:
Achilles' heel
Socrates' wisdom
Archimedes' screw
Moses' tablets
Jesus' disciples"

And the Gregg Reference Manual says this same rule extends to words that end in an /iz/ sound, making them tricky to pronounce. These words just take the apostrophe after the s. For example:
Lloyd Bridges' acting career spanned seven decades.
A number of dedicated people are committed to maintaining New Orleans' music scene.

Lastly, words that end in z take apostrophe-s.
These are Roz's tickets.
I bought this new hammer at Mr. Sanchez's hardware store.

It's all a bit tricky, but a lot depends on letting your ear be your guide.

--JS--