So my wife and I have a term we use that we each blame the other for having made up: stupifany. It means "an epiphany about something you should have realized ages ago." In any case, I just had a stupifany: the term "ultraviolence" from Anthony Burgess's novel Clockwork Orange is a pun on "ultraviolet." At least I think so. Not surprising from an author who published a book about Finnegans Wake.
I think I'll make my stupifanies a regular feature of Positive Anymore.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Canadian Place Names
This weekend I was at a conference where a large number of the speakers happened to be Canadian. It struck me that a large number of Canadian toponyms have different pronunciations in Canadian English and American. Some examples:
Canadian M/ʌ/ntreal vs. U.S. M/ɑ/ntreal
Canadian Newfoundland vs. U.S. Newfoundland
Canadian Tronto [or even "Chronno" - thanks, mzn!] vs. U.S. T/ɚ/onto
I think that the pseudo-French pronunciation of Quebec as /kebek/ in Canada is a different, and later phenomenon, a sort of particularly Canadian political correctness. But the others are simply place names for which separate American and Canadian pronunciations exist, each of which are the only legitmate option for Anglophones of the respective countries. For instance, though I'm American, I've started saying M/ʌ/ntreal, which is an affectation, and I'm annoyed with myself for it. Perhaps my excuse is that I'm a quarter Canadian (my Grandmother was Canadian). No, that's no excuse.
I tried to think of other examples of this phenomenon of different pronunciations of toponyms within a language (aside from ones you can explain with reference to dialect differences), but I could only think of a few. For instance, Oregonians get huffy any time they hear "Oregon" with secondary stress on the last syllable and no vowel reduction. Little do they know that the only people who say Oreg̚n are from there (or those like me who have lived there and had the mainstream pronunciation beaten out of them.
Canadian M/ʌ/ntreal vs. U.S. M/ɑ/ntreal
Canadian Newfoundland vs. U.S. Newfoundland
Canadian Tronto [or even "Chronno" - thanks, mzn!] vs. U.S. T/ɚ/onto
I think that the pseudo-French pronunciation of Quebec as /kebek/ in Canada is a different, and later phenomenon, a sort of particularly Canadian political correctness. But the others are simply place names for which separate American and Canadian pronunciations exist, each of which are the only legitmate option for Anglophones of the respective countries. For instance, though I'm American, I've started saying M/ʌ/ntreal, which is an affectation, and I'm annoyed with myself for it. Perhaps my excuse is that I'm a quarter Canadian (my Grandmother was Canadian). No, that's no excuse.
I tried to think of other examples of this phenomenon of different pronunciations of toponyms within a language (aside from ones you can explain with reference to dialect differences), but I could only think of a few. For instance, Oregonians get huffy any time they hear "Oregon" with secondary stress on the last syllable and no vowel reduction. Little do they know that the only people who say Oreg̚n are from there (or those like me who have lived there and had the mainstream pronunciation beaten out of them.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
A Word To The Wise: An Update
A comment by Zackary Sholem Berger pointed me towards the actual Talmudic aphorism, which is as follows:
די לחכימא ברמיזא ולשטיא בכורמיזא
מידרש מישלי כב
which I would translate,
It's pithy and it rhymes. Turns out it's not even in the Talmud, but in a ninth-century Rabbinic commentary on the book of Proverbs. Much to my chagrin, though, there is nothing about קונדסא or קונדס. So why did קונדס go from meaning "stick" in Aramaic to "prankster" in Yiddish? Don't know, but I bet it's somewhere in the Talmud. Flip it over and flip it over again; everything's in it.
If you're interested, there's a hilarious heated exchange in Yiddish on a Hasidic online forum in which several people make up insults alluding to this passage.
די לחכימא ברמיזא ולשטיא בכורמיזא
מידרש מישלי כב
which I would translate,
"[Saying something] with a hint is enough for a wise person, and for a fool, with a fist."
It's pithy and it rhymes. Turns out it's not even in the Talmud, but in a ninth-century Rabbinic commentary on the book of Proverbs. Much to my chagrin, though, there is nothing about קונדסא or קונדס. So why did קונדס go from meaning "stick" in Aramaic to "prankster" in Yiddish? Don't know, but I bet it's somewhere in the Talmud. Flip it over and flip it over again; everything's in it.
If you're interested, there's a hilarious heated exchange in Yiddish on a Hasidic online forum in which several people make up insults alluding to this passage.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
From Italy to New York via London
My recent musings about the whole Turin/Torino affair got me thinking about a related matter: the pronunciation of Italy. A few years ago I started noticing people pronouncing the /t/ in Italy as a full-on devoiced aspirated English /t/. This was interesting because, even though that /t/ is a typically English sound, the natural American tendency is to "flap" the /t/ in this situation (before unstressed vowels), making it sound more like a /d/. Okay, technically it's a [ɾ], but you get my point. This means that when an American pronounces Italy with a /t/, it can't be explained away as the speaker adapting the word to the phonetics of their own language, since, if anything, it violates the phonetics of American English. My initial thought was that this was yet another instance of hyperforeignism -- that is, a manifestation of an instinct that a flapped /t/ doesn't "belong" in a foreign word -- never mind that Italy isn't a foreign word.
Then I noticed that the onset of me noticing this pronunciation coincided with my moving to New York, and that the people who I heard saying this were all non-young (50+) native New Yorkers. This is the same group of people who still have a lovely but fading trait of New York English: the pronunciation of the /t/ in "bottle" not as a flap, but as a glottal stop. You know, like a parody of a Cockney accent: 'Ow many bo'les, Guv?
I'll admit that I don't know why New Yorkers say (said?) this, whether it was at one point a generalized Cockney-like tendency to turn flaps into glottal stops (glo'al stops?). I could research it, but I don't have time. So instead I'll offer the following theory, based on nothing at all. There's nothing like mucking up an empirical science by making up theories without any evidence. The mind, when encumbered by data, is free to go many wondeful, strange, factually incorrect places.
My theory is that in New York at some point the glottal stop/t/ occured more often than only in the word "bottle." How widespread I don't know. I know that in London there is a fundamental sociolinguistic between those who turn their /t/s into glottal stops, and those who leave them as devoiced, aspirated /t/s -- flapping isn't an option in that area. Perhaps such a distinction once existed in New York as well, perhaps even borrowed directly from London. Thus "bottle," a humdrum everyday word, preserved a basolectal pronunciation with a glottal stop, while "Italy," a word associated with high culture (Europe! What could be fancier?) retained an acrolectal /t/. As I have said on many occasions, I just made that up, but I think it might be true.
Lest you mourn the passing of "Italy" with a /t/ and "bottle" with a /ʔ/, there are plenty of other New Yorkisms which are thriving. Some of my favorites include using the word "Spanish" to refer to anyone of Spanish-speaking heritage, which New Yorkers of all ages and social/ethnic backgrounds do. In fact, a chapter in the Yiddish textbook I use in my classes lists "shpanish" as one of the main ethnic groups in New York. Another striking New Yorkism is calling any surface you walk on "the floor," indoor or out. This is more limited sociolinguistically, but still widespread among all age groups. But the absolute winner is "standing on line." I think for New Yorkers this is like "pop" is for me (as opposed to soda/coke): although New Yorkers claim that they can say "on line" or "in line," in reality they only say the former. Since "in line" is ubiquitous everywhere else, New Yorkers are misled into thinking they say it too. Furthermore, just as us "pop" sayers have no problem with "soda," while "soda" sayers can't stand "pop," so New Yorkers are deaf to "in line," but many of us immigrants to New York passionately hate "on line." Me, I love it. Not that I'd ever say it.
Then I noticed that the onset of me noticing this pronunciation coincided with my moving to New York, and that the people who I heard saying this were all non-young (50+) native New Yorkers. This is the same group of people who still have a lovely but fading trait of New York English: the pronunciation of the /t/ in "bottle" not as a flap, but as a glottal stop. You know, like a parody of a Cockney accent: 'Ow many bo'les, Guv?
I'll admit that I don't know why New Yorkers say (said?) this, whether it was at one point a generalized Cockney-like tendency to turn flaps into glottal stops (glo'al stops?). I could research it, but I don't have time. So instead I'll offer the following theory, based on nothing at all. There's nothing like mucking up an empirical science by making up theories without any evidence. The mind, when encumbered by data, is free to go many wondeful, strange, factually incorrect places.
My theory is that in New York at some point the glottal stop/t/ occured more often than only in the word "bottle." How widespread I don't know. I know that in London there is a fundamental sociolinguistic between those who turn their /t/s into glottal stops, and those who leave them as devoiced, aspirated /t/s -- flapping isn't an option in that area. Perhaps such a distinction once existed in New York as well, perhaps even borrowed directly from London. Thus "bottle," a humdrum everyday word, preserved a basolectal pronunciation with a glottal stop, while "Italy," a word associated with high culture (Europe! What could be fancier?) retained an acrolectal /t/. As I have said on many occasions, I just made that up, but I think it might be true.
Lest you mourn the passing of "Italy" with a /t/ and "bottle" with a /ʔ/, there are plenty of other New Yorkisms which are thriving. Some of my favorites include using the word "Spanish" to refer to anyone of Spanish-speaking heritage, which New Yorkers of all ages and social/ethnic backgrounds do. In fact, a chapter in the Yiddish textbook I use in my classes lists "shpanish" as one of the main ethnic groups in New York. Another striking New Yorkism is calling any surface you walk on "the floor," indoor or out. This is more limited sociolinguistically, but still widespread among all age groups. But the absolute winner is "standing on line." I think for New Yorkers this is like "pop" is for me (as opposed to soda/coke): although New Yorkers claim that they can say "on line" or "in line," in reality they only say the former. Since "in line" is ubiquitous everywhere else, New Yorkers are misled into thinking they say it too. Furthermore, just as us "pop" sayers have no problem with "soda," while "soda" sayers can't stand "pop," so New Yorkers are deaf to "in line," but many of us immigrants to New York passionately hate "on line." Me, I love it. Not that I'd ever say it.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Droppin' Affectations
In honor of President's Day, I'll do a little post about someone who, though not a former president, nevertheless lived in the White House, and who just may become president, which I wouldn't mind at all.
You don't need to believe in any vast right-wing conspiracy to think that Hillary Clinton receives an unfair amount of scrutiny and negative attention. (In the spirit of bipartisanship, I will point out that Mark Liberman at Language Log makes an excellent case that the attention drawn to George W. Bush's verbal slips is unfair). One recent example of this stems from a speech she made on Martin Luther King's Birthday just down the road from me at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ, in which she made the following remark:
Speaking about present participles, here's a funny ad for Berlitz language schools, which, if you haven't seen you should. See. It. Thanks go to Sophie for showing it to me. Ten bonus points go to anyone who can explain why this is actually very clever, and not merely a cheap jab at accents.
You don't need to believe in any vast right-wing conspiracy to think that Hillary Clinton receives an unfair amount of scrutiny and negative attention. (In the spirit of bipartisanship, I will point out that Mark Liberman at Language Log makes an excellent case that the attention drawn to George W. Bush's verbal slips is unfair). One recent example of this stems from a speech she made on Martin Luther King's Birthday just down the road from me at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ, in which she made the following remark:
The House of Representatives has been run... like a plantation, and you know what I'm talkin' about.Perhaps this was not the wisest simile for her to use, and she has come under fire for it. But a significant amount of the criticism focuses on her so-calles "g-dropping" in the word 'talkin''. Here's what Mark Goldblatt, author of Africa Speaks, a "satire of black urban culture," wrote recently in the National Review:
There should be a name for this linguistic tic, perhaps Sudden Melanin Syndrome. It's the habit of white-guilt besotted liberals of adopting the mannerisms of Ebonics in a desperate attempt to indicate their solidarity with black listeners. Naturally it’s insultingly patronizing and what it actually indicates is someone who's not comfortable in her own skin, who unconsciously conforms her very being to whatever she imagines will ingratiate her with her audience. I doubt you'll ever hear Hillary dropping a "g" at a lily white Wellesley College reunion. Or at a lily white Chappaqua bake sale. Or at a lily white pro-choice rally.Yes, I know, that's the second time I've cited a National Review article in as many weeks. Don't get the wrong idea; it just happens to be a good source of laymen's metalinguistic observations. Anyways, what's interesting to me is that Goldblatt considers 'g-dropping' a 'mannerism of Ebonics." It ain't. (Nor is 'ain't,' for that matter.) That is, though 'g-dropping' is typical of African American Vernacular English, it is much more widespread than that. Others label it 'Southern,' and it is indeed found in Southern dialects. Wikipedia says that
It is currently a feature of colloquial and non-standard speech of all regions, and stereotypically of Cockney, Southern American English and African American Vernacular English. Historically, it has also been used by members of the educated upper-class, as reflected by the phrase huntin’, fishin’ and shootin’.But this still doesn't give the full geographic range, which I feel covers much of United States. I can attest firsthand that 'g-dropping' is found in the Chicago metropolitan area (known to locals as Chicagoland) from which Clinton hails, because I'm a Chicagoan and I drop my g's. Or rather, my present participles and gerunds have the sound /n/, not /ŋ/. It's a perfectly natural part of my speech, which comes out more when I'm speaking informally (not surprising). Given how pronounced Clinton's regional pronunciation is, so to speak, I can only assume that she was showing her roots at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ. So ultimately Clinton is not, contra Goldblatt, affecting anything. In fact, she is dropping an affectation.
Speaking about present participles, here's a funny ad for Berlitz language schools, which, if you haven't seen you should. See. It. Thanks go to Sophie for showing it to me. Ten bonus points go to anyone who can explain why this is actually very clever, and not merely a cheap jab at accents.
Friday, February 17, 2006
3 Tendencies of Famous Quotations
I have been working over the past decade or so on an entirely unscientific set of general principles that famous quotations tend to follow. Why, I don't know. Maybe it's because people tend to like repeating these quotations, buying books full of them, using them as prooftexts for various arguments, etc. Which is not to imply that I am not one of these people. So here I will share with the world the following three tendencies:
1. Many famous quotations have multiple attributions.
I discussed an instance of this in a previous post. I think this breaks down into two subclasses: a) quotations that have are clever in a way that multiple people can come up with it independently, or which have perhaps been heard and repeated, and the repeater's utterance becomes famous. This is as opposed to b) quotations which, by virtue of being clever and witty, get mistakenly attributed to someone else known for saying clever and witty things. I'm suspicious whenever I read a quotation attributed to Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, or Abraham Lincoln. It seems that these people in particular are virtually interchangeable: which one of them said, "I don't want to be in any club that would have me as a member"? If you're me, and I know I am, you've seen it attributed to all of them. For the record, Groucho did indeed claim in Groucho and Me to have sent a telegram saying this, which doesn't mean that he came up with the phrase, or that he ever sent such a telegram. Also, Woody Allen has used this line a number of times (perhaps most famously in "Annie Hall"), obviously in tribute to Groucho.
2. Famous quotations often become altered in transmission, usually improving them.
Ever heard anyone say, "I am as mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore"? Of course not; what people say is "I'm mad as hell" etc., although the actual line (from the movie "Network" -- worth watching only as a cultural artifact) is the former, vastly inferior version. Wikipedia has an impressive list of "misquotations," many of which follow this axiom. What I like about this is that it shows that there is an innate sense for pithiness and elegance leading people to improve on already clever phrases without even knowing they are doing so.
3. Archaic quotations (Shakespeare, King James Bible, etc.) are often obscure.
This is the least scientific of my observations, based solely on the shaky foundation of my subjectivity. But think of the following quotations:
"Suffer the little children to come unto me."
"The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
"For now we see through a glass darkly."
"Get thee behind me, Satan."
or these:
"Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
"Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war"
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
I think that these quotations draw a sort of spooky power by not really meaning much to contemporary ears. Maybe that's why some people, including me, instinctively feel that the King James Version of the Bible just feels more biblical than more up-to-date versions. How could it be the Bible if it makes sense?
So there they are. I feel like there are better examples out there, but I can't think of them offhand. Maybe I'll come back to this later.
1. Many famous quotations have multiple attributions.
I discussed an instance of this in a previous post. I think this breaks down into two subclasses: a) quotations that have are clever in a way that multiple people can come up with it independently, or which have perhaps been heard and repeated, and the repeater's utterance becomes famous. This is as opposed to b) quotations which, by virtue of being clever and witty, get mistakenly attributed to someone else known for saying clever and witty things. I'm suspicious whenever I read a quotation attributed to Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, or Abraham Lincoln. It seems that these people in particular are virtually interchangeable: which one of them said, "I don't want to be in any club that would have me as a member"? If you're me, and I know I am, you've seen it attributed to all of them. For the record, Groucho did indeed claim in Groucho and Me to have sent a telegram saying this, which doesn't mean that he came up with the phrase, or that he ever sent such a telegram. Also, Woody Allen has used this line a number of times (perhaps most famously in "Annie Hall"), obviously in tribute to Groucho.
2. Famous quotations often become altered in transmission, usually improving them.
Ever heard anyone say, "I am as mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore"? Of course not; what people say is "I'm mad as hell" etc., although the actual line (from the movie "Network" -- worth watching only as a cultural artifact) is the former, vastly inferior version. Wikipedia has an impressive list of "misquotations," many of which follow this axiom. What I like about this is that it shows that there is an innate sense for pithiness and elegance leading people to improve on already clever phrases without even knowing they are doing so.
3. Archaic quotations (Shakespeare, King James Bible, etc.) are often obscure.
This is the least scientific of my observations, based solely on the shaky foundation of my subjectivity. But think of the following quotations:
"Suffer the little children to come unto me."
"The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
"For now we see through a glass darkly."
"Get thee behind me, Satan."
or these:
"Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
"Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war"
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
I think that these quotations draw a sort of spooky power by not really meaning much to contemporary ears. Maybe that's why some people, including me, instinctively feel that the King James Version of the Bible just feels more biblical than more up-to-date versions. How could it be the Bible if it makes sense?
So there they are. I feel like there are better examples out there, but I can't think of them offhand. Maybe I'll come back to this later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)