TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Nov 22)

letterwriting

Too much seeing, the selfie comes into its own, literary prizes, another dying art, and grammarians who should know better, and the new because: all making the news this week, because language…

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Multiple outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, reported the news that selfie is 2013’s word of the year. A sign of our times?

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On CSIS, we see Reginald Dale writing about the sloppy misuse and overuse of the verb “to see” in journalism.

 

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Everyone makes grammar mistakes. Even people who write about grammar mistakes make mistakes. Arrant Pedantry sums up those mistakes we all make.

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Because has a new role in life. Linguists are calling it the “prepositional-because.” Or the “because-noun.” The Atlantic reports, because linguistic evolution.

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NPR’s Morning Edition talked about the dying art of old-fashioned letter-writing (but it is still alive and kicking in some parts of the world).

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Whom or what are literary prizes for? asks the New York Times. “What purpose do these prizes serve? Are the values they promote aesthetic or commercial? And how on earth do the judges arrive at their decisions?”

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In Praise of Solid People, by C. S. Lewis

Grand Tetons

A poem by C. S. Lewis, who died 50 years ago today.

In Praise of Solid People

Thank God that there are solid folk
Who water flowers and roll the lawn,
And sit an sew and talk and smoke,
And snore all through the summer dawn.

Who pass untroubled nights and days
Full-fed and sleepily content,
Rejoicing in each other’s praise,
Respectable and innocent.

Who feel the things that all men feel,
And think in well-worn grooves of thought,
Whose honest spirits never reel
Before man’s mystery, overwrought.

Yet not unfaithful nor unkind,
with work-day virtues surely staid,
Theirs is the sane and humble mind,
And dull affections undismayed.

O happy people! I have seen
No verse yet written in your praise,
And, truth to tell, the time has been
I would have scorned your easy ways.

But now thro’ weariness and strife
I learn your worthiness indeed,
The world is better for such life
As stout suburban people lead.

Too often have I sat alone
When the wet night falls heavily,
And fretting winds around me moan,
And homeless longing vexes me

For lore that I shall never know,
And visions none can hope to see,
Till brooding works upon me so
A childish fear steals over me.

I look around the empty room,
The clock still ticking in its place,
And all else silent as the tomb,
Till suddenly, I think, a face

Grows from the darkness just beside.
I turn, and lo! it fades away,
And soon another phantom tide
Of shifting dreams begins to play,

And dusky galleys past me sail,
Full freighted on a faerie sea;
I hear the silken merchants hail
Across the ringing waves to me

—Then suddenly, again, the room,
Familiar books about me piled,
And I alone amid the gloom,
By one more mocking dream beguiled.

And still no neared to the Light,
And still no further from myself,
Alone and lost in clinging night
—(The clock’s still ticking on the shelf).

Then do I envy solid folk
Who sit of evenings by the fire,
After their work and doze and smoke,
And are not fretted by desire.

— C. S. Lewis, 29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Nov 15)

authors

This week in the news: Authors raise money for the Philippines typhoon appeal; The Guardian brings us the Letter H; a kerning fail at the hardware store; and is there such a thing as a universal syllable?

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Authors for the Philippines is an online auction of books and book-related items (including everything from dedications to author visits, manuscript critiques to signed books) to raise money for the Red Cross’s Typhoon Haiyan Appeal. Please bid enthusiastically.

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The British hardware chain store B&Q seems to have a festive font problem. It’s all about the kerning. The Poke brought this to fuckering light …

B&Q

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Michael Rosen writes in The Guardian about the letter H: “debates about power and class surround every letter, and H is the most contentious of all. No other letter has had such power to divide people into opposing camps.”

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Is there a syllable that everyone recognizes and understands around the world and across cultures? Jennifer Schuessler reports in the New York Times that there is, “Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands announced that they had found strikingly similar versions in languages scattered across five continents, suggesting that “Huh?” is a universal word.

 

Wordy board games

wordgames

Game-playing is and always has been a central part of the human experience and is as vital to – and reflective of – a society’s culture as music, dance, literature or the other arts. Chess, checkers (known as draughts in British English), and backgammon are board games that date back thousands of years — and they weren’t even the first of their kind. Senet, found in Predynastic and First Dynasty burials of Egypt c. 3500 BC and 3100 BC respectively, is the oldest known board game (four sets were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb); other such forms of ancient entertainment were Mehen, from Predynastic Egypt; Go, originating in China; Patolli, originating in Mesoamerica played by the ancient Aztec; and Pachisi and Chaupar, ancient board games of India. What these games share is the goal of outwitting one’s opponent by strategically seizing points, property or territory using a process or combination of counting, logic, or luck.

Board games predated the development of writing and literacy, and although it’s no surprise that language eventually found its way into the world of parlor entertainment, it seems to have taken its time, only joining the fun in the 19th century when board and parlor games started to develop and broaden to amuse and entertain the whole family rather than just the older, nerdier teenagers and adults. Words in all their glory — whether strutting their spellings, their definitions, or their usage in expressions and phrases — now form the basis of a number of popular modern games that have been enjoyed by humans large and small over the past century.

Incidentally, it’s interesting to note that board games are given “publication” dates: I didn’t realize that games were “published”, like books — and it seems especially strange when the games in question have nothing to do with language.

Here are some of the more popular and enduring wordy board games, with their tag-lines and a very brief description of their rules and origins. Any others I’ve missed?

Scrabble:

scrabble

“Crossword game”: The grand old man of word games: two to four players score points by placing tiles — each bearing a single letter — onto a board in such a way that the tiles form words, crossword-style. The words must be defined in a standard dictionary.

The first version of Scrabble was created in 1938 by the American architect Alfred Butts under the name “Criss-Crosswords”, as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. In 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut, bought the manufacturing rights in exchange for giving Butts royalties on sales. Brunot made some slight changes to the board, simplified the rules, and changed the game’s name to “Scrabble”, which means “to scratch frantically”. Legend has it that Scrabble‘s big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy’s, played the game on vacation and placed a large order for his department store …

 

Probe:

probe

“The game of words”: Reminiscent of the simple two-person game Hangman, up to 4 players try to guess a word chosen by another player by revealing specific letters. Probe was introduced in 1964 by Parker Brothers.

 

Boggle:

4.1.2

“The 3-minute word search game”: Using a plastic grid onto which lettered dice are shaken and settled (with a single letter facing up),  players search against the clock for words that can be spelled from adjacent cubes, ie. those neighboring each other horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. Invented by Alan Turoff in 1972 for Parker Brothers. Turoff’s wife was also a toy designer, and they exchanged their marriage vows to the tune of “Babes in Toyland”.

 

Scattergories:

Scattergories

2 to 6 players  score points by thinking of names – unique among players in the particular round — of  items in different categories with a given initial letter, all against the clock. Published in 1988 (the designer seems to be unknown).

 

Taboo:

taboo

“The game of unspeakable fun”: The object of the game is for a player to get her partner or team to guess the word on her card by defining it without using the word itself or any of the five additional words listed on the card. Taboo was designed by Brian Hersch and published in 1989 by Hasbro.

 

Apples to Apples:

apples

“The game of hilarious comparisons”: From two decks of cards — adjectives and nouns —   a player (referee) selects an adjective card; the other players choose and play from the noun cards in their hands the nouns that best match the chosen adjective. The referee then chooses the noun card that appeals most to them and awards the card to whoever played it. Designed by Matthew Kirby and Mark Alan Osterhaus, it was published in 1999 by Out of the Box publishing.

 

Banagrams:

bananagrams

“The anagram game that will drive you bananas!”: 2 – 8 players arrange their own tiles into a grid of connected words faster than their opponents. The winner is the first to complete a word grid after the pool of 144 tiles has been exhausted.

Abraham Nathanson, a Rhode Island artist, invented Bananagrams at the age of 76; the game debuted at the 2006 London Toy Fair. According to the New York Times, in its obituary for the inventor after his death just four years later, Nathanson “hit on the idea for Bananagrams while playing Scrabble with his grandson and chafing at the slow pace of the game. ‘We need an anagrams game so fast, it’ll drive you bananas.'”

 

Pictionary:

pictionary

“The game of quick draw”: The word-guessing game is played in teams, with players trying to identify specific words from their teammates’ drawings. Pictionary was invented by Robert Angel with graphic design by Gary Everson and first published in 1985 by Angel Games Inc.

 

The Origin of Expressions:

origin

“The origin of expressions: Phrases – Fakery – Finesse – Fun”: Players receive a common everyday phrase, such as “Baker’s Dozen,” and write an explanation for the phrase’s origin. Players try to convince the others that their own origin is the true one. Players vote for the most plausible origin. A recent game, published in 2007 by Discovery Bay Games, the designer is uncredited.

 

 

One pair, two pairs, three pair, four …

 

threepairs

Is that a few pairs of socks, or three pair? I’ve never really understood the logic of that “singular plural” of pair, whose usage seems to me to be especially common here in America.

A Google search on the term “three pair of” produces 3,300,000 results (which seems strangely symmetrical, even though the expression sounds decidedly wrong). Now if we make those pairs properly plural — ie. “three pairs of” — and hit the Google button again, we have almost 12 times as many results (38,300,000). “Two pair of” on the British National Corpus turns up just 4 results, whereas adding an ‘s’ to pair takes us up to 157. On the Corpus of Contemporary American English, those figures are 36 and 484 respectively. So I think it’s safe to say that on both sides of the Atlantic, the logical plural with an ‘s’ wins out usage-wise.

Most usage guides prescribe “pairs” for its plural form, including Garner’s Modern American Usage, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and Patricia O’Conner’s Woe Is I. Fowler states simply that “the plural form pairs is desirable after a numeral (e.g. seven pairs of jeans). The type seven pair of jeans is non-standard, at least in Br.E [British English].” Is he implying that the plural pair is an Americanism? Well, Garner shares Fowler’s preference, but does acknowledge the widespread non-standard option : “The preferred plural of pair is pairs. In nonstandard usage, pair often appears as a plural.” I wonder if it is considered more correct in the New World …

According to Merriam-Webster, “the usual plural is pairs, when there is no preceding number or indicator of number (as several).”  It gives “conflicting pairs of truths” as an example. But unlike the more traditional sticklers above, M-W concedes, strangely, that “when a number or indicator of number precedes pair, either pair or pairs may be used,” going on to cite examples such as “six pair of pants” and “three pairs of oars.” American Heritage recognizes that while “pairs” is the more common plural form, “pair” is not incorrect. It qualifies that “pair” or “pairs” can be used after a number other than one, “but the plural is now more common: She bought six pairs (or pair) of stockings.”

The word pair dates back to the mid-13th century, from the Old French paire meaning “pair, couple,” and directly from Medieval Latin paria meaning “equals”. It originally referred to things, and began to describe people from the late 14th century. Meaning “a woman’s breasts” is attested from 1922, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. Who knew.

Perhaps more curious is why certain household objects and items of clothing are referred to as a pair when they’re singular items, such as a pair of scissors, two pairs of spectacles, several pairs of jeans, and 100 pairs of underwear. That blades, lenses, and trouser-legs come in twos probably explains the first few, but the mind boggles a bit about the last. According to World Wide Words, “the answer to all this conventional plurality is very simple. Before the days of modern tailoring, such garments, whether underwear or outerwear, were indeed made in two parts, one for each leg. The pieces were put on each leg separately and then wrapped and tied or belted at the waist (just like cowboys’ chaps). The plural usage persisted out of habit even after the garments had become physically one piece. However, a shirt was a single piece of cloth, so it was always singular. It’s worth noting that the posher type of tailor, such as in London’s Savile Row, still often refers to a trouser and the singular pant and tight are not unknown in clothing store terminology in America — so the plural is not universal.”

The poppy

Poppy

On Poppy Day in the UK and across the Commonwealth, here is some poetry about the memorial flower.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— by John McCrae, May 1915

 

The Poppy

High on a bright and sunny bed
A scarlet poppy grew
And up it held its staring head,
And thrust it full in view.

Yet no attention did it win,
By all these efforts made,
And less unwelcome had it been
In some retired shade.

Although within its scarlet breast
No sweet perfume was found,
It seemed to think itself the best
Of all the flowers round,

From this I may a hint obtain
And take great care indeed,
Lest I appear as pert and vain
As does this gaudy weed.
— by Jane Taylor (1783 – 1824)

 

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly —-

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.
— by Sylvia Plath

 

In the Poppy Field

Mad Patsy said, he said to me,
That every morning he could see
An angel walking on the sky;
Across the sunny skies of morn

He threw great handfuls far and nigh
Of poppy seed among the corn;
And then, he said, the angels run
To see the poppies in the sun

A poppy is a devil weed,
I said to him – he disagreed;
He said the devil had no hand
In spreading flowers tall and fair

Through corn and rye and meadow land,
by garth and barrow everywhere:
The devil has not any flower,
But only money in his power.

And then he stretched out in the sun
And rolled upon his back for fun:
He kicked his legs and roared for joy
Because the sun was shining down:

He said he was a little boy
And would not work for any clown:
He ran and laughed behind a bee,
And danced for very ecstasy.
— James Stephens

The heart of an affair

affair

“An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.” — John Updike

It’s a scandalous affair that’s taking place at the Old Bailey right now: the high-profile phone-hacking trial of disgraced News of the World editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. And in a recent twist to the red-topped drama (red-topped not just because of the tabloid media giving it round-the-clock coverage but also with its flame-haired leading lady), there’s now another sort of affair that has come to light at the heart of this real-life soap opera: an extra-marital one that was apparently conducted between the defendants during the crucial period under investigation. But is “extra-marital affair” actually a tautology? Isn’t an affair — by definition — a romance between two people at least one of whom is married to another? What makes an affair an affair?

A quick anecdotal survey among my friends suggests that different people have very different notions of what constitutes an affair. Some say it has to be extra-marital. But what if it’s an open marriage, or if the spouses are separated or otherwise feeling nonplussed about their partner’s roaming behavior? Does the cheating philanderer deserve to have his nth lousy blatant fling named so eloquently? Others say it has to be illicit or secret — but not necessarily because of marital guilt. Lovers hiding their assignations because of an inordinately large or indecent age-gap might be accused of conducting an affair, even if both are single. Must a dalliance be fleeting or doomed to be called an affair? The man long estranged from his wife with a permanent live-in lover and children is surely not to be accused of having one. Are affairs sexual by definition and only emotional when they’re qualified as a “love affair”? It does seem that the word’s defining criteria are questionable and more than a few: does a relationship need to be intense and passionate, short-lived or temporary, sexual rather than emotional, or simply adulterous, in order to qualify for this poetic label?

The OED goes for the marriage clause, as well as the element of transience, defining an affair as “a (usually temporary) sexual relationship outside marriage; a love affair”. Cambridge Dictionaries prefer to focus on its illicit nature, describing it as “a sexual relationship, usually a secret one”. Longman likes to have both in place, ie. “a secret sexual relationship between two people, when at least one of them is married to someone else”. Merriam-Webster (online) requires only concealment: “a secret sexual relationship between two people”, whereas Wiktionary focuses on the defying of vows: “an adulterous relationship (from affaire de cœur)”, as does American Heritage: “a sexual relationship between two people who are not married to each other”. All seem to agree that an affair is of the body, and not necessarily of the heart, mind or soul.

A look at the word’s etymology and early usage might help shed a little light on the heart of its meaning. As the Online Etymology Dictionary explains: “c.1300, “what one has to do,” from Anglo-French afere, Old French afaire (12c., Modern French affaire) “business, event; rank, estate,” from the infinitive phrase à faire “to do,” from Latin ad “to”+ facere “to do, make”. A Northern word originally, brought into general use and given a French spelling by Caxton (15c.). General sense of “vague proceedings” (in romance, war, etc.) first attested 1702. Meaning “an affair of the heart; a passionate episode” is from French affaire de coeur (itself attested in English from 1809); to have an affair with someone in this sense is by 1726, earlier have an affair of love: ‘Tis manifeſtly contrary to the Law of Nature, that one Woman ſhould cohabit or have an Affair of Love with more than one Man at the ſame time. [“Pufendorf’s Law of Nature and Nations,” transl. J. Spavan, London, 1716].”

So, in the early 18th century, having relations with more than one person at the same time seemed to constitute having affairs, and they were passionate affairs of the heart — at least when described, perhaps modestly, in print…

Reporting earlier this week on the tawdry Brooks-Coulson entanglement, the New York Times quoted Joan Bakewell, the former BBC presenter who famously had an affair with Harold Pinter in the swinging 60s, as she wondered how such illicit relationships can still be managed in our era of constant connectivity. She asked “how affairs work when you’re constantly pestered with cell calls and emails with “spouses and partners asking: ‘Where are you?” You know, it’s impossible. I don’t know how they manage it.'”

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TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Nov 8)

dude

Words and language in the news during the week ending Nov 8. Scrabble, dudes and dementia are on the docket. Plus an epic and epically misunderstood poem.

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The Independent reported that one of the most famous sentences in the history of the English language has actually been misinterpreted for a couple of centuries. “The accepted definition of the opening line of the epic poem … has been subtly wide of the mark.”

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The etymology of dude: Slate finally puts this enduring mystery to rest, citing a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education that claims that “a massive, decade-long “dude” research project has finally yielded convincing results.”

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Want to know what words came up on the board of the final game of the British National Scrabble Championships? Swarf, enew and fy were some of the more obscure ones, and not all the weird words even have an entry in the OED. The BBC reported.

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If you’re nervous about getting dementia, learn a new language. As SmartBrief reported, a study in the journal Neurology found that the onset of many symptoms of dementia can be delayed by knowing more than one language. And this backs up the findings of an earlier Canadian study. Gehen und eine Sprache lernen!

 

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Nov 1)

donwenow

Words and language in the news during Hallowe’en week, including Obama’s (allegedly) ungrammatical tweet, Hallmark rewriting verse for the sake of political correctness, Star Wars bloopers, and more …

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No-one was madder than him about his Affordable Care Act web site’s glitches, Barack Obama tweeted. But the Twittersphere erupted. “Madder isn’t a word!” the Twitterati exclaimed. Well, in fact, it is: it’s the comparative of mad. As Kory Stamper wrote in The Guardian, you can’t win when you’re a president: we hold our leaders to an impossible standard, especially when it comes to their choice of words and language “registers” in certain contexts and situations. If they’re correct, they’re accused of snobbery; if they use slang or acceptable informal vernacular, they’re just wrong.

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Is Hallmark taking political correctness to ridiculous extremes? Adorning its new ugly holiday sweater ornament (sic) is a line from the Christmas carol Deck the Halls — adulterated. “Don we now our fun apparel”. Huh? Can’t holiday sweaters be ugly AND gay? We’ve been singing about our gay apparel since 1866, and people doth protest about this surprising edit. According to the Associated Press, Hallmark issued a statement in its defense: “‘Hallmark created this year’s Holiday Sweater ornament in the spirit of fun. When the lyrics to “Deck the Halls” were translated from Gaelic and published in English back in the 1800s, the word “gay” meant festive or merry. Today it has multiple meanings, which we thought could leave our intent open to misinterpretation,’ the statement read. ‘The trend of wearing festively decorated Christmas sweaters to parties is all about fun, and this ornament is intended to play into that, so the planning team decided to say what we meant: “fun.” That’s the spirit we intended and the spirit in which we hope ornament buyers will take it.'” Hallmark updated its statement yesterday, adding: “In hindsight, we realize we shouldn’t have changed the lyrics on the ornament.”

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In a piece about how infants learn languages, Time explores how language acquisition can vary wildly between children, depending on the nature of the native tongue being mastered. For example, one important factor is the relative balance between nouns and verbs in the language being learned.

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And in another article about babies and language, Popular Science reveals how the language you hear growing up affects how you learn to count. “English-speaking toddlers learn the idea of the number one faster than Japanese- and Chinese-speaking kids, while Slovenian-speaking babies learn “two” sooner than English-speaking ones.”

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A Star Wars blooper reel that surfaced on Reddit this week shows Harrison Ford — aka Luke Skywalker — asking for reassurance about how to pronounce the word “supernova”, according to Salon.com. See the video here.

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As Oscar season approaches, we want to be able to join in all the erudite discussions about who’s going to win which award. But some of those names — of people both behind and in front of the camera — can be hard to pronounce. Have no fear: Slate’s culture blog shows us how …

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Controversy continues to rage over the pronunciation of the acronym GIF. As Mediabistro reported, “Complex decided to ask Philip Corbett, the Times’ standards editor, if “jif” was the official Times way. He wouldn’t say. “I wasn’t involved in the discussions about today’s story and I think I want to steer well clear of the heated debate over the pronunciation of GIF,” Corbett told Complex. “I know a no-win situation when I see one.” Well, “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” the GIF’s inventor, Steve Wilhite, said in the New York Times back in May. But he was willing to stick his neck out. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”