Song of the Witches

1 WITCH.  Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2 WITCH.  Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.
3 WITCH.  Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!
1 WITCH.  Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH.  Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
3 WITCH.  Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH.  Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

— William Shakespeare, Macbeth

The Russian president: a man of many …

This post might be a little controversial — and not because of the inherently controversial nature of its subject, Vladimir Putin.

In a recent conversation about the Russian president* that took place among three European friends — a Brit who lives in America, a Dutchwoman who also lives in America, and a Brit who lives in France — there was major disagreement. And it wasn’t about Putin’s politics: our opinions on that subject were pretty much in synch. What we couldn’t agree on was how to pronounce his name. Between the three of us, there were three different pronunciations: POO-tin, PYOU-tin, and Poo-TEEN.

The French don’t just say his name differently from the rest of us: they spell it their own way. In most of the Western world in which the Roman alphabet is used, the president’s name is transliterated as and spelled “Putin”. But not so in France. There, for what might be either linguistic or diplomatic reasons, they spell his name “Poutine”, making it rhyme with routine when said aloud. The French might argue that their pronunciation of the more commonly spelled “-in” at the end of his name bears no resemblance to the “-tyeen” that the Russian alphabet prescribes, and therefore they needed to find another transliteration. But what’s just as likely is that the French felt uncomfortable pronouncing Putin’s name in the way most Frenchmen would be inclined to do if the name kept that spelling. Said aloud, it would be a homophone of putain: the French word for prostitute or whore. Not a good sound for a head of state. Especially a big state like Russia. So Poo-TEEN it is in France. Below is how the New York Times reported on this curiosity back in 2005.

But it’s the first syllable of Putin’s name — not the second — that separates the Brits from the Yanks.

This morning on American Public Media’s Marketplace radio program, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell (a Brit) was talking about Brand America and how the brand may have been damaged of late. That’s another story altogether, but during the conversation, in his cut-glass public-schoolboy accent, Sir Martin very clearly pronounced the Russian president’s name “PYOU-tin” [about 1.46 minutes in], inserting that “y” sound after the “p” and before the “u”. In the same way that we all pronounce the words pure, punitive, putrid, puny, pupil, and other words beginning with “pu” (except for those that have the open “uh” sound, like punish, puss, or publish), most Brits — at least those on the street — tend to do what Sir Martin does, inserting that ‘y’ sound. However, Americans say “POO-tin”. This is in keeping with a general rule described in an earlier Glossophilia post about the pronunciation of loan words in Britain and America: that Brits generally pronounce them according to what’s prescribed by the English spelling rather than that of the native language, whereas Americans tend to simulate the original pronunciation as much as possible. The Russian spelling of the President’s surname is Путин, which translates phonetically as “POO-tin”; if it were spelled ПЮтин, the Russians would call their leader “PYOU-tin”. (I used to speak some Russian as a kid, and I remember those two “oo” and “you” letters.) So the Americans are approximating the Russian sound, but the Brits are pronouncing it the way they themselves spell Vlad’s last name. Interestingly, British broadcasters — most notably the BBC — pronounce Putin’s name as the Russians and Americans do. (In fact, the BBC published a special guide on how to pronounce his name correctly, pointing out the common error of saying “pew” instead of “poo”.) So at least we’ve got it right officially in Great Britain. Have you ever heard Rasputin — the Russian dude with the beard and the eyes — pronounced Rass-POO-tin? Probably not, wherever you come from. A quick trot through YouTube suggests that it is pretty universally pronounced Rass-PYOU-tin, even by the Americans. Go figure.

* * * * *

The New York Times delved into the French spelling and pronunciation of the Russian president’s name back in 2005:

“In France, they do the right thing by Putin’s first syllable, spelling it Pou (as in the French ou, ”where,” and fou, ”crazy”). But their difficulty arises in that second syllable, tsyin, which we approximate with in. The French have a linguistic problem that may also be a diplomatic problem. It’s the affair of the spelling of in. …

“But other, more conspiratorial linguists suggest that the spelling of Putin in English would be pronounced as putain in French — that is, sounding close to pew-TANH.

“Putain, in French, means ”prostitute; whore,” or in current correctese, ”sexual-services provider.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the probable source, slightly corrupted, of the U.S. slang term poontang, a derogation of women as a means of sexual gratification. Hence, the rejection of the English spelling of Putin and the switch to Poutine, pronounced poo-TEEN. Small wonder that French arbiters of usage and pronunciation — perhaps out of commendable delicacy, in the interest of the avoidance of offense and the leers of pundits — have embraced phony phonetics, unanimously choosing to mispronounce the name of the president of Russia.”

* I decided not to dignify his title with a capital P

Lou Reed’s Heroin

“Heroin”

I don’t know just where I’m going
But I’m goin’ to try for the kingdom if I can
‘Cause it makes me feel like I’m a man
When I put a spike into my vein
Then I tell you things aren’t quite the same

When I’m rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus’ son
And I guess I just don’t know
And I guess that I just don’t know

I have made big decision
I’m goin’ to try to nullify my life
‘Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper’s neck
When I’m closing in on death

You can’t help me not you guys
All you sweet girls with all your sweet talk
You can all go take a walk
And I guess I just don’t know
And I guess I just don’t know

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I’d sailed the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
I put on a sailor’s suit and cap

Away from the big city
Where a man cannot be free
Of all the evils in this town
And of himself and those around
Oh, and I guess I just don’t know
Oh, and I guess I just don’t know

Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I’m better off than dead

When the smack begins to flow
Then I really don’t care anymore
About all the Jim-Jims in this town
And everybody putting everybody else down
And all of the politicians makin’ crazy sounds
All the dead bodies piled up in mounds, yeah

Wow, that heroin is in my blood
And the blood is in my head
Yeah, thank God that I’m good as dead
Ooohhh, thank your God that I’m not aware
And thank God that I just don’t care
And I guess I just don’t know
And I guess I just don’t know

— Lou Reed, March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013

Between and among

Talking about Netflix in a recent interview with the Toronto Star, Kevin Spacey made this comment: “For kids growing up, there’s no difference among watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV or watching Game of Thrones on their smartphone. It’s all content. It’s all story.” It doesn’t sound right, does it? Is among the culprit? If we look at exactly why it sounds wrong, it starts getting complicated…

Most of us remember from grammar lessons the notion that between is appropriate for two items, and among is for three or more. That’s presumably what made Spacey (or the paper’s copy-editor) choose the latter word. If it’s really that simple, then Spacey’s comment shouldn’t grate on the ears, should it? But it does, and that’s because it isn’t that simple.

Strunk & White tried to explain it this way: “When more than two things or persons are involved, among is usually called for: ‘The money was divided among the four players.’ When, however, more than two are involved but each is considered individually, between is preferred: ‘an agreement between the six heirs.'” That doesn’t seem like a great explanation to me: I’m sure each of the four players was considered individually when the money was divided, and I’ll bet at least one of those six heirs wasn’t considered individually when the agreement was made! There’s something here that I’m still not getting.

Eric Partridge, in his book usage and abusage, presents it this way: “One divides money, goods, property between two persons, but among three or more. The distinction, however, is not so simple. When speaking either of group action, or of precise spatial relationship, one must use between however many participants are involved; as in ‘The children raised $25 between them’, or ‘Switzerland lies between France, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Italy.'” Ah: so because the division of money among Strunk & White’s players wasn’t a group action as such, but the heirs’ agreement was, this begins to make sense. But I’m still not sure I understand completely.

Here’s Fowler on the subject (with my bolding): “The OED gives a warning against the superstition that between can be used only of the relationship between two things, and that if there are more, among is the right preposition. ‘In all senses between has been, from its earliest appearance, extended to more than two . . . It is still the only word available to express the relation of a thing to many surrounding things severally and individually; among expresses a relation to them collectively and vaguely: we should not say the space lying among the three points or a treaty among three Powers.‘ But the superstition dies hard. Seventy years after those words were written the following sentence cannot escape suspicion of being under its influence: The peaceful, independent, and self-governing status of Cyprus is conditional on the continuance of cordial relations among Britain, Greece, and Turkey.”

Grammar Girl distills the idea quite well, saying, “You can use the word “between” when you are talking about distinct, individual items even if there are more than two of them. For example, you could say, ‘She chose between Harvard, Brown, and Yale’ because the colleges are individual items. … On the other hand, you use “among” when you are talking about things that aren’t distinct items or individuals; for example, if you were talking about colleges collectively you could say, ‘She chose among the Ivy League schools.'” And to add to Grammar Girl’s last example, if you said that “she chose between the Ivy League schools”, that would surely suggest that there are only two such institutions.

Going back to Kevin Spacey’s comment, and taking into account everything said above, it does seem to follow that he could have chosen between when comparing the three distinct and individual watching experiences: there’s no group action or spatial relationship at play here, and there’s nothing vague or collective about the items he’s comparing. Let’s try substituting Spacey’s among with between and see how it sounds: “For kids growing up, there’s no difference between watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV or watching Game of Thrones on their smartphone. It’s all content.” Hmmm: that still sounds wrong. Why?

There is another important factor to consider. It’s the word that goes “between” the two or more items under discussion: this should, in fact, only ever be and, at least when between is in play. Fowler has strong words to say about the very common mistake — when employing a between clause — of using connective words other than and, such as or, against, or to. “In the commonest use of between, i.e. where two terms are separately specified, the one and only right connexion between those terms is and. But writers indulge in all sorts of freaks; the more exceptional and absurd of these, in which against, whereas, and to are experimented with, are illustrated in: He distinguishes between certain functions for which full and rigorous training is necessary, whereas others can very well be discharged by me who have had only the limited training. / Societies with membership between one thousand to five thousand. These are freaks or accidents…”

So, what if we keep between in Spacey’s comment and change all his ‘or‘s to ‘and‘s? “For kids growing up, there’s no difference between watching Avatar on an iPad and watching YouTube on a TV and watching Game of Thrones on their smartphone. It’s all content.”

That seems good, doesn’t it? Well, he does seem to suggest that all kids growing up are sharing just one smartphone: but that’s another discussion for another post …

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Oct 25)

That Gerund Is Funky: Words and language in the news during the week ending Oct 25.

* * *

NPR took us on a linguistic journey through the word glitch … What is a glitch, anyway? Meaning everything from a catastrophe to a mere flaw, the word that began in the groovy 60s to describe uneventful snafus in space might now spell peril for Obama’s affordable healthcare act.

* * *

“School Makes Parents Sign Contracts Promising Students Won’t Twerk or Grind at Homecoming Dance.” Yes, that’s a real headline in Time magazine. “It’s hard enough to explain twerking to parents. Now Maryland high schoolers have to explain twerking contracts.” The straight-faced magazine added this caption to the article’s accompanying photograph: “People who twerk or grind will get judgy looks.” Judgy?

* * *

The Guardian‘s David Marsh called for the appointment of a Language Czar, to outlaw ugly business and political lingo, as reported in Prospect magazine. March also argued, in the New Statesman and the New Republic, that “the golden age of grammar is a myth. … Just think about the gay times we had in the old days, when spam was something that went into fritters and you kept your mouse in a cage. The belief that all change is for the worse is invariably accompanied by the conviction that standards of literacy are falling. Such fears date from at least the 18th century.”

* * *

Huffington Post identified 9 words or phrases in everyday use that have racist or prejudiced origins (or murky historical pasts). Who knew that “uppity” once had more repugnant connotations?

* * *

An appalled Daniel E. Jones wrote a letter to the editor of Baton Rouge’s The Advocate, complaining that the paper’s bad grammar (on the first two pages of its Metro section) seems to reflect a lack of education. Joan E. McDonald of Lethbridge up in Canada directed a similar complaint at her local paper, the Lethbridge Herald. But here’s a juicy one: the Washington Post must have hung its head in shame when it received this letter from one of its readers, complaining about an especially egregious ungrammatical utterance — by a penguin no less — in one of the paper’s recent editions. “’It’s me and my wife’s 20th anniversary.’ Listen, kids may be reading this stuff,” warned Jack Fretwell from Reston.

* * *

It’s OK to retweet, but not to copy and paste on Twitter. CNBC Africa has been accused of Twitter plagiarism by its competitor, Business Day Television (BDTV), after it admittedly lifted messages posted by BDTV during South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s midterm budget speech. “As far as I know, publishing someone’s content as your own is plagiarism. Or does the Twittersphere have a different set of rules?,” BDTV boss Vernon Matzopolous wrote, according to TechCentral.

* * *

When is it OK to use incorrect punctuation? When you’re listing something on eBay, explained Angus Kidman on LifeHacker. “When you’re listing items for sale on eBay and the product name includes punctuation, you should not include it in the headline. The reason? Most people find stuff to buy by searching rather than browsing, and most people are too bloody stupid to use correct punctuation. They will type the punctuation-free version. If you want to top those search results, you have to use the incorrect rendering.” Perhaps this is wise advice for anyone posting a searchable internet listing?

They’re hell to spell

I don’t know about you, but there are a few words that I can never spell right – especially when it comes to a handful of homophone pairs with different spellings (I always seem to choose the wrong one). Is the woman pictured above defending her right to bear arms or to bare arms? Apparently both, in her case, but it’s curious to see how often the implication of nudity tends to trump that of grizzly critters when referring to America’s dangerous second amendment. (It should, in fact, make you think of shooting furry animals rather than naked intruders.)

One pair that always gets me is past and passed, especially when you’ve just walked past someone but you’ve also passed them in the street. Right? And although I can tell the difference between a bear hug and a bare hug (yes, I’m one of the above), I’m verbally challenged in this department. Another one that crops up less frequently in everyday use but always has me reaching for the dictionary is horde and hoard. Compliment and complement can get tricky, especially when they’re complementary, and why doesn’t indiscretion mean you haven’t been discrete?

I have no problem with the most common and known offenders: their, there and they’re; your and you’re; its and it’s; weather and whether. Confusing peek and peak is a classic clanger; there’s even a tweeter called Stealth Mountain who warns of his or her mission: “I alert twitter users that they typed sneak peak when they meant sneak peek. I live a sad life.” Fortunately I don’t think I’ll ever become a Stealth Mountain victim — and that’s not just because I hardly ever tweet.

But it’s not just homophones that stop us in our spelling tracks with annoying and debilitating frequency. The exceptions to spelling rules that make the English language so impossible affect most of us, however fluently we might think we’ve mastered our native tongue. I trip up in all the following categories, and I’m the first to admit it. Here are some of the many reasons God sent us Microsoft Word’s red squiggly lines (although watch out for homophones: they’re good linguistic escape artists when it comes to spellcheckers):

Double trouble: Is spelling Caribbean a form of harassment that causes embarrassment? We might find it easy to accommodate, assimilate, or even to assassinate, but how hard is each word to spell, especially if the occurrence is millennial?

The -ents and -ants are apparently incessant problems, no matter how independent, non-existent, reluctant, intolerant or persistent your thinking might be.

The -ibles and -ables can be improbable too: who spells susceptible or irresistible without pause …?

“I before e except after c“, our teachers always told us. But what about weird? Is that weird?

It’s practically impossible to spell publicly logically. And a good politician will politicly be politically correct.

And what’s with supersede? I don’t think it’s what polygamists’ wives are doing to each other, although their husbands might well be doing it to them collectively — albeit with a different spelling …

* * * * *

An earlier Glossophilia post looked at the world of homophones and homonyms (know the difference?), and here’s more on my horde/hoard blind spot.

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Oct 18)

That Gerund Is Funky … Language in the news …

As The Guardian pointed out, when British journalists add synonyms to add clarity to reports from across the Atlantic, they should make sure they’re choosing the correct words …

* * * * *

As reported by Yahoo! Canada’s OMG blog, singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens joined the queue of Miley Cyrus critics, taking issue not with her twerking but with the grammar in one of her songs, “#GETITRIGHT”. As Stevens pointed out: “One particular line causes concern: ‘I been laying in this bed all night long,’ Miley, technically speaking, you’ve been LYING, not LAYING, an irregular verb form that should only be used when there’s an object, i.e. ‘I been laying my tired booty on this bed all night long.'”

* * * * *

An exhibition named after a famous shoe named in turn after a punctuation mark has recently opened in Paris: “Virgule etc. … In the Footsteps of Roger Vivier” has the “Comma” shoe (otherwise known as the “Virgule”) as its top billing. Style.com reports.

* * * * *

The English language, according to linguist Dennis Preston, “makes up a great big gob of who you are.” People tend to use voices and accents to make determinations — often inaccurate — about age, gender, social status and race. The Holland Sentinel reported on his speech about the other “-ism” that we don’t often think about: language …

* * * * *

In the news … (Oct 11)

Where language was in the news this week …

Grammar Girl (aka Mignon Fogerty) appeared on the Today Show on Wednesday. Take her quiz that contained all the discussion topics she suggested to the producers. (I couldn’t find a correct answer to Question No. 2; please comment below if you think one of the answers to that question was grammatically correct – and why…) Continue reading →

Bad grammar heard upstairs

In the second season of the British TV series Upstairs Downstairs, which aired in the early ’70s, a little gem of a conversation took place between Edward, the footman, and Mr. Hudson, the butler, downstairs at 165 Eaton Place in London’s Belgravia at the turn of the 20th century.

Edward is telling Hudson about something surprising that he overheard while upstairs serving lunch to Lady Bellamy and her son James:

Edward: “By the way, Mr. Hudson: I noticed at lunch, while I was handing Captain James his potatoes, that he said to His Ladyship, er: ‘I tried to really save money, mother.’ Well, according to that book on grammar you give me, that’s a split infinitive isn’t it? I mean, surely for an Old Etonian he’s not very well educated. I thought they were supposed to talk proper.”

Mr. Hudson: “You’re quite correct in saying that Mr. James split an infinitive over luncheon, Edward: I noticed it myself. But don’t speak too lightly of the Old Etonians or underestimate their importance. Apart from providing this country with a number of prime ministers and colonial governors, we must never forget that they won the FA Cup in 1879. Get away with you now.”

The softest porn is the new funny talk

“Revenge porn” has recently been outlawed in California: the state’s governor signed a bill making it illegal (basically for bitter exes and disgruntled former lovers) to post explicit pictures of people online without their permission. In this case, there isn’t much question about what the word porn means in the context of its disqualification, with revenge — like its porn cousins child, gay, hard or soft — identifying the specific form of smutty erotica in question. But is porn losing its hard edge (if you’ll pardon the expression)?

Porn (short for pornography) means the description or exhibition of explicit sexual material designed for the purpose of sexual arousal rather than for aesthetic appreciation. And it’s the depiction of the material — rather than the act itself being filmed, photographed, recorded or written about — that the word describes. Pornography comes from the Greek word pornographos, combining porne meaning “prostitute”and graphein meaning “write”.

These days, porn is coming out of the shadows, at least linguistically. It’s no longer just the dirty word consigned to the proverbial top-shelf or password-protected imagery that it has historically described; the four-letter word has found a nice new home, nestling in the bosom of humor and parody. It has been hijacked by ironic hipsters in social (largely online) intercourse — as well as by clever marketeers — to mean more or less anything on whose image people are likely to gaze with acquisitive yearning. To capture or to encourage a craving for or fanaticism about an object of desire, the word porn with its suggestion of sexual arousal — although used with irony and exaggeration — ups the ante and bestows sex appeal on the most unlikely of products or commodities. In fact, the less sexual and the more inanimate the nature of the object, the more potent and witty the message. With everything from “food porn” (there’s even “burger porn”) to “fashion porn”, “car porn” to “record collection porn”, there’s some kind of innocent porn around every corner waiting to seduce us.

The “Bass Porn” page on Facebook is for lovers of that rhythmic instrument slung across a man’s nether regions, and if shoes get your pulse racing, you can oggle* them on one of Tumblr’s many Shoe Porn pages. New York magazine titillates the young and the restless with Real Estate Porn, and if hardware makes you hard (sorry), you can check it out or in and out in a Pinterest Hardware Porn corner. (It’s funny that hardware porn is OK for naming plenty of virtual destinations where you can go for enjoyment and gratification, but not so for software porn …). Want grammar porn? Check! (And come back to Glossophilia for more.) And here’s the silliest one of all: what has the capacity to make women’s tongues hang out, to drool with desire, to pant with anticipation without even a hint of sexual arousal? You’ve got it: wedding porn! (And no, that doesn’t refer to what happens on the wedding night.) You can find that all over the internet — and beyond …

This one really takes the biscuit. Arnold King, talking about economists with pseudo-knowledge in a blog on the Library of Economics and Liberty, complains that “the economics profession for the past thirty years [has] focused on producing stochastic calculus porn to satisfy young men’s urge for mathematical masturbation.” Hmmm … I’m not sure I want to think about that one too carefully, but let me just ask one question that King’s statement raises: what the four-letter-word is stochastic? Is that scholastic with a stick shift?

* One of my friends has pointed out that it’s spelled “ogle”, not “oggle”. Even though it’s pronounced “oggle”. You learn something new every day.