Parvum Opus 394: Toujours Arriere

LINQUES

As you know, the French Language Academy tries to keep the French language under control, and somewhat stable. They want to avoid importing too many words from other languages (like “le jazz”). When entirely new terms enter the world, such as technical words, translation cannot always be direct. Probably most languages simply imported and adapted the terms from their home of origin, but the French like to frenchify them if possible.

            There are numerous French/English computer dictionaries online, but the flash card site lets you click through and make a little game of looking at the words.

·         They did borrow surf directly: surfer (the infinitive verb). To imitate the English history of this computer term, you’d have to know the French word for the ocean surf, then know or invent a verb for riding the waves on a board, then use that verb as a computer term. Maybe “surfing” was already been entrenched in the French language but it’s definitely Surfin’ USA.

·          I like navigateur (Web surfer) and it reminds me of the old Navigator search engine, which I liked for its neat little graphic.

·         Why does télécharger mean download? Of course to the English ear it sounds like you’re recharging something.

·         A scroll bar is une barre de defilement, which I can’t help reading as something like a chastity belt. I invented a fake translation for the family motto of the Douglas branch of my ancestry: Jamais arriere (Never behind), which I “translated” as “I may be an ass” because it applied more accurately to one or more of my relatives. (OK, and maybe me too.) Why this Scottish clan has a French motto I don’t know.

PATOIS

Improbable Research reported on a paper published by Hubert Devonish in Jamaican patois (and in English). Example paragraph:

“In plentii konchrii, di piipl-dem no taakin di seem langgwij an no fiil se dem iz seem neeshan. So, dem wa in chaaj a di setop in di konchrii doz chrai mek di piipl-dem get fiilinz fo neeshan.”

“In many countries, the populations do not speak the same language and, therefore, do not feel they belong in the same nation. In these circumstances, those who run the state apparatus often try to create a shared national consciousness.”

            As you see, the patois spelling indicates pronunciation (the grammar is different from standard English also).

            While we can understand it, this sample shows why standardized English spelling is important. Every once in a while there’s a flap about changing English spelling to a phonetic system. But whose English pronunciation are you going to attempt to reproduce? The Queen of England or Bostonian John Kennedy? A Southern belle or an Irishman?

IT’S YOUR NAME

Of course I care about correct pronunciation, but the rules don’t apply to people’s names, as Miss Manners knows:

Dear Miss Manners,

            I am a multilingual person who has lived in four continents, only recently back in the United States. In the U.S., I frequently meet first-generation Americans who mispronounce their own names.

            As someone who can speak the relevant languages and thus know how to say the names properly, do I refer to these persons as their names should be said? Or do I defer to the majority, and distort the names as they do?

            Does etiquette explain what is helpful and what is obnoxious in this instance?

            My answer, which agrees with Miss Manners’:  A name is personal. Pronounce it (and spell it) as you wish. People in other countries will pronounce English names as they wish, or as they can.

HARD DRINKING

Here’s an old column from Dave Barry’s “Ask Mr. Language Person” that I don’t think I’ve linked yet.

                Re his discussion of Starbucks’ names for coffee sizes, read this story from Not Always Right and get back to me: How to Show-Up a Show-Off. Quote:

“She probably looked at you, assumed you were a man, and was therefore completely confused by your non-fat non-sugar orange mocha chip frappuccino order. Real men drink real coffee.”

            OK, I’m willing to concede that real men sometimes like sweet drinks, but wouldn’t it be a good idea for Starbucks to rename some of its drinks in the interest of preserving their dignity? Possible male drink:  non-fat could be stripped (sexy); non-sugar could be hard (as in hard cider, though it’s not alcoholic); orange could be sinensis (scientific); mocha chip could be cacao stone (scientific + tough); frappuccino could be whip (tough like Zorro). So:

            Give me a stripped, hard, sinensis, cacao stone whip.

Definitely more manly. Although nothing is more manly than a cuppa Joe. I’d like to see a coffee shop that just sells coffee. For a buck.

            Oh, and the sizes. As you know, a Starbucks small is Tall (uh-huh), medium is Grande (hmph), large is Venti (huh?). They have their reasons, but after years and years of going to Starbucks I still have to stop and think, just like I have to stop and think about the multiplication tables above the 6-times.

I CAN’T MAKE MY LEGS DO ANYTHING

Heard in a commercial for stockings or something:  “They always make your legs look flattering.”

                My legs haven’t flattered me or even appeared to do so lately. Of course I don’t flatter them much either.

            Surely any ad has a script and a bit of lead time even if it’s a live production. Wouldn’t anyone write, or automatically say, “They always make your legs look good” or long or whatever? Or, “They always flatter your legs.” I’m hoping this is just a brief moment of synapse failure. Otherwise it’s a level of illiteracy too low to countenance in someone who makes a living writing or reading ads.

LOOK ABOVE

I see this kind of construction fairly often:

            Look at the above comments.

I can’t say absolutely that it is incorrect, but it definitely sounds wrong. Dict.org gives various usages for “above” — preposition, adverb — but not adjective. If you say “Look at the comments above” is it an adjective, which ordinarily precedes the noun in English, or an adverb modifying “look”? It certainly is not a preposition in this case.

            It could be an elliptical adjective (“Look at the comments that are above”), but I’m voting for adverb, similar to “Look at the comments over there”.

            “Look at the comments above” sounds right. Same goes for “below”. Does anybody ever say or write, “Look at the below comments”?

READ THEIR BOOKS

·         In A Fisherman's Language is an autobiography by Captain James Arruda Henry, who didn’t learn to read until he was in his 90s. (Kindle only.)

·         Life Is So Good by George Dawson is another book by a man who didn’t learn to read till he was almost 100. (Kindle and print.)

READ MY BOOKS

I’ve been working all winter at putting my Kindle books (and other) into paperback format. So far:       

The Gritty Bits is a collection of my political commentary as the Cincinnati Independent Enquirer. A bit indigestible but cleansing. Articles.

The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

The Man from Scratch is a medical sci-fi crime thriller. Novel.

Parvum Opus I is a collection of the first year of Parvum Opus columns. Articles.

Audio Book on Amazon

When Sonny Gets Blue is the first volume of bluesman Sonny Robertson’s autobiography. Audio book.

Parvum Opus 393: Conascend with Me

POSTCOCITY

It’s not that the world has run out of material for Parvum Opus to kvetch about. Maybe next year I’ll get back to a more frequent schedule. This year I’ve worked on other things.

            When I was a little kid I had an unformulated desire to publish. I didn’t write much to speak of when I was a child, outside of school, but I remember wanting to make a book out of a piece of cardboard. I think I copied the alphabet on it. I wasn’t precocious enough to really make a book, though. But eventually I began to write, and now I can publish too, thanks to new technology. I write, edit, and design the covers; I have a new publishing name, Who Art, and designed the Who Art logo too. You might say I’m postcocious. If I were an actor I guess I’d want to direct.

            So now I’m putting my writing (much of which I already published as e-books) onto real paper. Then I will continue with the epistolary biography of my late high school Spanish teacher, Ellen Rowe (who contributed a bit to the early Parvum Opus columns), as well as other new writing projects.

·         I’ve just published the first year of collected Parvum Opus columns in paperback, now online at CreateSpace and also on Amazon.

·         Also now in paperback is The Wish Book, a bit of brain candy, lots of fun (CreateSpace and Amazon). I used this verse by Yeats from The Circus Animals’ Desertion as the coda to the novella:

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

·         The Man from Scratch will be available in a few days on CreateSpace, and on Amazon within a week or two after that. It’s a murder mystery about cloning and the ethics of genetic engineering. Bitterly humorous but not as sweet as The Wish Book (and not suitable for kids).

·         When Sonny Gets Blue is an audio book, the first volume of an autobiography by my friend Howard Sonny Robertson (CreateSpace and Amazon). I produced it but it’s entirely Sonny’s voice. Fascinating.

            CreateSpace is an excellent Amazon affiliate for DIY publishing and distributing books, CDs, and videos. You do everything online, for nothing or next to nothing, and you end up with a real book. I learned about CreateSpace from reader Dave DeBronkart, who has published two books, also as both Kindle books and paperbacks: 

·         Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: How an Empowered Patient Beat Stage IV Cancer (And What Healthcare Can Learn from It)

·         Facing Death - With Hope: What one patient learned as he faced the end

Thanx and a tip of the Keith Stephens hat to Dave DaBee.

VOWELS CONTROL YOUR BRAIN

In case you weren’t sure, now we know that it’s the vowels, at least in advertising. Stanford linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky says so. All along I thought it was the consonants. Professor Jurafsky has a blog on the language of food. I think that boy is hungry. Somebody throw him a turkey leg.

(Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, so right now I’ll interrupt my writing for some early festive sipping:  St. Germain liqueur. Good sprinkled on corned beef too, by the way.)

HOW JOURNALISTS ARE BORN

Years ago I was an associate editor for a large Midwestern university, in the publications department, which was next door to the news department, all of which was an arm of the public relations office responsible for fund-raising. One day a hard-hitting journalism student hit me hard with this question:  What if the university needed money for something? Would we cover it up, or write about it, he probed shrewdly. I explained that our office was all about asking for money, all the time, for everything.

            He was probably a classmate of the girl who wrote in the school paper that she was disappointed by London. She’d just come back from her first visit, and asked plaintively, Where were the tickertape parades? A British professor responded that it’s New York, not London, that is noted for tickertape parades. Even New York doesn’t have them every day. Too bad she couldn’t find some other way to amuse herself in London.

HOW FICTION IS BORN

I have other stories from that editorial job that will appear in a future novel. I just add in the murders.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH

Or, Whatever happened to the Jutes?

The Open University has a clever video cartoon about the history of the English language, all told in only 11:21 minutes.

The Open University is European, and not all cartoons.

BAD SEX WRITING AWARD

Dave DaBee tipped me to the Bad Sex Writing Award, sponsored by the Literary Review. Actually I’d mentioned this award in 2009 in PO 350.

            The 2010 winner, whose name doesn’t deserve a mention but you can find it along with his book title on the web site, wrote this:

Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.

I suggest to any ladies and gentlemen out there contemplating sex for the first time with someone that you ask the object of your speculation to give you an erotic writing sample first (along with the blood test).

WHY NOT?

Conascend

Why do we have the word “condescending” but not “conascending”? If you condescend, you deign to go down to someone else’s level. But don’t we attempt to go up to a higher level at times?

            I think we should try introducing this new coinage as a group Parvum Opus project. “We will conascend to add to the English vocabulary.”

Urbia

Why do we have the word “suburbia” but not “urbia”? “Suburbia” is a bit different from “the suburbs” which simply refers to the communities that surround a city, the small towns and residential areas. But “suburbia” usually implies a state of mind and a way of life, and is often derogatory. People who sneer “suburbia” usually grew up there and think they became cool when they left.

            So why not “urbia” as a companion word? Its meaning would depend on who uses it. I leave that to you — “You know the type, he lives in urbia.” Send your definitions, and we’ll try to introduce that word too.

PREPOSITIONS ARE IMPORTANT

… but not always logical.

            On a reality TV show about people who get done in by their own dangerous exotic pets, the narrator said:  “James had a fascination for snakes.” This means that the snakes were fascinated by him. It should have been, “James had a fascination with snakes.” (He was fascinated by them.)

            Now it’s true that the preposition “for” seems ambiguous here since it can be used with different meaning in other formations, e.g., “James had a weakness for snakes.” (He was a sucker for their cold little eyes.) But that doesn’t matter. The rule, and the idiom, are what they are. Yes, I understood the meaning, but my attention shouldn’t have been distracted by the misuse of “for” in this instance.

MAN UP

I don’t know when the expression “man up” came into use. It means, of course, to act like a man, do your duty, show courage, etc. Same as “cowboy up”. I recently heard “rooster up” — didn’t note the context, but it must be more like trying to be aggressively dominant, not quite the same as to cowboy up.

JUST SO YOU’LL KNOW

A clumber is a type of field spaniel that hunts silently. Neat, huh?

TYPOSTROPHIC

As I re-read my books in preparation for paperbook publication, I find errors no matter how many times I’ve read them before. Here I reprint a poem I wrote at the end of 2003 about my mistakes — slightly edited.

2003: 

As Lewis Carroll wrote in preface to “Hiawatha’s Photographing”:

“In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Any fairly practiced writer, with the slightest ear for rhythm, could compose, for hours together, in the easy running metre of ‘The Song of Hiawatha’.”

Thus, my end-of-the-year meditation on doing wrong when I know what’s right:

The Unattainability of Impeccability, or

I’m Not Bothering to Make A New Year’s Resolution This Year

In the bowels of my computer

Or perhaps my nether brain cells

Lives a typographic gremlin

Who cares not that I’m a speller —

Disregards my grammar knowledge —

Laughs to think that I’m a writer

(Let alone pretend to edit) —

And to keep from overheating

I must give my thoughts expression,

And attempt perfect composure

When I lay them on the line.

So the gremlin jerks my fingers,

Struts and frets upon my keyboard,

Clouds with floaters my right eyeball,

Even when I type correctly,

Read and proofread till I cannot

Find and fix another error:

Everything looks just as it should be

But it’s all a sad delusion.

“Tart” is “taart,” not even English.

Verbs do not agree with subjects.

Words drop out and strange ones enter.

Print does not match with my brain waves.

GIGO — input leads to output —

Garbage in means garbage out — does

Not explain the situation

(Though perhaps it’s instant karma

As I point my ink-stained fingers

At others' harmless flubs and glitches).

Like the ancient carpet weavers

Of the fabled looms of Turkey,

Should I thread a flower in backwards,

Use red yarn instead of purple,

Purposely distort the pattern,

So Allah will not be offended

By presumption of perfection?

I don’t need to fool my gremlin

By pretending to be flawless.

No god could ever be affronted

By my warp and woof of language —

Vocabulary, syntax, spelling —

All are ways and means to blunder.

Any god who’s worth a prayer

Won’t find hubris in these pages,

Only lots of gag material.

So I’m assigned a lesser spirit —

Just a lowly typing demon

Copyedits all my writing.

By R. Keith, 2003

Happy New Year, and may all your typos be harmless, unlike the one that said “Love me not” instead of “Love me now”.

~ From Rhonda and Fred, 2011

Parvum Opus 392: Real-Word Experience

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

PREPOSTROPHOUS

Rich Lederer agrees about short- and long-lived:

In brief, all major dictionaries cleave to your argument for sounding the i in short-lived and long-lived as a long i. These compounds mean "short/long of life." It should be noted, though, that the Brits prefer the short i in these words.

We both beg to differ with the Brits.

He also wrote:

Most folks who have seen The Help agree that the film is destined to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture. But with all the care lavished upon the writing and filming of The Help, in slithers the following prepostrophe: 

            Skeeter Phelan, the film's protagonist and writer of the book The Help, is typing up a notice for the Junior League's newsletter. The camera homes in on the text, which includes: "Come to the Holbrook's to drop off old coats," which she changes to "old commodes" in order to befoul Hilly's front yard.

             You'd think that Skeeter — or at least the writers of the screenplay — would know that Holbrook's should be Holbrooks'. 

(By the way, I know someone who did put an old commode in her yard, in hopes of lowering the sale price of the house she lived in when it went up for sheriff’s auction, because she wanted to buy it cheap. It’s a long story.)

AIXELSID TNOF

Dave DaBee posted this reference to a newly invented type font called Dyslexie, designed by Christian Boer of the Netherlands, that is supposed to be easier for dislexics to read. Boer, himself dyslexic, designed the letter shapes to be less confusing.

One of Dave’s Facebook friends, Victoria Haliburton, disagrees. She works with dislexics. I include most of her comments — unedited (she probably wrote in a hurry) — because she is as amusing as she is opinionated (but presumably not dyslexic herself).

Sorry to disappoint you and everyone who wants a miracle cure, but this guyis wrong in so many directions that it is hard to know where to start. First, as the article mentions -- and then ignores -- dyslexia is NOT a vision problem. Every few years somebody comes up with a new snake oil guaranteed to cure botts, glanders, and the hives, shows positive results from their own testing -- and then disappears as mysteriously as they appeared. …. since it is NOT a vision problem, playing around with visual efforts is on the level of curing a cold by sacrificing a chicken -- irrelevant, but the cold gets better in seen days anyway so you can prve the cure . . .. In fact dyslexia can be treated and in many cases "cured" (ie the student looks and acts and tests well within the normal range, although perhaps with a few quirks). The statement in the article "there is no cure" is dead wrong. The treatment has been well-known and used for over a century -- my grandmother could have told you -- and has passed every *scientific* test thrown at it over the last sixty years. read the NIH study on Teaching Children to Read, 1999 (not the hysterical attacks on it since, but the actual study). Be forewarned: you are used to reading medical studie where there is a standard of proof; education so-called "studies" have no such standard and are 90 percent laughable. Anyway, the treatment that works, and works with a ery high success rate, is traing not in vision but in hearing - phonetic discrimination etc. The reason for the high rate of dyslexia and "dyslexia" (much higher) in English is twofold -- the problem of partially inconsistent (only 15 percent by the way) sound-symbol correspondence, and the much uch worse probelm of poorly-prepared teachers who are taught things that just ain't so and who try to teach their students by guess, hope, and pray rather than actual reading instruction.

As far as fonts, by the way, it has been found that one of the *easiest* to read is a serif font, Century Schoolbook -- which was designed as an easy-reading font for children's texts by peple without scientific credentials but wth a lot of real-word experience. The basic rules for font design and calligraphy, which include consistent slant (unlike this new font) and a minimum of additional frills (he's good here) and a balance of open white space and dark letter (he's right here about openness) are designed to maximize readability. Uneven slopes give the reader a headache; I know, I read juior-high kids' papers. They slow you down, quite badly if you are a fast reader.

LITERALLY

Dave also sent an article from the Boston Globe by Christopher Muther, “Literally the most misused word”. Is it literally a hopeless case?

Literally is used, incorrectly, as an intensifier, in the grand tradition of exaggeration that is so American. How many things are really awesome, after all? Is your yes always absolutely a yes?

Proposing substitutes for literally may be useless. For instance, the article quotes Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, on Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas saying, “This is literally a dream come true” when they won the Stanley Cup. Zimmer suggests substituting something like “unquestionably a dream come true”, but is that really any better? It depends on what you mean by “dream”. Possibly Thomas didn’t actually (really truly) dream in the night about the Stanley Cup, though it wouldn’t be surprising if he did, but he could have literally had a dream in the sense of a strong imaginative desire for a future outcome.

Another Bruin, Andrew Ference, said, “I can’t wrap my mind around how many people were there. I literally can’t wrap my head around it.” Well, that’s half true. He couldn’t wrap his head (a physical object) around a concept. But maybe he could wrap his mind (a more abstract sort of thing, really a though) around an idea.

In any case, if literally is used incorrectly more than not, what will take its place?

ARTFUL

Another intrusion of political correctness into art commentary distorts the intention of a 19th-century painting by George Inness, March of the Crusaders, which depicts knights traveling through the Italian countryside. On the linked page here, the comment points out the reference to death in the picture of the noble procession, but in a local Inness exhibition, a curator was compelled to write apologetically that “At this time, many saw the Crusaders as heroes.” This disparagement of the Crusaders has developed largely since the recent unpleasantness, of course, and makes sense if you’d prefer to be living under sharia law.

Lest we forget, the phrase “political correctness” came from Trotsky, and was adopted by the American Communist Party, which would announce that its members had to back certain policies because they were politically correct (i.e. practical) even if they were wrong, or statements even if they were false; the party line shifted often. Unlike the Bolsheviks, we probably won’t be imprisoned or killed for being un-PC, though that could change, but how comfortable would you be in speaking positively about the intrepid knights of the Crusades at your next social get-together?

WHO ART

I am now republishing my e-books in paperback under my new publishing label, Who Art. The first of these is now available on Amazon, The Wish Book, an amusing light read about the old Sears catalogs, a clandestine midnight burial, and a bit of romance. Paper is so much more satisfying than pixels.

The first volume of Sonny Robertson’s audio autobiography, When Sonny Gets Blue, is also on Amazon now.