My Next Listen

Talk about sensual prose . . .

My newest audiobook is enthralling. I was hooked from the very beginning--as much by the language as by the plot.

(Simon and Schuster Audio; 15 hours and 40 minutes; Narrated by Bianca Amato and Jill Tanner)

Amazon.com Review

Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:

"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."

She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."

"I am a biographer, I work with facts."

The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan. The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told. --Valerie Ryan

National Grammar Day

“Do you adore clean, correct sentences? Do ungrammatical advertisements make you cringe? We understand completely, and this is why the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar and MSN Encarta have designated March 4 as National Grammar Day.”

If you love grammar, you should definitely check out National Grammar Day’s website. You’ll find out who had the worst grammar in 2008 (politicians, celebrities, cities, etc.). You can link to great grammar and writing websites and blogs. You can order your own National Grammar Day t-shirt. They’ve even put together a Bad Grammar Hall of Fame playlist.

Grammar lovers may be weird and neurotic, but at least we know how to celebrate it.

You Just Thought You Knew

“Urban Dictionary is the slang dictionary you wrote. Define your world.”

Wanna see how this on-line dictionary defines the word “book”?

1. book—an object used as a coaster, increase the hight of small children, or increase the stability of poorly built furniture. Example: “Where do you want me to put your drink?” “Oh, just leave it on top of that book.”

2. book—verb meaning to run or to leave in a hurry Example: “I booked when the cops showed up!”

3. book—cool: the first option given when trying to type 'cool' in a text message using t9 “That chick thinks she's book, but she's totally hacked.”

4. book—1. A source of information. 2. A source of entertainment. 3. A tool barely used by todays societies, because it is not 'cool' to read a book. Examples: 1. The dictionary 2. Neil Gaimain's 'American Gods' 3. Which is a shame, really, because once upon a time (and today, in countries with little money) a book was a precious commodity.

6. book—secret word for "booze" Used when near adults or somewhere that you cannot talk about drinking openly. a. a shot is one page b. reading a book means drinking c. being literate means being drunk (since you have "read the book") d. being illiterate means being sober e. the library is the liqour store. Examples: a. “Lets read a few pages!!” b. “I’m gonna read a book.”
c. “Damn man, Bob read so many pages that now he is literate as hell!” d. Bob: "Wanna read a few pages after school man?" Jim: "Naw man, I have a driving lesson and I gotta stay illiterate." e. "Yo, I’m gonna get some books at the library so we can have a lot of it at the party."

7. book—1000 hits of acid. Somebody else posted that it was a hundred. That is incorrect. 100 is a sheet or page. 10 is a strip and 10,000 is a bible. I used to get books for $1450.

8. book—1. An object containing information (ie: words, pictures) used for the purpose of entertainment or education. These are now available in electronic form. One that writes such a 'book' has the ability to earn money known as 'royalty'. 2. To get into trouble with an authority figure such as a teacher or a police officer. 3. To make an escape... usually from an authority figure such as the ones mentioned above. Student 1: “Dude! I forgot to read my book for my report for English Class!” Student 2: “Did the teacher book you?” Student 1: “Na man, I booked before she could find out!”

10. book—An archiac form for bringing information to the masses. Consists of several paper pages with words printed or written directly on them. After the invent of computers, books where a thing of history. Evidently many people on the internet cannot read words with only letters in them, they MUST contain numbers and symbols as well.

13. Book—In the Twilight Zone, an episode which showed the disappearance of humankind, there was one guy left in the world, a bookish type of person that read all the books that he possibly could. In the end of the episode, he finds out he had all the time in the world to read every single book in human history, the problem was, that he broke his glasses, and could not read any book. he screamed "I had all the time in the world!" Lesson of the episode? Dont take things for granted. Books are cool, if you find the time to get interested in one that is.

14. Book—A collection of paper strips, usually bound together and labeled on the cover or binding. The strips, or pages, contain various sections, or chapters, which relate facts or a story. Generally, all topics discussed in the book relate to each other and form a point, which is the main theme of the book. Many books relate stories, whether funny, action-packed, romantic, horrible, dramatic, etc. Some books are very evil and discuss topics boring and very fact-based. These are called School books, and should be burned.

28. book—A piece of literature that people read and write to make themselves feel smart.

33. book—one of the greater objects to fill free time with. Reading a book induces feelings and thoughts not attainable anywhere else.

34. book—A movie that hasn't yet been shot.

38. book--An object that you should never look at,EVER. Boy 1: "I’m gonna read a book." Boy 2: “Nooooooooooooooooooo!!"

48. book—1.best thing in da world 2. worst thing in da world Examples: 1. “I love reading books in my free time.” 2. “Ugh. I have to read 5 books over vacation for English homework.”

49. book—Object that does not give instant gratification, like a computer, a television or a dildo.

52. book—A source of reading, in America and most English speaking countries opens right to left then you read them top to bottom left to right.

53. book—"koob" spelled backwards.

54. book—A now useless form of entertainment Example: “You like books?! You should have real fun and watch TV and play video games! No one has the right to tell people what fun to have! (Mine was just a suggestion.) Those annoying grown-ups have to stop telling us to read instead!!!!!!!!”

55. book--Useless pieces of paper with words on them. Wait- I take that back-FREE ROLLING PAPERS!

Gleanings from My Readings

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
---Jane Austen, in Northanger Abbey

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“Reading from a monitor, instead of a book, is like playing videogame football instead of tossing a football around.”
---Roy Blount, Jr., in Alphabet Juice

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“It’s magic to see Spirit, largely because it’s so rare. Mostly you see the masks and the holograms that the culture presents as real. You see how you’re doing in the world’s eyes, or your family’s, or—worst of all—yours, or in the eyes of people who are doing better than you—much better than you—or worse. But you are not your bank account, or your ambition. You’re not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die. You’re not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are Spirit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You’re here to love, and be loved, freely. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill—and we’re all terminally ill on this bus—what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them.”
---Anne Lamott, in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

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“Highly credible people make decisions to ‘suspend judgment’ when considering another person’s perspective. They do this because they are okay with being wrong—or, at bare minimum, okay with having their opinions challenged. This doesn’t mean they don’t have passion and strong beliefs. It simply means that their minds are open to other opinions, even if those are quite different from their own.”
---Sandy Allgeier, in The Personal Credibility Factor

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“Hillary’s campaign illustrates how far we’ve come, and how far we haven’t come. The tone and tenor of the debates around Hillary, and around Sarah Palin, was far more personal and mocking than toward their male counterparts. Maybe the material was richer, but there was no attempt to dance around gender issues the way there is with race. As a society, we still condone sexism; we view it as a part of nature, a given that isn’t worth bothering our pretty heads about.”
---Eleanor Clift, in “Suffrage, Hillary Style,” Newsweek 1/27/09 Commemorative Inaugural Edition

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Happy Reading!

Gleanings from My Readings

“Consideration & Esteem as surely follow command of Language, as Admiration waits on Beauty.”
---Jane Austen, in Lady Susan

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“History is most responsibly understood as a mosaic of probabilities or as something like a babble of voices from which emerges a fallible consensus of opinion. Narratives give us focused, if varied, points of view, and storytellers elide, forget and filter whatever facts they believe they possess. About the best you can hope for in a movie’s presentation of history is that it is not an overt lie.”
---Philip Martin, columnist for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, in his article “Defiance Is Riveting Drama; Is It History, or Its Shadow?” 1/20/09

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“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the sad feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
---Andrew Wyeth, American artist

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“There is, of course, a cognitive disconnect to reading poetry to an audience numbering in the millions, as Alexander did. Most poets never reach that many people in a lifetime, which may have something to do with the choice to keep her focus simple, her imagery direct. Even so, the crowd began dispersing well before she was finished, as if her words were little more than an afterthought. Partly, that has to do with her placement on the program—after the president; she had the misfortune of following the main event. But even more, it suggests the tangential role of poetry in our national conversation, which is unlikely to change no matter how seriously this president, or any other, takes the written word.”
---David L. Ulin, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, in his article “The Poem That Failed”

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Elizabeth Alexander’s Inaugural Poem:
“Praise Song for the Day”

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

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Happy Reading!

Renaming

I love the way families have special words, usually coined by the children. We call a billfold a bofield thanks to our oldest son. He also gave us smell-good for cologne, as in “Dad, can I wear some of your smell-good?” Our daughter renamed the elbow the bowain. And, yes, we do still use these words, but we try not to do it in public.

Right now, I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and she shares a couple of her family’s special words:

In a few months we’d be drunk on the scent of Lizzie Webb’s mock oranges and lilacs, but the show begins modestly in April with her tiny Lenten roses, white–petaled snowdrops, and the wildish little daffodils called jonquils that have naturalized all over the grassy slopes. As Lily and I walked single file up the path to the greenhouse, I noticed these were up, poking their snub, yellow-tipped noses through a fringe of leaves.

“Oh, Mama,” Lily cried, “look what’s about to bloom—the tranquils.”

There went the last of the needles of ice around my heart, and I understood I’d be doomed to calling the jonquils tranquils for the rest of my days. Lily is my youngest. Maybe you know how these things go. In our family, those pink birds with the long necks are called flingmos because of how their real name was cutely jumbled by my brother’s youngest child—and that was, yikes, twenty years ago.

Ah, the joy of children and language.

It's the Adverb's Fault!

Steven Pinker of the New York Times explains HERE why Roberts flubbed while administering of the presidential Oath of Office. It's a grammar thing, folks.

Gleanings from My Readings

“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
---Jane Austen, in Persuasion

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“Few of us have the temperament of monks. Most of us draw sustenance from the human drama. We might recognize the tremulous signals emanating from some invisible inner universe, but most of us see no choice but to live in the world, to engage in commerce, to seek delight in people and things around us. Perhaps when we knock wood to preserve our luck, what we’re really doing is convincing ourselves of the solidity of the present, distinguishing the actual from the wishful.”
---Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat Gazette columnist

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Actual title of new workout video: Bollywood Booty. I’m not kidding. Not only will this video help you “stay fit and get firm,” it will also “help you release your inhibitions.” Isn’t that what everyone looks for in a workout?

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“To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don’t remember what I was like before I learned my ABC’s, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.”

“I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies, and every time you write very unique, or “We will hire whomever is more qualified,” thousands of literate people lose yet another smidgen of hope. And please promise me you will never lose your grip on the subjunctive.”

---Ray Blount, Jr., in the Introduction to Alphabet Juice

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“The problem with God—or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God—is that He or She rarely answers right away. It can take days, weeks. Some people seem to understand this—that life and change take time. . . . I, on the other hand, am an instant-message type.”
---Anne Lamott, from Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

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John Donne’s “A Hymn to God the Father” (1633):

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.


II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sins their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallow'd in a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.


III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:

And having done that, Thou hast done;

I fear no more.

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Happy Reading!

Cajoling Myself

No, I’m not writing this post just because I want to use the word “cajoling,” although it is a great word, isn’t it? Say it out loud. See? It even sounds like you’re giving yourself a pep talk, kind of like poking yourself in the ribs. And it has a happy sound. You’re encouraging yourself, not beating yourself up (that would be “manhandling” or “coercing.”)

Okay, enough about words and down to business. I’m actually writing this post because this morning, I realized something about myself. I’m not organized or disciplined or driven to achieve. I simply cajole myself through life.

Today was weightlifting day, something that comes around about three times a week for me. Some days, I really enjoy it. I’m eager to begin, and each lift feels great. My body feels fit and strong. I am joyously alive. I even feel a little righteous. Today was not such a day.

I told myself, “Just do your run, and if you don’t feel like lifting, you don’t have to.” Of course, this is a sneaky move. First of all, it gets me in my exercise clothes and out the door, which is half the battle. Then after my run I’m already sweaty, so I can’t use the excuse that I don’t want to get that way. I told myself, “Well, you might as well go ahead and lift a few weights. If you want to quit after the first set, you can.” Then, of course, it was “Well, just one more set.” Then, “You don’t want to be a quitter, do you?” And finally, “Come on. Just one more set! Think of all those hump-backed little old ladies you see in Walmart who struggle to lift their groceries from the cart to the checkout. You don’t want to end up like that do you?” And before I knew it, I was done.

See, it wasn’t will power. I just cajoled myself through it, a strategy I knew would work because I’d done it before. And not just with workouts.

I got through my undergraduate years this way. I was driving two hours one-way, with three children at home, and when I’d get overwhelmed, I’d tell myself: “You can quit tomorrow, but you’re not going to quit today. All you have to do is what’s required today.” And I didn’t quit. Certainly I’ve gotten through my doctoral program by cajoling myself. “Wow, that’s a really long checklist of really hard requirements. Maybe I can’t do this. Well, I’ll just get through the coursework and worry about the rest later.” When it got time for my comps reading, it was: “Just start the first book. Okay, check. Now the next one . . .” And writing papers? “Okay, just do the research. Now an outline. Just write an introduction . . .” I plan on completing the dissertation using the same method.

Writing teachers always say to stay away from clichés, and I understand why. They are “tired language,” and writers want to be original and striking. But clichés become clichés because they are true to life. “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch. Yard by yard, it’s too hard.”

Works for me.

More Eavesdropping

Earlier, I wrote a post about Eavesdropping at Walmart. Here are two more overheard conversations:

One day, I was standing in line at the photo lab. The line was pretty long, and the young man in front of me finally made it to the counter. He then began—in Spanish—to explain what he wanted to the elderly woman manning the register. The woman waited until he paused, then said very loudly, as if he were hearing impaired rather than speaking a different language, “Sir, you need to leave now and come back with somebody who can talk.”

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Just a day or two ago, I’d made my weekly grocery run and was piling items on the conveyor belt, all the voices around me melting into a low, easily-ignorable hum. As I stood, ready to slide my debit card, a distinct, little-girl voice rose above the rest. “It’s time for you to be quiet now, grandpa,” she said.

I guess she’d had enough of him for one day.

Breaking News: Scientists Validate the Metaphor

I read the other day about a recent scientific experiment. The scientists chose a group of people, secretly divided them into thirds, put them in a room, and instructed them to mingle. One third was “in the know,” one third was a control group, and those of the last third were the subjects of the experiment.

The “in the know” group had been instructed to treat the control group normally but to stare down, ignore, snub, and generally be rude to the subjects of the experiment.

Afterwards, both the control group and the subjects were interviewed about their experience. Among other questions, they were asked to estimate the temperature of the room. Those who were treated rudely consistently rated the room as colder than the control group.

From this, the scientists concluded that metaphors like “an icy stare” and “the cold shoulder” corresponded to actual physiological reactions, and were therefore valid.

My reaction to this newsworthy achievement? Boy, I could have saved them a lot of time and money.

Fun with Words

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed and dry cleaners depressed?

Laundry workers could decrease, eventually becoming depressed and depleted! Even more, bedmakers will be debunked, baseball players will be debased, landscapers will be deflowered, bulldozer operators will be degraded, software engineers will be detested, and even musical composers will eventually decompose.

Brother, Can You Spare $895?

I just found out, courtesy of an ad in Harper’s magazine, that for a mere $895.00, I can get my very own 20-volume copy of The Oxford English Dictionary. It’s on sale! Original list price: $3000! The lowest price ever offered!

I’m not quite sure where I’d put all twenty volumes, but I don’t know an English major alive who wouldn’t secretly love to have his or her own copy of the OED. It’s really a lot more than a dictionary; it’s an encyclopedia of the English language. It was originally commissioned by the members of the Philological Society of London in 1857. They proposed a ten-year project, but the first edition actually took seventy years to complete. It contains definitions, pronunciations, etymologies, cross references, and quotations. The 1933 Preface states:

The aim of this Dictionary is to present in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records [ca. AD740] down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang.

The second edition is the one on sale now, and there’s a third edition in the works.

The OED is an amazingly ambitious project, but I think Samuel Johnson beat them hands down. The OED has always been produced by a committee (and remember, the 1st edition took seventy years to complete); the 3rd edition now in progress is the work of more than 300 scholars, readers, researchers, and consultants. Compare that to Johnson’s feat. As the editors of the Longman Anthology of British Literature explain, Johnson’s Dictionary, published in 1755, was “a nearly superhuman accomplishment.” In seven years, a single author defined 40,000 words “with unprecedented exactitude, and illustrated [them] with more than 114,000 passages drawn from English prose and poetry of the previous 250 years.”

“To explain a language by itself is very difficult,” Johnson writes in his Preface. I’ll say! Have you ever tried to define a word and found it difficult to do without using the word itself? Unless it’s a definition I’ve memorized, my definitions sound something like this: “Uh, it’s when you . . .uh . . .” or “Umm, it’s kinda like . . . no, more like . . .” I know what the word means, but explaining it is a different story. Imagine defining 40,000 words and then combing through the literary canon trying to find the best examples of all the different ways you can use those words. By yourself. Without a computer. No search engines; no databases. I can't imagine taking on such a task.


Johnson was a little hard on himself, I think. He continued, “That part of my work on which I expect malignity most frequently to fasten is the explanation; in which I cannot hope to satisfy those who are perhaps not inclined to be pleased, since I have not always been able to satisfy myself.”

Well, rather than “malign,” I stand in awe.

Sunday Comics

Sunday Funnies

A linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative."

A voice from the back of the room retorted, "Yeah, right."

Emotional Spaces

psy-cho-log-i-cal (adj) 1. a. of or relating to psychology (the science of mind and behavior) b. mental 2. directed toward the will or toward the mind specifically in its conative function

From the above definition, courtesy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, one would naturally assume that the word psychological would be used, most likely even exclusively, in some context related to human beings. Right? Maybe animals at a stretch, but inanimate objects? Surely not.

Oh, but you forget we have a wonderfully adaptive language we call American English.

According to real estate lawyer Tim Grooms, the State of Arkansas has a “ghost-buster bill” that prevents sellers and agents from being sued over paranormal activity. This code protects agents who fail to disclose “any fact or circumstance or suspicion of the existence of any fact or circumstance that indicates that the real property is psychologically impacted” (emphasis mine). Arkansas law defines property that is “psychologically impacted” as any property that “was at any time suspected to have been the site of a homicide, suicide, or felony.”

Before selling a property, the seller is required to fill out a disclosure informing the selling agent about any unusual events that might affect a property’s marketability. Although ghosts aren’t necessarily spelled out in any legal clause, a representative of the Arkansas State Realtors Association explains, “If a seller tells his agent there is something floating around in there, the agent is probably obligated to tell their buyer about it.”

I think it’s really interesting that we’re not talking about terrified, psychologically impacted inhabitants, but the actual house itself. This reminds me of the opening of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. The novel begins, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” Oooooh. And it only gets better.

Well, I don’t think my house is terrified or insane, but it just might be a little depressed. I’ve noticed it’s letting itself go a little. I wonder if it needs therapy?

Educated Mispronunciations

If you’re a reader, you realize that there are lots of words that you read every day but never really hear anyone use in conversation. You recognize these words and understand their meanings, but they are not words that seem to fit into your everyday speech. This is called your Reading Vocabulary. (You actually have four different vocabularies—Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking.)

Now, just because you’ve never said these words aloud or heard anyone else pronounce them, doesn’t mean you don’t “say” them inside your head, and you can drift along for years, comfortable in your verbal ignorance. The big shock comes when you finally hear an educated person, your professor, for instance, use the word in a lecture, and you suddenly realize that you have always said the word incorrectly in your head. These mispronunciations usually consist of putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable, but occasionally you may have mangled a word almost beyond recognition. You are mortified and console yourself by thinking, “Thank goodness I never said the word aloud in public!” all the while wondering how many times you have humiliated yourself without being smart enough to even realize it. You discover that ignorance is not bliss.

Now, of course, you want examples. You want me to humiliate myself before you. Okay, okay, I will abandon my pride. The first instance of my pronunciative ignorance (I think I just coined a new word) began in my preteen days. My favorite reading material was a series of mystery novels, the Trixie Belden collection, and I think I had about eighteen of them. In these novels, Trixie’s brother Mart had an old jalopy. Now, in my head I pronounced this word JAlopy, with the emphasis on the first syllable. (As an aside, as I now think back, I am amazed at how many times the author felt the need to use this word throughout the course of these eighteen books. She must have liked how it sounded or enjoyed the appearance of it on the page.) When I finally heard someone say the word on television, I realized it was pronounced jaLOPy, with the emphasis on the second syllable. This discovery did not bother me too much because jalopy is not a word that a teenager just throws around, and even if I had decided to use it, I didn’t figure that any of my friends would have known what the word meant or how to pronounce it anyway.

Not so with this second illustration of my ignorance. I had seen the Latin term ad infinitum, meaning without limit or end, and, basing my pronunciation on the word "infinity," I assumed it was pronounced ad inFINitum. Wrong again. After hearing one of my professors use it in class, I discovered that it’s pronounced ad infinEYEtum. After class, I made straight for a dictionary, and sure enough, the professor was right and I was wrong. Imagine that.

I have never been a stranger to dictionaries. I have always kept one handy, looking up words that I don’t know when I encounter them in reading or conversation. So what bothered me most about this event was not that I had made a mistake, but that I was making them without even knowing it and was likely to continue to do so. Because I could decode the meaning of the word from the text and could apply general rules of pronunciation, I assumed that I knew these words. It had never even occurred to me that I should look up these words.

Well, right after that class I was scheduled to work my shift in the Writing Center, and the professor I was working with that day is a stickler for correct grammar and pronunciation. I told him what had happened and about my worries that I would embarrass myself in the future. I don’t really know what kind of solution I expected from him other than the admonition that maybe I should look up everything, but his reply both surprised me and gave me comfort. He said, “When I hear a person mispronounce or misuse a word that is common to everyday usage, I think he is uneducated. When I hear a person mispronounce an unusual word but use it correctly, I know he is a reader. There is a great difference.”

Whew. Readers, we can relax now.

Southern Modalities

In his article in yesterday’s Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Paul Greenberg responded to the writer of a letter to the editor complaining about a line in an earlier editorial: “the board might could use a little guidance.” The writer was “utterly amazed” that the phrase “might could use” would occur in an ADG editorial. The writer continued, “What English grammar book did that come from? Shame on you. Your Arkie background is showing.”

Well, those editors are not the only transgressors. When I was an undergraduate at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, my German professor, the offspring of a German mother and a British father, called me down for saying that I “might could” do something. She haughtily informed me that only in the South had she heard such usage. Two modal verbs! One would never use such a construction in proper English or in German. I might add that none of the other students in the class, all Southern, had had the least trouble understanding me, nor were they shocked at my usage.

Besides German, this professor, who was also fluent in French, taught the Freshman Composition classes for all international students, and a great deal of her time, she said, was spent in helping these students, who had been trained mostly in British English, understand the ways Southerners “mis-used” the English language. One day, she said an international student came to her confused because another student had told him that she was “fixin’ to” go to the Student Center. “I do not understand,” he said. “Fixing is what you do to a broken machine.” This, of course, was another Southernism that didn’t meet with her approval. She said she could always tell when she was south of the Mason-Dixon line because, invariably, as soon as she drove across language disintegrated.

Mr. Greenberg rightly pointed out that for those who want to be precise in their usage, “might could” is a helpful construction. “Could” and “might could” signal a great difference in probability. In Standard English, “could” has both indicative and subjunctive meanings. But in Southern English, “I could come” is indicative, whereas “I might could come” is subjunctive. Quoting a linguist, Greenberg points out that “the use of double modals in Southern American English fills a gap in Standard English grammar, namely the loss of inflectional distinction in English between indicative and subjunctive modals. Dialect or regional forms are often more progressive in gap-filling than is a standard language.” Well, of course. That's why we use it.

Greenberg also gives another example where Southern English has filled in a language gap—the famous pronoun y’all, our second person plural. “The less discerning standard usage,” he continues, “has only you for singular and plural.” So there.

Unfortunately, at that time I was unable to mount as good a defense as Mr. Greenberg did. All I knew was that I was perfectly able to express myself, and, double modality or not, the construction worked for me. It expressed exactly what I wanted to say.

Well, I might could write more, but I think I’m fixin’ to stop here.