Tag: English

Acyrologia

I DO curl up in the feeble position.

This is one of those Facebook items, passed along by Grandiloquent Word of the Day, that I loved so much, thought I’d give it its own post. (AND I’m in a river in Egypt.)

How many errors to YOU see?

grammar

One of those words Americans apparently misuse is walla. “The correct word they are looking for is ‘voila’, which loosely translates as ‘here it is’, ‘there you go’, or similar meanings.”
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I had seen the word “pwned”, assumed it meant “owned,” but never bothered to look up the derivation until Arthur had been pwned. Here’s the Urban Dictionary, again.
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20 Jokes So Terrible They’re Actually Funny; well, some of them are…

Someone tell me why there is, again, a run of graphics suggesting that Bob Denver, who died in September 2005, died recently. there was a run of these reports in 2012, as I recall, and a couple times since then.

It’s like what SNL used to say about Franco: Bob Denver is STILL dead.

Right on! for the genericized noun

They are not capitalizing Coke because, in part of the country, coke could be a 7-Up or “diet dr. pepper.”

wordbrandsThis newspaper writer I’ve met notes: “MS Word kept capitalizing ‘laundromat.’ I checked, and Webster’s agrees. Westinghouse copyrighted it back in 1947. But. . . . really?” This led to this interesting discussion about all the words that, once upon a time, were capitalized because they were brand names but are not now:

App Store, Aspirin, Catseye, Cellophane, Dopp kit [I had to look this up, even though I’ve had one!], Dry ice, Escalator, Heroin, Kerosene, Lanolin, Linoleum, Mimeograph, Primal Therapy, Thermos, Touch-tone, Videotape, Yo-Yo, and Zipper.

And Dumpster. I mean, what else would you CALL that thing? According to this article: “The alternatives recommended by AP (‘trash bin’ and ‘trash container’) are too vague. And the Times definition (‘trash hauling bin’) is too clunky.” I totally agree. So you’re SUPPOSED to Capitalize it, according to the style books, but almost no one does, except spellcheckers. As someone noted about the Dumpster people, “They really got the hold on it. my goal in life is to invent a thing that’s way more popularly known by what I named it than by what it is.”

And the correspondents seemed to get feisty on this branding topic: not capitalizing Kleenex, or Xerox, or Coke because, in part of the country, coke could be a 7-Up or “diet dr. pepper.” Of course, you always have to worry about autocorrect.

You know who gets REALLY fussy about these: The National Association of Realtors. It’s their members who are known as Realtors, and if you are listing houses in the US, and don’t belong to the association, you are NOT a Realtor.

BoingBoing complained about the irritating mid-word capitalization of brand names such as ProQuest or iPhone and PayPal; I would describe that annoying incaps trend, stealing the phrase, as corporate graffiti.

But I draw the line at the lower case for initialization such as ZIP code; ZIP means Zone Improvement Plan.
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Logos’ hidden images.

N is for English as a New Language

English, on a language perspective, makes no sense at all.

english_as_a_new_languagelMy wife is a teacher of English as a New Language (ENL). It has also been called English as a Second Language (ESL), but the NEW designation is more accurate because, for some of these students, English is their third or fourth language.

Here’s a 2008 article about English Language Learners (ELLs) that I think describes the process and problems of learning English for non-native speakers.

The rules for the order of adjectives are nearly instinctive for native-born speakers of English. In case that you need help learning this language, we recommend you this igcse online english tutor.

But it is tricky for the ELL. There are several lists, found here and here and elsewhere. But they generally agree on the order.

Comparative / superlative
Example: Bigger chair, smartest student

Opinion
Example: an interesting book, a boring lecture

Dimension (size)
Example: a big apple, a thin wallet

Age
Example: a new car, a modern building, an ancient ruin

Shape
Example: a square box, an oval mask, a round ball

Color
Example: a pink hat, a blue book, a black coat

Origin / nationality
Example: some Italian shoes, a Canadian town, an American car

Material
Example: a wooden box, a woolen sweater, a plastic toy

So you would say a “new Italian car,” not an “Italian new car.” Or a “big pink plastic sculpture.” And you don’t use commas between the terms. If you ask a native speaker why, she’ll say because to do otherwise sounds wrong. If I were an ELL, this might be a difficult aspect.

Other issues for ELL students depend on their native language. Certain sounds aren’t “available in their first language (‘th’ is a big one in general, but so are ‘v’ for Turkish speakers, ‘w’ for some European language speakers, ‘sh’ for Spanish speakers, and ‘r’/’l’ for many Eastern/Southeastern Asian language speakers).

“English, on a language perspective, makes no sense at all. There are so many exceptions, and these exceptions don’t follow the same rules. Some letters are silent, but they aren’t always so. There is no real verb conjugation. You always need your pronoun or it makes no sense at all.

“The sounds are weird as well. You can learn the short and long vowel rules, but in some situations, they are just different, and there is no reasonable explanation as to why you have pronounced something differently.”

There are also issues with verb conjugations, idioms, and homophones/homographs/homonyms.

I’m always impressed when people take on English as a New Language.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

English in Math

I can yield in my pedantry, but only so far.

Percentage_IncreaseEnglish in Math, part 1:

Recently, several media outlets noted that the US women’s soccer team was subjected to wage discrimination, and that “the World Cup winners were paid four times less than their male counterparts last year.” One can argue the numbers, but there is a clear disparity.

What struck me, though, was the phrase “four times less”, which to my ears, seemed incorrect. I asked my spouse, who is a teacher of English as a New Language (ENL), the new designation for what had been traditionally referred to as English as a Second Language (ESL), in part because those learners may be taking on English as a third language, or fourth, or more. She agreed it “sounded wrong.”

We both would have said the men made four times as much, or the women made a quarter (or a fourth) as much. Professor Milo Schield, from the Department of Business, Accounting and MIS at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, MN, would agree with us. In COMMON ERRORS IN FORMING ARITHMETIC COMPARISONS, he writes of Using ‘times less’ as an inverted form of ‘times as much’:

Since six is three times as much as two, it is tempting to say that two is three times less than six. Two is definitely less than six and their ratio is definitely that of three to one. But if two were three times less than six, then six should be three times more than two. Recall that six is three times as much as two – two times more than two. ‘Times less than’ is an inverted form of ‘times more than’ – not ‘times as much’. This error is more common in speech than in writing. This error is a variation on… Confusing ‘times as much’ with ‘times more than’.

Got that? Of COURSE, you do.

But after reading this language log, and this observation, I’m willing to cede that, while my thought process is technically correct, I may be willing to give this one a pass. I KNOW what they mean, and explaining the “error” is far too exhausting.

Percentage increase

On the other hand (English in Math, part 2):

Our tax accountant gave us an interesting tidbit, citing our cash charitable contributions as 320% higher than others who earn the same amount and noncash contributions as 40% lower. So, I surmised that if the AVERAGE person gave $100, we would have given $420. Ah, but that’s not what he meant. We have given $320 versus $100. That is 220% higher than OR 320% of the average.

Quoting the professor:

The essential feature is the difference is between ‘as much as’ and ‘more than.’ ‘As much as’ indicates a ratio; ‘more than’ indicates a difference. ‘More than’ means ‘added onto the base’. This essential difference is ignored by those who say that ‘times’ is dominant so that ‘three times as much’ is really the same as ‘three times more than.’

I saw this same error on The Daughter’s First in Math, where there was a 700% increase shown, but the choices were increases of 100%, 200%, 400% and 800%. We picked the 800%, since it was the closest, and it registered as correct.

This all goes to show that I can yield in my pedantry, but only so far.

Z is for Ze (or zie)

American University’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion offers a pronoun guide.

zieWhile many of the world’s languages do not, English has historically had gender specificity in certain of their pronouns, particularly in the third person singular (he, she). For many years, a gender-specific, almost always masculine, pronoun was used to express a gender-neutral meaning:

“A candidate should work to the best of his ability, and he must comport himself appropriately.”

A few solutions that been used to improve on this, include “he/she” (clunky), the word “one” (did not seem to catch on), or the third person plural word “they” (which I hate). Some attempts have been made, by proponents of gender-neutral language, to introduce invented gender-neutral pronouns.

In September 2015, “Harvard University made a buzz after allowing students to select gender-neutral options like ‘ze,’ ‘e,’ and ‘they’ on registration forms. In doing so, it joined a wave of other major colleges in acknowledging that gender identity, and the pronouns that go with it, is more fluid than how previous generations understood it.”

American University’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion offers a pronoun guide which states “the practice of asking individuals what pronouns they use for themselves should be done in an effort to respect the diversity of gender identities beyond man and woman.”

Here are some of the gender-neutral contenders, with a breakdown of their strengths and weaknesses:

Ne: Ne laughed. I called nem. Nir eyes gleam. That is nirs. Ne likes nemself.
Ve: Ve laughed. I called ver. Vis eyes gleam. That is vis. Ve likes verself.
Spivak: Ey laughed. I called em. Eir eyes gleam. That is eirs. Ey likes emself.
Ze (or zie) and hir: Ze laughed. I called hir. Hir eyes gleam. That is hirs. Ze likes hirself.
Ze (or zie) and zir: Ze laughed. I called zir. Zir eyes gleam. That is zirs. Ze likes zirself.
Xe: Xe laughed. I called xem. Xyr eyes gleam. That is xyrs. Xe likes xemself.

As noted, “‘Hir,’ although it’s supposed to be pronounced ‘here,’ is read as ‘her’ by many people unfamiliar with the term.” The author prefers ne (n as in neutral) or ve (popular in science fiction), to ze, for reasons of pronunciation in combination with other words, as well as being more gender-free.

I’m not opposed to the use of more gender-neutral language. But the linguistic conservative in me wishes that some sort of consensus would have developed in the past few years, such as when firefighter replaced fireman, and flight attendant encompassed stewardess and steward.

Now, The New York Times Adds ‘Mx.’ to the Honorific Mix, at least on one occasion, in lieu of Mr. or Ms.

Of course, this all has been and will be, a continuing source of debate about whether the trend is cultural sensitivity, or political correctness run amok.

abc 17 (1)
ABC Wednesday – Round 17

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