Are You Hangry?

 

“Are you hangry?”—The Conversation

You: “Funny how monosyllabic has five syllables, isn’t it?”

Me: “Yes, English is full of curiosities.”

You: “Such as?”

Me: “Take the letter A. If you start spelling out numbers (1, 2,  3...), you wouldn’t use the letter A until you reached a thousand.”

You: “Speaking of numbers, forty is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order.”

Me: “Regarding alphabetical order, English has a handful of words with each vowel, in order, once only. For example, abstemious and facetious.”

You: “How about this: can you think of any words beginning and ending in und?”

Me: “How about underground? Any others?”

You: “Yes: underfund. My turn: What are the only common words in English that end in -ngry?”

Me: “That’s easy: angry and hungry.”

You: “The Oxford English Dictionary now includes hangry, which combines angry and hungry to mean ‘bad tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.’”

Me: “I’m left handed. So one of my favorite words is stewardesses.”

You: “Because?”

Me: “It’s the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.”

You: “I don’t know if there’s a right-handed equivalent. But I like uncopyrightable; it’s one of only a few words that have 15 letters, none of them repeated.”

Me: “Sort of the opposite of bookkeeping, which has three repeats in a row.”

You: “I like words containing other words. My favorite is therein, which gives you 13 words using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein. If you wonder about er, it’s okay. Merriam-Webster says it’s an interjection, usually indicating hesitation.”

Me: “Does anyone else care about all this?”

You: “Almost certainly not.”

Me: “Interesting word, almost. It’s the longest commonly used English word with all the letters in alphabetical order.”

You: “Oh.”

[300 words]

A Word for You and I

 

A Word for You and I

After reading my January posting a faithful reader noted her irritation when people say something like this: “She said hello to you and I.” I share her pain.

We need “…to you and me.” Because the to is a preposition, we need the objective pronoun. You wouldn’t say, “She said hello to I.”

But her grumble got me thinking: Does it matter if someone says to you and I? You and I know exactly what they mean. Oops: I’ve used the plural they as the pronoun for the singular someone. Does that matter?

I’m not hung up on, nor do I understand, the intricacies of English grammar. Who truly cares about the past pluperfect, modal auxiliary verbs, or interrogative marsupials?

In my book on words, Meet the Dog that Didn’t Sh*t, I noted that English is a dynamic language, with rules and usage perpetually in flux. But while English speakers are continuously reshaping parts of the language I’m convinced that we need some rules and some standards. They may change over time but they are the rules and standards that we happen to have right now. For me, a good rule of thumb is, “Would I correct my children’s speech or writing on this point?”

Linguist David Crystal makes this point about applying grammatical rules with flexibility: “Competent writers know they have the ability to switch into and out of standard English,” what we might define as “good” English, what we’d expect to see in a well-edited book. But he adds that much of our usage is informal: “Every sentence we speak or write involves a choice. We hope we have made the right choices—that we have chosen language which is both meaningful and acceptable to our listeners and readers.”

I’d say that’s good advice for you and I.

[300 words]

 

A Mystery Solved

 

A Mystery Solved

For those of you who read last month’s entry, about “Red Little Riding Hood,” you’ll recall that in English adjectives must be in this order: opinion/size /age/shape/ color/ origin/ material/ purpose Noun. I cited this example: a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.

(If you didn’t read last month’s entry, this one will make more sense if you go back and do so. For your own benefit. Really.)

Then I mentioned the exception to this rule, the example of the “Big Bad Wolf.” According to the rule, shouldn’t it be the “Bad Big Wolf”? Yes. So what’s going on?

In English when we have two words following each other that are largely the same, but in which we’ve changed the vowel, we must ensure that those vowels follow this order: I-A-O. Thus we have “pitter patter” (I-A) To say “patter pitter” (A-I) sounds wrong.

Linguists call this (you might want to get a pen or pencil and write this down) the ablaut reduplication rule. Other examples? We say flip-flop and tit-for-tat. To say flop-flip or tat-for-tit just sounds wrong. Same with bish bash bosh, which Wiktionary defines as “indicating the completion of a task with efficiency.” Definitely not bash-bish-bosh. The ablaut reduplication rule takes precedence over the adjective-order rule.

Back to the adjective rule for a moment… The book describing these mysteries, Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence, shares an anecdote about J. R. R. Tolkien, whose first venture into writing fantasies like The Lord of the Rings began as a 7-year-old. It was about a “green great dragon,” he told his mother. Honoring the adjectives rule, she told him there was no such thing; it had to be a “great green dragon.”

Forsyth says “Tolkien was so disheartened that he never wrote another story for years.”

[300 words]

 

Red Little Riding Hood

 

Red Little Riding Hood Has anyone ever told you have a “tell,” something you do without realizing it? Perhaps it’s tugging on your left ear when you’re nervous. In language too we often do things unconsciously. Take adjectives, for example. In English, adjectives normally precede the nouns they’re describing: a dead walrus, a tearful gangster. (Not always, though; we have “heir apparent,” not “apparent heir.”) But what fascinates me is the unspoken rule regarding the order of adjectives we might use, as in “Little Red Riding Hood.” We can’t have “Red Little Riding Hood.” Our ears tell us this is wrong. But why? Author Mark Forsyth explains in his book The Elements of Eloquence that in English, adjectives must be in this order: opinion/size /age/shape/color/origin/material/purpose Noun. He gives this example: a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. Another writer comments, “If you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.” Because size must come before color, you need to have Little Red Riding Hood. And if you want to say she’s a “good girl,” you need “good little girl” where opinion (good) must come before size (little). That’s why “little good girl” sounds weird. Same with “An ugly old Belgian hunting dog.” You can’t switch to “an old Belgian ugly hunting dog” or “a Belgian hunting ugly old dog.” It’s a complete mess.   That’s why we have the rule. But wait… What about the “Big Bad Wolf”? Here we have size before opinion. Shouldn’t it be “Bad Big Wolf.” Why do we say this? In next month’s blog we’ll look at the explanation for this grammatical minor strange rule. [300 words]

Goldilocks And The Three Beers

 

Goldilocks And The Three Beers

If you haven’t yet heard this sobering story of a word lost in translation, brace yourself. It begins with a Frenchman named Charles Perrault (1628-1703), who founded the genre of fairy tales. Among his works were Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots and The Sleeping Beauty. And, of course, Cinderella. The original title of Cinderella was La Petite Pantoufle de Vair, or The Little Fur Slipper. However, somewhere along the line the sound of “vair” got confused with “verre,” which means glass. We’ve misconstrued a critical part of Perrault’s story ever since, telling our children and grandchildren the nonsensical detail that Cinderella actually wore glass (yes, glass!) slippers. Or maybe just one of them was glass; we can’t be sure that the one she continued to wear as she hobbled away from the Prince was also made of glass.

            We now see this mistake as correct. That leads me to ask, what else might we have got wrong? Take for example the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It’s conceivable that it was originally Goldilocks and the Three Beers. Perhaps she was given the choice of Heineken, Amstel and Miller Lite. Which one she chose isn’t known.

Another beverage-related option might be Goldilocks and the Three Bars, in which she goes on a pub crawl—an unsavory image for young children, so the story got sanitized. Or assuming that as in the Three Bears version, Goldilocks’ choice was indeed animal related, maybe the original was Goldilocks and the Three Boars. We can’t know for sure. Then, there’s the possibility that her encounter was with a trio of exceedingly dull people: Goldilocks and the Three Bores. Again, we can’t know.

            Next time we’ll consider why the original version of Baa Baa Black Sheep may have been Barber Black Sheep.

[300 words]

I'll Be Your Server

 

I’ll Be Your Server

Gordon: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed today about your blog, “Three Hundred Words With Gordon Jackson.”

Alter Ego: My pleasure.

Gordon: But isn’t this approach of interviewing yourself rather predictable? Clichéd, even?

Alter Ego: Yes.

Gordon: Oh. Well, let’s begin. Why did you settle on “300 words” for this blog?

Alter Ego: Good question. But first I’d like to mention that I have a new book out. It’s titled I’ll Be Your Server. It’s a series of brief reflections on servants in the Bible.

Gordon: What’s that got to do with 300 words?

Alter Ego: Well, the reader of the book will get a lot more than 300 words.

Gordon: How many?

Alter Ego: 37,109. All of them carefully chosen.

Gordon: Good. But I’d like to get back to our topic of your blog.

Alter Ego: Yes, yes—of course. But let me mention briefly that there’s an introductory section that describes the difference between the role of a servant in general and that of the Christian servant. Then, there’s a case study of Jesus as a servant, followed by the 34 individual studies of servants whose contributions are recorded in the Bible.

Gordon: We’re running out of words here. We’ve got only about 120 left for this blog entry.

Alter Ego: First, there are the well known servants, like David, Mary and Moses. Also the Archangel Gabriel, the only non-human servant mentioned. He’s especially interesting because he terrifies everyone he appears to.

Gordon: But about 300 words…

Alter Ego: Other well-known servants include Martha and her sister Mary and the innkeeper who doesn’t have room for Joseph and the pregnant Mary.

Gordon: And lots more who aren’t well known, yes?

Alter Ego: Yes. Like Eliezer and Malchus.

Gordon: But about your blog…

Alter Ego: You mean our blog…

[300 words]

 

A Course of Anti-Ambiguitals

 

A Course of Anti-Ambiguitals

[All these examples of misunderstood wording are real and recent.]

Doctor: “So what brings you here today?”

Me: “Well, doctor, English is my first language. Really, my only language. But I keep finding that I don’t understand things. It gets embarrassing.”

Doctor: “Can you give me an example?”

Me: “Sure. My wife and I were at a restaurant recently and saw a sign that said, ‘Please wait for the host to be seated.’”

Doctor: “Yes?”

Me: “Why were we supposed to wait for the host to be seated when we were the ones wanting seats?”

Doctor: “I see.”

Me: “Interestingly, he never did sit down. Here’s another example. On a recent flight I read in the safety instructions that seatbelts should be worn at all times. But mine looked quite new, and hardly worn at all. I asked the flight attendant if I could have a worn one and she didn’t seem to understand. Got quite snippy about it, actually.”

Doctor: “Hmmm…”

Me: “Then there was the visit to my local CVS pharmacy where they had a sign that said, ‘We have 15+ Vaccines.’ I asked the pharmacist if ‘15+’ were some new strain of COVID 19 or something similar. She didn’t understand what I was talking about. I persisted, though, and asked if my insurance covered the vaccine for 15+. She said she’d have to look into it.”

Doctor: “How long have you had this problem.”

Me: “As long as I can remember. Here’s another example: I got a T-shirt from a physiotherapist who treated me. It has the slogan, ‘Changing lives one injury at a time.’ Aren’t they supposed to be healing people?”

Doctor: “I think you might benefit from a course of anti-ambiguitals.”

Me: “Thank you.”

Doctor: “One suggestion: Get someone else to read you the directions.”

[300 words]