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]

 

Sorry, my mistake

 

Sorry, My Mistake

Before it slips even farther into the past, let’s revisit the experience of Tom Craig at the Paris Olympics. He was a member of the Australian field hockey team and was arrested for buying cocaine. He later apologized and said, “I made a terrible mistake.”

That’s also the word used by the person in charge of all Australia’s athletes at the games, Anna Meares. She said, among other things, that “he has owned up to his mistake.” But she still sent him home.

Here’s a fellow who decides to buy cocaine. He seeks out a seller. He pays the going rate. All purposeful, voluntary actions. Then he says he made a “mistake.”

A mistake is inadvertent, unintentional, like when I write the wrong date on a check. Or when I try getting into the wrong car at the mall because its identical to mine.

If you catch me breaking into your house, are you okay with me saying, “Sorry, my mistake”? Or what if I say I meant to break into the house next door? “Sorry, my mistake.”

Here are the four ways Merriam-Webster defines “mistake,” with examples.

1.      To blunder in the choice of [mistook her way in the dark]

2.      To misunderstand the meaning or intention of [don't mistake me, I mean exactly what I said]

3.      To make a wrong judgment of the character or ability of [The army's leaders mistook the strength of the enemy]

4.      To identify wrongly, confuse with another [I mistook him for his brother]

Then there’s the sense in which Craig used the word, which was, “I displayed mind-blowingly appalling judgment, but if I call it a ‘mistake’ maybe people will be more forgiving.”

I might be more forgiving if he had later said, “I made a mistake when I said ‘mistake.’”

[300 words]

Word Kill

 

Kill Your Darlings

Any writer can put words on a page or a screen. But good writers know which ones to kill.

Let’s look at five realms of redundancy.

Bureaucratic Speak: Here’s an example from a British government report. “What I have said has demonstrated that it is very difficult to find an answer to that question, but if pressed for an answer I would say that, so far as we can see, taking it rather by and large, taking one thing with another, and taking the average of departments, it is probable that there would not be found to be very much in it either way.” How about, “It’s a toss-up”?

Dead words: Words that are fine in speech kneecap our writing: Very (I once had a student use “very” fourteen times on one page), really, actually, etc.

Email: What could be cut in this exchange?

·         I’ve attached the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting.

·         Thanks.

·         You’re welcome.

·         We’ll talk more then.

·         Sure.

·         Look forward to it.

·         Me too.

·         Take care.

·         And you.

Will someone strangle those two?

[I don’t text, so I am spared the horror of those individuals who feel compelled to send a “like” to every text they receive.]

General Bloat [not to be confused with Major Disaster, Corporal Punishment and certainly not Private Parts]: Some examples, with possible solutions:

·         in the event that = if

·         regardless of the fact that = though

·         under the circumstances in which = when

Personal Bad Habits: We all have words with which we’ve fallen in love, our darlings. They serve as default fillers when we’re not writing thoughtfully. When I’ve finished a draft I’ll follow the writing advice of whoever said “kill your darlings” (apparently Arthur Quiller Couch) and launch a search and destroy mission against simply, just, and indeed.

Down with needless redundancy!

[300 words]