Mr Wrong

I went to college with Michael Gove.  He appeared to be a bit of a pompous snob even then.  But at least I thought he was literate.

He attacked something written in the Guardian Education pages by the children's author "Mr Rosen criticised the test on the basis that there was no such thing as correct grammar"

Yet Mr Rosen said no such thing.

It makes me sic

We need to rent out our house.  I've mentioned it before.  Below is the text that the major high street letting agency actually published to advertise this amazing Three bedroom new build house located within walking distance to Redbridge Central Line station and shops. 

The property benifits from having a large fitted kitchen/diner, seperate reception, integral garage which includes a seperate w/c ... This house is a must see so call now to aviod disappointment.

Let me know if you need to employ a proofreader. 

Let me know if you are interested in renting it.

Goallessness

Not about my objectives for the year, I'm still considering those.

My last post was a very simple one. But it was topical, posted just a few minutes after the incident to which it referred, and it was short, just 34 of my words around the quote.

One of those 34 words was goallessness. Anyone who watched the game, anyone who has watched any football, will know exactly what that word means. But it's not in the dictionary.

Yet I don't care. As Stephen Fry asked of those pedants who obsess about grammatical correctness: Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it?

Though in my case, it was simply the clearest most concise way of expressing the thought. Without using those bloody txt contractions.

Tweeting is for birds?

From JP on January 17th: Twitter is fast becoming my personal submarine and periscope to the ocean of the World Wide Web

From Ann on January 23rd: I think this year is Twitter’s year. I think their tipping point has been reached and passed.

From Stephen Fry just yesterday: Welcome to my twitterworld


But I'm still not sure about it. Two possible reactions:

From the stereotypical new woman, enthusiastic about this new way to communicate:

I am a twitter. Sexy, fun, dietin' manhunter.

Or from the stereotypical dinosaur, a guy who doesn't believe in all this new technology:

I am a twit. Terse, XY, fundie, tin man, hunter.

The same letters in the same order, just slightly different spacing.

Far From Feeling

I read Marginal Revolution. There found a link to the Typealyzer. It parses the text of a submitted URL and then makes an automated attempt to show the parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.

So, this is not really me, but this is my blog:

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy [sic] attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality.

So far so "good" ... but it finishes with:

Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Obviously not true?

Schadenfreunde

See jhal. If Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams and Stephen Fry can coin their own words, then so can I.

Without the "n", the word is a well known import from Germany. But the original carries strong negative connotations, malicious pleasure from the discomfort of others. And that is not nice.

But sometimes the others are your friends, people for whom you genuinely wish well. Yet occasionally, despite your best advice, they may make the wrong decision. Free will. No harm done, but a lesson learned. Schadenfreunde.

Frying Language

Oh frabjous day. I love it when "someone famous" expresses the same opinion that I've been banging on about here since the dawn of blogtime, especially when that "someone famous" is a linktastic legend. Five quotes almost randomly selected from 5000 words of pure bliss:

1. People seem to be able to find sensual and sensuous pleasure in almost anything but words these days. Words, it seems belong to other people, anyone who expresses themselves with originality, delight and verbal freshness is more likely to be mocked, distrusted or disliked than welcomed. The free and happy use of words appears to be considered elitist or pretentious.
Yes. Leave my words alone.

2. the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other people’s usage and in which they show off their own superior ‘knowledge’ of how language should be. I hate that, and I particularly hate the fact that so many of these pedants assume that I’m on their side.
He's not, and I'm not.

3. There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories [but] Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? ... Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades.
My echo - Trussed or Trust.

4. The worst of this sorry bunch of semi-educated losers are those who seem to glory in being irritated by nouns becoming verbs. How dense and deaf to language development do you have to be?
I call it Consultantspeak

5. I think what offends [us] when confronted with extremely informal, unpunctuated and haywire language is the implication of not caring that underlies it. ... But that is an issue of fitness, of suitability, it has nothing to do with correctness. ... Context, convention and circumstance are all.
Exactly. I actually said context and implied meaning were everything. Close enough.

He even recommends Steven Pinker! The whole blessay is excellent. However, Mr Fry, there is something to be said for conciseness too.

The Editors

I was asked to provide an initial review of the first draft of a first novel. Am happy to do so and look forward to it.

However, when it comes to the editing of my own written work, my views correspond almost exactly with those of Giles Coren. Read them here, but be warned about the language.

If it appears as though I have forgotten the rules of English grammar, that I have split an infinitive or misplaced a gerund, then dammit I meant it. If I've used a word that is not in the dictionary or placed a common expression into an uncommon location, then sorry but that's just the way I speak - or to be more precise that's just the way I write. Though I do want to make things clear, concise and unambiguous, I don't feel a need to subscribe to Truss to achieve that. Yes there is a chance that I made a mistake - but most of the time, when you see a flagrant disregard for grammatical convention and standard English etiquette, then it was entirely deliberate.

Probably.

For I do also have some sympathy with his subeditors.

Palindrome

I just got the idea from the Language Log, but imagine how the GOP poll ratings might slide if Sarah Palin were to be caught in an embarrassing situation after a few bottles of vino...

Lo Ho! Claret fades. Sarah harassed after alcohol.

Six and Out in Melbourne and London

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms.

That's today's quote from Google. One thing about George Orwell, he certainly had courage.

It's not only the likes of Sherry Jones and Taslima Nasreen who have shown courage. Scott Adams gets it too. But it would be too easy to just relate tales of Jon Swift and Lenny Bruce and Monty Python and a long history of comic subversion. Let's turn to cricket instead. There are many lessons for life in The Art of Captaincy and Opening Up, but most autobiographies are dross. And in CricInfo yesterday we are back to Orwell:

Upon hearing of the bugs squashed on the wallpaper of the hotel opposite his, young kitchen hand George Orwell did not beseech the bugs to write his book for him. Down and Out in Paris and London is no less grisly or educational a read for the lack of bugs' insights. Yet in cricket we see the bugs everywhere, furnishing us with their bug's-eye perspectives, and not just any old bugs but former top-level bugs.

But those "bugs" that Christian Ryan refers to are some serious big names in the world of cricket. So there goes his chance of getting any exclusive interviews with them. That was brave too.

Monkish Ignorance and Superstition

The folks at the Language Log, in addition to some fairly technical discussion of innate linguistic tendencies, often highlight people who just get get it completely wrong about the "rules of grammar". So they usually identify fools. But yesterday they identified liars.

It is similar to the case I mentioned on 7th March where a sly salesman changed my quote. It was not just correction of spelling or grammar; although I hope you find no fault here, I actually care little for those. What piqued me was a change in implied meaning.

Yesterday was the same idea, but a far more serious example. Thomas Jefferson is a hero, the Declaration of Independence was just an expression of Common Sense. His entire life's work was an attempt to elevate science and reason over outdated ideas of hereditary privilege and superstition.

So George Bush quoted Thomas Jefferson in his Independence Day speech. Directly from the transcript on the White House website: "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be — to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all — the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government."

An egregious lie. Completely missing from the middle of the quote above, after "to burst the chains" and before the comma were the crucial words: "under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves"

That's all that was omitted. You can see why George's speechwriter chose that omission.

From everything I have ever read of him, Thomas Jefferson wanted to build a new world free of organised religion, a state without church. Not only does George Bush seem to want to reverse that decision, he seems to want to rewrite history to do so.

Undiversification

Prosody. That's the word I was looking for. Back when I referred to the "unique sound of a language". Back when I said that I prefer my name to be pronounced differently depending upon the language being used at the time.

Mark Liberman attempts to quantify it at the oft-quoted Language Log, which is also the place to go if you want to debunk crazy theories that English needs to replicate the rules of Latin grammar.

According to Not the Nine o Clock News, the hardest words to say in English are Kinda Lingers. I suggest that a cunning linguist could do better.

What's in a name

Watching Euro2008, we constantly get to hear the commentators mis-pronouncing foreign names. The ITV commentator who constantly refers to "Nicola Anelka" (sic) is simply an idiot. But that's an easy target. More controversially, I suggest that we sometimes go too far trying to get the right native pronunciation, sometimes it's ok to Anglicise...

My name is Rana, I am writing in English, but I have a different name in Bengali. My name in Bengali is Rana.

I have neither the knowledge nor the keyboard to accurately write out all the different phonemes involved, but in some respects English is a very limited language. Only twenty-six letters, though other sounds can be created through combinations of those letters. I actually like the limited set used here, it gives extra scope for pun and games. Bengali has over forty letters including more than one that approximates to n. The first is like the English one. The second is a bit different, and it is not the same as the Spanish ñ either. My name uses the second one. More significantly, within my Bengali name, the stress is not so strongly on the first syllable.

But, and this is the message here, if you are talking in English then keep your pronunciation in English. Don't try to completely copy the native phrasing. I've said it before. It just sounds odd.

Thy will be done

As evident in my continual misuse of grammatical standards and as I periodically restate here, I am no professional student of English.

But although it is self-evident that Indo-European languages share common ancestry, I vaguely recall that some serious scholars have alleged that language shapes culture and perhaps there are little-known languages such as Hopi that have no real concept of time; or at least no past, present and future tense as we recognise them today in our western European world.

It's very predictable that I'd recommend The Language Instinct for an excellent overview of this subject. Of course the Hopi theory is debunked there. But that book is a decade old. What I noted just today was that Geoff Pullum reminded us that English has no future tense.

"The fact that there is a stubborn tendency in English grammar books to misrepresent will be as the future tense of be doesn't make it right. "

The word will is not a marker of future tense, it is an auxilliary verb that can indicate a future tense, but only sometimes depending on context. Other English modifiers can equally be used. But reduce to common sense. English has no future tense.

Bear Stearns

I'm not really one for nominative determinism, more for pointless puns. But I couldn't help but think that the name Bear Stearns was a delicious candidate to be the first bank on Wall Street to feel the crunch. After all, the definition of bear from the American Heritage Dictionary:

One, such as an investor, that sells securities or commodities in expectation of falling prices.
A pessimist, especially regarding business conditions.

It's maybe not the ideal sounding name for a company in which you would want to invest your savings.

Unlike bear, the word stearn is not in my dictionary. The closest match is probably stern. I'll just quote in its entirety the third of three definitions of this noun from Wordnet, not because it's relevant, just because it's funny:

the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on; "he deserves a good kick in the butt"; "are you going to sit on your fanny and do nothing?" [syn: buttocks]

The bare sterns did get a good kicking.

The Rule of Words

Tuesday was National Grammar Day, but it should be clear that I either disregard or do not know the official rules of English - instead I follow amateur linguistic guidelines - context and implied meaning are what count.

I don't usually discuss specific incidents except to make a more generic point. However, a software supplier wrote an email to a senior client today, copied to me, including the following lines:

To secure the resources from our side, we would like to complete the contract and purchase order by the 14th March. With regard to future process improvements, I mentioned a complimentary module used by [the client]

Context and implied meaning. Our prior expectation was that the extra module would cost more money, so the phrase above suggested to me that a clarification was in order. My note to the supplier was polite and specific, I quoted the above phrase and asked:

Do you mean complimentary or complementary? As we decide our budgets and scope of work, the distinction is important.

And the supplier was quick to reply. Of course he meant:

complementary as in "forming or serving as a complement; completing"...

There is no good vs evil in this, we all make mistakes and if they are clarified then that is fair enough.

But there was an unsavoury twist to this story. These emails have attached history. In addition to showing the clarification in his new note, the supplier overtyped the word in the history. He changed his original note to use complementary instead of complimentary, and even changed the quote within my email.

Looking at his final note implies that his original text was correct and also implies that I highlighted a possible distinction purely to make a pedantic point. He deliberately changed what I wrote. Probably not evil, but maybe unethical.

Of course if the original note had said complementary, then the implied meaning would have matched expectation and I would not have asked for clarification. You should know that.

And please do not misquote me.

National Grammar Day

Yesterday in England was Mamma's day, and tomorrow in the US is Grammar's Day.

The SCOGG manifesto: We owe much to our mother tongue. It is through speech and writing that we understand each other and can attend to our needs and differences. If we don't respect and honor the rules of English, we lose our ability to communicate clearly and well. In short, we invite mayhem, misery, madness, and inevitably even more bad things that start with letters other than M.

Within this blog and elsewhere, I undertake an eternal fruitless quest for perfect clarity and zero spelling mistakes. So you might guess that I agree with those statements. But that guess would be wrong. It would be reading a conclusion from the style of this blog and not from its content. I have spelled it out before.

Specifically regarding the guardians of grammar day, the Language Log, with impeccable grammar, points out three ridiculous assumptions in their manifesto that I summarise below:

1. non-standard variants are unclear and therefore impede communication
2. respecting and honoring "the rules of English" is what permits people to convey meaning to others
3. for English, the "standards" seem to be defined by a self-proclaimed group of commercial publishers, editors, etc who seem to know nothing about the nature of language or its history.
   

I mention them here because I don't actually think that any of those assumptions are very obvious. But they are there, and he was right to highlight them. And English is not my mother tongue anyway.

Break a Leg

Both my dad and my brother have performed on stage many times. That is not just amateur dramatics, my dad is a member of Equity and is off filming something in Wales next week. Within theatrical circles, I have heard the phrase "break a leg" used as an expression of support before a show.

Even the most casual perusal of this blog will make clear my opinion on such superstitions. I'll just say that they deserve as much respect as religions.

But I appreciate some human psychology. If a dumbo actor thinks carrying around a little lucky feather makes him perform better, then he is likely to perform better with it. If someone feels better after being wished good fortune, I will wish them good fortune.

I'm getting up early to play football tomorrow. And over the years I have witnessed the genuine breaking of legs right in front of me many times, and I can still recall the sight and sound of a snapping limb. For all of Sky's sensationalist coverage of the Premier League, I am pleased they did not replay the Eduardo incident today. Though even news programmes have now shown it.

So I have never used that phrase. And I never will. Is that superstition?

Miles Away

I am not going to write an obituary for Miles Kington. Although I should. This after all was the guy who "wished his obituary to begin with a series of utterly false statements".

But he managed to do every day for many decades what I struggle to do for just a day - to write an original topical witty grammatically perfect concise funny article and deliver it to a rigid journalistic schedule. If only this blog was like that.

So instead I will just recall his poetic advice to anyone in this field:

You can say all you like
About science and art
But if nobody's listening
It's not worth a fart.
You can utter pure wisdom
On art and on science
But none of it works
If you haven't got clients.

And the moral of the tale, The Leaf on the Tree:

Get a life. And leave it gracefully, when the time comes.

Olla

At lunch today the subject turned to food. The rice was undercooked, but that was just normal for the client office restaurant. But I was reminded of two basic marketing areas, and another one has just occurred to me now.

1. Brand value:

One person commented that he had eaten a particular brand of pie only once and had fallen spectacularly ill immediately afterwards. He had never touched that brand again. Now that brand is well-known and respected, and I would have thought that if you must have a pie, then at least choose a well-branded product. But first impressions count and the guy's reaction was perfectly understandable.

2. Product Currency:

A second person at the table recently got married. Between the reception last Saturday and the vultures in the office, we have polished off most of the wedding cake. However, pre-deep-freeze tradition dictates that a piece of cake is saved for a year. But I really don't think a year-old cake would be too healthy.

Yet sometimes the "maturing" of a dish is what provides its special flavour. We can create a new more valuable product in the eyes of the consumer by appealing to grounds of tradition and maturity, regardless of its intrinsic value.

3. Lying in advertising:

And coincidentally Bill Poser at Language Log brought up exactly the same subject only yesterday. He provides an excellent analysis of how deteriorating food sometimes becomes valuable delicacy. He started his analysis with a recipe printed in the New York Times, the dish was called "Olla Podrida", that means "Rotten Pot", the etyomology has been verified.

Yet the author of the Times article admits: she and her consultants and editors were aware of the correct name and etymology but thought that some readers might be put off by the notion of rotten food, so they changed the name a little and made up a fake etymology.

So the restaurant owner is quoted as saying: "Olla means pot, and the original name was olla poderida, which comes from poder, which means strength"

But if the newspaper editors were the people who changed the name, then how did the restaurant owner who sourced the dish provide that quotation?