Tag Archives: Language

Having to do with the quirks that work their way into people’s understanding of their native language.

OK, I Give!

St. SebastianYeah, that’s the way it is with me. Not one to be a martyr in a lost cause, I give up, already.

See, you don’t know me, but I am one of those people–one of those really disgusting people, apparently–who knows all the words and all the grammar and usage rules, but what’s the use, really? I mean, none of it seems to do anyone any good anymore, does it? It’s certainly nothing to boast about in today’s cultural milieu. One should, rather, hang one’s head in shame for knowing all those words and all those rules. Sign of a misspent youth and all that, what?

“Hey, wait,” you say. “You cocky jerk, isn’t it ‘all of the words’ and ‘all of the rules'”? Not really. Nope. And what about knows? Surely, people know things, don’t they? Well, they do, but one person knows things. This one confuses M$ Word’s grammar checker, too, so give yourself a pass. Score one for you if you marked the cliche near the end there, however.

The fact is, though, I’m tired. Having fought the good fight in an English classroom for a quarter century, I can say rather authoritatively that the fight already is over and the other side has won. The barbarians are at the gates, and we’re trapped inside the walls living in our own filth. We’re obviously correct in everything we say or write, but that doesn’t make the air smell any better in here, does it?

But, as my in-laws from Long Island say, “wadda-ya gonna do?” The forces acting to change language are just too strong. Resistance is futile, or perhaps I should say, feudal. I am going to go ahead and be ass-immolated.
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Dolly Lama?

The current Dalai LamaWith the Dalai Lama so much in the news lately, I am struck by how many commentators mangle the pronunciation of his title. I mean, he’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner (1989), for crying out loud. Can we get this right?

It seems that many of them pronounce it “DOLL-lee LAH-muh.” The more approved western pronunciation, however, seems to be something along the lines of “DOLL-eye LAH-mah” (see the resources below). The man himself, heard in recent interviews, seems to say something like “dah-LA-la-ma,” almost as if it were one word with the accent on the second syllable.

One particularly frustrating instance of this confusing pronunciation phenomenon occurred in an interview (3/26/08) on NPR‘s Fresh Air. In her discussion with Pico Iyer, author of The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Terry Gross continued to call the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide the “Dolly Lama” despite the fact that the interviewee, a man acquainted with the Dalai Lama for over 30 years, kept pronouncing it in the approved western fashion.

The natural question is, “What’s going on here?”

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“Shooting Spree”

Whitman.jpgThis is one “convention” of journalists that could use some some serious reflection. Whenever someone shoots more than one or two victims, members of the chattering class will refer to the incident as a “shooting spree.” The phrase, ringing so close to the more common “shopping spree,” makes it sound as if someone were having just a whole lot of fun killing people.

The phrase is problematic on so many levels. It has become a particularly obnoxious cliché in the vast majority of cases, it is anything but accurate; furthermore, and more to the point, the phrase could encourage impressionable fringe characters by making the actions of a crazy person sound attractive and fun.

I don’t know which is a worse offense, frankly. I hate cliché s, I hate fuzzy, inaccurate prose, but the idea of making a destructive act of utter desperation sound like fun does not strike me as all that useful, either.
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Forward Slash?

Or even more nonsensically, forwardslash.

Where in the world has this new trend come from? I refer to the tendency of calling a “slash” a “forward slash.”

The keyboard has always had a slash character. On the “qwerty” keyboard, it’s there in the lower-right corner under the question mark. It’s a slash. It always has been, at least since Civil War days.

Now people in the media are referring to it as a “forward slash,” and the trend is growing. Why would this be? Where did all this unnecessary folderol come from? I’m thinking it has to do with the various marketing departments of many large firms and their constant efforts at idiot-proofing the world.

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