Happy American Pi Day! (Today's 3/14 in American-style notation; watch for British Pi Day in July--22/7, to be exact.) Having no actual celebration, real-life or online, planned, I offer you a new term I learned today: Daylight Stupid Time.
I've written here at least once before about how I am no fan of Daylight Savings Time, which happened to coincide with American Pi Day this year. Well, today John J. Miller posted an email in the Corner from a reader saying that the amateur astronomy community calls it Daylight Stupid Time. That sounds about right to me.
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Monday, February 01, 2010
Here's An Idea for Someone Else
When I saw the movie Ushpizin (mentioned a couple of posts ago), I got to experience one of those minor pleasures of life that people seldom talk about: unexpectedly hearing words you know in a stream of what are, to you, meaningless sounds. In the movie when the wife walked to the sink and started the hand-washing blessing, it took a moment for the penny to drop and me to realize, "Hey I heard that, I didn't understand it by reading subtitles". I knew the whole beginning of the blessing (Baruch atah adonai melech haolam...), because they are the beginning of other blessings and I Iearned them a long time ago. In the middle of this flow of sounds I couldn't understand was a sentence--or partial sentence--I did understand. Usually when I have this experience it's only a word: some busboys saying manana, for example, or one of the handful of Japanese words I know (oba-chan, konichiwa--words like that) coming out of an anime character's mouth. Suddenly hearing an English word in a stream of foreign language is also pretty good, but not quite as good.
Anyway, this is only preparatory to recommending a website that has some Hebrew blessings with the words in both Hebrew characters and roman letters and audio of each word being said or sung so that you can learn correct pronunciation: Learn Hebrew Prayers.com. Presumably the site will eventually be expanded to include more prayers.
And recommending that website is only preparatory to asking why some Catholic somewhere doesn't do this for Latin prayers? I've read advice to pronounce Church Latin like Italian (rather than Classical Latin), and I once somewhere saw a few Latin prayers spelled out phonetically for English speakers, but that's it. Any media-savvy speakers of Church Latin want to perform this service for us slobs who never studied Latin and are too lazy to start but would like to know a few prayers?
If I'm complaining about a lack that has already been filled, please tell me.
Anyway, this is only preparatory to recommending a website that has some Hebrew blessings with the words in both Hebrew characters and roman letters and audio of each word being said or sung so that you can learn correct pronunciation: Learn Hebrew Prayers.com. Presumably the site will eventually be expanded to include more prayers.
And recommending that website is only preparatory to asking why some Catholic somewhere doesn't do this for Latin prayers? I've read advice to pronounce Church Latin like Italian (rather than Classical Latin), and I once somewhere saw a few Latin prayers spelled out phonetically for English speakers, but that's it. Any media-savvy speakers of Church Latin want to perform this service for us slobs who never studied Latin and are too lazy to start but would like to know a few prayers?
If I'm complaining about a lack that has already been filled, please tell me.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Words That Sound Like Other Words
Yesterday on Craftster I saw a thread in which a couple of people seemed to have some discomfort with the term "fagot/faggot stitch", a knitting stitch pattern which I must confess I'd never heard of, although I've long known the similar sewing term--and, for that matter, the original stick term and its use in shortened form to refer to cigarettes in England, as well as the pejorative term these posters wanted to avoid seeming to say. Laudable as their desire not to give offense may be, I have a comment.
Item: My mother has told me how, in her youth, her teenage brother used to upset their preschooler nephew mightily by accusing the nephew of "peering out the window". The outraged child would be driven nearly to tears as the older boy asserted that he'd "seen him do it".
Item: Supposedly there was a politician back in the '30s who "attacked" his opponent by telling voters that the opponent's sister was a known thespian and that the opponent and his wife had practiced pre-marital celibacy. Ignorant voters drew the (intended) conclusion that the opponent and his family were immoral and supported the accuser.
People who get offended by words that happen to sound like other, offensive words are like my preschool cousin and those voters: they are betraying their ignorance by getting upset over inoffensive words they don't understand. Actually, many of them are even worse off than my little cousin and the uneducated voters, because my uncle was deliberately trying to annoy my cousin and the politician was deliberately trying to mislead the voters. A city councilman or teacher who uses the word "niggardly" to describe something that is niggardly is not trying to mislead or offend anyone. A person who uses the word "faggot" to describe a bundle of sticks, "fagoting" to refer to a certain decorative sewing technique, or "fagot stitch" to refer to a particular knit stitch pattern is not intending to mislead or offend anyone. To insist on being offended in these cases where there is no offense and no intent to cause offense is either to show that you are ignorant or to show that you are determined to be offended even when you know there's nothing to be offended about. Better vocabulary instruction in the schools could help with the former, but I don't know if there's anything that can help the latter.
Item: My mother has told me how, in her youth, her teenage brother used to upset their preschooler nephew mightily by accusing the nephew of "peering out the window". The outraged child would be driven nearly to tears as the older boy asserted that he'd "seen him do it".
Item: Supposedly there was a politician back in the '30s who "attacked" his opponent by telling voters that the opponent's sister was a known thespian and that the opponent and his wife had practiced pre-marital celibacy. Ignorant voters drew the (intended) conclusion that the opponent and his family were immoral and supported the accuser.
People who get offended by words that happen to sound like other, offensive words are like my preschool cousin and those voters: they are betraying their ignorance by getting upset over inoffensive words they don't understand. Actually, many of them are even worse off than my little cousin and the uneducated voters, because my uncle was deliberately trying to annoy my cousin and the politician was deliberately trying to mislead the voters. A city councilman or teacher who uses the word "niggardly" to describe something that is niggardly is not trying to mislead or offend anyone. A person who uses the word "faggot" to describe a bundle of sticks, "fagoting" to refer to a certain decorative sewing technique, or "fagot stitch" to refer to a particular knit stitch pattern is not intending to mislead or offend anyone. To insist on being offended in these cases where there is no offense and no intent to cause offense is either to show that you are ignorant or to show that you are determined to be offended even when you know there's nothing to be offended about. Better vocabulary instruction in the schools could help with the former, but I don't know if there's anything that can help the latter.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Something I've Wondered--Pro-life Grammar?
This is a very small thing and I am not trying to make fun of anyone by mentioning this, but I listen to EWTN radio or audiotaped TV pretty often and I sometimes hear something that I find grammatically odd. A fair number of people now use "pro-life" as a noun. They will say that someone "is working for pro-life", instead of saying that "So-and-so is doing pro-life work" or "So-and-so is a pro-life activist". Or they'll say things like "I try to talk to people about pro-life" or "She's involved in pro-life." Why not "I try to talk to people about pro-life philosophy/thought/concerns" or "She's involved in pro-life work." I don't understand why people would word things this way; it just does not sound like common usage. And how widespread is this? I accept Catholic teaching on life issues, but I am not involved in the pro-life political movement, so I don't know if this is something common to the movement as a whole or just something certain EWTN listeners/viewers use. It's not something that is keeping me up nights, but if anyone has an idea of what's going on here, I wouldn't mind hearing about it.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Separate and Very Unequal
John J. Miller has an article up at WSJ.com calling for the elimination of something I've always thought was a bad historical error, Indian reservations. The creation of Indian reservations effectively ended the chance for Indians to become full and equal citizens of the United states. Shoving them on reservations not only treated them as lesser people who could be stowed wherever the rest of the populace found them less inconvenient, but it prevented them from becoming participating members of society. It prevented assimilation. You can say maybe they didn't want to assimilate, but I think that should have been left up to the individuals to decide; Irish, Italian, and other immigrant groups got the chance to decide how far they wished to assimilate into the dominant US culture, why not the indigenous American Indians? Instead, it was determined that their future would be decided by government fiat and that their future would be one where they had, not even second-class citizenship, but a kind of non-citizenship thrust upon them. They count for nothing in American political life; they aren't even counted in voting statistics, last I heard. They have been kept separate from the rest of the country and hampered at every turn from pursuing the American dreams of self-determination, owning your own home, and making a better life for your children. It's a national shame, and it's one that is fueled by racism--the obvious, "hard" racism of the past and the "softer" racism of recent times that says Indians are different, their noble traditions won't permit them to function as citizens of a modern society, and what's more they don't want to do so, so we help them when we keep them separate. I think all people, Indian or non-Indian, can do without that kind of "help".
I guess some might defend the creation of reservations on the grounds some Indians fought the U.S. government and white settlers in their areas. Yes, some American Indians did that but so what? The Confederates rebelled against the whole United States, declared themselves a separate entity, and fought a full scale, bloody war against the US. They were accepted back into the Union and, after a relatively short time of transition, they were once again able to count themselves full citizens. Their descendants are free to do all the things any other American can do. It's long past time Indians were accepted into the national life of American.
I confess I have absolutely no idea how the reservation system could be ended, though. I wonder if Mr. Miller does. All I can imagine is a big old mess.
Oh, and do note I say American Indian, not "Native American". That latter term is the biggest load of bull I have ever heard. I am a native American--white skin, green eyes, freckled face, and all. I had ancestors here when there were just American Indians and various colonists, and every one of my ancestors who was born here was a native American. Until every English speaker develops the miraculous ability to speak in initial capitals so that "native American" is distinguishable from "Native American", I'm going to continue to say this is the stupidest bit of PC nonsense I've ever heard and I'm going to continue to say Indian (or tribal name, such as Choctaw, or individual name, such as Frank or Edna, depending on circumstances.) According to George Carlin, the term "Native American" was the invention of a federal government bureacrat anyway, and that's enough reason to look askance at the term right there, before you move on to considering the fact it's asinine.
I guess some might defend the creation of reservations on the grounds some Indians fought the U.S. government and white settlers in their areas. Yes, some American Indians did that but so what? The Confederates rebelled against the whole United States, declared themselves a separate entity, and fought a full scale, bloody war against the US. They were accepted back into the Union and, after a relatively short time of transition, they were once again able to count themselves full citizens. Their descendants are free to do all the things any other American can do. It's long past time Indians were accepted into the national life of American.
I confess I have absolutely no idea how the reservation system could be ended, though. I wonder if Mr. Miller does. All I can imagine is a big old mess.
Oh, and do note I say American Indian, not "Native American". That latter term is the biggest load of bull I have ever heard. I am a native American--white skin, green eyes, freckled face, and all. I had ancestors here when there were just American Indians and various colonists, and every one of my ancestors who was born here was a native American. Until every English speaker develops the miraculous ability to speak in initial capitals so that "native American" is distinguishable from "Native American", I'm going to continue to say this is the stupidest bit of PC nonsense I've ever heard and I'm going to continue to say Indian (or tribal name, such as Choctaw, or individual name, such as Frank or Edna, depending on circumstances.) According to George Carlin, the term "Native American" was the invention of a federal government bureacrat anyway, and that's enough reason to look askance at the term right there, before you move on to considering the fact it's asinine.
Friday, November 25, 2005
'Tis pity she's a person of negotiable affection...
Why are so many people nowadays so obsessed with whoring? It's as if no girl nowadays can say, "I like yarn" or "I really enjoy cookies"; no, it's "I'm a yarn whore" or "I'm a cookie whore." And don't even get me started on the fact that a large segment of the American population now uses the term "pimp" to refer to good, or at least innocuous, things.
Is it that the consumeristic, materialistic mindset has now been carried so far people no longer mind admitting they are for sale--and for cheap too. And does the same materialistic mindset mean they see no longer see any reason even to pretend to find exploiting people wrong? If that's so, why not go the whole hog and start talking about being a "yarn slave" and "slavemastering your 'ride'"?
Are some of them trying to shock people? If so it's not working, because everybody says it; maybe they could get a reaction if they talked about "lynching" instead of "pimping".
Or is all the whore and pimp talk just rampant crudity and no one using it is thinking about what they're saying?
Probably.
But I wonder if the whore thing--and the slut thing, too, as "slut" is used a lot and in a similar way-- isn't part of our modern anti-goodness. People nowadays are less apt to believe in goodness. When we see it depicted in fiction, we scoff at it; when we see it in life, we suspect it; when we hear it promoted, we mock it. We want our heroes not just
"warts and all", but nearly all wart; a strangely large number of us now prefer villains. Maybe this whore thing is a related phenomenon? People don't believe in virtue any more, but think if it did exist, it wouldn't be egalitarian to reach for it, so we're all more in tune with the times if we embrace vice instead. No girl believes in the idea of or wants to be a lady, but any girl can call herself a whore or a slut, and who's going to contradict her?
It's probably just crudity. But whatever it is, crudity or sign of deeper problems, couldn't people at least mix it up a little--say "pander" or "procuror" occasionally instead of "pimp", throw maybe an occasional "prostitute" or "madam" or "bawd" in there; I have seen a "harlot" or two, but that doesn't provide much variety. Even crudity needs originality! Get with it all you yarn/cookie/whatever cathouse denizens--pander your language!
And while you're doing that, maybe you could come up with some sort of ranking for the various whores? Just so we know where we are. I mean, is a two-skein whore the high-priced yarn whore or the cheap one? Do cookie whores come in two-chip versus blue-chip varieties, or is it a chip versus chunk scale? I just want to know so I don't inadvertently insult someone by suggesting her price is lower than it is--say calling a woman a styrofoam cup of instant Folgers whore when she's really more of an overpriced espresso kind of whore.
Is it that the consumeristic, materialistic mindset has now been carried so far people no longer mind admitting they are for sale--and for cheap too. And does the same materialistic mindset mean they see no longer see any reason even to pretend to find exploiting people wrong? If that's so, why not go the whole hog and start talking about being a "yarn slave" and "slavemastering your 'ride'"?
Are some of them trying to shock people? If so it's not working, because everybody says it; maybe they could get a reaction if they talked about "lynching" instead of "pimping".
Or is all the whore and pimp talk just rampant crudity and no one using it is thinking about what they're saying?
Probably.
But I wonder if the whore thing--and the slut thing, too, as "slut" is used a lot and in a similar way-- isn't part of our modern anti-goodness. People nowadays are less apt to believe in goodness. When we see it depicted in fiction, we scoff at it; when we see it in life, we suspect it; when we hear it promoted, we mock it. We want our heroes not just
"warts and all", but nearly all wart; a strangely large number of us now prefer villains. Maybe this whore thing is a related phenomenon? People don't believe in virtue any more, but think if it did exist, it wouldn't be egalitarian to reach for it, so we're all more in tune with the times if we embrace vice instead. No girl believes in the idea of or wants to be a lady, but any girl can call herself a whore or a slut, and who's going to contradict her?
It's probably just crudity. But whatever it is, crudity or sign of deeper problems, couldn't people at least mix it up a little--say "pander" or "procuror" occasionally instead of "pimp", throw maybe an occasional "prostitute" or "madam" or "bawd" in there; I have seen a "harlot" or two, but that doesn't provide much variety. Even crudity needs originality! Get with it all you yarn/cookie/whatever cathouse denizens--pander your language!
And while you're doing that, maybe you could come up with some sort of ranking for the various whores? Just so we know where we are. I mean, is a two-skein whore the high-priced yarn whore or the cheap one? Do cookie whores come in two-chip versus blue-chip varieties, or is it a chip versus chunk scale? I just want to know so I don't inadvertently insult someone by suggesting her price is lower than it is--say calling a woman a styrofoam cup of instant Folgers whore when she's really more of an overpriced espresso kind of whore.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Go Not Genderly Into That Good Term
In the 1970s, a small number of people got all het up about language, and we got a lot of terms like "fireperson", a sudden surge in slash usage (s/he, his/her), and the beginning of quite a lot of other pronoun nonsense, especially people being so afraid to appear sexist that they began to use plural terms where a generic "he" or "his" was called for ("Anyone wishing to survive the crash should put on the lifejacket stored beneath their seat. Anyone without a lifejacket may wish to put their head between their legs and...") A lot of the anger among the very few people in the population who actually cared was over the fact that English uses a male term as the generic--"mankind" rather than "personkind", "his" rather than some sex-generic term like "shis". That "man" can refer to a male human or to everyone, while "woman" can refer only to a female (or, more rarely, to females generally) but never to humanity as a whole, was supposed to be offensive.
I'm a child of my time, so I understand what they were saying: "The male is made the standard of all things, etc." But really now, couldn't it be interpreted exactly the opposite way? "A man is just a man, but a woman is something else! WOman is man-plus, man the deluxe model, man with extra. We say 'his'or 'he' for people within mixed groups, because while anyone can fit the basic model, not just anyone can be the luxury model."
Well, it makes as much sense as what the '70s language police were saying.
I'm about to go off to have my dinner, but it occurs to me that there's another oppressed group whose concerns the gender-in-language people were not concerned with: the animals. Won't somebody please think of the animals?! Language tradition wasn't much concerned with them either. How else do you explain the fact that there is no way to refer to members of a mixed humans (both sexes) and animals (both sexes) group? If I wanted to say that all the members of a mixed household were about to have dinner, but I started off with a singular term, how would I continue? "Each member of the Jones household is about to have her/his/its dinner." Rather awkward, don't you agree? So far the only non-sex or species-specific terms I can think of to substitute are "shirts" or "shits"; as the former may be somewhat more appropriate, I propose we use "shirts" for "her/his/its" and use "sheet" for she/he/it. I leave the question of why the Jones household is called by the name of its human oppressor rather than by the name of one of its animal members to someone else.
I'm a child of my time, so I understand what they were saying: "The male is made the standard of all things, etc." But really now, couldn't it be interpreted exactly the opposite way? "A man is just a man, but a woman is something else! WOman is man-plus, man the deluxe model, man with extra. We say 'his'or 'he' for people within mixed groups, because while anyone can fit the basic model, not just anyone can be the luxury model."
Well, it makes as much sense as what the '70s language police were saying.
I'm about to go off to have my dinner, but it occurs to me that there's another oppressed group whose concerns the gender-in-language people were not concerned with: the animals. Won't somebody please think of the animals?! Language tradition wasn't much concerned with them either. How else do you explain the fact that there is no way to refer to members of a mixed humans (both sexes) and animals (both sexes) group? If I wanted to say that all the members of a mixed household were about to have dinner, but I started off with a singular term, how would I continue? "Each member of the Jones household is about to have her/his/its dinner." Rather awkward, don't you agree? So far the only non-sex or species-specific terms I can think of to substitute are "shirts" or "shits"; as the former may be somewhat more appropriate, I propose we use "shirts" for "her/his/its" and use "sheet" for she/he/it. I leave the question of why the Jones household is called by the name of its human oppressor rather than by the name of one of its animal members to someone else.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Animal Story and The Way We Talk
I saw a news story yesterday about a couple of teenagers in Canada who gave a dead cat an emergency C-section. I like animal stories, and I am glad not all of the kittens had to die with the mother cat and that a cat who'd lost her kittens was able to adopt new ones. But a point of language struck me.
We--and by "we" I mean everyone, including MSM--have no problem referring to what's in the womb of a pregnant cat as "kittens"--i.e. the usual word for immature cats. Or what's inside the womb of a pregnant dog as "puppies" (the usual word for immature dogs), etc. It is only when referring to what's inside the womb of a human that using the usual word for its offspring--i.e. "baby"--becomes controversial.
Some people not only won't say "baby" but will correct those who do: "It's not a baby, it's a fetus!" (Never mind that "fetus" comes from the Latin for "baby" or "offspring".) And MSM stories that involve pregnant women and what they're carrying sometimes say "baby" and sometimes "fetus" or other; an ongoing news story may see the same being go from being referred to as "fetus" to "baby"--for example, things along the line of "Fetus Missing" to "Baby Found" this past winter when that pregnant woman was murdered and her, um, "product of conception" stolen. And it's not always clear why MSM choose to use one word over the other. Maybe wanted uterine passengers are "babies" and uterine passengers that are not wanted by the mother--or that the speaker/writer think the woman shouldn't have--are "fetuses"? Of course the MSM has to be careful how it talks about things to avoid offending readers/viewers, but I think sometimes they're playing the same game the non-media people are: change what you call it and you'll change what it is.
And none of this is to suggest that "fetus", "embryo", etc. are incorrect, only to point out that it's a bit odd for no one to mind our saying "kitten" in a place where our saying "baby" would have people yelling at us.
You know, maybe the "it's not a baby, it's a fetus" people are a bit like those people who get very angry when human evolution is mentioned, but who don't bat an eye when, say, badger evolution is mentioned or when their doctors talks to them about bacteria and viruses adapting to our medical treatments or when pesticide companies talk about insects evolving to endure our current pesticides.
After discovering that the cat's body was still warm, they
decided to try to save its kittens ...
[She] made an incision into the mother cat's belly and could
see the kittens.
She pulled them out and found that two of four kittens were
still alive...
We--and by "we" I mean everyone, including MSM--have no problem referring to what's in the womb of a pregnant cat as "kittens"--i.e. the usual word for immature cats. Or what's inside the womb of a pregnant dog as "puppies" (the usual word for immature dogs), etc. It is only when referring to what's inside the womb of a human that using the usual word for its offspring--i.e. "baby"--becomes controversial.
Some people not only won't say "baby" but will correct those who do: "It's not a baby, it's a fetus!" (Never mind that "fetus" comes from the Latin for "baby" or "offspring".) And MSM stories that involve pregnant women and what they're carrying sometimes say "baby" and sometimes "fetus" or other; an ongoing news story may see the same being go from being referred to as "fetus" to "baby"--for example, things along the line of "Fetus Missing" to "Baby Found" this past winter when that pregnant woman was murdered and her, um, "product of conception" stolen. And it's not always clear why MSM choose to use one word over the other. Maybe wanted uterine passengers are "babies" and uterine passengers that are not wanted by the mother--or that the speaker/writer think the woman shouldn't have--are "fetuses"? Of course the MSM has to be careful how it talks about things to avoid offending readers/viewers, but I think sometimes they're playing the same game the non-media people are: change what you call it and you'll change what it is.
And none of this is to suggest that "fetus", "embryo", etc. are incorrect, only to point out that it's a bit odd for no one to mind our saying "kitten" in a place where our saying "baby" would have people yelling at us.
You know, maybe the "it's not a baby, it's a fetus" people are a bit like those people who get very angry when human evolution is mentioned, but who don't bat an eye when, say, badger evolution is mentioned or when their doctors talks to them about bacteria and viruses adapting to our medical treatments or when pesticide companies talk about insects evolving to endure our current pesticides.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
How We Speak Today
Catherine Seipp's column today at NRO had the following hilarious anecdote on current mores:
Read the rest at http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200503310749.asp
"I can't get away with it," responded Angel's Tim Minear, whose new show The Inside is a
Silence of the Lambs-style gorefest that will premiere on Fox later this year.
"Children are gutted on my show from stem to stern, but I couldn't have a serial
killer say the word 'retard' because that would have been insensitive."
Read the rest at http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200503310749.asp
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
"Let 'Er Rip"
I don't care enough to actually research this, but my theory is that the saying "Let 'Er Rip", often used when starting up something dangerous of noisy, comes partly from the term RIP--Requiescat in Pace, or Rest in Peace.
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