We Must Not Offend Anyone! – Political Correctness and “Merry Christmas”

27th November 2011 By 2 Comments

Some people at this time of year prefer to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, because they’re afraid it will offend non-Christians.

I’m not Christian. And I don’t really give a crap about what religion people are trying to tiptoe around when they do stuff like this. More often than not, they seem to end up tripping over their own feet in the process.

But what I am interested in is what the concept is about. I don’t think it’s about political correctness at all. I think that once again, most people have unwittingly assigned the wrong word to this problem.

Is it political correctness or is it a simple acknowledgment of multiculturalism? (BTW, I don’t do political correctness, either. I think some people take it way too far. Get hobbies – knitting is a worthy one.)

Not everyone’s Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, agnostic, wiccan, stop me any time… holiday seasons vary according to the country people live in. In countries where the population is predominantly Muslim, a traditional greeting during Ramadan is

  • “Ramadan Mubarak!” (“Blessed Ramadan!”)

Other greetings include:

  • “Ramadan Kareem!”
    (“Noble (or Generous) Ramadan!”), and
  • “Kul ‘am wa enta bi-khair!”
    (“May every year find you in good health!”)
As far as I know, there is relatively little argument beyond this about how to greet people during this holy time.  (If I’m wrong, please use my contact page to get in touch, and I’ll be happy to correct the error. I minored in Religion in my undergrad degree, and so learned received a very basic education regarding Islam. I’ve since done some informal reading on it. Very interesting, with a rich history.)
The third example of greeting could even be held up as non-denominational, in my opinion – since when do you have to be of any particular belief persuasion to wish someone else a year of good health? Plus, if you learn the Arabic form, you’ll impress all your friends at pub quizzes.

A question for my readers:

Is the United States the only country in which people publicly tie themselves into knots, year after year, over what to say to each other depending on where the Earth is in relation to the Sun, particularly as November slides into December?

 

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Prayer, Grammar, Activity and Passivity in Twitter Trends

25th November 2011 By 1 Comment

I’m annoyed.

Today, one of the top trends in Twitter is #prayforjustinbieber.

Why does Justin Bieber need prayers? To stop people from chasing him? Why doesn’t he just do what Graham Chapman’s character did in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, and choose to die whilst being chased by a horde of naked girls clothed only in wrist and knee guards (and skating helmets, I think – I couldn’t find the video). He meets his end by leaping off a cliff – the girls chased him to it.

“Pray for” #twittertrends – I don’t get it. Why can’t people do something useful, like donate to charity or visit sick friends in hospital?

I understand that not everyone can afford to donate what they’d like to for charity. But every pound or dollar helps, and you can volunteer your time, too, in the event that you really are strapped for cash.

Why do people trend “pray for” – are they actually religious, or do they just do it because everyone else is doing it – rather like the phenomenon of “crowd applause” (I don’t think that’s the right name for it, but it happens when one person in a crowd starts clapping, the rest quickly follow suit even if they have no idea why they’re doing it – the desire not to be left out is so overwhelming that it overrides anything else)? This is something I learned about when I studied social psychology. So far I haven’t been able to track down a formal reference to it, but I’ll keep looking because now not knowing exactly the name for it is bugging me!

What about atheists? Isn’t it a little presumptuous to start praying en masse for people who don’t believe in your particular religion? What do you hope to accomplish on their behalf? Are you trying to make them feel better…or just yourself?

Prayer is passive; why not be active?

Uhoh, I feel a Grammarian rant coming on!

In first-year English class at uni, my professor would hold forth for entire lectures about how it was better to write in the active voice rather than in the passive. But writing in the passive voice does have its uses. I suppose what he was getting at could have been the idea that it is important to simply pay close attention to what you’re writing. Microsoft Word used to – I don’t know if it still has – a thing at the end of every Word Count that you run – statistics on the document, and one of those things is a percentage of the sentences written in the active and passive voice. I particularly remember this feature when I was working on essays on my Grandpa Marcel’s Mac computer.

Grammarians, care to weigh in?

I haven’t written an English paper in ages; the statistics thing at the end of the word count fairly exploded at the end of trying to calculate the percentage of passive sentences in any one of the psychology papers I had to write (APA style, which by its nature requires more use of the passive voice). Sorry, English professor Annandale!

Perhaps the reason people trend #prayfor has little to do with nebulous religious beliefs, but more to do with a visceral need for social acceptance. If you don’t show support for someone in need, and an “easy” way of support (i.e. by typing a meaningless phrase) is available, use it, rather than putting some effort into a concrete method of assisting someone in need that might actually do some good.

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Dangling Modifiers and Giving Ray Bradbury a Blowjob

21st November 2011 By 1 Comment

I’m evil.

Sloppy grammar - go home and do it again!

I’ve found yet another geeky reason to link to Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury by Rachel Bloom: Talking on Facebook about dangling modifiers and the need for correct grammar and spelling:

Grammar hammering needs to be done when the butchering of grammar by the unwashed masses means that one can’t understand the message. Or it makes the writer look idiotic. Aren’t people (adults) embarrassed when their grammar and spelling are sloppy?

There is a verse that goes,

Come on baby, I’m down on one knee
I carved our names on a Halloween Tree
You write about earthlings going to Mars
And I write about blowin’ you in my car

(Reprinted from http://lyrics.wikia.com/Rachel_Bloom:Fuck_Me,_Ray_Bradbury)

The last line is an example of a dangling modifier. Is Rachel singing about giving Bradbury a blowjob in her car, or is she singing about writing about giving him a blowjob in her car? Is she doing the sex act in the car, or is she merely writing about the scenario (which contains the sex act), but isn’t actually performing fellatio on him at that time?

Either way, Mr Bradbury reacted thusly:

For your pleasure, dear readers: Use these!

http://dictionary.reference.com/

http://thesaurus.com/

http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/

 

 

 

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Happy Birthday, Edmond Halley!

8th November 2011 By Leave a Comment

On today’s Google Doodle:

Today is Edmond Halley’s 335th birthday. He’ s the English astronomer best known for computing the orbit of the comet in his name.

I didn’t know that “Halley” (as in the comet, named for the English astronomer who computed its orbit) has three different pronounciations. I’m accustomed to the one that rhymes with “daily”. The most common one (used in Great Britain) is the one that rhymes with “valley”.

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Shivanaut Scarves – Oh My Stars and Garters!

4th November 2011 By 3 Comments

My current project is a set of seven scarves, for Havi Brooks’ Playground Shop at The Fluent Self.  They are knit with Lion Brand Jiffy yarn (Shocking Pink, and Black), which I bought from a fabulous online yarn shop called Banyan Tree Yarns. Georganne Cauchi, the proprietor, has been helping me with many of my latest projects – determining how many skeins I need is a very simple maths calculation, which my artsy-fartsy brain seizes up on.

14 August, 2011: I’m starting the sixth scarf today! The first five were knit with stockinette stitch, and unfortunately roll inwards; that’s just the way that stitch behaves. So with the remaining two scarves, I’ll do a garter stitch and see if they stay flattened.

04 November 2011: I’m about a third of the way through the seventh and final scarf. It’s also being done in garter stitch, and it turns out that this type of stitch does make the scarf stay much flatter.

“Oh, my stars and garters!”

 

When Beast/Hank McCoy says this in the movie X3: The Last Stand, it’s not the sort of thing you’d expect a brawny, furry fellow to exclaim, which is why it’s funny. Ordinarily, you’d expect something more brutish to come out of such a tough-looking guy’s mouth. But Beast, as we learn, is a well-educated, cultured, and refined gentleman (who quietly bemoans his eternal torment of shedding on the furniture; I can only imagine how much he spends each month on lint rollers to keep his suits immaculate!).

I went searching for the origin of the phrase and found this:

Meaning: 

A jocular exclamation or expression of astonishment.

Origin

‘Oh, my stars and garters’ is now very much an American expression.

‘Stars’ has been a favourite in British exclamations for many centuries; for example, ‘bless my stars’, ‘thank my lucky stars’ – both 17th century coinages. This usage of the word dates back to at least the 16th century, when it was used by Christopher Marlowe in the play The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, circa 1593:

“O my starres! Why do you lowre [bring down in rank] unkindly on a king?”

The stars in question are the astrological bodies and one’s stars were one’s position in life, or disposition.

Moving on to ‘garters’ and the connection isn’t with astrology, or even hosiery, but with chivalry. The Noble Order of the Garter is the highest heraldic order that the British monarch can bestow…’Stars and garters’ was used as a generic name for the trappings of high office and, by extension, the people who occupied such; for example, this piece from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, circa 1712:

“While Peers, and Dukes, and all their sweeping train, And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear.”

‘Oh, my stars and garters’, when used as a humourous exclamation, appears to be a merging of the previous ‘star’ exclamations and the ‘stars and garters’ associated with the honours given to the great and the good.

(Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/my-stars-and-garters.html)

Way to go, furball.

 

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Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say

28th October 2011 By Leave a Comment

Arguments over use of language continue. It would be much simpler to invent new words for these concepts. This Wikipedia article discusses the use of the adjective “Polish” in reference to the Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_death_camp_controversy 

Offense has been caused because Polish officials are (rightly, in my opinion) dismayed to be referred to in media as the architects and purveyors of the “Polish death camps” that were located within the borders of their country. However, they argue that these camps were conceived of in Nazi Germany, and run by the Nazis, while the Nazis occupied their country.

It’s a no-brainer: Poland itself wasn’t responsible for genocide. But it’s still less of a mouthful to say “Auschwitz” than it is to say the more politically and ideologically correct “Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945).”

Then there’s the trouble with the word “German” and the stigma attached to the country and its citizens because of the two World Wars. Not all Germans were Nazis. Not all Nazis were Germans. Hitler was Austrian. There are good and bad people everywhere – it makes no difference what country they are from.

(And what was with Hitler’s “Aryan, blonde hair, blue-eyed” obsession? That’s still something I don’t understand. Hitler was dark-haired ad dark-eyed. Wouldn’t that mean he’s effectively sending himself to the gas chambers because he doesn’t fit the arbitrary mold of idiotic physical perfection that his Party has cooked up? But sanity is not what was going on there. Maybe he’d taken too much meth to make any sense to himself. Too bad all those assassination attempts failed. But Valkyrie is still a good film.)

English is a particularly problematic language when it comes to adjectives and demonyms. There is often only one word to describe both – which makes them visually identical – but they mean quite different things.

English language

English literature

English people

English cuisine

An adjective is a word which describes, or qualifies, a noun or noun phrase.

A demonym is the name for the resident of a locality. A demonym is usually – though not always – derived from the name of the locality. Thus, the demonym for England is English; the demonym for Italy is Italian, but the demonym for Netherlands is Dutch. [source: Wikipedia: "demonym"]

Russian, on the other hand, has different words for these things. Let’s look at the adjective “Russian”.

(Now, I’m going to assume that some of my readers can’t read Russian, so bear with me, and I’ll talk you through it, OK? This is the language I studied for my undergraduate degree, so it’s the one I feel most qualified to use as a tool for demonstration. What you’ll be able to see is that the letters of the different words in Russian – which uses the Cyrillic alphabet – don’t look the same. It would be like me writing two English words: house and catastrophe, and even if you didn’t know the language, you could probably suss out that these words aren’t the same.)

Russian language  = русский язык

Russian economics = российская экономика

Russian citizen = россиянин (Russian man); россиянка (Russian woman)

See how those words are all different? 

 

One last thought. from the film The Last Emperor (1987):

Reginald Fleming ‘R.J.’ Johnston (played by Peter O’Toole): ”Words are important.”

Emperor Pu Yi at 15 (played by Tao Wu): “Why are words important?”

Reginald Fleming ‘R.J.’ Johnston: ”If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say, and a gentleman should always mean what he says.”

 

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Bilingual Babies

18th October 2011 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I wrote about linguistics and language acquisition in kids under 3 years old, so I needn’t belabor the point here. Here’s an article that I came across today:

Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html?_r=1

Doesn’t the mental picture of an infant-size EEG cap just make you go “Awwww!”? How about twenty little kids sporting them, all seated together, whilst budding scientists take notes?

"Give me back the toy, HAL." "Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

 

I knew that when I started studying Russian in university, I wanted, eventually, to raise kids who spoke both English and Russian at home – providing that my other half was agreeable to it. But how to do it? How do you do it without isolating the parent who only speaks English?

It turns out that books are available to help – lots of them, as it turns out.

Here are a few (mind you, I don’t know how good they are; I’ve just put them on my as-yet-unconceived baby wish list). When and if you do buy books like these, it’s a toss-up between hardcover and paperback. Personally, I choose paperbacks because they are cheaper, and easier for me to hold. On the other hand, hardcovers tend to last longer. I’ve linked you to the paperbacks for these books:

“Raising a Bilingual Child” by Barbara Zurer Pearson (Amazon US link)

“The Bilingual Edge” by Kendall King and Alison Mackey (Amazon US link)

“The Bilingual Family: A Handbook For Parents” by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley (Amazon US link)

“Growing Up with Two Languages: A Practical Guide” by Una Cunningham-Anderson and Staffan Andersson (Amazon US link)

Happy reading!

I don’t own a Kindle yet. :P

 

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Your kid can’t pronounce a letter? Don’t panic!

16th October 2011 By Leave a Comment

On Facebook recently, I saw a woman fretting over the fact that her 22-month old daughter couldn’t pronounce the letter “L” in words like clock, cluck, flock, clear. She wanted to know whether she should look into getting the child into speech therapy.

I studied about half a degree’s worth of undergraduate psychology courses, and a full undergraduate degree of Russian language, as well as courses in phonetics and semantics. A child’s mouth is quite small, and the tongue is a comparatively large piece of flesh flopping more or less aimlessly around in that confined space. They’re learning motor skills at that age and only just starting to master gross motor skills. The movements of the tongue are fine-motor skills, so at this stage, a few mispronunciations and muddled sounds aren’t the end of the world.

In both adult and child language acquisition, the rule of thumb is that if you get the gist of what the person is saying, reward them, ignore little mistakes, and parrot back correct words and phonemes (sounds) (“Yes dear, that’s a flock of geese.”).

Having said that, catching serious speech anomalies in kids at an early stage is important, so it’s up to the parents and their physicians to make that judgment call.

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