Saturday, June 25, 2011

THERE IS

            This phrase is linked to my very pettest of peeves, the misuse of the word “they.” What both errors boil down to is a lack of understanding of, or downright rejection of, the concept of “number.”
            “There is many pitfalls on the road to financial recovery.” I hear such constructions every day, from people of all walks of life, from people who should know better.
            How many pitfalls? More than one? Then it should be: “There are…”
            All I can conceive of to explain this obvious error is that people are not even thinking a whole sentence ahead in their speech. If they knew when they started that they would refer to more than one thing, perhaps they would say it correctly. Or, perhaps, they are forgetting how they started a sentence before they finish it.
            Words are like tools. If they are well cared for, oiled occasionally, and kept sharp, they can produce true works of art. They can explicate complex meaning and differentiate between similar but not identical objects, events, and feelings. On the other hand, as is so often repeated these days, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
            Sloppy speech makes for sloppy communication, and that leads to the “dumbing down” of everyone.
            The classical arts of language are grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Grammar is a system of word meanings and the rules of their interaction. Logic is a method of weeding out inconsistencies and assumptions that lead to incorrect conclusions. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. If grammar is ignored or atrophies, it becomes more difficult to produce logical thoughts, and when rhetoric is unfettered by logic, people can be convinced of just about anything.
            Is our language deteriorating accidentally, or are there those who are working to dismember it? Look at those who wish to convince us for the answer. That’s why precise speech is important and worth preserving. Don’t let them dumb us down!


Thursday, June 23, 2011

MISNOMER

            This word simply means “wrong name” or “not the correct word in this context.” It is not, as some people seem to think, a synonym for “misconception” or “fallacy.”
            The prefix “mis-“ means wrong, or incorrect, as in “misspelling.” The “nomer” part of the word is related to the word “name” and such words as “nominate,” “nomenclature,” etc.
            “Calling an orangutan a monkey is a misnomer,” is a correct use of the term.
            “The belief that humans cause climate change is a misnomer,” is incorrect. It’s also wrong, but that’s just my opinion. Grammatically, the sentence would be correct if “fallacy” were used.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

ALOT

            I always try to figure out why people make the mistakes they do. Sometimes it’s easy; in this case it’s not.
            My only guess is that people extrapolate their misspelling of “a lot” from the word “apiece.”
            Whatever the cause, the unholy merger of “a” and “lot” is simply pandemic. In the past week, at least five of my Facebook friends have used it, including a state political leader and a local office holder.
            Bottom line: “a lot” is always two words. Period. End of story.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

THESE KINDS

            About three years ago I started hearing people using the phrase “these kinds of things,” and, like so many phrases, this one went viral. I’m sure some people used this construction in the past, but all of a sudden everyone seemed to be doing so.
            In most situations, “this kind of thing” is quite adequate. To have “these kinds of things,” you must have at least two sets of things.
            Examples are obviously necessary:
            “We’ve had floods in just about every state along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. I don’t know how people cope with these kinds of things.” (There was more than one flood, but no other disaster or difficulty was mentioned. This is a case of simply “this kind of thing.”)
            “In the last year, people in the Midwest have had to deal with drought, then extremely cold weather, then excessive rainfall, and now flooding of record proportions. I don’t know how they cope with these kinds of things.” (You could make a case for this one, but “this kind of thing” would work just as well – the set being the various disasters enumerated.)
            “Not only have Midwesterners had to deal with drought, extreme cold, excessive rainfall, and record flooding, but now several state legislatures have passed measures reducing aid to displaced persons. I don’t know how they can cope with these kinds of things.” (There are definitely two separate classes of things in this example, and the construction “these kinds of things” might be appropriate.)
            It’s a minor point, perhaps, but recently it has gotten worse. Now I keep hearing people say “these kind of things.” I can only shake my head as smoke wafts from my ears. There is no conceivable excuse for putting those words together.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

RETICENT

            This word means “reluctant to speak,” but I hear it more and more often used as a synonym for the more general term, “reluctant.”
            “Reticent” is related to the word “tacit,” which means “silent.” A good synonym is “taciturn,” which has the same root.
            “George was reticent about his many accomplishments in the field of nuclear engineering,” is a correct use of the word. “George was reticent to drive any vehicle with a stick-shift,” is not.

Friday, June 3, 2011

FELLOWSHIP

            This word is a noun, but especially in churches it can be heard used as a verb, as in, “We hope to have you fellowship with us again next Sunday.”
            One should be careful about turning perfectly good nouns into verbs. For example, I’ve heard the word “office” used that way: “Where do you office?” “I office in the Bradbury Building.”
            Yuck. I suppose this trend could catch on:
            “Oh, he’s hammocking in the back yard.”
            “My mother retirements at the Shady Rest Home.”
            “He violins with the orchestra.”
            Let’s hope it doesn’t catch on. I find it difficult to friendship with people who use “fellowship” as a verb.

DECIMATE

            This word means “to reduce by one-tenth,” and does not mean annihilate or devastate, as it is often used.
            Its origin goes back to the Roman Empire, where it was used as a punishment for cowardly or unsuccessful soldiers.
            Imagine, if you will, a Roman general standing before an offending line of soldiers, ordering them to count off, over and over, one to ten, then directing that every number three be killed. Undoubtedly the survivors would make every effort to avoid such an offense in the future.
            There have been cases throughout history where this method of discipline was applied to civilians, sometimes to the residents of entire villages.
            When such action is taken against human beings, it is grotesquely violent, but if, for example, a mouthwash were to advertise that it “decimates the bacteria that can cause disease,” it wouldn’t be very effective.
            If you want to say an event wiped out most of a group, “devastate” is more accurate than “decimate.”

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

AMERICAN


            In the 2007 Miss Teen USA contest, the finalist from South Carolina was asked why she thought it was that a fifth of Americans couldn’t find the United States on a world map. Her answer was mind-bogglingly incoherent and thus hilarious, and the YouTube video of it has racked up 50 million hits (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww). I must add that her smile was quite winning.
            What seemed to bother most people about her answer was her use of the term “U.S. Americans,” as if this were a stupid tautology. Nobody seemed to mind that she called the country where we’ve been fighting for a decade “The Eye-rack.” Twice.
             Well, I don’t think she was all that wrong in specifying which Americans she meant.
            There are (according to Wikipedia) fifteen countries or territories in South America, with a combined population of almost 400 million people. In North America, there are 43 countries and territories (including Central America and the Caribbean), with a total population of about 542 million.
            The United States of America (heavy on the “of”) is just one country with about a third of all those people.
            Yes, I am saying Canadians are Americans, too – as are Mexicans, Falkland Islanders, Brazilians, and even (gasp) Cubans.
            And yes, I realize that if you say you’re an American almost anywhere in the world, the hearer will assume you mean you’re from the United States. Katharine Lee Bates probably didn’t have Tierra del Fuego in mind when she wrote “America the Beautiful,” although the shining seas she speaks of meet down there.
            It’s just that I appreciate accuracy, and I resent those who seem to think everyone on the other side of an imaginary line is somehow inferior.
            Lyndon Johnson was famous for beginning his presidential addresses with “My fellow Americans,” and many of his successors have done the same, but I appreciate Barak Obama for ending his addresses with “…and may God bless the United States of America.” Perhaps he is sensitive to our usurpation of the word from our neighbors.