Wordmanship
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Voting for W.C. Fields
Monday, September 29, 2025
An international language
English has become an international language in two different ways. First, people almost everywhere in the world learn English in school even if it is not spoken in their homes. Whether it's for business, for enjoying western movies, websites, books, etc., or simply for speaking with American tourists, it makes sense to learn English wherever one lives.
Recently I stayed in a home where several young men from Nepal were living while attending college in Ohio. In conversing with each other they always spoke their native language, but they could switch to English very easily whenever I stepped into the room. I, on the other hand, know English and only English.
I have known visitors from China, Nigeria, South Korea and other countries who spoke my language as well as I did, often without much of an accent. That's because English is an international language. English speakers can visit almost anywhere in the world and find someone who understands what they are saying.
English is international in another way, as well. The language readily welcomes new words from anywhere. While French is a language that discourages acceptance of foreign words, English readily accepts foreign words and is enriched by them.
Consider the origin of several words so common that we might think of them as being English from the start: rocket (Italian), rapids (Canadian French), punch (Hindi), boss (Dutch), emotion (French), tycoon (Japanese), robot (Czech).
The reason foreign words sound English when English speakers say them is that while we may accept foreign words, we do not, as a rule, accept foreign pronunciations. We may accept ukulele from the Hawaiian language, but that doesn't mean we say it the same way native Hawaiians say it. We turned it into an English word.
By contrast, when an English word is adopted into many other languages, it is often pronounced as an English speaker would say it. Thus, it can be surprising to listen to a German radio station, for example, and to suddenly hear English words, said as an American might say them, inserted into otherwise German sentences.
When other languages sometimes adopt English words, they often take them pronunciation and all. English speakers, on the other, welcome words from anywhere, but then we make them our own.
Friday, September 26, 2025
Nothing respectable
Jane Smiley |
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Fake news
The other day in Greensburg, Pa., I found the first copy of The Onion I had seen in years, and I bought it to see how it stacked up in 2025.
All satire, including the Bee, has hits and misses, and much of this depends upon the individual. Some things just strike some people as funny, but not other people. This issue of The Onion had a few hits, though not many in my opinion.
On the front page, I liked the story headlined "Trump Imposes 25% Tariff On Chinese-Made Trump Products." Also funny were a couple of teasers for stories not actually in the fake newspaper: "Trump Writes Netanyahu Strongly Worded Check" and "Grandma Recalls Wild Teenage Year Before She Met Grandpa."
Inside there is a mostly dull graphic called Alligator Alcatraz By the Numbers that has one redeeming gag: "3 — Average outfit changes per Kristi Noem photo op." To be funny, satire should be exaggerated reality. Too much exaggeration and it's not funny. Not enough reality and it's not funny. This gag hits the mark perfectly.
By contrast, there is a graphic on the opposite page headlined "CDC Figures It Easier To Start Tracking People Without Measles." Here we have too much exaggeration and not enough reality. Back in the Covid-19 days, a similar map might have actually been amusing.
Most of the rest of this issue of The Onion has a similar imbalance and thus fails to tickle my funny bone.
The Babylon Bee has its own share of failures, too, and I read very few of their fake news stories because they fail to consistently amuse. Their headlines, however, are usually first-rate. Consider some recent examples:"Entire American University System Officially Designated A Terrorist Organization."
"Millions Of Christian Extremists Gather To Pray For Those Who Want To Kill Them."
"Navy Recruitment Soars After Going Back To Blowing Up Pirates."
"Trump Invites Doubting Democrats To Touch The Hole In His Ear." (That may be a bit sacrilegious, but it's still funny.
"Chuck Schumer Said He's Never Felt In Danger Walking In DC And Neither Have His Ten Bodyguards."
"CNN: Charlie Kirk Memorial 'Mostly Hateful'"
The right dose of exaggeration combined with the right dose of reality. Now that's funny.
Monday, September 22, 2025
Too many or too few?
Is a multitude of books a good thing or a bad thing?
John Steinbeck |
On the other hand, Voltaire said, "The multitude of books is making us ignorant."
So which view is the correct one? I tend to agree with both.
I have never thought I owned too many books, even when they were in multiple stacks in the attic of my Ohio home — or now when they fill a storage unit so that I can barely enter. I just received a check for more than $1,400 from the sale of several first editions. I can't help viewing this windfall as an excuse to go book shopping.
Yet Voltaire has a point, too. When there are so many books, it becomes difficult to focus on the best ones. I am presently reading a thrilling C.J. Box novel. I enjoy his books, but I could intsead be rereading something by Steinbeck, which might be more edifying. Most of us choose mysteries or thrillers or romances over serious novels and poetry and challenging nonfiction most of the time. Is that making us ignorant?
At one time most people had very few books in their homes. And these were mostly books of high quality — the Bible, perhaps something by Dickens or something by Milton or something by Shakespeare. These were read over and over again. Then came the so-called penny dreadfuls and then cheap paperbacks, and the world of literature changed. Did it change for the better? I think so, but then again, maybe not.
Friday, September 19, 2025
Cold cases
Two stories, nearly 40 years apart, come together. In 1980, a student radical is found murdered, and her former boyfriend, Nick, is a prime suspect. Nick, who narrates this part of the tale, suspects Mark, Alice’s new boyfriend, but he has disappeared, and the police show no interest in finding him. And soon they lose interest in Nick, as well, and even in the case itself. What's going on?
In 2019, an archaeologist digging for Roman ruins finds a skeleton in a field, clearly just a few years old. Identifying the victim proves difficult, but gradually it is found to be the remains of a nattily dressed underworld figure.
How these two very different unsolved cases tie together makes for an interesting entry in this top-rate British police series.