The Joy of Words

Over the weekend, I picked up a small stack of quality books from an estate sale for a mere $5; if I'd had $100, I could acquired about 500 books but several repair bills (central air conditioning, car, dryer, car again, laptop, dryer again, in that order ) claimed priority  on my budget.

Among the books were these: The Story of English, which was a companion book to the PBS series; The Handbook of Good English, by Edward D. Johnson, and the sixth edition of Wheelock's Latin.  All of them are pleasures to read with whatever level of commitment can be summoned. Latin, in particular, is something I feel drawn to but have never studied beyond the very basics (the word "ablative" freaks me out.)  Maybe some day.

CNN's Appalling Choice of Words

Headline writers have often been a little too quick to seize on the latest catch phrase and put them to work in inappropriate ways.

I wonder how many headlines employed "Where's the Beef?" on zoning, political, sports or feature stories, or "I was for it before I was against it" and any of the dozens of other phrases.

But this pickup and the echoing of a politically driven charge may have set a record for pure speed and thoughtlessness. When someone at CNN noticed, the chyron was changed, but not all that much: It went from "Dept. of Jihad?" to "Al Qaeda 7?" to "Are Justice Dept. lawyers disloyal?" accompanied by comments about whether a "loyalty test" should be required at the Justice Department.  My most charitable intrepretation is that this is what happens when someone falls in love with a phrase or concept, one that seems so exciting and bound to stir the audience, but doesn't think about the impact or consequences. We specialize in words, people. Let's find our own.

Can You Say Wiki?

John McIntyre is occupying his time writing enlightening commentary about style and writing rules, explaining newspaper lingo and other fun language-related stuff (including editor haiku.)

Someone on Facebook suggested to John that there may be a need for an "intervention" against the AP stylebook's errors and hoary rules, which leads me to nominate John to lead (no, I will NEVER say "helm") a kind of Editorpedia (there's already a dead-looking Editpedia) that counters or bolsters AP and other stylebooks.

I would defend the AP stylebook to an extent--at a time when our skills as editors are valued about as much as those of old-time elevator operators, I'm reluctant to trash anything that makes people think even a little bit about how to write, employ some decent grammar, etc. And I continue to wonder why we now reject rules we all grew up with as wrong or off track when there's no academy of language that says this is right, this is not. What's the starting point, folks? Who's the authority? I know, I know, there's always a pre-Shakespeare source to cite.


And, as far as the commentary going around about a Twitterer who treasures the AP stylebook--yes, it might be a little sad if that's all the person knows. But as someone who started in newspapers at 16 and in possession of as little knowledge of the world as you might infer from that, I found the AP stylebook to be a little treasure trove of information. I mean, who else knew why some countries' leaders were called prime ministers, while others were called premiers? Or offer a quick explanation of the world's major religions?

Yes, I've gone well beyond that, but I still page the stylebook just for fun, though not nearly as much as the gorgeous pages of a new American Heritage dictionary. And there are many great alternative sources of language rules and suggestions. But few serve so many people and publications and offer a common, basic approach that encourages at least some literacy and logic.

Now, if they'd just get rid of that damned no-split-infinitives rule...

Shimmy, Shimmy

I am seriously at a loss to figure out how 186 square miles of land can undulate. Any ideas?

In Unicoi County, Tenn. -- an undulating 186-square-mile swath of former tobacco land -- a number...

Confusing Language

I suppose it's possible that the bill's language has changed but I think it's sloppy language. All week, people having been writing about Sen. Jim Webb's version of the GI Bill and writing, very specifically, about how it would benefit for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. I have been asking questions about this because, to the best of my memory, previous GI Bills did not require service in a particular theater of operation but rather was dependent on time served. Because if service in a combat theater were required, that would seem to force some people into volunteering for combat roles or at least to volunteer for overseas assignments. Today, I'm seeing the same writing in some places, but changes elsewhere. In particular, The New York Times today clarifies and writes about X amount of service after Sept.11. But others are still talking about Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm interested in knowing how this shakes out and whether we're going to get this story right today.

Evolving Languages

Scientific American examines language evolution.

New Languages Rapidly Spring From Old Ones
Scientists for decades have clashed over whether evolution takes place gradually or is driven by short spurts of intense change.

In the latest chapter in this debate, researchers report in Science this week that it appears that when new languages spin-off from older ones, there is an initial introductory burst of alterations to vocabulary. Then, the language tends to settle and accumulate gradual changes over a long period of time. The team believes this discrete evolutionary pattern occurs when a social group tries to forge a separate identity.

Study co-author Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading in England, says that the latest study grew out of an earlier finding in which he and colleagues determined that about 20 percent of genetic changes among species occur when they first split off, whereas the rest happen gradually.

"It was very natural for us to wonder if a similar process [of evolution] happens in cultural groups," Pagel says. "We treat the words that different languages use almost identically to the way we use genes: … The more divergent two species are, the less their genes have in common, just as the more divergent two languages are, the less their words have in common."

The team focused on three of the world's major language families in its study: Bantu (Swahili, Zulu, Ngumba, for example), Indo-European (English, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit) and Austronesian (South Pacific and Indian Ocean languages such as Taglaog or Seediq). They constructed genealogical trees—similar to those they had created previously in their 2006 species-related study—albeit this time the trees traced existing languages back to their common roots; the length of a "branch" indicated the extent of word replacement that took place as each old language morphed (possibly with new languages splitting off) into its current form.

Keeping You Regular

Tracking the evolution of language
Researchers discover that irregular verbs change in a predictable manner -- just like genes and living organisms.

By Denise Gellene
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Tracing the evolution of English verbs over 1,200 years -- from the Old English of "Beowulf" to the modern English of "The Princess Diaries" -- researchers have found that the majority of irregular verbs are going the way of Grendel, falling to the linguistic equivalent of natural selection.

The irregular verbs, governed by confusing and antiquated rules, came under evolutionary pressure to obey the modern "-ed" rule of regular verb conjugation, according to a report today in the journal Nature.

That the English language has undergone dramatic change over a millennium will come as no surprise to generations of high school students who have struggled to decipher "Beowulf," which dates to the 9th century, or Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," written about 1200.

Linguists have constructed elaborate "family trees" showing how English has developed over time but have been unable to detect the principle driving irregular verbs toward regularity.

The researchers, led by Martin A. Nowak, an evolutionary theorist at Harvard University, discovered that irregular verbs evolve in a predictable manner -- just like genes and living organisms. Analyzing databases containing millions of words, Nowak and colleagues showed that the patterns of change depended on how often irregular verb forms were used.