Why people shouldn't use tools they don't understand

I'm a teacher.

I teach English which, of course, includes teaching reading and writing. Like all teachers, whatever their subject, I have a toolbox that contains lots of different tools and techniques that I mix and match according to the circumstances. I have a pretty good idea about how to do my job and which techniques work for me and my students.

One such tool is phonics. In ludicrously over-simplified terms phonics is what you are using when you teach your kids that "cat" is "ku... a... tu". It's a single tool in the box and not an uncontroversial one, primarily because every few years the Government does a back flip and demands that teachers who were using it stop or that teachers who weren't start. Personally, and I suspect this is true of most teachers, I like to have all the tools available to me.

Last night though, I witnessed a perfect example of why people shouldn't use tools they don't understand. Phonics is a particular teaching technique but it's a technique that should only be used by people who have more than a rudimentary idea about what it is.

There was a woman at the Metro stop with her seven-year-old son. I know that he was seven because I heard her say, "Come on, you're seven. You should know this already."

That one sentence says all you need to know about her caring, nurturing attitude. If not actually angry, it certainly came over as sounding irritated. From my observation of the situation he did have reading difficulties, with a reading age more like four or five than seven. 

She showed him a word and read it out loud.

"Holly."

At her insistant urging he tried to follow it in the page and sound it out.

"Hhhhh...  oh... ul... ee."

It was, I thought, a fair enough stab at it. His mother disagreed. She instantly told him he was wrong and "corrected" him.

"Hur... oh.. ler... ler.. yuh".

The kid was clearly utterly bewildered. Her attempt to sound it out had sounded out what she thought each letter, in isolation, should sound like and bore no resemblance at all to the way the word should be pronounced. The kid tried again - his way - and she corrected him again. She went on to similar nonsense with the words "baby", "lady" and "fairy".

If that's the way he's being encouraged at home then it's hardly surprising that he's having problems. Poor kid. I think it's terrific that parents get involved in their children's learning but they should try to do it in a way that isn't quite so counter-productive.

So that's what it means...

In a news item yesterday Kate Middleton was described as "wearing a recycled blue coat that she had previously worn at a friend's wedding".

So that's what "recycled" means in royal circles - wearing the same item of clothing twice.

But there's nothing wrong with it...

I often wish people who make pronouncements on language would take the trouble to learn something about it.

One of the regular panellists on The Wright Stuff is Dominic Holland and Matthew Wright, the host, often suggests that Dominic's spelling and grammar could use some work.

He did so today showing this tweet that Dominic had made

I am doing The Wright Stuff all this week – with the inimitable host, Matthew Wright. It's a show I do do regularly and very much enjoy.

His complaint was the "do do" but, with the greatest respect, it's the complaint itself that is do-do.

If it's an error at all, then it's a momentary error of concentration entirely unrelated to either grammar or spelling. We all do do it from time to time and in a fast environment like Twitter the chances of such errors are magnified.

But it might not even be that. The sentence is a perfectly valid English construction. If we replace the second "do" with a synonym, say "appear on", then it's much easier to see:

"It's a show I do appear on regularly and very much enjoy."

We can, in English, use "do" as an auxiliary verb. It intensifies the main verb and contradicts a negative assertion.

"You don't read enough books!"
"I do read enough books."

"You don't want another beer, do you?"
"I do want another beer!"

"You don't do The Wright Stuff, do you."
"I do do The Wright Stuff."

I've encountered similar misguided suggestions in the past that there is something wrong with "had had", which is equally nonsensical.

I'm not saying that Dominic's comment was intended this way, the hundred and forty character limit of Twitter makes it very difficult to establish a context but even if it was, as seems likely, a lapse of concentration, it DID NOT result in an ungrammatical sentence.

I can? Thank you.

On Wolverhampton station there is a facility where, if you have dog, you can fill a dog bowl with water so that your pet doesn't go thirsty. That's fine. What confuses me is the sign above it which reads

This facility is for the

use of our four-legged

friends.

Please quench your thirst

with our best wishes.

Even in Wolverhampton most of the dogs are unable to read so what I want to know is this... who exactly does the "your" in the second sentence refer to?

Bet he doesn't win...

BBC News 4 June, 2011.

"The jockey, Kieren Fallon, will today find out if he will be allowed to run in the Derby."

Shows how much I know, I thought the horses did the running.

Grand(iose)

The presenter on a daytime property program on TV described a house, apparently approvingly, as "grandiose". People often seem to not have much idea of the conventional usage of words. "Grandiose" is almost exclusively a disapproving term meaning "unnecessarily large and pretentious".

I find it mildly amusing that such a negative term can be substituted for the simpler and far more positive "grand" giving the completely wrong impression of the place.

Autocaption Fun

Having arrived a little early at the pub last night, while I was waiting for my drinking buddy, Pete, to arrive I found my eye drawn to the TV in the corner which was on but with no sound. The channel showing was a news channel with an auto-captioning system.

I love watching auto-captioning because it doesn't always work properly.

So, in the item about the Strauss-Kahn rape allegations the phrase "in view of the people's objection" was shown on screen as "in view of the purple of ejection" while in the item about Birmingham Council's defeat in the matter of disability benefit cuts a woman with cerebral palsy was described as having "a real bore palsy".

There were probably lots of others but at that point Pete arrived and conversation took over.

Impossible

There's a trailer currently running on Channel 5 for a new TV show called "Impossible" which, as far as I can tell, appears to be a Derren Brown style magic show. In the trailer the magician is heard to say "Can I predict what you will do before you have done it yourself?"

I'll tell you what would be impossible, predicting what they have done after they have done it.

I always suspected as much.

French Language is a Hoax.

(Thanks to Language Log for pointing this one out.)

What it wasn't

You know how much interest I have in sport!

Nevertheless, there is one aspect of the Andy Gray affair that does interest me. First, for those who don't live here in the UK, let me tell you what that affair is. Two sports commentators, Andy Gray and Richard Keys who thought they were not on microphone made some sexist remarks about a female official at a football match - remarks to the effect that she couldn't possibly understand the offside rule because she was a woman. Unfortunately for them someone did record them and release them to the press.
One of them has been sacked. The other one has, I understand, resigned.

It has created a bit of a mediastorm of comment.

Now here's the only bit I find at all interesting.

The comments were certainly sexist.

They may well have been offensive - they definitely offended some people.

They - the comments - were a rather stupid variation on an old joke.

They - the commentators -were rather stupid to make such comments anyway.

They were doubly stupid not to make sure that nobody was recording them

There are, apparently, prior instances of sexism from Andy Gray.

What there words most definitely were not, at least in any sense that I understand the word, is a rant.

Several newspapers, including our ever-beloved Daily Mail, have described them as such but saying it doesn't make it so. Not even when it is repeated on television news programs.

rant (n) : violent or extravagant speech or writing (AHD)

rant (n): a long, angry and confused speech (Cambridge Advanced Learners' Dictionary)

rant (n): loud excited speech (Collins Pocket Dictionary)

The remarks in question lasted in total about thirty seconds, were said in the jocular, flippant tones that good friends use to each other and were perfectly straightforward, if straightforwardly stupid and wrong. I don't know if the two men deserved to lose their jobs and, honestly, I don't care one way or the other but whatever they were guilty of, it wasn't a rant.

Simpsons language

Another great example of that wonderland style language logic that sometimes turns up in the Simpsons.

Bart: I can't go to the party. No one else is.
Marge: If no one else jumped off the Empire State Building would you not jump too?

Apostrophe's

I was in Wolverhampton today where I passed a shop selling discounted ex-catalogue electrical goods. Under the name of the shop, in large bold letters were the words

The shop that defie's the credit crunch.

I am constantly amazed that there seem to be people out there who believe that every word that ends with "s" must have an apostrophe.

Over-negation again

Just heard on the BBC news.

(Because of the road conditions...) police are advising people not to go out unless it's unnecessary."

Damn, my journey is necessary!

Mission: Untranslatable

I've been greatly enjoying watching season one of the old Mission: Impossible  TV series. One aspect of it that I had forgotten is the eccentric approach to foreign languages. Many of the adventures take place in made-up foreign countries and those made-up foreign countries have made-up foreign languages. The very first episode ever took place in the "country" of Santa Costa. 

In general, the foreign countries fall into two groups - the ones which are approximately Spanish and the ones which are approximately Eastern European. The approximately Spanish ones use signage in a language that is a mixture of English, Spanish and Portuguese but with the added twist that almost all words end in vowels. 

One episode contained signs that read "Material Radiocativo: No entrar", "Usar Anteojos Protectores" and "Escaleria de Salvamento".

Another had "Jardin Zoológico", "Estacion de Cuarentina" and, in consecutive scenes, both "No entrar" and "No entre".

I'm rather more partial to their unspecified Eastern European countries though which use a mix of English, German and a kind of Hollywood Bulgarian: featuring things like "Zöna Restrik: Entre Ferbaten". Another episode had both "Restrik Fumen Prohob" and "Varnung: Gaz Hydrocyanide - No Intreten" while the action of the one I watched last night took place mostly in a "Mortuari".

What I find most interesting about it though is that these made-up, mix'n'match languages that they use are all more or less instantly intelligible. They are clearly designed that way but it is interesting to me that in all the examples quoted above only "anteojos" wasn't clear to me. I don't know if this means I have an above average understanding of languages or if their executive in charge of making stuff up was especially good at his job. I suspect the latter.

Yummy

I don't know if men's toilets in the US have condom vending machines in them but most of the ones in the UK do and most of them sell the kind of condom that come with the warning "Caution: For novelty use only. Not a prophylactic."

Flavoured, coloured, oddly-shaped and so on.

I did a double take last night, though, when I spotted one labelled "McCondom". What could it be? Cheesburger flavoured, perhaps? Closer examination of the machine revealed it to be Highland Whisky flavoured, which I'm not convinced is any better.

Slip? Or a joke that I didn't get?

Rob Brydon interviewing Ronnie Corbett last night.

"You have been noted for your sartorial eloquence."

Trailers

Last night I saw a trailer for the new Channel Four series, The Pillars of the Earth, a drama about the building of a cathedral in 12th century England. Now it's convention for trailers that you put your best bits in so that you attract viewers. If the dialogue on offer here represented the best bits heaven help us when we get to see the worst bits. 

"England has been steeped in blood for sixteen years" pronounced one character sententiously.

"You have been consorting with a married woman." thundered another.

"God's work does not blend with anarchy!" declared a third.

There was even a "why hast thou forsaken me" and a "God is on our side".

If these bits of clichéd nonsense are typical I shall be very happy not to watch the rest.

Just remembered this

At breakfast last week, the day after one of the awards ceremonies, I commented on how inappropriate the T-shirt of one of the prize-winners had been. (I still think a thirteen year old at a prize giving ceremony shouldn't be wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend "Suck me off".)

However the point is that in our conversation I referred to it as "inappropriate wear", a perfectly commonplace idiom, only to be met with the reply that I couldn't use "wear" in that way. I was speaking with a colleague who is (and I hope he'll forgive me for saying so) an intelligent, well-educated, experienced, native-speaking English teacher and he said that he had never heard this use of "wear".

It didn't occur to me at the time to ask if he had heard of expressions such as "rainwear", "formal wear" or "evening wear".

It always strikes me as odd when I encounter such lexical gaps. Or am I mistaken. Is this a less commonplace use than I thought?

I wish they wouldn't do that

Am I the only one who gets a little irritated (it isn't strong enough to actually count as annoyance) by television programs which try to add a little interest by including linguistic information but do it by repeating folk etymologies and urban myths which five minutes with a dictionary would disprove.

Take the program that's on at the moment, Bargain Hunt. A few minutes ago the presenter was looking at an ivory carving of two gnomes. To spice it up the presenter asked us if we were familiar with the origin of the word "gnome". It is, he told us, an acronym meaning Guarding Naturally Over Mother Earth. This is of course utter nonsense. You should always hear alarm bells ringing when anyone claims that an old word (gnome was first recorded in the 16th century) is an acronym. 

Gnome is of course no such thing. It is generally considered to have been coined by Paracelcus possibly based on a Greek word meaning "earth dweller". An alternate theory is that it was based on a form of "gignoskein" - to know.

What is pretty damned unlikely is that someone writing five centuries ago in German, at a time when acronyms were all but unused, would choose to coin a new word by forming an acronym from English words.

The trouble is that people believe these things - especially if given a specious authority by the almighty television. 

A possible explanation is that there are several thousand hits in Google putting the same theory. Sooner or later everything turns up on the internet and they way things are going - with BBC researchers apparently using the internet as a primary source - truth is going to disappear altogether replaced by consensus belief. 

I just wish they would check a bit more carefully before spouting nonsense to a gullible public.

(Incidentally, later in the program, explaining the inscription G-IV-R on a piece of furniture he referred to the GR as George Rex (so far so good) and the IV as "one vee, or four". Surely that should be read as "eye vee, or four".)

Translation Blues

Now that the summer is over, every kid is back in his or her own country and all the teachers have gone home, I'll put this here.

In one of my classes a Chinese girl asked me to help turn something she had translated for her project into a more grammatical form. I looked at and was forced to admit defeat. Investigation revealed that the original source was Japanese which she had translated with an electronic dictionary into Chinese and then, with a different electronic dictionary into English.

The title, "Sushimi", gave me a clue that it might be about food but I could get nowhere with the rest of it. Here it is for better scholars to consider.

Insurance membranes frozen to fresh the meal. In order to have their if not suited to the taste of some of their jerky in to the Japanese style soy sauce knife must also be fast so raw fish less cut of meat will not go type.