by John McWhorter. Finally finished - it's really not that long, I was just interrupted. It is full of all sorts of arguments about the formation of the English language. He makes some good points, but his arguments are a little too strong, which makes me hedge and pull back a little and say, "Ok, it's possible, but..."
There are just a few quotes I would like to cite:
"Linguists savor articulateness in speech and fine composition in writing as much as anyone else. Our position is not that we should chuck standards of graceful composition. All of us are agreed that there is a usefulness in a standard variety of a language, whose artful and effective usage requires tutelage."
"Linguists traditionally observe that esteemed writers have been using they as a gender-neutral pronoun for almost a thousand years."
"All of this (the history of change of the English language through time) is seen as noble, historical, a matter of our mighty and open language coming to be. But somehow, there seems to be an idea that the process had an inherent end point, beyond which we are not to go. It's as if somebody, somewhere had been endeavoring to meld a chunky Germanic tongue spoken by some restless warrior tribes into precisely the English we have right now, that they officially declared themselves finished sometime not long ago, and that from now on, we are not to mess up their creation."
"No language makes perfect sense. That's another way of saying: there is no known language that does not have wrinkles of illogicality here and there."
"There is a canny objection one sometimes hears out there that English is easy at first, but hard to master the details of, while other languages are hard at first but easy to master the details of."
Sunday, February 27, 2011
The first three
I couldn't wait anymore. I drew the first three book names from the box. The winners are:
1. Eleanor Roosevelt volume 1
2. A Day at a Time: The Diary Literature of American Women 1764 to the present
3. Best American Essays: Fifth college edition
I started this post but never published it. I read 2 and 3 already, and I drew another 3 because I couldn't wait; it was so much fun!
4. 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl
5. Henry VIII
6. Mexico and Peru Myths and Legends
So now 1, 4, 5, 6 are sitting on my bedside table along with Gabaldon's Breath of Snow in Ashes, Lonely Planet's How to Write Travel Writing, Tales to Tremble by, The 3am Epiphany, Reading Like a Writer, and a whole stack of books for my capstone research and class.
#3, Best American Essays: Fifth college edition, was an excellent book. I could have excerpted every other page. It was such an interesting mix of great writing on all different subjects. I highly recommend the Best American Series. This one is the best of the best intended for use in college classes as a good collection of writing in many styles for their students.
#2, A Day at a Time: The Diary Literature of American Women 1764 to the present, sat on my shelves for years - and what a treasure. It is a colection of excerpts from diaries of common American women. Some of the writing and stories were amazing! I ordered two of the books from Amazon so I can read the whole thing. Here are a few of the highlights:
One woman, writing in 1788 in New Hampshire, describes a change in her husband toward their daughter - how he begins to sexually molest her and the mother can do nothing about it since women had absolutely no rights back then.
Several women give first hand accounts of the Revolutionary War, the Oregon Trail and the Civil War. I was continually surprised that some women were allowed to speak their minds so freely at these times.
Elizabeth ashe went to France at the end of WWI to work in a hospital. She writes of French woman named Mlle. L'Hotellier who worked in a hospital, hid French troops from the Germans and helped their escape, was finally caught, arrested, tortured and starved. Later she escaped and made her way back to the hospital. Mlle. says of her experience: "No one knows what freedom is that has not been deprived of it; that she is now free from everything; that she realizes that before she was a slave to certain habits, slave to her clothes and to her possessions, but that now that she is free she realizes how little all of these are worth if we are deprived of the freedom of body or soul."
One excerpt was by a Juanita Harrison - a Mississippi born black woman (b. 1891) who worked her way around the world finding jobs as ladies' maids to support her travels. She finally retired on the island of Hawaii in a tent. I am currently waiting for this book in the mail. I really need to read the whole thing.
The next diarist is Eslanda Goode Robeson. She is another black woman (b. 1896) who went to Columbia University. Her book is called African Journey and is currently in the mail on its way to me. It was such an amazing story I just had to get the book. Here are a few bits of her writing:
She and her 8 y o son are traveling through Africa in 1936. This was an era of rampant and unhidden racism. The colonial era is still in full swing and modern conveniences are not common.
In Kenya she remarks in regards to the public segregation: "It always strikes me as amusing, pathetic and a bit silly when I see Europeans taking so much trouble to segregate themselves in public places, when i know these same Europeans fill their homes with all kinds of native servants, who come into the most intimate contact with their food, clothing, and especially their children."
"This morning we drove through a locust storm. Pauli said it was like the movies. (It is strange when one comes to think of it, that natural phenomena should seem like fiction or films, and not vice versa, to city-bred or highly civilized people.)"
As she worked with some native women one day, "They wanted to know what kind of work women did 'outside,' how they brought up their children, how their men treated them,how they dressed, whether they went to school with the men. They wanted to know if I thought our black children will have a place in the world, a real place, or will 'they only be told what to do?' "We are tired of being told what to do. Our children will be more tired of it.'"
Crossing the Mediterranean on a boat, she conversed with an older white "colonial" man. The man said her son was intelligent, "pity he's got that handicap, he's black, pity, he could go far." The author responded, "He'll go far because he's black. His color, his background, his rich history are part of his wealth. We consider it an asset, not a handicap." Later she contemplated, "This poor man doesn't know what it's all about. He has no important or useful knowledge about more than a billion of his fellow men - Negroes, Africans, Indians, Chinese, probably Jews, and probably Russians. Most likely he has simply dismissed them contemptuously as "primitive," "oriental," or "red." He has built himself into a very small, very limited world of his own, behind a towering formidable wall of ignorance, prejudice and "superiority."
1. Eleanor Roosevelt volume 1
2. A Day at a Time: The Diary Literature of American Women 1764 to the present
3. Best American Essays: Fifth college edition
I started this post but never published it. I read 2 and 3 already, and I drew another 3 because I couldn't wait; it was so much fun!
4. 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl
5. Henry VIII
6. Mexico and Peru Myths and Legends
So now 1, 4, 5, 6 are sitting on my bedside table along with Gabaldon's Breath of Snow in Ashes, Lonely Planet's How to Write Travel Writing, Tales to Tremble by, The 3am Epiphany, Reading Like a Writer, and a whole stack of books for my capstone research and class.
#3, Best American Essays: Fifth college edition, was an excellent book. I could have excerpted every other page. It was such an interesting mix of great writing on all different subjects. I highly recommend the Best American Series. This one is the best of the best intended for use in college classes as a good collection of writing in many styles for their students.
#2, A Day at a Time: The Diary Literature of American Women 1764 to the present, sat on my shelves for years - and what a treasure. It is a colection of excerpts from diaries of common American women. Some of the writing and stories were amazing! I ordered two of the books from Amazon so I can read the whole thing. Here are a few of the highlights:
One woman, writing in 1788 in New Hampshire, describes a change in her husband toward their daughter - how he begins to sexually molest her and the mother can do nothing about it since women had absolutely no rights back then.
Several women give first hand accounts of the Revolutionary War, the Oregon Trail and the Civil War. I was continually surprised that some women were allowed to speak their minds so freely at these times.
Elizabeth ashe went to France at the end of WWI to work in a hospital. She writes of French woman named Mlle. L'Hotellier who worked in a hospital, hid French troops from the Germans and helped their escape, was finally caught, arrested, tortured and starved. Later she escaped and made her way back to the hospital. Mlle. says of her experience: "No one knows what freedom is that has not been deprived of it; that she is now free from everything; that she realizes that before she was a slave to certain habits, slave to her clothes and to her possessions, but that now that she is free she realizes how little all of these are worth if we are deprived of the freedom of body or soul."
One excerpt was by a Juanita Harrison - a Mississippi born black woman (b. 1891) who worked her way around the world finding jobs as ladies' maids to support her travels. She finally retired on the island of Hawaii in a tent. I am currently waiting for this book in the mail. I really need to read the whole thing.
The next diarist is Eslanda Goode Robeson. She is another black woman (b. 1896) who went to Columbia University. Her book is called African Journey and is currently in the mail on its way to me. It was such an amazing story I just had to get the book. Here are a few bits of her writing:
She and her 8 y o son are traveling through Africa in 1936. This was an era of rampant and unhidden racism. The colonial era is still in full swing and modern conveniences are not common.
In Kenya she remarks in regards to the public segregation: "It always strikes me as amusing, pathetic and a bit silly when I see Europeans taking so much trouble to segregate themselves in public places, when i know these same Europeans fill their homes with all kinds of native servants, who come into the most intimate contact with their food, clothing, and especially their children."
"This morning we drove through a locust storm. Pauli said it was like the movies. (It is strange when one comes to think of it, that natural phenomena should seem like fiction or films, and not vice versa, to city-bred or highly civilized people.)"
As she worked with some native women one day, "They wanted to know what kind of work women did 'outside,' how they brought up their children, how their men treated them,how they dressed, whether they went to school with the men. They wanted to know if I thought our black children will have a place in the world, a real place, or will 'they only be told what to do?' "We are tired of being told what to do. Our children will be more tired of it.'"
Crossing the Mediterranean on a boat, she conversed with an older white "colonial" man. The man said her son was intelligent, "pity he's got that handicap, he's black, pity, he could go far." The author responded, "He'll go far because he's black. His color, his background, his rich history are part of his wealth. We consider it an asset, not a handicap." Later she contemplated, "This poor man doesn't know what it's all about. He has no important or useful knowledge about more than a billion of his fellow men - Negroes, Africans, Indians, Chinese, probably Jews, and probably Russians. Most likely he has simply dismissed them contemptuously as "primitive," "oriental," or "red." He has built himself into a very small, very limited world of his own, behind a towering formidable wall of ignorance, prejudice and "superiority."
a quote from Derek Bickerton
From Adam's Tongue: How Humans made language, how language made humans.
"What makes interdisciplinary work so hard is that any academic discipline acts like a straitjacket, forcing you to look only in certain directions, blocking other perspectives from view. It takes a good deal of conscious effort, plus a lot of soaking yourself in other people's literature, to overcome this state of affairs."
I actually didn't finish this book because he just kept driving at his point like a salesman and I decided I wasn't interested in it. But I do like this quote and the idea of the restrictions your academic discipline puts on you.
"What makes interdisciplinary work so hard is that any academic discipline acts like a straitjacket, forcing you to look only in certain directions, blocking other perspectives from view. It takes a good deal of conscious effort, plus a lot of soaking yourself in other people's literature, to overcome this state of affairs."
I actually didn't finish this book because he just kept driving at his point like a salesman and I decided I wasn't interested in it. But I do like this quote and the idea of the restrictions your academic discipline puts on you.
The Art of Readable Writing
This little gem caught my eye on the shelves of Hamline library. The Art of Readable Writing by Rudolf Flesch, Ph.D. (1949). I was curious what kind of writing advice he would give back in 1949. I actually found some very interesting guidance.
He talks about simplifying your vocabulary: "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that most people are morons... If a person doesn't know much, that doesn't necessarily mean he's unintelligent.After all, intelligence is the ability to learn...'We often overestimate the stock of information readers have, and underestimate their intelligence.' (Glenn Frank)"
"There's hardly anything more important for readable writing: the more you know about the kind of person you are writing for, the better you'll write." I ask myself, "who am I writing this blog for?" I have no idea. Actually, I think it is for me and my future students. I mainly see this blog as a place to store snippets of interesting things I've read.
Lee De Forest said of the radio: "What have you gentlemen done with my child? He was conceived as a potent instrumentality for culture, fine music, the uplifting of America's mass intelligence. You have debased this child. You have made him a laughing stock to the intelligence."
"This goes for movies, books, magazines, newspapers too. Never mind writing what the public wants - or what you suppose the public wants. (Or what you want the public to think they want.) Study your audience and then write what you want to say in the form that is most likely to appeal to them."
"The first rule of good style is to have something to say...but having something to say also means having a good stock of facts...At the same time as you gather your facts, you must also get hold of two more things: first, your framework, and second, your verbal illustrations. Your reader will need a firm framework and colorful verbal illustrations to enjoy and remember what you have written."
Next he discusses how to get inspired - by doing nothing for a while. "Every professional writer knows that this period of just-sitting-and-thinking between legwork and outline is the most important part of the whole writing process."
"In your writing you must first go over your material in your mind, trying to find the focus, the perspective, the angle of vision that will make you see clearly the shape of whatever it is you are writing about. There has to be one point that is sharply in focus, and a clear grouping of everything else around it. Once you see this clearly, your reader will too. And that, the shape of your ideas, is usually all he is going to carry away from his reading." So true - ggod point to remember and pass to my students.
"The most widely used device for getting ideas into shape is to buttonhole some unsuspecting victim...and to rehearse your ideas aloud. This has two advantages: first, it forces you to funnel your ideas into a limited number of words; and second, the other person will tell you what your idea looks like from where he sits."
"Theoretical insights work best when the thinker is apparently wasting time." J. Robert Oppenheimer
In the next section he talks about where inspiration comes from. "Bright new ideas are always combinations of old ones; they usually come to us after our mind has had a rest after a concentrated effort; and if we do it right, we can sometimes coax them to the surface."
"have a large number of ideas and experiences on hand; put them together; stir vigorously."
"If you keep your mind always in apple-pie order, you'll probably never have that (bright idea). Your combinations will always be the old, well-established ones; your mind will always run in fixed grooves. That's why there is such a thing as a too strict classification or a too orderly outline... If you are used to starting every writing job by making an outline, don't. Wait until you have felt the click. Before that, any outline will tie your ideas down." I love that! More great ideas to pass along...
"Get your facts, think hard of the best way of presenting them, and then "think aside." Let the matter drop for a while until you suddenly hit upon a striking combination of ideas." Some people struggle with the "getting the facts" part, but that's a different problem. Once they figure that out, they can do this.
On intros and conclusions:
"An effective piece of writing should start with something that points to its main theme. In other words, you must put your reader in the right frame of mind; you must start by getting him interested in what's going to come...prepare his mind for what's going to come, but not give away the show"
"A good ending should echo the main theme, just as a good opening should sound it in advance...petering out is the most common fault"
"If you don't follow the natural order of your subject, the result is invariably confusion...compelling the reader to spend time in trifling detective work."
In the next section he suggests writing a story around a character. "There's nothing on earth that cannot be told through a hero - or heroine - who's trying to solve a problem in spite of a series of obstacles. It's the classic formula; and it's the only one you can rely on to interest the average reader...If there is no story to tell, you'll have to invent one."
"An excess of summary and an insufficiency of scene in a novel makes the story seem remote, without bite, second hand"
Use dialogue to include the reader. Dialogue means not just direst quotes, but also questions, commands, exclamations, incomplete sentences, or sentences addressed directly to the audience. Percentages of these types of sentences in fiction will be over fifty percent, in popular (magazine) writing 12 to 15 percent, in technical writing - zero.
"Spoken language is the primary phenomenon, and writing is only a more or less imperfect reflection of it." E. H. Sturtevant
In regards to the rule of not repeating words (which he says should be broken), "Sentences in which the writer has carefully not repeated a word set readers wondering what the significance of the change is, only to conclude disappointingly that it has none.
About grammar rules - "...rules of English usage are not immutable natural laws, but simply conventions among educated English-speaking people. If enough educated people insist on making a "mistake," then it isn't a mistake any more and the teachers might as well stop wasting their time correcting it."
"There's hardly a rule in English usage that holds good in all possible situations; in fact, wherever there is a choice, the mechanical application of a rule-of-thumb will be more often bad than good."
In the next section he talks about sentence length and how it has been shrinking over time. He lays out an example of a long, convoluted and confusing sentence, then says, "The cure for this type of sentence elephantiasis is very simple. All you need to do is stop being stuffy and talk like a human being, and that's that." He quotes a law professor, "casting all conditions and requirements into a single sentence will often compel the unfortunate reader to take the sentence apart so that he can obtain an understanding. His task would have been much easier if the author had broken the sentence down into several sentences." Another tip for students - they often write sentences that are too long.
A great quote about truth from John Horne Tooke, "Truth supposes mankind: for whom and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom only it is applicable. If no man, no truth. There is therefore no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth; unless mankind be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth: for the truth of one person may be opposite the truth of another."
Tooke says, "language goes through a continuous process of condensation and abbreviation; through the centuries, people manage to cram more and more meaning into fewer and fewer words. What once took a whole sentence or clause to express, can now be compressed into a single word; and language is full of clever devices that make for more and more speed."
"We shouldn't stuff our sentences with tightly packed bundles of abstractions without ever choosing a simpler way of expressing the same idea...Pompousness is often funny, but it has its serious side. Long words are hard to read; sometimes they are actually unintelligible...The trouble is the terrific density of the language. The things being said come too thick and fast for the ordinary reader...In fact if someone cannot understand a piece of writing, the trouble is rarely that his vocabulary is too small; usually he simply cannot cope with the way words are used." In other words, once again, simplify your writing.
"Vocabulary building as a major industry dates back to some intelligence tests that were given to various occupational groups years back. It turns out that big executives topped everybody else in the range of their vocabulary. The (false) logic is simple: top executives have top vocabulary; hence: vocabulary means success. And so the battle cry was born: 'Build up your vocabulary for quick advancement.'...The trouble is that all the hullabaloo about vocabulary building gives the ordinary citizen the notion that there's a premium on rare and unfamiliar words. Instead he ought to realize that they work like a drug - harmless in small doses, but dangerous if used too much."
"First - make sure you know for whom you are writing. Find out what they know, what they don't know, and what they want to know. Write for your readers and nobody else...Now, collect your material. Get all the information you need. Pay special attention to the little things that will add color and human interest... Then, when you have all the stuff you need, stop for a while and do something else... (when you write) Start with something interesting and promising; wind up with something the reader will remember."
"The trouble with most current writing is that it consists of nothing but nouns and adjectives, glued together with prepositions or with be verbs."
Winston Churchill in regards to the "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule: "This is the kind of arrant pedantry, up with which I shall not put."
"Everyone hears but what he understands." Goethe
In regards to the meanings of words: "One of the basic facts about language is that no word ever means exactly the same to two different people... Your background and experience with a word can never exactly duplicate mine. The basic meaning of the word will usually be the same, but the connotations, the overtones, the feel around the fringes cannot possibly be alike. You can never tell just what a seemingly innocuous word will conjure up in another person's mind... Words are, by definition, unpredictable. That's a fascinating and exasperating fact anyone who writes has to face. Ordinarily we take these differences in connotation for granted. Our language is, and always will be, an imperfect tool of communication and we just have to make the best of it. By and large, people do understand each other even if there may be some amount of misunderstanding around the fringes of practically every word they use."
"When it comes to translation from one language to another, it becomes almost impossible to find words whose meaning matches exactly that of the original. Behind each word in a language is the history of all the uses of the word in that language - and that history is always untranslatable...It's the abstract words that are most apt to be translated in different ways."
"the true source of word meanings is not the dictionary but the people who use the language."
"You can guide a reader's interpretation of the more abstract words - which are the most dangerous - by using as many concrete cases, illustrations and examples as possible."
When we read: "If you think you just pick up on the meanings of words one after the other, you are wrong. Language is not as simple as that. What you do is this: Your eyes move along the printed lines in rhythmic jumps. After each jump they rest for a short while, focus on a word or two, and move on. From time to time, when you unconsciously feel the need of checking back, your eyes move back. And that's the pattern. At about 250 words per minute (average). But that's not the whole story. Words don't mean anything by themselves, or even in groups of two or three. Words get their meaning from the context. So after your eyes have seen the words, your mind assigns to these words a provisional meaning. When the end of the phrase, sentence, or paragraph is reached, your mind rethinks the words in the light of what came after. Reading is really a miracle: your eyes pick up groups of words in split second time and your mind keeps these words in delicate balance until it gets around to a point where they make sense. What all this means to a writer is obvious. A writer must know how people read, what are the main sources of reading errors, and what can be done to forestall them... Don't use unfamiliar spellings or strange words, people's eyes will refuse to read them. Another source of trouble is little words. We ordinarily don't read them at all, but simply assume they are where they belong."
"Nothing is self-explanatory - it's up to you to explain it. And you'll have to do it in words."
"Language is the most democratic institution in the world. Its basis is majority rule; its final authority is the people. If the people decide that they don't want the subjunctive anymore, out goes the subjunctive. If the people adopt okay as a word, in comes okay. In the realm of language, everybody has the right to vote; and everybody does vote, every day of the year. The way you talk and write makes a difference in the English language that is being talked and written today. There is no fixed set of rules: you are making the rules. To be sure, there are limits to what you can do with your language, but they are wide limits, and there is lots of elbow room for everybody. In one way or another, your language differs from that of anybody else. It's part of your own unique personality. It has traces of the family you grew up in, the place where you came from, the people you have associated with, the jobs you have had, the schools you went to, the books you have read, your hobbies, your sports, your philosophy, your religion, your politics, your prejudices, your memories, your ambitions, your dreams, and your love life. The way you form your sentences shows your outlook on life; the words you choose shows your temperament and your aspirations."
"English is a great language; it is perhaps the one that gives the individual greatest freedom. It is poetic and practical at the same time; it is tremendously rich; it's a sort of all-purpose language."
"Language is a social affair; we use it according to the social situation we are in. Our rhetoric is keyed to our place in society - either the one we have or the one we'd like to have. We write stilted English because we unconsciously assume that this is expected of us in the position we happen to fill or the organization we belong to. We have formed a set of habits. and in our speaking and writing we simply piece together the ready-made bits of language that are handy wherever we happen to be. Most of the time we keep our personality out of our language. The easiest thing is to conform."
These last quotes speak for themselves. I love this guy - he writes exactly what I want to express.
He talks about simplifying your vocabulary: "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that most people are morons... If a person doesn't know much, that doesn't necessarily mean he's unintelligent.After all, intelligence is the ability to learn...'We often overestimate the stock of information readers have, and underestimate their intelligence.' (Glenn Frank)"
"There's hardly anything more important for readable writing: the more you know about the kind of person you are writing for, the better you'll write." I ask myself, "who am I writing this blog for?" I have no idea. Actually, I think it is for me and my future students. I mainly see this blog as a place to store snippets of interesting things I've read.
Lee De Forest said of the radio: "What have you gentlemen done with my child? He was conceived as a potent instrumentality for culture, fine music, the uplifting of America's mass intelligence. You have debased this child. You have made him a laughing stock to the intelligence."
"This goes for movies, books, magazines, newspapers too. Never mind writing what the public wants - or what you suppose the public wants. (Or what you want the public to think they want.) Study your audience and then write what you want to say in the form that is most likely to appeal to them."
"The first rule of good style is to have something to say...but having something to say also means having a good stock of facts...At the same time as you gather your facts, you must also get hold of two more things: first, your framework, and second, your verbal illustrations. Your reader will need a firm framework and colorful verbal illustrations to enjoy and remember what you have written."
Next he discusses how to get inspired - by doing nothing for a while. "Every professional writer knows that this period of just-sitting-and-thinking between legwork and outline is the most important part of the whole writing process."
"In your writing you must first go over your material in your mind, trying to find the focus, the perspective, the angle of vision that will make you see clearly the shape of whatever it is you are writing about. There has to be one point that is sharply in focus, and a clear grouping of everything else around it. Once you see this clearly, your reader will too. And that, the shape of your ideas, is usually all he is going to carry away from his reading." So true - ggod point to remember and pass to my students.
"The most widely used device for getting ideas into shape is to buttonhole some unsuspecting victim...and to rehearse your ideas aloud. This has two advantages: first, it forces you to funnel your ideas into a limited number of words; and second, the other person will tell you what your idea looks like from where he sits."
"Theoretical insights work best when the thinker is apparently wasting time." J. Robert Oppenheimer
In the next section he talks about where inspiration comes from. "Bright new ideas are always combinations of old ones; they usually come to us after our mind has had a rest after a concentrated effort; and if we do it right, we can sometimes coax them to the surface."
"have a large number of ideas and experiences on hand; put them together; stir vigorously."
"If you keep your mind always in apple-pie order, you'll probably never have that (bright idea). Your combinations will always be the old, well-established ones; your mind will always run in fixed grooves. That's why there is such a thing as a too strict classification or a too orderly outline... If you are used to starting every writing job by making an outline, don't. Wait until you have felt the click. Before that, any outline will tie your ideas down." I love that! More great ideas to pass along...
"Get your facts, think hard of the best way of presenting them, and then "think aside." Let the matter drop for a while until you suddenly hit upon a striking combination of ideas." Some people struggle with the "getting the facts" part, but that's a different problem. Once they figure that out, they can do this.
On intros and conclusions:
"An effective piece of writing should start with something that points to its main theme. In other words, you must put your reader in the right frame of mind; you must start by getting him interested in what's going to come...prepare his mind for what's going to come, but not give away the show"
"A good ending should echo the main theme, just as a good opening should sound it in advance...petering out is the most common fault"
"If you don't follow the natural order of your subject, the result is invariably confusion...compelling the reader to spend time in trifling detective work."
In the next section he suggests writing a story around a character. "There's nothing on earth that cannot be told through a hero - or heroine - who's trying to solve a problem in spite of a series of obstacles. It's the classic formula; and it's the only one you can rely on to interest the average reader...If there is no story to tell, you'll have to invent one."
"An excess of summary and an insufficiency of scene in a novel makes the story seem remote, without bite, second hand"
Use dialogue to include the reader. Dialogue means not just direst quotes, but also questions, commands, exclamations, incomplete sentences, or sentences addressed directly to the audience. Percentages of these types of sentences in fiction will be over fifty percent, in popular (magazine) writing 12 to 15 percent, in technical writing - zero.
"Spoken language is the primary phenomenon, and writing is only a more or less imperfect reflection of it." E. H. Sturtevant
In regards to the rule of not repeating words (which he says should be broken), "Sentences in which the writer has carefully not repeated a word set readers wondering what the significance of the change is, only to conclude disappointingly that it has none.
About grammar rules - "...rules of English usage are not immutable natural laws, but simply conventions among educated English-speaking people. If enough educated people insist on making a "mistake," then it isn't a mistake any more and the teachers might as well stop wasting their time correcting it."
"There's hardly a rule in English usage that holds good in all possible situations; in fact, wherever there is a choice, the mechanical application of a rule-of-thumb will be more often bad than good."
In the next section he talks about sentence length and how it has been shrinking over time. He lays out an example of a long, convoluted and confusing sentence, then says, "The cure for this type of sentence elephantiasis is very simple. All you need to do is stop being stuffy and talk like a human being, and that's that." He quotes a law professor, "casting all conditions and requirements into a single sentence will often compel the unfortunate reader to take the sentence apart so that he can obtain an understanding. His task would have been much easier if the author had broken the sentence down into several sentences." Another tip for students - they often write sentences that are too long.
A great quote about truth from John Horne Tooke, "Truth supposes mankind: for whom and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom only it is applicable. If no man, no truth. There is therefore no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth; unless mankind be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth: for the truth of one person may be opposite the truth of another."
Tooke says, "language goes through a continuous process of condensation and abbreviation; through the centuries, people manage to cram more and more meaning into fewer and fewer words. What once took a whole sentence or clause to express, can now be compressed into a single word; and language is full of clever devices that make for more and more speed."
"We shouldn't stuff our sentences with tightly packed bundles of abstractions without ever choosing a simpler way of expressing the same idea...Pompousness is often funny, but it has its serious side. Long words are hard to read; sometimes they are actually unintelligible...The trouble is the terrific density of the language. The things being said come too thick and fast for the ordinary reader...In fact if someone cannot understand a piece of writing, the trouble is rarely that his vocabulary is too small; usually he simply cannot cope with the way words are used." In other words, once again, simplify your writing.
"Vocabulary building as a major industry dates back to some intelligence tests that were given to various occupational groups years back. It turns out that big executives topped everybody else in the range of their vocabulary. The (false) logic is simple: top executives have top vocabulary; hence: vocabulary means success. And so the battle cry was born: 'Build up your vocabulary for quick advancement.'...The trouble is that all the hullabaloo about vocabulary building gives the ordinary citizen the notion that there's a premium on rare and unfamiliar words. Instead he ought to realize that they work like a drug - harmless in small doses, but dangerous if used too much."
"First - make sure you know for whom you are writing. Find out what they know, what they don't know, and what they want to know. Write for your readers and nobody else...Now, collect your material. Get all the information you need. Pay special attention to the little things that will add color and human interest... Then, when you have all the stuff you need, stop for a while and do something else... (when you write) Start with something interesting and promising; wind up with something the reader will remember."
"The trouble with most current writing is that it consists of nothing but nouns and adjectives, glued together with prepositions or with be verbs."
Winston Churchill in regards to the "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule: "This is the kind of arrant pedantry, up with which I shall not put."
"Everyone hears but what he understands." Goethe
In regards to the meanings of words: "One of the basic facts about language is that no word ever means exactly the same to two different people... Your background and experience with a word can never exactly duplicate mine. The basic meaning of the word will usually be the same, but the connotations, the overtones, the feel around the fringes cannot possibly be alike. You can never tell just what a seemingly innocuous word will conjure up in another person's mind... Words are, by definition, unpredictable. That's a fascinating and exasperating fact anyone who writes has to face. Ordinarily we take these differences in connotation for granted. Our language is, and always will be, an imperfect tool of communication and we just have to make the best of it. By and large, people do understand each other even if there may be some amount of misunderstanding around the fringes of practically every word they use."
"When it comes to translation from one language to another, it becomes almost impossible to find words whose meaning matches exactly that of the original. Behind each word in a language is the history of all the uses of the word in that language - and that history is always untranslatable...It's the abstract words that are most apt to be translated in different ways."
"the true source of word meanings is not the dictionary but the people who use the language."
"You can guide a reader's interpretation of the more abstract words - which are the most dangerous - by using as many concrete cases, illustrations and examples as possible."
When we read: "If you think you just pick up on the meanings of words one after the other, you are wrong. Language is not as simple as that. What you do is this: Your eyes move along the printed lines in rhythmic jumps. After each jump they rest for a short while, focus on a word or two, and move on. From time to time, when you unconsciously feel the need of checking back, your eyes move back. And that's the pattern. At about 250 words per minute (average). But that's not the whole story. Words don't mean anything by themselves, or even in groups of two or three. Words get their meaning from the context. So after your eyes have seen the words, your mind assigns to these words a provisional meaning. When the end of the phrase, sentence, or paragraph is reached, your mind rethinks the words in the light of what came after. Reading is really a miracle: your eyes pick up groups of words in split second time and your mind keeps these words in delicate balance until it gets around to a point where they make sense. What all this means to a writer is obvious. A writer must know how people read, what are the main sources of reading errors, and what can be done to forestall them... Don't use unfamiliar spellings or strange words, people's eyes will refuse to read them. Another source of trouble is little words. We ordinarily don't read them at all, but simply assume they are where they belong."
"Nothing is self-explanatory - it's up to you to explain it. And you'll have to do it in words."
"Language is the most democratic institution in the world. Its basis is majority rule; its final authority is the people. If the people decide that they don't want the subjunctive anymore, out goes the subjunctive. If the people adopt okay as a word, in comes okay. In the realm of language, everybody has the right to vote; and everybody does vote, every day of the year. The way you talk and write makes a difference in the English language that is being talked and written today. There is no fixed set of rules: you are making the rules. To be sure, there are limits to what you can do with your language, but they are wide limits, and there is lots of elbow room for everybody. In one way or another, your language differs from that of anybody else. It's part of your own unique personality. It has traces of the family you grew up in, the place where you came from, the people you have associated with, the jobs you have had, the schools you went to, the books you have read, your hobbies, your sports, your philosophy, your religion, your politics, your prejudices, your memories, your ambitions, your dreams, and your love life. The way you form your sentences shows your outlook on life; the words you choose shows your temperament and your aspirations."
"English is a great language; it is perhaps the one that gives the individual greatest freedom. It is poetic and practical at the same time; it is tremendously rich; it's a sort of all-purpose language."
"Language is a social affair; we use it according to the social situation we are in. Our rhetoric is keyed to our place in society - either the one we have or the one we'd like to have. We write stilted English because we unconsciously assume that this is expected of us in the position we happen to fill or the organization we belong to. We have formed a set of habits. and in our speaking and writing we simply piece together the ready-made bits of language that are handy wherever we happen to be. Most of the time we keep our personality out of our language. The easiest thing is to conform."
These last quotes speak for themselves. I love this guy - he writes exactly what I want to express.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Spoken Here
This post is about a book I read last summer called Spoken Here: Travels among threatened languages by Mark Abley. I have been going through my books and posting them for sale on Amazon. Since I already read this book, I'm getting rid of it, and I want to blog about it before I do. I highly recommend this book - he's not a linguist, so you don't need to be one to understand him. I made notes as I read it. It is about disappearing languages. In one chapter he addresses the idea that one language is not "better" than another. "Languages evolve, of course, but they evolve toward simplicity." Our world has become more complicated, but our languages have gotten simpler.
"No language merits extinction by reason of incompetence." When native languages give in to English or Spanish it is not because those native languages were worthless or lesser than the world language that won out over them.
I love this quote: "Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand."
I learned some interesting U. S. history that they didn't teach us in school: "Andrew Jackson ordered the expulsion of all Indians in the southeastern states. It didn't matter whether a people had been friendly or hostile to the whites: they had to leave. (The next president) Van Buren declared, 'No state can achieve proper culture, civilization and progress as long as Indians are permitted to remain.' Through the 1830s, the US Army forced tens of thousands of Indians to abandon their homes at gunpoint and walk westward. untold thousands died along the way." Sounds like the Nazi death marches that Americans are so quick to proclaim as horrible. Its different when we do it, though.
Language is a "constant struggle for maximum communication, with minimal effort." People are always shortening things - sounds assimilate, syllables disappear - due to this lazy tendency in language.
"The knowledge that a language is disappearing can make its last speakers perpetually anxious to say it right. Yet languages depend on noisy use, not silent perfection."
"Indigenous languages might benefit from a gift of energy, money, and outside expertise. Even so, for the purposes of language reproduction, no external gift matters as much as self-belief. If mothers, fathers, and grandparents want to speak a language with their children, that language will survive. But if mothers, fathers, and grandparents are constantly told that their language is an old-fashioned relic, unfit to be uttered in a classroom or a factory, and useless for their children's future, then few of them are likely to keep up the struggle."
Overall, a great book.
"No language merits extinction by reason of incompetence." When native languages give in to English or Spanish it is not because those native languages were worthless or lesser than the world language that won out over them.
I love this quote: "Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand."
I learned some interesting U. S. history that they didn't teach us in school: "Andrew Jackson ordered the expulsion of all Indians in the southeastern states. It didn't matter whether a people had been friendly or hostile to the whites: they had to leave. (The next president) Van Buren declared, 'No state can achieve proper culture, civilization and progress as long as Indians are permitted to remain.' Through the 1830s, the US Army forced tens of thousands of Indians to abandon their homes at gunpoint and walk westward. untold thousands died along the way." Sounds like the Nazi death marches that Americans are so quick to proclaim as horrible. Its different when we do it, though.
Language is a "constant struggle for maximum communication, with minimal effort." People are always shortening things - sounds assimilate, syllables disappear - due to this lazy tendency in language.
"The knowledge that a language is disappearing can make its last speakers perpetually anxious to say it right. Yet languages depend on noisy use, not silent perfection."
"Indigenous languages might benefit from a gift of energy, money, and outside expertise. Even so, for the purposes of language reproduction, no external gift matters as much as self-belief. If mothers, fathers, and grandparents want to speak a language with their children, that language will survive. But if mothers, fathers, and grandparents are constantly told that their language is an old-fashioned relic, unfit to be uttered in a classroom or a factory, and useless for their children's future, then few of them are likely to keep up the struggle."
Overall, a great book.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
850 books in the box
Ok, so I discussed a few blogs back that I put some author's names in a container and I will draw a name when it's time to read the next book. Well, I expanded on the idea. I organized my books in Librarything and put all of the books that I want to read in one category. Then I printed out that category list, cut them up and folded each one and put them in a box. As I folded them a few thoughts came to mind. First, if I die tomorrow and my family finds this box of folded up book titles, they are going to think I was slightly insane. Maybe they'll think it was cute, or creative. I don't care. I can't think of any other way to fairly and randomly pick the next book. As I folded them, I looked at the titles and I would think to myself, "I hope I get this one first," or "I hope I don't draw this one." For the ones I hoped not to get, I would say, "If you don't want to read this book, why do you own it?" So then I would reconcile myself to fate. Then I started imagining weird combinations of three such as Bertrand Russel, Jean Auel, and Roots. Well. there's about 5000 pages to get through. SO I laid out some mental rules for myself:
1. If I really don't want to read a book, I can put it back into the pot.
2. If I start reading a book, and I just hate it, I will stop.
3. If I get the second (or third) of a series, I will read them in order.
Whatever, it's just my own casual book fate challenge.
Besides, I have a bunch of books on my bedside to finish before I draw my first one. There are 850 books in the box. What will my first book be???
1. If I really don't want to read a book, I can put it back into the pot.
2. If I start reading a book, and I just hate it, I will stop.
3. If I get the second (or third) of a series, I will read them in order.
Whatever, it's just my own casual book fate challenge.
Besides, I have a bunch of books on my bedside to finish before I draw my first one. There are 850 books in the box. What will my first book be???
Studies in Words finished
I have to admit I skipped the middle 7 chapters of this book. They were the actual meat of what Mr. Lewis wanted to discuss. Each of those chapters took a word and discussed its meaning through time and the Latin and Greek equivalents of those words and discussed how they were the same or different. I tried to read a few, but I was really not interested. His final chapter, however, was much more interesting. It is called "On the Fringe of Language." In it he discusses how we use words as insults, or just emotional expression, and they have lost meaning.
"Another limitation of language is that it cannot, unlike music or gesture, do more than one thing at once. However, the words in a great poet's phrase interinanimate one another and strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous chord, yet, strictly speaking, each word must be read or heard before the next. That way, language is as unilinear as time."
"One of the first things we have to say to a beginner (writer) ... is 'avoid all epithets which are merely emotional. It is no use telling us that something was "mysterious" or "loathsome" or "awe-inspiring" or "voluptuous." Do you think your readers will believe you just because you say so? You must go quite a different way to work. By direct description, by metaphor and simile, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, readers, not you, exclaim, "How mysterious!" or "How loathsome!" Let me taste for myself and you'll have no need to tell me how I should react to the flavor.'
I love this paragraph because he states precisely what I feel, but cannot put into words, especially as eloquently as he does. Great advice as a tutor.
He goes on to tell us that there are exceptions...
'Which, to the boundaries of space and time,
Of melancholy space and doleful time,
He points out that in this poem, Donne reverses the process. "The object (space and time) is in one way so familiar to our imaginations, and in another so unimaginable - we have read so many tedious attempts to exalt or over-awe us with mere superlatives or even with simple arithmetic - That nothing can be made of it. This time...the poet appeals directly to our emotions; and not obvious ones." So true when those simple overused adjectives don't do something justice. Melancholy and doleful.
Next he discusses words that are merely emotional and have lost meaning (remember verbicide?)
He cites damn as an example, "historically the whole Christian eschatology lies behind them. If no one had ever consigned his enemy to the eternal fires and believed that there were eternal fires to receive him, these ejaculations would never have existed. But inflation, the spontaneous hyperboles of ill-temper, and the decay of religion, have long since emptied them of that lurid content. Those who have no belief in damnation - and some who have - now damn inanimate objects which would on any view be ineligible for it. The word is no longer an imprecation. It is hardly, in the full sense, a word at all when so used. Its popularity probably owes as much to its resounding phonetic virtues as to any, even fanciful, association with hell. It has ceased to be profane. It has also become very much less forceful."
Here he discusses calling someone names, such as swine or pig. "But his language as such has very little power to do the only thing it is intended to do. It would have been far more wounding to be called swine when the word still carried some whiff of the sty and some echo of a grunt; far more wounding to be called a villain when this still conjured up an image of the unwashed, malodorous, ineducable, gross, belching, close-fisted and surly boor. Now, who cares? Language meant solely to hurt hurts strangely little."
I love the way he writes. I must admit I am surprised, as I often have been, that people felt this way, even way back then (1960).
"When words of abuse have hurting the enemy as their direct and only object, they do not hurt him much."
"As words become exclusively emotional they cease to be words and therefore cease to perform any strictly linguistic function. They operate as growls, or barks, or tears."
"The function of criticism is to get ourselves out of the way and let humanity decide. Not to discharge our hatred, but to expose the grounds for it; not to vilify faults, but to diagnose and exhibit them. Unfortunately to express our hatred and to revenge ourselves is easier and more agreeable. Hence, there is a tendency to select our pejorative epithets with a view not to their accuracy, but to their power of hurting." Do we want to "inform the reader or annoy the author?"
He talks about a book critic: "In the first hundred words the critic had revealed his passions. What happened to me after that is, I think, what must happen to anybody in such circumstances. Automatically, without thinking about it, willy-nilly, one's mind discounts everything he says, as it does when we are listening to a drunk or delirious man. Indeed we cannot even think about the book under discussion. The critic rivets our attention on himself."
This could be applied to other situations such as political pundits, or any time someone is offering up an opinion about a subject.
The lesson? "The very occasions on which we should most like to write a slashing review are precisely those on which we had much better hold our tongues. The very desire is a danger signal."
And that's it for that book. I'll just go and erase my pencil marks and return this dusty old tome to the library.
"Another limitation of language is that it cannot, unlike music or gesture, do more than one thing at once. However, the words in a great poet's phrase interinanimate one another and strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous chord, yet, strictly speaking, each word must be read or heard before the next. That way, language is as unilinear as time."
"One of the first things we have to say to a beginner (writer) ... is 'avoid all epithets which are merely emotional. It is no use telling us that something was "mysterious" or "loathsome" or "awe-inspiring" or "voluptuous." Do you think your readers will believe you just because you say so? You must go quite a different way to work. By direct description, by metaphor and simile, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, readers, not you, exclaim, "How mysterious!" or "How loathsome!" Let me taste for myself and you'll have no need to tell me how I should react to the flavor.'
I love this paragraph because he states precisely what I feel, but cannot put into words, especially as eloquently as he does. Great advice as a tutor.
He goes on to tell us that there are exceptions...
'Which, to the boundaries of space and time,
Of melancholy space and doleful time,
He points out that in this poem, Donne reverses the process. "The object (space and time) is in one way so familiar to our imaginations, and in another so unimaginable - we have read so many tedious attempts to exalt or over-awe us with mere superlatives or even with simple arithmetic - That nothing can be made of it. This time...the poet appeals directly to our emotions; and not obvious ones." So true when those simple overused adjectives don't do something justice. Melancholy and doleful.
Next he discusses words that are merely emotional and have lost meaning (remember verbicide?)
He cites damn as an example, "historically the whole Christian eschatology lies behind them. If no one had ever consigned his enemy to the eternal fires and believed that there were eternal fires to receive him, these ejaculations would never have existed. But inflation, the spontaneous hyperboles of ill-temper, and the decay of religion, have long since emptied them of that lurid content. Those who have no belief in damnation - and some who have - now damn inanimate objects which would on any view be ineligible for it. The word is no longer an imprecation. It is hardly, in the full sense, a word at all when so used. Its popularity probably owes as much to its resounding phonetic virtues as to any, even fanciful, association with hell. It has ceased to be profane. It has also become very much less forceful."
Here he discusses calling someone names, such as swine or pig. "But his language as such has very little power to do the only thing it is intended to do. It would have been far more wounding to be called swine when the word still carried some whiff of the sty and some echo of a grunt; far more wounding to be called a villain when this still conjured up an image of the unwashed, malodorous, ineducable, gross, belching, close-fisted and surly boor. Now, who cares? Language meant solely to hurt hurts strangely little."
I love the way he writes. I must admit I am surprised, as I often have been, that people felt this way, even way back then (1960).
"When words of abuse have hurting the enemy as their direct and only object, they do not hurt him much."
"As words become exclusively emotional they cease to be words and therefore cease to perform any strictly linguistic function. They operate as growls, or barks, or tears."
"The function of criticism is to get ourselves out of the way and let humanity decide. Not to discharge our hatred, but to expose the grounds for it; not to vilify faults, but to diagnose and exhibit them. Unfortunately to express our hatred and to revenge ourselves is easier and more agreeable. Hence, there is a tendency to select our pejorative epithets with a view not to their accuracy, but to their power of hurting." Do we want to "inform the reader or annoy the author?"
He talks about a book critic: "In the first hundred words the critic had revealed his passions. What happened to me after that is, I think, what must happen to anybody in such circumstances. Automatically, without thinking about it, willy-nilly, one's mind discounts everything he says, as it does when we are listening to a drunk or delirious man. Indeed we cannot even think about the book under discussion. The critic rivets our attention on himself."
This could be applied to other situations such as political pundits, or any time someone is offering up an opinion about a subject.
The lesson? "The very occasions on which we should most like to write a slashing review are precisely those on which we had much better hold our tongues. The very desire is a danger signal."
And that's it for that book. I'll just go and erase my pencil marks and return this dusty old tome to the library.
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