triptych

“How was Spain?”

I knew this simple question would lead to a treat. Marica and Ronald were a bit of an odd couple and could have two different conversations simultaneously using the same words.

“I loved the triptych,” Marica said. For her, the point of any trip was to see art. And she had mentioned she wanted to see Bosch’s Haywain triptych in the Museo del Prado, a sure highlight for a medieval fantasist.

“Oh, yeah,” Ronald concurred, “the Trip Tik was pretty good. There were some puzzling aspects, but it seemed clear enough by the right edge.”

Although Ronald’s interest in trip planning always focused on which model of car he would be renting, Marica nonetheless managed to cozen herself into believing he cared about art. “Yes,” she said, “such a grand progression: innocence in the beginning, the great hay wagon in the middle, with the Christ” – Ronald snorted – “and then the descent into Hell at the end.”

“Well, you’re being a bit dramatic about the Madrid traffic, perhaps, but just a bit. But, yeah, I almost forgot that hay wagon. And what I said when I nearly ran into it!”

Marica turned and squinted at him. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you and your driving. I bet you don’t even know who’s Bosch.” She pronounced Bosch in the Dutch manner, rather like “boss.”

“Obviously,” he said, “you are, since I only drive to get you from gallery to gallery! But you’re the one who started in about the Trip Tik. I didn’t think you even cared about the CAA.”

“I don’t,” she said. “Nasty people who work against public transportation. But what has that to do with – I do say, James, would you like to share something with the class?”

I was nearly convulsing with laughter; I contained myself enough to launch into one of my wonted explanations. “She’s talking about a triptych as in a three-panelled painting,” I explained to Ronald. “You may perhaps remember a painting on three wooden panels hinged together –”

“More than one of them,” Ronald replied. “The place is infested with them. Next thing she’s going to want to paint our closet doors. But they don’t all have to do with trips.”

“Oh,” I said, “it’s from the Greek tri, ‘three,’ and ptuché, ‘fold.’ Nothing to do with trips. Whereas you’re talking about a route guide with tips and tricks for your trip. Trip plus Tik. No fancy ych ending to make it look arcane.”

“Or yecchy,” Ronald muttered. He added more conversationally, “But my Trip Tik has nothing to do with her triptychs.”

“And what, pray tell, would be a Tik?” Marica interjected.

“Obviously triptych influenced this formation,” I said. “They did it more to make it stick than to trip your tongue. But I suspect it was also influenced by the international motoring passport that came out in the early 20th century, the triptyque. Which was a card that folded in three, hence the name. Linear route maps, for their part, have also been around longer than the CAA, AAA, or AA.”

“They sure beat a big road atlas,” Ronald declared.

“Well,” Marica said with contained disdain, “a road atlas is still the only kind of diptych you’ll look at.”

“Hey!” Ronald looked almost hurt. “I checked the dipstick when we picked up the car! Not my fault the thing developed a leak and we ran out of oil.”

Fulford fulminates – pfui.

The National Post’s Robert Fulford has gone on a grammar gripe to mark the unofficial but much-bruited National Punctuation Day.

Ick.

More “language as gotcha game” thinking. While standards are important in language, they exist to serve communication, not vice-versa. We certainly want children to learn consistency and discipline in their usage, but we should also want them to think about why they do what they do and to focus on language as something enjoyable and to put their main emphasis on effectiveness of communication. Punctuation ranting leads to truly a**hole-ish behaviour like this: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=522. Come on, perspective, please! Language exists for connecting people; if in our focus on language we disrespect people, we have lost the thread entirely.

And to address the apostrophe issue that Fulford fulminates on, I need to point out again that apostrophes on possessives are neither necessary (we get by fine without hearing them in speech) nor historically appropriate. They were forced into the language during the Renaissance by people who mistakenly believed that our possessive was contracted from “has” and who thought the written forms of words should manifest their origins (but only to some extent… for instance, a b was reinserted in debt to make it look more like debitum; why not add the i and the um while you’re sticking in silent letters?). “Ancient tradition” my ass. Fulford should take a short course in the history of the English language and study some Old English inflections. (See faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/courses/handouts/magic.html to see what our possessives used to be – they’re in the G. row, for “genitive.”)

The comments on Fulford’s article give further evidence to my contention that most people who go on about other people’s grammar don’t know grammar as well as they think they do. One fellow attempts to maintain a strict distinction between literal “farther” and figurative “further” when there is only a general trend, not a lexicalized difference. In response, another fellow, trying to sound authoritative, writes “written by whomever feels the urge,” which is altogether nonstandard; the relative pronoun here is the subject of a subordinate clause, and as such should be in the nominative, if we’re going to be insisting on the rules. Another one corrects someone on a supposed misplaced comma that’s not actually misplaced. And so on.

English is fun because it’s crazy. But it’s also frustrating for the same reason if you’re trying to be a stickler about it. Three points of advice:

a) remember why you’re using it;

b) know your stuff, and know what you don’t know;

c) enjoy it, please, and let others do the same.

Overwrought about overweight

Overweight, known to most of us as an adjective, also has a medical use as a noun to refer to the condition of having a body mass index of at least 25 (above normal) but below 30 (obese). I don’t altogether enjoy that usage, aesthetically, but I recognize why it’s used.

A fellow editor mentioned needing to stifle a scream whenever seeing overweight as a noun and having to let it stand. Stifle a scream?

starboard

I remember one of my elementary school teachers telling us that on ships, the left side was called port because it was the side towards the port – ships docked on that side – and the right side was called starboard because, as it was away from the port, you could see the stars. In my adult years I have come to realize that many teachers, like many other adults, will often make things up that seem reasonable to them and assert them as fact when explaining things to children. This is one such instance. Actually, the star in this word comes from the word that, on its own, came to be steer in modern English. Old Germanic ships were steered by a steersman who stood on the right side of the vessel with a paddle. (This did force the ship to dock on the left side, so port is port because that’s the side of the ship that had the port – opening – in it for loading and unloading; that side was originally called the larboard.)

But no one thinks of steer now when seeing this word. Steering is not done from the right side and hasn’t been for a long time. And star, well, star is star! It has that éclat that lends fulgurance even to such a baleful thing as a star-chamber. In this word, it is joined to board, which has that rigidity with the hint or threat of splinter, and so you can get a taste of a wooden ship at night, stars above and boards below. Try to ignore the rats running off the left side… the ship is broad and you’re on the right. No mixed-up road brats – or bastard – will steer you wrong. Hard a-starboard!

P.S. There’s a huge amount of etymological rubbish focused on things nautical and naval. Quite a few terms and phrases have baseless – and sometimes breathtakingly inane – stories about nautical origins circulating. Among the most senseless is the assertion that “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” was a reference to cannon balls being stacked on brass plates on a ship’s deck. Whoever made this up knows not enough about a) ships in general, b) naval battles in specific, c) physics, and d) metal. Actually, it came from a host of phrases referring to brass monkeys, the first recorded one being “hot enough to melt the nose off a brass monkey.” (See www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bra1.htm for more details.) Another common fase etymology is for posh, which has for decades been said to stand for “port outward, starboard home.” This is baseless. The term most likely comes from London street slang for “money.” See www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pos1.htm for more details.

Whoever tells you to always avoid splitting infinitives is wrong

Yet another colleague has called for backup to respond to someone who insists that splitting infinitives is always and without exception wrong.

Siiigggghhhhh. Really, do these people never, ever look anything up?

What’s up with English spelling?

Presented at the 30th annual Editors’ Association of Canada conference, Toronto, June 6, 2009

Handout: Why is it spelled that way? A ghotiun expedition (PDF, 156 KB)

Last week, the annual Scripps Spelling Bee was held. Everyone was so impressed at how smart these kids were, at how they could spell all these words.

Remember that song, A-B-C, easy as 1-2-3…? So what the heck is so easy about ABC, at least in English? It gets to be like a bad marriage. Or a boxing match.

Peking, Beijing, whazzup?

Pity the capital city of China. No matter what, its name gets mispronounced. It used to be written Peking, but that led to millions of people saying it like an act of voyeurism. Now it’s written Beijing, and anglophones all over the world can’t believe that a j could represent anything like how we say it in English, so in the spirit of foreignness they blubber the b and say the j as though it were French.

In fact, the phonemes involved in the name of China’s capital are such that Peking (the Yale transliteration), Pei-ching (Wade-Giles style, but never commonly used) and Beijing (Pinyin style) are all arguably viable, but all misleading in one way or another for the simple reason that the sounds used are not all sounds we make in English.

If I were using the subjunctive…

The subject of the subjunctive came up in a recent email discussion. English does have a subjunctive – or, I should say, some versions of English do have a distinct subjunctive. Some people will say “If I was you,” meaning right now, and they’re not using a special subjunctive form. But others (me included) will say “If I were you,” because I couldn’t possibly actually be you, and they are using a special subjunctive form. And I will be addressing the kind of English that does use these forms.

There are actually a variety of places where the subjunctive gets used in English, although rather fewer than there used to be, and I’m not going to go into detail about all of them, but they all involve a posited alternate reality – one that is desired (as in “I ask that he come to see me”) or merely posited as possible (“If music be the food of love, play on”), or one that is  definitely expressed as other than the current state (“If I were a rich man…”).

The discussion began with the sentence “He felt as if he were at a crossroads.” And the question: The character is indeed at a crossroads, so should it be “was”?

What flavour of English do you want?

This is taken from a presentation I gave at the Editors’ Association of Canada conference in Edmonton, June 2008. For the bibliography and a concise summary of some key points, see the handout (PDF, 72 KB)

I thought I wouldn’t call this “Register, collocation, and reflected meaning” because, well, that sounded a little dry. And I’m going to be starting into this subject with the use of a metaphor of sort. The metaphor I’m going to be using—and I think it’s a pretty viable one—is, as you may have guessed, that a piece of a text is like a piece of food. A document is like a dish. Words are like ingredients.

Tonnes of options

Today’s discussion on the Editors’ Association of Canada listserv has brought forth an ad looking for performers with “tonnes of energy.” Hm! That would be “tons,” right? Boy, give these people 2.5 cm and they’ll take 1.6 km…

Except that there actually is a case to be made for it.