The Queens English? Ha!

I used to believe that poor grammar and punctuation (along with lame justifications thereof) was chiefly the domain of us Americans, but this article is making me rethink that assumption. There might be some valid reasons to remove apostrophes from signs, but "confusing and old-fashioned" aren't among them. And one shouldn't need an A-level in English to understand a simple street sign!

In the town of Manhattan, Kansas, where I grew up, there's a street that had three different names among at least seven signs: Seth Child Road, Seth Childs Road, Seth Child's Road. This was the case fifteen years ago, anyway; I don't know if they've settled on something since. The inconsistency was a little annoying, but I wouldn't have taken it as an argument to remove all apostrophes from every sign. If anything, "Seth Childs Road" makes the least amount of sense among the three.

I'm with Lynne Truss on this one. It's a weak attempt to hide ignorance by claiming some higher purpose.

Bumbling along with joy

My two daughters, ages five and three, have been taking Mandarin and Taiwanese lessons at the Fremont Taiwan School for a few weeks now. It's been an interesting experience for our family. The teachers, staff, and most of the parents are first-generation Taiwanese, which means that their primary language of communication is Taiwanese or Mandarin. Since classes are held during the day, it's my stay-at-home husband---who speaks neither language---who's responsible for ferrying them to and from class. I've come home to comments like, "Um, she has homework for next week, but I'm not sure what it is."

Nor can I completely save the day, since my Mandarin is abysmal and my Taiwanese is functional but by no means fluent. When I emailed the teacher last week in English to inquire about the homework, she phoned me at work speaking Mandarin; I inquired (in Mandarin) whether we could switch to Taiwanese and we managed to have a reasonable conversation about my daughter's homework in a language neither of us felt totally comfortable in. We stumbled around for a while on what I think was the word "trace", which neither of us knew in Taiwanese. I was eventually able to convey to my husband what I thought the homework was, even though I couldn't read the characters on the worksheets. (I have got to learn how to use a Chinese dictionary.)

In the midst of all this parental confusion, my girls have been real troupers. My older daughter was at first upset that she couldn't understand the teacher, who also spoke too loudly, but after I armed her with the Taiwanese phrases for "What does that mean?" and "Could you please not speak so loudly?" she was fine. I think it helps, too, that she attended a German immersion preschool for two years and can deal with being in an environment where she doesn't understand the language. Now that a few weeks have passed, they're happy and enthusiastic and the teacher raves about their participation and progress.

I relate these experiences because I've so often, in my anti-racism work and elsewhere, encountered people who describe feelings of unease, frustration, or hostility when they are in the company of people who don't speak English. Yes, I do understand the discomfort. I wasn't born speaking five languages, nor do I speak most of those languages fluently. Yes, language is a barrier, but frequently not as huge of one as people think it is. When there is a willingness on both sides to bridge the gap and to be in community, many wonderful things can happen. With the school, I was upfront from the beginning about my and my husband's lack of fluency in Chinese and our desire to change that for ourselves and our daughters. The staff got me an interpreter for the parents' meeting, and they've set up a camera and a monitor so my husband can observe the classes and (hopefully) pick up a bit of the lessons themselves. When the kids had a Moon Festival party a few weeks ago, an older child sat between my girls explaining what was going on, and a fellow parent performed a similar service for my husband.

It is not language that creates barriers; it is people and their attitudes. In my volunteer work as a Spanish interpreter for the Rotacare Free Clinic, I seek to bridge the language gap for others; in my position as a parent at the Fremont Taiwan school, I gratefully accept the willingness of others to bridge the corresponding language gaps for me. Through it all, I am humbled and proud to be in the presence of those who recognize that in this world we need all the bridges we can create, that humanity transcends the borders of a country, and that we are ultimately far more alike than we are different.

School board idiocy

I am absolutely horrified by this story. Following a commencement speech at a Lousiana high school in which the co-valedictorians thanked their parents briefly in their native Vietnamese, the school board is considering a formal policy that all commencement speeches must be delivered in English. (Reports here and here.)

How ignorant and xenophobic do you have to be to feel threatened by a high school valedictorian wanting to express gratitude to her parents in a few sentences of another language? I am sick and tired of people believing that living in the United States entitles them never to hear any other language spoken besides English. It's simply incomprehensible to me how the school board can claim that this policy is aimed toward inclusivity.

Hue Vo, one of the co-valedictorians, also said in her speech, "Ellender is very diverse. We have many cultures there. They encourage us to be an individual. That’s why I love Ellender. It helped me be an Asian American and not be ashamed of it because no one judged me." Ironic, isn't it?

(Thanks to Angry Asian Man, who expressed his outrage far more eloquently than I can.)

Here we go again

I almost don't want to waste blog space writing about a subject that I think has already received far too much attention as it is, but this latest development seems too ridiculous to ignore:

The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term "plutoid" as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto.

Sidestepping concerns of many astronomers worldwide, the IAU's decision, at a meeting of its Executive Committee in Oslo, comes almost two years after it stripped Pluto of its planethood and introduced the term "dwarf planets" for Pluto and other small round objects that often travel highly elliptical paths around the sun in the far reaches of the solar system.

(Full article here) So now Pluto is not a planet or a dwarf planet, but a plutoid. Pluto is a plutoid. How tautological is that?

I doubt we'll see the end of this. My impression is that the original controversy arose because people were emotionally connected to the idea of nine planets. I can understand this; I picked up the children's book 11 Planets recently and it just felt...wrong. Blasphemous. Weird. So I don't think those people who desperately want Pluto to be a planet again will settle for anything less than Pluto, and only Pluto, restored to full-planet status. They think Pluto was unfairly demoted (which I disagree with) and they want justice.

As a scientist, I'm quite familiar with the phenomenon of words having different scientific and colloquial meanings, and I think it's okay. We know koala bears aren't bears and peanuts aren't nuts in the botanical sense. And while I still think it's more consistent to have either eight or eleven planets rather than nine, there are many precedents in our language for "wrong" words and concepts being retained for historical reasons.

That said, I'm still a proud member of the Facebook group "I'm Glad Pluto's No Longer a Planet; It Makes Gustav Holst's Suite Complete".

Language #8

I have varying degrees of competence and experience in seven languages, and I've purposely avoided starting any new ones for quite some time as I struggle to maintain and improve the ones I have amidst all my other obligations and hobbies. From time to time I've thought about what the next one might be: French or Italian, which I love and which would be easiest given my history of Latin and Spanish studies? Japanese or Korean, which would be most valuable in my current high-tech career? Russian, which I'm attracted to for its history, literature, and culture? Actually, I've decided (and already begun) language number eight, and it is none of the above.

It's Arabic.

Early this month I carpooled to a concert in Fresno with a very casual friend, someone I met online and have encountered from time to time but with whom I've never had a deep conversation. She is Iranian, a devout Muslim, and over a decade younger than I am. It is not often that one gets an opportunity to make a profound connection with someone so different, and even less often that one takes advantage of that opportunity. I feel immensely privileged that during our five-hour round trip we talked, and talked, and talked, and I came away with a glimmer of true understanding of her values, beliefs, and upbringing. Genuine understanding, not the simplistic picture of Islam and the Middle East that we are fed by politicians and media in an effort to gain popularity by feeding on people's natural fear for the unknown.

Different people have different ways of acquiring knowledge of a culture, different paths to making it accessible. Some are attracted to food, or literature, or art; some do it when they begin dating someone of that culture. For me, the link is language. I could write a book on the secondary effects that my studies of Spanish have had on me, from my appreciation of Latin pop music to my views on immigration. I've mentioned before that the study of foreign languages has opened my mind and broadened my horizons far more than anything else I've done, including travel. Thus, it is through the study of Arabic that I shall seek to fill this huge gap in my understanding of the world.

Some of my friends and acquaintances have already expressed surprise at my decision, convinced that Arabic is a far less "useful" language than, say, French. A few months ago, I would have agreed with them. In fact, Arabic is the fourth to sixth (depending on exact criteria) most commonly spoken native language in the world, far ahead of all the languages I listed above. I believe that my previous notions of what languages qualify as "useful" were heavily influenced by growing up in an educational system that highly overemphasizes Western culture and history, and a economic system that equates importance with wealth. I consider my ignorance of Middle Eastern language, culture, and religion an embarrassment, and I will delay no longer in trying to remedy it.

Good intentions are only that, however, and it's proving to be quite a challenge. Although I consider myself an experienced language learner with a natural gift, for the first time I'm tackling one that is substantially different from English, without the benefit of ethnic heritage and connections (Taiwanese and Mandarin) or previous familiarity with the alphabet (Greek). After a month, I'm still trying to master the abjad---the term for a consonantal alphabet---connecting all the letters (which can take up to four forms!) to their sounds. It's a slow process, but as with all new language acquisition, a deeply rewarding one for me.

My only hope is that I maintain my energy and motivation for this work, for passion and a lofty purpose can often be defeated by a healthy dose of reality; I remember several classmates in my Ancient Greek class who took it with the worthy goal of reading the New Testament in its original language, only to drop out when faced with the devilishly difficult grammar. My friends and fellow language lovers, I'm counting on you to hold me to my word.

Symbol or letter?

When the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" came out several years ago, the title was printed on posters as "MY BIG FAT GRΣΣK WEDDING", with the capital letter for sigma in place of the Es. The purpose was, of course, to give a "Greek" look to the publicity material, but for me and I assume many others who know a bit of Greek, it read distractingly as "GRSSK". I saw the same phenomenon recently in promotions of the movie "Borat", which appears as "BORДT" with a Cyrillic D in place of the English A. This one was less irritating to me since I don't read Russian, but I wonder if those who do thought "BORDT" every time they saw it.

I find such substitutions rather linguacentric, since I believe it unlikely that anyone with a knowledge of both languages would ever think of mixing them in that way. One has to view the sigma or the Cyrillic D as a graphic or a symbol rather than a letter for it not to be distracting. I'm once again reminded of the Stroop effect and a question posed by my classmate in the psychology/linguistics class where I first learned of it: "Would it be confusing if the color words were in a different language that you didn't understand?" Of course not!

I was plodding through a highly technical paper at work recently when I discovered, to my dismay, that the author had used both versions of the Greek lowercase phi (φ and ϕ) to represent unique quantities. Fortunately, they were distinct enough as not to be terribly confusing, but I thought it would be difficult if I ever had to discuss the equations out loud. After all, using the two phis is equivalent to using both forms of the English lowercase "a", and one would have to refer to "loopy phi" or "straight phi" or something like that to distinguish them. Yikes!

Das geht nicht!

I recently read a news blurb publicizing an upcoming appearance of my favorite violinist, Joshua Bell. It began thus:

Bell, the wünderkind violinist who has been in the spotlight for much of his 39 years...

Wunderkind, literally "wonder child", does not have an umlaut. Not in German, and certainly not in English. I find it particularly irritating (cf. this previous post, and this one) when people use foreign words or expressions incorrectly, perhaps because I have little patience with those who try to be clever when they're not. "Look at me! I know what the word wunderkind means! I know that German has umlauts on vowels! I know how to make an umlaut on my computer!" I'm generally tolerant of typographical errors, and I'd be far less indignant if the reporter had left out an umlaut where one belonged. But I think it's a greater crime to get busted when you're showing off or trying to trick people (carpool cheaters who get caught with inflatable dummies in their passenger seats deserve harsher penalties than those who simply take the risk as a obviously solo driver). If you're going to use a foreign term, use it right or be ridiculed. I expect the same level of scrutiny from my readers as I sprinkle foreign expressions liberally throughout my blog.

But on the topic of superfluous accent marks, I got email today with the interesting subject line, "Hirofumi sénds yóu sóftwáre dównIóád cóúpón fór Mar 21 00:30:00 MSK 2007"...I assume the funky vowels were intended to help the message get past my spam filter. Which it did, but given that most text processing algorithms on the web seem to treat accented and unaccented letters equally, I doubt the weird subject line was what made the difference.

At the movies

I missed most of the Oscars last night, though I was pleased to catch the presentation of the award for lifetime achievement to Ennio Morricone, a composer I very much enjoy and admire. I admit that I was a little surprised to find that a man known for writing scores for so many Hollywood movies doesn't speak English. Nonetheless, his heartfelt gratitude came across in his acceptance speech even before it was interpreted. And who knew Clint Eastwood could speak Italian? My respect for that man just grew even more.

I've always preferred watching foreign movies with subtitles, rather than listening to the dubbed versions. Part of it is the simple aesthetics of having mouths synchronized with dialogue, along with hearing the original actors' vocal expressions. But I also think the rhythm and sound of a particular language evoke certain moods in much the same way as a musical score. And although the quality of a screenplay may not be as sensitive to individual word choices as in opera or poetry, I believe most screenwriters do choose their words carefully, and this work deserves to be presented. True, it's a little more effort to read all the translations, but in my mind there's no question that it's worth it.

The 2006 Word of the Year

The American Dialect Society has voted "plutoed" as its 2006 Word of the Year. According to the press release, "To pluto is to demote or devalue somone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet."

I have a couple of objections to this choice. The first is semantic: The IAU did not "demote" Pluto. It created a formal definition of a planet to remove ambiguity, something that scientists love to do and that I believe most language enthusiasts encourage. The effect of that definition was to remove controversy over whether more recently-discovered bodies such as Eris should be classified as planets, and yes, to remove Pluto from that classification as well. But the proposal was not, as the definition of "pluto" implies, some sort of hostile act whose sole purpose was to strip Pluto of its status.

My second objection is that it is quite unconventional to define a verb in its active voice by the object of the verb's action. In other words, while "plutoed" as a past participle makes sense, "to pluto" as it was defined does not; it implies that Pluto did something, which it didn't. Usually, it's the agent of the action (in this case, the IAU) after which the new verb is named, and then both voices work: "The planet got IAUed", or "They IAUed Pluto". It's only because the passive voice in English has the compound form of to be + past participle that we sometimes define a verb first in the passive form, then extend it (inappropriately) to the active form. This sort of backwards coinage would be unlikely to happen in, say, Latin, where all voices share the same stem.

Finally, while the reclassification of Pluto may be an important event in scientific history, the linguistic significance of the term "plutoed" is debatable. I'd never even heard of it before it was voted 2006 Word of the Year; to me, some of the other nominations like "YouTube" or "macaca" were far more noteworthy. But then, I don't know what criteria were used by the 47 members of the society who voted for "plutoed".

Pop song grammar

In poetry and song lyrics, rhyme and rhythm often play large roles. (In fact, that's the main reason it's so difficult to translate poetry well; so much depends on the specific sounds of words in a particular language.) With this in mind, we frequently give writers of such types of work a certain amount of liberty in stretching the rules---or at least conventions---of grammar and word order. As long as their choices register as "unusual" and "interesting" rather than "wrong", it's fine.

But some pop songs just go too far. Paula Cole's "I Don't Want To Wait" begins

Open up your morning light
Say a little prayer for I

Say a little prayer for "I"? Even the most uneducated English speaker knows that the preposition "for" must be followed by "me", not "I"; there is no dialect in which this is a valid construction. Every time I hear this, I wince. And though I'm editorializing, I really don't think the sentiment expressed is profound or beautiful enough to justify such an egregious grammatical error.

A little lower on the offensiveness scale is Savage Garden's "Truly, Madly, Deeply", which goes

I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever

It's a common mistake to use the transitive "lay" instead of the intransitive "lie"; so common, in fact, that the author of these lyrics may not even have chosen the word intentionally. The same goes for Joan Osborne's "What if God was one of us", which fails to use the subjunctive form "were" as is appropriate. These could be chalked up to ignorance of proper grammar, or the idea that since so many people misuse English in this way, it's more aurally pleasing to use what is common rather than what is correct.

I was going to include John Mellencamp's "Hurt So Good" in this category, but actually in this case it's acceptable. In a song that includes "love don't feel like it should" and "I ain't made no plans", "good" rather than "well" is the appropriate adverb. It's not the Queen's English, but it's consistent and valid. As I hope I made clear in my previous post on grammar, there are dialects in which the standard rules of English do not apply (though other, definable rules do), and this is one of them.

When is it rude to speak a foreign language?

I've frequently heard people say that they think it's rude when others speak a foreign language in their presence. I admit that when I was much younger I might have agreed, just as I was embarrassed and annoyed when my parents would speak Taiwanese to me in front of my friends. But now that I'm a mature, multilingual adult, I'm baffled by others who continue to feel this way.

The most common explanation I hear for such resentment goes something like, "I don't understand what they're talking about...are they talking about me, or what?" To this I would respond: Speaking a foreign language is not like whispering, which I do agree is rude. In my experience, when people speak a foreign language to each other it's because it makes more sense to do so for reasons of fluency or understanding, not because they are purposely trying to exclude others. To assume that the parties are talking about you is, in my opinion, paranoid and egocentric. I speak Taiwanese to my parents all the time because it's my only opportunity to practice the language and they tend to understand me better when I do. Why should I switch to English when others are in the room simply to facilitate their eavesdropping?

The most recent incident in which an acquaintance described language-related rudeness was at a nail salon; during her pedicure, the woman working on her feet completely ignored her and instead spent the entire half hour chatting in Vietnamese with her colleagues. Now, I agree that this behavior was rude, but I would assert that the rudeness was because the customer was being ignored, not because there was a conversation held in a foreign language. I've been waited on in stores by teenagers who don't even look me in the eye as they're ringing me up, chatting with their coworkers in English. It's the unprofessionalism that's the issue, not the language.

There are, of course, instances in which the use of a foreign language is inappropriate. In my group at work, for example, over half the engineers are from China and Taiwan, and sometimes I feel that there is more business conducted in Mandarin than in English. While I don't make a habit of eavesdropping on every conversation that takes place in someone's cubicle or in the hallway, there have been numerous occasions in which my limited Mandarin allows me to detect that I should really be part of an ongoing discussion and I join it; usually my colleagues will recognize that my presence is valuable and immediately switch to English. That's the way a lot of research-based work is done; a couple of people start talking about something, then someone overhears it and walks over to give his input, and eventually a useful exchange is had. My German and Korean coworkers, however, who don't speak Mandarin, have no such opportunity, and I believe this is ultimately detrimental to the company.

This kind of situation is unique, though, and most objections I hear to the use of foreign language have to do with personal matters. I certainly don't care at all if my coworkers talk to their wives in Mandarin on the phone. And I can't help but wonder if there is an element of racism in such objections; I hear them most frequently against Latinos and Asians, whereas I've never heard anyone complain about people speaking, say, German or French. Is the perceived threat more about the existence of these other races, and the communication habits that make their presence obvious, than it is about the language itself? It's worth some more thought and examination.

Translations with an ulterior motive

As an aspiring interpreter and translator, I'd like to believe that the primary reason for bilingual materials---street signs, instruction manuals, what have you---is to allow a greater population to understand what you have to say. However, I've started to realize that there are many occasions in which things are printed in multiple languages simply to create a certain effect. It's as much a part of the image as a company logo or packaging.

Perhaps I should have noticed this sooner. After all, I'm well aware that a sizeable fraction of my French knowledge comes from reading the labels on my beauty products while I'm standing in the shower waiting for my hair conditioner to work. Yet I seriously doubt that the French translations describing the "gentle yet effective cleansing action that will leave me refreshed and in a state of total well-being" are there for the benefit of non-English-speaking French nationals. No, they're there because we associate France with fashion and beauty. The same goes for the liner notes in my classical CDs, which often appear in French, German, and/or Italian as well. Classical music is such a culturally proper thing to enjoy, and we all know that Western Europe is the model for highbrow entertainment.

In other arenas, the languages can be different too. "Acta Met", a frequently-referenced academic journal in materials science, is the short name for Acta Metallurgica et Materialia, and articles appearing in this journal have their abstracts printed in English, French, and German (though the articles themselves are only in English). Hmm, Latin title---perhaps to emphasize the long history of metallurgical studies---and French and German as an acknowledgment of the materials scientist demographic? In contrast to science and its exalted image, technology seeks to emphasize the new, the state-of-the-art, the emerging markets, which in these days means Asia. My husband, in his former job with a large semiconductor company, loved to show off his business cards, which were English on one side and Japanese on the other. He never even worked with Japanese; it was just cool to illustrate the global reach of his company's influence.

I suppose that "gratuitous" translations such as these are just a step below the common practice of saying or writing something in another language simply because it's different, of using the mystique of a foreign language to one's advantage. How often do we see supposedly profound statements inscribed in Latin, as though they could have been uttered by some ancient philosopher, rather than someone who probably writes greeting card verse for a living? And then there's the popularity of Chinese character tattoos, which (to use a foreign expression, proving my point even further)---create that je ne sais quoi that English words wouldn't be able to produce.

I suppose I don't really have a problem with foreign languages being used in this manner, except when it's done carelessly and with ridiculous results. I've seen enough Asian products with nonsensical English words on them to be cautious about going the other direction.

The new high school offerings

Back when I was in high school, some fifteen years ago, foreign language curricula were fairly standard across the country. Every school I knew of offered at least French and Spanish. My own school offered German, which was also quite common. The fourth language usually offered was Latin. Any languages beyond that were typically found in private schools or "special" (charter, magnet) public schools, and were usually the common Asian languages (Mandarin, Japanese) or what I think of as "second-tier" European languages (Italian, Russian).

I recently got hold of the curriculum for the local high school where I live now, and I was quite surprised when I saw the languages that it offers: ASL, Filipino(!), French, Mandarin, Punjabi(!), and Spanish. No German or Latin. The course description for ASL includes a warning that it may not satisfy some colleges' foreign language requirements.

I've long been of the opinion that everyone should study at least one foreign language in his or her lifetime, and I consider it a disgrace that most U.S. high schools have no foreign language requirement for graduation. The benefits to foreign language study are numerous: the ability to communicate with more people, the appreciation of other cultures, and a better understanding of one's own native language.

Until now, I've never thought much about which of those benefits is most important. But as I ponder the inclusion of these less commonly-spoken languages and the exclusion of what I consider staples of the traditional Western curriculum, it feels to me that local school districts are making decisions based more upon their personal interests than the goal of a comprehensive high school education for its students. The highest-represented minority races in my city are Hispanic (24%), Filipino (19%), Chinese (9%), and Indian (9%). And although I couldn't find precise statistics, I wouldn't be surprised if our deaf community is significantly larger than average, due to our proximity to a major school for the deaf.

It's natural, of course, for a community to want its language represented in its local high school curriculum. And yet, I wonder if the public schools are really the right place to be teaching such uncommonly spoken languages as Filipino and Punjabi (incidentally, why Punjabi and not the more widely-spoken Hindi?). Should it not be the role of Filipino parents to pass on their culture and heritage to their children, rather than relegating it to the schools? I am tremendously proud to be Taiwanese-American, but I would never support teaching Taiwanese in schools. Especially given the fact that Mandarin is currently the official language of the country, Taiwanese is a fairly useless language for anyone without close ties to pre-1950 Taiwan. While I would love to increase awareness of the country's history and politics among young people, I don't believe that giving the Taiwanese language a disproportionate level of importance in public schools is the way to do it. Let me learn Mandarin in school, but Taiwanese from my family. (See this previous post for a detailed treatment of the differences between Mandarin and Taiwanese.)

I admit, too, that I'm quite distressed by the exclusion of German and Latin from the curriculum of a school that otherwise seems to have an excellent variety of course offerings. I'm a fairly liberal person; I usually support the political correctness movement, and I agree completely that non-Western culture is undertaught, particularly in this age when the influence of the Middle East and Asia on our politics and economy is larger than ever before. But German is undeniably a valuable language in the modern world---I would argue, far more important than ASL, Filipino, or Punjabi---and Latin, far from being a dead language, plays a crucial role in law, medicine, and the English language itself. To make them unavailable is, in my opinion, inexcusable.

How do you say "narf" in Korean?

Last weekend, I took in the new M. Night Shymalan film "Lady in the Water". (In case you're worried, there are no spoilers in this entry.) It's received a lot of criticism, to be sure, and I don't want to get into most of it here. But the aspect I most object to, as a language lover, is something I haven't seen addressed in any of the reviews I've read. Paul Giamatti's character learns about a hidden "Blue World" populated with fanciful creatures called narfs, scrunts, and tartutics. Most of his knowledge of this world is obtained from a Korean lady with her daughter as interpreter. And yet, in none of the Korean do we ever hear sounds resembling "narf" or "scrunt." So how does the daughter come up the English words for them?

Translating names is an tricky task. The common practice is to leave names as they are. Thus, in Spanish newspapers our president is still George Bush, not Jorge Arbusto. There are exceptions; in my Spanish version of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the protagonist's name appears as Cindy-Lou Quien, rather than Cindy-Lou Who. But at least these are names that happen to be identical to English words. "Narf", "scrunt", and "tartutic" are not, at least according to Merriam-Webster's. So I wonder what the Korean version of the story could possibly use in their place.

I don't speak Korean, so it's possible that the words were there and I just missed them among all the other unfamiliar sounds. I'd love to consult a Korean speaker and find out if the dialogue was actually real, or whether it was a bunch of nonsense syllables. If the latter, that's unfortunately one more strike against a movie I'd really hoped to respect more than I did.

And speaking of strange name translations, I've still never figured out why Smurfs are "Pitufos" in Spanish.

Aren't romance novels worth editing?

I've recently been enjoying a series of romance novels by Suzanne Brockmann. Romances have a bad reputation among many readers who see them as mass-produced variations of the same plot over and over, with one-dimensional characters who have nothing on their minds but marriage and/or sex. Several years ago, during a case of plagiarism between two romance writers, I read a Newsweek article which commented, "Who notices these things when all that stuff sounds the same anyway?" But as with all genres of literature, there are good and bad examples (note: avoid the Harlequin series), and I've found a number of authors whom I place firmly in the former category, Brockmann among them.

Something I've noticed, though, is that romance novels seem to be far less well-edited compared to other styles of literature. I'm not talking about tight prose or plot pacing, but the most basic mechanics of spelling, grammar, and accurate foreign translations. I was sorely disappointed in my latest Brockmann read in which she described a character as having the cajones to wander the French countryside as a WWII spy. I know what she meant, and the term is cojones. A cajón is a large crate, or a drawer in a piece of furniture. This same character, whose American name was Joe, had the Italian version of his name written alternately as Giuseppe (correct) and Guiseppe (incorrect). With the amount of research that is done by a skilled fiction writer, it's disappointing that such errors slip by unnoticed by both the author and her editor.

I'll admit that Brockmann's errors aren't the worst I've seen, though; that honor goes to a novel by Nora Roberts---another esteemed romance writer---that is riddled with spelling errors. The one I remember most was "dispite" instead of "despite", a mistake that was repeated too many times throughout the page to be dismissed as a typographical error. I mean, "dispite" isn't even in the dictionary! What about a spellchecker? I was so irritated by this particular case that I wrote a letter to Berkley Publishing, pointing out that this sort of indifference contributed to the poor reputation of the romance genre and did a disservice to Roberts' talent. Alas, I never received a response.

got grammar?

As the final stage of my recovery from a vacation that turned out to be anything but relaxing, it's time to let off a little steam. I don't put bumper stickers on my car, but if I did, the one I saw on the way to work this morning would be the first: "got grammar?" Here are a few of my biggest pet peeves.

• Good is an adjective, not an adverb. Something does not "work good," it "works well." Native German speakers are forgiven for confusing these, since German adjectives and adverbs have the same form. Everyone else, get it right.
• Lay is a transitive verb. The intransitive verb is lie. And since the people who confuse the two aren't likely to know what a transitive verb is, it's back to Grammar 101: A transitive verb is a verb that takes a direct object. You don't lay down for a nap, you lie down. You can lay your baby down for a nap, however.
• In English, prepositions take the accusative case, not the nominative case, even when the subject is compound and includes a pronoun. What's an accusative pronoun? Me, him, and her, as opposed to you, he, and she. My daughter does not talk to "my husband and I," she talks to "my husband and me" (and everyone else, for that matter). And the phrase is "just between you and me," not "just between you and I." Unless we're speaking Spanish (entre tú y yo), but we're not.
• It's is a contraction of "it is." The possessive adjective is its, no apostrophe.

Lest I become accused of linguistic elitism, let me say that I am quite aware that there are dialects in which the standard rules of English grammar do not apply, and that I do not believe that any dialect is inherently better than others. However, there are certain societal contexts in which the use of only particular dialects is considered acceptable, and should you fail to follow the rules of that dialect, be aware that you will be judged accordingly (and likely, unfavorably). It's a bit like the kid who walks into an interview for a bank job in frayed jeans and an old T-shirt. If he doesn't know any better, someone needs to set him straight. If he knows what's appropriate but chooses to behave differently to make some kind of point, he should be prepared for the consequences.

And yes, I too relax the rules of standard grammar depending on my audience and environment. I'm not a stickler for the use of "whom", and I go with the masses when it comes to eliminating the predicate nominative pronoun in favor of the accusative pronoun ("That's him" rather than "That's he"). We change our language, including our grammar, to create a particular effect (not affect, as in the annoyingly incorrect name of my old hair salon, "A Unique Affect"). But creating an effect requires intention, and that requires an knowledge of what is correct and why.

The mystique of a foreign language

Many people are familiar with The Little Prince, a novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is superficially a children's tale but contains many ideas about love, identity, and spirituality, among others. I was first introduced to it in my high school German class as a reading assignment. I recall that one of my classmates later decided to read the English translation, and declared to me that it was better in German. When I myself decided to read it in English, I wholeheartedly agreed.

To this day I wonder why that was the case. Since the book was originally written in French, it could simply be that the German translation was better than the English. Or, perhaps German is somehow more suited for writing about such topics, in the same manner that Latin works well for law; language develops according to the needs of those who use it, after all, and many great philosophers were German.

But I frequently wonder whether it's simply that reading such a story in a language in which I'm not totally fluent added to the mystery which was such an integral part of the experience. Perhaps the limitations of my German abilities forced me to process my thoughts in a more childlike, innocent way that helped me appreciate the story's charm. It's impossible to separate all the different effects of reading in a different language, so maybe I'll never know. Even if I were to become fluent in German at some later time in my life and reread the book, I wouldn't know if any changes in my experience were due to the improvement in my language understanding or simply the passage of years.

Last month I went to a performance of Russian war songs by the noted baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. I only had tickets as part of my subscription to the San Francisco Symphony and wasn't that excited about going (I'd never heard of the guy, and wasn't familiar with any of the works), but found it to be profoundly moving. Part of that was undoubtedly due to Hvorostovsky's artistic skills, but I think part of it was the fact that I didn't understand the Russian words. Even though there were printed translations in the program notes, my inability to comprehend the lyrics forced me to listen to the music on a more fundamental, primordial level. Though I don't like to put it this way, I wasn't "distracted" by the words.

The late great physicist Richard Feynman once described a conversation he had with an artist who claimed that scientists couldn't properly appreciate beauty, that they would take something like a flower and view it in terms of boring biological processes. Feynman's response was that on the contrary, a scientist could appreciate the flower's beauty on multiple levels, that he could understand not only the visual attractiveness but also the beauty of its atomic structure, and so on. At the time, I thought this was dead-on true, but now I'm not sure. There's no question in my mind that seeing too much in something can be distracting, like in that game where one has to identify the color of a word that is itself a color (GREEN, RED, YELLOW). Maybe the mystique of a foreign language is a manifestation of this same phenomenon. Maybe, sometimes, it's better not to understand too much.

International Mother Language Day

Today is International Mother Language Day, observed by the member states of UNESCO to "promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism." The 1999 proclamation was a result of a proposal by Bangladesh to internationalize what is celebrated in that country as Language Martyrs' Day, commemorating a movement to preserve Bengali as a national language during a period of Pakistani rule.

I can only speak for myself, but the study of foreign languages has opened my mind and broadened my horizons more than anything else I've done in my life, including travel. I strongly believe that an appreciation of linguistic diversity is a key element to the achievement of world peace. On this day, let us remember that we are all more alike than we are different, and work to build bridges toward greater mutual understanding.

Technology and writing

I'm privileged to be a member of the generation which has grown up along with the revolution in consumer technology. I'm old enough to remember writing school papers by hand, using cute stationery to handwrite letters to friends, and looking up words in (gasp!) a dictionary that lived on the bookshelf. The capabilities offered by technological developments, especially the word processor and the Internet, have undoubtedly changed the way we write. Are the changes for the better? I fear not.

The biggest change I've noticed in my own writing is verbosity. Since I type much faster than I write, I've grown accustomed to using many more words than I really need to express a concept. Part of the cause is that I know it's easy to edit afterward, so there's less incentive to get it right the first time. And the speed with which I can transfer my thoughts to text is so rapid that there's no time for even internal editing; in fact, perhaps I'm even buying time for my brain by having my fingers type filler phrases. Occasionally, when I want to handwrite a personal note of some length, I'll actually compose it at the keyboard and then copy it longhand. That's when the verbosity is painfully obvious---pun intended.

Another scary writing practice I attribute to the use of online communication is my increasing inability to write without smilies, or emoticons. I do manage to keep them out of professional correspondence, but among friends I find myself peppering my paragraphs with annoying little faces that would be unnecessary if I just took the time to express my thoughts more precisely in words. There's an online forum I frequent which actually has animated smilies available, and when I'm not on it I find myself really missing the ability to add the little face rolling its eyes or blushing. Perhaps this is just a sign that all our different methods of communication---writing, speaking, body language---are merging, but I still feel that certain nuances of meaning that used to be expressed in words no longer are.

Prefix madness

There's a popular Dilbert strip in which Dogbert attempts to name a high-tech company by using a computer to choose random words from astronomy and electronics, with the hilarious result "Uranus Hertz."

If only everyone were so creative. As technology has become an ever larger part of people's lives, the temptation to create new words and names by adding technical-sounding prefixes has gotten almost out of control. In early days there was a lot of cyber- business going on---cyberspace, cyberculture, and of course cybersex. The ubiquity of email (hardly anyone spells it "e-mail" anymore) and the explosion of dot-com companies in the 90s, all of which needed trendy-sounding names, led to e- everything: eBay, eHarmony, e-cards. My husband even once tried to claim "e-quail" as a word in Scrabble (as well as "re-exercise"; needless to say, we now resolve all disputes with the official Scrabble dictionary!).

A more recent trend I've noticed---and apparently I'm not alone---is the nano- one, no doubt fueled by the growing interest in nanotechnology. The biggest indication? Apple Computers, long enamored with the i- convention (iMac, iTunes, iPod), has now introduced the iPod Nano. And so it continues...