Something I have noticed but haven't commented on is that the meaning of "dude" has shifted. In my generation and a little earlier, dudes were exclusively male, but by the time the critically acclaimed Juno was released, dude could be used as an affectionate term of address for females as well as males as in:
Juno: Anyway dude, I'm telling you I'm pregnant and you're acting shockingly cavalier.
Leah: Is this for real? Like, for real for real?
Juno: Unfortunately, yes.
The usage of dude as male is still around as in:
- Dudes (i.e. men) Who Wear Skinny Jeans
- Former Governor Sarah Palin's reference to her husband Todd Palin as the "First Dude" (don't hate me because I watched her nomination speech)
- Dudes aren't into birth control - explaining while we may not see male birth control pills being developed
I'm curious if a third person reference to female dudes is possible (e.g. "Dudes who are knocked up"). So far entering "dude" and "pregnant" has mostly turned up references to males including The Dudes Guide to Pregnancy: Dealing with Your Expecting Wife and, of course, pregnant males.
It's an experiment that was bound to happen - a linguist has taught his child to be fluent in both Klingon and English. There is a lot of mockery occurring...even though this story is on a science fiction forum. It's definitely an unusual concept.
So what are my thoughts? While I'm not sure it would be something I would do, it may or may not be too drastic. A lot depends on whether the parent, computational linguist d'Armond Speers spoke ONLY in Klingon or BOTH Klingon in English. The original story from the Minnesota Daily says only Klingon, but a comment from Ultralingua (who uses Speers as a consultant) claims it was both Klingon and English.
Given that Speers is said to be a linguist and that news articles often distort linguistic issues, I will give Speers the benefit of the doubt. Even if he only spoke Klingon, I will assume that other relatives used English, so his son would be in a bilingual environment. That means, that I think it's safe to assume that the son did acquire English. (P.S. According to Wired, his wife used English so that their son could become bilingual)
What about the Klingon acquired? One question I had is how different the phonology would be from English. In theory Klingon has non-English sounds...but again there are no real native speakers of Klingon. For most adult speakers, I am assuming that Klingon in the U.S. is essentially spoken with a U.S. English accent (and local accents elsewhere). I don't know what Dr. Speers Klingon accent is like, but I will assume HE learned it as an adult and that his native language(s) will impact his Klingon phonology.
I would have the same question about morphology and syntax. Although there are non-English features built in to Klingon, again the fluent speakers are almost all adult learners (who probably use it in limited circumstances). I suspect that local language features creep in.
The result may actually be something like a creole Klingon, similar to creoles in the Caribbean, Africa and the South Pacific. These are the result of children being exposed to pidginized European languages. In many cases, particularly in the South Pacific, we know that the result is a language with a European lexical items but with lots of Austronesian features included (words, grammatical structure, changes in pronunciation). These features are one reason why an English creole like Tok Pisin is unrecognizable from standard English
Another question is whether the child will maintain Klingon or not. In theory he could remain bilingual...but I suspect he will begin to encounter "negative attitudes from his peer group" in elementary school if not sooner. That is, if he speaks Klingon with other children, few will understand and there may be serious jeering involved. We do know from research that if your peer group does not use a form and/or expresses a hostile attitude, the child will NOT be motivated to maintain it. Both is pretty fatal. There is a good chance the Klingon fluency will be diminished from lack of overall use.
The truth is that the "Klingon community" has a hard battle. Obviously, its nobody's native language, and unlike other minority languages, few professional linguists are interested. They tend to worry more about languages with longer histories and actual native speakers which are in danger of becoming extinct. The fact that the language is associated with a "fringe" culture gives it even less credibility.
We linguists may be acting a little closed minded though. Clearly someone cared enough about this language to pass it on. And it is not the first time an "artificial language" has been acquired by children - I have heard that some children have been taught Esperanto from birth. One commenter says that some people meet and marry through learning Esperanto, so that Esperanto would become the household language. Again I assume that an Esperanto speaking child would eventually become bilingual in some other language (because I am really not aware of a large-scale monolingual Esperanto community).
I do think it is worth investigating the Esperanto phenomenon, because we would be seeing another way to create a "new" fully human language. Ironically though, I think if more Esperanto native speakers are born, Esperanto will do the one thing it's not supposed to do - develop into local dialects and begin to get the irregularities that other human languages have.
P.S. - Actual Results
Trust Wikipedia to have additional information. Apparently this experiment was attempted in the late 1990s, but as expected the child Alec eventually chose English as his main language. The article also reports that there were many missing lexical items in Klingon including table and pacifier. If this were like other dual language scenarios, I suspect that Klingon would be acquiring a lot of English borrowings....
Book Product Details (from Amazon.com)
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian; First Edition edition (October 7, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 006136925X
ISBN-13: 978-0061369254
Review
One of my Christmas gifts last year was Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling (Hardcover) by David Wolman. It's obstenaibly a history of English spelling, but really it's a history of English spelling reform. That is, if you are curious as to why there's an "e" in Phoenix, this book may or may or may not have an answer. But if you've ever wondered why they have to keep teaching this spelling in school even though the "e" is not really pronounced...then this book is for you.
One thing I like about this book is the hard-nosed attitude towards English spelling. Wolman is one of the many people in modern society who's been chided all his life for his non-mastery of the crazy rules of English spelling. He's realized that it's not that he is who is lacking logic...rather it's the English spelling system that could use some reform. He, along with many in the English spelling reform movement, ask if it is really necessary to burden our children with learning the difference between 'night' versus 'knight' when 'nite' works just fine.
Of course spelling reform is easier conceptualized than implemented, especially in a society which has forgone an official language board. This is a history of spelling rule formation, disintegration and call for reform. The book begins in the Old English period when spelling was something scholars made up as they went along, but at least it was phonetically consistent.
It moves quickly through Middle English when French brought some new spelling conventions to England to the era of printing, which is where most of the problems began. Widespread literacy requires a standardized spelling, but the codifiers were actually just printers trying to get a publication to press. Occasionally, they may have been Dutch printers at that who guestimated English spelling convention. Combine that with the fact that English already had both English and French spelling rules and was going through some serious sound shifts, and you will end up with a decidedly quirky system.
The rest of the book runs through different standardization and reform events ranging from Samuel Johnson who created the first modern English dictionary to Noah Webster who created the first American English dictionary and advocated some reforms...some of which stuck (e.g. plow vs plough). The chapters cover other major figures including Benjamin Franklin, Theodore Roosevelt and others. Many have really, really tried, but usually with limited success.
The story ends with one mechanism which may actually cause reform to happen - the Google spell checker. The difference between Google and other efforts is that Google treats spelling like a socially defined convention. In English, most people spell the dark period after day as "night", but maybe you also want "nite". Google pulls up both if its database think they are alternate spellings. Wolman also notes the tactful way Google gives a suggested correction. Google never says yells or gives an error if you type "frend" instead of "friend", but merely asks "Did you mean 'friend'? when you type "frend". Usually the answer is "Uh...yeah", but it's a relief Google doesn't make fun of you or mutter under its breath about the decline of the English language.
And interestingly, ...you may really mean "frend" either as an obscure word (e.g. the FREND spacecraft arm or director Charles Friend) or even as a check to see if speakers are using "frend" as an alternate spelling of "friend" (they are). Wolman argues that Google was instrumental in persuading some spelling authorities that spelling "r(h)ubarb" would not cause the end of the world, and might be...acceptable.
Ending with Google is interesting because spelling or any writing is really an arbitrary set of conventions...which people like to mess with for purposes of establishing linguistic identity. This is why the Pan Celtic word for three - /tri(:)/ is spelled as trí in Irish, trì in Scottish Gaelic (see the accent flip) tree in Manx, but just tri in Welsh and try in the modernized Cornish spelling system (Heaven forbid the European languages use the same spelling system).
In the end though, why shouldn't Google decide? It's much more democratic, and probably will have more acceptance than anything an official panel will decree. And it will be gradual enough to please those attached to the old forms. Nothing rouses outrage so much as a full-blown replacement of "corrected forms." English spelling will probably be never fully "fixed", but it would be nice if there were a better way to tame it.
My Rating
I would say a 4 out of 5. Ironically, I would have liked more discussion of some of the quirks of English spelling. Not so much to maintain them, but to help current speakers understand what is going on (hint: it's usually a question of language origin plus some sound shift rules).
On the other hand, I am happy with any book from a non-linguist who understands that language is not made of up grammatical decrees.
On a recent episode of Top Chef the judges had an aumsing discussion of how to pronounce paella. For me, it should be /pajeja/ (pie-ey-a)...just like it is in (Latin American) Spanish, but Toby Young from the U.K. was happy to pronounce it with an /l/.
Who's right? Most of the Americans agree it's to use the authentic Spanish (or at least Latin American Spanish) pronunciation, but Toby countered that no one pronounces Mexico as /mehiko/, but as Anglicized /mɛksɨko/ - good one Toby.
Although I do tend to attempt authentic Spanish pronunciation of words, the argument points out that this is more of a U.S. custom than a U.K. one. However, Toby's point about the pronunciation of Mexico points out that there are lexical exceptions even to this rule. Some Spanish words (e.g. canyon, Mexico, Argentina not to mention Arizona, Colorado, Montana, rodeo) are so ingrained into English that even Americans have nativized the pronunciation.
It is good etiquette these days to pronounce foreign words as close to their original pronunciation as possible. For instance, Toby also commented that no one in English says Barcelona with a Spanish "th" /θ/, but of of his colleagues said she did. Ironically though, in Catalan, Barcelona (and Barcelona IS In Catalonia) may actually have an /s/. So...when playing this game, be sure you do have all the facts or the ghost of Toby Young may laugh in your face.
One of my Listservs announced that the Library of Congress has classified some of its audio recordings from around the country into a set of American English Dialect Recordings organized by place (click "C" for Canada). The core is probably the set of collections made by linguist Walt Wolfram, but other samples are included, and the collection also includes some notable figures such as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. These last two recordings are old enough that you can see how speech in formal settings has changed over time.
The tapes are primarily open-ended conversations or speeches, but the extensive metadata gives you a good context of who, what and when. Many of these were recorded on site, so audio quality for spectrographic analysis is probably hit or miss, but it does have some good samples, and they are available in the .wav format as well as MP3 and Real Player. Note also that samples were recorded across a period of several decades (from the 30s to the 80s), so dialects in that area may have changed since the original recording.
However, they are freely available for educational or research use, so that's a major benefit. This collection was organized by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), so I am happy to see this as a use of our tax dollars at work.
I ran into an interesting colloquialism listening to an interviewer from a miner turned federal mine inspector. In this quote she refers to miners needing to educate themselves on mine safety:
Each one of us needs to make ourself more knowledgable.
That's right - the reflexive "ourself" is singular even though it's a second person plural pronoun. This was a new one for me, but actually consistent with other aspects of spoken grammar. As you might guess, this is not "correct grammar", but actually within this dialect perfectly correct. Examining the sentence, you notice that the speaker is using a distributed plural meaning that each member acts individually, hence on his or her own (or in colloquial English..."on their own."
I am reasonably confident that if the speaker had said "We have to work together to make ____ knowledgeable", the pronoun would probably have been "ourselves".We rarely distinguish this in formal English except sometimes in singular/plural direct objects:
The team members need to bring their trophy ("trophy" singular).
The team members need to bring their uniforms ("uniform" plural)
But spoken English is more subtle about the distinction. Another example on the Web was "Then we will have to do it on our own/by ourself." Of course, this was immediately corrected by a grammar expert. But interestingly, the first speaker was quite perplexed as to why one couldn't use "by ourself."
I have to admit that my grammar has a singular "themself" which specifically refers to an unknown individual (replacing the more cumbersome "himself or herself"). My grammar also has singular "they" instead of the formal "him or her" as well as singular "their" replacing "his or her". As in:
Anyone who looks at themself (himself/herself) on camera all day will be concerned about appearance.
Anyone living away from parents will eventually have to do their own laundry.
When I write, I am careful to use the plural consistently so that I can use true plural "they" (since I refuse to default to "himself"). However, the more precise grammar is the spoken grammar which distinguishes distributed plurals (members acting independently) from plurals in which members act collaboratively.
Royal "Ourself"
There is an official version of "ourself" defined in Merriam-Webster which is the reflexive of the Royal We used by a monarch. So if the monarch wishes to dine alone, he/she (or they) might say "We will dine by ourself this evening." However, I am not sure that the Royal We is used much in current English. Even the Queen of England in interviews appears to refer to herself as "one" rather than any first person.
A few decades ago, scholars wondered if being connected via a common set of TV programs (and now YouTube and the Internet) would level out dialectal differences. I was always skeptical, and the evidence is leaning against it. For instance, one of the episodes of the PBS miniseries Do You Speak American? shows how California is developing into its own dialect area.
Acronym Variations
But the proliferation of new tech words (or tech neologisms) shows how differences can arise. For instance today in a class I'm teaching, I discovered that "Web 2.0" had two variant pronunciations - "Web 2 point 0" and "Web 2 0" (no "point"). One student further intoned that dropping the "point" was much hipper (interesting).
Another one with variant pronunciations is "SQL" (structured query language) which I was taught as "S Q L", but others as "Sequel". The most interesting one may be "RSS" because no one can remember what "RSS" stands for - either Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It doesn't matter though because the lexical entry is now RSS /arɛsɛs/.
Maybe this shouldn't surprise us because so many tech words are introduced to us from print resources. Even if we get to a YouTube source, I suspect that most of us see these terms online in a blog, tech review, documentation, listserv or e-mail. These don't normally come with pronunciation guidelines (or if they do, they're best guesses). That is, programmers may invent new acronyms, but they rarely publish pronunciation guidelines. The only way to get an "authentic" pronunciation would be to hear a presentation from a development team.
What's that gadget?
Another source of confusion may come gadgets with no official name like this one below:
A flash drive/jump drive/USB drive/keychain drive. Image courtesy Fredo Alvarez. Licensed by Creative Commons.
This thingamabob is known as a jump drive/flash drive/USB drive/thumb drive depending on the speaker. Actually the first time I saw it it was described as a neat device that plugged into a USB drive and that you could put on your keychain. So for me, it became a "keychain drive" (and apparently for other people as well - although I think I am the lone "keychain driver" speaker at Penn State.)
Surprisingly, I don't recall any major marketing campaigns for this - word of its existence seemed to spread by word of mouth. These are the circumstances which could promote multiple variants, but it really is amazing how many developed in such a short period of time (since about only 2002 or 7 years).
Although we are connected by media, apparently we don't always use it to propogate "official" usage information. In fact, in the new age of Facebook/texting/Twitter/YouTube/multiple cable channels, I would predict that more variations will evolve over time. Unlike 50 years ago, we can't assume that a large segment of Americans will be watching the same show (e.g. I Love Lucy) because there are so many more options. Despite the ubiquity of these technologies, they are actually serving to Balkanize us at the moment.
The difference may be that not all communities will be geographically contiguous - we've seen this somewhat before (e.g. educated people speaking Latin or French across Europe), but I don't think on the scale we're seeing now.
A video making the rounds in John Wells' Phonetic Blog is a 1940s educational piece on helping a Sinhala speaker (from Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it was called back in those days). The student is trying to get directions to 48 Paddington Street, Edgeware Road, but the newspaper vendor he asks is perpetually confused. Hence the student visits the local phonetician's office (wouldn't you?).
Wells makes some interesting comments on how old-fashioned the phonetics instructor (A. Lloyd James) sounds. It is amazing how even the "standard" has significantly shifted in 50 years. What's interesting to me though is that I actually find the Sri Lankan speaker far easier to understand than the instructor (or the newspaper vendor). Apparently, I've had more exposure to speakers from South Asia than this variety of British English.
I have no explanation for the instructor's advice to "change the rhythm." It's not a recommendation most linguists would make today, certainly not in terms of "Morse code." However, now that Professor James has mentioned it, it is true that there is a longer pause between phonological phrases in English than the Sri Lankan student. I think the professor is trying to point out that in the address "48 Paddington Road, Edgeware Road" there is a pause in English (indicated by the comma) which the Sri Lankan speaker is not always making. I guess that "pause" is supposed to make the difference. To me, the change sounded very miniscule though.
In fact, in the student's second attempt, he only inserts pauses in the address. The rest of his sentence has the same "rhythm" has before!
The recent Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino is a very interesting character study, but is also notable for giving a demonstration of a voiceless or aspirated nasal.
If you don't know the plot, Eastwood plays a retired Detroit auto worker Walt Kowalsky with politically incorrect views on a lot of things, including his Asian neighbors (fortunately, he learns toleration, but in an interestingly unsentimental manner). It turns out that his neighbors are part of the Hmong culture as one of the younger women Sue Lor (played by Ahney Her) explains to Clint.
In fact, she even says the name "Hmong" where "hm" is a voiceless or aspirated /m/ which I will transcribe as /mʰ/ (and "ng" is really the velar nasal /ŋ/). In an aspirated nasal, the vocal cords do not vibrate continuously through the /m/ but pause at some point. From what I could tell, the vocal cords begin as non-vibrating, but then begin during the nasal. It would be consistent from how voiceless nasals are pronounced in other languages of Burma.
So the transcription for "Hmong" is actually or /mʰɔ̃ŋ/ (not sure about the tone), but to my ears it sounded like "Mong" /mɔ̃ŋ/ with a slight pause in the beginning. Very interesting. It's another happy example of how linguistic sensitivity is slowly creeping into Hollywood.
P.S. I also have to respect a movie that shows how effectively a Hmong grandmother can spit a wad of tobacco. Needless to say, Walt was impressed in spite of himself.
Fascinating video of Anne Sullivan (Helen Keller's instructor) explaining how Helen was able to learn to speak despite being blind and deaf. It was done by Helen placing he hands on Anne's face and sensing vibrations - but note how the hands were placed.
