English usage

  • Language before computers

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Tech

    In recent decades, computing has had a major influence on language. I’m indebted to my old friend Mr Wong for the following round robin that landed in my inbox and admirably illustrates how computing, computers and IT have pervaded everyday language.

    Memory was something you lost with age.

    An application was for employment.

    A program(me) was a show on TV

    A cursor was someone who swears a lot.

    A keyboard was a piano.

    A web was a spider’s home.

    A virus was the flu.

    A hard drive was a long trip down the motorway.

    A mouse pad was a mouse lived.

    There were others – something about a floppy – but I’ll spare your blushes with those! 😉

  • The Chaos of English

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities

    Lurking in Bristol Wireless’ IRC channel earlier this morning, I was made aware of the poem The Chaos by Gerald Nolst Trenité (1870-1946), who was a Dutch writer, traveller and teacher.

    The Chaos demonstrates many of the idiosyncrasies of English spelling and first appeared as an appendix to his 1920 textbook, Drop Your Foreign Accent: engelsche uitspraakoefeningen*.

    It is reproduced below in all its glory for your delight.

    Dearest creature in creation,
    Study English pronunciation.
    I will teach you in my verse
    Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
    I will keep you, Susy, busy,
    Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
    Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
    So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

    Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
    Dies and diet, lord and word,
    Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
    (Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
    Now I surely will not plague you
    With such words as plaque and ague.
    But be careful how you speak:
    Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
    Cloven, oven, how and low,
    Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

    Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
    Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
    Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
    Exiles, similes, and reviles;
    Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
    Solar, mica, war and far;
    One, anemone, Balmoral,
    Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
    Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
    Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

    Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
    Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
    Blood and flood are not like food,
    Nor is mould like should and would.
    Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
    Toward, to forward, to reward.
    And your pronunciation’s OK
    When you correctly say croquet,
    Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
    Friend and fiend, alive and live.

    Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
    And enamour rhyme with hammer.
    River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
    Doll and roll and some and home.
    Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
    Neither does devour with clangour.
    Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
    Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
    Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
    And then singer, ginger, linger,
    Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
    Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

    Query does not rhyme with very,
    Nor does fury sound like bury.
    Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
    Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
    Though the differences seem little,
    We say actual but victual.
    Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
    Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
    Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
    Dull, bull, and George ate late.
    Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
    Science, conscience, scientific.

    Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
    Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
    We say hallowed, but allowed,
    People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
    Mark the differences, moreover,
    Between mover, cover, clover;
    Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
    Chalice, but police and lice;
    Camel, constable, unstable,
    Principle, disciple, label.

    Petal, panel, and canal,
    Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
    Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
    Senator, spectator, mayor.
    Tour, but our and succour, four.
    Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
    Sea, idea, Korea, area,
    Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
    Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
    Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

    Compare alien with Italian,
    Dandelion and battalion.
    Sally with ally, yea, ye,
    Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
    Say aver, but ever, fever,
    Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
    Heron, granary, canary.
    Crevice and device and aerie.

    Face, but preface, not efface.
    Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
    Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
    Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
    Ear, but earn and wear and tear
    Do not rhyme with here but ere.
    Seven is right, but so is even,
    Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
    Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
    Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

    Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
    Is a paling stout and spikey?
    Won’t it make you lose your wits,
    Writing groats and saying grits?
    It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
    Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
    Islington and Isle of Wight,
    Housewife, verdict and indict.

    Finally, which rhymes with enough —
    Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
    Hiccough has the sound of cup.
    My advice is to give up!

    Source: Wikisource

    * = English pronunciation exercises

  • Put icons back in church where they belong

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Once upon a time the only place one would see anything “iconic” was in a Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox Church. A gilded frame, copious amounts of gold leaf and a halo or haloes were usually involved.

    However nowadays – much to my dismay – something just has to exist to be regarded as an icon: no veneration is necessary and the word has become hackneyed and synonymous with lazy journalism, as in this piece from today’s Bristol Post, where the undeserving victim is traditional British fish and chips.

    Let’s see what the Guardian Style Guide says about iconic:

    In danger of losing all meaning after an average three appearances a day in the Guardian and Observer, employed to describe anything vaguely memorable or well-known – from hairdressers, storm drains in Los Angeles and the Ferrero Rocher TV ads to Weetabix, the red kite and the cut above the eye David Beckham sustained after being hit by a flying boot kicked by Sir Alex Ferguson. Our advice, even if our own writers rarely follow it, is to show a little more thought, and restraint, in using this term.

    Turning to icon, the Style Guide lists the following objects which were described in the Guardian as “iconic” in a single fortnight in 2010:

    Archaeopteryx
    bluefin tuna
    Castro’s cigar
    David Beckham wearing an anti-Glazer scarf
    Grace Kelly in casual wear
    Imperial War Museum North
    Liberty prints
    limestone stacks in Thailand
    Nigel Slater
    Mad Men
    Variety
    the John Hughes films Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science
    postboxes
    prints of the Che Guevara image
    Stephen Fairey’s Obama Hope design
    the parliamentary constituency of Hove
    the Brandenburg Gate
    Bach’s St Matthew Passion
    a community-owned wind turbine
    Kraft cheese slices
    salmon farming
    the blue and white stripes of Cornishware pottery
    Penarth Pavilion, Cardiff
    the Norwegian church and Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay
    a multimillion-pound arena in Leeds
    a “rock-built engine house at Bottalack near St Just”
    the Royal Albert Hall
    wind turbines (“iconic renewable energy technology”)
    Wembley Arena
    the video for Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

    This abuse of language has gone on far too long. Let’s put icons back where they belong: in an Orthodox church, in a gilt frame and covered in gold leaf; is that too much to ask?

  • Language and open source

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Open Source, Tech

    I’m intrigued by the way we advocates of free and open source software (FOSS) are viewed and described by the world outside our circle. Frequently, the terms are very loaded, e.g. ‘zealot’.

    A report today in The Register Channel on Scottish NHS IT procurement and a decision to waste millions on Microsoft Windows 7 is no exception. Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius, a major UK open source supplier, is quoted and referred to as a ‘firebrand’.

    According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, firebrand‘s first recorded use was in the 13th century, when it was originally “a piece of burning wood“. Its meaning was extended to over subsequent centuries to include “one that creates unrest or strife“.

    Synonyms for firebrand are: demagogue, exciter, agitator, fomenter, incendiary, inciter, instigator, kindler, provocateur, rabble-rouser.

    I’ve met and spoken to Mark on a number occasions and the last thing one can describe him as is a firebrand or any of its above synonyms. Admittedly, he has a business to run, but he’s also concerned that the UK spending on ICT amounts to an eye-watering £20 billion per year. That’s three times more than is spent on the army. Most of that £20 billion is spent on proprietary software and its suppliers, in the course of which vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are exported to MS’ coffers in Redmond, USA.

    Both Mark and I feel that FOSS would be a better alternative and there’d then be more money for the NHS to spend on patient care – a far better use of resources. If that makes us ‘firebrands’, then we’ll wear the label with pride.

  • Sir Humphrey’s newly banned words

    Steve WoodsLanguage

    The British Government has just updated its style guide for content written on the .gov.uk domain. It covers all aspects of writing material, including tone of voice, use of plain English, avoidance of Americanisms and the like.

    However, my eye was inevitably drawn to the proscribed bits and the style differences for Inside Government, i.e. when government department talks to government department, and in particular its section 4.1.3, entitled “Words to avoid”.

    For the benefit of passing mandarins and interested citizens, these are reproduced below, along with comment, both Sir Humphrey’s (in round brackets) and mine [in square brackets with the text in italics]:

    • agenda (unless it is for a meeting)
    • advancing
    • collaborate (use ‘working with’)
    • combating
    • countering
    • deliver (pizzas, post and services are delivered – not abstract concepts like ‘improvements’ or ‘priorities’) [I must part ways with Sir Humphrey here; services are provided, not delivered]
    • dialogue (we speak to people)
    • disincentivise [bravo!]
    • drive out (unless it is cattle)
    • empower [about time]
    • facilitate (instead, say something concrete about how you are helping)
    • focusing
    • foster (unless it is children)
    • impact (as a verb) [hallelujah!]
    • initiate
    • key (unless it unlocks something. A subject/thing isn’t ‘key’ – it’s probably ‘important’)
    • land (as a verb. Only use if you are talking about aircraft)
    • leverage (unless in the financial sense)
    • liaise [a very useful word for something non-commital, but a common spelling trap for the unwary 🙂 ]
    • overarching
    • promote (unless you are talking about an ad campaign or something)
    • robust [sometimes tough love is required]
    • slimming down (weight loss is slimming down. Everything else is probably removing x amount of paperwork, etc.)
    • streamline
    • strengthening (unless it is strengthening bridges or other structures)
    • tackling (unless it is rugby, football, some other sport)
    • transforming (what are you actually doing to change it)
    • utilise

    The banning of these words is justified as follows:

    We lose trust from our users if we write government ‘buzzwords’ and jargon. Often, these words are too general and vague and can lead to misinterpretation or empty, meaningless text. We need to be concrete, use plain English and be very clear about what we are doing.

    Will this result in more comprehensible communication from government? Only time will tell.

  • Of patricians and plebeians

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Andrew MitchellGovernment Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell has been in a spot of bother recently for allegedly saying the following – according to The Sun – to a police officer in Downing Street who refused to let him ride his bicycle out through main security gate:

    Best you learn your f*cking place. You don’t run this f*cking government. You’re f*cking plebs.

    According to his Wikipedia entry, featuring public school, Cambridge and the world of high finance there’s no doubt that Mitchell is a patrician.

    The term patrician originally referred to the elite families in ancient Rome. They were the top of the social pile and had wider political influence than the citizens and residents below them. It has subsequently become a vaguer term used for the aristocracy and elite bourgeoisie in many countries.

    Below the patricians in ancient Rome’s pecking order came the plebeians. Plebeians were defined as “the non-aristocratic class of Rome, and consisted of freed people, shopkeepers, crafts people, skilled or unskilled workers and farmers“. Over the centuries, some plebeian families in Rome nevertheless became quite rich and influential. Pleb is now used – as above by Mitchell – as a derogatory term for someone thought of as inferior, common or ignorant.

    However, the plebeians were not the lowest of the low in Rome. Below them came the “Capite censi“, i.e. “those counted by head” in the census, and slaves. The largest group of the capite censi were the proletarii, literally “those who produce offspring”. Proletarii were therefore Roman citizens owning little or no property.

    So, looking back at the origins of “plebs”, by using it, was Mitchell actually (if unknowingly) abusing the middle classes, Middle England and the bedrock of Tory support?

  • Women and politics

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    The piece below is one of the 4 winning entries for a recent Labour peers’ essay writing competition for young women (aged 17-18 years) on the topic of young women and politics.

    Young Women and Politics

    by Lucy Midgley

    I believe that one of the main problems in today’s society is that women simply do not have the confidence and self esteem to state their views. In this essay I will discuss reasons why I believe that women are afraid or unwilling to raise their voices.

    Self esteem is certainly a big issue; how can women feel empowered enough to speak out for what they believe in and to make their views heard when they have no confidence in themselves? In today’s society there is far too much focus on personal image. Women in particular are targeted by society to dress a certain way. In order to feel comfortable there is a certain image that has to be maintained: it’s a pack mentality and outsiders who don’t fit in a box will be excluded. The amount of pressure on young women is so great these days to, for example, wear fake tan and expensive clothes, that these are the only things that seem to fill their minds.

    In recent years narcissism has been increasing in young people with the growth of interest in Facebook and other social networking sites. A thing that only emerged as I was growing up has been something that many are growing up already fully accustomed to. This causes many young people to become extremely self conscious and obsessed. Many teens, particularly girls, spend most of their time on Facebook, checking their pages to see what other people have written about them, posting pouty photos and reading all the gushy comments about how pretty they look. This is all they essentially seem to care about. It’s hard to believe these young women really care about anything at all, so obsessed with their own very small bubble, and yet ninety years ago these would be the women campaigning for women’s right to vote. What can have happened for there to be such a fog of apathy to have descended on the female population during these last few years?

    The problem, highlighted by the 2009 report ‘We Care, But Will We Vote’ lies within the women themselves: young women are simply not interested in politics or in having their views heard. Is this, you may ask, because they are completely content with their lot and have no issues to be raised? I believe the problem is not a lack of issues but a repressed voice. I believe that the narcissism I mentioned is not born out of an intrinsic vainness but rather an intrinsic insecurity; born out of a need to reach the ridiculously high bar set by women’s magazines and celebrities. This insecurity is an insidious thing that will only grow and grow with the daily deluge of photos showing image conscious young women impossible expectations.

    This has recently been highlighted by the media frenzy following the release of topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge by a French magazine. The amount of media hype surrounding these photos I find to be completely ridiculous; the fact that the biggest news story of recent times about a female public figure is still to do with her image and not any of the wonderful things she has been doing.

    I’m not saying I’m surprised by this, I’m simply disappointed in the amount of interest this has garnered. People still see women, even female public figures and politicians, as objects and care more about how they look and what they are wearing than about what they have to say. It feels like a step back, with the anniversary of the death of Princess Diana so close to the release of these pictures. It seems that we still care so little about what is important and the media are still much more interested in their private lives and their body image than their positive actions. The magazine Closer, which published the photos, had no qualms about showing them to its audience; no thoughts on how this would affect image conscious young women. How are we supposed to be getting women to feel empowered and interested in politics and raising their voices when these kinds of news stories are still viewed upon with such relish?

    A cancerous insecurity grows within many young women preventing them from feeling brave enough to speak out or to become politically involved. Insecurity in young women is not only caused by overexposure to stick-thin models but also to a lack of any real role models. With Margaret Thatcher the only woman in British history to become Prime Minister, many young women believe it is simply not possible to achieve a stable political career. Although the Suffragettes won the vote for women there is still a long and winding road to equality. I believe there is still a glass ceiling for women, preventing them from reaching top jobs, yet unlike the Suffragettes the problem is not mainly from authority figures but lies within. Many women believe positions in society are simply not possible for them. This is hardly surprising when you look at the statistics: the 2010 survey for women in politics worldwide found the UK in the 31st position with just 18% of female parliamentarians.

    This problem has not been improved upon by the recent cabinet reshuffle. In fact is has been exacerbated, with only four women in the whole of the cabinet, the highest in sixth position and two women extremely close to the bottom of the ministerial pecking order. Are women in Britain really supposed to believe that the political profession could be a possible path for them? Yet this creates a vicious cycle: women not getting into politics means future generations will still have few role models, so what can be done? Women need to feel that the political profession is open to them.

    One of the main causes of this political listlessness is a general feeling that society doesn’t care about young people in general. The recent rioting that occurred was a dramatic lashing out of a frustrated youth who used the anarchy to revert to primal instincts and simply enjoy the rebellion. Young people feel wronged by a government who promised not to raise tuition fees before they got into power and then broke their promises before they’d even got their foot in the door, is it any wonder young people felt frustrated? They attacked a society they believed was punishing the people that would eventually have to sort out its problems.

    The trouble is that the loudest voice is always the one that seems to be heard and the government is hardly likely to care about young people who throw a temper tantrum when they don’t get their own way, the problem is that other voices are not heard above the shouting. Young women in society today can not all feel apathetic towards political issues but many are intimidated by those with louder voices. These women should be listened to and, in order to do this, you have to engender an interest in politics for women by showing them that they can make a difference. In politics nobody cares how you dress or how loudly you speak, people only care about what you have to say.

    © Lucy Midgley, 2012. Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

    Lucy Midgley is my niece. Needless to say, I’m a proud uncle.

  • Gert lush

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Tech

    The story that the fair city of Bristol is to see the roll-out of 4G mobile access has not escaped the eagle eyes of The Daily Mash, as the screenshot below shows.

    Screenshot of Daily Mash news piece

    4G is shorthand for the fourth generation of mobile telecommunications standards and the successor to third generation (3G) standards.

    Urban Dictionary defines ‘gert lush’ as: “The highest form of praise that can be given to anything by a Bristolian.”

    Proper job, says I. 😉

Posts navigation