April 19, 2005
DEMOTIC DEMONS:
Johnson's Dictionary (VERLYN KLINKENBORG, 4/17/05, NY Times)
Two hundred fifty years ago, on April 15, 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his Dictionary of the English Language, compiled and written almost wholly by himself. It appeared in London in two folio volumes. Like most dictionaries, there is a rigorous serenity in the look of its pages. The language has been laid out in alphabetical order. The etymologies and definitions bristle with italics and abbreviations. The quotations that exemplify the meanings of the words present a bottomless fund of good sense and literary beauty.But I wonder whether anyone has ever had a more dynamic or volatile sense of the language than Johnson did. We tend to remember him as an older man, grown heavy, his face weighed down as much by indolence as industry. But in April 1755 he was not yet 46. With the publication of his dictionary, he returned from his researches into the English language the way an explorer returns from the North Pole, with a sense of having seen a terrain that others can see only through his account of what he found there. Instead of a wilderness of ice, he faced what he called, in his preface to the dictionary, "the boundless chaos of a living speech."
The Most Misused Words (Laura Knoy, 2005-04-15, NHPR)
Lay or lie? Among, amongst, or between? Affect or effect? We're talking with Steve Kleinedler, the author of "100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses and Misuses". Mr. Kleinedler is also the Senior Editor of the American Heritage Dictionary and author of the recently published book "100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know".
Ms Knoy and her show are Public Radio at its best, informative and non-partisan, sometimes a bit goo-goo but often fascinating. So it was just appalling at the beginning of this broadcast when she asked Mr. Kleinedler what his personal pet peeve was as regards language misuse and he said the substitution of literally for figuratively. She asked what he meant and he said: Well, when someone says they were so angry that their head was literally going to explode. She still didn't get it. Doesn't NPR have a style book? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 19, 2005 12:00 AM
A good writer will generally avoid "literally" because it is so trite. But one would have to be a prig or an ass to say, "I'm so angry my head was figuratively going to explode!"
Posted by: Jamuel Sohnson at April 19, 2005 1:42 AMYou know what bothers me almost as much as the misuse of "literally?" The claim that people are substituting "literally" for "figuratively," as Mr. Kleinder did. No one means to point out that they are being figurative by saying "literally"--they mean to emphasize what they are saying. An annoying and worthy pet peeve, but not exactly what he says it is.
Posted by: Timothy at April 19, 2005 1:53 AMTimothy:
He didn't mean that they should be saying figuratively, just not literally. Listen. It's a good show.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2005 7:53 AMWhere's the style book, indeed. A style book is only useful in the print media. In the electronic media, however, there is the prickly matter of telling people how to _pronounce_ a word or a name, as opposed to _spell_ it. This involves either:
Telling the person to his/her face that he/she is botching a pronunciation or...
Sending a memo with the correct pronunciation spelled out phonetically.
Uh-oh...did he say "phonetically?" No one knows how to spell things out phonetically any more-- and if they did, the others don't know how to interpret the phonetic symbols. Hmm...might it have something to do with American education over the last 40 years?
We were watching the TV news recently and we witnessed the following spectacle: An anchor, throwing it to a field reporter who threw it back to the anchor, who then consulted an "expert." In the space of 1 minute, each of the three pronounced the same name (which one is irrelevant) THREE DIFFERENT WAYS. Each could hear the other, each had the option of at least deferring to the previous pronunciation, yet each one chose to be a Pronunciation Rebel.
There's no excuse for mispronouncing a place name (which is done constantly), as there are actual guides out there for such matters. No one consults them or, if they do, they choose not to follow them. One has to wonder why.
Poor guy. He obviously wasn't prepped that his interviewer was going to be one of those pseudo-humans mass produced in our colleges and universities. They are everywhere in the media and are instantly recognizable because they have no sense of humor. Their creators forgot that what differentiates us humans from other creatures is our ability to laugh.
Posted by: erp at April 19, 2005 11:04 AMReminds me of an Alan Partridge sketch. When challenged over a similar misuse of the term, he says "I meant literally as in 'not really'."
But, as Johnson pointed out ("the boundless chaos of a living speech"), all languages evolve all the time and in unexpected directions, especially English.
(French is beautiful, but they want to keep it frozen forever. Impossible.)
In a language where Michael Jackson can sing "I'm bad" and mean "I'm good", then 'literally' anything is possible.
"She asked what he meant and he said: Well, when someone says they were so angry that their head was literally going to explode. She still didn't get it." In that very moment of her confusion ... his head exploded.
Posted by: Genecis at April 19, 2005 3:00 PM"There's no excuse for mispronouncing a place name (which is done constantly), as there are actual guides out there for such matters."
It makes me crazy to hear talking heads pronouncing Jersualem as Jeruzalem.
In Hebrew, Jerusalem is spelled "Yad Resh Vav Shin Lamed Mem" which could be transliterated: YRUShLM.
The use of J in English for Hebrew Yad is common and goes back to the King James Bible.
The Shin is pronounced as sh in show, but was often transliterated as S, which is not totally unreasonable because the letter can be pronounced as s as in see (in dotted forms of hebrew it is called Sin if so pronounced. (There is a letter samech which is always pronounced s as in see) There is no posibility that the letter shin may be pronounced as Z in zoo.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at April 19, 2005 7:09 PMReminds me of when Frank Gifford (bless his little pea brain) announced during a Monday Night Football game that "this Giant Stadium crowd is literally exploding!" A friend of mine said (deadpan): "Boy, I wouldn't want to have to clean that up."
Posted by: Foos at April 19, 2005 7:13 PMMy pet peeve is litterboxes. Also saying "public"
when you mean "liberal elites", as in N"P"R.
I´m not a big fan of Limbaugh, but he has more humor than all of NPR put together. Yes, including The Car Guys.
Posted by: seelow heights at April 20, 2005 6:25 AM