The Ingenuity of Languages; and Weeding in Libraries

THE INGENUITY OF LANGUAGES; AND WEEDING IN LIBRARIES

Written Sat. June 30th, 2018; posted Sun. July 8th, 2018

1. The Ingenuity of English

Different languages are ingenious in different ways.  When you study another language – some language other than the language you already speak – you will encounter some of this ingenuity.  The way to master the ingenuity, so you can wear it lightly, is to practice. “Wearing a language lightly” means carrying it around with you, without it feeling like a burden.

An example of the ingenuity of English is the distinction between sky and heaven.  Sky is the sky in general, whatever is above you when you go out of doors, without it being attached to the earth.  (For the purpose of this discussion, we will ignore falling objects.)  Heaven, in contrast, is the sky where you go when you die, if you have religious faith.  In many of the other languages of Europe – other than English, whose history makes it a language of Europe – there is only one word that covers the meaning of “heaven” and “sky.”

2. The Ingenuity of Menominee

An example of an ingenuity not found in English, and not found in European languages in general, but found in perhaps an eighth of the world’s languages, is a distinction between the exclusive and inclusive meanings of “we.”  “We” means “I and others.”  If the others include “you,” linguists call that kind of “we” “inclusive we” or “first person plural inclusive.”  If the others referred to by “we” do not include “you,”  linguists call that kind of “we” “exclusive we” or “first person plural exclusive.”  By leaving off the prefix ex- or in-, and adding a suffix, linguists derive the word “clusivity,” which can be explained as a noun which stands for a question.  “Clusivity” is a linguists’ word meaning “Does your ‘we’ include the person you are talking to?”

The sentence “Does your ‘we’ include the person you are talking to?” follows an American rule of writing, which is this: If a quotation contains another quotation inside of it, then the inner quotation is surrounded by single quotation marks, and the outer quotation is surrounded by double quotation marks.  The British rule of writing is the other way around, or the exact opposite of that.

Most of the languages which are spoken by large groups of people do not distinguish between exclusive and inclusive “we.”  A single word is used for “we” both exclusive and inclusive in the European languages, English, Russian, Spanish, French, German, and the rest.   Likewise, a single word is used for “we” both exclusive and inclusive in many other languages around the world, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swahili, Turkish, and others.  But you find one word for inclusive “we” and a different word for exclusive “we” in Indonesian (a major world language) and in a third to a half of the Native American languages, and in almost all the native languages of Australia (most of which are endangered languages).

In Menominee, a Native American language of Wisconsin, the difference between exclusive “we” and inclusive “we” is expressed by a subtle interplay of prefixes and suffixes.  Here are the Menominee personal pronouns, from Leonard Bloomfield's two books The Menomini Language and Menominee Lexicon.  (Bloomfield used the spelling Menomini, but the tribe prefers Menominee.)

Person                   Menominee singular pronouns        Menominee plural pronouns

1st                         n-en-ah  (I, me)                             n-en-a' (we, us) [exclusive, not you]

1st & 2nd (inclu.)  -----                                                k-en-a' (we, us) [inclusive, including you]

2nd                        k-en-ah (you)                                 k-en-ua' (you all)

3rd                         w-en-ah (he, she, him, her)            w-en-ua' (they, them)

In Menominee, -en- is the root of all personal pronouns (meaning "this is a personal pronoun").  The prefix n- marks first person; prefix k- marks second person; and prefix w- marks third person.  The ending -ah marks singular pronouns; the ending -a' marks plural pronouns which include the first person; and the ending -ua' marks plural pronouns which do not include first person.  (The difference in pronunciation between -ah and -a' is not huge, but it reappears in other Menominee words.  The Menominees, when they spoke their native language, could pronounce an -h at the end of a word, something not done in English; it sounds like a short sigh after the vowel.  But the apostrophe represents a sudden choking off of the sound after the vowel, called a glottal stop.)  Here is how the prefixes and suffixes are combined: to make the pronoun for inclusive "we", one combines the second person prefix with the first person ending.  Since inclusive "we" includes both the first person (I) and the second person (you), there is a logic to having a prefix for one, and a suffix for the other!

3. Grammar as Generalizations and Patterns

That is certainty an ingenuity of language!  It is also what linguists mean when they talk about “grammar.”  In the experience of some people, “grammar” means “being ashamed of the way your mother and father talked.”  But for linguists, “grammar” means “putting into words the patterns which people usually follow when they speak their native language” or “analyzing sentences and words into their meaningful component parts, and specifying how those meaningful parts are combined.”

More specifically, what we just analyzed about the Menominee pronouns is “articulating in words one particular pattern which Menominee speakers follow when they speak their native language.”  When we articulate in words one particular grammatical pattern in a language or languages, linguists call that “capturing a generalization.”

4. Languages of the Past, and Universal Grammar

Now, what if in the future, people stop speaking the Menominee language entirely?  That leads us to discuss the relevance of well-described dead languages to universal grammar.

There is a rhyme used by English-speaking students who are studying Latin, which goes like this:

“Latin is a dead language, it’s plain enough to see:

It killed off all the Romans, and now it’s killing me.”

But, when linguists describe the grammar of an ancient or dead language, they (that’s the linguists) permit themselves to use the Present tense, which can be called the “eternal present.”  Here is an example: “In Latin, the direct object is expressed by the accusative case.”  (An example of what "accusative case" means is given at the end of this essay.)  Notice the word “is.”  That’s Present tense.  Regardless of whether people stop speaking Latin entirely; or stop speaking it entirely, then start speaking it again; or stop speaking it entirely, then start speaking it again, and then stop a second time – it is always going to be a fact about Latin grammar, that the direct object is expressed by the accusative case.  Something similar is true of Menominee grammar (with different particulars).  So, linguists use the present tense when capturing generalizations.  Linguists have studied the concept of a “possible spoken human language” fairly extensively -- but so far, linguists have shown no interest in the concept of a “possible future spoken human language.”  The idea that linguists appear to have been following is “once a possible human language, always a possible human language.”

In the abstract, linguists can believe in the existence of a prehistoric language of Europe or the Ancient Near East, a very distant ancestor of the Latin language, which did not have an accusative case to express the direct object.  If such a prehistoric language existed, then it would follow logically that there was some mechanism by which a language which does not have an accusative case can evolve an accusative case.  Now, linguists reason, if there was a mechanism by which a prehistoric distant ancestor language to Latin could have evolved an accusative case, then that same mechanism could operate again on some language or other in the future.  Such a mechanism can actually be glimpsed in Modern Spanish, where the Spanish word “a” which is equivalent in meaning to the English preposition “to” (as in “to the city”) seems to be evolving into a marker of the direct object, or accusative case.  This is an example of why linguists assume, or implicitly assume, “Once a possible human language, always a possible human language.”

One possible future linguistic scenario – no one knows for sure, not even the most brilliant linguist now alive can be certain – might be that the English language would continue influencing all other spoken human languages more and more, until at some point in the future a state is reached where there is not a single living spoken language which has different words for exclusive “we” and inclusive “we.”  But the assumption “Once a possible human language, always a possible human language” could still lead linguists to believe, that such a future state of affairs could in turn be followed by an even later stage in which English developed a new way to have separate  words for exclusive “we” and inclusive “we.”

That is the idea running in the background when a linguist or a grammarian -- it does not matter which -- uses what we have designated the “eternal Present “ in making this grammatical statement, “In Latin, the direct object IS expressed by the accusative case.”

5. Weeding in Libraries

Therefore, if a certain language ceases to be spoken, that does not mean that we can throw away all the grammars of that language.  The grammars of that language in the plural – meaning, the books or monographs written about the grammar of that language in the singular – have stored up and preserved information about one of the numerous eternally possible spoken human languages.

Generally, old nursing books and old law books are considered by librarians (and nurses and lawyers) to be creepy in a particular sense, meaning that if you follow the advice contained in them, you are not using up-to-date information, and as a consequence, you might hurt or harm yourself.  Old linguistic and grammar books never become creepy in this specific sense, and as a result, librarians should not make an effort to prevent people from reading old linguistic books and grammar books which are being taken out of the library to make room for newer linguistic books and grammar books.  In this sense, linguistics is one of the humanities, or to use the word in its singular form, linguistics is a humanity.  “Linguistics is a humanity” is a college administrator way of saying that linguistics, like literature and history and art and music and religion, is concerned with eternal and nearly eternal truths about human beings.  Walt Kelly the comic strip author remarked that “The things that make us human are always close at hand.”  Human language is one of the things that make us human, and wherever there are communities of people, human language is always close at hand.  Even though linguistics (or comparative grammar) does not feel like the study of an art form such as literature and visual art and music, nevertheless, linguistics is one of the humanities in the college administrator sense of the word humanities.  Linguistics (or comparative grammar) is the study of one of the things that make us human.

Thus, when we use the eternal present and say “In Latin, the direct object IS expressed by the accusative case” we are also implying, When librarians remove an old Latin grammar from the library to make room for some newer books or to make room for more computers so more people can read E-books at the same time, the librarians removing the old Latin grammar should not try in any way to prevent people from reading the old grammar book which is going out the back door of the library.  Old grammar books never become creepy in the specific and technical way in which old nursing and law books become creepy.

In conclusion, whatever it is that people mean when they say “linguistics is a science,” it does NOT mean “librarians should prevent people from reading old grammar books, when they go out the back door of the Library.”

Postscript. An Example of the Accusative Case in Latin

Mārcu-s vide-t.     [Latin for] "Mark sees."

Mārcu-m vide-t.     [Latin for] "He sees Mark" or "She sees Mark" or "It sees Mark."

The -m at the end of Mārcum is the ending of the accusative case.  As indicated above, the accusative case is used to mark the direct object in Latin.  So Mārcum is the object of vide-t (He, she, it sees).  By contrast, the -s at the end of Mārcus is the ending of the nominative case, used to mark the subject of the verb in Latin.

"Accusative" is certainly an odd word!  R. H. Robins in his book A Short History of Linguistics on page 35 says it came about from Romans misunderstanding an Ancient Greek word.

Frank Newton

Freedom of Speech for Highly Paid Athletes

FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR HIGHLY PAID ATHLETES

Tues. July 3rd, 2018

Highly paid athletes need to have freedom of speech, like college professors.  Highly paid athletes sometimes tweet things they later wish they hadn’t tweeted.  Stupid things.  But many highly paid athletes also have access to a world of experience which most intellectuals and most rich people do not have access to, namely, the experience of growing up poor.  Highly paid athletes need to be permitted to serve as spokespeople for poor people.

Jesus served as a spokesperson for poor people, and He did a really good job.  Our country needs to give highly paid athletes the same opportunity.  (Towards the end of his ministry, Jesus also served as a spokesperson for rich people.  That is because Jesus, like Joni Mitchell, could look at clouds from both sides now.)

Not all highly paid athletes are good role models.  But then again, not all intellectuals are good role models.  Not all rich people are good role models.  Do you know what I mean?

Some highly paid athletes have criticized the National Anthem, which has words by Francis Scott Key.  I say, allow them to make this criticism.  Tex Sample has written a really good essay on patriotism.  You can read it here: https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/8958/teaching-biblical-patriotism-as-pastoral-care-god-country-and-stories-of-working-class-pain .  I recommend it to you, but I warn you: it is not going to answer all the questions you have about patriotism.  Conservatives think that patriotism is an open-and-shut case.  The truth is, patriotism is more complicated than that.  I know you don’t want to hear this, but we are going to have to have a dialogue about patriotism.  That is a subject for a later blog.

Frank Newton

PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN TOO MUCH ABOUT STEREOTYPES

PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN TOO MUCH ABOUT STEREOTYPES

Written Sat. Sept. 17th, 2016; posted to my blog Sun. July 1st, 2018

My patience is thin with people who spend too much time complaining about other people's preconceptions, misconceptions, and stereotypes.  That's because I'm an elitist when it comes to attitudes.  In addition to the elite of money, there is also an elite of attitudes.  People who belong to the elite of attitudes never weary of Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan; they never complain saying that the Good Samaritan is a cliché.  People who belong to the elite of attitudes listen with respect to their poorer neighbors, because listening with respect to the poor is one of the correct answers to the question What would Jesus do?  People who belong to the elite of attitudes keep an open mind about groups of people they haven't had much experience with.  People who belong to the crème de la crème within the elite of attitudes have a near-miraculous ability to discuss politics with people of the opposite political party.

Paying too much attention to the opinions of people who DON'T belong to the elite of attitudes is a whole lot like paying too much attention to the opinions of stupid people.  "Consider the source," my mother and grandmother used to say.

If you are writing a paper about the people of Appalachia, you should spend almost your entire time seeking out sources which -- or who -- DON'T have stupid attitudes towards the Appalachian people.  You should seek out sources with well-informed ideas about the Appalachian people, and then you should spend almost all the rest of your research time reading or interviewing those good sources, and writing about what they have to say, interjecting your own good-attitude thoughts into your writing whenever you can.

I don't aim to imply that you should despair of communicating with people who have preconceptions, misconceptions, and stereotypes.  I guess I might say "Let me see what I can find out about that and get back to you."  Then seek out what well-informed people have said on the subject, and the next time you run into the person burdened with stereotypes, do your best to repeat what you have read or heard from well-informed sources.  Then -- depending on what the other person says back to you -- might be a reasonable time to give up on communicating with that person.

The idea of an elite of attitudes is close to what E. M. Forster said about "an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky."  (Pluck being a British word for bravery; but E. M. Forster clearly meant to include bravery in everyday living -- he didn't mean to limit pluck to military bravery.)

Frank Newton

A Home-made Theology of the Judgment of the Nations

A HOME-MADE THEOLOGY OF THE JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS

Sat. June 23rd, 2018

Tex Sample’s article "Teaching Biblical Patriotism as Pastoral Care: God, Country, and Stories of Working Class Pain" is dated June 13th of this year and can be read at https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/8958/teaching-biblical-patriotism-as-pastoral-care-god-country-and-stories-of-working-class-pain.  It is a many-faceted essay on working class pain, and what our country needs to do to address this problem.  The article begins:

“Patriotism is an important part of traditional conservatism, a cultural resource for most working-class white Americans. Without question, love of country can be both a motivation for the good and a problem. Love of country can become idolatry. Such patriotism can be an inordinate love that leads to excesses and extremes, to militarism, to an ethos of violence, and to a regimented mindset.

“At the same time, love of country can also be valuable. To love this land, to love its people, does not require that it be idolized. Love of country does not have to be . . . white supremacist. It depends on how wide the reach is of those to whom we belong.”

The problem of working class pain is one of the biggest problems facing the United States today, and I want to write about it.  But not until I have read more about it.  Tex Sample is writing a book about it; his article is a shorter version of the book and what you might call a "down pay­ment" on the book.  The book has been entitled Working Class Rage: A Field Guide to White Anger and Pain, and it is due to be published by Abingdon Press in September 2018.  I aim to read it.

But in the meantime, I am going to address another aspect of Sample's outstanding article, the question of what the Bible, especially the Old Testament, has to say about patriotism.  What Christians need, and what I find lacking, is a theology of the judgment of the nations.

There's a lot of ground to be cleared, but I am going to start by explaining why I use the term Old Testament, and why I like it.  In the wake of Hitler, many liberal Christians have taken to using the term Hebrew Bible instead of the term Old Testament.  This trend is closely tied in with the post-Hitler need to respect Jewish things -- Jewish beliefs, Jewish books, Jewish people, Jewish cemeteries, and all things Jewish.  I do respect them.  But a disagreement about Jesus remains.  The turning point for me -- the "hinge" on which the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament turns -- my proof text -- is at Luke 24:13-27, the passage which we Christians call the road to Emmaus.  Jesus has a certain tendency -- completely out of fashion among teachers in my time -- to call His followers stupid -- or maybe was Jesus's Aramaic more slangy, like saying dumb instead of saying stupid? -- when they don't catch on to things He says.  Verses 25 to 27 tie up the story of the road to Emmaus:

" 'How dull you are!' he answered [Jesus answered his two followers who were walking to Emmaus].  26  'Was not the Messiah bound to suffer in this way before entering upon his glory?'  27  Then, starting from Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them in the whole of scripture the things that referred to himself."  [It does not matter which translation I quoted, but it is the Revised English Bible.]

The question is, where did I get the idea that the Old Testament prophesies the coming of Jesus, the Messiah?  The answer is, I got that idea from Jesus himself.  He said it at Luke 24:26-27.  That is why I refer to the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament.  The Old Testament -- the English word testament used to mean covenant or legal document -- is the left wing of revelation, the New Testament is the right wing of revelation, Jesus is the heart of revelation, and Luke 24:25-27 is the muscle that connects the two wings of revelation to the heart.  That's why I call the Hebrew Scripture the Old Testament.  But saying "Old Testament" changes absolutely nothing about my duty to protect Jews from people like Hitler.

With that said, the Old Testament speaks often of the nations, but when it speaks so, it does not include Israel (or Judah).  The nations is a translation of a Hebrew term which means, in its usage if not in its literalness, foreign countries.  To opine for a moment about the English language, "foreign countries" is a tremendously useful term which means "all countries but our own."

The God I believe in is a God of all nations.  When the God I believe in judges the nations, he judges my country along with the other countries.  I follow Jesus, and that means I believe whatever is said about Yahweh in the Old Testament is said about my God.  Yahweh judges the nations = My God judges the nations.  But -- important point which I am saying a second time and emphasizing here -- when God judges the nations, he judges my country along with, and at the same time as, the others.

Sample's article addresses what the Bible has to say about the judgment of the nations.  He writes:

"the nations of the world will be judged ultimately by how they meet raw human need (as with the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31), even as they march in that final eschatological parade (Revelation 21). And yet, in the midst of all these teachings, we are called to be subordinate to the ruling authorities (Romans 13), albeit in a biblical context."

(We have expanded Sample's abbreviations for the books of the Bible.  Our gut feeling, evidently not shared by tons of people, is that writing down the extra letters, so that the whole word of the name of the book of the Bible is written down, is a sign of respect.)

So next, I look at these Bible passages that Sample refers to.  I read Revelation chapter 21 looking for the nations.  I find Revelation 21:24: "By its light [Jerusalem's light] shall the nations walk, and to it the kings of the earth shall bring their splendour."  Sample calls that the "final eschatological parade" -- but those Bible words really fail to say anything at all to me about the judgment of the nations. 

Matthew 25:32 (Jesus speaking) tells me a little bit more:

31  'When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne,  32  with all the nations gathered before him.  He will separate people into two groups, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;  33  he will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.  34  Then the king will say to those on his right, 'You have my Father's blessing . . .  35  For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger, you took me into your home;  36  when naked, you clothed me; when I was ill, you came to my help; when in prison, you visited me.'  . . .  41  Then he will say to those on his left, 'A curse is on you; go from my sight to the eternal fire that is ready for the devil and his angels.  41  For when I was hungry, you gave me nothing to eat; when thirsty, nothing to drink;  . . . '

Here Jesus teaches important things about heaven, about being a Christian -- and particularly about the commonality of goals between people who focus on salvation, and people who focus on the social gospel.  But I do not learn much about the judgment of the nations.  I have specific beliefs about things my country has done which were wicked.  You have specific beliefs about things your country has done which were wicked.  We all have specific beliefs about things other countries have done which were wicked.  Where is the judgment of the nations?  When is the judgment of the nations?  Where in the housekeeping of heaven are nations punished for their wicked deeds?  Because "the nations" in Matthew 25:32 in Jesus' narration dissolves into a reference to God's judgment of individual human beings.

Now the Old Testament is filled with references to the earthly punishments of nations.  But nations share many moral properties with individual human beings, and one of the most important of these shared properties is that nations, like individual human beings, often get away with stuff on earth.  Evil stuff.  Nations are punished over and over on earth, but these punishments are crummier and more soiled than the justice any jury has ever given to any one human being.  On our earth, nations are repeatedly punished when they have done nothing wrong, and repeatedly not punished when they have done very wrong.  Heavenly justice is the vision of the just man and the just woman.  But if there is no heavenly judgment of nations, a heavenly justice to satisfy "those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail" (the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:6) will be totally impossible.

Ministers of the Gospel have invited me to agree with the prophet Jeremiah, when he condemns King Zedekiah of Judah for rebelling against the Babylonian Empire.  But I cannot agree with the prophet Jeremiah in this matter.  King Zedekiah's rebellion was a disastrous error of judgment.  I am suspicious of rebellions in general -- I am always suspicious of their chances of success -- and people who consider revolution to be romantic are stark raving lunatics in my opinion.  Furthermore, the atheists are totally correct when they call a thing like King Zedekiah's rebellion "a disaster of Biblical proportions."  But our God, I say to you, does not punish human beings for being stupid; neither does He punish nations for behaving stupidly, and against their own best interests.  Every punishment which has ever come upon human beings for being stupid, or against nations for being stupid, has been a human punishment which has come from human sources.  Our God punishes people, and nations, for being wicked.  I can find a lot of bad judgment in King Zedekiah's rebellion against Babylon; but I cannot find any wickedness. 

At the end of the Concord Hymn, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks to a spirit:

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free . . .

Emerson was talking about the spirit which possessed the embattled farmers at the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill.  Adult patriotism makes a person pause and reflect, that all human beings long to be the citizens of a country, some of whose people have died, in order to set their children free.  If there is an American who believes, dying to leave your children free is for the citizens of large countries; it is not an ideal for the citizens of small countries, like King Zedekiah's Judah; then I have to disagree with that American.  Is there such an American?  I don't know; but if there is such an American, then that American is completely comfortable with what the Romans did to Jesus.  The thrust of the Church as a whole, over the last two thousand years, has been to lay the entire blame of the crucifixion on the Jews, excusing the crucifiers themselves, who were Romans executing a Roman command.  And what is the outcome of that?  A small country is blamed, a large empire is excused.  Matthew has Pontius Pilate wash his hands of Jesus' blood, and if there is an American who believes that rebellions are only for large countries like the United States, then I say to you, that American is ripe to believe that the crucifiers did nothing against God's law, and any cruelty committed by the United States of America against the people of any small country in the future is similarly excused before God's throne.  But I disagree.  I say to you, King Zedekiah made a disastrous error of judgment, but he wanted to leave his children free, and I can find no fault in that.  I must disagree with the prophet Jeremiah in this matter.  Jerusalem and Zedekiah were terrifyingly punished by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; but this punishment did not come from God.  It was a human punishment.  It was a punishment for being stupid, and any punishment for being stupid is not from God, because our God is a God of both stupid and smart.  Our God punishes for wickedness, not for stupidity. 

Jeremiah, no.  I foresee a judgment of the nations by God, a judgment in which the nations will be judged on the same basis which Jesus declares to us, in Matthew chapter 25, saying, this is the basis, on which the individual human being will be punished.

Now if after the judgment of the nations, the nations will burn, then who will feel the heat of that burning?  An unknown ancient Greek poet said the mills of God grind slow.  Who will feel the heat from the judgment of the nations?  I can only understand it in this way: that when the individual human being stands before God, God will bring up the wickedness done by the individual's country, in the adulthood of that human being, listing those things mingled with the wickedness done by that individual.

If I may use commas unconventionally: The individual human being, is well advised, to tremble at the thought of the punishment God reserves for wicked deeds.  The nations of this world are similarly well advised, to tremble at the thought of the punishment God reserves for their wicked deeds.  This is the theology of the judgment of the nations.  Loving your country is a good thing.  Sample's description of patriotism as a cultural resource is a weighty description, and it has the ring of truth!  But trembling at the thought of the punishment that waits for your country's wicked deeds is also a good thing.

Frank Newton

Crash Course in Southern Pronunciation and Grammar

CRASH COURSE IN SOUTHERN PRONUNCIATION AND GRAMMAR

Sat. June 16th, 2018 (with a correction Sun. Sept. 2nd, 2018)

Perhaps you are not a native of Dixie, but you have a sudden need to pass as a person born and bred in the South of the U.S.  This little essay will put you on the right path.  In a linguistic outburst or moment, Monty Python once observed that "Isoglosses were erected to repel invaders."  "Isoglosses" are the dotted lines that separate the dialect peculiarities of each small town from the dialect peculiarities of the next small town over, as illustrated in Leonard Bloomfield's book Language on page 326.  Monty Python were probably thinking of the small towns of England and Scotland, but something similar applies in the Southern U.S.  Nonetheless, there are three general characteristics, and they will be explained here.

(1) The Beautiful Pronoun.  Talking to more than one person?  In some parts of the English-speaking world, you will say, "you lot."  In the vast majority of the United States, you will say, "you guys."  But if you were born in the South, if your parents were born in the South, and if you haven't traded in your tongue for a more worldly model, you will say, "y'all" or its grander uncontracted form "you all" (which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mark Antony when he says "You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown" -- sounds very Southern if you glide over the Roman holiday, and pretend not to notice "thrice").  The apostrophe in y'all marks the exact spot where the "ou" of "you" disappeared.  If you write ya'll, you are very likely to be a Southerner, but nevertheless, your apostrophe has slipped a gear, because y'all does not have the same background as I'll, you'll, we'll, they'll, in which the apostrophe marks the spot where the "wi" of "will" disappeared.  I once saw a bumper sticker in Chapel Hill, one of the many intellectual capitals of the South.  The bumper sticker maker had printed "NO NUKES YA'LL," but the bumper sticker owner had taken scissors to the bumper sticker and rearranged it to say "NO NUKES Y'ALL."  Quite rightly!

To borrow an idea from southern France, Dixie could be poetically called the Langue de Y'all.

There is a small portion of the South where people say "y'uns" instead (derived seemingly from "you ones", but it doesn't sound right unless contracted).  My friend Harrison has been known to say y'uns.  There's an isogloss waiting to be figured out -- the exact geographical home and haunt (or distribution) of "y'uns" is unclear to me.

Back to y'all.  There's an idea that's gained traction, that Southerners sometimes say y'all to one person.  In my view, that can happen, but it has the exact same meaning as saying "you guys" to one person.  If a Southerner says y'all to one person, the Southerner probably means "your group, including you who are here, plus your significant other or your family and friends who are not here."

Basically, if you know how to use "you guys" or "you lot" or "you people," then you know how to use "y'all."  I had a linguistic professor (Robert Rodman) who came into class one day and pointed out that Americans don't say "You guys eat you guys' spinach."  Instead they say, "You guys eat your spinach."  At the beginning of the sentence, you have established that you are talking to several people.  When it comes time to use the possessive form of the pronoun, you insert the simpler form "your," usually singular nowadays -- but after all, "you" and "your" continue the old plural pronoun of Old English.  Arriving at the punchline, Southerners say "Y'all eat your spinach."  We don't say "Y'all eat y'all's spinach."  Different pronoun.  Same grammar.  In the song Ode to Billie Joe, Bobbie Gentry has the narrator's mother say "Y'all remember to wipe your feet."  That's good grammar y'all -- Southern on the ground, on the farm and in the town.

In the movie Rush Hour, Chris Tucker corrects Jackie Chan's pronunciation of y'all several times.  To tell you the truth, I thought Jackie Chan pronounced it pretty well.

(2) The Beautiful Vowel.  The South has its own sounds (see #3 below).  But first, we will mention a conservative tendency in Southern pronunciation.  Southerners, like Northeasterners, will use one vowel sound in the woman's name Dawn, and a different vowel sound in the man's name Don.  The American's "Don" sounds close to the Englishman's "darn," inasmuch as the Englishman is not pronouncing the R in darn; and the American's Don is the same from Carolina to California (with a possible exception for New York City).  The linguistic letter for the American's Don is simply /a/.  A as in Spanish.  The Southerner's Dawn has a different vowel sound, which linguists call an "open O" and write with a backwards c -- a little O with a hole punched on the left side of the circle.  It will be too hard to try to write that symbol in my blog, but you can picture what it looks like.  I call the sound of it the beautiful vowel.  It sounds halfway over to the "oh" in "oh yeah," but people in the Western United States do not use this vowel sound at all.  They pronounce Dawn the same as Don.  In the South, they sound different.  At least, with the same disclaimer: if you were born in the South, if your parents were born in the South, and if you haven't traded in your tongue for a more worldly model.  In the South, "caller" sounds different from "collar," and "caught" sounds different from "cot."  Caller and caught have the open O like Dawn -- halfway over to the OH sound.  Collar and cot have the ah-sound like Don.  Generally the AU and AW and ALL words have the open O vowel.  But then so do "dog" and "broad" and "gone."  To do this right, you have to memorize how some words sound (dog, broad, gone).  But if you are following me thus far with your tongue, you are on the right track.

To wrap up on point #2, the beautiful pronoun (y'all) contains the beautiful vowel (open O).

(3) The Rebel I.  "The rebel I" is a nickname for a vowel sound which Southerners use in the words that teachers call the words with Long I.  You can hear the alternative to the rebel I, when the Beatles sing (in "I Saw Her Standing There") "And I held her hand in mine."  "Mine" sounds like "mah-een" which is called a diphthong, meaning that one vowel sound glides over to another.  There is only one pronounced vowel letter in "mine."  But when you hear the Beatles sing "mah-een" you hear two vowel sounds.  A little exaggerated -- but still, that's how it's said every day in most of the English-speaking world.  Not in the South.  When you get to the end of the vowel sound in "mine" in the South, you are making exactly the same sound you were making when the vowel sound began.  That's not a diphthong -- it's a monophthong (mun-AHF-thong).  Our rebel I is halfway between the short A of Dan and the American short O of Don -- the latter being ah, as we've already noted.  It's not a long way from Dan to Don -- but somehow, Southerners manage to fit "dine" halfway in between.

There's an isogloss that goes with the rebel I -- an elusive dotted line, I don't know exactly where, but somewhere between North Carolina and Alabama.  In the deep South -- in Alabama, for example -- all long I's have the rebel I sound, and "right" has the same vowel sound as "ride."  But the shallow South, including North Carolina, is way trickier.  In the shallow South, you only hear the rebel I at the end of a syllable, as in "my," and before the voiced consonants B, D, G, J, L, M, N, V, Z.  If the long I is before one of the voiceless consonants F, K, P, S, T, the shallow Southerner will not pronounce the rebel I:  he or she will use the diphthong, just like a Northerner.  The shallow Southerner has the rebel I sound in "ride," but the diphthong in "right"; the rebel I sound in "rival," but the diphthong in "rifle"; the rebel I sound in "tidal," but the diphthong in "title."  Except for the T as in "title" (which has gone over to a D sound in the South as in most of the rest of the U.S.), this voiceless consonant thing goes according to the sound -- not according to the spelling.  The C in "rice" is pronounced like an S -- so the shallow Southerner gives the I the diphthong sound.  Rice.  But the S in "rise" is pronounced like a Z -- so the shallow Southerner gives the I the rebel I sound, just like the deep Southerner.  Rise.

In Ken Burns' movie of the Civil War, the Tennessean who has become a prisoner of war says "We're fighting for our rights."  For a split second, the Northerner thinks he said "We're fighting for our rats."  But then he catches on.  Like a deep Southerner, the Tennessean used the rebel I in "rights" (as well as "fighting").

It is unclear to me if Roy Orbison put into his song "Blue Bayou" the line that says "With that girl of mine by my side, the silver moon and the evening tide."  But later singers have sung it like that.  Here, all Southerners agree -- "mine by my side" and "tide" have the rebel I.  Practice will make perfect!

You may have thought dialects were easy.  Not really.  But if you have followed me this far, you can pass.  There is more, but now you have the big points.

This is my way.  James Thurber sketched another way.  If you have a pressing need to sound like a Southerner, you could try saying "Are you sitting in the catbird seat?"  But, my way is more reliable.

Frank Newton

Protection Failures as a Cause of Oppression

PROTECTION FAILURES AS A CAUSE OF OPPRESSION

Wed. June 13th, 2018

If you are supposed to protect somebody, and you try to protect them and fail, it makes you ornery.  That is why women's rights tend to decay after a war, especially after a losing war.  A war heightens men's perception that they are supposed to protect women.  But a war also heightens men's awareness of how difficult it is to protect people.  One response of people who are tasked with protecting others, and feeling that they are having a hard time protecting them, is to reduce the liberty of the people being protected, in order to make it easier to protect them.  So, when it is difficult to protect women, and men believe that it is important to women that men protect them, the men tend to take away some of the rights of women, or at least try to take away some of their rights.  To take a non-feminist example, if a successful surprise attack is conducted against a nation, and the people complain that their government failed to protect them from the attackers, the natural reaction of the government will be to take away some of the rights of the people, in order to make them easier to protect.

An extreme case of this problem with our world -- this evil state of affairs, if you will -- is described and analyzed in Lu Xùn's essay "My Views on Chastity" which Gladys Yang translated into English, along with selected other writings by Lu Xùn, in Silent China.  In "My Views on Chastity" Lu describes and critiques a civilization in which women who were raped were expected and encouraged to commit suicide (it was the civilization he grew up in).

This line of thought suggests that you should be cautious about complaining that some group of people are supposed to protect you and they did a lousy job, because that group of people might respond by reducing your rights.

Frank Newton

Saeva indignatio and Stephen Colbert

SAEVA INDIGNATIO AND STEPHEN COLBERT

Mon. May 21st, 2018

(Note.  It is over two years since I last blogged.  I thought I would try again, and see if it works.)

Stephen Colbert has a polarizing effect on people.  I don’t think his mockery of President Trump is effective.  An ancient Roman literary critic summed up the Roman satirical poet Juvenal by saying that Juvenal had saeva indignatio (savage indignation).  In one of Juvenal’s poems he criticized shoddily constructed multi-floor apartment houses in ancient Rome which collapsed, killing everyone unlucky enough to be inside when they fell.  It gives you a perspective on shoddiness or bad workmanship (or sleaziness as it is called in America nowadays).  Shoddiness or sleaziness is not a new thing; instead, it is part of human nature (part of the gene pool).  But to get back to my point about saeva indignatio.  The question for Democrats is, how shall we disagree with President Trump?  What style of speaking or writing should we use, when we want to disagree with President Trump’s messages, actions, and assumptions?  My idea about savage indignation is that it is ineffective in our society.  It must have something to do with the huge number of clever people in the United States.  When you have as many clever people as our country has, you have a lot of sarcastic people.  And sarcasm effectively neutralizes savage indignation.  I don’t know whether savage indignation brought about any constructive results in the past.  But I don’t believe it does today.  As I look back on Hitler, I wish Germans hadn’t tried to laugh him off.  I wish the Germans had criticized Hitler in a very serious way from the beginning.  Trump isn’t as bad as Hitler, but Trump could get worse.  Democrats need to study how to speak persuasively to Trump’s supporters.  Sarcasm isn’t the answer in this situation.

It's hard to do, but we need to try.

Frank Newton

Cleveco at Dragonfly

CLEVECO AT DRAGONFLY
Mon. Feb. 1st, 2016

Cleveco fronted by Kevin Bridges on guitar turned in a raucous-joyous and toe-tapping performance at Dragonfly Wine Market on West Warren Street near the Earl Scruggs Center in uptown Shelby on Saturday.  They played an original by Kevin (Fell from Airplane) about a man who fell to his death out of an airplane into a graveyard near Kevin's house.  They covered Luckiest Man, and John Prine's "Paradise," and at drummer Chris's suggestion, they turned in a rousing rendition of "Dead Flowers" by the Rolling Stones.  I asked Kevin how long it took them to set up, and he said ten minutes -- I said wow -- he said they have a speaker that pumps up the music for both the band and the audience, so they can dispense with a separate monitor.  Bassman Sandy was on hand, maybe a little more talkative than usual.  It was a three-man band on this occasion, because Danny Parker was off playing another gig, but Kevin said he should be back with the band which is good news of course!

War

WAR

Thurs. Aug. 20th, 2014, Wed. Feb. 18th, 2015; posted Wed. July 8th, 2015

During peace, people learn life lessons very, very slowly.  During war, people learn life lessons very, very quickly, but on the other hand, a lot more people die young.

The reason I am in favor of peace is that I want to have time to think.

As a romantic liberal, which I am, I believe that even people who are not very good at thinking and don't care for thinking deserve a chance to think -- and the rest of us, a fortiori.

Have you ever thought to yourself, a military recruiter might look at a person and say, "That person evidently doesn't like to think, so there certainly wouldn't be any harm in asking them to agree to put themselves in harm's way, and in worse case scenario to die for their country" ?

Well, as I say, I believe that even people who don't like to think deserve a chance to think.

It is unrealistic to think that our species can eliminate war.  But on the other hand, it is not unrealistic to think that we can make wars less common if we put our minds and our hearts into the task.

There is usually no way to measure whether a war has been postponed by taking a particular course of action.  I walk by faith in this matter.  I can't prove to anybody's satisfaction that a certain course of political action has postponed the next war; but I believe that certain things the United States is doing, or could be doing, will postpone the next war.  That's a criterion which I bring into play, when I figure whether I'm in favor of a particular foreign policy.

An Infinite Number of Commentaries

AN INFINITE NUMBER OF COMMENTARIES

Mon. July 6th, 2015

If you put an infinite number of white men in front of typewriters, typing commentaries on the Book of Joshua, eventually one of them will write that Joshua misheard the word of the Lord, and God didn't want him to order the killing of all the people of Jericho.