When is a "mistake" almost right and nearly acceptable?!

       In an obituary today in the Los Angeles Times for the wonderful performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, the article tells us Rachel graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City and began to be friends with painters like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and joined the dance company headed by Merce Cunningham:


           "She was a dancer and fell in with an avant garde crowd at a time             of artistic fervent in the 1950s."


       Now a spell-check wouldn't catch the "fervent" as a mistake or misspelling because it's actually a word, and although it is an adjective when a noun is called for and "ferment" was no doubt intended, a churning, boiling time of artistic creativity is also clearly one where the artists are "fervent" about their art!  

"Mesmerizing"

       Just ran across the word again and realize how nice it is, I guess, to have a word coined out of your name.  Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th century medical doctor, was a visionary and began believing magnets could cure or help patients in some way.

       Then he thought he had some of those powers himself, and got people to do things through what he hardly recognized as hypnotism; hence mesmerism is broadly understood as the equivalent of hypnotism.  American Heritage Dictionary's Word History continues:


One of [Mesmer's] pupils, named Puyse´gur, then used the term mesmerism (first recorded in English in 1802) for Mesmer's practices.  The related word mesmerize (first recorded in English in 1829), having shed its reference to the hypnotic doctor, lives on in the sense "to enthrall."

"Modicum"

       So the word "modicum" occurred to me the other day, sounded a little small on the tongue, and, of course, why not, that's what it refers to, something little, tiny, small, diminished, a bit.

       But there are other words that can serve the same purpose, refer to similar size things:  iota, tad, tittle. . . just to start such a list.

       It's good to have a quantity of words at hand to choose from, then to settle on one that seems to fit best.

A Restaurant I would Gladly Patronize

       Daughter Elizabeth told me today, Mother's Day, she and Grandson Micah went to a favorite restaurant she's loved ever since she's lived in Tucson, an unpretentious, neighborhood kind of place where the food is good, the wait staff is longstanding, and both they and the customers seem just glad to be there.

       I was struck with the unshamefaced straightforwardness of the restaurant's motto, which Elizabeth snapped today and mailed me:

"Homeland"

       Wrote this essay closer to the time the word first became prominent in the country.  The muse and thoughts I had then still seem to me to be pertinent regarding this almost-taken-for-granted word now:


                                                HOMELAND

       The term “Homeland” as in “Homeland Security” has bothered some people, including me.  Others seem to accept it readily.

       It was apparently first used in an American government context by a 1997 document of the National Defense Panel, then as part of the two-word phrase in the first Hart/Rudman report on national security in 1999, but most notably to the general public in President Bush’s October 2001 creation of an Office of Homeland Security which has now received its Congressional imprimatur in November 2002.

      The term, perhaps for one old enough, resonates from World War II and Hitler’s Germany.  Naturally the sound of it is not favorable for somebody with that association.

       But it’s what the term does (and maybe what it did for Germany!) that bothers me most:  it makes us into an isolated patch of soil in which we are all rooted, apart from the rest of the world.

       What happens to the “homelands” to which most of us trace our ancestry, i.e., the now widely disparate countries that gave us or our forbears their birth?  Those countries are cut off from contributing to our culture and our identities as we float ever further from our peculiar, distinct, and diverse origins.

       WE are now the “homeland,” barricaded and armored away from the rest of humanity, thus giving the lie to our welcoming and immigrant-built country, subverting our very appeal to the world.

Language is a Great Mulch!

       I finished lecture #36, the final one in John McWhorter's "Great Course" The Story of Human Language on CD, my first real introduction to linguistics and a worthy one indeed.

       I'll share a couple little "food for thought" items as given in print form in the little book that accompanies and consolidates the fuller actual lectures:


       Ask traces back to an Old English word acsian, but despite how we feel about the pronunciation "aks" today, in Old English acsian was as common as ascian, casually written in formal documents.  As so often, our contemporary senses of what is "wrong" are abitrary--even literate English speakers once saw nothing amiss in the alternation between these words.

       About came from a case of the rebracketing that we saw create the word alone [originally "all one," time and use reduced it to "alone"].  At plus by plus out, pronounced together rapidly over time, became the single word about, just as God be with you became Goodbye.

       

       

       

       

More on "The Ballad of Beautiful Words"

       Why is the poetry in yesterday's post so readable, listenable?  So Euphonious?  Is it more the rhymes, more the rhythms, is it more the individual words and their sound/image value?  Is it just a list of nice words in a "ballad"?  WITHIN each line, what are the colors, the shifting differences even when the letters are all the same that begin words?  I think the poem a marvel.  The selection process itself must have been a feast, not to mention the piecing it all together in a seamless sound and rhythmic package, each stanza.

       I can't tell for sure who made the poem; this is one-third of it, but I can find it for you and send you to it.  It's at Issa's Untidy Hut, the Poetry Blog for Lilliput Review.  Scroll down till you come to "The Ballad of Beautiful Words."

from "The Ballad of Beautiful Words"

Amethyst, airy, drifting, dell.
    Oriole, lark, alone,
Columbine, kestrel, temple, bell,
    Madrigal, calm, condone.

Emerald, swallow, tawny, dawn
    Silvery, starling, lane,
Radiance, rosary, garland, fawn,
    Pastoral, valley, vane.

Saraband, arrow, huntsman’s horn,
    Orison, organ, bairn
Meadow, madonna, moorland, morn,
    Colony, carol, cairn.

Crinoline, crimson, crystal, croon,
    Troubadour, flagon, flown,
Caravan, amber, laurel, moon,
    Tamarind, tendon, tone.

Anchorage, archer, astral, own,
    Barnacle, billion, bay,
Channel, communion, island, moan,
    Carnival, castaway.

Chivalry, convoy, clamor, cling,
    Hurricane, highland, dream,
Journeyman, mariner, sailor, wing,
    Mandarin, tarn, redeem.

       (more in next post about this poem)

Brain on "hold."

       Restrained from much energetic exercise at the moment, it's hard to maintain animated vitality.  Keep wanting to take another nap.  Good for continued recovery from my hernia surgery but less so for the life of the blog.
   
       I rest, seek respite, reset, yawn, stare at the screen, nod off...to bed. 

      

"Empty Nesters"

       Seeing two birds flapping and fluttering under the eaves of our patio to a location somewhere in the patio this morning reminded me of the bird I saw the other day just beyond our patio pick up and sort of weigh and balance and consider a twig and then take it and fly in.

       That made me think (and today it was confirmed) there's a couple building a nest in our patio--and I saw it.   
  
       It's exciting!  But mainly it made me think how for granted we take our relationship with other sentient and wild beings that accompany us on the planet.

       Do we notice that we say, "Yeah, our kids have flown.  We're empty nesters now."  They're hardly metaphors!  Fellow creatures are how we know some things, and it's in our language.

"Welterweight"

       So it was a welterweight contest in Las Vegas last night.

       But what weight is it?    Obviously more than a"fly"and more than a "bantam."

       "Welterweight" is between lightweight and middle weight and comes in at between 135 and 147 pounds.

       I grew up on the heavyweight fights of such figures as Joe Lewis, "The Brown Bomber."  I suppose heavier guys are more capable of committing greater mayhem on their opponents.

      But what is a "welterweight"?  Probably the name came from "welt," raised portion of the skin that's been bruised, typically by a blow to it. 

Fortune Cookie?

       One of those little moments that takes you aback.

       Chinese dinner delivered to home.  Three Fortune Cookies.  Chose.


                 "You and your spouse will be happy in your life together."


       Wait a minute.  Well, yes, but what percent of pride do you want for your prediction when we're already in our eighties and been happily married for 58 years?

Cut from a Different Cloth

       Purchased new toaster today at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  I think I may have learned what the "Beyond" stands for when I read the directions that told me certain things I should do before starting to operate the toaster.  One of them was the following:


                    "Wipe the exterior with a damp sloth."


       I wonder if a sloth is damp most of the time; and also what a sloth might think of my using it in this way.  We usually figure a sloth is pretty lazy, but then it might take such use as a salve for its conscience.  It'd get the credit, but I'd be doing all the work!

"Saxophonist"

       As a kind of addendum on yesterday's "microscopist" entry, I have to say that the Brit's attempt especially to get us to say [sack-SAHPH-n-IST] for this word is a very similar case in point.  You've entirely lost the word "saxophone."

       At least Merriam-Webster tells us as Americans that the pronunciation for this word is [SACK-suh-PHONE-ist].  Brava! Bravo! from me for that one.  And if we can come off our high horses (never the British, of course) for this one, why not for the other and make the word [MY-kruh-SKOHP-ist]!!!

       We tend to want to emulate the "high-class" Brits for whom at times, the more esoteric the word sounds, the more right it must be.  (A little jazz saxophone ought to loosen 'em up.)

"Microscopist"

       Reading biologist E. O. Wilson's latest book called Creation,  a beautifullly detailed and eloquent siren call to save the life of the planet,  I come across the kind of word that drives me a little nuts.

       Now you and I know how to say the word "microscope."  But in discussing how to get a young person turned on to science by giving the kid a microscope, Wilson speaks of it having worked for himself, turning him into a microscopist like Anton Leeuwenhoek.  There it is.

       Neither the word "micro" nor the word "scope" appear in the word "microscopist," anyway in the saying of it.  It comes out [my-KRAHS-kuh-PIST].   This pronunciation  loses entire touch with the original root parts that give us to understand,  provide our bearing on what the word means!

          (Please see tomorrow's post.)

Lindstrom Got its Dots Back, Yeah!

       Here's a language story that reminds me of my native Minnesota and sounds just right to me!

       FM's "The World" keeps track of the "The World in Words" as part of its coverage and discovered that the little town of Lindstrom, Minnesota, had lost its "umlaut" over its "o" when the road signs leading into town were repainted.  People began to complain because the vast majority of the 4,442 citizens of Lindstrom are of Swedish inheritance, and that diacritical mark meant the town was pronounced LIND-strohm, not LIND-strm, and that's the way the townsfolk want it to be!

       Governor Mark Dayton finally sent out a fiat ordering the restoration of the two dots.  And his will was carried out.

       Umlauts are really of German origin and used in the German language, but Swedish too apparently.

(You can take a link to the story in print, audio and podcast by clicking here.)

"Trippingly on the Tongue"

       Please read this paragraph ALOUD from this morning's Los Angeles Times front page:


          After years of government investigations, Corinthian Colleges Inc. will shut down more than two dozen of its remaining schools, displacing more than 10,000 California students.  The move ends the turmoil at what was once one of the nation's largest for-profit college chains but presents fresh challenges to students, who now must seek transfers or federal loan forgiveness.


       At the Los Angeles Radio Reading Service, we often read articles over the air which we've not read completely, sometimes at all, in advance of going on air.  I stumbled when I came to four words in this paragraph--"what was once one"--.

       The writer might not realize this is a tough chain of words to put together and get right aloud; the broadcaster knows very well.  The sound that begins all four words is [w]; the vowel sound that follows it is [uh] as in "sun" in all four words; the closing consonant sounds all differ.  It's hard to get your mouth around all these successive single similar syllables successfully.

       HAVE FUN!  READ ALOUD.


      

"Inadvertently"

       What does it mean?  “Not turning to,” by root meaning anyway.

       Let’s see.  “Ad” means “to” from Latin and “vert” means “turn” as in “reverse” “turn back.”   Then “in” as a prefix  means “not” and so “not turning to.”

       Doing something “inadvertently” is to do it without intention, doing it without the mind turning [sufficiently] toward it.

When is sub-par English just fine?

   
       Yesterday, Dodgers manager Mattingly was talking generally in the direction of whether a hot-hitting, homer hitting rookie substitute infielder should replace a seasoned and popular third baseman in the lineup:

       "We know we have a long season, a long way to go.  You put things together during the winter knowing who your personnel [are] and how you think you see it working.  Sometimes, you stay with that course.  Other times, you have to get off that course.  We've played, how many games?  I just don't think we're willing to just go run in a whole 'nother thing."

       I don't mind at all that last sentence.  That 'nother is fine.  Maybe you'd rather see, "I just don't think we're willing to just go run in another whole thing."  More literate, but conversationally less spontaneous and "right on."   

"Stool Softeners"

       "Stool Softeners"?  I thought stools were supposed to be rigid so you didn't fall off  'em.

       But now that I look at "softener," I see that though the word has that "rigid" "t," there's no hard sound in the word "softener."

       Now that's appropriate.