Family Shibboleths: a Glossary of Albert-isms

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Family Shibboleths: a Glossary of Albert-isms

Last week I hosted my mom, two brothers, assorted nieces, and a nephew for Thanksgiving. My niece Laura brought this custom-made Bingo card:

(A little explanation: CAlbert means a California Albert; WAlberts are the Washington state Alberts; and the Wollenhaupts are other relatives from my mother’s side that came for lunch the next day.)

I dig this family Bingo concept. It’s a nice way to celebrate the little idiosyncrasies and oddities that make a family feel close. We didn’t actually compete at family Bingo; that would have required fourteen unique cards and people would have had to carry them around the whole time. Instead we just had the one card, posted to the fridge. As you can see, we fell just short of getting a complete blackout.

I think there’s room to refine this game and make it a tradition. First, we could have a card for each person, up on the fridge, and anyone could mark things off (that’s right—helping one another try to win). Second, we could improve on what goes in the squares. “Cats are unusually mean,” for example, could never apply in this household, because a) we have just one cat, and b) what counts as “unusually” mean, given that all cats are asocial predatory beasts? 

Meanwhile, “NPR plays in the background” could apply to many a Bay Area home, but not mine—I dislike talk radio of any kind and there’d be no way to hear it over the din of this many Alberts anyway. 

(As for the final missing square, “Someone spews their drink,” apparently the only reason this didn’t happen was that my nephew Peter couldn’t come; I’m told he “seems to make it his mission to make a sibling or relative laugh explosively while drinking, hoping that said drink will spew out of said relative’s nose.” Peter stayed home as he was required by his megalomaniac coach to attend basketball practice on Thanksgiving Day, just to kiss the ring and demonstrate that sport comes before family. But I digress.)

The family Bingo game got me thinking about why family gatherings are so enjoyable. For one thing, we get that comforting sense of belonging, of being among our tribe. The quirky, idiosyncratic lingo we tend to throw around helps cement this. (Of course my family isn’t alone in this; Roz Chast recounts here how she polled her friends to learn what term their families use for picking thru the fridge instead of cooking a meal; in her household they call this “fending.”)

I think of such linguistic peculiarities as a family shibboleth. In case you haven’t heard this term, Wikipedia defines it as “any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another.” Of course, I mean shibboleth in a good way; the origin of this word, from the Old Testament, is actually pretty dark: after a battle between the Gileadites and the Ephraimites, any Ephraimite refugees who were intercepted were challenged to pronounce “shibboleth,” because in their dialect it sounded like “sibboleth.” Anyone who pronounced it this way was identified as the enemy and immediately killed.

Clearly this isn’t the point where family gatherings are involved; naturally we want everybody well-versed in our lingo. Generally our members pick it up easily enough. For example, early in the visit when I asked my youngest niece, age nine, if she liked butter, she looked puzzled and said something like “um … sure,” instead of the right answer which is, “yeah …. mmmmmbutter” … but when I asked her again three days later she responded correctly. Notwithstanding her swift adaptation, the family lingo can certainly be bewildering to a newcomer, and my niece Laura, recently engaged, asked me to create a family glossary for her fiancé’s benefit. Any time somebody asks me to write something, especially on the subject of words and wordplay, I find the prospect irresistible (as you can see here and here).

And so, I’ve compiled a glossary of Albert-isms, replete with etymologies. What does this have to do with you, the lay albertnet reader? Well, for one thing, if you’re reading this, you’re probably my mom, or perhaps one of my brothers. And even if you’re not, you ought to find these amusing. Moreover, I’ve witnessed family gatherings where people were too quiet or seemed lacking in family shibboleths, so I hereby give you permission to totally steal these and introduce them into your own family dialogue. (If any of my family members don’t like this, they  can complain in the comments area below, or on their own social platforms).

I’ve grouped these into general categories, starting with food-related terms, since family gatherings tend to center around the kitchen. Next are the cinematic references my family is so fond of. The last section comprises the truly weirdest utterances, many of which celebrate important bits of family history dating back decades.

Culinary Albert-isms

• Jukebox – microwave oven (origin: Kitchen Confidential; until my older daughter went off to college, she had no idea that this term, and the next three, weren’t ubiquitous)
• Microbe – see “microwave oven”
• Nuke – to heat in a microwave oven (e.g., “I don’t feel like cooking, let’s just nuke some leftovers”)
• Radar love – the process of heating via microwave oven (e.g., “this isn’t hot enough, give it a little more radar love”; origin: Kitchen Confidential)
• Bell’s seasoning – the key to Thanksgiving and thus the subject of much discussion
• Tranja (pronounced “TRAHN-ya”) – any tasty beverage, including energy drink; often used in the statement, “Drink—it’s tranja. I hope you relish it as much as I” (origin: Star Trek)
• Pretty yum – delicious (origin: five-star Yelp review of a Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco, ca. 2015)
• “Do you like butter?” / “Yeah, mmmbutter.” – standard verbal exchange whenever butter is present (origin: my friend Pete’s home-ec teacher back in, like, 1983, responding spontaneously when randomly asked if she liked butter)
• Lekker – see “pretty yum” (origin: from Netherlands Alberts)
• Splaula – spatula, especially a rubber spatula (origin: what my daughters and I thought my wife had written on her shopping list years ago, due to her encryption-like handwriting)

Cinematic Albert-isms

• “You’re not the quarterback here, Mike!” – Say this whenever somebody is overstepping or attempting to have too much influence. Do not substitute your interlocutor’s name for “Mike.” Always say “Mike.” (Origin: Breaking Away)
• “Cutter started it!” – Trot this out whenever you’re chastised for pointlessly bickering. It’s not important who actually started the argument, of course. (Origin: Breaking Away)
• “It’s a crazy world.” / “Someone oughtta sell tickets.” / “Sure, I’d buy one.” – Whenever you encounter an instance of the world being, in fact, crazy, you should say so, and then wait for the correct response, which is the bit about selling tickets. If this response is not received, pause a few beats and then say, “Sure, I’d buy one” anyway, to inspire your interlocutor to do better next time. (Origin: Raising Arizona)
• “Say, that reminds me.” – Use this whenever changing the subject, or even when continuing on the same subject, or whenever harmless verbal garnish is desired (source: Raising Arizona)
• “I’m defecatin’ you negative!” – This is a more family-friendly way of saying, “I shit you not.” It avoids both the profane word and its common synonym, “poop,” which is of course far worse. (Origin: Raising Arizona, with “defecatin’” substituting for “crappin’” which is still too risqué for the youngest Alberts)
• “I guess that’s why they call it a Way Homer.” – Say this whenever one of your jokes bombs. If your interlocutor replies, “Why’s that?” then you say, with much hilarity, “Cause you only get it on the way home!” Ideally, the next response will be, “I’m already home, Glen” (even if your interlocutor is not at home). This will have been a perfect volley. (Origin: Raising Arizona)
• “Does the pope wear a funny hat in the woods?” – This simply means “yes” or perhaps “hell yeah.” (Origin: combination of a quote from Raising Arizona and the expression, “Does a bear shit in the woods?”)
• “Two dollars! Two dollars!” (while walking like a zombie) – This one is a bit tricky. You have to walk slowly with your spine totally erect, your head back, your eyes fixed on a distant point on the ceiling, and arms outstretched (i.e., like a zombie), while chanting “Two dollars!” over and over. Do this when you don’t know what else to do; for example, if somebody is explaining why he or she went gluten-free. (Origin: Better Off Dead, combined with some random zombie-walking which my young Dutch nephew Max first encountered around the same time. He somehow conflated the two, having probably never even seen Better Off Dead, and his father later complained that Max was staggering around like a zombie chanting “two dollars!” pretty much nonstop. Thus this is a tribute to youthful enthusiasm and joie-de-vivre.
• “Good luck … we’re all counting on you.” – Say this whenever anyone is embarking on anything. This is one of those lines that somehow improves with age and repeated usage. (Origin: Airplane)
•  “Vaal is pleased.” – This is shorthand for “I am the eyes and ears of Vaal, and Vaal is pleased.” There’s no perfectly prescribed situation for using this; just exercise your best judgment. (Origin: Star Trek)

Particularly idiosyncratic Albert-isms

• Duh-huh or tuh-huh – just kidding. (Origin: when I first moved to California, I lived and worked with my brother Geoff; we biked to work and back together; we socialized together; in short, we were practically inseparable, and sometimes got a bit tired of one another, which could result in witty verbal exchanges that sometimes became caustic or acerbic. To soften this, we took to formally indicating the jocular nature of a comment by attaching “duh-huh” (which Geoff reckons is spelled “tuh-huh”) at the end. For example, we’d say something like, “Wait, you traveled three hours for this bike race and didn’t bring your UCSF license? Why would you think they’d let you register ... your good looks? Duh-huh!” Astonishingly, almost everyone we knew adopted this usage, including this one kid, Dave E, who couldn’t even say it right so it came out “duhhhht.” More than thirty years later, this is still standard usage among Alberts, across generations.)
• Mmmmmyello – this is how to answer the phone (origin: our friend Davey’s mom back in like 1980)
• Brrrowh – I don’t know (origin: contraction, over time, of “I dunno”)
• “Huh huh … no” – basically either “just kidding” or “scratch that” (origin: uttered by my friend Chris, as we were looking at VHS cassettes at the video store; he had suggested, “Let’s get Blame it on Rio” and then—realizing that his young lust was obviously the only possible motivation for wanting to see such a drippy movie—he got embarrassed and uttered the now immortal phrase, “huh huh … no” to try to retract it)
• “I need to drop some friends off in the toolit” – use this when you’re excusing yourself to go do a, uh, download. (Origin: the euphemism “drop some friends off at the pool,” warped unintentionally by a very young Albert, and spoken with a redneck accent for no clear reason)
• Micturate – urinate (this is certainly not an Albert coinage; it’s unclear how this became the family’s preferred term, given how seldom it’s typically used)
• “Okay, Christmas is canceled” – This is trotted out annually as a (so far empty) threat. (Origin: our mom said this repeatedly during our childhood, out of sheer exasperation at our awful behavior and/or her [and eventually everyone’s] contempt for the rampant commercialism of the holiday)
• Motherfrockle – motherf**er. (Origin: my niece Rachel, when very young, was verbally abused by another kid, and told her father but didn’t want to use the actual word, so he asked her to whisper it in his ear, and she put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “He called me a frockle!”)
• “I don’t wear contacts because I care about my eyes” – Say this whenever somebody mentions contacts, or puts them in, or takes them out, as a way to pass judgment. (Origin: our dad pompously declared this when he first learned I wear contacts; he followed it up with some long diatribe about how some lady friend of his, who had like the first generation hard contact lenses, slept in them and then they were stuck to her eyes; never mind that this was over forty years before and she was an idiot)
• EUx (Evil Uncle Dana, Evil Uncle Max, Evil Uncle Geoff) – All three uncles get the “Evil” moniker, and the standard abbreviation (e.g., EUD, EUM). (Origin: my brother Bryan was the first to have kids, and the last to become an uncle, so the rest of us got this label, mainly due to our actually being pretty much evil or at least a bad influence)
•  “What we need here is a Physics major.” – Say this to insult a sibling. You can substitute whatever college major you need; for example, during an argument about grammar you could say to me, “What we need here is an English major.” (Origin: during a long, complicated scientific discussion, which included possibly all his sons and definitely Bryan, our dad said this, as if to deny the very fact of Bryan’s major, which was indeed Physics.)
• “You are real lucky.” – Say this to any family member who seems even remotely lucky or successful, or who has avoided failure or cataclysm, as a way to deny that his or her good fortune has anything to do with character, pluck, or effort. You can also tell yourself this several times a day, as a way of feeling gratitude. It’s especially useful if, like me, you actually are real lucky. (Origin: our dad said to me, “You are real lucky you didn’t do more damage,” in angry response to [what he evidently perceived as] my utter incompetence, when I did some very minor damage to my car. Details are here.)
• “You’re not very bright, are you.” – Say this to any family member who says or does anything even slightly incorrect or questionable. (Origin: our dad famously, though perhaps apocryphally, said this to me after I rode 130 miles over the highest pass in North America without proper food or even a jacket and got caught in a thunderstorm; details are here.)
• “I’m going out there, don’t try to stop me. / You fool, you’ll be killed!  / I must do this … alone.” – Whenever you leave the house, utter the first statement. Your interlocutor should utter the second, and then you close out the dialogue with the third utterance. If your interlocutor neglects, or refuses, to provide the second statement, pause for a few beats and deliver the closing line anyway to inspire your interlocutor to do better next time.)
• “All over the place spaced-out BLEAAAH!” – This is a nice way to point out that a family member, particularly a teenager, has totally dropped the ball. (Origin: back in the ‘80s, our mom once completely lost her shit and delivered a powerful, thundering harangue including several instances of this very useful expression. The “BLEAAH!” part should be delivered with extreme gusto and high volume, ideally with your eyes practically bugging out. Note: do not deliver this diatribe in a library or museum.)
• “Bundle up Billy!” – Say this to any family member heading out into the cold, especially if you wish to advise and also demean the person (e.g., if you are talking to a teenager who finds the idea of a jacket, not to mention protective parenting, highly offensive). Do not substitute any other name for “Billy”—always use “Billy.” (Origin: actual quote concerning our friend Bill, whose loving mother said this to him and which we all took to saying to him constantly, all winter long, ad infinitum. Interesting aside: Bill now lives in Perm, Russia which isn’t technically Siberia but is halfway there; the average high temperature there in winter is just 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Bundle up, indeed!)
• “Come and get it or I’ll throw it out!” – what you say when the family meal is on the table (origin: one of those Time Life Old West books, probably The Cowboys; I read this sentence aloud to my mom and brothers back in like 1975 and it just stuck)
• Landlo’ – our mom’s second husband (origin: he actually was her landlord, and when he got greedy and said she either needed to buy the apartment or move out, she slipped between the horns of the dilemma by marrying him and thus moving in with him, which was a huge mistake as you can see here)
•  “Bye” – Obviously this word itself isn’t a family shibboleth, but we say it in a very specific way, waving annoyingly by opening and closing a hand, which is held up right next to our face, which wears an expression of utter disgust and dismissal; useful whenever a family member departs but particularly through a car window as the family member drives away. (Origin: this is how one of us, or perhaps all of us at one time or another, were kicked out of Green Scene, a go-kart track, for reckless driving, in the mid-‘80s)
• Slaap lekker – sleep well (origin: literally, “sleep tasty,” this is a standard Dutch expression brought to us by the Netherlands branch of the family)
• Don’t let the hmm-hmmms bite – don’t let the bedbugs bite (origin: this is what our brother Geoff used to say to his son Max because he was very young and the idea of bedbugs terrified him)
•  “You know, I really like [x]. I mean, I know that’s not profound or nothin’ … heck, we all do. But for me, I think  it goes far beyond that.” – This is really useful, every time you encounter something you like. It’s a way of expressing gratitude very formally and passionately. (Source: a “Far Side” cartoon)
• “Outta my way, mother daughter!” – This expression gets nearly constant use: pretty much whenever a wife, mother, or daughter is in your way. I have two daughters, a mom, a wife, and at least eight nieces, and thus say it probably 700 times a year. (Origin: during a violent dispute with my brother Max, then a teenager, my dad fled down the hall, with Max in hot pursuit, ready to beat his ass; our brother Bryan was squarely in the way, either to intervene or as a pawn caught in a deadly game, and Max yelled something similar to this, except that what he said was decidedly more profane, along the lines of “outta my way, motherfrockle!” Granted, this is a pretty dark memory to be dredging up all the time, but perhaps by saying this jovially we’re neutralizing that old trauma, or at least owning it.)

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More War of Words

Introduction

I’ve long envied syndicated columnists, because a) they make money from writing, and b) people actually write to them with questions and comments, from which the columnist can often wring a whole column.  He can get past writer’s block by performing a kind of alchemy, turning a mere reader’s humble feedback into literary gold.

Of course, this blog doesn’t bring about many useful comments.  The percentage of albertnet pageviews that have resulted in comments stands at 0.36%.  Occasionally I take on the role of the reader and write in myself (e.g., Ask Dr. Beer, Ask Dr. Pasta) but of course that’s cheating.  At other times, as with my recent “Grammar Wars” post, I write something provocative and hope for the best.

I was not disappointed in the case of “Grammar Wars.”  A friend of mine, Trevor, posted not one but two comments, comprising a number of contrarian statements.  (Ah, that last sentence was satisfying ... a boss of mine once argued that “comprising” cannot be used this way—that you can only say “comprised of”—and it hurt me to subjugate the truth of my position beneath the greater truth that you must not alienate the guy who controls your salary.) 

I have waited awhile before countering my friend’s arguments, to see if anybody would come to my defense (as happened with an incoherent and profane attack leveled at my British Faucet post).  Nobody has, though a mutual friend posted a simple “Wow,” most likely in response to the comments rather than the post.  Knowing that Trevor’s comments were deliberately (if playfully) pugnacious, I will give him the honor and satisfaction of a thorough rebuttal.

But first...

It’s tempting to get right to it, and if you’re growing impatient, just scroll down to the phrase “Shibboleths and marketing” right now.  But if you enjoyed “The Deer Hunter” and feel that all the pre-Vietnam exposition was worth the trouble, stay right here because I’ve got a couple of asides to get to.

First, I must point out that debating Trevor in a public forum feels a bit like an insurrection, like Obi Wan Kenobi deciding it’s time to give Yoda a real beat-down.  This is because for the first couple years of our friendship, Trevor and I observed a strict pecking order:  he was the star cyclist on our UC Santa Barbara cycling team, and I was the mere domestique (i.e., selfless helper).  It was I who nicknamed Trevor “Red Five,” after Luke Skywalker; I came upon this nickname while giving Trevor a lead-out, sprinting just ahead of him well before the line and pulling off so that he’d be in perfect position to win (“You’re all clear, kid!”).  Here’s a picture of one such lead-out, at the National Collegiate Championship criterium.  I’m the third guy, having already done my work and pulled off; the second guy, Dave, has just finished his pull, and Trevor is about to launch.  (Did he win this sprint?  Of course.)

One more thing.  You may be curious about the last thing Trevor wrote:  “[Heh.  For those of you who know Dana really well, this is the proverbial birthday cake covered in ants.]”  This comment establishes—in fact, celebrates—Trevor’s appreciation of how much I love a good showdown.  It refers to the tale I told him of a gorgeous, perfect chocolate layer cake I almost lost.  I grew up in Boulder, some 5,000 feet above sea level, where it’s basically impossible to bake good cakes, because they rise to much and become fluffy and tough.  So I was really excited about a cake my mom baked at my grandfather’s house in the Napa valley, down here at sea level.  To draw out our enjoyment, we put the cake one of those old-fashioned covered cake pedestals and went for a two-hour appetite-inducing walk.  When we returned, the beautiful cake was absolutely teeming with red ants.  They were all stuck in the frosting, either battling to get free or in the throes of a sugar orgy.  For a moment it seemed all was lost and I could have just wept.  But then anger took over, and I decided to get Keyser Söze on their ant asses and just eat the cake anyway.  It filled me with the deepest satisfaction to give those ants a terrible death, matching their rapaciousness with my own.

Shibboleths and marketing

“I've been duped!” Trevor writes in his first comment.  “Where’s the grammar?!  Shibboleths and marketing!”

Well, I can’t argue this point:  my “Grammar Wars” post was as much about spelling (“just desserts”) and pronunciation (“process-ease”) as it was about grammar.  In response to “where’s the grammar?” I can at least offer up the “who” vs. “whom” tale, because grammar is at the heart of that (specifically, the issue of whether a certain pronoun replaces an object or a subject).  I’m not willing to call that a spelling error because nobody spells who “whom.”  What would other misspellings be?  Whobever?  Whonever? 

Meanwhile, “shibboleths” really threw me.  This is one of those words that I always have to look up, and then after understanding and appreciating its meaning I promptly forget it, and then the cycle repeats.  The gist of “shibboleth” is judging somebody by how he speaks; in an Old Testament tale, “pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect lacked a /ʃ/ phoneme (as in shoe), from Gileadites whose dialect did include such a phoneme.”  The consequences of mispronunciation were dire:  Gileadite soldiers would detain and quiz suspected Ephriamite war refugees, and “If anyone said, ‘Sibboleth’ because he could not pronounce ‘Shibboleth,’ then they would seize him and kill him.” 

This shibboleth concept is a nice way to explain why grammar, spelling, and pronunciation matter:  because whether you like it or not, well-educated people will judge you by these things.  So perhaps I should have called my post “The Shibboleth Wars.”  I’m not sure that would attract much of an audience, though.  It sounds to me like the name of the next installment in the “Star Wars” series, continuing along the descent-into-boredom trajectory set by “The Phantom Menace.”  But why does “The Grammar Wars” connote marketing in Trevor’s mind?  Is “grammar” a sexy word?  I don’t think so, and  I deny the suggestion that I deliberately duped Trevor the way a marketer would, simply because I give my blog post titles very little thought.  “War of the Words” probably would have been better, but it’s too late now.

Artisanal

Trevor argues quite rightly that “artisanal” is not only a legitimate word, but is a very useful one in identifying “that certain type of Bay Area hipster pretension that we love to hate.”  Most of the paragraph he devotes to this matter is useful and persuasive, and ties in nicely with his earlier mention of shibboleth.  But I cannot abide his opening sentence, “The suffix -al is perfectly fine and acceptable to form adjectives, nouns, and verbal actions.”  There is an admirable air of authority about this bold declaration, bringing to mind the breezy but ironclad rules set forth by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White in The Elements of Style.  Unfortunately, Trevor’s sentence is only sometimes true.  You can’t just slap “-al” on any old word you please; if you could, we’d have words like craftsmanal and mavenal.  Also, how do you form a noun using the suffix “-al”?  Were “bacchanal” and “finial” formed this way?  I think not.  And verbal actions?  What verb ends in “-al”?  Total, as in “I totaled my parents’ car?”  Okay, the more standard “corral” is a legitimate verb (and noun), but again, I doubt it was built out of “core” + “-al.”  Neither was “coral,” I might add.

Process[ease]

Trevor has no problem with “process-ease.”  He suggests that this pronunciation often has a purpose:  to differentiate between the noun and verb forms of this word:  “Those who say process[ease] almost always reference the noun and not the verb.”  It’s sweet to think that people are this helpful, but a) in my experience people aren’t that helpful, b) the English language relies heavily on word order, not pronunciation, for meaning, and c) it would be pretty hard to confuse the noun and verb forms of this word anyway.  Can you think of a single example of a sentence where the meaning would be hard to distinguish through context alone?  “Tom processes the invoices carefully” is not likely to have anybody wondering, “What are ‘Tom’ processes, and what do they do?”

Now, one thing I didn’t so much as mention in my post is the matter of the “o” in “processes.”  Trevor suggests that somebody might say, “This device pr[aw]cess[es] widgets by different pr[oh]cess[ease] depending upon which buttons you press.”  Whoa, whoa, whoa. 

I don’t have a big problem with the long “o” in “pr[oh]cess,” it being a perfectly valid pronunciation and the norm in the UK.  (I fact-checked this with a British friend of mine, and though he validated that he’s heard only “pr[oh]cess” over there, he was quick to add that he can’t speak for the whole nation.  This is exactly the kind of timid priggishness America’s founders came here to escape.) 

I sometimes say “pr[oh]cess” myself, though only when talking to my kids (and mimicking the British female robot voice of a talking ATM from which I first heard this pronunciation).  But I don’t think I could bring myself to say “pr[oh]cess” in other situations because, to my mind, a British pronunciation from the mouth of an American smacks of affectation.  I grow increasingly aware that a British accent, especially in business, connotes intelligence, sophistication, and global savvy.  Many years ago I worked with a customer who, to my surprise, turned out to be an idiot despite his strong British accent.  It didn’t seem possible for an idiot to speak that way.  Since then I’ve been less naive and have discovered that a British accent doesn’t actually guarantee intelligence or education.  In fact, I’m suspicious now when I hear a British accent; I ask myself, “Could this person have risen this high in corporate America for no other reason than that cool accent?”

With all this in mind, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to hear an American saying “pr[oh]cess,” and the kind of American who strives to sound fancy and intellectual by saying “process-ease” is exactly the kind who would affect the long “o.”  But I cannot imagine there’s anybody who mixes the British and American pronunciations in order to help differentiate between noun and verb forms, as Trevor suggests with “pr[aw]cess[es] widgets by different pr[oh]cess[ease].”  This kind of mix-and-match usage would be almost as absurd as the flat-top mullet I talked a barber into giving me back in the 1980s.  I know it’s impossible to prove a negative, but I hope to God there aren’t really people out there mixing British and American pronunciation of a word within a sentence.  If anybody reading this has heard such a thing, let me know.  (If there’s anybody reading this at all.  Hey, you, there in the back ... wake up!  Have you heard this kind of British/American pronunciation mash-up?)

I wish I could stop now—I feel like I’ve eaten three or four large pieces of ant-infested cake—but I’m not done yet.  I still have to deal with a sentence so inflammatory I almost wonder if it was consciously designed to sacrifice logic and Truth for the sake of pure provocation:  “The noun [process-ease] is frequently used in some quasi-scientific context and the [ease] is consistent with the pronunciation of the plural forms of analysis, neurosis, prognosis, and so on.”

First of all, citing the frequency of a pronunciation is no justification.  Should we also accept “nuke-yoo-lar” and “ree-la-tor” just because lots of people pronounce “nuclear” and “realtor” that way?  And how does “some quasi-scientific context” deserve my support?  To me, “quasi-scientific” brings to mind disgraceful ideas like the Atkins diet (don’t even get me started on that). 

As for the second part of that statement, the “process–ease” pronunciation only seems consistent with words of Greek origin like analysis, neurosis, and prognosis.  As the American Heritage Dictionary points out, “’process’ is not of Greek origin, and there is no etymological justification for this pronunciation of its plural.”  Proceeding from analysis/analyses to process/process-ease is no more valid than saying “gen-WEE-nee” for “genuine” while pointing to “linguine” as justification.  And we don’t say “van-EE-ah” for “vanilla” even though you could claim it’s consistent with the pronunciation of “tortilla.”

Spaces after a period

Trevor goes on to write, “And since we're bringing it, do my poor eyes deceive me or are you adding two spaces after every period? From Robert Bringhurst’s ‘The Elements of Typographical Style,’ which I highly recommend:

In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit.

At first blush, this instruction seems compelling.  I have blogged at length about how the limitations of early typewriters have created the terribly awkward QWERTY keyboard that society is still bound to.  Having put forth the considerable effort required to abandon that layout, I would be happy to switch to a single space after each period, if I were to agree that this practice was based on a long-ago design principle that is now defunct.  What I’d like to ask Bringhurst is why compositors were encouraged to add extra space.  What is meant by “dark and inflationary” age?  What is the link between the behavior and the equipment?

I do add two spaces after a period, because I was taught to do so by my junior high typing teacher, Mr.  Todd.  This wasn’t his idea, of course; it was right there in the textbook.  The idea is that the extra space helps the reader identify the end of a sentence.  Sure, we have a period for that, but periods exist within sentences, too (e.g., when you see an abbreviation like Mr.), and, given how fast people read, two indicators is arguably better than one.  Thus, it is not obvious to me that there’s anything quaint or obsolete about this practice.  Meanwhile, given the sacrifice Mr. Todd made for his students—he lost most of his hearing because he shared a classroom with thirty roaring Selectric typewriters for so many years—I feel compelled to honor him by continuing to put two spaces after a period.

The American Heritage Dictionary

Trevor comments, “Oh, and the American Heritage Dictionary? Total crap. I looked up ‘irregardless’ in it, found it, and then threw it away. ‘Bungled affectation’ is only legitimate if you can successfully defend ‘irregardless.’”  When I quoted this dictionary in my original post, I was almost sure I’d draw Trevor’s scorn, as he’s lambasted this dictionary before.  In terms of eliciting a response, dangling this citation out there was practically entrapment. 

I’d say that before we go picking on this dictionary, we should establish whether or not it’s the sole offender.  I consulted the Webster’s Unabridged Third New International Dictionary and it also defines “irregardless,” however briefly:  “adv [prob. blend of irrespective and regardless] nonstand : REGARDLESS.”

So it looks like Trevor, if he maintains his position, will have to throw out Webster’s too—but I suspect he wouldn’t discredit this noble dictionary, since (I happen to know) Trevor highly regards Vladimir Nabokov, whose favorite dictionary is Webster’s, as described here.  (This discussion, of a barbed public dispute that Nabokov had with the critic Edmund Wilson, reminds me somewhat of this very post, except that for Wilson and Nabokov the stakes were high.  After all, those two actually had readers, and relied on their literary reputations for their livelihood.  In comparison, what you’re reading here is trivial, all in good fun.)

Here is Nabokov with his beloved Webster’s dictionary.  (Not shown:  the word “irregardless,” which is most certainly in there.)

Frankly, I think the American Heritage Dictionary does a much more thorough job than Webster’s does with “irregardless,” by providing a useful commentary about it:

The problem with a dictionary simply leaving the word out is that it leaves arguments unsettled.  Let’s suppose Trevor gets in an argument with some idiot about whether or not “irregardless” is a word, and together they look it up in Webster’s.  The idiot may feel that he has won, because the word is in there, and “nonstand” doesn’t do much to discredit it.  Now suppose they look it up in Trevor’s Oxford English Dictionary and it’s simply not there:  this doesn’t provide closure on the issue, any more than the lack of “artisanal” in my American Heritage Dictionary does.  Isn’t it better to include “irregardless” in order to fully disparage it, rather than just leaving the matter open to endless moot debate?

Conclusion

There’s no real conclusion, of course—there can never be.  I’m sure I’ve left myself vulnerable, in these 3,000 words, to further assaults on my own grammar, rhetoric, and reason.  I don’t have a proofreader, nor the time to scrutinize my work for typos.  There are even logical flaws that I can’t bring myself to fix, like saying “I decided to get Keyser Söze on their ant asses.”  This statement practically begs the reader to say, “Obviously this is an allusion to ‘The Usual Suspects’ and the bit where Keyser Söze’s enemy is holding Söze’s family hostage at gunpoint, and how Söze shoots his own wife and child just to show his opponent how illusory his leverage really is.  But ‘getting Keyser Söze on their ant asses’ is a ridiculous metaphor, as merely eating ants is nowhere near as bold as killing your family, particularly given that eighty percent of the world’s population eats insects on a regular basis.”  (Ha!  Beat you to it!)

There is, however, one more thing I’d like to point out.  You may be under the impression that I consider Trevor an opponent in a verbal “war.”  In fact, that’s not at all the case.  The real opponent is the guy who couldn’t care less about proper language (or worse, the guy who “could care less” about proper language) and who, when confronted with a question of spelling, grammar, or style, simply says, “Whatever.”  Such flaccid, passive word slobs are the real enemy.  Their apathy wages a silent war on our language, with precision, order, and grace all hanging in the balance.