Talkin' About Talk Date Archives

Is there a right way to use language?

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The US has no shortage of linguistic gatekeepers. Language pundits warn in the press, on the air, and even on the inside of matchbook covers that, if we don't clean up our linguistic acts, the doors of opportunity will be closed. Fear of not saying things the "right" way causes some of us to break out in a sweat when choosing whether to say "between you and me" or "between you and I."

What makes us so linguistically insecure? It's the idea that a language has only one correct form, and that we're not in step with it. But let's remember that the choice of the "best" or "most correct" way of speaking is just a matter of history. Saying "between you and me" -- like not wearing sneakers with a coat and tie -- is a convention, not a divine law. Power, money and prestige cause one variety of language to be preferred and therefore prescribed. In England, the focus of wealth, commerce, and government in London caused a variety of southern British English to be thought of as the best. In the US, where there was no such center, the language of the well-educated, higher classes became the preferred variety. Over time, that variety came to be seen as the only acceptable way to express ourselves.

There will always be people who prescribe how we should talk, who point out what they see as flaws in other people's speech. Because they think the preferred language is the only one that's acceptable, prescriptivists try to prove that other varieties of language are deficient.

If you say "I don't have no money," one of them may tell you that two negatives make a positive, and even in simple math, minus two plus minus two equals minus 4. Besides, does anybody really believe that someone who says "I don't have none" means they do have something? Are they ever misunderstood? Not likely. The test of a language's effectiveness is not whether its arbitrary noises or scribbles meet a standard, but whether it communicates. A speaker of impeccable English may say silly and illogical things; a speaker of a down-home variety may be logical and precise.

I feel kind of sorry for the watchdog pundits who try to tell us when to use "whom" instead of "who." It's a losing battle, because ultimately you can't prescribe how language should be used. Words don't have a "real" meaning. They only mean what we agree they'll mean, and there may be differences from one group to another about that agreement. Besides, language isn't a fixed system. It evolves. Some of yesterday's poorly-thought-of language may become today's preferred English. You may deplore it if you're a speaker of the preferred variety of a language, but most often, as language evolves, it adjusts in the direction of how lower-status speakers use it. That doesn't make it wrong or deficient. It's just what language does.

That said, another aspect of language is that it happens in societies, and societies always make judgments. It's a reality in the U.S. that speakers who use double negatives will earn disapproval from certain people, some of whom have power over what we hope for in life. If you're not a native speaker of the preferred variety of language, there are social and economic advantages to learning it, even though it's only a historical convention, no more logical or beautiful than the one you already speak.

Prescriptivists even want us to give up our native varieties. But we shouldn't let ourselves be bullied. Prescriptivism comes out of a desire for uniformity in behavior, in language as in other areas. It can lead to elitism, racism, and even silliness. When told not to end sentences with prepositions, Winston Churchill was said to remark: "This is arrant pedantry, up with which I shall not put." So should we all.

That's the language thought for the day, which comes from Dr. Dennis Preston, University Distinguished Professor of English at Michigan State University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at cofc.edu/linguist. And in the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

Is Spanish in the US to stay?

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Spanish in the United States is an amazing story. The U.S. is now the fifth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. New York has as many Puerto Ricans as San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. Miami is the second-largest Cuban city; Los Angeles the second largest Mexican city.

But what's the future of Spanish in this country? Going by history, it should follow the script of other languages that have come, and gone -- or gradually lost speakers -- during more than three centuries of immigration. Think of Italian, Dutch or Polish. Dozens of languages have landed on our shores, only to fade away in a generation or two. Will Spanish go the way of other immigrant languages -- or will it find a way to survive?

As a general rule, immigrants to this country strongly prefer their native language over English. This certainly applies to the millions of foreign-born Latinos now in the US. But with each successive generation of Latinos, Spanish use declines sharply. By the third generation, few Latinos remain proficient in the language of their parents and grandparents. They overwhelmingly prefer English.

Latino youth abandon Spanish to fit in, or attain the social status of English. And practically speaking, some worry that Spanish will interfere with their ability to speak English, and their ability to make a good living. So it's only a matter of time before Spanish fades away. Or is it?

So far, the generational loss of speakers has been offset by a steady flow of new immigrants from Latin America—up to a million a year. But even if immigration declines as some experts predict, the sheer number of speakers in the country give Spanish the advantage of critical mass -- far larger than any other immigration in history -- which will give it staying power. At the moment there are over 40 million Hispanics in the U.S., found in every state of the union. There are also places in the country -- think of Texas, Arizona, and Colorado -- where Spanish has traditionally been spoken by natives, not just recent immigrants. And let’s not forget non-Latinos who are fluent in Spanish for many reasons.

But the future of U.S. Spanish doesn't depend just on external factors like social pressures, economic incentives, and demographics. It may also be related to how it develops as a language. Impressive as the numbers are, there's also an astonishing variety of accents, usage and dialects, as Spanish-speaking immigrants come from places ranging from Buenos Aires to Tijuana. There's been nothing like it in the history of the Spanish-speaking world.

Spanish is being negotiated and reinvented day by day, in part because of the mixing of dialects; in part because it's incorporating elements of English. A U.S. mixture of Spanish and English is evolving, often referred to as "Spanglish." Think of "Yo quiero Taco Bell," or "Hasta la vista, Baby." Spanglish is both popular and contagious, even spreading to other Spanish-speaking countries.

Spanish in the U.S. is mutating, adapting to its linguistic environment -- and therefore more likely to thrive. My guess is that Spanish will indeed survive. But it won't be the traditional Spanish of Mexico or, for that matter, any other country you know. Three generations from now it will be a new blend, still understandable by people in Spanish-speaking countries, but something different, enriched by the influence of English and the mixture of dialects that flow into it.

Whatever new shape it takes, we should recognize that Spanish is no longer a foreign language in the United States. New Mexico has acknowledged that by making the state officially bilingual in Spanish and English. The rest of the country, while not doing so officially, is rapidly adapting to the fact that Spanish is now -- together with English -- one of the country's national languages.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Maria Carreira, professor of Spanish at Cal State Long Beach. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you have a question about language, visit us at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And in the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

Comments

Posted by: Yanira at August 25, 2005 03:02 PM

Posted by: Breana at August 25, 2005 04:48 PM

Posted by: Xenia at August 26, 2005 06:40 PM

Posted by: paloma at October 19, 2005 04:28 PM

What's the difference between dialect and language?

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Strange as it may seem, there's no really good way to distinguish between a "language" and a "dialect." Because they're not objective, scientific terms. People use the words "dialect" and "language" to mean different things. "Language" can often refer to your own linguistic variety and "dialect" to the variety spoken by someone else, usually someone thought of as inferior. Or "language" can mean the generally accepted "standard" or radio-talk language of a country, while dialects are homely versions of it that vary from region to region and may not be pronounced the way the so-called "language" is. Language varieties are called "dialects" rather than "languages" because they're not written, or because speakers of that variety don't run the country, or because their language lacks prestige. In short, the distinction is subjective. It depends on who you are and where you sit.

From a linguistic perspective, no dialect is inherently better than another. For example, the emergence of Parisian dialect as the standard in France, was just a matter of history. When the 10th century king of France set up his residence in Paris, the language of his court became the "standard." If things had gone differently, the dialect of Poitiers or Dijon might be the national language of France today.

Dialects can be socially determined, as Eliza Doolittle learned in My Fair Lady.

Or they can be politically determined. The linguist Max Weinreich is often quoted as saying, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." His point was that politics often decide what dialect will be called a "language." Powerful or historically significant groups have "languages"; smaller or weaker ones have "dialects."

Or the status of a language can be arbitrarily determined, by a person or a government. In southern Africa a missionary declared three separate languages to be a single tongue. He decided they were dialects of the same language and created what is now known as "Tsonga." On the other end of the scale, the government of South Africa arbitrarily declared Zulu and a language called Xhosa to be different tongues, even though there's no clear boundary between them.

Dialect differences are often relatively minor -- maybe just a matter of pronunciation: "You say tomayto, I say tomahto." There can be differences in words such as American English "elevator" and British English "lift"-- which reminds me of George Bernard Shaw's famous quip that America and Britain are: "two countries separated by a common language." But dialects can also differ so greatly from one another -- I'm thinking of German in Cologne versus the German of rural Bavaria -- that speakers of the same language can barely understand one another, if at all.

One of the tests people use to differentiate "language" from "dialect" is mutual intelligibility. You can say that people speak the same language -- or a dialect of the same language -- if they understand each other. If they don't understand one another, they must be speaking different languages. That seems like a good rule. So why, in a case like the Cologne and Bavarian dialects, which aren't mutually intelligible, don't the Germans call them separate languages? Or why are Swedish and Norwegian separate languages, when Swedes and Norwegians have no trouble understanding one another? It's really pretty confusing.

It becomes even more muddled when speakers of Dialect A just don't want to understand speakers of Dialect B. Dialects of the same language aren't mutually intelligible, even though there's no linguistic basis for that. The two groups insist that they speak separate tongues, even though they don't.

So, do you conclude from all this that the terms "dialect" and "language" are politically and socially loaded? If so, you're absolutely right.

Now let me ask: do you speak a language or a dialect? That's a trick question, because ultimately, all languages are dialects. You no doubt speak one of each.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Tucker Childs, professor of Linguistics at Portland State University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And in the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

Comments

Posted by: josephine at September 9, 2005 11:55 AM

Posted by: fortune mahunye at September 14, 2005 08:10 AM

Is Japanese related to Chinese?

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The less it has in common with your native tongue, the more difficult another language seems. By that measure, Japanese is one of the harder languages for English speakers to learn.

But, to start with the good news, the sounds of Japanese pose little problem. Many of them are much like ours, though as you probably know, Japanese has only one sound that corresponds to English "l" and "r". On the downside, Japanese is absolutely unrelated to English, so you don't get a free startup vocabulary of cognates, the way you would in, say, Dutch. Japanese has borrowed plenty of words from other languages, but they're often reshaped, so you might not recognize them. For example, the name "Smith" becomes "Sumisu" and "kuruunekku" is a crew neck sweater. Got that? "kuruunekku" -- crew neck.

Here's a sample of it:
(Japanese language sample)

Japanese grammar isn't really complex, but it's definitely un-English. For example, English sentences usually start with a subject, followed by a verb. In Japanese you have to save verbs until the end of the sentence, and subjects are often left out.

Japanese also has an elaborate system of what is called "honorific" speech: when you talk to superiors or strangers you use different verb forms, sometimes completely different words, from those you use with friends and family.

What can be bewildering for foreigners, is that the Japanese so often seem to cut linguistic corners. They talk about "that" without ever mentioning what "that" refers to, and even leave verbs and entire phrases out of sentences, once everyone knows what the topic of conversation is. To an outsider, a social conversation can be as cryptic as a Mafia telephone call.

Still, these are all things you can master with a reasonable amount of time and effort. It's the Japanese writing system that gives learners fits.

Like many other Asian peoples, the Japanese were enormously influenced by China. And when they began writing their own language -- which is not at all related to Chinese -- they adapted Chinese characters. They took a system already challenging for learners -- thousands of characters to memorize -- and added a new difficulty: they used one character for several different words. If English were written using Chinese characters in the Japanese way, the same character, let's say the one for "horse," might appear as part of the written versions of chivalry, cavalier, horseman, and even knight. The reader has to figure out from context which word is meant. It's not as hard as it could be, though. The Japanese commonly use only about 2,000 characters (as opposed to 5,000 or so for Chinese), and they spell out quite a few things phonetically. But just to keep you on your toes, they do it with two different homegrown systems, and even use the Roman alphabet too! It's not easy -- not even for people born in Japan.

The Japanese sometimes seem to take perverse pride in the obstacles their language poses, but the fact is that foreigners can and do learn it -- some even become Japanese TV personalities. To learn it well, it'll usually take more study than a European language, but the effort is really worthwhile. Japanese has 127 million native speakers, which makes it the eighth most-commonly spoken language in the world, ahead of German, French, and Italian.

The time is long past when the Japanese were feared as an imperialist power or the label "Made in Japan" was thought to mean cheap imitation goods. Today, the world beats a path to Japan to do business, buy its products and enjoy its culture, including pop music and animated cartoons -- everything from sushi to sumo. And the gateway to understanding and appreciating that culture -- a fascinating culture -- is ... the Japanese language.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Blaine Erickson, Assistant Professor of Japanese at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And in the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.