I think I've mentioned before that plurals in English can be sort of confusing, because of a number of factors. One is that we borrow wholesale from other languages. The second is that we may or may not borrow the plural form of a noun. Or, what is worse, we may borrow the traditional plural and then gradually trade it for our English s plural, so that for a time a noun may have two plural forms. The plural of cactus was (and still may be in some places) cacti. Other charmers are hippopotami (true!) and stadia (plural of stadium). A cherub is an angel. So is a seraph. The plurals were cherubim and seraphim, but now mostly cherubs and seraphs. But what about a noun like haitus? What's the plural here? Haiti (or is that the country)? Or Quietus? The fact is that I've never encountered the plurals of those two words, and without looking them up, which I am too lazy to do, I guess I'll never know.
The comedian Shelly Berman once did a bit in which he discussed the problem plurals. He came up with kleenex/kleenices; goof/geef; stewardess/stewardi; and my favorite, the plural jacki.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Vowels
Vowels are the troublemakers of the linguistic world. Consonants stay pretty much constant (Not completely true, as German speakers, for instance, have two versions of our "l," and we have three different versions of "p"). Vowels are made by activating the vocal chords, and varying the shape of the oral cavity as the air rushes through it. This gives lots of room for tinkering.
Now, vowel sounds can differ dramatically from person to person, depending on a number of factors. There's even a song about it: "I say potayto, you say patahto..." But there's an interesting subset of vowel sounds that I find intriguing simply because they are so subtle that we might not even notice them. The word roof, for instance. It can be pronounced ruff or roof. The word caught can be pronounced cot or cawt. There's an international phonetic alphabet which was developed to catch these differences, but it's quite cumbersome and a pain in the neck to learn.
The point, though, is that the differences are there, and have some interesting consequences. Where I live, for instance, people don't differentiate between the vowel sounds in pin and pen, sale and sell. Here's the good part. If you don't differentiate in your own speech, you will probably not recognize the difference in the speech of others, who do. So, I am used to seeing signs that say, "For sell."
Does this mean that the people who don't make the distinction are tone deaf? Not at all. Does it mean that they are linguistically challenged? Again, not at all. It's just that their dialect has conflated some sets of sounds. Just normal language behavior.
Now, vowel sounds can differ dramatically from person to person, depending on a number of factors. There's even a song about it: "I say potayto, you say patahto..." But there's an interesting subset of vowel sounds that I find intriguing simply because they are so subtle that we might not even notice them. The word roof, for instance. It can be pronounced ruff or roof. The word caught can be pronounced cot or cawt. There's an international phonetic alphabet which was developed to catch these differences, but it's quite cumbersome and a pain in the neck to learn.
The point, though, is that the differences are there, and have some interesting consequences. Where I live, for instance, people don't differentiate between the vowel sounds in pin and pen, sale and sell. Here's the good part. If you don't differentiate in your own speech, you will probably not recognize the difference in the speech of others, who do. So, I am used to seeing signs that say, "For sell."
Does this mean that the people who don't make the distinction are tone deaf? Not at all. Does it mean that they are linguistically challenged? Again, not at all. It's just that their dialect has conflated some sets of sounds. Just normal language behavior.
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