Lavengro

When is a word a word?

When is a word a word and when is it two words, or even three? A strange thing about English is its ability to assimilate different words into the same form.

bow
There are two words with the same spelling. One of these words has two pronunciations but its meanings all relate to the idea of bending.

pronounced /b@U/
It is the thing used to shoot an arrow. It is a knot made with two loops, typically used to tie shoelaces or worn by girls in their hair or in a bow tie. The elbow is the joint where the arm bends in the middle.

pronounced /baU/
There are two different words with this pronunciation.

The first is the verb related to the noun described above. It means to bend forward from the waist as a mark of respect. To bow your head is to let it fall forward as a sign of humility or shame. To be bowed down with care is to be oppressed by it. To take a bow is to recognise applause or congratulation, literally or metaphorically.

The other word is the rounded or pointed part at the front of a ship. Another form of this second word, bough (with the same pronunciation), is a poetical word for the branch of a tree. Most native speakers are not aware that these words have different origins.

case
The word case represents two separate words that have no etymological connection.

A case is a container that is specifically designed to contain one particular item: cigarette case, glasses case, pen/pencil case. A suitcase is used for carrying clothes. A briefcase is a container used for carrying papers; the reference is to the use of the word brief to refer to the notes that a barrister uses.

Lower case and upper case letters are other names for small letters and capital letters respectively. Printers used to keep the small letters in the lower part of the case in which they kept their type and the capital letters in the upper part of it.

From a different origin, it means an example or occurrence of something: An interesting case. A case of meningitis and is used as a grammatical term

A case meaning a container, a suitcase for example, or upper- and lower-case letters, has a different origin from a case as an example, phenomenon, a case of malaria or the nominative case.

Then suffix -most, found in topmost, northernmost, and similar words, is not the same as the superlative adverb in most difficult.

punch
This means to hit with a closed fist; it can be used as a noun (throw a punch). It also means to make a hole in paper, metal, leather etc. and is the name of the tool used for doing so. You can punch a piece of metal or punch a hole in a piece of metal.

policy
A policy /"pQlIsi/ is the course of action or strategy adopted by a government, company, other organisation, or an individual. A document stating the terms and conditions of an insurance contract is also called a policy.

These are different words. As a course of action it is related to polite and police. The word policy as used in insurance terms is from French, and probably ultimately from Greek apodeixis meaning evidence, proof.

pool
A pool is a small body of water occurring naturally. Pools suitable for swimming in are called swimming pools, but now swimming pools are usually artificial.

A pool is also the result of people contributing money or other resources to a common fund. Businesses may pool their capital; friends on holiday together may pay money into a pool for food and other common expenses. The pools (usually plural) is a system of betting on football matches where the money paid is pooled and distributed to the winner or winners; this idea also lies behind the name of the game pool, which is similar to billiards and snooker.

Some companies and other large organisations have a car pool where cars are provided in common for employees, a group of friends or neighbours might organise a car pool to take each other’s children to school, and journalists in difficult conditions might form a pool to exchange information that they have gathered.

Although these two words (pool of water and common resources) have different origins, they are associated in the minds of many people.

All of the above definitions derive ultimately meaning a gate. The person responsible for guarding the gate of a town or building derives from the Latin porta. However, a different origin (Latin portare) gives the word porter as someone who carries things, especially luggage at railway stations and airports.

Found (create, originate), founder (sink) and foundry (a place where metal is worked) are all different in origin.

This is based on articles in my A Guide to English Language Usage from Lavengro Books.

Why Christmas

The other day I went to a carol concert here in Barcelona. It finished with White Christmas – or it should have, but this is what we got:

I'm dreaming of a why Christmas
With every Christmas card I wry
May your days be merry and brigh
And may all your Christmases be why.

It’s the final-consonant problem of course. Native English choirs pride themselves on all hitting the sound at the same instant. However, Catalan does have words that end with t, unlike Spanish, which has no words ending with the airway obstructed or the mouth closed.

Or so I thought till I went to YouTube and found that Bing Crosby misses the t’s too.

So what? Happy Christmas to those who celebrate it, and enjoy yourselves anyway to those who don’t.

I have been otherwise occupied in the last few months. I hope to resume normal service in the New Year.

Homophonia

The Independent reports:

Tim Torkildson ... said he was removed from his role as head of social media because his boss believed that his post about homophones might give off the impression that the school promoted homosexuality.

What can one say, except that the blog post was obviously all Greek to the school's owners?

Italian or Spanish?

It is a curious fact that many British people who find themselves using Spanish words give them an Italian pronunciation. This phenomenon is mentioned in the satirical website The Daily Mash:

ELDERLY people cannot say chorizo without inserting a ‘t’ sound, it has emerged.

New research claims the spicy sausage has become part of the UK’s staple diet. However people over 60 still insist it is called ‘choritzo’.

67-year-old Mary Fisher said: “I love a bit of choritzo. We have it on our pitzas when we go to Pitza Express.”

Pronunciation expert Tom Booker said: “There’s no point in telling them. Just go with it.”

It is not just elderly people. I have heard people who are (obviously) much younger than me talking about holidays in Eye-bitza (for Ibiza).

In standard peninsular Spanish the letter z is pronounced /T/. Chorizo is pronounced /tSo"riTo/ (English pronunciation choreetho.) (Phonetic symbols will not display on all devices.)

I heard this Italian interference many years ago when I was with an Englishman in a restaurant in Barcelona and he wanted to order two of something. With full confidence he said due (Italian for two) in a loud voice to the waiter.

I have several times heard the Spanish word machismo pronounced with a k sound, which would be an Italian pronunciation, and I have even heard the adjective macho pronounced as maco.

This mispronunciation is also featured in Fawlty Towers. After an English/Spanish confusion of those and dos (two), which are almost homophones in Spanish, Basil says burro meaning butter. The waiter Manuel, who famously is from Barcelona, is confused because in Spanish burro means donkey. When he understands what his boss wants he explains that in Spanish butter is mantequilla. Basil has used the Italian word for butter, which is indeed burro.

(Image of chorizo, Wikipedia)

Atishoo! Atishoo! We all fall down.

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down.

These of course are the words of the nursery rhyme but what interests me here is the word atishoo. It isn’t a real word; it is merely a representation of a sound, a phenomenon known as onomatopoeia, and as such its form can be variable. In English it is sometimes written as achoo or indeed in any other way that may take the writer’s fancy. Obviously, atishoo and achoo are pronounced differently but are intended to represent the same sound.

Nevertheless, atishoo is probably the most common form and can be compared with similar words in other languages. Onomatopoeic forms show considerable variation between languages as a result of the way in which the sound is perceived in different cultures, as this picture shows.

I remember an occasion in Spain when I was watching a clown. She had a made-up funny name and was speaking English but with a distorted voice that made it impossible to know if she was a native speaker or had a Spanish accent. But when she sneezed (as part of her act) and said achís I knew at once that she was Spanish. There are stories of spies who can pass as natives of other countries linguistically and culturally, but this is the sort of thing that can easily give the game away.

Animal noises are another source of cultural/linguistic differences in onomatopoeic perception, as this image shows. In A Guide to English Language Usage I have this chart for the English perception of animal noises.

There is more about onomatopoeia on Wikipedia.

(Images: Ring-a-ring o' roses, Wikipedia. Achoos and Woofs, http://www.earlylanguages.com/)

The Mayor of Madrid speaks English

This post contains IPA symbols that need the Times New Roman phonetic font. Devices that do not have this font installed – mobiles for example – will not display these symbols properly.

Something of huge interest to me has been published, unintentionally no doubt. It is the pronunciation crib sheet that Ana Botella, the Mayor of Madrid, used in making her speech to the meeting of the International Olympic Committee where her city’s candidacy was being considered. She has been widely derided in the media for her English (particularly by her political opponents), though how many of her critics could have done any better is a moot point.

Over the years I have been asked on a number of occasions to rehearse students who had to make a spoken presentation for a congress, interview, exam or other purpose, even to the extent of making audio recordings for them to use as a model. I have seen how they write home-made phonetic transcriptions of the sounds that they hear, often very idiosyncratically, in a form that has meaning for them as a mnemonic aid for pronouncing individual words or phrases. This, however, is the first time that I have seen a complete text written in this way.

I do not know the precise manner in which this text came into existence but I do know that such things are very personal if they are to be of any use and I think it quite probable that Ms Botella wrote it herself. The fact that it contains some inconsistencies and typos is irrelevant given the purpose for which it was intended; it was not designed as a coherent phonetic transcription. I have made a transcription of her words in proper English and numbered the paragraphs for my comments

Some general phonetic points about Spanish pronunciation of English words.

• Consonant clusters and word-final consonants are problematic.
• In Spanish z is pronounced /T/, d is pronounced /D/, qu is /k/, and ll is a palatal sound something like the lli in English million (Wikipedia).
• Spanish does not have English /dZ/; instead of devoicing it as Germans do they pronounce it as /j/, represented here as the letter y.
• The English aspirated h is also unknown but Spaniards perceive it as Spanish /x/, written as j (usually represented in English by kh).
• The situation with b and v is highly complex; suffice it to say that they are widely confused.
• English u /V/ is perceived as /a/ and English w is pronounced as /gw/ or /ɣw/.

Transcription of the crib sheet

1. Thank you Ignacio, President Rogge, dear IOC members, ladies and gentlemen. I have the chance to speak to many of you in private conversations and also in presentations in San (sic) Petersburg and in Lausanne.

2. I must say, I’d like to continue our friendship and frankly, I don't want this to be our last chance to speak to each other.

3. So let me tell you a little more about my beautiful home town Madrid. Madrid is one of the most comfortable, charming and inviting cities in the world. Just like all of Spain, Madrid is an amazing mixture of traditions. You can see feel and taste the wonder of Spanish culture. In Madrid’s parks its food, its art and its architecture.

4. Perhaps those of you who have visited Madrid share this feeling. We have been working hard for many years so our guests, almost eight million each year, feel at home.

5. And most importantly, Madrid is FUN. The Olympic Games are not only a celebration of sport. They are also a celebration of life. And I assure you no-one celebrates life like the Spanish people do.

6. There is nothing quite like a relaxing cup of café con leche? In Plaza Mayor? Or a quaint (?) romantic dinner in the Madrid de los Austrias, the oldest part of Madrid.

7. These experiences and so much more are the heart and soul of Madrid.

8. So, later today when you are considering your choice for twenty-twenty, I hope you remember that in addition to the best prepared plan, Madrid also offers you a city full of culture, FUN and welcoming people.

9. The magic of Madrid is real and we want to share it with all of you. Muchas gracias.

Comments

1. a. It should be have had.

b. The final s is conversations and presentations is clear. For that she is to be congratulated.

c. Spanish-speakers find it impossible to handle words that begin with s+consonant. Words of Latin origin that begin this way have an additional e at the start to provide the necessary vowel: estación, espacio for station, space. There is even esmog, esmoquin and esnifar for English smog, dinner jacket/tuxedo and sniff (cocaine). This explains the espic for speak though in fact the e that she pronounces is slight.

d. She seems to be saying Spanish San as written rather than English Saint.

e. The spelling Petensbun is unusual, not least because the Spanish form is Petersburgo. That central consonant cluster is not easy for a Spanish-speaker but is just the same in English. My first thought was that n was the nearest approach that could be managed, especially for the final syllable /b3:g/ with its impossible final consonant (no Spanish word ever ends with the airflow obstructed or with lips closed) but I was struck later by a different idea. If the model on which this based was American the retroflex r could very easily seem to have a nasal element to it, which would explain the presence of the n in both cases.

2. a. The initial e of espic is more strongly pronounced here.

b. In oderrr the Spanish d represents /D/, the triple r is presumably a reminder to pronounce it or to lengthen the vowel, as with morr in the next paragraph. Of course, it is not pronounced in standard British English but Spanish-speakers find that hard to believe, and anyway she may have had a rhotic model voice.

3. a. The spelling Madruid is interesting. It could obviously be a typo (u and i are adjacent on the keyboard) but it could also be an attempt to represent the English /I/, especially if the model is American. In 8. and 9. the crib has the Spanish pronunciation Madrí, which is what she says there.

b. Again, she does well with the final consonants of cities and world, and she makes a reasonable attempt at the central consonant clusters of mixture and architecture. The intrusive e is apparent in Spanish.

4. a. The difficult diphthong in share is represented by sheeer, where the eee also indicates its spoken emphasis.

b. The final syllable of visited is pronounced properly. Many Spanish-speakers simply omit it in words like this.

c. There is a clear /t/ at the end of guest, another surprise as this is a notorious combination. She can be forgiven for missing the final s of this cluster.

d. The h in home is good despite being represented by j in the crib.

5. The typical substitution of /a/ for /V/ is evident here in FAN for FUN.

6. a. Here we see one of the biggest puzzles and a source of great media criticism. Why does she say café con leche (coffee with milk) in Spanish? But also, why the question marks, reflected in the spoken intonation, in the first two sentences?

b. My first thought for the cuei of the crib was that it was quiet but having listened carefully to the speech I think that it is intended to be quaint with the typical loss of final consonants.

c. The Austrias is the name given in Spanish to the Habsburgs who ruled Spain until 1700. It is a simple way of avoiding the challenge of pronouncing Habsburgs in Spanish but is baffling to non-Spaniards.

7. The last syllable of experiences is there. It is almost always omitted (see visited 4b. above).

8. a. Later today has been written and is pronounced correctly as one unit.

b. The w in when is good.

c. The crib has siri for city, which also suggests an American model.

c. The final d in prepared is clear, which is especially remarkable as it precedes a p. Unfortunately this is followed by the typical pronunciation of Madrid omitting the final letter

d. There is a reasonable attempt at the /dZ/ of magic despite the y in the crib.

9. As with Madruid (3a.) the ruiel might be a typo or an attempt to represent a spoken English model.

I understand that like many Spanish politicians Ana Botella has a low level of English. If that is so, she is to be congratulated on having rehearsed her pronunciation, especially of difficult consonants, to a high level. However, her accent is still very strong (though clear) and I feel on balance that she would have done better to stick to the simultaneous interpreters.

Finally, there is the matter of the presentation. While Spanish public speaking certainly goes in for facial expression and hand gestures much more than English does, this is exaggerated and distracting, and I would advise any student of mine to calm it down a little – or even a lot. In my view it is her excessively theatrical presentation and manner that let her down rather than her spoken English.

The content of her speech is of no concern here; nor is her political affiliation.

The comments below continue the analysis.

I have written a follow-up to this post.

Holidays

I am on holiday and will not be posting as usual during the rest of this month.

I spent the weekend on the Catalan coast north of Barcelona, not technically on the Costa Brava but close to it. According to English Wikipedia

Sant Pol de Mar (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈsam ˈpɔɫ də ˈmar]) is a municipality in the comarca of Maresme in Catalonia, Spain.

It is interesting to see that the Catalan punctuation assimilates the nt by changing it to m. By coincidence I have recently been working with someone whse surname is Sampol.

I wish my readers a pleasant summer holiday,

(Image of Sant Pol de Mar, © Peter Harvey)

Why we don’t like ‘impactful’

On Lingua Franca Anne Curzan asks ‘What To Do About Impactful’? What indeed? She says, and I agree:

If I were asked to rate new words on a scale from 1-10 based on their aesthetic appeal (note: words’ aesthetic appeal in my opinion—this scale cannot possibly be objective), with 10 being the most appealing and 1 being the least, I would give impactful about a 3. In other words, I notice the word, and I don’t especially like it.

Fair enough, but when she goes on to say:

There is no particularly good reason for my displeasure with this word.

I am not so sure; it has an unusual stress pattern. Other words that take the suffix -ful (the COED lists 115 of them) are monosyllables (playful, useful) or have the stress on the syllable before the suffix (eventful, delightful). As a result, the u is pronounced as a schwa or indeed not at all. Impactful, on the other hand, does not fall into this category because it has the stress on the first syllable, requiring a strong vowel in the last syllable. Further, the consonant cluster is not easy. Frightful and fateful have a t before the f, and tactful has the same ct combination, but they are monosyllabic roots that allow a weak pronunciation of the vowel in the suffix.

So, I think that the word’s perceived unpopularity has an objective basis in pronunciation and is not, at least not entirely, because it is a neologism popular in business jargon.

Yeah right

Dr Goodword’s Language Blog mentions something that I have seen before and thought about commenting on:

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day and said, “In English, a double negative forms a positive. But in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However,” he pointed out, “in no language in the world can a double positive form a negative.” But then a voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

I [Dr Goodword] responded that intonation was a crucial factor in his example.

As Dr G. says, intonation is the key to understanding the intended meaning. However, the point of the special intonation used here is that it expresses irony – and the point of irony is that words are used to express the opposite of their literal meaning.

Unaspirated ‘h’

There is – or was – a sort of rule that h was not aspirated (pronounced) in words where the stress was not on the first syllable, with the article an being used before words such as historical. Google Ngram Viewer suggests that this is not done now and that we can safely say that the well-known trio of heir, honour and hour (plus their derivative forms) are the only words with silent initial h.

historical

Nevertheless, on 6 May 2005 the BBC reported:

Tony Blair is heading for an historic third term in government but with a greatly reduced majority.

hysterical

habitual

I have a special interest in hotel. My father (born 1920) always spoke of an hotel, justifying this because it was a French loan word. Here I can see how unusual this was.

hotel