\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I did a double-take listening last week when I heard someone announcing she was going to Dick’s Dally. Dick’s Dally? You know, the popular restaurant downtown that prepares deli sandwiches. Each time I’ve gone there I’ve been convinced that they conduct their business with celerity and alacrity. They certainly don’t dally at the deli.<\/p>\n
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 All of this made me ponder the wonderful variations on language all of us perform. The point came home when Joann Rains, a retired secretary for Judge Jay Harris, added a suggestion to my columns on language. She said something like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lately, all we hear is people using \u00c5\u2019that’ for \u00c5\u2019who.'”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 An example she gave was, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I’d like to thank all the people that helped me.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 As a retired teacher of language and elocution, who put away his grammar book long ago, I explained that references to people need to be who, not that; \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that” is for inanimate objects, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The book that I gave her is exciting.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Joann probably is also aware of occasions when people use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153who” when \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that” or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153which” ought to apply, as in, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thank the businesses who supported me.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But after I stressed my take on that\/who, I realized there’s a song from the musical, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Annie Get Your Gun,” called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Girl That I Marry.” Somehow, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that” appears correct in this restrictive clause. Could it be that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that,” in reference to future, unspecific situations calls for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that” instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153who” or even \u00e2\u20ac\u0153which”?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Likely, the age-old question of who and whom, causes people to use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that”; that way they don’t have to stop and think. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who do you trust?” is probably more common than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whom . . .” My son Ben pounced on my use of the plural \u00e2\u20ac\u0153don’t” instead of the singular \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doesn’t” in a recent column on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153quality” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153uniqueness.” The expression I used was, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c5\u2019Quality’ is one of those words which don’t necessarily denote goodness.” I sent him a several-paragraph explanation but won’t repeat it here, in the hopes some Optic reader will explain why the sentence is correct — or not. Shortly after the completion of President Bush’s physical exam, a reporter wrote something like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The president said he \u00c5\u2019feels good’ and \u00c5\u2019is ready to go to work.'”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Now waaiitt a minute. The writer attributes the quoted words to Bush. Would Bush really use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153feels” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is”? Wasn’t he more likely to have said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel good”? Well, few things in language are certain, but I determined that the only way the president would have used those two verbs would be in the context of: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mawnin’ yall. Ah feels good and Ah’s ready to go to work.” But \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mawnin’ yall” borders on southern-speak, which sounds more like something former president Jimmy Carter would have said. But now we’re getting too political.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Several years ago, at a teacher workshop directed by a man who said he’d spoken no English until he entered school, I noticed him, a holder of a Ph.D. degree in languages, using the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cumment” for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153comment” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153this things” for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153these things.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Naturally I wondered why. If people replicate sounds of languages near and dear to them, why did this man say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cumment” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153this things”? These vowels certainly are plentiful in the English language. Spanish has only five vowel sounds, whereas English has five vowels but 15 vowel sounds, some performing triple-duty. Why, then, say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cumment” when the vowel in that word doesn’t exist in Spanish? Nor does the vowel in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153this.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 That took me back to second or third grade at Immaculate Conception School, when I must have recited something that incurred the wrath of Sister Mary Ceciliana Gregoriana Della Pina. I can remember her railing me and others over our Spanish accent, which in those days was tantamount to heresy, or Protestantism. She observed this phenomenon when one of us, possibly me, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to leave a long time.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, Arthur, it’s not leeeev, but live; you want to live,” she said.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So the rest of us, who also misused another English vowel when we said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cop of coffee,” quickly got corrected, and eventually — due to overcorrection — some of us stopped using these Spanish vowels we had grown up with. It’s disconcerting when one develops a mental block over a simple vowel and needs to choose, for example, between the vowels in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bit” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153beat.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Obstructed vowels, for sure, gave most of us fits, but certain consonant sounds which don’t occur naturally in our native languages can be a problem. Once, in the intermediate grades, my resentment of a slack-jawed troglodyte who had stolen from me became palpable. One of my friends asked me if I had a grudge. My reply was, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No I don’t. In fact, my parents don’t even own a car.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether our overcorrection, and ultimately the misuse, of various vowels wouldn’t have occurred had our teacher been a wee bit more diplomatic.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Did she frighten us to the point that we simply avoided the long-e sound in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153feel,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153neat,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reach,” etc., and transformed them to their nearest phonetic counterparts, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fill,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knit” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rich” all legitimate English words, but still misused?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 We observed that our non-Spanish-speaking classmates got no better grades than we, and that their English was far from flawless. But their diction was more along the lines of using \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ain’t,” \u00e2\u20ac\u0153git” and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hisself.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Language, with its unpredictability, fascinates me. That’s why I enjoy writing all this columns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I did a double-take listening last week when I heard someone announcing she was going to Dick’s Dally. Dick’s Dally? You know, the popular restaurant downtown that prepares deli sandwiches. Each time I’ve gone there I’ve been convinced that they conduct their business with celerity and alacrity. They certainly don’t dally at the deli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}