VCE English Language and things

I value the fact that English has two parallel vocabularies—the Germanic vocabulary and the Latinate vocabulary. For example, we have the word undersea, and then we have submarine. Or underground and subterranean, all-powerful and omnipotent. [highlighted text] So we can shift registers. [/end highlight] We can say something in a very plain, blunt, Anglo-Saxon way, like ”I will not do that”—all Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. Or we can say it in a fancier, more distant, abstract, Latinate way, like “I prefer not to permit myself to approach such a notion.” Or, in a passage of plain Anglo-Saxon, you can throw in one Latinate word, unexpectedly, to great effect.

Here is a quick and dirty writing tip that will strengthen your writing.

In English, the word at the end of a sentence carries more weight or emphasis than the rest of the sentence. You can use that to your advantage in modifying tone.

Consider:

In the end, what you said didn't matter.

It didn't matter what you said in the end.

In the end, it didn't matter what you said.

Do you pick up the subtle differences in meaning between these three sentences?

The first one feels a little angry, doesn't it? And the third one feels a little softer? There's a gulf of meaning between "what you said didn't matter" (it's not important!) and "it didn't matter what you said" (the end result would've never changed).

Let's try it again:

When her mother died, she couldn't even cry.

She couldn't even cry when her mother died.

That first example seems to kind of side with her, right? Whereas the second example seems to hold a little bit of judgment or accusation? The first phrase kind of seems to suggest that she was so sad she couldn't cry, whereas the second kind of seems to suggest that she's not sad and that's the problem.

The effect is super subtle and very hard to put into words, but you'll feel it when you're reading something. Changing up the order of your sentences to shift the focus can have a huge effect on tone even when the exact same words are used.

“mine uncle” somehow got turned into “my nuncle” in the 1600s this sounds so fake but i assure you “nuncle” was a real word people used, all thanks to MISDIVISION, also called REBRACKETING. It’s the same reason “a napron” (from mappa, then nappa) got turned into “an apron” and for some crazy fucking reason we decided to drop “nuncle” and go back to “uncle” but kept “apron” instead of “napron”

“indeed” used to be “in deed” as in “i will do this in word and in deed” meaning your ass was gonna go DO something FOR REAL, you can COUNT ON ME. It got turned into one word, which then wound up meaning almost the same thing. Kind of like “all right” vs “alright”. 

“shamefaced” originally was the archaic “shamefast” as in you’re so ashamed you’re stuck there 

“bridegroom” came from OE “bridgome”, “gome” being a word for “man”

eggs were called “eyren” (as in things from eyries) in England until the old norse derived term “eggs” became the standard term. because of the massive number of dialects in england during themiddle ages this sort of thing led to Outright Hilarious Misunderstandings. there’s a story about some dudes in 1490 who sailed from London down the Thames 20 miles and asked a lady to make them some eggs and she was like “i don’t speak french what the hell are you saying to me” BA DUM TSSSSSSSS

“explode” once meant “to force a performer off the stage”

the word “funk” dates from the Tudor era and was a word for the smell of tobacco smoke. that’s right, shit was funky with Henry VIII

“noon” comes from the latin “novem” meaning “nine”. the roman way of counting time meant that the ninth hour of the day was about 3 PM. (they started at dawn being hour one and moved on from there)

“slut” just meant “an untidy messy dirty person” up till actually fairly recently

“cumberground” is an archaic word meaning “a useless person who just takes up space”. i expect you all to make good use of this when referring to a certain british actor who looks like the middle stage of an animorph

For instance: Americans don’t really say ‘have done’. Like if you say ‘would you have eaten that food if you knew it was hers?’ an American would say (if so) “I would have.” I see Brits (I’m not aware if Scottish English or Irish English do this, so Brits it is) say ‘I would’ve done’ more often. Overall, helping verbs are included more often in British English even with the rest of the sentence removed.

Helping verbs really are the thing I’ve noticed the most. Ways of forming contractions that I see and can immediately peg as ‘not American.’ Reading the earlier-mentioned article by a Brit, I see ‘you’ll not’ and that sets off my British English radar hard. Or when I looked it up, saying ‘they might do’ when asked if someone might/may do something, Americans wouldn’t say that but Brits might (do :3). 

ok SO. a lot of this comes from various stuff i’ve seen on the linguistics of tumblr, but at the heart of it is that people in my generation (at least in the us; idk abt other countries’ timelines on this front) went thru (or are still going thru) our Formative Social Years in an environment where we’d regularly interact with even our closest friends on text-only platforms (whether texting or gchat or fb messages or w/e), and b/c so much linguistic/social information is actually conveyed by facial expression and tone of voice, we’ve collectively made up all of these textual ways of conveying that in a concise, efficient way

so like, sometimes on this blog i’ll talk about “straight people”, and sometimes i’ll talk about “str8 ppl”, and even tho i would pronounce those the same, the first is much more neutral — it would probably happen in the context like “i’m not sure how i feel about straight people writing stories that center around experiences of homophobia” — than the second, which which is much more frustrated/venting — it would be more likely to crop up in the context of “all i want is to live quietly in my little queer utopia but no str8 ppl have to come along and heteronomativity UGH #over it #whatever #NOT RLLY OVER IT”. or even with more subtle things like end punctuation: “i’m not going” basically just means i’m not currently planning to go to the thing; “i’m not going.” carries much more of a connotation of “i have seriously considered going and have Reasons for staying at home” (and note that capital — “i have Reasons for staying at home” feels different than “i have reasons for staying at home”). (and this isn’t even getting into things like shitposting or advanced memeology, but there are specific textual markers that go with things like that, some of which would be pronounced if you read them aloud, but many of which wouldn’t be)

but, crucially, for these kinds of things to carry meaning, they have to be used consistently: if i use “str8 ppl” and “straight people” interchangeably in all contexts (as i do for something like “the supreme court” vs “scotus”), then there’s no way to develop a distinction in meaning between the two — the only way to do that is to consistently use the different orthographies in different contexts. (to take another example: if something is “great”, then it’s solidly good. if something is “gr8”, it’s more in the land of “i can’t quite believe this is as earnest/tacky/tasteless as it is but i’m weirdly into it anyway?” (sometimes with a side helping of “do i just enjoy this ironically or do i genuinely enjoy it there is no way of knowing please send help”))

the upshot of this is that to be fluent in tumblr (or texting, or fb messenger, or w/e) means to actually be paying a lot of attention to subtle points of grammar and spelling, to know when to use “did u kno” or “ur” or even pull out an old-fashioned tip of the hat to “e733T haxxor 5killz”. most of these are very subtle distinctions, the kind of things you feel intuitively rather than write out explicitly, and so it’s very hard to convey them concisely and accurately to someone who’s not already immersed in the linguistic environment

and let’s be real, people in my parents’ generation aren’t. i mean, sure, many of them have facebook accounts, but these kinds of platforms weren’t around when they were in their “really getting to grips with social interaction” years, and their most important social interactions usually don’t take place exclusively online. for me, all of my closest friends are people i’ve only interacted with online for more than a year now (with a few brief face-to-face visits when various travel arrangements have allowed), so tumblr, facebook, and gchat are absolutely critical to my social life and interpersonal interactions; for my parents, their closest friends are people they see in person at work every day, so social media is a light overlay to their social lives, not the thrumming core

as such, my parents don’t grok these distinctions. to them “what are you doing?” means the same thing as “lol wut r u doing”; “gr8” is just like “great” (and “gr9” takes some parsing … ); dogespeak doesn’t have the same distinctive valence that it does to us. since they don’t know about these distinctions, they don’t feel the need to maintain more “proper” spelling/grammar when texting with a friend — different people have different set points for this, obvs, but in general i feel like “standard (setting aside all the class and racial implications in that term …) spelling and grammar” (with lighter-than-standard punctuation and capitalization) translates to “relatively neutral/pleasant conversational voice”, and then deliberate misspellings, abbreviations, letter substitutions, and grammar deviations are markers used to indicate shifts in mood — i have a vague sense that bitterness tends to collapse down and preserve grammar but weird spelling (“lyk w/e im happy 4 u but pls, i kno u lied 2 get that”) whereas enthusiasm tends to preserve spelling but weird grammar (“what i can’t even no how do air AMAZE”). since people in my parents’ generation don’t realize that doing so unintentionally changes the way their words come across, they feel free to text “poorly” (ie with lots of errors/substitutions, generally mixing various text-flagged vocal tones in ways that are often incoherent) in order to do so more quickly (b/c lbr typing everything out can be a pain (esp on a non-smartphone), and since parents don’t do it as much, they’re not necessarily as fast as our spry young fingers on a familiar interface)

so yeah, that’s what i suspect is going on

your fave is problematic: adjectives

cannot be characterized in terms of a prototype

not a semantically definable class of concepts

Wired Style: A Linguist Explains Vintage Internet Slang

I’m on The Toast talking about retro internet language and how I became a descriptivist. Read the whole thing here - how many do you remember?