Editrix

To "G" or Not to "G" (Updated)

As you can tell from my “What Editrix Is Reading Now” widget, I’m making my way through Other People’s Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy by Victoria Purcell-Gates. So far, I’m digging the book, but I have one small complaint.

Below is an excerpt from the first chapter. It’s how the author recounts what Jenny, an illiterate woman living in urban Appalachia, said to her in conversation:

We was goin’ down, and there was a rattlesnake! You know, we didn’t get to it right then. The others, they was flyin’ away, goofin’ off, but Charles didn’t ’cause we had the baby on with us. And they kept motionin’ for us to back up, and Charles said “What for?”

Now, I have no problem with re-creating people’s speech as accurately as possible, particularly when their literacy, level of education, and mastery of language are topics of discussion. But the g-dropping, as rendered here, irks me. I can think of three reasons for my being irritated:

1)      I’ve lived in many places, among people of many backgrounds and with many levels of education, and I’ve always heard people drop their g’s. Since g-dropping is widespread, since we’re already shown that Jenny makes subject-verb agreement errors (“we was goin’ down,” “they was flyin’ away”), and since “’cause” is enough to clue us in to Jenny’s accent, ginning up her speech with dropped g’s seems like overkill.

2)      The dropped g’s make the text harder to read, particularly in long passages, such as the one I lifted my quote from. Every time my eye gets to an apostrophe, it’s surprised anew, as if each apostrophe were a goldfish that kerplopped to the surface of a pond.

3)      I’m overly sensitive to cartoonish portrayals of Appalachians. (See this and this.)

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m probably overreacting. I should also point out that I have taken absolutely zero linguistics classes and am basing my assumptions solely on my personal experience. So, if anyone would like to set me straight, please do. But  I still think portraying the text this way would have been easier on the reader while remaining faithful to the rhythm of Jenny’s speech:

We was going down, and there was a rattlesnake! You know, we didn’t get to it right then. The others, they was flying away, goofing off, but Charles didn’t ’cause we had the baby on with us. And they kept motioning for us to back up, and Charles said “What for?”

Update (January 21, 2009): Not only are the g’s dropped from Jenny's speech, but so many exclamation points are used that one would think she's always shouting:

I love it, you know, goin’ jeep ridin’ and four-wheelin’! (24)

That’s the way I was brought up! (26)

Nobody took my lunch money! (35)

But I never would’a thought to turn [the postcard] over to see some writin’ to me! (59)

Don't Misunderestimate Me

I just got around to reading Gail Collins's New York Times column. This one was called "He's Leaving. Really." I bet you can guess whom it's about.

Ms. Collins writes:

"Sometimes you misunderestimated me," Bush told the Washington press corps. This is not the first time our president has worried about misunderestimation, so it's fair to regard this not as a slip of the tongue, but as something the president of the United States thinks is a word. The rhetoric is the one part of the administration we're surely going to miss. We are about to enter a world in which our commander in chief speaks in full sentences, and I do not know what we're going to do to divert ourselves on slow days.

I'm intrigued -- and disturbed -- by the notion that President Bush thinks misunderestimate is a word. I'd always assumed that it was a whoopsy-daisy kind of thing, like the time I asked Mr. K-- if he thought I was infanticiding him by packing his suitcase. But Ms. Collins brings up an excellent point. President Bush has butchered the word underestimate more than once. Does he really think misunderestimate is a word? Am I the only one who finds that prospect chilling?

Here's something even more chilling: Do you think misunderestimate will eventually become a word now that (a) President Bush has used it so much and (b) so many people (including me) have been carping on it? If misunderestimate did enter the lexicon, my guess is that it wouldn't just be a synonym for underestimate. I think it would be a saucebox of a word, a word that means something like "to simultaneously loathe and pity someone." Or maybe it will come to mean "to go for a big word to make yourself seem smart and, in so doing, come off looking like an idiot" (e.g., "Joe the Plumber was misunderestimating when he said 'pronounciate' on Fox News").

 

Online Surveys & Market Research

I Still Say "Carmel," Damn It

John McIntyre, wearing his trademark bowtie, stars in this positively charming video at You Don't Say, in which he schools us in pronunciation.

Editrix and Mr. K-- Are Getting Married*

Which brings me to Mr. K— and my first post-engagement disagreement: how to pronounce nuptial. I’d always said** \nəp-shə-wəl\, but Mr. K— was adamant that it’s \nəp-shəl\. This quasi-argument over pronunciation took place, like our last one, on the stairs. From now on, I think I’m going to avoid bringing up anything pronunciation-related when we are ascending or descending the staircase. Clearly there is bad juju there.

I started digging around in my books and discovered that Fowler’s calls my way nonstandard. But having Fowler’s call your pronunciation nonstandard is like having the Fug Girls make fun of your outfit if you’re Katie Holmes, so, you know, I didn’t lose heart.

The more straightforward proclamation in Garner’s was more disappointing: “Nuptial is pronounced /nəp-shəl/—not /nəp-shə-wəl/ or (worse) /-chə-/.”

When I saw that even the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage didn’t support my view, I knew I was screwed. Not only was I screwed, but I was also tossed into the same circle of pronunciation hell as George Bush and, apparently, Ike Eisenhower:

In many recent usage books the reader is admonished to say \’nü-klē-ər\ instead of  \’nü-kyə-lər\, and never mind what President Eisenhower used to say.

We wish first to confront a more interesting question. Why, when the pronunciation problems of nuclear are so well known that they are a continuing source of national wrath and mirth, do so many educated people—and especially members of Congress—persist in the condemned pronunciation? . . .

[Interesting, but long and only tangentially related, explanation]

A number of other pronunciation variants that go against the spelling of a word—the common /nəp-shə-wəl/ for nuptial . . . for example—can be explained along similar lines.

Returning to the status of \’nü-kyə-lər\, we must make several points. First, it is a minority pronunciation; \’nü-klē-ər\ is still much more common among educated speakers. Second, it is nonetheless a common pronunciation among the educated . . . Third, if it is your natural pronunciation and you choose to continue with it, you will have a lot of distinguished company, but you are also likely to draw some unfriendly attention from those who consider it an error.

Although the bride is always right when it comes to choosing a cake topper and declaring, “The bouquet toss is hideous, and it makes me feel all stabby, and I’m not doing it, no, no, no, you can’t make me,” it appears that she isn’t always right when it comes to pronouncing words. Even wedding-related words. Even if the bride is an editor.

Damn.

*That’s part of the reason I took a two-week break from blogging rather than a one-week break. My wedding shoes aren’t going to buy themselves.

**Please ignore the weird underlining in this post. I can’t figure out why TypePad keeps implementing it.