Straight Talk Needed

Okay, forget politics for the moment and look at a broader cultural picture. Or pitcher. More on that momentarily. We get a lot of complaints from elites, parts of the masses who mistakenly think they are elites, and so-called “professionals” about the lack of basic reading, writing and math skills among the general population. That is the Great Unexceptional. I know the complaints are valid. I myself don’t know half the math I should given all my relevant variables, and that half is the majority of math so far as I can tell. Writing? In one day of paying attention I’ve seen two professional signs, one factory-made, warning me to EXPECT DALAYS and that there is NO TURNNING. Until recently my town had a Restaraunt—proclaimed in very large, multichromatic neon. Don’t even bother to count menu listings of expresso. I’ll bet that when ordering menus from a print shop you actually have to specify that you want it spelled with an “s”, like it’s an expecial request.

Anyways (sic), what has me going hoarse with exclamatory rage is how people talk. Of course talking is less formal than writing is, and fairly so. Talking is most often done in real time, without editing, reflection, or, being honest, a whole lotta thinking. But some of the most common mispeakings in everyday life are the products of nothing but laziness, slovenliness, and illiteracy.

For those who accuse me of being a Bushie, let me say that when it comes to this issue, W is the Clod in Chief. I don’t know if I have ever heard a public figure who disembowels the English language as does GWB. Not even his father, a Master Mot Mangler and Phrickaseer of Phrases, matches him. (The Rev’n Jackson is, of course, an anomaly. I’m not sure what language he is trying to speak. The violence against vowels makes me think Scots, but other evidence points to more of a speech pathological issue. Here I’m talking about plain old English badly saiden.)

This is the “nucular” problem. W, like many who did not go to Yale and Harvard, and many who did, doesn’t say nuclear correctly. Why? Anyone with second-grade literacy can look at the spelling of the word “nuclear” and see that to pronounce it “nucular” is simply as incorrect as would be incroect. But evidently, George and many, many others do not read. Or they read lazily. Okay, so the faux pas is identified. Either in person or, in the case of a president, by a sniggering press (ironically) and he corrects himself, right? Worng. He ignores the correction and continues, as if he’s proud of his verbal torpor, or as if it doesn’t matter; metathesizing on his merry way. What this shows is bad education, bad socialization, disregard for sharpness and a general disinterest in getting things right. Now that I think about it, I believe he did go to Harvard and Yale.

Before anyone laughs media-like at the President’s misunderestimation (not really a pronunciation issue, but of diagnostic value) of the precision of English orthoepy, listen closely to what others who fancy themselves elite do everyday—sometimes on specific instructions from deaf and stupid broadcast producers:

Species—it is speeSHees. Plural and singular. That is a sh like in Be quiet, not an s like in Says who? Why? It is Simple, Simon: In the English language c’s in syllables followed by vowel combinations like ie, ia, ea, are pronounced like sh’s. Just think about it—it is not a speSSial case, the Pacific is not an oSSean and raSSial profiling is not soSSially acceptable.

“Professionals” – really just journalists—have told us that the rules of English spelling are so non-existent GHOTI could spell “fish”. Sure, they chuckle condescendingly, just take sounds made by GH in laugh, O in women, and TI in station. This is seemingly true to a reporter who has learned by wrote to write. GH never makes the F sound at the beginning of a word. Only after AU or OU combinations. The O in women is a spelling relic, and an isolate. TI never makes an SH sound at the end of a word. Only when leading a TIO, TIA-consonant construction. So, no, GHOTI could never spell fish in English. The rules of English spelling are quite clear on that. Journalistic idiuts say utherwise. Complex rules is not the same as no rules. And if you don’t know the rules, don’t complain that there are none. By their reasoning, if you take the B from dumb, the A from aegis, the N from autumn and the G from sign BANG makes no sound at all

Do not, however, make the assumption that a good speller a good teller makes. Not unless you you really know the rules about how spelling and pronunciation hook up, and when they don’t. Otherwise you run the risk of being semi-literate; which, while maybe better than being illiterate, is no better than being half-witted. Controllers are just that, coNtrollers, whether they spell it with a MP or not. It is troublesome that so many otherwise erudite individuals are just halfway there—proving simultaneously that they can spell, good for them, but they can’t be bothered to check a dictionary or be careful beyond that.

You grovel in your hovel with a shovel. They all rhyme in sight as well as sound as the rules say they should. Those who don’t rhyme them are in fact creating more of that notorious chaos in English than in fact exists. Gruvel, huvel, and shuvel are in fact the old and phonetic spellings. Problem was that early U’s and V’s looked the same. So “helpful” scribes started almost—not quite, closing the tops of their U’s before V’s. Well, paving the road to Hell, and whatnot. Making the U’s look too much like O’s just traded one problem for another. But all you have to do is think about it; O’s before V’s almost always make the U sound. That IS the rule, not an exception: love, above, oven, shove, glove.

Realtor—that is a REAL….TOR. That IS Just like it’s spelled. Not relator, unless you mean one who relates, presumably to a relatee. This is another nucular; one that the realtors themselves take badly. Even when the only reason they are the benefisheraries of this awareness is that it is related to them at realtor school. Likewise jew--el—ree and jew—el--er. Unless you are British in which case most of this is hopeless. Or maybe Canadian, in which case everything is hopeless. But you already knew that.

And speaking of the speaking of Canadians, don’t make the mistakes Michael Myers mocks placing the emPHASis on the wrong syLLABle. When words gain suffixes, emphasis, or stress, often changes. This is because the number of total syllables a word has affects its pronunciation somewhat and simply because some words are properly pronounced one way and improperly in another. When you compARE things, they are COMP’rable. Not comPAREable. ILLustrating something is iLLUSTritive. To push farther, someone can be DESpicable or HOSpitable. Not desPICable or hosPITable. Maybe these are the products of analogy to disGUSTing, which in fact is. But the analogy is false. The first two are emphasized on the first SYLLable, the last on the second. Just like it is correct, if aBERRant, to say so instead of ABerrant. You have to acCLIMate, yourself to hearing and saying things rightly (it is a matter of adjusting to the CLImate, after all, not the AC). And sadly, being clear and proper in your elocution can obFUScate what you are trying to say to the phonetically tone deaf.