e2pandas

Trst is beautiful, but is it pronounceable?

Trst (the Croatian and Slovenian version of the name of the beautiful Italian city of Trieste in north-eastern Italy) is a word that looks thoroughly unpronounceable, consisting of nothing but a compact block of consonants. Equally menacing to the English-speaker is the appearance of the word Krk (the name of a nice island in the Croatian archipelago in the northern Adriatic Sea), the name of the Rijeka suburb Trsat or for that matter a whole long list of Slavonic consonants-only words or consonant-dense word elements.

Most English-speakers, Dutch-speakers (and speakers of languages with similar phonetic characteristics) assume that in order to be able to pronounce Trst, Krk and other consonantal Slavonic words, you would need a transitional vowel, a "schwa" (denoted by the phonetic symbol "upside-down e"), between the consonants. Well, there is actually no need for a schwa, as I will try to impress on you in the following.

Sustainably continuant speech

The secret lies in the character of the Croatian (and Slovenian, Serbian, etc.) "R", which is of the rolling variety, like in Spanish, Scottish and several other European languages. The interesting feature of the rolled "R" in this particular connection is that it is continuant or sustainable - you can keep rolling your "RRRRRRRRRRRRRR" for as long as you please, often turning the R into a voiced consonant in the process. Examples of continuant consonants in English are "SSSS", "MMMM", "FFFF" and "LLLL", while the consonants "T", "K" and "P" are non-continuant. Non-continuant consonants can be pronounced in one single burst only. In order to be able to pronounce a second non-continuant consonant in a word, you first need to "re-charge your consonant-pronouncing batteries", by taking a run in a vowel, like you do in the words "tat", "cock", "pop", etc. At the very least, you would need a schwa between two non-continuant consonants in order to make them pronounceable.

Now, what makes continuant consonants interesting is that they can be seamlessly combined with other consonants, i.e. the combination needs no intervening vowel or schwa to be pronounceable. For example, you don't encounter any problems when trying to pronounce the words SSStockholm, SSSSkating, SSSpelling or PHthalate.

Non-sustainable problems of non-continuance

Let's return to our original stumbling-block, the Croatian name of the fair city of Trieste, TRST. As we have just shown, the ending -ST is easily pronounceable for all, as it consists of a continuant, sustainable S, followed by the non-sustainable (non-continuant) T. What about pronouncing the beginning TR-, when it is followed by a consonant ? For an Englishman or Dutchwoman this would be impossible, of course, because the English and Dutch R's are not only non-continuant, but also very far from a rolled R in other phonetic respects. Furthermore, the T in English is pronounced "thickly", with the tongue situated far from where it needs to be to start pronouncing a subsequent English non-rolled R.

However, for people proficient in pronouncing rolling continuant R's and tip-of-the-tongue T's, there is no corresponding problem. The non-continuant T goes seamlessly over to the continuant R, and then - equally seamlessly - to the continuant S, followed by the final non-continuant T. Hence Trst is easily pronounceable for people who have mastered the rolling R, without any need for a schwa or two.

Unlike, like apples and bananas

So, to finish this long-winded story with a succinct summary - the apparent physical impossibility of pronouncing Trst without any intervening schwa's stems from the fact that the R in the Croatian word denotes a completely different phonetic entity than R does in English words.

Thanks to Gritchka for the correct technical term continuant and many clarifying observations regarding comparative phonetics !

Word Coinage
Or, Let's Make Up Words!

Shakespeare did it. You do it more often than you expect. You're searching for a word, and it's on the tip of your tongue and you're scratching your head and sweating... and then you just take two words and cram them together in a meaningful way. Presto changeo, you've created a new word. As with all things linguistics, there are several different ways that words enter into a language's vernacular. For the purposes of this exercise, we'll stick to English words, though the procedures often stick for other languages as well.

Compounds

Here there be nouns, verbs, and adjectives. When you smash together two (or more!) of these, you form yourself a friendly little compound word. Doubtless you are unsurprised that boyfriend, road rage, and mailman did not exist in the primordial goo that was English back in the day. These words were all formed later, for the purposes of convenience. (Note: compounds are spelled with and without dashes and spaces between the words)

When the two words smashed together are in the same category (noun + noun, verb + verb, adjective + adjective), the right-most word is the "head" of the compound, giving the new word its primary meaning. Consider the following:

noun + noun

• homework
• girlfriend

verb + verb

• sleepwalk
• breakdance

adjective + adjective

• icy-cold
• red-hot

Notice that the right-most word is the root purpose of the word. Something can be red-hot without being red, a girlfriend is a very specific type of friend, not a specific type of girl (though I'm certain someone will argue this one), and if you're breakdancing, it is unlikely that you're breaking anything at all (unless you're truly no good at the dance).

Naturally, there are more ways to create compounds than simply by slapping together like-form words. Consider pickpocket, homework, headstrong, and spoonfed. These four words were created by mashing v+n, n+v, n+a, and n+v respectfully. And that doesn't even begin to make light of those words formed with prepositions, such as mother-of-pearl and overtake.

The most entertaining part of compounding when making new words is the ambiguity that comes along with it. Consider top-hat rack vs. top hat rack. The first is a rack for top-hats, the second is the hat rack that is highest up. A Redcoat in a woman's closet is vastly more important (or was, in 1779) than having a red coat (though fashionistas may disagree). Further, a boathouse is for boats, a doghouse is for dogs, but a cathouse is for prostitutes. A magnifying glass does what it ought, but a looking glass does not. Highbrows generally don't, and bigwigs will never admit it, and eggheads look just like you and me.

Acronyms

When an acronym falls into the vernacular, we in English do funny things with it, depending on just how specific we want to be. Take, for example, NASA. We all know how to pronounce that string of letters, and we know that each letter stands for something (our first clue is that it is all in capital letters), even if we don't know it's for National Aeronautics and Space Agency. We computer geeks know RAM is random access memory, and ROM is read-only memory. We've noticed AIDS and UNESCO, even if we don't remember what each letter stands for. We even allow ourselves to build on these acronyms. Consider ROM, PROM, and EPROM.

In the cases above, each acronym is pronounced as a word. However, though UCLA and NFL both are active acronyms in our vernacular, we do not pronounce it as a "word" per se, because "uk-luh" and "niffle" are not pleasant to our delicate tastes.

We, the Internet folk, create our own gender of acronyms when we want to save time typing. You know them all: MORF, a/s/l, FAQ, wysiwyg, and a slough of others. It is unlikely we're all on the same page whether or not these are pronounced as NASA is, or as NFL is.

Sometimes, however, we get words that we don't put all in caps, and we occasionally forget that these words are formed by acronyms. Consider laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) and scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). Even snafu is an acronym, taken from the mouths of soldiers in WWII: Situation normal, all fouled up (feel free to replace "fouled" with an f-word of your choice).

Back-Formations

By far my absolute favorite form of word creation comes from back-formations. Take, if you will, stoke, swindle and edit. All three of these words came about because folk thought the endings of stoker, swindler and editor were inflectional endings (one who stokes, swindles or edits). Pea came about because people mistakingly thought pease was plural.

I wonder how long it will be before someone attempts to be couth, plussed, and ept by removing the "morphological affixes" (they are not morphological affixes in these cases, though they look an awful lot like them) from uncouth, nonplussed, and inept.

Abbreviations or Clipping

We're a very time-oriented society. We've got very little time to say what we mean. So when I say "these ads in my zine really annoy me," you know I'm referring to advertisements in a magazine. I've studied math (mathematics), I pay for gas (gasoline), and I ride a bike (bicycle).

Words from Names / Eponyms

In O Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun: An Etymology of Words That Once Were Names, Willard R. Espy compiled a list of over 1,500 words that exist in the current vernacular that were, at one time or another, proper nouns--that is to say the name of a very specific person or place. Peanut butter and jelly, slapped between two pieces of bread gives us a sandwich, which is named for the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who put meat between bread so that he could eat while gambling. A robot is actually from a Czech play by Karel Capek, named R.U.R., which meant Rossum's Universal Robots. If something is bigger than big, it's gargantuan, named for Gargantua, the creature with a huge appetite created by Rabelais, and if something is jumbo, then it's named after an elephant brought to America by P. T. Barnum.

Further, denim was once imported from France, de Nimes ("from Nimes"), argyle from Scotland, the kind of socks worn by the chiefs of Argyll of the Campbell clan, and those annoying paparazzi (singular, paparazzo) are named for the news photographer character of Signor Paparazzo in the motion picture La Dolce Vita.

Blending

Finally we get to it--the catchall for word formations that don't really fit anywhere else: the blending. Let's take the two words smoke and fog and merge them together, not like compounding (keeping the words intact), but by really, truly, smushing them together. Done? You should be left with smog (if you came up with foke, then you did it the wrong way). Cranapple is likely made of cranberries and apples, motels are for motorists who need hotels, and infomercials are ironically named for commercials that are informative (who needs to be informed at 3am?).

The true king of blending, however, has to be Lewis Carroll, who, in his brilliant Jabberwocky poem, creates a variety of whimsical and fun words. Consider chortle, which blends chuckle and snort. Slithy is both lithe and slimy, and mimsy is flimsy and miserable.

In the English language, an indefinite article is a word used as a preface to a countable or uncountable noun.

As with several other spoken languages, the indefinite article construct is not exhaustive:

a and an are used with countable nouns.

Example: "That body of water is a lake, not an ocean."

some is used with uncountable nouns.

Example: "I'm going out to get some air."

A is used to preface words that begin with consonant sounds, while an is used to preface words that begin with vowel sounds. Some can be used with either.

"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Though this is one of the simplest English grammar concepts to learn, it is also one that the most people have trouble learning, especially people learning English after lacking an indefinite article in their native language, as is the case with native speakers of Japanese. One of the most common gaffes by users of the indefinite article is using "an" to preface words that begin with the letter H, such as "an historic," or "an hysteric." Usually, this is caused by the user not making a distinction between written and spoken words, as some people pronounce words like "historic" as "-istoric," and when writing those words and words like them, develop a reflex to reach for the "an" as if the writer were speaking.

In middle English, "an" was the only indefinite article. Also, according to Fowler's, it is acceptable to use "a" to preface certain words that begin with vowels, such as "a one" or "a unit." However, words like "one" and "unit" don't start with vowels when spelled phonetically, which explains that exception. "An" has some exceptions, as well, such as "an hour," "an honest person," and so forth. In fact, when it comes to the spoken word, just about every regional dialect in the English-speaking world has its own rules for indefinite articles. This writeup is primarly concerned with the written word, which, as far as English goes, seems to be universal, apart from the o/ou, e/ae, and z/s differences between American and British English. It's been mentioned that "an historic" is correct when used in written British English, but if that's true, then wouldn't combinations like "an homosexual," "an herpetologist," and "an home" also be correct? It seems implausable, but the answer is apparently yes.

According to our resident grammarianGritchka, "an historic" is correct because the first syllable of "historic" is entirely unstressed (in certain dialects, most popularly in British and Australian English), which would permit "an" as a valid preface. "An honest person" works in much the same way. Given the relative weirdness that English possesses when compared to more structured languages (such as French or German), there seem to be more than a few exceptions to every rule. This issue in particular seems to go through phases, as apparently "an historic" is only just starting to become archaic in Britain, where it is still considered correct, whether written or spoken.

"Oh. Well, that makes sense."

There doesn't seem to be any grey areas concerning the usage of "some."

Growing up, as I did, in Michigan, and then moving to Louisiana in my early twenties, I was consistently jarred by people saying "an -istoric" rather than "a historic," and I'd always try not to look for it but I'd end up hearing it, or seeing it on the signs of antique shops, nevertheless. It seemed so alien. It drove me crazy for the first year I lived there, after which time I made a calculated effort to ignore it.

This is my grammar pet peeve. There are many like it, but this one is mine. No, it's not my life, I've gotten over being annoyed so easily. But it still doesn't read correctly. When I see it written, it's as though the writer posted a "watch your step" sign in a poorly lighted room; you see it, and then grind to a halt and look thither and yon for the errant step, or in this case, words that don't belong together.

Sources:
http://www.scribe.com.au/tip-w005.html
http://www.grammartips.homestead.com/historical.html

This is a good skill to know later on in life, especially if you're working in an office or something where you have to write letters, memos, and such.

If you don't know how to punctuate, you must have not paid attention to the teacher in English class, or maybe you're just slow.

A few common mistakes in punctuation are:

Comma splice:
A comma splice is when you combine two sentences together with a comma. This is bad. You CAN combine 2 sentences with and, but, or any of those combination words, or you can use a semicolon (;). Ex: "I got a new bike today, My bike's black." should be "I got a new bike today and it's black," or "I got a new bike today; it's black."

Ending a quote:
"Hi, my name's Jeff." said Jeff. - wrong. "Hi, my name's Jeff," said Jeff. - Correct. '"What's your name?" said Moe.' is also correct.

The apostrophe: OH NO! RUN! HIDE!
- Possession - Mike's bike, not Mikes bike.
- "not" - Couldn't, not couldnt.
- is/has - "What's happened?" (as in "What has happened") is the correct use. Without an apostrophe the word would be plural.

The It's/Its Conundrum:
"Its" is the possessive case of "it" (belonging to it). "It's" (with an apostrophe) is the contraction of "it is." Proper usagle of "it's" would be something along the lines of "It's cold outside!" while "its" would be used as "That dog is always wagging its tail."

"Junk English is like junk food - ingest it long enough and your brain goes soft."

Ken Smith's book Junk English (New York: Blast Books, 2001. ISBN 0-922233-23-3) is a short guide (150 pages), sorted alphabetically, to various mistakes commonly made in English. Each of the points is accompanied by a real-life example. A lot of these are things I never really realized I was doing, but Smith shows why they're incorrect. The humbling part is when you realize he's right about it.

One example is what Smith calls abstract adjectives. Abstract adjectives are words like major and serious that add emphasis but do not describe the subject. A lot of people say things like "it's a serious defect in the plan". The word serious here doesn't tell you anything about the defect, but the sentence sounds better, doesn't it? Naw, that's just your brain going soft.

The section on Battlefield Language really stuck out to me. Here, Smith shows us some very violent words and phrases used in everyday language. "Spearheading a sales drive with new sales tactics and escalating a price war in target markets..." may sound correct, but it's the softening of the brain. While I support the romantic notion that English is a living language, I agree with Smith that certain words, misused enough, lose their effect.

I suppose a lot of the material in the book is based around sales. One of the observations made in this area is the word just. It's often used to conceal how difficult something is (just $500!). Another is the misuse of words to dress up a product. An example would be calling your product a "solution" or "convenience". And of course, the constant misuse of the word do in such phrases as "let's do lunch".

Junk English is an interesting read. It challenges you to take a look at what you say every day and realize that most of it is meaningless filler. The book costs $12.95 US and is well worth it.