(00:00:00) English how the language is evolving and maybe what the language might be like in years to come. Dr. Pearsall welcome. It's a pleasure to have you with us today. Thank you. Bob good to be back. I know that the that the language is really your expertise not politics, but we are in the midst of the campaign season with each side charging. The other from time to time that the other is is guilty of political rhetoric not telling the voters the truth but engaging in political rhetoric. Well, what does that term political rhetoric really (00:00:30) mean? Thank you for asking me that the season of presidential campaign is always tough on somebody who's in the rhetoric Department because the term is used in a very derogatory way rhetoric simply means the art of persuasion. It's really kind of a simple as that and during a campaign like this. It's almost always associated with Adjectives like empty rhetoric political rhetoric mere rhetoric. It's almost like damn with Yankee in the in the Old South rhetoric is a very old and honorable profession and it's the rhetoric of course is used in a political campaign because in politics the major goal of every candidate is to convince the people out there essentially of three things and this goes back to Aristotle one is that he's a person of Good Will and good moral character and his opponent is is not that he understands and can relate to the emotions of the people out there there their fears perhaps for example, the fears of the old about social security Medicare we here, mr. Mondale doing that a good deal and the and the notion that he understands things or she understands things logically and we can At things in a logical sequential way to convince you that something or other is true. So those three make up the components of any rhetoric whether its political rhetoric or otherwise, and of course the season like this is a good time to see all three of those things in operation (00:02:16) and sometimes it's verbal and sometimes it's communicated I guess through television and all kinds of different ways that can be done nowadays. (00:02:24) Absolutely. (00:02:24) It's four minutes past 12:00 o'clock. We will open the phone lines for your questions about language this noon questions for dr. Pearsall 2276 thousand is the number for those of you in the Minneapolis st. Paul area, in other parts of Minnesota. The toll-free line is available at one eight hundred sixty five to nine 7001 865 to 9700 outside the Twin Cities and in Minneapolis st. Paul our lines are open at 2 to 7 6,000. What are some of the things in our language that we have now come to accept that might have been considered taboo a few years ago, maybe within the lifetime of some of our older listeners things. That would have been absolutely wrong taught to them in school and yet today it's fairly common. (00:03:15) Oh at least two maybe three things probably even more than that one that comes to mind immediately. Probably is the is the old taboo against the split infinitive the kind of statement where you say, I'm going to forcefully hit the ball rather than I'm going to hit the ball forcefully in other words splitting to hit with some adjectives or with some sort of adverb that again, like some of the various conventions that we still adhere to came in during during the 18th century when people were trying to stabilize English grammar English a convention and generally now, it's accepted that you write the sentence whichever is the Moa speak to say In whichever way is most graceful and most understandable and is splitting the infinitive makes it more graceful more understandable you go right ahead and do it on the other hand if it makes it an awkward sentence, then you would not probably another one which what you see is the gradual week gradual weakening of the apostrophe in the possessive case. Now, it still really held to and things like John's hat Mary's coat, but you'll see for example Pikes Peak which is named after a man named mr. Pike without an S. And you'll see that written now without an apostrophe it simply Pikes Peak you'll see things like Officer's Club on an Airbase will not have the s for example, for example, Donaldson's department store has dropped the S Dayton says retained it rather rather (00:04:51) interestingly, but it would still be wrong what not to put in an apostrophe to indicate the plural such as to how Is with an apostrophe (00:04:58) s. Yeah, the only case the only cases where you use apostrophe s to pluralize something is if you're using a letter as a letter, for example, if you say he knows his p's and q's. Oh, yeah, okay there so people don't think you said he knows his P SQ s you put an apostrophe in there. We do it now although less frequently. We also do it with over numbers. We speaking of the nines and tens. I'm talking about not now and I and e but just the digit 9 we used to always put an apostrophe s in the show the plural there frequently now, you'll simply see that written as 9 s Tennis. (00:05:45) Okay. We have a lot of listeners on the line with questions for you. Dr. Pierce. Also go to our first caller. Hi, you're on the air. Professor Pierce all about the split infinitive. I quite agree with you that it's from the 18th century, but they loved Latin dearly in the 18th century tried to model English on it as you know, and since the lat infinitive is only one word. It would been impossible to split it. That's not why I'm calling. However, I do have a question for you. I've been teaching business writing for almost 20 years at community colleges and every book and every other authority. I've heard of preaches the use of simple language in short words like use for utilize or now for presently yet. This kind of Simplicity is always resisted by students and also by business people when I've done Consulting work. I know some reasons for it people want to impress others. They want to hide their true meaning where they want to protect others, but can you think of any other reason for such resistance? I'll hang up and let you answer. Thank you. (00:06:45) Okay. I can think of one other immediately based upon some research done at the University of Chicago. By a professor named Joseph Williams Williams gave under the guise of doing something else gave English teachers both at the high school and the college level teachers who presumably probably teach this simple English. He gave them sets of essays to grade one of which were written in rather simple sentence structure primarily subject-verb sentences one that was written in a very complicated sentence structure with more use of these impressive words and the English teachers by and large gave the higher grades to the ladder. In other words. There are a lot of teachers out there despite what the book saying despite what your no doubt saying who are by if not by their actual teaching by their actual grading are rewarding people for the very thing that by and large plain language laws and textbooks are trying to get people away from (00:07:50) interesting observation will move on to another Snare of the question for dough. Oh my I think we should try another line is that sounds really bad perhaps our caller there could bring us back at 2:00 to 7:00 6,000 in the Twin Cities. Okay, you're on the AR. Go ahead please in sixth grade math. I learned when reading a number the only symbol read and is the decimal point however many people including a lot of radio and TV announcers put an and between the hundreds in the tens place, for example, 1234 and 56 cents is often read as one thousand and two hundred thirty four dollars and fifty six cents, which is (00:08:27) preferred. I don't really know that either one would be preferred as long as long as it was an understandable statement and she was saying that I was trying to think how I would say it I would say it without the and in that place that could very well be a regional kind of a difference. I really don't know that one is preferred over the other (00:08:48) and then it's past 12:00 o'clock. Another caller is on the line. Go ahead. I am an elementary school teacher and long time ago. I set out at the goal of trying to save the ' you've already dealt pretty well with that issue. But my question Still Remains, is there any hope for teaching Elementary age children the use of it and particularly adults the correct use of the pronoun iits and the contraction it apostasy. I don't (00:09:14) I don't know to take your last part of that question first the the the iits 44 the possessive one without the apostrophe as opposed to the it ' as for the contraction for it is those those two in combination are probably the most misspelled words in the English language. So I'm not sure there is hope yeah, yeah, I think there is the main thing is keep people from spelling at iits ' which is the the really bad air ouch. I might bring up a historical Point here though about the apostrophe something that I guess language students know but perhaps not everybody else. Us and that is that the apostrophe in the possessive case was put into English in the 18th century by mistake. In other words, the apostrophe really doesn't belong in the possessive case oddly enough historically at any rate. It doesn't and the in the mistake was and you you even see it in all Shakespeare. For example, the the the S showing the possessive case is something that goes way back to Anglo-Saxon goes way back to Middle English and a simply you add an S to show The Case of the possessive case and when we come into the 18th century when we have Printing and people worrying about spelling and so forth. We have the contraction using the apostrophe a contraction like can't or don't for example, which is a very good and proper use of the apostrophe and people looked at the possessive case and not knowing as much about the history of the Images we do today looked at something like for example, the dog's bone and made the erroneous assumption that that was really a contraction for the dog his bone. Now what we would have done about the female dog. I don't know but they didn't really worry about that very much. So they assumed as long as that was a contraction for dog his bone John his hat. Therefore we should leave out the h i and put in the ' so it was just completely wrong and I think some of the weakening of the apostrophe today probably goes back almost to that sense that we know certainly when we speak for example that we don't need it. Nobody goes around saying John apostrophe s hat we say simply John's hat and we have no trouble with (00:11:38) so as we look at what might be an error in actually is getting back to what was considered more correct many hundreds of (00:11:44) years. Yeah, oddly enough. Yeah, although I throw in a caution here and that is whatever is correct is usually what people think is. Act at the moment. So the historical argument is not necessarily a strong one (00:11:55) and school children should probably not be listening to this with the idea of using it as an argument in their quizzes. Exactly. All right. It's about 12 and a half past noon and our listener has a question. Dr. Pierce Halls listening. Go ahead, please. I'm dr. Pierre saw something that really drives me crazy are their recent expressions of it's so fun. And it's the funnest also the mispronunciation of the word. No clear. Why is it so difficult for people to say nuclear? They say nuclear now Eisenhower used to say it all the time. Maybe that's where they got the Habit another word to word that drive me crazy is Realty and realtor people constantly misprinted. Why do people keep slipping word letters in where they don't belong. This is driven me crazy. I not only hear children do it. I hear adults even teachers say it's so fun. And it's the funnest what in Heaven's name can't they understand it except that it gives and possibly a (00:12:46) statement the I don't have any answer for you. Really to be perfectly honest people. There are there are there are fed statements. If you would certainly at least in this part of the country, I don't know whether it's it's elsewhere but the statements of it is the funnest for example is certainly a fat statements through this area. I hear it all the time whether it's a statement or not. I'm not really sure from a grammatical point of view from a conventional grammatical point of view clearly. It is not a statement on the other hand of this is statement. If we understand that person to say I'm having a good time when they when they do say that as as far as the mispronunciation of words again people people do that. Obviously Eisenhower indeed did mispronounced the word the I haven't looked in a dictionary lately to see whether missed Eisenhower's pronunciation has become an accepted. Anyone, but English speakers, perhaps even more certainly more than French speakers probably tend to be notoriously sloppy with pronunciation. And of course one of the things that you see happen, if you take the historical view of a language is that if enough people do mispronounce a word oddly enough than that becomes either the accepted pronunciation of the word or an accepted alternative, (00:14:20) especially true I suspect in the case of the word nuclear where if top public officials mispronounce it (00:14:26) right then yeah, then people obviously what people do in pronunciation most people in here, I tend to take their lead indeed from status figures now, who would that be? Well obviously leaders would be status figures people like you bopped are quite clearly a status figure to the people listen to you Walter Cronkite is a is a status person in other words somebody who you would expect. Back to pronounce the word properly therefore if you hear him say it or she said in certain way you assume that's the correct way so that you get the switch gradually. For example, from what in my youth was Caribbean to Caribbean because Caribbean is what you here primarily from Radio announces and TV announces the you another one with another very obvious one is amateur amateur amateur all those not spelled that way is the older acceptable pronunciation of the word, but a great many people including most of the ABC Sports casters during Olympics giveth the spelling pronunciation of amateur. So obviously people go around science amateur and I believe the dictionary accepts that now as an alternative one pronunciation obviously is a very slippery thing anything that's done. With with the with air pressure and tongue movements in that sort of thing is clearly going to be a very slippery business (00:15:58) North he tells me that the toll-free line is not working very well. So that those of you outside the Minneapolis st. Paul area who have a question for dr. Pearsall this noon might want to give us a call in the Twin Cities. The area code is 612 and the number two two seven six thousand and I think Dorothy is in a generous mood today and may be willing to accept collect calls about that will take another listener with a question. Go ahead. You're on the air. Yes. Thank you. I have two questions. Is one why would National broadcasters persist in pronouncing the word Junta instead of pronouncing it Junta where moment's thought or question would tell them that's how it's nationally pronounced or internationally pronounced. The second question is your first collar had mentioned the problem of worthiness of making something that could be simple quite complicated. There was an article in the Minneapolis Tribune recently on the writing of resume cover letters where employers were bemoaning the fact that would be employees are writing fantastically wordy letters adjectives terribly long sentences some that never end. I was reminded in an editing class some years ago that this problem of worthiness is becoming sort of epidemic and I even had trouble cutting sentences down to clear and concise but graceful thoughts. Could you talk a little bit more about that problem? I'll hang up. Thank you. (00:17:24) Okay. Let me tell the first question to Bob because it was Puncher yeah, well versus junkie, (00:17:30) you know, it's odd about that about that word. It always used to be pronounced Junta and then like you say some of the national broadcasters began using the word Junta. I can't remember what which network it originated at but I have heard it and I always thought well, I'm going to continue saying Junta until somebody tells me that Junta is the preferred but I (00:17:54) don't know the yeah, I don't I'm not sure. I have an answer the course we're talking about a Spanish word here and the Spanish pronunciation would be Hunter obviously, whereas if you take it into English and anglicize it then it would become Junta the one comment I would make is that is that Americans by and large tend to attempt at least to keep the original pronunciation of a foreign word. So Hunter would be more common probably in American English. It would be in English English the English are much more prone to anglicize a word that they bring into the language and use regularly. For example in this country. We say we're going to have a buffet attempting a French pronunciation of that word. Whereas in English just quite openly say we're going to have a Buffett really yeah you see and I think maybe that comes from a greater Security on their part. Well actually been around a lot longer than we have. Yeah, and I think the I think the Junta with with a J. My experience is that we started hearing that mostly with the Jay and I could be wrong during the English Argentine war and I think that the CBS for example would always use the J pronunciation so probably that's bread obviously their status people that obviously spread to other announces as I talked about before for status person. Does it a certain way and Walter Cronkite certainly or whoever was on at that time would be status then we would start to pronounce it that way. Hmm. second question about the Simplicity of language the I think the probably the hardest thing to teach students and I've certainly tried in classroom and in books textbooks is is that in most cases the the simplest expression of something is probably the better way and I think the the problem is that they want to impress people with their language as an earlier caller said rather than to express what's really going on. And as I said before a lot of a lot of teachers perhaps unconsciously row reward him for that the certainly if you go into the business world, you find the same thing there and that is you'll find some business people indeed tend to try to write impressively complicated sentences or esoteric vocabulary, but increasingly I find in this is something tell your students. I think increasingly I find business people when I consulted with them prefer and are beginning to learn how to get simpler (00:20:39) language and don't you think it's harder to express complex thoughts in a simple style then in a more convoluted (00:20:46) style. Oh sure sure. You see that in legal contracts and so forth, you know to you take insurance. He says as laws require people to do now, you're aware. I'm sure most of our listeners are aware of the fact that well, maybe they're not five. I believe it's five states right now, including our State Minnesota have what are known as plain language laws which require contracts up to I think $50,000. So you do your normal consumer contracts to be written in plain language practically all states. Now, maybe the only four or five have that law for insurance and therefore most insurance policies now because they're Nationwide have to be written in plain language and it's quite a chore to get those old convoluted insurance policies, which everybody recognizes as a verbal bog down to something which says that the very same thing in a way that most of us can understand readily. (00:21:44) Yeah, it's fun to read those things and find out what they really say is we'll take another listener with a question for dr. Pearsall. Go ahead. You're on the air. It's three things that I've noticed lately with intelligent well-educated people on television and other places that one of them. I don't know where it came from but everybody is putting of where it doesn't belong like how big of a failure instead of how big a failure and another one is using adjectives for adverbs adverb seems who have simply disappeared from the scene and the other is using amount instead of Number the amount of delegates. For instance. I'll hang up in and listen to you. (00:22:33) Okay, the the only one I can speak really clearly to is probably the middle one the the dropping of prepositions like of into into sentences is certainly a a common thing. And I don't usually people don't do it in writing. I think sometimes in dropping it into a sentence. It's just kind of a way of of of expanding the idea a little bit. It's not wrong. It's not right. It's probably better stylistically certainly certainly not to do it. I haven't heard the expression amount of delegates again, that could be one of those things that if an announcer say on CBS at a political convention started saying it that way other people would pick that up things get to be fed words again adjectives adverbs is a little bit different kind of question. Most people I think probably do still Many people in any pretension education at any rate still make a very clear distinction between adverbs and adjectives but there are certain adverbial forms, which have been around for centuries, which are the same as the the adjective form. For example. Well, take a word like slow drive slow in the adverbial form. We would expect that to be of course Drive slowly and yet the the form of slow is an adverb has coexisted with slowly for hundreds of years so that and the same is true of its opposite quick. So do you use quick or slow in that adjective form is really historically speaking not incorrect. So the people do mix up quite frequently the adverbs and adjectives like good and well a comment have you done this program? Before but which is probably worth repeating. Is that a good way to keep good? And well separate is to remember that the missionaries went to Hawaii to do good and ended up doing well in the sense that they would become the the upper class of Hawaii their descendants have it in here it (00:24:52) all right another listener with a question for dr. Pearsall. Go ahead, please I don't have a question over statement. I've heard to rather serious errors committed on this program in the last couple of minutes one is the dr. Pearsall started to say something using the connective phrase as far as something is concerned and did not complete the statement. He said something like as far as English. Well that is so and so he didn't complete it. This is epidemic in our speech today and it drives me crazy. The other thing I heard was the announcer say like you said Doctor well, I'd like to hear you talk about that. Thank you. We butcher Lake and (00:25:42) I hope I will not hurt you sand the any further in in in normal speech patterns as opposed to writing patents people quite frequently. I'm afraid including including me will start a sentence and then suddenly have a shift of thought and probably end up with a sentence that is purely strictly speaking not a grammatical sentence most of us particularly those who are not experienced speakers tend not always to talk in complete sentences or complete paragraph. So certainly I think the person who Who is more who does this they have just done it right there people who are more accustomed to speaking whether as a teacher or a politician or a radio announcer do tend to talk more in complete sentences, but I would never be surprised that I don't think you should be to hear somebody in a impromptu situation start a thought and suddenly switch 222 another thought it's one of the things I think one of the things that obviously if I can extend on that one of the things that hurt. Mr. Nixon, I think back in the old Watergate days when the when the when the tapes came out was that a literal transcription in writing of those meetings that he had setting aside the moral character of those meetings attended to make them look rather like asses and the reason being is they were speaking rather normally and most of us if we speak normally and then if it's transcribed and put into writing it can look rather ridiculous. So I really can't apologize for that. It's a fairly normal thing like like and as again since the 18th century most certainly as has been the acceptable word and the the word that which is expected to be correct in that situation. As you said Mr. So-and-so on the other hand historically back as early as the 12th century like was used in the same situation. And again, as I said before historical argument is not the is not really the best argument is what people are doing at the moment, but I think a great many Americans and at some point you have to say. Well if it's used by most educated people is it right and most people most historians of the language linguist will say yeah at some point it becomes correct if most people do it like is I think coming more and more into acceptability certainly in a speech situation. Writing probably most of us should hold to the As in that particular place. It's (00:28:26) 12:30. Dr. Thomas Pearsall is in the Studio's today. He's chairman of the rhetoric department at the University of Minnesota's st. Paul campus and we're taking your questions about language today. 2276 thousand is the number for those of you in the Minneapolis st. Paul area and outside the Twin Cities area. You can call us collect on that number. The area code is 612 our toll-free line not working as well as it should today. Here's another listener with a question. Go ahead please. Yes, dr. Pearsall. I'm calling from Rochester and we've had a running discussion in our family for some time on one on Paul Harvey's favorite comments. He'll say we didn't do nothing. We didn't do nothing about such and such and I'm just wondering if that is correct and my opinion is using two negatives there and it's not correct, but I've had a Opinions on that. Would you comment on that please? (00:29:22) Ya know if he if what he means is that nothing was done then he's incorrect again under our 18th century a conventional rules. And I think that one really does hold up. In other words the double negative which came into the language during the 18th century says that we should not say things like as I believe what Javi you say Xavier saying he didn't do nothing. I believe that's where heard you say. The more correct thing would be either he did nothing or he didn't do anything though. You've got to get the 1 or the or the other so you would be right strictly strictly strictly speaking. I think again interesting point here though is that again? Historically in the historical is always rather interesting to look at the double negative. Even the triple quadruple negative was perfectly common in English through the 18th century we see it in Chaucer. We see in Shakespeare Chaucer would pile up as many as four five negatives in a sentence and simply the idea of being the more negatives the more by golly negative. He was and what happened was that 18th century grammarians looking at it trying to stabilize the language looked at it like a problem in algebra and said in effect two negatives make a positive which strictly logically speaking is probably true and therefore said, we should not do it and I think it's still the accepted convention that we that we should not do it. (00:30:56) Okay, one wrong for Paul Harvey will move on to another listener with a question. Go ahead please you're on the air. Yes. Thank you. I'm calling. Brooklyn Park, I have a comment into questions my comment is that when I was in high school 15 years ago. I was on the speech team and founded a very rewarding and confidence building activity be able to learn how to use the language well and correctly in front of an audience and it was it was a marvelous experience. My two questions are one we hear a Educators and parents lamenting the the Advent of television and how it is affecting a decline in reading skills Etc. I'm wondering if you dr. Pearsall have noticed a decline in strictly the reading and writing skills or whether the the oral verbal skills have also declined with that or is this just a myth to the two go hand in hand, or is that a myth with the Advent of Television? The second question is do you see us moving toward and would you welcome a move toward more phonetic pronunciation? Excuse me? Spelling of the English language. Do you think that's a possibility in the near future? (00:32:10) Yeah, let me take your first question first certainly statistically on things like college board scores and so forth. There's been at least over the last 20 30 years perhaps there's been a decline in people's language skills. And of course that coincides to a certain extent with the growth of T of TV, I think to I think to ignore the impact of TV on people's particularly on people's reading and writing skills would be like ignoring a hippopotamus in the living room. I mean, it's there. All I have to do is go back to my own youth which is longer longer ago than I like to think but the for for amusement I would I would tend to either listen to the radio which was there that time or to or to read and I think most of my most of my friends when they weren't doing something. Let It Go or outside for amusement would tend to read now they were not perhaps reading and I was perhaps not reading anything that could be classified as great literature but it was reading it was it was processing language if you would and I think probably because of that most of us had higher language skills when we went to school then a lot of the people coming school now because for amusement now, they're much more likely of course to to watch television which doesn't which is a much more passive thing I think than reading is so they don't get the the written language skills as far as students today. I think there's some hope really I would say over the last five years anyway and here in Minnesota, which is really probably all I should be speaking for I would say the students in my classes are at least holding their own or have probably improved. I think the students coming into to both classes of writing or classes of speaking that art Department. First a probably slightly better than they were five years ago. I would hope almost certainly because we're doing a better job in the elementary schools and high schools. (00:34:22) What about phonetic spelling, which is the other part of our colleagues (00:34:25) question. Yeah. I think I think we all agree that English spelling is rather horrendous. So we have we have trouble with English spelling clearly when you have you know, something like ough can be pronounced in four or five different ways through though and so forth and so on cough George Bernard Shaw spelled if you remember one time to illustrate how bad English spelling was spelled fish ghoti. The GH was from rough. The old was from women in the ti was from a condition fish. So we all agree. I think on the other hand as soon as you start saying should we spell English phonetically you run into a if not only a national problem you run into an international problem. And that is that English is probably the most worldwide language today spoke in in, you know, all the old parts of the British Empire smoking in a continent is lodges as large as ours and as a result it's spoken in a great many different accents right within our own country. We have the accented you here in Mississippi versus what you here in the Twin Cities. My rather obvious Northeast accent compared to what you would hear in Iowa for for example. So soon as you say we're going to spell it phonetically the question immediately is whose accent mmm in other words If Australians just to take a rather way out example compared to our way of speaking if Australian started to write their language phonetically. And we started to write Oz phonetically the two languages would look very different. There's different probably is Dutch and German looked or French and Spanish look French and Italian Italian Spanish. So what you would be creating I think would be barriers by going the phonetic spelling oddly enough. So probably as bad as English spelling is the net result in terms of good communication among all these things speaking groups probably has been has probably been for the good (00:36:45) move on to another listener with a question about language. Go ahead. Dr. Pearsall is listening. Good morning. Good afternoon. Just just as a follow through on what he was just saying, I do have something else to say but one of the more interesting things that I've heard is listening to a Bostonian speaking to somebody from New Orleans and using the same language and sometimes you wonder if they are speaking the same time the what I'd like to do on a point of clarity On the previous question or is what Paul Harvey says is we're not doing nothing about and then whatever it happens to be in other words the inferences. We are doing something about that and I think he's using it quite properly. Hello. (00:37:30) Yeah. All right. Well if he means the positive statement in other words if he says by we are not doing nothing meaning we are doing something which is what you're saying to us. Then he would be correct. I would point out though that he runs the risk certainly of being of being misunderstood as the other previous caller clearly Miss onto misunderstood him and and anytime I think any time we break and that's one of the problems anytime we break normal language patterns. We do tend to be misunderstood and that's and that's and that's a problem. We have to take great care. For example, sometimes people will use irony, you know, they'll deliberately say something that's supposed to What they do what they really mean and people will misunderstand that they'll think they really mean what they're saying and that can cause this problem so particularly in public life. I think we have to be rather careful to say what we mean in a rather in a rather straightforward normal manner (00:38:28) 20 minutes before one o'clock another caller with the question. Hi, you're on the air. Hi. Hello. Dr. Pierce? Thank you for mentioning. The use of English is an international language when I was teaching English as a second language overseas. I met a number of British persons who seem to think that American English was even at its best substandard now, that's what it seemed to me. They seem to think do you know of any English language professionals from England? Who who see American English as an English form as legitimate is queen's English. (00:38:59) Yeah, I would I would say a great many. English linguist if you would probably don't who understand the way the way language Works do not see American English if we can call it that as being inferior to English English, they simply see it as mean different which it is in a rather trivial ways, but sometimes important ways so I would say the people understand how language works and you can see various and I'm afraid I can't pulling out for you right now, but you can see various lots lots of evidence for this in various things written by the English by English my English linguist on the other hand people who are not linguistically sophisticated English people will tend to take the As and it's a very human thing to do will say, well you don't spell labor the way I do or you don't pronounce path the way I do and therefore you're somehow or another inferior to me and I'm afraid that's one of the human weaknesses that that all of us have to watch out for I can remember when I first moved to the middle west years years ago and I was probably much more prone to put always on the end of my words than maybe I am now, although I still do it a certain extent but I would have sounded something like Geraldine Ferraro. Probably I was 12 years old before I knew idea wasn't spelled with an r on the end of the point being that I had a Northeast accent of a certain time and here it sounded strange and certain middle westerners thought my accent was infuriated. There's the point being it isn't it simply different. Nobody has an accent until he leaves home. It's when we leave home and moved to a different part of the country or nowadays a different part of the world that we have an accent most of us probably somewhat and self-protection and partly on consciously tend to pick up the accent where we live for a long portion of time long portion of our life, so that probably I still obviously Northeast accent is not nearly as Northeast as it was 20 years ago (00:41:10) what we're really talking about here. I think is snobbishness whether it be over wine or food or language or everybody (00:41:16) people tend to be wine snobs food snobs language snobs. Sure. Absolutely. (00:41:21) It is about 17 minutes before one o'clock another listener with a question. Go ahead please. Hello. Dr. Pearsall. I wonder if you could give some examples apart from the question of accent of speech habits, that would be peculiar to minnesotans or people from the Upper Midwest. I've heard a claim for example that minnesotans tend to arrange their sentences so they can emphasize the last syllable or last word. (00:41:46) Yeah one immediately jumps to mind that I would mention would be the to me rather. Curious Minnesota habit of saying may I go with or can I go with where meaning can I go with you? And they tend not to say can I go with you? You'll say you go in the movies. Can I? With that that's one that jumps right out. Another one that I can I can think of is the is the word humongous which I'd never heard before I moved to this part of the United States. So I take that to be rather rather a Minnesota work. (00:42:21) How about you betcha (00:42:22) you betcha here is another one. Yeah, right. And and again those are those are different kinds of things there. For example here in the middle west. I think generally not just Minnesota if you buy something in a store and you leaving people tend to say have a good day or something like that. Whereas if you down in Texas, for example, people always say y'all come back week fall into those speech patterns, we fall into those speech habits (00:42:49) another caller with the question. Go ahead and you're on the air I tuned in late. Have you discussed nuclear versus nuke nuclear versus new career? Yes. Yes. Yeah. We did talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I guess what was your conclusion about that? Dr. Pierce? (00:43:04) Well Mike, I guess I guess my conclusion was that and I have looked into a dictionary lately to see what dictionaries are listing as or describing as acceptable there. My point was that a lot of words like that if enough status people for example president's use them in the certain pronunciation, then that pronunciation like it or not becomes an acceptable alternative and at some point the dictionary will pick it up and print it as an acceptable alternative. (00:43:32) Okay. We'll take another caller with a question. Go ahead. Dr. Pearsall is listening that ough business bothers me enough that I adopted the Chicago Tribune spelling of thr use seems to work and it makes me feel happy. The second concern is the verb to be and a few people who use seen as the past tense. I asked him whether they wish to be corrected and then I'm merciless because I'll say you what and then they know what they have done and the third thing was that we were trained in. Ramming sentences and in reading the morning paper just because it starts with a capital letter and ends with a period if it doesn't have a subject a verb and a predicate to me. It doesn't look like a sentence and the final concern is I think studying a foreign language helps Americans to learn more about English. Would you care to (00:44:26) comment? Yeah, I think I can comment probably the easiest on your last statement. I think yeah, I think beyond beyond a doubt when you we attempt to learn Latin or French or Spanish or whatever because we have it taught to us from a grammatical point of view. That is people say this is how the past tense is done in French. For example, that maybe for some people the first time they really grasp what a past tense is and understand it. Now that doesn't mean that they haven't used the past-tense correctly their entire life because they have we start using tents correctly for example, probably. By the time were three four years old or even earlier, but we may not have understood the concept and when you learn a foreign language you learn that concept you learned how they handle the future tense and past tense or whatever and then you carry that back to your own language and helps you to understand it. That's a phenomenon which is well understood and well established. I (00:45:24) think they still teaching students to diagram sentences nowadays, or is that pretty pass a (00:45:32) I think it's still done in the elementary schools. Perhaps some Elementary School teach me call in and tell us for sure. It's not done. I think much past the elementary school level as it helpful. I found it. So when I was young I happen to be good at it. Maybe that was why I think that was why I used to rather enjoy it. It's probably the only person in class who did I'd go to the bank. I think my first teaching might have been when the teacher would ask me go to the Blackboard and diagram a sentence and I was rather good at it. And so I sometimes suffered in the playground I suppose because I wasn't good. Yeah, I think it I think oddly enough. There's two schools of thought here. Maybe it's worth talking about a little bit in terms of learning grammar if we can separate grammar for a moment from correctness. Let's separate the two we learn our grammar by the time we're two three four five years old a child comes to school essentially with all the grammar. They're ever going to need now by that. I mean, they can construct all the tenses. They can use passive voice versus active voice so they can know they know how to phrase a question on and on and they learned that they learned that on the playground there at their mothers and fathers knee and so forth. So in that sense grammar is not doesn't need to be taught because they know okay, then when we get to school we put a veneer on top of that to begin with Of and is only a small small percentage of all the Graham who we know we put a veneer on top of that of what's correct or not. For example is I was driving down to do the show you had a delightful man on who was the chicken liver King of New York. Oh, yes, and he was talking about making chicken chicken liver statues of Elvis Presley and Nixon and Eisenhower and the Statue of Liberty and the whole cast of the musical at all the way through he kept saying things like I done a statue of Elvis, I'd done a statue of Richard Nixon. I'd done a statue. Oh, okay clearly correctly. That should be I did a statue of Elvis and so forth. Alright, so his correctness was was wrong clearly on the other hand was his grammar wrong if we separate grammar from correctness. No, it wasn't his grandma was In other words, he had the sentence structured properly. We had no trouble understanding them. It was just it was in certain circles. He would be considered quite wrong abusing erroneous horrendous, whatever people want to want to want want to do right now to get back to the sentence diagramming if you will sentence diagramming is not really needed in most cases for the student to know how to use grammar or even grammatically correct conventions. They know those anyway we're sentence diagramming comes in handy is if you want to talk about those things, for example, it's a great convenience to me as a teacher if I want to talk to somebody about the verb should agree with the subject that the student know what a subject and a verb is So what a subject a verb are because if they don't then I have to go through a lot of complicated explanation sure. You know what? I don't have to use a (00:49:07) picture worth a thousand words sure right on (00:49:09) so the diagramming helps their my guess is that it's probably and some Elementary School teacher probably could tell us better. My guess is it's dying out (00:49:20) time is really getting away from his here. Nine minutes before one o'clock. Lots of colors left. Go ahead, please you're next. Hello. Yes. I would like your your dr. Pearsall to address a question that is that is rather dear to my heart and that's Many people say that language is a growing a living thing. And so the current laxness with regard to agreement in plurality of subject and predicate and so forth that these things aren't really important. My personal feeling is that in that that kind of an attitude loses something if only Hidden ironies or what have you? I recently completed a book by Joyce carry. Mr. Johnson. We're the largest part of the humor was in his subtle. Mr. Johnson's subtle misuse of language. All right, dr. Personal. Can you comment on this one? (00:50:28) Yeah, I think that you that you raised a point. That's probably one of the one of the most difficult questions that any serious teacher of language and writing and speech probably does face. But then I mean that the the serious teacher of language knows two things one is he knows that language changes and that as language changes some people going to be upset by that change other people are going to accept it other people are not even going to know that it happened but that it is going to change. For example, I don't think most educated people make too many mistakes in the example you In the in the subject-verb agreement most people still handle that rather. Well, you do find one little thing creeping into the language probably because of the woman's movement I suspect and that is that the after a after a word like everyone which is a singular singular word. We would have a few years ago used in the latter part of the sentence. We would have used heat or some or him some sort of singular pronoun to match that to match that everyone now because we no longer feel comfortable using here and we don't want to go to the trouble of saying he and she or him and her we tend in sentences like like that probably to go to a plural form now strictly grammatically speaking. That's that's that's still wrong. But if enough people do it for a long enough time, it's going to be accepted as correct. All right, so the serious language teacher knows that that changes like that are going on all the time on and the split infinitive for example, those kinds of things on the other hand. He doesn't want his student to go out and do something that's going to with We'll go out and disgrace himself or herself. So therefore he or she does tend to come down and say well these are the conventions of of today. For example, we still expect to use your example again subject verb to agree and you're going to be considered the literate if you don't get your subject and verb agree nor if you go around saying things like between you and I instead of between you and me, so we do teach those conventions, but at the same time we teach them we're aware that change can occur and change is not Decay change is simply change. I think that's the important principle in volunteer. (00:53:04) Take another caller with a question with five minutes to go ahead you're on the air. Yeah, my question concerns the role of language in giving a person a sense of identity and I guess I've run into a fair number of British English language snobs who think of English is their language because they are the language and I guess it is possible to see that point of view, but for other groups of people such as in Minnesota where there been heavy immigrations neck too many generations ago from german-speaking people, for example, it might be natural for people to be saying are you going with because the the German construction gives mm it is going to wind up with the preposition. I wonder if there any studies that you know about that correlate ethnic derivation and what at one time was a first language is not English in molding acceptable forms in speaking American English. I'll just hang up and listen to the end. (00:54:05) Yeah, I can't give you documentation on it right here. But yes, yes, there have been there have been various studies done about various ethnic. For example, the German influence as you just pointed out having an influence on the way on the way people on the way people do do actually (00:54:21) talk. You think that explanation that he gave could be the reason for that in (00:54:25) Minnesota. Oh, I wouldn't be surprised at all. (00:54:27) Yeah and thought about that but that's probably gonna be a hello your next. Go ahead please with your question. Yes. I have a comment about one of your previous comments and a question. You said earlier that the preservation of the original foreign pronunciation was more prevalent in the u.s. Than in the UK you happen to pick a particular world, but I've never heard pronounced in the UK as Buffett just about example. I assume any way to go on because you made the other comment about TV having such an impact on the way we speak and though at the way that the media presents arguments should we set some standards? For announces and people on TV such as done on the BBC. (00:55:11) Okay. Let me take your first comment first a night my only my only answer to that is that I was in England last September and indeed I was invited by very educated person to attend a Buffett so it sounded like that to me. So I would take that at least in this one person as being a good a good example, you might have been able to furnish other more common examples the as far as stand its most indeed. I think there ought to be standards and I think most broadcasting networks and the public radio and so forth do indeed have standards and style books and that kind of thing that they expect their announces to hold to and indeed will take quite seriously probably more seriously than almost any of us do the correct pronunciation of words and foreign languages and foreign words and for foreign dignitaries and so forth. So all the announcers Evan owner very very serious about this but indeed I think there ought to be a standard whether there ought to be if your question implies that there ought to be some National Standard some sort of something like the BBC I'd be a little bit more nervous about that I think (00:56:22) and let me tell you when we make mistakes. We certainly hear about it from our listeners. Go ahead please your next probably our last call. Yes. I wonder if you would agree with me that the current term Ms. Should not take a period because it is not an abbreviation. It is a made up word and I noticed that everyone is using a period with it and it seems to me that that's going to go into common usage and shouldn't the other thing is I wearing them we'll just have to get his comment on that briefly because we're almost out of (00:56:48) time. Okay, that one has not settled down yet. You see it both ways. My impulse would be probably that it would not take the period but in terms of usage, you're seeing it both ways, and I've seen it in dictionaries both ways. (00:57:02) What do you think about the New York Times refusal? Use the term altogether. (00:57:06) I think it's rather foolish, (00:57:09) right? And on that note. We shall have to conclude because we run out of time. Thank you very much. Dr. Thomas Pearson all for coming in today. Dr. Pearsall is head of the Department of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota's st. Paul campus. A lot of people left on the line. Sorry, we couldn't get to you today. But that often happens on these Saturday noon broadcast. Thanks to engineer Bill Wareham and Dorothy Hanford for answering the telephones today briefly the weather calling for mostly sunny skies and cool temperatures across the state of Minnesota today highs will range from the middle 50s to the lower 60s. Then tonight lows will be in the upper 30s to mid 40s Sunday again tomorrow with mid 60's to mid 70s forecast Statewide weekend is made possible by economics laboratory products and services for household institutional and Industrial Cleaning worldwide. This is Bob potterpaul. Today's programming on ksjn is sponsored in part by Alan in honor of Del C's birthday. It'll be sunny in the Twin Cities today. The high should be around 60 and possibly a little bit warmer than that tomorrow. This is ksjn in Minneapolis. And st. Paul. It's one o'clock.