We are going to be talking this morning about writing the use of language the origins of words and my guess is professor Charles Norman from Macalester College where he is director of the learning skills center. Nice to have you on the other day to tell me before we get started with the the interesting in of the purpose of the discussion. It wasn't learning skills center in what you do there. Well, we've existed for almost 20 years now. Our main function is to bring students to the level of achievement that they want to come to an end.We like to think that if there if they come in and feel very weak and students and we we bring them out of that it on the other hand if there be students and one of va students we help with that. We're we're kind of a tune up service kind of thing. I trust is based on the assumption that almost anyone who changes station in life has to go to college even College of graduate school probably has home every other to feel less secure in until we speak to that lack of security part 1But it's a it's a service that all colleges and universities now have it's very rare to find an institution that doesn't have learning Skill Center or something like that. I see. All right, and you aren't the director that and you teach writing basically. All right. All right. All right. Well, let's get on to some of the things that we want to talk about. I will open up the phone lines at 2276 thousand if you have a question for Charles Norman and other parts in Minnesota are toll free numbers one 800-652-9700. Everybody has questions about how the language is used where words come from and so on. That's what we're going to be talking about today or if you're interested in writing. You can maybe get some tips from Charles Farm in about 2 how to get going and how to complete the project you're interested in.The political season is upon us as we all know with the precinct caucus is coming up in Minnesota next Tuesday. So I thought we might start with getting attached at a little bit about some of the common words that we use in political discussions caucus being the first one that comes to mind. What's the origin of that word Charles? Well, there's some argument about to its origin. One theory is that it's essentially a Greek word that comes through Latin and old high German and means a drinking vessel. which makes a certain kind of sense when you think about the what people behave a cock says well in the tradition of cooks is going back into the nineteenth-century caucus has been around a hundred fifty years. And while we like to talk about the smoke-filled rooms are the back rooms I suspect. There's more. We're drinking goes on and smoking at least in the Glory Days of yore actually the John shorty who used to do. I program my ologies through public radio argues that that's probably not true that it's not an English were they must don't have it as matter fact, if you look into the Oxford English Dictionary witches are great scholarly dictionary. They say it's a word that comes out of New England very early 19th century and they just threw up their hands and say they don't know where it comes from at the shop. She already argued that it does essentially a Algonquin word, Virginia Algonquin word. Meaning of counselor or Elder are wise man and that this didn't originally Was a collection of wise men pull together in Boston first caucus occurred upstairs in the second or third floor of a dwelling and it was a group of political leaders who got together to discuss political prospects only we know that some of the people who go to the caucus are going to be a conservative some who go will be liberals. Where do we get those words conservative and liberal or conservative from the idea of people who? Conserve resource resource is Traditions elements of culture are like to think they do. What argument is Topher liberal comes from the word root in Latin means free, but it's come also to mean. Los enough in the political sense and outside the political arena with generosity when we talked about liberality, we liberality liberal giving that's what it was is generous giving free giving it rude but also generous giving so there's those two cents is that I think liberals would both Ascent to go to send to First the idea of services on freedom and secondly a certain abscess on generosity the origin of the use of language and writing and if you have a question, our phone number is 227-6002 in cities Elsewhere One 800-652-9700 within the state of Minnesota. If you're listening in one of the surrounding states, you can call us directly at area code 612-227-6001 personal waiting with a question already. Hi there you're on the air. Yes, I have a question about the use of language. It kind of a I wonder if it's correct that are so many people scientifically on TV. I have got to do something that sounds of proof that they said I have got it would be awfully clumsy attacked by those acceptable ways of doing that using that. Words that way I would say not that kind of a situation to God is redundant I have to do something says what you mean just as clearly as I have got to do something. I must do something perhaps would he be even more economical more streamlined? Is there a difference. Now he mentioned that to the caller mentioned that he hears this on television? And I wonder if there isn't a different standard for what you use in spoken English versus what you would write to say that I've got to go get the weather right now that that that might not be Silent Sound quite as horrible as to write something like that might not absolutely it's hard to say what spoken English ought to be it's easier to say what it is. My own feeling is at since World War II. There's been an enormous democratization of language in general partly because of Because of political activity to that have opened up. mainstream Activity 2 more and more different kinds of Americans with different kinds of linguistic backgrounds. The other Allen is just a power of Television if if you put a dozen people on television or radio who speak relatively colloquially and how they have far more effect on the language at large and someone who writes very formally and I think over the past 40 years or so, we've seen the effect of that colloquial speech to speech of everyday social intercourse seems more and more to be taking hold in our culture, which I think is relatively good so that does so it says on the one hand that there is a is a spoken language in the spoken language is something or I'll prove it to It also says it's the spoken language is powerful and now it's pulling it's pulling are on our retinas course in that direction there's a difference but it may be that is so it's leveling out Charles Darwin is with us and we talked about the use of language in the origin of words and maybe I'll get back to some of my political ends. Maybe you got some political ones that you curious about. Let's go to your question, please. Hello there. I was like trying to come in on three words worship generation and propitiation. And the reason I want that is that people often say that the Chinese ranchester worshippers. I claim that they were not wear capris with a thick and still do I know who that is. I'm not exactly sure how to how to respond to that. supposed to my response is that worship is but attitude that you direct to God and veneration isn't an attitude YouTube you the right to the to the old not necessarily old people but to the old to the traditional that which form which is worthy of great respect because it represents a that from which all value flows. Okay and a comment on the other one propitiate. Okay. Let's go onto another call your high. Yes. I have a question. Everyone should look into his problems or everyone should look into their problems when I was in school years ago. Well, I guess it would be his problem but I see so much in the papers. And what's your read that use the plural are problems, which is correct. well Everyone is technically singular and so normally I suppose you say everyone hears, but everyone need not always be single other times when you use it in the context where the the rest of the sentence makes it clear that you're trying to say something at this point. I think there's a more important problem that's coming up though today in the end is exemplified by your sentence and that is whether he has makes it a suitable all purpose of universal pronoun and the more and more I think we're agreeing with so masculine, but it doesn't represent the linguistic needs of our of our people and so we try to find ways to avoid using internet since So we sometimes throw the whole sentence into the plural to avoid saying he is we say there. even if it's ungrammatical, sometimes I have simply to avoid the resorting to the masculine gender of the better way probably just don't throw the whole sentence in them for Wednesday instead of saying everyone see all of us or something like that. Would you prefer if you wanted to avoid the gender problem? Would you prefer to say to to make it plural as to as opposed to saying his / her? Yes, I was dreadfully awkward, isn't it? It is awkward. I think it's awkward just to force the plural. I think if you say everyone blah blah there most of us would agree that if we're being careful about language attest clumsy to therefore we try to get the subject in the plural as well as the 09. That agrees with us. Okay moving on to another question. Hello there. You're on the air with Charles Norman people on NPR listen to that a lot pronounce it and it goes C8 and negotiations and it drives me crazy and I wonder how we can get them to stop doing it. And the second question is more important. I have a 9 year old nephew who has been writing stories since he was 6 and I'm dying to get them published. How do I go about doing it? Well, I pronounce to go she ate negotiate so I don't know how you change the behavior of. People on the radio. I'm not sure it's even important if enough people say negotiate didn't negotiate it will be it. So it's not something that the Republic is going to deliver down or by about publishing. Children stories that's not easy to do for a lot of reasons. So mainly because the competition is fierce. I would go to your local community library or downtown library in and go to the reference room of the periodical room. Cruise sources like Writer's Digest to find out what is available at the market isn't who you might get in contact with I have a niece who is published something like twenty one place. Mostly one-act plays and she's only 22 years old and a good deal of those Republic when she was a young teenager in the way. She did that was to be involved since they were place to be involved with a theater group in the theater group is self. I know that is to say sum-sum unit larger than she was had the clout to get her interprint. So it may be that it's something like that would help to have your child be involved with some sort of children's writing group for the leader of the group might have some connections or might even be able to pull together a number of children stories into the manuscript is worth submitting. Let me bring in a questionnaire about writing and maybe that'll prompt some additional discussion on this from the from the collars since since you are teacher rating among other things any any ideas on how a person can either get started on or get over the block. They might be stuck on in a short story a magazine article play a novel poem. Whatever it is. He might be working on and just can't get over the hump. Well, this is what interests me the most perhaps about writing. I've taught creative writing for a bigger part of my career and it is dealing with students who are stuck is probably more important than the other kinds of things that you do. I think the first thing that you have to get through to a student at some point is it writing is an unnatural act We we speak and listen because of the way were socialized and you learn those things that are mother's knee but reading and writing her our school arts. And even those of us who write all the time. We'll find X when it doesn't feel comfortable. I think the first thing that we have to do is to divest ourselves of the need to continually be perfect when we write and I think it makes no difference with the writing of the Business Report or a letter on the job or a short story or play it that we have to have some part of the writing experience as freeform the spontaneous for that reason. I try to convince my rotors to always maintain a journal have some kind of writing its private for they can let it all hang out before they don't have to write with any kind of standard in mind the writing to themselves already for themselves. And the writing is Freeland spontaneously as possible. So that's what that something is a part from the from the individual effort. We're not talking about that the given short story with that short story that lets you know, you've written 15 pages and now you're stuck. I think one of the first things to do is realize that you don't have to continue to write it you can put it aside for a while an hour a day a week and you can even try to do other things with it. If your if you've bog down writing try talkin it into a tape recorder or if the free flow isn't working tried doing an outline of people don't take out last very seriously these days especially with respect to writing fiction say no but it's not a bad idea. Once you've had the first first flush of inspiration to us to try to sit down and bring some structure and of what you're doing and then right from that so that you're moving back and forth between different approaches. I think we're a lot of us get stuck as when we try to do the same thing the same way day in and day out without any Variety in these kind of things. Perhaps you can shake up your message so that you loosen up and fast, you know that core of naturalness it might exist in your writing Charles Darwin from Macalester College talking about writing and the use of language today and we have a question from you next total there. And then there's the pronunciation of nuclear into my basic concern and I would guess that your guests would be particularly equipped to comment on. The product of our high school's back in my time and another state we diagram sentences. We were drilled in spelling we had those activities. I had two years of Latin on the Year in Spanish in high school in German and college in Japanese in the Army and took a short course in French, but with the decline in foreign languages, it would seem like a lot of students might not know their native tongue as well. And when they show up as freshman in college, I will call that I signed up by choice for a person who's called Grandma zero because I wanted to leave you and I hope you had to get up at 7 in the morning because the score on the test. Well, I was educated somewhat the same way I I came through. High school after work, just after World War II in another state Kentucky as a matter of fact, and we were taught rather conservatively. And thoroughly. I thought I wasn't very good student, but I did seem to learn the kinds of things about language that I was expected to learn. And I went on not long after that to teach in that state. And in the teaching I did for a decade was similarly. Rigorous and our students were expected to have a foreign language and I taught a lot of very basic and conservative grammar. I talked to him to to diagram sentences in so long and I enjoy doing it and I do to this day. However, and then I think this is the number I would offer in terms of their ability to write I didn't see that though though students back in the late forties. My I started my career 1949 those Tunes back in the late 40s early 50s wear any better prepared in terms of writing then students today who don't have very often that kind of background. I think they're what permits are student to write. Well, it's just a a general Literate sense and I'm going to broaden the definition of literacy a little bit here instead of referring to reading and writing I want to make as a kind of respect for the language not to not that reverential respect going to rayshun that some of us prize perhaps but a good ear and hear that that loves to hear the language that gets a kick out of a good Storyteller on radio or television brings off his or her story that I think that today we've learned that people write pretty much in terms of the way they hear the language and so it's probably more important for them to hear. Good English and by that I don't necessarily mean English is perfectly formed in English. It represents the clever and throw use of language. Then it is for them to be able to do a lot of abstract manipulation of grammar and other formalities of alignment. I love that sort of thing. And I love to teach it and I wish all my students enjoyed it. They don't and for that reason I really don't do it very often. I don't know. I don't teach on the high school ever ever anymore. And I don't know whether I would if I were on that level but certainly on the college level we like for them to to study foreign languages. That's a great Boon to what we do when we're teaching writing. But we don't have much time to do that sort of thing. So we we try to have them write and write some more and right yet more. That's that's what we're teaching by. What would you say that the freshmen that you deal with that McAllister have come in contact with diagramming sentences at all out of high school or not Charles Norman with us today. Go ahead. What's your question for him? The lady that called about having her child stories published. There's something in Minnesota called the high school writer that any high school kid can send in submissions to poetry or anything and they consider them for publication. Like I think it comes out every month and it may very well be something for elementary school children as well. And if there isn't she might look into starting one. Well and being ambitious project in thanks for the tip. It's called the high school writer and maybe that called her can look for it at the library or from her local public school. Go ahead, please your next question for Charles Norman. Yes. I have several things that I mentioned. I'd like to know the correct use of the word importantly, which is you so much these days and I also how can we get rid of expressions like the bottom line which everybody uses they have more than one bottom line before you hang up. Why don't you use the word importantly as you believe it to be misused. Give us a clue of what you're driving at their political commentators and the news people say that something is coming up, which is important. They'll say that it's important way. I love well, I'm not I'm not sure quite the quite what it is. You want me to respond to I'll say this. However, I have a friend who teaches McAllister Susan told to rights. Good things for good people and she's made a point with her students over the years tell him never to use the word significant or meaningful when they're writing about something that if it's worth writing about it is significant whether or not depends on what they say about it. I suppose I could extend her comments to to embrace so importantly it was as well that though sometimes when if I Can sort of guess what you're getting at sometimes when you're you're talking about a series of issues or a series of occurrences and you're trying to form your mark so that there's a kind of climactic structure to what you're saying you want to end. Well, you want to end with a a flourish a kind of tiny peroration that sometimes a little adverb like importantly lets the audience know not only that you come to something of significance but there that you're about ready to wrap it up then, you know, you could say finally I suppose or you could even say here comes the bottom line, but no you say and most importantly the about the bottom line and that that kind of thing is seems like an abomination. I don't know. It's a it comes out of the language of finance and they seem to be in the saddle these days. I guess you you have to give them their day. They are. We think about the bottom line is part of our political world more and more all of a sudden newspapers have a section on another Marketplace or business. And so that kind of metaphorical language seems to be very very much with us. I guess it doesn't bother me I have my assumption is it'll probably go away after a while. It does happen. Doesn't it freezes come into being there their use for quite a while to me than to everybody was saying, you know if they would have a Some sort of meeting to deal with were the results of the meeting weren't weren't to be anticipated soon. But much later they would say that whatever and she would be down the pike. Everything was down the pike or down the road a bit. I haven't heard that in the last few years, but for a while it was every bit as ubiquitous an expression is the bottom line irritating but it went away the expression isn't there is off. Maybe maybe they took up saying the bottom line is I'm all right. Go ahead with your question for Charles Norman. You're on the air great. I'm really irritated by the loss of the subjunctive. I hear people say if I was going to do that. This has to be the loss of the subjunctive thing. I if I work and I wonder if you have any reservations about that will I feel somewhat the way you do I enjoy reading the subjunctive. it represents a subtlety of expression in a certain degree of polish that I like to see and in writing whether it's belletristic writing than what we associate with fine literature or just the writing of someone who fires a memorandum across The building that you however, the subjunctive is dying out and in American English and there's not a whole lot we can do about it. Now. There is a difference. However between saying if I was going to the fair and saying if I were going to the fair you mean two different things if And if I were going Express is more. Clearly and more carefully that you're not likely to go but it's problematical anyway, and then here's what you might do. If you did go. Where is if I was going to the fair and play how much stronger censored indeed you're likely to do that but those distinctions don't seem to matter to very many people if it's disappearing to a considerable extent in formal writing. The usage that I deplore disappearing is so there's just this distinction between would and should. Kristen saw which would be preferable to the most American Writers. I would want to see what you have written or I should want to see what you have written. I think most American Writers today was how I would want to see what you have written. Technically. I should want to see what you were written for all sorts of subtle reasons is preferable if you take seriously the idea of a subjunctive or a potential mode or some other how to send text with it. Carefully expresses situations that are statements of sheer fact But it's hard to hang on to that and another again. I think the fact that so much of our discourse now is spoken rather than written and it we really are beginning to look to newscaster broadcaster telecasters setting popular standards, which means the great majority of and that's you can't argue with it. Really you can argue about what you like, but that it's happening is a historical fact in the making a simple rule on the appropriate YouTube shooting wood. Well or isn't it simple? Well, it's not support. American English in English and general doesn't have a a very proper future tense. You you start building shouldn't would or any of those expressions with Will and she'll wood is a kind of retrograde form of Will and should is a retrograde form of shell. We are taught to say future tense. I shall you. Will he she or it will and then if you have some sort of expression that goes beyond simple Futurity and you're trying to express volition you change the trash out. I will and then you change the you will to you shall but the terribly subtle you give me. You can't really express it. In a simple rule. What does the expression I offered earlier? I think I said something like I should want you to go or I should want you to write something like that. The reason why you switch from from wood to should say that is because would they want both expressed volition the desire to do something to change something and it's redundant to use the woods expression volition and the one expression volition. So you change the word should I start a simple rule? I mean I did and by the time you track your way through all the various Possibilities with that you've got 50 or 60 60 different ways of saying exactly the same thing with these subtle shadings. It's it's hard to it's hard to administer. I think the rule is never use either one. If you're on the air, I'll tell you when you're when you do a program like this and you really are you just think I'm going to be so glad when I don't want I'm not doing this anymore and I'll just get me away. I'll just shut my mouth and not saying let's move on quickly, LOL. You're on the air. Yes, please 5 today. Why do we use the word, you know, you know, when was originated I didn't remember hearing it when I was a boy 15 years ago. well I Was A Boy 50 years ago, and I didn't hear it either, but I did hear and I used you see. Not too long ago. I had a woman who was in a class of my news about my age. Ask the question. Why do young people in fact you say? Why do black people say, you know so often and she was professional woman and she never said, you know, she was quite a middle-aged middle-class all all the sorts of things that most of us on either side of this microphone or I suppose at any rate. I should have her was this and I think this is The answer that you know is a marker it's a mannerism. It's mostly associated with youth not necessarily black youth. So we associate the expression with black youth so often I think because when we report the your comments are black athletes who tend to be young when you're much more than they tend to still use the markers of adolescence in late adolescence. And you know, it's one of those markers as I said when I was quite young we said you see and we said it exactly the same way my parents had fits over that they were teachers and so they were continually trying to refine my manner of speaking and I guess by the time I was fifteen they sort of knocked it out of me, but but it was there and it was something that I had over, I was very aware of it by the way party because of the number part of the cuz I was hearing it in other people but Most people who say you know today tend to be teenagers are people in their early twenties, you know, you rarely see somebody in their thirties saying, you know when he's supposed got started, you know, yeah. Oh, I don't know like 10 years ago or more. I think more by roughing the Casual recollection of it's becoming such a common markers. Maybe the early 70s. But I feel about that. That's kind of The Adolescents Quillen to the bottom line among middle-aged professionals some years ago. I was teaching at the University of Hawaii experiment. They went out into the community to Listen to Hawaiian American Samoa in Chinese Japanese Filipino Youth and older people in that they were supposed to record samples of their speech. The issue was that in the state of Hawaii. They have a lot of difficulty trying to teach people to write because it clashes of culture. This is where is the most urban areas United States and so one of things I want to demonstrate to these people all of whom were teachers of writing is that if you listen to two people one who represents the teenage culture in the other who's genuinely middle-aged or approaching it you're going to hear two entirely different kinds of English and they found it to be true, especially with the Hawaiian. Could you speak a pigeon? At the teenagers are almost unintelligible. You can understand what they're saying. But if you go to to that same teenagers family. His or her mother is going to speak something closer to Standard English. And as I get older more and more that the Adolescent markers our job because they can't function in a competitive economic and social environment unless you talk like not only that. But the people who run the society and I think that's where you get the that's why you see that, you know fade-out I told the class of mine some years ago that when we get our teenagers at McAlister they come in saying, you know, and then we educate them and they leave saying basically which is as much of a mannerism as you know, it irritates me just as much Here's another caller with a question for Charles Norman. Go ahead please you're on the air. Their or his her in there and everyone and also the other little thing that came up recently about should Ward and shallan. So far. One thing is the English really doesn't have the the senior impersonal program pronoun that you got in French and German. You haven't got full and you haven't got none and is rushing you got a third one that stands for the human beings and their can anyone get to see you or no? And then also when it comes to the other should wood business until the problem is for all of those expressions. Like I have dropped to you know, and I showed her I would or something is it in English than Mortals have died out German you still have to use the most if you're going to speak it's decent for us in the same thing is true in in French. Metron okay. Thanks for your comment. I would let you know English is a peculiar language are Mortals are dying out some of the other grammatical markers at it's worth pointing out that we can operate without them fresh. And so this may not be future tense, but it's future time. I'll catch the train no, forget that start over by the train arrives tomorrow. If you're looking at the the simple grammatical construction that verbal drives me nuts present tense sentence clearly expresses Futurity. Our language can do that. That's one reason why we're losing Motors. I think it's because we're pretty efficient without them. I was taught what they were a thousand years ago, but I forgotten them a little yeah. Well, depending on what you're trying to do to be a wood could might should write 12 minutes before the hour and it's your turn to talk to Charles Norman. Go ahead. Please have two Reeds Orwell's politics and the English language. all right, you have a specific question ma'am instead of by which comes out of Contra rangate in at this point in time that type of thing that's become part of our language Department of obfuscating other words, you're feeling about the rising and literacy in this country and also I consider that the main part of National Defense and also what grades K through 12 call comprehension, which is not true comprehension. Okay. I think that's probably enough to on there. Do you think there is rising A literacy in the United States? First of all? I'm not sure. It is hard to it's hard to answer that without doing some sort of quantitative study. I'm I'm not much of a quantitative study cuz I don't know how to do those given the line of work today chosen for myself, but I guess I would be more comfortable with the notion that there's a change in standards of a literacy. Not that they are being driven up or down but but that we We're governed and we're actuated. But different priorities in we were a few years ago when we really have been sort of overwhelmed by government and business the values of government and business Intrigue us to look at the look of what's happening with her primary campaigns right now. We're following primary complaint campaigns so closely in this particular year that to compare our interest was perhaps what it was 20 years ago is is it's not the same ball game and I think that's that determines a lot of over what happens to our language. I suspect that government and business speakers of English have enough prestige in our society right now to change the way we communicate at least vocally. I don't know what you do about that. I guess my feeling is if it's truly abominable you those of us who teach English try to laugh at all. If I didn't mean I think to laugh at it is probably the best way to deal with it. After awhile you hate you have to accept some of it at you just not going to go away. Probably unless you laugh at it sufficiently. We laughed at a lot of the things that came along with Watergate and I think Did pretty good job on that the last see where former President Nixon is being rehabilitated and maybe there's some of that language will be rehabilitated see what up. Charles. Norman is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul were talking about the origin of words that use of language and writing and we've got about 10 minutes left. Let's take your question now. Hello there really retired from profession, which I knew the language and I'm in it was not particularly. Creative, you know, I'm entering a field where I will be answering letters possibly giving some speeches possibly some creative writing and I were wondering if I were to come out to your lab if there if I could be updated I can certainly give you things to read. Good to have at your elbow. I think that most of us who are literate and want to be more literate probably can do ourselves the best pop-up possible favor just by having books around a refer to You can never learn at least not in the final quarter of the twentieth century enough rules to keep you safe the language changes too much and you're just you suggested in the way you phrase your comment that but you're moving from one world into another and that's that's frequently a big part of the problem that we have is language. We we deal with English one way for a percentage of the day and another way for another percentage of the day, so we almost have to have resources to fall back on if you came out to my office. I'll be happy to talk to you, but I'd probably way book titles at you and have you have you see if if that's not the best way to help you rather than have people come to your office. Would you want to leave an address that they could write to you at? Sure, they could just write to Charles Norman the learning skills center Macalester College St. Paul. 55105 Precinct. All right, let's move on to your question for Charles Norman either. question I think it was used in places where we would say might but I was wondering if you'd ever heard that and I had a second comment regarding the phrase 12 noon, which I hear a lot and it's kind of like his fingernails on a Blackboard 12:00 midnight. Or you can leave all the 12 is what you're suggesting. guilty and I Could help in rehabilitating some of her news personalities if you're very good at all. I guess both of them represent a kind of excess. The first is Texas, excess and that's against the second is broadcast. Isaac says, I don't know what's up. I never heard of no. Then we should just save noon and midnight and Skip 12 or just say 12 +. Skip the noon. All right. Well, I'll try to learn but old dogs, you know, let's move on to your question here by their Charles rooms listing. Recyclist. He believes that we need this badly in our Global Communications today that in order to prevent being misunderstood. We must become more and more precise having had some experience myself for almost half-a-century working with medical Publications. So forth. This word and I am so happy cuz I work with people who are MD PHD stand someone we might spend an hour discussing one word and its etymology until very happy to be able to say. Yes the words we use is the one we wanted in. This is a reason and I'm sure there's going to be having more and more but I would also like to say I'm disappointed in what you had to say about the generic terms, I think. Open the day when we really had a good education in our schools. Just took this as second nature that this did not mean the masculine and I think it's his leg and I think the more of the people I told the situation but there was some particular things we're hearing right now and silver politicians thoughts about controlling our own destiny and change to point out that this is a contradiction in terms. If you're going to use the word destiny, you can't possibly control it feels in public by saying these things to understand the meaning of words before they use them. All right, that's about enough. I think for that one. What about Edwin Newman and what you put your feeling on sort of precision that he recommends is are called her support human rights. He writes according to the I appreciate that. He holds up to standards for others. Oh, I wish I could I wish we all could write like I'm a new man. I wish we could teach people to write like Edwin Newman. You know, I guess my response is it it's a little like demonstrating the street against nuclear weapons, you know, you can do that and you can do that thinking that you're going to make a difference. So maybe you do and maybe you don't we won't know for 50 years, but I feel the same is true about our are you supplying was the language is moving in a direction other than the direction are most recent caller would would prefer I deplore that it's I don't know that I'm permissive. I think that I hold up standards of clarity and precision for my students. We might disagree about what Clarity is and what Precision is, I think if I had to discuss the word for an hour before I decided whether to use it or not, I would I would save the hour but not using it at all and moving on to something else if you had said, I mean there's there's the elements of subtlety in that sort of Treatment to clean a minute to fly in the face of efficiency questions for Charles Norman today. Hi there your next Tuesday and they'll came to be dropping. How did they evolve into using you with some sort of a political movement to increase democracy in any other languages? So sure I can I can really answer that to. All right. Well, let's just use our time efficiently and move on to another question then hello there when you're near the end. What's your call noticed in this program in another's Reese's certain resistance to the evolution of the English language, which is the means by which we received at its current Beauty and and used at what do you think the meaning of that resistance is and has it in fact play the evolution of the language throughout its its course. Well, I think of his evolution Language, is it one of those personal things? We haven't we hang on to the language of our youth we hang on to the language of Arsenal the significant ceremonies and occurrences that make our lives meaningful. I found it very difficult myself. I'm in my middle fifties to see language change and get away from me hit it has two but it hurts frequently and I can understand why people would want language to us to never change it. So enormously consoling for that most personal of elements of one's life to remain the same. Unfortunately, it won't Well sure. I'm afraid we've out ran out of time. Thank you very much for coming in. We welcome been very interesting and informative. I want to ask you one final question. I see you have a you have a dictionary with you don't have to be hurt you and have to refer to it. But what what dictionary do you recommend the American Heritage dictionary first edition? I like that better than others, but thanks a lot st. Paul. He is director of the learning skills center at McAlister. Weekend is made possible by Ecolab Incorporated and its Chemlawn subsidiary. Stay tuned. This is Bob Potter speaking.