This post is literally better than chocolate (or how we misuse ‘literally’)

Posted on 23 February, 2012 by Frithahookway

Ever eaten something so spicy that it literally set your mouth on fire? That must have been traumatic. Or been so mad that you literally exploded? Talk about a mood killer.

The problem with our wee friend ‘literally’ is that it has lost its literal meaning. So often you’ll hear about something that ‘literally’ happened. In actual fact, unless it happened exactly the way it’s being described, the situation is figurative.

Literally, by definition, means ‘exactly and without exception’. However, since the early 20th Century, the term has been widely used to as an intensifier of words like ‘ virtually’ or ‘in effect’. So unless you didn’t stop wriggling for a full eight hours, you didn’t literally toss and turn all night. Nor is it likely, no matter how hungry you might be, that you will ever end up literally eating a horse.

As is expected though, with the way our language tends to evolve, it’s unlikely that the correct term ‘figuratively’ will ever beat out a hundred years of misuse and come back into vogue.

Sigh. You win, society.

But next time you’re out for a Spicy Chicken Masala, just for fun, try: “My mouth is figuratively on fire!”. You may get the odd look or two, but at least you’re doing it correctly. You’re also mixing it up with an alliteration. Literacy points all round.

Understanding irony (or how Alanis Morrisette got it so wrong)

Posted on 14 December, 2011 by Frithahookway

“An old man turned ninety-eight. He won the lottery and died the next day”. Not really ironic is it? Unfortunate, yes and rotten timing too, not to mention a rather morbid opening line to the Alanis Morrisette’s song Ironic.

“It’s like rain on your wedding day”. Nope, not ironic either. Rather, just really bad luck.

“A no smoking sign on your cigarette break”. If the sign in question hung in an actual smoker’s lounge , then yes, this would be ironic. But otherwise, no, this is not irony, just annoying.

Really the only thing ironic in Ironic is that none of the situations she describes are, in fact, ironic.

So if Alanis got it all wrong, what then is ironic? There are three types of irony – verbal, dramatic and situational, each quite different from the other.

Verbal irony is when someone says something, but means another – there’s a bit of a confusion between verbal irony and sarcasm, as they cross over a little. For example “I’d rather pull out my own teeth” or “clear as mud” are both example of verbal irony. The irony is only recognisable by our given/stereotypical knowledge of the objects in the sentence, or the context being referred to. It is understood that mud is not clear and pulling teeth is painful, which take these sentences from being literal into the realm of irony.

Dramatic irony is a bit of a weird one. It is primarily used in a narrative where one of the people observing the situation is privy to information that at least one of the other characters is unaware. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, we have Romeo thinking Juliet is dead and killing himself when the audience knows she is just taken a swig of sleeping potion, which is dramatic irony. Similarly, in Oedipus the King the reader knows that Oedipus is the murderer he’s looking for; however his conscious self, Creon, and Jocasta do not. Or if you’re after a more modern example, The Truman Show showcases dramatic irony, because everyone apart from Truman knows he’s the main character of a reality show.

Situational irony, the type that is most commonly misused, involves a situation where the actions end up having an effect that is the opposite from what was intended or expected. Often situational irony is confused with coincidence, an obvious chain of events or something just being funny.

“We turned up to work on Friday wearing the same dress! How ironic!” – No, just a coincidence. But also kinda cute.

“My pen had been running out of ink but I took it into the exam anyway, and it ran out mid-essay. How ironic!” – No, just an obvious outcome to your pen showing signs of running out of ink and also terrible exam prep.

“This fire-extinguisher shoots out fire balls. How ironic!” Boom. Situational irony to a tee.

So with our newfound knowledge of irony we could perhaps rework a few of Morissette’s lines. Take “it’s a traffic jam when you’re already late”. If we try:

“It’s like a traffic jam when you’re already late to a political summit on road congestion”.

Is it as lyrically catchy? No.

Ironic? Through and through.

Burnt or burned? The participle conundrum (or how to talk about your toast correctly)

Posted on 1 December, 2011 by rebekahguy

Did you learn about linguistics at school? To be more precise, are you over the age of 27? If the answer to either of those questions is “yes”, then you might know about participles. If you answered “no’” then you probably don’t. If you answered “yes” and then “no”, or vice versa, well… I don’t know. I’d hoped that wouldn’t happen.

The difference between learned and learnt, or burned and burnt, lies within the scope of a tiny but important English variant: the past participle tense. It’s created with the use of participles – your learnts, burnts, spilts and lepts.

If you’re unfamiliar with the use of participles it’s because these days, due to the downfall of the institution which I like to call Speaking Correctly, and because humans have learnt (HA!) that a fewer number of variables is a better number of variables (especially when the people who like those variables are puny and easily physically bested), those words mentioned aren’t seen as holding differing meanings (so don’t believe the first few entries on Google Answers). But they do! Example:

I learned French.

I’ve learnt French.

When you say you learned something, the meaning conveyed is not only that the learning event was in the past, but that it’s probably finished now. The ‘learnt’ meaning is that yes, the learning happened in the past, and its application may still exist today and in the future – maybe you’re still learning it. Probably in that case you’d add another word to the sentence: “I’ve learnt French before”; similarly, “I’ve burnt toast before, and I plan to do it in the future, many times”. Been is a participle of the verb to go, as in “I’ve been to Disneyland before, and I plan to do it in the future, many times” compared with “I went to Disneyland when I was five”.

Surprise Educational Experience: Apparently, the word cookt used to exist: “I’ve cookt for my mother for the last fifteen years, and she still won’t acknowledge my brilliance” (the cooking started in the past and will continue, as will the lack of maternal respect). Sadly, that wee gem isn’t around anymore (although I plan to use it).

There is one definite rule with participles – they need an auxiliary verb. That’s just some lingo you can throw around if you want to seem smart, cos it really just means you need to use have or had before the participle, like in the above examples. Otherwise it won’t make sense. Well, it will make sense to those who don’t care, but to us puny and easily physically bested dorks it’s tantamount to gibberish.

One last thing – learned, burned, leaped, spilled, blessed, and all those other –ed words can be used as present participle qualifiers. Now, that sounds dumb, but really it means that you can add a syllable to the -ed word and make it describe a thing in a very scholarly-sounding way, like this: “Queen’s Brian May is actually a very learn-ed man”, or “Indeed, this French toast has bless-ed us all”, or “Yikes, this stove has burn-ed me”… VERY cool.

Rooves or roofs? (or how to make a writer die inside)

Posted on 12 October, 2011 by rebekahguy

How do you say it: roofs or rooves? Even I’m confused about my preference. I know that the spelling for rooves looks ridiculous, and that the sound of roofs makes me die a bit, but that’s all I know. Time for some delving…

The Oxford English Dictionary (it’s the George Clooney of all source material – everything it says is correct) explains that the norm for pluralising words that end in /f/ is –ves; so wives, lives, knives etc. BUT there are six and only six /f/ words (titter) that have irregular pluralisation and just need –s: beliefs, chiefs, dwarfs, gulfs, proofs, and our pal roofs. Also, no dwarves eh? Controversial. But it’s the OED, so it’s the truth.

Thus, we’ve cleared up the spelling. Unfortunately, if you don’t recognise the OED as an authority then I can’t help you at all. But there must be a reason the roofs/rooves confusion arose in the first place, right…?

Well, FOLKS caused it, didn’t they! Grammatical Pet Peeve #1: Usage suggesting a different spelling, then people, lazy, lazy people, changing the accepted spelling willy nilly (remember that from the last post? Yeah, it’s a theme). Of course we say rooves because of the aforementioned dying-inside, native English speaker’s reaction to trying to combine that /f/ sound with an /s/ immediately after – but there are five other words that have this sound too! Granted, I’ve never tried to say chieves or proves but dwarves coulda been a contendah. For what reason? I don’t know! Silliness!

Tune in next week when I’ll be trying to staple jelly to the wall…

Hate speech (marks), (or how not to use bunny ears)

Posted on 30 September, 2011 by rebekahguy

We talk; we write. Sometimes we write the things we say. And sometimes we write things that are approximations, or that are ironic, or that have many meanings. So of course the grammar gods would decide that all these things shall be indicated using the same symbols. Of which there are two kinds, and consistency is really the only rule. Nooooooo!

[The above is a basic rundown of what this blog post will be: some bold facts, then some examples, and lastly some panic-ridden statements that only add confusion and take away from any real resolution. You on board? Good.]

Speech marks. Inverted commas. Quotation marks. Bunny ears. “”. ‘’ – I’m going to call them bunnies so I’m not being biased towards one kind of usage. And also because I like bunnies. I also like to call them The Sluts of Grammar because they’re used all over the place, for heaps of different things, and I think they’re dirty. Oh and you might think that double and single ones are regional… Wrong. They may have started out that way, but, as is the wont of the bunny (and as you will see), things are now a big free-for-all.

They pop up in direct speech: “Hey you kids, get out of my boggy marsh!” (unnecessary bunnies, I’d have known that was direct speech via context); they’re used to show that the meaning of the word/s inside isn’t quite applicable: crystals somehow ‘know’ what shape to grown into (duh, I think I’m safe from being fooled here); they’re used to highlight irony: Charlie Sheen derives his “wisdom” from his vast experience in the industry (god, so obvious it’s about to punch you in the face); and they can indicate the names of artistic works: Frank Zappa’s ‘Weasels Ripped My Flesh’. That last one could mean an album or a song but you’d have to check consistency to know. GOOD. SIMPLE, THEN.

So, they all mean different things at different times and willy nilly seems to be the suggested dosage. You can use either the double ones or the single ones however you like, and they don’t even really hold much meaning within a context.

I know of three definite rules for these things:

- Use the same style for the beginning and end of whatever’s inside them (and thereby consistently within the wider text itself, pleaseandthankyou).

- In British English (the more commonly used variety in NZ) the full stop or comma comes after the bunny ears.

- If a bunny-able phrase appears inside a bunny-able phrase, use the other style, like this: “He just yelled out his window, ‘Hey you kids, get out of my boggy marsh’,” she explained.

My suggestion for bunnies is to be sparing. And, actually, that includes using your fingers to denote a bunny-able phrase. Meaning can be lost in both situations if you’ve got too many bunnies – they look cheap and off-putting. Much like sluts. You may notice I used italics where bunnies might have instead been used in this post, and that’s really where I think the solution lies, because slanty typing is so much prettier, and uses the actual words to connote the deeper meaning, not some candy-ass superscript. There, I said it.

And also, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was written with no quotation marks at all, even with plenty of direct speech in it. In Early Modern English quotation marks were used only to denote pithy comments, let’s go back to that! “There are no stupid people, only stupid punctuation”. Nice.