communication

Does English need colour and glamour?

~ K.L. Hill ~ 2 Comments

Color Abstract

For that matter, does English need favour, honour, flavour, savour and so many more -our words? Before our Australian, British and Canadian fellow English speakers panic – relax. This is just a point of discussion. From the standpoint of communication, it does seem that color, glamor, favor, flavor, honor and savor are satisfactory. Yes, these are the American spellings, but please note, US English generally prefers glamour. Thus the US -our/-or spellings are also not clearly defined.

Moreover, outside the US, the spellings are honourable but honorary (not honourary) so English in the UK is equally inconsistent. I must confess that I am a bit OCD and this type of untidiness is somewhat unnerving. While it is not going to end world hunger or solve world peace, I can’t help but ask whether we can come to some agreement on the lack of consistency and find some common ground. To add to this situation, some derivations of these words have already begun to lose the extra “u“ in the UK spelling. Note that the derivations of glamour and humour in the UK are glamorous and humorous, respectively. The combination of –our plus –ous appears to be a bit too much for all English speakers.

Noah Webster is basically responsible for many of the reforms in English spellings such as color ~ colour, center ~ centre and defense ~ defence. There has not been a real reform since then, in the early 1800’s, so it may be time to rethink some of these inconsistencies and redundancies. One argument for a reform is economic: producing text in all varieties of English can be very expensive.

Clearly there is a good argument for retaining the cultural flavo(u)r and historical development. English is richer for these details. Therefore I would like to ask you, do we really need “u” in our “our” words, or will “or” suffice for communicating on a worldwide basis?

Our native language is a very personal and emotional subject; language is identity. We all want to keep our individual identity and cultural perspectives. To quote a great observer of human nature on tradition and innovation:

An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven’t been done before. Mark Twain

¡Spanglish spoken aquí!

~ K.L. Hill ~ 4 Comments

EspanglishThe latest US census shows 53 million native Spanish speakers living in the US. That’s a population bigger than many developed countries in the world, and more than Spain’s 2014 population of 47 million. The largest concentration of Spanish speakers in the US are mainly in California and Florida, although they can also be found far north where some occasionally work as migrant field workers.

New Mexico has been a bilingual state since the area was first colonized by Don Juan de Oñate in 1598. Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in the US and the second oldest European-settled city after St Augustine in Florida, which was also established by the Spanish in 1565. Thus speaking Spanish in the US is no new trend.

In fact the English language is full of words that originally entered through Spanish: abalone, adobe, aficionado, albatross, alligator, alpaca, armada, armadillo, anchovy, avocado, banana, barbeque, barracuda, bonanza, burrito, burro, bronco, cabana, cafeteria, cannibal, canyon, cigar, cockroach. And the list goes on and on.

There are television and radio stations as well as newspapers in Spanish. And telenovelas – Spanish-speaking soap operas.

Adiós is used as often as ciao or sayonara; and let’s not forget hasta luego and hasta la vista, with a nod to Schwarzenegger as The Terminator. In fact the film Blade Runner from 1982 hinted that a language based on Spanish, Japanese and German would evolve in Southern California. (But they hadn’t yet anticipated the flood of post-shah Persians who also play into the mix as parts of LA are informally called Little Teheran.)

Spanglish has become such a staple in the US that a movie of the same name was made in 2004. Then in 2006 the amazing and brilliant 2015 academy-award-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu included a bilingual family in Babel, his tale of communication, noncommunication, miscommunication and discommunication. Basically, Culture Clash 101 were it to be included as a university course.

Many of the words that are now being included in Spanglish are new to English too like Googlear or gugulear (to google), clickear (to click), taguear (to tag), and tuitear (to tweet).

So Spanish enriched English with vocabulary and culture. And Spanglish, or Espanglish if you are a native Spanish speaker, is realizing the latest inflow or influx, or actually incursion, of English into Spanish. Again. And so the circle continues.

From Spanish Mid 17th century: from Spanish, alteration (influenced by avocado 'advocate') of aguacate, from Nahuatl ahuacatl.avocado: Oxford Dictionary (online) Mid-17th century: from Spanish, alteration (influenced by avocado ‘advocate’) of aguacate, from Nahuatl ahuacatl.

Common ground

~ K.L. Hill ~ 2 Comments

Common Ground

If you live in Indiana or Tennessee, it may never occur to you to use the spellings organise, colour or oenology. Actually you might never use oenology, or the American counterpart enology for that matter, unless you are a true wine enthusiast. By the same token, if you live in London or Dublin, you would never consider using color or flavor. You may however use organize instead of organise, especially if you are an academic or follow Oxford Dictionaries’ spelling preferences.

But this situation appears to be changing with the increase in exposure to all regional varieties of English. And the common ground of course is the Internet, or if you prefer, the internet. Now we all have access to any corner of the world from our own living rooms, kitchens or local cafés.

During the last three decades I have lived in five countries and taught English to many non-native speakers, as well as native English speakers in the US at the university level. Foreign students of English are often exposed to a variety of “Englishes”, and often they don’t even realize there are variations of English. Add in their exposure to English worldwide on the Internet – the good, the bad and the truly ugly – and the result is a true hodgepodge of linguistic chaos. Pure anarchy.

Everyone is able to communicate in English, with some mishaps from time to time. So is there really a problem? For simply communicating, probably very little. For writing well and writing professionally. A lot. A heck of a lot. To use the colloquial, a helluva lot. (Yes, it is in Webster’s New World, 4th and 5th editions.)

Our common ground then is an English that can serve us as a useful tool to communicate both informally as well as an advanced tool for writing, be it for your own blog or to submit to The New York Times or the Financial Times.

Fortunately we are entering a time when there are more and more programs and tools to aid us in our writing endeavors (or endeavours). Under Links above, this blog will list some of the most useful sites and programs currently available.