Are you a Grammar Nazi or a Pronunciation Princess?
March 25, 2007 at 12:00 Last week Wordgirl had a post on one of her pet peeves—people who mispronounce or misuse words. She gave some examples that really got on her nerves and invited readers to do the same.
Much to my surprise, outraged Wordies and Grammar Nazis took over the comments section in waves of righteous indignation. Lord, there are a lot of people in the world who are Highly Irritated about the State of the English Language.
But I wasn’t one of them. Yes, I earned more than half my college credits in English and have a degree in communications. Yes, my entire professional career has been devoted to writing and to editing And yes, I even love reading nerdy grammar columns written by people like James Kilpatrick, but my interest in good grammar is outweighed by my interest in good writing. Good writing may or may not be grammatically perfect. Pay too much attention to grammar and not enough to tone, voice, color, and rhythm, and you’ll produce perfectly good prose that’s perfectly boring and frequently ignored.
Unlike the laws of math and physics, many of the laws of grammar change. Dictionaries are edited and style books are updated because each generation shapes the language. That’s why we don’t all speak like characters in Shakespeare’s plays. It’s the same reason I can be in a room with friends from England, Australia, and New Zealand and still not understand all that they're saying.
One of the things I love about language and usage is seeing how they evolve. Words take on new shades of meaning, slang emerges and retreats, and our culture influences how we speak, write, and communicate. A few weeks ago, Neil at Citizen of the Month joked that his blogger friends were a bunch of link whores, and I kept rolling “link whore” around in my head, secretly delighting in it and wondering how long the term would last.
As for pronunciation, I expect public figures and professional media to get it right, but I fully tolerate, and even enjoy, hearing variations on the norm or “incorrect” pronunciations. In most settings, I find mispronunciations endearing and interesting, quirks that tell a story about the speaker. Where have they lived? How were they raised? Where did they go to school? Having lived most of my life in the South, I love Southern accents, from slow drawls and Tidewater melodies to Texas twang. The “mistakes” people make flavor the conversation and often make me smile. Teachers and parents can correct pronunciation, but I think for one person to correct another in any other setting is rude.
One of Wordgirl’s commenters noted that a person may be very well read but not well spoken in terms of pronunciation. The more time you spend alone with books and not glued to the TV, the easier it is to create or imagine a pronunciation that’s one or more degrees off of the norm. There are many words I’m not sure how to pronounce because I’ve seen them in writing but not heard them spoken. It’s been 25 years since I lived in a house with network or cable TV. I get all my information from reading so forgive me if I mispronounce the names of celebrities or towns in Iraq.
So are you a Grammar Nazi or a diehard Wordie? Does the way words are used or spoken get on your nerves or fascinate you? Do you stifle the urge to correct others or let it roll? Are you self-conscious about your speaking or writing?
March 25, 2007
© 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambaut and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.
Leftovers
Reader Comments (16)
"Fresh" apple's and pear's. Are we to assume that the produce is only pseudo-fresh? And that the sign-maker forgot to include the object owned by the apple and the pear? AAAARRRGGGHHH. I will never give in.
I have Italian friends and a Belgian husband, their mistakes with English are so delicious to me. Sometimes they're mortified but I love hearing them.
I love to live life up close and personal, to hear or read what people are really saying ... I have no time for policing their grammar ... it's what they are telling me, not how they are saying it that's important to me.
Then again, that might be because I'm from New Zealand and know that I am guilty of doing 'interesting' things to the language ;)
I will however, tell you if your roots need to be done.
:)
I would never correct anyone in conversation, and only in writing when my job calls for it. But that doesn't stop me from getting annoyed with lazy copy editors in print.
I like your take on mispronunciations. I once worked with a woman who ALWAYS said pacific instead of specific: "Let's be pacific... and pacifically, ..." I had a really hard time keeping a straight face in meetings. In that line, the one pet peeve I have is nuculer instead of nuclear. Not that I would ever correct anyone. But I enjoy adding it to the list of things to hate Bush for.
But truly, spelling is My Thing. I don't normally correct people, unless they ask. The only time it really bugs me is in something presented publicly, such as marketing copy or personal profiles. Above anything else, spelling says the most to me about a person or business. Especially since now, with Spell Check, there is really no excuse. -shrug-
Anyway, I could go on and on. But instead, I will send you to http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/ , because it makes me giggle that there are people this serious about punctuation. I (heart) nerds!
However, some media professionals could be overtaken by Grammar Nazi tendencies. As a courtesy, when I interviewed top level executives of major companies for feature articles, I would allow them to review their quotes before submitting the article for publication. Many times, the execs would pass the article on to their corporate communications office for review. I remember one ardent Grammar Nazi wanting to completely re-structure her executive's quotes because she wasn't happy with his grammar. I spent quite a long time persuading her that we shouldn't do that, 1) because the article had a conversational tone to it and was meant to make the reader feel as if they were sitting around in a coffee shop with these guys, 2) it was beneficial to let her executive's conversational style come through in his quotes because it "warmed" up their brand and gave it personality, 3) These were HIS words. It's one thing to tweak a quote, another to completely alter it.
We negotiated some changes but honestly, it was like talking her down from a ledge, telling her the sentence fragments were OK in this context and that the other executive quotes had a similar tone and style.
But "mute" means one thing and "moot" means something else entirely. "Prostrate" is a position and "prostate" is a gland. To get the two confused changes the context of a sentence. I hope I didn't come off as snobbish in my post. As I said, I was an English teacher and as such it would have been counterintuitive to let such a mistake go with my students.And my editors at the newspaper would never want a mistake like that to go into print. I don't correct people now (except for my husband and kids), but my frustration with people who should know better comes from NOT correcting them. That's all that I meant to say.
I thought your post was fine--I was just surprised by the number of commenters who came out of the woodwork to express their language-related irritation. Who knew so many people cared so much?
And I was also surprised that I didn't feel more passionately about the topic myself, seeing as I spent most of my career as an editor. Asking myself, "Why don't you care more about this?" is what inspired my post.
"Don't end a sentence with a preposition Michael. You weren't raised to sound like a Yankee."
She wasn't so subtle with other corrections. If you put your elbows on the table she'd stab you with a fork-"Oh excuse me I mistook your elbows for a potato."
Good thing you married a Southern Grrrl.
Elbows on the table at home don't bother me much. Just don't chew like a cow, talk with your mouth stuffed, blow your nose, or start eating before everyone is seated. Use whatever fork you want and leave the napkin on the table, I don't care!
Your post brought to mind a radio segment I heard just yesterday while roadtripping. An amusing book, Frindle, written by Andrew Clementz, was read aloud by actors. The story begins with a 5th grade student, in his own creative response to a language arts class dictionary-based assignment, deciding to invent a new word. He begins referring to a pen as a frindle. It catches on with his classmates, to the apparent annoyance of the teacher. Things develop from there. It was cute and funny and interesting, really. I think your kids would really like it.
As for me, I have such a flimsy grip on the English language that I wouldn't begin to correct others. Count me as one who is self-conscious. (But, as you can see, it doesn't stop me for talk talk talking! ) I hope those who can't stand it will tune me out and the others will at least get my meaning even if my delivery is lacking.
Hope you get a chance to check out the book. It'd be a fun one to read together.
Love the fork in the elbow story. Reminds me of my son's third grade teacher who, when a child would say they were done with something, would ask if they were a baked potato. When they replied that they were not, she'd say, "In that case, you are finished, not done."
But I do find it annoying when communications that are designed to be very clear are anything but due to mixed messages, inappropriate use of the wrong term, etc. I am much less forgiving about contextual errors than grammatical/spelling ones. But again, it's more one of those things where I will laugh rather than get too worked up about it.
I do think it depends on who is communicating, as well. I'm certainly not forgiving if someone who claims to be a "marketing expert" is unclear in their writing as opposed to if someone whose job does not involve regular writing and communication misspells a word or misses an apostrophe.
So I guess it all boils down to this: "it depends." ;-)
I used to make awful pronunciation mistakes with words or names I read in books but had not yet heard in conversation. Like when I was a kid and pronounced the name Penelope to rhyme with antelope!
That said, I do get annoyed when reading a book and come across many errors that editors and publishers should have caught. I guess my feeling is that in reading something personal, the errors don't matter, but in something I pay money for, I expect a bit higher standard!