PARVUM OPUS

 

Number 157

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BAD COP, GOOD COP

 

"People finish, turkeys are done."

 

This is one of those little zingers teachers like to throw at their students to impress something on their memory. One of my students told me that her child's teacher made the turkey remark when the grade-school student was done with, or had finished, his work and said, "I'm done!"

 

I have never heard this distinction made, and aside from the devastating damage to the poor child's self-esteem, it is in fact an incorrect distinction. Dict.org gives this definition and example from Shakespeare under "do":

 

To bring to an end by action; to perform completely; to finish; to accomplish; ~ a sense conveyed by the construction, which is that of the past participle done. "Ere summer half be done." "I have done weeping." ~ Shak. [1913 Webster]

 

Reminds me of the case of my son's junior high English teacher who insisted that "theater" and "theatre" had two different meanings, rather than being American and British spellings.

 

In my first editorial job, I worked under a very good editor who had her own pet peeve, as editors and teachers do: she didn't like "over" used for quantities, as in "Gas prices at the pump went over $3 a gallon last year." She insisted on "more than" instead and said "over" didn't make sense. In fact, it makes sense to everyone, and again, dict.org gives this meaning and adds a somewhat vague but very old example from Chaucer:

 

Beyond; in excess of; in addition to; more than; as, it cost over five dollars. "Over all this." ~ Chaucer.[1913 Webster]

 

On the up side, I ran across an excellent article by a retired English teacher, Marie Rackham, on why she kept teaching grammar through all the "grammar stifles creativity" fads.

 

ABLE

 

One of the most irregular of English verbs is "can" or "to be able". We say "I can" more often than "I am able", but they are the same. But what is the infinitive of "can"? Not "to can"; it's "to be able".

 

CHECKADO

 

English words are commonly adopted into other languages, but I was surprised to hear one of my Mexican students use the word checkado when we were working on verb forms. Though I've forgotten most of the Spanish I learned, I felt sure that checkado (meaning checked) was not a real Spanish word. My student had to stop and think about it for a minute but agreed that it's an English word with a Spanish past perfect verb ending.

 

I found the word online, too, and saw that the English spelling has also been adopted. A true Spanish word would be spelled checado. The letter K isn't really part of the Spanish alphabet, as the letter occurs almost exclusively in words of foreign origin. That letter K is very Germanic, which is why it's been used to re-spell "Amerika" by people who want to associate this country with Nazi Germany.

 

THE NEW JOYS OF YIDDISH

 

I bought a copy of Leo Rosten's The New Joys of Yiddish, and haven't looked through it enough to know if there are new word entries. However, it differs from the original JOY in several respects:

 

1. The volume I picked up at Half-Price Books is a British edition, and there is a new British preface by a Rabbi Lionel Blue, in addition to a new preface by Lawrence Bush. The first book covered only American Yiddish.

2. There are more, and more scholarly, footnotes.

3. The Anglicized spelling has been revised in some cases, which changes the order of the word lists and cross-references.

5. There's a glossary in the back.

6. There are sketches by R. O. Blechman that remind me of a cross between James Thurber's drawings and Marc Chagall's work.

 

LIFE IMITATES ART

 

In Sharyn McCrumb's hilarious book If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him, a woman marries a dolphin.

 

An English woman named Sharon Tendler actually married herself to a dolphin in Israel. Tendler had known the dolphin for 15 years, so it was hardly an impulsive act. I don't know if she'd read McCrumb's book ~ if so, the moral is you have to be careful of what you put in your head, as a friend of mine said once about reading in jail ~ but if I could find her address I'd send her a copy.

 

IMPROVING YOUR WORD POWER

 

Fred knows a woman who is admirably trying to improve her vocabulary, but I question her sources. Three of her new words are complicacy, ill-looking, and conductible. These are indeed words, but somehow archaic. Dict.org says complicacy means complicate, which in itself is a slightly dated, almost poetic, word meaning complicated. Conductible does in fact mean able to be conducted, or led, but Fred has only heard it used as an electrical term. And ill-looking does mean ugly, but it just isn't used anymore; we would think it meant looking unwell. I suspect the lady picked up an old book in a used bookstore somewhere.

 

Authorities like old dictionaries and even modern thesauruses can be dangerous. The husband of one of my students sent an e-mail about a cancellation, and wrote, "Thank you for your comprehension." Of course this means exactly the same as "Thank you for your understanding" but we never say "comprehension" in this context.

 

TOP WORD SEARCHES

 

Merriam-Webster OnLine just released its list of the top-searched words of 2005:  integrity (no. 1), refugee, contempt, filibuster, insipid, tsunami, pandemic, conclave, levee, and inept. How did "insipid" get in there?

 

WHO'S WHO

 

Maybe some of you are in a Who's Who, but if you're not and would like to be, it's not all that hard, as I discovered years ago. I found out that someone I worked with was going to be listed in a Who's Who, I forget exactly which one, possibly something about American businesswomen, and I thought, who's she? Just an ordinary middle manager, and not a very good one at that. I figured out that she may well have nominated herself, so I decided to nominate myself, and sure enough I was able to put together a fine sounding vita without actually lying, and got myself listed also. I didn't buy the expensive volume with my name in it, though, but wouldn't it look good in your office?

 

I made it a bit of a hobby to keep myself listed for a few years, and even expanded to nominating myself for two or three different Who's Who books. If you're looking for a way to amuse yourself some winter night, and impress strangers, give it a try. There are publishers other than Marquis (linked above), and maybe there are some for which you cannot nominate yourself.

 

READING ALOUD

 

I was dubious when I heard about a new line of children's books called Story Reader that have built-in recordings of the text to listen to along with reading the printed page. But since some parents may not be able to read well, these would actually be good tools for the dyslexic parent, for instance, who wants to read to his child. Getting a recorded book to listen to along while reading the same print book is also a good idea for foreign-language students.

 

While I was trying to track down these books on the web, I discovered that programs exist for prisoners to record children's books.

 

Once I volunteered to record a book for a dedicated radio band for the blind. The book was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It gave me more respect for professional actors who have to deliver lines without making a mistake. Backing up and correcting my mistakes probably stretched my studio time to at least 200% of the actual recording time.

 

 

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