Letty, musing

Typically, I’m a big fan of neologisms.  I love watching them arise from movements in culture.  I love how technology trends add new nouns and verbs to our vocabulary.  I love it when artists or wordsmiths take two words and create hybrid baby words from their parents.  I like doing that myself.  I’m guessing I’ve done more mashups than “Glee,” in some cases.  But I came across an invented word this morning that I hope meets a hasty demise.

“Cautionistic.”

Say it out loud.  Don’t you feel stupid?  Don’t you feel like smacking whomever invented that word upside the head?  I do.  Here’s where I came across it, and why I hate it:

This morning, after almost zero sleep – like maybe “one sleep” – I was blearily putting together my breakfast with the morning news on the radio in the background.  A reporter was filing a story from Capitol Hill regarding Congress and the economy and blah, blah, blah … I’m friggin’ tired!  The Congressperson, or economy expert, or random idiot in a suit she was interviewing said that he and whatever group he represents were “cautionistic” about the economy’s apparent slow-growth recovery.  She made a point to note that he had coined the term to describe their reluctant encouragement at the economy’s improving health stats.  They were CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC about the economic recovery.

You know what would have been the perfect phrase for their wary enthusiasm?  CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC!!  Instead, he created a single word to stand in for a perfectly good phrase that would’ve done a better job conveying their mood.

There are probably plenty of other cases where someone made baby words out of a perfectly good phrases that I probably have no beefs with.  But I’m too tired and grumped over this instance to think of them. (Comments section, please, dear reader.)  But that unnecessary smooshing only half bothers me.  The other half, or maybe the other 75%, is that “cautionistic” fails at letting the hearer or reader know exactly what is meant by that adjective.  The root of the word appears to be “caution.”  That they are “istic” makes me suspect there must be “cautionISTS” in the world and Congress, or whomever this Suit represents, is adopting the viewpoint of “cautionists” in this instance, and so they are taking a “cautionistIC” approach.

If someone said they approached a subject with a “feministic” attitude or was a member of a group that had a “communistic” method of self-governance, then I’d know what they meant.  I might not agree with the choice of those adjectives (I suspect “feminist” and “communist” would work just fine), but it would be pretty clear to me what they were getting at.  When the Capitol Hill Suit says, “We’re ‘cautionistic’ about the economy,” I think he means he’s very wary and ultimately untrusting.  Not that he’s cautiously optimistic.

Here’s hoping tomorrow morning will be less bleary-eared.  And that the Suit on the Hill refudiates his own neologism.   Uh … oops.  Repudiates it!

A few weeks ago, Brigham Young University benched one of its star basketball players, Brandon Davies, for breaking the school’s honor code and engaging in premarital sex with his girlfriend. That decision sparked a few days of reaction among sports fans and culture watchers. Reactions that I read and heard – ranging from denunciation to support – were far less surprising, to me, than Davies’ ejection. Among the reactions that crossed my path and stuck in my craw was one from a good friend of mine, Amanda Marcotte, a vocal feminist, liberal blogger.

She laid out her opinion on the suspension in a few tweets. In the last one, she wrote that using the term “premarital” sex  is antiquated.  There are people, she argued, like her, who have sex but intend to never marry.  And that got the word nerd in me excited.

“Premarital sex”, as most of us define it, means sex in a non-marital (not necessarily non-committed) relationship.   But Amanda is right, it does assume that marriage is an eventuality in someone’s life.  This is not only not the case for people like her who have no desire to marry, to but for those who may, but for whatever reason, never do.  In the cases of those who would like to marry, but haven’t yet, or maybe never will, their sex activity can only be called “premarital” in retrospect.

It’s sort of like VBAC vs. TOLAC.  VBAC is the acronym for Vaginal Birth After Cesearan-section.  TOLAC stands for Trial of Labor After Cesearan-section.  Mothers who have delivered via C-section in the past are increasingly aiming for a VBAC for subsequent children.  It is quite common for women to say that they will be having a VBAC delivery.  A few months ago, the American College of Gynecologists (ACOG, for those playing the monogram game, at home) issued a statement that current health statistics suggest that women could safely deliver a baby via VBAC after up to two C-sections.  The statement discusses VBAC success rates and the uterine rupture and risk rates of TOLAC.  I was a bit confused by the introduction of TOLAC into my alphabet soup vocabulary of women’s health.  I asked a cousin of mine, who is an OB/GYN, what the difference was between VBAC and TOLAC.  The difference:  definition in retrospect.  A woman in normal labor after a C-section is in TOLAC until the baby is safely, vaginally delivered.  Then it’s called a VBAC.  If a woman is attempting to deliver vaginally and some other terrible thing happens that necessitates an emergency C-section, then she didn’t have a VBAC, she had a TOLAC that ended in a C … section.

Premarital sex cannot be called that, really, unless and until the participants marry, later.  (And not necessarily each other.)  A woman may say she’s going to have a VBAC, but she’s not going to have one.  She will have had one, once she has successfully delivered.  We use these terms as givens for conditions that may or may not occur.

Both of these terms work on assumption.  But let’s drop the assumption for “premarital” sex, for a moment.  How do we term that sex performed outside the confines of marriage?  Extra-marital sex is what one engages in, in breach of the marital contract.  And what of those who are having sex, but are no longer married due to divorce or death of a spouse?  Is that post-marital sex?  So, maybe:  non-marital sex?

However we term it, what interests me most here is one of things that interests me about language in general.  It reveals our societal values.  That we even frame the status of sex in terms of marriage says more about where we value marriage as a society, really, than where we value sex.  We value marriage above sex.  We value sex as a function of marriage, formerly regarded as a function exclusive to the marriage contract.  Though we typically no longer expect people to reserve their sexual pursuits to the confines of marriage – or, at least, no longer universally castigate people for not keeping sex a purely marital activity – our language has yet to reflect that.  “Premarital sex” is a vestigial phrase, then.

But it still works, frankly.  We can take offense at it, or nitpick it for its inaccuracy, but no fluent English speaker is genuinely confused by its meaning.  Similarly, I have yet to find someone who has no idea what President Bush meant when he talked about “nuk-yu-lar” weapons.  We all know he means “nuclear.”  Some linguists are beginning to accept both pronunciations.  Since language tends to follow culture, I suspect that how we frame definitions of sex a hundred years from now, will be shaped by how we approximate sex and marriage a hundred years from now.

I’d love to create a cultural definition for sex we can use a hundred years from now, based on an assumed outcome.  Any suggestions?

I’ve been slowly watching The Up Series on Netflix streaming for the last few weeks. Well, most of the series. For some reason Neflix doesn’t stream 7 Up, 7 Plus Seven and 35 Up. Right now, I’m on 49 Up, which was heretofore the only of The Up Series I’d seen. I got to the Nick section and as they were recapping his life as recorded in the previous documentaries, I realized something:   his British accent is fading.  Later, I mentally replayed the Paul section; I realized Paul sounded much more Australian than British.  He’s definitely got that twang.  This makes sense, as Nick has been Stateside since before 28 Up, and Paul has been in Australia since before 7 Plus Seven.

I wrote yesterday about how the language learning “window” of the brain starts to narrow around puberty.  Unsurprisingly, the thickness of one’s native accent is also affected by age.  Someone who learns to speak a second language at age 25 will speak it with a thicker version of their native accent at age 50 than someone who learned the second language at age 12, or 5, or 2.  This is why my Mexican-born grandfather, who learned English in his mid-20s, to this day, has a much thicker Mexican accent than the children of many immigrants who learned English in Elementary school, or younger.  This age-accent phenomenon isn’t limited to speaking a second language.  It also applies to regional speech of the same language.  A 35 year old South African who relocates to Canada for the remainder of his life, will likely carry an identifiable South African accent English speech with him for the rest of his life.  His 15 year old cousin might find her accent more influenced by Canadian English by the time she’s an adult.  And his 5 year old son might reach adulthood bearing scant trace of his South African accent, if he bears the accent at all.

This isn’t new.  Most of us know adults who speak with varying degrees of accented English and when we learn of their backstories, the folks with thicker accents tend to be those who made contact with our language group later rather than sooner.   As I noted, Paul sounds much more Australian to me than British, so I assume he achieved accent assimilation quickly and thoroughly.  Nick still sounds British, but you have to listen fairly carefully.  I hear it more with the clarity of his “T’s” than the short “A” sounds (cat, plan, glass)* or the soft “Rs” that tend to be the easiest for Americans to spot.  Are the dental plosives (t/d) the last fade for the Brits when they cross the pond?  My brother-in-law  is a native of England.  He’s been among American military for the better part of 20 years and over here, continually, for about 12 or 13.  He sounds British to me, but mostly because of his slang; his accent has definitely become more Americanized.  There are times when I think he sounds more like someone from Brooklyn. (Or what this Texan who grew up watching movies and TV shows about New York assumes native Brooklynites sound like.)  What I’m curious about is how long does it take the average person to “dilute” his or her native accent when they’ve immersed into a second language community?

* I hope to find a way to include the International Phonetic Alphabet in this blog at some point, because my own phonetic descriptions drive me crazy with their crudeness.  … also, technically, the vowel sounds in “cat”, “plan” and “glass” are not short vowel sounds, but I’m referring to them as such because it made sense to me when I learned them that way in First Grade. My apologies to Peter Ladefoged, wherever he is!

Remember that time I created that blog and it was going to be all about language and language-related topics?  It was this blog, remember?  You don’t remember?  Well, I never forgot.  And I certainly couldn’t fault you for forgetting.  If you’ll notice, I’ve not updated this blog in almost two years!  In that time, Michael Jackson has died, Iran has internally revolted, Justin Bieber has emerged (not as a replacement, mind you), I’ve had a kid and Egypt and Tunisia are now under new management.  But mostly, Justin Bieber has emerged.

Thank Heaven for Lent!  “What does that have to do with anything?” you ask.  I don’t always participate, but in the last 7 or 8 years, when I do, I’ve adjusted from a discipline of denying myself a vice to practicing a virtue.  Like most people, not just Lent participants, I find myself caving before the deadline, Easter Sunday.  And like most participants, I am hopeful that I can make it all Lenten season this year.  (So far 1996 was the only 100% success.  That was the Lent of veganism.)

So what does Lent have to do with this blog?  For Lent 2011, I have decided to practice three virtues:  1) Eat only what I need.  Beyond weight loss and management, hopefully I’ll be less of a resource-drag in the human food supply.  2) Spend at least twice as much time with the people in front of me (family, friends, animals, etc) as I do with the people in the screen in front of me.  I’m not looking to unplug, just re-evaluate my priorities.  3) WRITE, EVERY DAY!  It could be on a blog; could be in my journal; could be for an assignment. (Ahem, I could take short assignments during the kid’s naptime, if anyone wants to talk.) I just need to get back in a daily habit of writing.  I can’t recall the last time I was in a daily habit, but since the last part of my pregnancy – 16 to 14 months ago – I have fallen into a tri-monthly habit.  This has to stop.

So that’s where this blog comes in.  I am writing here, today, to kick off the 40 days.

I’ve spent a few hundred words so far telling you why I’m back. How about I stop my yammering, and actually write to the purpose of this blog?  Namely, language.

It has long frustrated me that the United States does not put more emphasis on teaching foreign languages in our schools, particularly to children under the age of 12.  Our brains are programmed to soak up language and process it and refine it, up until around puberty.  The closer we get to puberty, our language-learning abilities slow, considerably.  They never stop, but the cogs in our machine start grinding.  So, our ability to learn a second language decreases with age.  The younger we’re exposed, and the more we’re immersed, the more of the second language we retain and our competency in that language is higher than it would be if we were exposed at a much later age.  It’s no accident that those who grew up speaking a foreign language at home and English outside are usually fluent in both languages.

So, why does the US generally wait until Junior High, when the language learning window narrows significantly, to introduce teaching foreign languages?  Our foreign counterparts don’t all wait that long.  Several years ago, my husband and I were enjoying a day at a zoo in Hong Kong.  There were several school groups milling around that day and many of the kids had worksheets in their hands, I presumed, relating to the animals.  Upon closer inspection, however, one set of boys’ worksheets had nothing to do with animals, but with alphabets.  Their schoolwork included tracing Chinese characters and the Roman alphabet that we use.  The group of boys gathered around the monkey we were watching could not have been more than 6 years old, but their school system clearly did not presume that they were too young to learn not only another language, but another character system.  One brave boy, recognizing that we were English speakers, turned to me and dared a “Hello!”  I gave him a bright, “Hi! How are you?”  To which he responded, “Fine.”  He couldn’t muster much more, because he and the other boys all dissolved into giggles, ecstatic that the magic words they’d been learning, actually work.

It’s not just China that begins teaching foreign languages at an early age.  A friend of mine who was raised in India and emigrated here as a teen, once told me the only good thing the British did for India was introduce English in all the schools.  I don’t know if she was fluent when she arrived, but she had a stronger foundation for becoming fluent, because she was exposed well before she hit puberty.  She’s bi-lingual.  She, like many other foreign-born citizens, have been able to succeed in this country, not just because of hard work, but because of their multi-linguality.  This doesn’t just apply to foreign-born citizens.  Native born multi-lingual citizens have an advantage over monolinguals.  Take my uncle, for example.  Though by the time he was born, my Mexican-American grandparents were speaking mostly English at home, he was still exposed to plenty of Spanish at home and on Sundays, he was exposed to solely Spanish at church.  As an adult, when his company needed representatives to develop business in Latin America, they looked to him.  He was able to work into full fluency, quickly, because he’d grown up with it at a young age, and was immersed.  I’m not a business-person, but I’d assume that the more languages you can do commerce in, the broader your consumer base.

I’m sure one could point to the fact that English is the current language of global commerce as reason for our delayed foreign language education.  But that is no reason for us to slack off.  Aside from the fact that all common commercial languages rise and fall and we should assume English is no different (French, anyone?), making foreign language education available at earlier ages is also good policy for national security.

I remember reading about 9 years ago, that at the time of 9/11, the military had only 30 – 40 Arabic linguists. If we had 30 – 40 Arabic linguists, how many Pashto linguists did we have?  One?  Two?  I don’t know what the current number of Arabic linguists is.  I assume – and hope – it has grown.  Even if we had not gone to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, that still put us at a tremendous disadvantage.

There are many, many reasons why foreign language should get more attention in our schools than it does.  However, it seems national security is the driving force behind much of our policy.  In 1946, President Truman signed into law the National School Lunch Program, largely because the number one reason for recruit rejection at the time was malnourishment.  (Of course, today, youth obesity is the number one medical reason for recruit rejection.)  Shouldn’t we expect multi-lingualism in the same we expect good nutrition?