December 17, 2024 • 53 mins
Linguist Anne Curzan has thoughts on your language pet peeves, including “these ones,” “dilly-dally,” and “sneaked” versus “snuck” (or would it be sneaked “versing” snuck?). She looks into historical examples of language changes that were once controversial and now are no bigs – and how we can be more kind by celebrating diversity in language rather than judging it.
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PHOTO: Author photo of Anne Curzan.
READ:
Anne Curzan, Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words
LISTEN:
That’s What They Say podcast
WATCH:
What makes a word "real"? TED Talk
Jennifer Garner Corrects Conan's Grammar – Late Night with Conan O’Brien
Whoever or Whomever? – The Office
EXPLORE:
Lizzie Skurnick, “Grammando”
“Lincoln Riley Thinks Your Quiet”
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Live event produced by Jesse Swanson
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Live event produced and mixed by Jeff Kolar
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
ANNE CURZAN (00:00):
In case you were wondering, I quite like the Oxford comma. See, and this is what I'm with my people. You say Oxford comma and I can get applause for that.
(00:01):
[Theme music plays]
[Cassette tape player clicks open]
ALISA ROSENTHAL (00:03):
Greetings, fellow humans. And thanks for checking out Chicago Humanities Tapes - the spot for the biggest names and brightest minds direct from the Chicago Humanities live spring and fall festivals to your ears. I’m Alisa Rosenthal, and today
Anne Curzan is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English, Linguistics, and Education at the University of Michigan, where she also currently serves as the dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. She can be found talking about language on the weekly show “That's What They Say” on local NPR affiliate Michigan Public.
I’ve linked to her show as well as her most recent book Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words and her viral TED talk “What makes a word ‘real’?” in the show notes, so definitely check those out.
This is Anne Curzan, live at the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture as part of the Chicago Humanities Fall Festival in 2024.
[Theme music plays]
[Audience applause]
ANNE CURZAN (00:09):
Thank you. And I want to thank everyone at the Chicago Humanities Festival for inviting me to be here. Of course, there is nothing more human than language, and I'm delighted to get to speak about that here today. I want to thank everyone on the team who's helped organize this visit and who supported me in being here and the tech folks who've made all the technology work. So many, many thanks to everyone involved. So I'm delighted to get to come talk with you about language and about peeves that you may have brought with you today to share with me. It's one of my favorite things and perhaps questions and concerns, and I hope perhaps some delights, like a favorite word or the like. So I am a professor of English, at the University of Michigan. I'm a linguist by training, which I study the history of the English language, which means that I study how English got from Beowulf to texting. And if you have not heard Beowulf in a while, I'm just going to recite the first lines
And one of the things that people have been sharing with me recently is a peeve about "these ones." Okay. I'm getting a few head nods. So in case that was the peeve you brought with you for the Q&A, let me just address it right now, because in several talks, people said, I just all these people are saying "these ones" and I hate it feels childish, it feels uneducated. It's redundant. You could just say "these." So I went to go find out what's going on with that. Well, it turns out, first of all, we've been saying "these ones" for several hundred years. No one seems to be concerned about "this one." Right? No one's worried that that's redundant. But if you make it plural, suddenly people don't like it. But it's not that we don't like "ones" as a plural, because we will say "those are my loved ones." And so "one" seems to be fine. And it even seems to be okay if you put a modifier in it, if you say, "Ooh I like these red ones." Not so bad. So people are worried somehow about "these ones." Why are people worried about it? Because if you go look, it is suddenly increased in frequency. It is fashionable at the moment. And when things start to increase in frequency, people notice them and often they go, yuck, stop it. So I have been learning about "these ones."
And then I also had someone write in to the radio show to say, what is going on with "dilly-dally?" Which is a great phrase. So "dilly-dally" is a reduplication that functions a little bit like "wishy-washy." And they mean a little bit the same thing. So if you're "dilly-dallying," you're idly spending your time, you're loitering, comes from "dally" and it's just reduplicated. So as opposed to "dally-dally," we "dilly-dally." And while I was looking at "dilly-dally," I started looking at "shilly-shally." So I don't know if this one is much less frequent, but it is out there. So to waiver, to be equivocal, to "shilly-shally" – not be able to make up your mind. And this one, the etymology is great. So "shilly-shally" comes from "shall I? Shall I?" So it was "shall I shall I" became "shill I shall I." And then became "shilly-shally." So these are the random facts that I collect and store in my head, which makes me a very entertaining person at dinner parties. And I was many years ago, I was teaching a class on the history of the language, and I said, I promise you that every day you will get a linguistic random fact, which are great at dinner parties. And this undergraduate raised his hand and he said, "What kind of parties do you go to?"
So. Let me start with some changes that are with a change that's happening all around us. And we're going to quickly move into the participatory part of this program, which is what is going on with the verb "sneak?" So the question is (00:12):
what is your past tense of "sneak?" So here is a sentence
CONAN O’BRIEN (00:13):
He snuck into the room to see what –
JENNIFER GARNER (00:14):
I sneak into the room – snuck isn't a word, Conan. And
you went to Harvard and you should know that.
CONAN O’BRIEN (00:16):
"Snuck
ANNE CURZAN (00:17):
There is so much happening in that clip that she stops mid-interview to say, "Snuck is not a word." Now, of course, it's a word. She knew exactly what it meant. So it's a word. "You went to Harvard, and you should know that." So there we've got the gatekeeping that goes on and shaming around language. But then what does Conan do? Well, he looks at up in quote unquote, the dictionary. Now, we have no idea what dictionary this is, when it was published, who edited it. But it looks like a dictionary. It looks very authoritative. And he's like, Look, it's in there, therefore, it is a word. And then you have to laugh evilly about it. But this is what I would call going "grammando" on someone and I'll come back to the word "grammando." But first, let me tell you what's going on with this verb. So this verb was a regular verb for most of its life in English. The past tense of "sneak" was "sneaked." And many people, because they know I'm a historian of the language, will say, well, English must just be getting more regular over time. To which I say it is getting more regular except when it isn't. So in this case, we have taken a regular verb and in North American English – and I will tell you, British speakers see this as a very North American form – we have made it an irregular verb. So starting you've got no "snuck." And then starting in the late mid to 20th century, we start to get "snuck" and it has taken off. And now we've got more "snuck" than "sneaked." Now, I do not know why we are doing more "sneaking" in general, right? I mean, there's just an uptick in "sneaking." But and if you want to waste a lot of time, go to the Google Books Ngram viewer where you can search things and look at their frequency over time in American English, British English. It's great fun. So in this case, we're witnessing a change in the language with "snuck" coming into American English at this point more common than "sneaked." It is absolutely a word. This has happened with other verbs as well. The past tense of "dig" used to be "digged." And there is some question as to what the past tense of "dive" is. I would guess for most of you it's "dove." But for some of you, I got some lingering "dived." So that again, these were regular verbs that became irregular over time. But I love that clip with Jennifer Garner and Conan O'Brien because you have her going "grammando" on him.
And this is one of my gifts in the book. And a gift to you is this word "grammando." So it was introduced to me in 2012, in The New York Times Sunday magazine by Lizzie Skurnick. And in the column, that should be a word. And as soon as I saw it, I said that should absolutely be a word. And I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that it catches on. So it is in the book. And she defines it as one who constantly corrects other’s linguistic mistakes. And we have the example cowed by his "grammando" wife, Arthur finally ceased saying "irregardless." And I would guess there are some of you who have strong feelings about "irregardless" who are clapping at its demise, although it is in most standard dictionaries and I am aware it is redundant. But there are other redundant words as well. And one of the realizations I came to in writing the book when I first started the book, I thought, I'm trying to help people who are "grammandos" become "wordies." And I'll come back to the word "wordies." But when I came to realize is that we actually all have inner "grammandos" in our head. They're they're there for all of us. And the question is, how loud are they? How much do we listen to them? What do we what conversation do we have with our inner "grammandos?" Then because I am from the University of Michigan, I had to share this example of someone going "grammando." So this is from a University of Michigan football game earlier this year against USC. And here you have on the board "Lincoln Riley" – who is the coach of USC – "thinks your quiet." This was a way to try to rally the crowd so that they would get noisy. Now, I would guess because you are here, you can see the issue. So later in the game. [Audience laughter] Now we spelled it right. "Lincoln Riley still thinks you're quiet." Now, I haven't talked to anyone to know exactly what happened, but I would guess that a whole lot of people went "grammando" on the team up there controlling the scoreboard, and they decided to correct it. Now, I am going to say, if you're controlling the scoreboard, you should get the apostrophe in the standard place. I am also going to say that apostrophes are really confusing and we should, I think if most of us, if not all of us, are honest, we have screwed up our "its" and our "it's" with an apostrophe and without when you're typing fast because there's a good reason. It's confusing. Confusing. People will sometimes make judgments that someone is uneducated because they cannot get their apostrophe in the right place. And I would ask you to be really careful about that. I would guess that many of the smartest people you know, most educated people you know, are bad spellers. Or bad proofreaders or both. One of the most brilliant people I know at the University of Michigan cannot proofread. She is brilliant and her brain just does not work that way. And so now I can't help it. I just proofread, which means I'm clearly losing other substantive things because my brain is focused on the apostrophe. So we have this idea of a "grammando." And what I like about "grammando" is it gets us away from "grammar police" and "grammar Nazi." I have never liked the phrase "grammar Nazi." I feel like if we're going to talk about Nazis, we talk about Nazis. Now we have "grammando." And once you have "grammando," you can talk about going "grammando" on someone. And I think that is an excellent phrase.
So then we have "wordie." So this is a relatively new word. It was included in Merriam-Webster in 2018. And it's like a "foodie" except for words. So someone who loves words. And I ran into one of you before the talk who said, you know, I'm pretty sure I'm a "wordie." And I would guess all of you are "wordies." You're here on a beautiful Saturday afternoon to think and talk about language. And I actually think that almost all humans are "wordies." Humans enjoy language. We're curious about it. We enjoy it. Think how many people play Wordle or Spelling Bee or Boggle? Scrabble. Bananagrams. Like to pun. Like to rap. We like to play with language. We are also curious about it. When I tell people that I know why "colonel" is spelled with an L and pronounced with an R, everyone's like, I've always wondered about that one! So it is one of the joys of my job is that I am getting to tap into people's curiosity about language. One of the things I worry about is that our educational system often drills that passion and love out, that the way we teach grammar and language can make it seem not fun and can make people feel stupid. And one of the things I'm trying to do is bring that love back.
So as I said, all of us have inner "grammandos," including me. And I'm very open about the fact that one of the words I really don't like is "impactful." [Audience applause] Excellent. I am delighted that I have friends here. So, I was giving a talk a couple of months ago and I said, I really don't like the word "impactful." And there was a young man who was about 14 sitting up where I could see him, and he just he couldn't restrain. He was just like, Why? Like, what is your problem? And I said, There's no good reason. It's perfectly well formed. Something can be "meaningful." It can be "impactful." It means it has a lot of impact. I think it is probably stronger than saying something is "significant." It has a slightly different meaning to say it is "impactful." Why doesn't Anne Curzan like it? Because it is new within her lifetime. Right? So I'm not going to tell you exactly how old I am. But you can see from this chart that starting if we go back here to 1960, "impactful," not a thing. If we come up here into the 21st century, "impactful" has taken off. It's very fashionable. There's nothing wrong with it. It is very helpful. I have opted out. So. And that's we all have the right to opt out. You don't even have to give a reason. But I don't have good reason to cross it out in other people's writing because there's nothing wrong with it. And in fact, I can feel myself getting over it. Within the next year I will be using "impactful." I can feel it. I will sometimes say things like, "That change is going to be very –" and I realize I've walked right up to it. And then I will just make a left turn and say "significant" or something like that. But I'm about to say "impactful." It's going to happen. So I have it, too. I hear things. I think, Does the language really have to change that way? But I have a conversation with my inner "grammando" about how well formed that opinion is and whether it should come out of my head.
So I think I've gotten here in part because as a historian of the language, I study how the language changes over time, and I also study people's attitudes about that change. And what you see is that people have been concerned about change in language as long as there has been language. And when you look back at the things they were concerned about, they look ridiculous. So let me show you what I mean. Richard Grant White is one of my favorites. He was a grammarian in the 19th century who was very cranky about many, many things. And so I'm going to share just a couple of them. So here he has concerns about the verb "leave." "This verb is very commonly ill-used by being left without an object. Thus 'Jones "left" this morning. I shall "leave" this evening.' 'Left' what? Shall 'leave' what? Not the morning or the evening, but home, town, or country. When this verb is used, the mention of the place referred to is absolutely necessary." We now think, What is your problem? You can just "leave." You don't have to "leave the Atheneum." You can just "leave." But this was relatively new within his lifetime and he didn't like it. So he decided to write about it. Here we have Thomas De Quincey in 1851. "The word 'sympathy' at present so general by which instead of taking it in its proper sense as the act of reproducing in our minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it is made a mere synonym of the word 'pity.' And hence, instead of saying 'sympathy with another,' many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of 'sympathy for another.'" Okay. We now can have "sympathy for people." It is very, very common.
There are lots of concerns about prepositions because prepositions shift. Prepositions are highly idiomatic in English. For people who are learning English as a second or third language prepositions are often extremely hard because we have a lot of them and they are highly idiomatic. There are some other changes happening with prepositions that I hear about. One of them is about "on accident." Okay, I'm getting some head nods. If you know young people, you are probably hearing some of the young people in your life say, "Oh I did it on accident." Okay. I'm good, thank you for the affirmation that you are hearing this. I am a "by accident" speaker. I would guess many in this room are "by accident" speakers. We are going to lose. Let's just be clear. If we look at the demographics on average "by accident" speakers are older than "on accident" speakers and they are going to outlive us. This is how language change happens. What I find interesting when I'm working with undergraduates is that many, many of them have never noticed this until I pointed out. When I say, Do you say "by accident" or "on accident," they sit there and they think and "Oh I think I say 'on accident,'" some of them have both, but they've never noticed it. You notice it if you've noticed it, because it's a change for you. It's going to happen. Why? Who knows? Prepositions just change. It could be because you have "on purpose." So there you have a nice parallel. If it's "on purpose," you could either decide to say "by purpose," and then we could have parallelism by "by purpose" and "by accident." Or you could have "on purpose" and "on accident." So that is changing.
There is another change that several colleagues at Michigan have written to me about, which is about "based on" versus "based off." And people are like, Really? Either you're saying, Yes, I hate that! Or, Seriously, someone's worried about that? The people who are worried about it are very worried about it and write to me about it. "Based off" is definitely happening. Historically, it's been "based on." There are people who say it makes no sense to say "based off." But I would argue you could make as much sense out of "based off" as you can on "based on." So if you have a base, you build "on the base." But if you also have a base, you could jump "off the base" like a springboard as a "jumping off point" and it is "based off." Now there are people like, Okay, I'll I'll get on board with "based off," but could we not say "based off of." I don't like the double preposition. Fair enough. It's a little redundant, but that is also happening. So we get change in prepositions.
Here is a change in pronunciation. So we have Samuel Rogers, 1855. "The now fashionable pronunciation of several words is, to me at least, very offensive. 'Contemplate' is bad enough. But 'balcony' makes me sick." So this word was borrowed into English. The second they were both borrowed, "balcony" came in from Italian. The stress was on the second syllable "bal-CO-ny." And English as a Germanic language tends to like stress on the first syllable. But it brought it up to the first syllable, we get "balcony." Unremarkable to us now. But there are many shifts in pronunciation happening all around us. We could think about whether you have a T in "often." So I would guess we probably have a mixed bag here. Historically, well, so "often" is interesting. If you go back several hundred years, it had a T. As did "soften" and "hasten." They all had Ts, and then that medial T got lost. So that they none of them had Ts. And then in the highly literate world in which we live, we are reintroducing the T in "often." So you will now hear a lot of "of-ten," particularly in more formal settings. When I ask undergraduates, a lot of them say, I have both. And when I'm bumping it up a little bit, I will say "of-ten," because it feels more formal to have the T in it. Even though for several hundred years it didn't have the T. I will give you another example from the book. This one is a really powerful pronunciation example of variation we have in the language. I'm going to start with the little, what is shift-8 on a keyboard, that little star. Which, there are many ways to say it. The way it is spelled is "asterisk." That is not the way I say that word. I would like you to just say that word to yourself. Okay. I'm hearing some murmurings. I think I'm here. So I'm an "asterix" speaker. My K and S have swapped. So I say "asteriks," unless I slow down. There are people who say "asterik." There are people who say "asteris." So we've got at least four. Some people will say, I just say "ast-risk" like I don't have a I have shortened the middle syllable on that. I don't think – I could be wrong – but I don't think I have ever been judged for saying "asteriks." That someone has said, Anne Curzan should not have her job because she says "asteriks." But people do say, You should not have that job if you say "aks a question." And here's how we see that judgments about language are about much more than language. They're about speakers, they're about identity, they're about race and ethnicity, nationality. So what's interesting about "ask" and "aks" a question is that if you go back in the history of English, they're both old. And from what we can tell, the older form is probably "aks." And that the swapping of the sounds was from "aks" to "ask." And Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales uses "aks of question" spelled "a-x-e" and it was the high form. And then over time it came to be replaced by "ask" of the as a standard form. And the judgments that are loaded onto "aks" are severe, and people will say, You shouldn't get that job if you say "aks a question." So this is why what I work on is both delightful and funny and incredibly powerful and serious all at the same time because we do so much gatekeeping around language and around the diversity in language that is actually systematic and has a long history to it.
So here is Richard Grant White again, I just had to share this one because it sets up an example that's happening around us. So he didn't like the verb "donate." "I need hardly say that this word is utterly abominable. It has been formed by some presuming an ignorant person from 'donation.'" Now he's right about the etymology. So we had "donation" and we back-formed "donate." Because we do that sometimes. So we have many, many examples. We had "television" and then we needed a verb. We "televise" things on "television." We had "editor," and then we had to describe what editors do. So they "edit" things. An interesting one (00:25):
the word "beggar," which you can, you know, "b-e-g-g-a-r" borrowed in French, but if you hear it, it sounds like it has an E-R ending. So hundreds of years ago, we back-form "beg" from the French-borrowing "beggar." What do "beggars" do? They "beg." What do "lazy" people do? They "laze" around. So here is a back-formation that is going on around us that was brought to my attention by parents who came to me and said, What is going on with the verb "verse?" And then they said, Anne make it stop, which I, I cannot. And of course, my reaction was, that's totally fascinating. So. Is Venus Williams "versing" Serena Williams today? Again, if you hang out with young people, this is happening. So this afternoon, the University of Michigan is "versing" the University of Oregon in football. I'm concerned. Oregon is very good. What I think has happened here is that we've got a back-formation from "v-e-r-s-u-s" coming in from the Latin. If you think about kids who are hearing on the radio or television "Sunday
So let me share three more. I'm going to do one historical one and then two more recent peeves. So this one is hard for us to believe here in the 21st century. But in the 19th century, people were very concerned about the passive progressive. And if you've never had to think about the passive progressive, you do use the passive progressive all the time for things that are being done progressively and passively. So what are we talking about? We're talking about a construction, like "the bridge is being built." And here we have David Booth (00:26):
"For some time past 'the bridge is being built,' 'the tunnel is being excavated,' and other expressions of a like kind have pained the eye and stunned the ear." This is all over 19th century grammar books. People hated the passive progressive when it came in. You're thinking, Well, what would you – how would you express that if you did not have the passive progressive? You would say "the house is building." Which makes no sense to us now. But I would guess that I have some Jane Austen readers in the room. And in the book it says, "Who? I share an example." Jane Austen did not have the passive progressive. When she was writing this was not part of her grammar. And so it's in Northanger Abbey and the sentence reads something like
All right. I would guess some of you, like I did, grew up with Strunk and White. There are many people who still celebrate Strunk and White. I am not very kind to Strunk and White in Says Who? There is some helpful advice in there. There is also some not helpful advice in Strunk and White, but just to show the evolving nature of what people think is correct and what people are worried about here is 1979, many of us in this room were alive in 1979. And we get this is about generic "he." So "he" used to refer to any person, "a teacher should learn his students names." Generic "he" has become seemingly indispensable. It has no pejorative connotation. It is never incorrect. Now, I actually remember in elementary school, in junior high school, being told that I should use generic "he," that it was correct and that it included me. Never felt like it included me, but that's what I was told. Now, obviously, the advice on this one has changed significantly. But I wanted to share, 1979 (00:27):
this is what was seen as correct.
And lastly, connected to the title of the book, here is the New York Times style manual as late as 1999 with concerns about the adjective "fun." So, "Though the commercial may someday win respectability for 'fun' as an adjective, a 'fun' vacation, the gushing sound argues for keeping the word a noun." I do not understand what is "gushing" about "fun" as an adjective, but "fun" for most of its history in English was a noun. And in the 20th century it became an adjective. Which is why you get "funner" and "funnest." But through much of the 20th century, style guides were resisting "fun" as an adjective, let alone "funner" and "funnest." And you will notice that I put "funnest" in the title of the book in part to have people pick it up and say, What kind of English professor would ever put "funnest" in the title of a book? And what I've loved is that some people, when they've been introducing the book, have said "a kinder, funnier usage guide." And I'm like, Nope, nope. I did put "funner" in the title of the book and I'm happy to come back to "funner" and "funnest," but it's it's the regular way that one syllable adjectives work. Once "fun" becomes an adjective the comparative would be "funner," except that we don't like it. So then we say, It can't be.
All right. So let me at this point, there are many people and you may be thinking this right now who are thinking, Anne Curzan has no standards. She is saying, You can do whatever you want whenever you want, and it doesn't matter. And I would like to be very clear. That's actually not what I'm saying. I am saying that we should be thinking about rhetorical effectiveness, about making choices with purpose based on audience and context, and that there are many, many effective ways to use language depending on context. And so what I'm trying to do in the book is take different kinds of rules and show that some of these are helpful and some of them are not. So the rule about "not ending a sentence with a preposition," this has never been helpful. We have always been able to end sentences with prepositions in English. The fact that you cannot do it in Latin is irrelevant. So that has never been helpful. "Don't dangle or misplace your modifiers in writing." This is super helpful because it can be ambiguous if you have your modifier in the wrong place. In speech we don't notice, in writing it can be confusing. We should be careful about that. "Don't use the passive voice." This one needs a lot more nuance. Sometimes the passive voice is very, very helpful. "It has been argued the murder was committed." Right? If you put those in the active voice, they don't work particularly well. But sometimes it's really awkward. And the last one is a myth. "Don't start a sentence with 'and' or 'but'" – this has never been true. But it is now in the Microsoft Word grammar checker. Which should have you asking a lot of questions about the Microsoft Grammar checker, which I did and I'm happy to talk about. So let me end here with giving you a few things to watch in the language. So the full acceptance and writing of singular "they" both as gender neutral and as non-binary. The ongoing demise of the inflected form "whom." And I'm just going to show you a quick video from The Office on this one.
Office clip Honestly, you don't know what so that you can communicate to people here, to your clients, to whomever. So. Okay. What? It's whoever got to know whomever is never actually right. Sometimes it's right. Michael is right. It's a made up word used to trick students. Actually, whomever is the formal version of the word. Obviously, it's a real word, but I don't know when to use it correctly. I'm not a native speaker. I know what's right, but I'm not going to say because you're all jerks who didn't come see my dad. Do you really know which one is correct? I don't know. It's home when it's the object of the sentence. And who one is the subject. That sounds. Right. Well, it sounds right. Good. Is it? It ranges as much as an object. With me as an object. Is he right about that? How many is that again? Was one of Michael the subject to explain the computer system, the object and guilt to whomever, meaning us, the indirect object, which is the correct usage of my word. No one ask you anything ever. So who remembers games? Toby, why don't you take a letter opener and stick it in your skull? This doesn't matter.
ANNE CURZAN (00:31):
So what I love about this thing, it's it's not a word. It's never word. It's the formal version. "Whom" has been trying to die for several hundred years. And we could just let it die. The decline of "must" in the sense of necessity. Very few people are noticing this, but if you have errands to run this afternoon, I would guess most of you would say "I have to run errands," not "I must run errands." "I must" feels very strong at this point because "must" is declining and we're getting these new auxiliaries "hafta," "wanna," "gonna," "sposedta." And if we didn't have such standardized spelling, that is how they would be spelled. The increasing use of "less" instead of "fewer." I'm very sorry, Mom. It's just happening. Ongoing apostrophe instability. And then and because there are people who seem to think that there was a moment in the history of English where everyone agreed about how to use an apostrophe. And I'm here to say there has never been that moment in the history of English when we all agreed about how to use an apostrophe. And the last one is this repurposing of punctuation to meet the demands of texting. So here you have written language moving very, very fast, without tone, without facial expression. And so texting young people have created conventions and they're using punctuation to do the work. So if I show this to a room of undergrads, they will say, These three texts are completely different. Completely. The one on the left over here that is neutral. "Okay." – with a period that is serious, potentially angry. "Okay" – that is skeptical. I'm waiting for more information. They have repurposed punctuation to do the work.
So the four key messages from the book (00:32):
all living languages change because humans. Diversity in language is part of the diversity of us, and it should be celebrated as part of the diversity of us. Correctness in language, as I hope I've shown you with some of these examples, is not a stable concept, and we can care deeply about language and be kind to each other. And what I hope we can be is more curious and seeking more information. And I'll leave you with this analogy from the book, which is
AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 (00:33):
Hi. Thanks so much for your great talk. I come from a family where "irregardless" was literally a fight in the household, and my letters home from camp came back edited with spelling corrections! So I have a sort of more philosophical question. There are languages that are more or less poetic. English is not fundamentally a very poetic language. I'm wondering if you've thought about if your language is more poetic, if that has a psychological or cultural impact.
ANNE CURZAN (00:34):
Can you help me understand what you mean by poetic?
AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 (00:35):
Arabic, for example, is much more, the words, the use of poetry embedded in speech, the flowing use of descriptions and understanding.
ANNE CURZAN (00:36):
Okay. So it's a it's an interesting question. It's a much it's a it's as you note, it's a huge question. I want to be careful about a word like "poetic" because, of course, my first reaction is, of course, there's been phenomenal poetry written in many, many varieties of English and one of the things that humans seem to do with language, we we use metaphor. Different languages will do that differently. But English actually employs metaphor all the time. What George Lakoff has called "conceptual metaphors." So for example, we talk about "understanding" as "seeing." And then your ideas are "clear" or "opaque" to me when we say "I see what you mean." I don't "see" what you mean. "Good" is up and "bad" is down. Right? And we then structure a whole way of thinking about language that way. The question of the relationship of language and thought is a huge one. So I recognize it's probably an insufficient answer to your question. But one of the things that I worry about and that all linguists are worrying about is that we are losing languages every week, every year, and that we're losing a lot of cultural knowledge and culture as we lose those languages, because there is a way in which people are capturing the world, speaking about the world, making particular distinctions within a language about the world. And when we lose those, we lose the art, we lose the poetry, but we also just lose the categories and the way of speaking about the world. And that's a huge loss for us.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 2 (00:37):
Thank you so much for your talk. English major as well, followed by business school. Great writer. My pet peeve is when people say "I've been wanting." "I've been wanting to go there." "I've been wanting to travel there." And it sounds awful to me. Why not say "I'd like to go there?" This "been wanting" sounds incorrect. And I've never seen an explanation for the usage.
ANNE CURZAN (00:38):
You are the first person who has ever brought this up to me. Is there anyone else here who is been noticing this? I mean, this is one of the things I love about this talk and giving these talks is that I get to hear new things. So I do not have a good answer for you, but I will get one and it will probably show up on the radio show. That's What They Say. So "I've been wanting." So you don't like the perfect tense there of why have you put it in the I mean, people are saying I've been "I've been wanting this" for a while, right? Because the perfect starts in the past and comes up to the present. I mean, I think that that's what people are trying to express. I'm totally working this out in my head right now. I'd like to suggest only right now
AUDIENCE MEMBER 3 (00:39):
Thank you very much for your talk. Could you please comment on usage fads like, "you know" and "I mean."
ANNE CURZAN (00:40):
The usage of "you know" and "I mean" um. And "um." These are what linguists would call discourse markers. They actually do work in conversation. There's a whole subfield where people study these. It's called pragmatics. Something like "you know" is a way to bring in your audience. You're trying to invite people in. "I mean" is a way to diminish your own authority. Which sounds like a bad thing, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes you want to soften your own opinion. "I mean, I think it's blah, blah, blah," which opens up some space for somebody to disagree with you as opposed to, "I think, blah, blah, blah." "I mean, I think." "Um" keeps the floor. It says "I'm about to say something. Do not talk right now. I still have the floor." "Like" is of course, a very common discourse marker. So they do a lot of work. Where they start to have trouble doing their work is when we overuse them. We don't notice them when they're not common. We're all we all use them. But if someone has a discourse marker that they use a lot, "you know" or "I mean" or "like," then it starts to become prominent because it's overused. So I think we often think discourse markers are distracting. They're not distracting when they're being used at a more minimal level. They are distracting when and we all have them. When I teach, I use "right." It's the way I invite students in, but I use it a lot, that I'll say something "...right? Nuhnuhnuh right? Rrright?" And then, of course, a student pointed out to me when we were doing discourse markers, I was teaching, they said, You know what your discourse marker is, Professor Curzan? I was like, Oh please tell me.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 4 (00:41):
Hi! I just wanted to say thank you for the talk. And I want to say specifically, I really appreciate the nods that you've given about how language can disguise judgment. Something that has been a huge preoccupation for me for the last few years is the usage of words like "good," "bad," "worse," "better," "best" – words that I find really difficult to process because I feel they are so frequently used euphemistically. I'm curious to know if you have any information or thoughts on either the history of the usage of these words or just any thoughts generally how you handle these words that both say so much and maybe nothing at the same time.
ANNE CURZAN (00:42):
So if I'm hearing you right, the concerns about those being used almost hyperbolically. Where "good, "best" are being used for things that might not be "the best?" Is that – okay. There actually, some of you may have seen it. John McWhorter had a really interesting column about this within the last couple of weeks about a, his argument is that humans we often want to be emphatic or over-the-top or extravagant. And so we will speak in hyperbolic ways. And what happens is that then a word over time will lose its strength. And the place where we see this most dramatically in English is intensifiers. So if you look at intensifiers, "truly" used to mean "it is true," it was the adverb of "it is true." And then it just became an intensifier, "it's truly great." "Really" meant "real." "Very" is also related to truth. And all of those as they became intensifies and they lose their strength over time. And so and then so then we have to make new ones like "super" or "uber" or "wicked" in slang to do that kind of extravagant work. So people will lament this as a kind of weakening. But as a linguist, I just see it as change over time that there are words that will get stronger in intensity and their words that will get weaker.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 4 (00:43):
Thank you. I actually I do see the usage there as like an intensifier. I think I was more specific about your comment earlier about like, someone who, Oh that's not good. That's oh a good person wouldn't do that. Or the way that judgment is loaded into the languages and the impact of that.
ANNE CURZAN (00:44):
Okay. Thank you for clarifying. So that is something this is my mission as a linguist trying to do this work is that this is how I was educated, is that there is a right way to use the English language. And then there are many wrong ways to use the English language, and the right way is the formal edited standard way. And then everything else is irregular or broken or slangy or whatever it is, and it's simply linguistically not true. There are formal ways and informal ways to use the language. There are standardized ways and nonstandard ways, and they are all effective in different contexts. So the idea that the formal standard way is the best way to use English, it's just not true. We know that it is actually enormously ineffective in many contexts. It will make you sound overeducated, snobby, pretentious, whatever it is, it will not actually be an effective way to use the language. And linguistically, this you know, I'm trying to get truth about the fact that all varieties are systematic, they're all rule governed. When people try to say to me, The double negative is illogical and broken, I'm like, The double negative is completely logical in language. I know that in math you multiply two negatives, you get a positive. But. I don't care. Math is not language. And if you add two negatives in math, you get a bigger negative. So and if you look historically, most varieties of English had double negative. And then the standardized variety moved to single negation. And many world varieties still use double negation. But the judgments on it are really strong. So you're getting at the reason I wrote this book is that it is so that we can have more informed conversations about language, and if we do that, we actually can A) have more fun because language is fascinating and we can learn about it and the diversity of it and how it changes. And we can be kinder to each other. And embrace all of that diversity and change.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5 (00:45):
Have you come across "out there" as a phrase? I noticed it by in a presentation by a CEO, an investment presentation recently where he used it at least 50 times in 30 minutes. It's like a verbal tic – "out there."
ANNE CURZAN (00:46):
Can you tell – meaning?
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5 (00:47):
Almost no meaning to it.
ANNE CURZAN (00:48):
And this is in a business context.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5 (00:49):
Yeah, he just threw it in. Yeah. "This is what's happening 'out there.'"
ANNE CURZAN (00:50):
Ah. Huh. Again, I'm going to look at that one, too, in terms of. So business jargon tends to get a lot of criticism. And I've done a couple of podcasts about this. It is there's a lot of new jargon that comes through the business world, I think, because people want new new language. There's a premium on that in a lot of business contexts. I think a lot of people like to harsh on business if they're worried that it has an outsized influence on us generally in the culture. But what's also fascinating about business jargon, so I'm going to have to look it "out there," but some things that used to be seen as jargony
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ALISA ROSENTHAL (00:53):
For more information on Anne Curzan, including the link to her book Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words, head to the show notes or chicagohumanities.org.
Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the staff at Chicago Humanities who are producing the live events and making sure they sound fantastic. Thanks for joining us for a wonderful year in fascinating speakers and sparkling audio. The best way to support our programming is to leave a rating and review, hit subscribe to be notified about new episodes, and check out our backlog for a gem you might’ve missed. And we want to know what you think! You can shape the future of the podcast by taking the short listener survey in the show notes, it helps us out a lot. The podcast is taking a short break, but we’ll be back in 2025 with some really great new programs and some wonderful stuff from our 30+ year archive. Hey thanks for listening, and as always, stay human.
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In case you were wondering, I quite like the Oxford comma. See, and this is what I'm with my people. You say Oxford comma and I can get applause for that.
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ALISA ROSENTHAL (00:03):
Greetings, fellow humans. And thanks for checking out Chicago Humanities Tapes - the spot for the biggest names and brightest minds direct from the Chicago Humanities live spring and fall festivals to your ears. I’m Alisa Rosenthal, and today
Anne Curzan is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English, Linguistics, and Education at the University of Michigan, where she also currently serves as the dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. She can be found talking about language on the weekly show “That's What They Say” on local NPR affiliate Michigan Public.
I’ve linked to her show as well as her most recent book Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words and her viral TED talk “What makes a word ‘real’?” in the show notes, so definitely check those out.
This is Anne Curzan, live at the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture as part of the Chicago Humanities Fall Festival in 2024.
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ANNE CURZAN (00:09):
Thank you. And I want to thank everyone at the Chicago Humanities Festival for inviting me to be here. Of course, there is nothing more human than language, and I'm delighted to get to speak about that here today. I want to thank everyone on the team who's helped organize this visit and who supported me in being here and the tech folks who've made all the technology work. So many, many thanks to everyone involved. So I'm delighted to get to come talk with you about language and about peeves that you may have brought with you today to share with me. It's one of my favorite things and perhaps questions and concerns, and I hope perhaps some delights, like a favorite word or the like. So I am a professor of English, at the University of Michigan. I'm a linguist by training, which I study the history of the English language, which means that I study how English got from Beowulf to texting. And if you have not heard Beowulf in a while, I'm just going to recite the first lines
And one of the things that people have been sharing with me recently is a peeve about "these ones." Okay. I'm getting a few head nods. So in case that was the peeve you brought with you for the Q&A, let me just address it right now, because in several talks, people said, I just all these people are saying "these ones" and I hate it feels childish, it feels uneducated. It's redundant. You could just say "these." So I went to go find out what's going on with that. Well, it turns out, first of all, we've been saying "these ones" for several hundred years. No one seems to be concerned about "this one." Right? No one's worried that that's redundant. But if you make it plural, suddenly people don't like it. But it's not that we don't like "ones" as a plural, because we will say "those are my loved ones." And so "one" seems to be fine. And it even seems to be okay if you put a modifier in it, if you say, "Ooh I like these red ones." Not so bad. So people are worried somehow about "these ones." Why are people worried about it? Because if you go look, it is suddenly increased in frequency. It is fashionable at the moment. And when things start to increase in frequency, people notice them and often they go, yuck, stop it. So I have been learning about "these ones."
And then I also had someone write in to the radio show to say, what is going on with "dilly-dally?" Which is a great phrase. So "dilly-dally" is a reduplication that functions a little bit like "wishy-washy." And they mean a little bit the same thing. So if you're "dilly-dallying," you're idly spending your time, you're loitering, comes from "dally" and it's just reduplicated. So as opposed to "dally-dally," we "dilly-dally." And while I was looking at "dilly-dally," I started looking at "shilly-shally." So I don't know if this one is much less frequent, but it is out there. So to waiver, to be equivocal, to "shilly-shally" – not be able to make up your mind. And this one, the etymology is great. So "shilly-shally" comes from "shall I? Shall I?" So it was "shall I shall I" became "shill I shall I." And then became "shilly-shally." So these are the random facts that I collect and store in my head, which makes me a very entertaining person at dinner parties. And I was many years ago, I was teaching a class on the history of the language, and I said, I promise you that every day you will get a linguistic random fact, which are great at dinner parties. And this undergraduate raised his hand and he said, "What kind of parties do you go to?"
So. Let me start with some changes that are with a change that's happening all around us. And we're going to quickly move into the participatory part of this program, which is what is going on with the verb "sneak?" So the question is (00:12):
what is your past tense of "sneak?" So here is a sentence
CONAN O’BRIEN (00:13):
He snuck into the room to see what –
JENNIFER GARNER (00:14):
I sneak into the room – snuck isn't a word, Conan. And
you went to Harvard and you should know that.
CONAN O’BRIEN (00:16):
"Snuck
ANNE CURZAN (00:17):
There is so much happening in that clip that she stops mid-interview to say, "Snuck is not a word." Now, of course, it's a word. She knew exactly what it meant. So it's a word. "You went to Harvard, and you should know that." So there we've got the gatekeeping that goes on and shaming around language. But then what does Conan do? Well, he looks at up in quote unquote, the dictionary. Now, we have no idea what dictionary this is, when it was published, who edited it. But it looks like a dictionary. It looks very authoritative. And he's like, Look, it's in there, therefore, it is a word. And then you have to laugh evilly about it. But this is what I would call going "grammando" on someone and I'll come back to the word "grammando." But first, let me tell you what's going on with this verb. So this verb was a regular verb for most of its life in English. The past tense of "sneak" was "sneaked." And many people, because they know I'm a historian of the language, will say, well, English must just be getting more regular over time. To which I say it is getting more regular except when it isn't. So in this case, we have taken a regular verb and in North American English – and I will tell you, British speakers see this as a very North American form – we have made it an irregular verb. So starting you've got no "snuck." And then starting in the late mid to 20th century, we start to get "snuck" and it has taken off. And now we've got more "snuck" than "sneaked." Now, I do not know why we are doing more "sneaking" in general, right? I mean, there's just an uptick in "sneaking." But and if you want to waste a lot of time, go to the Google Books Ngram viewer where you can search things and look at their frequency over time in American English, British English. It's great fun. So in this case, we're witnessing a change in the language with "snuck" coming into American English at this point more common than "sneaked." It is absolutely a word. This has happened with other verbs as well. The past tense of "dig" used to be "digged." And there is some question as to what the past tense of "dive" is. I would guess for most of you it's "dove." But for some of you, I got some lingering "dived." So that again, these were regular verbs that became irregular over time. But I love that clip with Jennifer Garner and Conan O'Brien because you have her going "grammando" on him.
And this is one of my gifts in the book. And a gift to you is this word "grammando." So it was introduced to me in 2012, in The New York Times Sunday magazine by Lizzie Skurnick. And in the column, that should be a word. And as soon as I saw it, I said that should absolutely be a word. And I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that it catches on. So it is in the book. And she defines it as one who constantly corrects other’s linguistic mistakes. And we have the example cowed by his "grammando" wife, Arthur finally ceased saying "irregardless." And I would guess there are some of you who have strong feelings about "irregardless" who are clapping at its demise, although it is in most standard dictionaries and I am aware it is redundant. But there are other redundant words as well. And one of the realizations I came to in writing the book when I first started the book, I thought, I'm trying to help people who are "grammandos" become "wordies." And I'll come back to the word "wordies." But when I came to realize is that we actually all have inner "grammandos" in our head. They're they're there for all of us. And the question is, how loud are they? How much do we listen to them? What do we what conversation do we have with our inner "grammandos?" Then because I am from the University of Michigan, I had to share this example of someone going "grammando." So this is from a University of Michigan football game earlier this year against USC. And here you have on the board "Lincoln Riley" – who is the coach of USC – "thinks your quiet." This was a way to try to rally the crowd so that they would get noisy. Now, I would guess because you are here, you can see the issue. So later in the game. [Audience laughter] Now we spelled it right. "Lincoln Riley still thinks you're quiet." Now, I haven't talked to anyone to know exactly what happened, but I would guess that a whole lot of people went "grammando" on the team up there controlling the scoreboard, and they decided to correct it. Now, I am going to say, if you're controlling the scoreboard, you should get the apostrophe in the standard place. I am also going to say that apostrophes are really confusing and we should, I think if most of us, if not all of us, are honest, we have screwed up our "its" and our "it's" with an apostrophe and without when you're typing fast because there's a good reason. It's confusing. Confusing. People will sometimes make judgments that someone is uneducated because they cannot get their apostrophe in the right place. And I would ask you to be really careful about that. I would guess that many of the smartest people you know, most educated people you know, are bad spellers. Or bad proofreaders or both. One of the most brilliant people I know at the University of Michigan cannot proofread. She is brilliant and her brain just does not work that way. And so now I can't help it. I just proofread, which means I'm clearly losing other substantive things because my brain is focused on the apostrophe. So we have this idea of a "grammando." And what I like about "grammando" is it gets us away from "grammar police" and "grammar Nazi." I have never liked the phrase "grammar Nazi." I feel like if we're going to talk about Nazis, we talk about Nazis. Now we have "grammando." And once you have "grammando," you can talk about going "grammando" on someone. And I think that is an excellent phrase.
So then we have "wordie." So this is a relatively new word. It was included in Merriam-Webster in 2018. And it's like a "foodie" except for words. So someone who loves words. And I ran into one of you before the talk who said, you know, I'm pretty sure I'm a "wordie." And I would guess all of you are "wordies." You're here on a beautiful Saturday afternoon to think and talk about language. And I actually think that almost all humans are "wordies." Humans enjoy language. We're curious about it. We enjoy it. Think how many people play Wordle or Spelling Bee or Boggle? Scrabble. Bananagrams. Like to pun. Like to rap. We like to play with language. We are also curious about it. When I tell people that I know why "colonel" is spelled with an L and pronounced with an R, everyone's like, I've always wondered about that one! So it is one of the joys of my job is that I am getting to tap into people's curiosity about language. One of the things I worry about is that our educational system often drills that passion and love out, that the way we teach grammar and language can make it seem not fun and can make people feel stupid. And one of the things I'm trying to do is bring that love back.
So as I said, all of us have inner "grammandos," including me. And I'm very open about the fact that one of the words I really don't like is "impactful." [Audience applause] Excellent. I am delighted that I have friends here. So, I was giving a talk a couple of months ago and I said, I really don't like the word "impactful." And there was a young man who was about 14 sitting up where I could see him, and he just he couldn't restrain. He was just like, Why? Like, what is your problem? And I said, There's no good reason. It's perfectly well formed. Something can be "meaningful." It can be "impactful." It means it has a lot of impact. I think it is probably stronger than saying something is "significant." It has a slightly different meaning to say it is "impactful." Why doesn't Anne Curzan like it? Because it is new within her lifetime. Right? So I'm not going to tell you exactly how old I am. But you can see from this chart that starting if we go back here to 1960, "impactful," not a thing. If we come up here into the 21st century, "impactful" has taken off. It's very fashionable. There's nothing wrong with it. It is very helpful. I have opted out. So. And that's we all have the right to opt out. You don't even have to give a reason. But I don't have good reason to cross it out in other people's writing because there's nothing wrong with it. And in fact, I can feel myself getting over it. Within the next year I will be using "impactful." I can feel it. I will sometimes say things like, "That change is going to be very –" and I realize I've walked right up to it. And then I will just make a left turn and say "significant" or something like that. But I'm about to say "impactful." It's going to happen. So I have it, too. I hear things. I think, Does the language really have to change that way? But I have a conversation with my inner "grammando" about how well formed that opinion is and whether it should come out of my head.
So I think I've gotten here in part because as a historian of the language, I study how the language changes over time, and I also study people's attitudes about that change. And what you see is that people have been concerned about change in language as long as there has been language. And when you look back at the things they were concerned about, they look ridiculous. So let me show you what I mean. Richard Grant White is one of my favorites. He was a grammarian in the 19th century who was very cranky about many, many things. And so I'm going to share just a couple of them. So here he has concerns about the verb "leave." "This verb is very commonly ill-used by being left without an object. Thus 'Jones "left" this morning. I shall "leave" this evening.' 'Left' what? Shall 'leave' what? Not the morning or the evening, but home, town, or country. When this verb is used, the mention of the place referred to is absolutely necessary." We now think, What is your problem? You can just "leave." You don't have to "leave the Atheneum." You can just "leave." But this was relatively new within his lifetime and he didn't like it. So he decided to write about it. Here we have Thomas De Quincey in 1851. "The word 'sympathy' at present so general by which instead of taking it in its proper sense as the act of reproducing in our minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indignation, love, pity, or approbation, it is made a mere synonym of the word 'pity.' And hence, instead of saying 'sympathy with another,' many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of 'sympathy for another.'" Okay. We now can have "sympathy for people." It is very, very common.
There are lots of concerns about prepositions because prepositions shift. Prepositions are highly idiomatic in English. For people who are learning English as a second or third language prepositions are often extremely hard because we have a lot of them and they are highly idiomatic. There are some other changes happening with prepositions that I hear about. One of them is about "on accident." Okay, I'm getting some head nods. If you know young people, you are probably hearing some of the young people in your life say, "Oh I did it on accident." Okay. I'm good, thank you for the affirmation that you are hearing this. I am a "by accident" speaker. I would guess many in this room are "by accident" speakers. We are going to lose. Let's just be clear. If we look at the demographics on average "by accident" speakers are older than "on accident" speakers and they are going to outlive us. This is how language change happens. What I find interesting when I'm working with undergraduates is that many, many of them have never noticed this until I pointed out. When I say, Do you say "by accident" or "on accident," they sit there and they think and "Oh I think I say 'on accident,'" some of them have both, but they've never noticed it. You notice it if you've noticed it, because it's a change for you. It's going to happen. Why? Who knows? Prepositions just change. It could be because you have "on purpose." So there you have a nice parallel. If it's "on purpose," you could either decide to say "by purpose," and then we could have parallelism by "by purpose" and "by accident." Or you could have "on purpose" and "on accident." So that is changing.
There is another change that several colleagues at Michigan have written to me about, which is about "based on" versus "based off." And people are like, Really? Either you're saying, Yes, I hate that! Or, Seriously, someone's worried about that? The people who are worried about it are very worried about it and write to me about it. "Based off" is definitely happening. Historically, it's been "based on." There are people who say it makes no sense to say "based off." But I would argue you could make as much sense out of "based off" as you can on "based on." So if you have a base, you build "on the base." But if you also have a base, you could jump "off the base" like a springboard as a "jumping off point" and it is "based off." Now there are people like, Okay, I'll I'll get on board with "based off," but could we not say "based off of." I don't like the double preposition. Fair enough. It's a little redundant, but that is also happening. So we get change in prepositions.
Here is a change in pronunciation. So we have Samuel Rogers, 1855. "The now fashionable pronunciation of several words is, to me at least, very offensive. 'Contemplate' is bad enough. But 'balcony' makes me sick." So this word was borrowed into English. The second they were both borrowed, "balcony" came in from Italian. The stress was on the second syllable "bal-CO-ny." And English as a Germanic language tends to like stress on the first syllable. But it brought it up to the first syllable, we get "balcony." Unremarkable to us now. But there are many shifts in pronunciation happening all around us. We could think about whether you have a T in "often." So I would guess we probably have a mixed bag here. Historically, well, so "often" is interesting. If you go back several hundred years, it had a T. As did "soften" and "hasten." They all had Ts, and then that medial T got lost. So that they none of them had Ts. And then in the highly literate world in which we live, we are reintroducing the T in "often." So you will now hear a lot of "of-ten," particularly in more formal settings. When I ask undergraduates, a lot of them say, I have both. And when I'm bumping it up a little bit, I will say "of-ten," because it feels more formal to have the T in it. Even though for several hundred years it didn't have the T. I will give you another example from the book. This one is a really powerful pronunciation example of variation we have in the language. I'm going to start with the little, what is shift-8 on a keyboard, that little star. Which, there are many ways to say it. The way it is spelled is "asterisk." That is not the way I say that word. I would like you to just say that word to yourself. Okay. I'm hearing some murmurings. I think I'm here. So I'm an "asterix" speaker. My K and S have swapped. So I say "asteriks," unless I slow down. There are people who say "asterik." There are people who say "asteris." So we've got at least four. Some people will say, I just say "ast-risk" like I don't have a I have shortened the middle syllable on that. I don't think – I could be wrong – but I don't think I have ever been judged for saying "asteriks." That someone has said, Anne Curzan should not have her job because she says "asteriks." But people do say, You should not have that job if you say "aks a question." And here's how we see that judgments about language are about much more than language. They're about speakers, they're about identity, they're about race and ethnicity, nationality. So what's interesting about "ask" and "aks" a question is that if you go back in the history of English, they're both old. And from what we can tell, the older form is probably "aks." And that the swapping of the sounds was from "aks" to "ask." And Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales uses "aks of question" spelled "a-x-e" and it was the high form. And then over time it came to be replaced by "ask" of the as a standard form. And the judgments that are loaded onto "aks" are severe, and people will say, You shouldn't get that job if you say "aks a question." So this is why what I work on is both delightful and funny and incredibly powerful and serious all at the same time because we do so much gatekeeping around language and around the diversity in language that is actually systematic and has a long history to it.
So here is Richard Grant White again, I just had to share this one because it sets up an example that's happening around us. So he didn't like the verb "donate." "I need hardly say that this word is utterly abominable. It has been formed by some presuming an ignorant person from 'donation.'" Now he's right about the etymology. So we had "donation" and we back-formed "donate." Because we do that sometimes. So we have many, many examples. We had "television" and then we needed a verb. We "televise" things on "television." We had "editor," and then we had to describe what editors do. So they "edit" things. An interesting one (00:25):
the word "beggar," which you can, you know, "b-e-g-g-a-r" borrowed in French, but if you hear it, it sounds like it has an E-R ending. So hundreds of years ago, we back-form "beg" from the French-borrowing "beggar." What do "beggars" do? They "beg." What do "lazy" people do? They "laze" around. So here is a back-formation that is going on around us that was brought to my attention by parents who came to me and said, What is going on with the verb "verse?" And then they said, Anne make it stop, which I, I cannot. And of course, my reaction was, that's totally fascinating. So. Is Venus Williams "versing" Serena Williams today? Again, if you hang out with young people, this is happening. So this afternoon, the University of Michigan is "versing" the University of Oregon in football. I'm concerned. Oregon is very good. What I think has happened here is that we've got a back-formation from "v-e-r-s-u-s" coming in from the Latin. If you think about kids who are hearing on the radio or television "Sunday
So let me share three more. I'm going to do one historical one and then two more recent peeves. So this one is hard for us to believe here in the 21st century. But in the 19th century, people were very concerned about the passive progressive. And if you've never had to think about the passive progressive, you do use the passive progressive all the time for things that are being done progressively and passively. So what are we talking about? We're talking about a construction, like "the bridge is being built." And here we have David Booth (00:26):
"For some time past 'the bridge is being built,' 'the tunnel is being excavated,' and other expressions of a like kind have pained the eye and stunned the ear." This is all over 19th century grammar books. People hated the passive progressive when it came in. You're thinking, Well, what would you – how would you express that if you did not have the passive progressive? You would say "the house is building." Which makes no sense to us now. But I would guess that I have some Jane Austen readers in the room. And in the book it says, "Who? I share an example." Jane Austen did not have the passive progressive. When she was writing this was not part of her grammar. And so it's in Northanger Abbey and the sentence reads something like
All right. I would guess some of you, like I did, grew up with Strunk and White. There are many people who still celebrate Strunk and White. I am not very kind to Strunk and White in Says Who? There is some helpful advice in there. There is also some not helpful advice in Strunk and White, but just to show the evolving nature of what people think is correct and what people are worried about here is 1979, many of us in this room were alive in 1979. And we get this is about generic "he." So "he" used to refer to any person, "a teacher should learn his students names." Generic "he" has become seemingly indispensable. It has no pejorative connotation. It is never incorrect. Now, I actually remember in elementary school, in junior high school, being told that I should use generic "he," that it was correct and that it included me. Never felt like it included me, but that's what I was told. Now, obviously, the advice on this one has changed significantly. But I wanted to share, 1979 (00:27):
this is what was seen as correct.
And lastly, connected to the title of the book, here is the New York Times style manual as late as 1999 with concerns about the adjective "fun." So, "Though the commercial may someday win respectability for 'fun' as an adjective, a 'fun' vacation, the gushing sound argues for keeping the word a noun." I do not understand what is "gushing" about "fun" as an adjective, but "fun" for most of its history in English was a noun. And in the 20th century it became an adjective. Which is why you get "funner" and "funnest." But through much of the 20th century, style guides were resisting "fun" as an adjective, let alone "funner" and "funnest." And you will notice that I put "funnest" in the title of the book in part to have people pick it up and say, What kind of English professor would ever put "funnest" in the title of a book? And what I've loved is that some people, when they've been introducing the book, have said "a kinder, funnier usage guide." And I'm like, Nope, nope. I did put "funner" in the title of the book and I'm happy to come back to "funner" and "funnest," but it's it's the regular way that one syllable adjectives work. Once "fun" becomes an adjective the comparative would be "funner," except that we don't like it. So then we say, It can't be.
All right. So let me at this point, there are many people and you may be thinking this right now who are thinking, Anne Curzan has no standards. She is saying, You can do whatever you want whenever you want, and it doesn't matter. And I would like to be very clear. That's actually not what I'm saying. I am saying that we should be thinking about rhetorical effectiveness, about making choices with purpose based on audience and context, and that there are many, many effective ways to use language depending on context. And so what I'm trying to do in the book is take different kinds of rules and show that some of these are helpful and some of them are not. So the rule about "not ending a sentence with a preposition," this has never been helpful. We have always been able to end sentences with prepositions in English. The fact that you cannot do it in Latin is irrelevant. So that has never been helpful. "Don't dangle or misplace your modifiers in writing." This is super helpful because it can be ambiguous if you have your modifier in the wrong place. In speech we don't notice, in writing it can be confusing. We should be careful about that. "Don't use the passive voice." This one needs a lot more nuance. Sometimes the passive voice is very, very helpful. "It has been argued the murder was committed." Right? If you put those in the active voice, they don't work particularly well. But sometimes it's really awkward. And the last one is a myth. "Don't start a sentence with 'and' or 'but'" – this has never been true. But it is now in the Microsoft Word grammar checker. Which should have you asking a lot of questions about the Microsoft Grammar checker, which I did and I'm happy to talk about. So let me end here with giving you a few things to watch in the language. So the full acceptance and writing of singular "they" both as gender neutral and as non-binary. The ongoing demise of the inflected form "whom." And I'm just going to show you a quick video from The Office on this one.
Office clip Honestly, you don't know what so that you can communicate to people here, to your clients, to whomever. So. Okay. What? It's whoever got to know whomever is never actually right. Sometimes it's right. Michael is right. It's a made up word used to trick students. Actually, whomever is the formal version of the word. Obviously, it's a real word, but I don't know when to use it correctly. I'm not a native speaker. I know what's right, but I'm not going to say because you're all jerks who didn't come see my dad. Do you really know which one is correct? I don't know. It's home when it's the object of the sentence. And who one is the subject. That sounds. Right. Well, it sounds right. Good. Is it? It ranges as much as an object. With me as an object. Is he right about that? How many is that again? Was one of Michael the subject to explain the computer system, the object and guilt to whomever, meaning us, the indirect object, which is the correct usage of my word. No one ask you anything ever. So who remembers games? Toby, why don't you take a letter opener and stick it in your skull? This doesn't matter.
ANNE CURZAN (00:31):
So what I love about this thing, it's it's not a word. It's never word. It's the formal version. "Whom" has been trying to die for several hundred years. And we could just let it die. The decline of "must" in the sense of necessity. Very few people are noticing this, but if you have errands to run this afternoon, I would guess most of you would say "I have to run errands," not "I must run errands." "I must" feels very strong at this point because "must" is declining and we're getting these new auxiliaries "hafta," "wanna," "gonna," "sposedta." And if we didn't have such standardized spelling, that is how they would be spelled. The increasing use of "less" instead of "fewer." I'm very sorry, Mom. It's just happening. Ongoing apostrophe instability. And then and because there are people who seem to think that there was a moment in the history of English where everyone agreed about how to use an apostrophe. And I'm here to say there has never been that moment in the history of English when we all agreed about how to use an apostrophe. And the last one is this repurposing of punctuation to meet the demands of texting. So here you have written language moving very, very fast, without tone, without facial expression. And so texting young people have created conventions and they're using punctuation to do the work. So if I show this to a room of undergrads, they will say, These three texts are completely different. Completely. The one on the left over here that is neutral. "Okay." – with a period that is serious, potentially angry. "Okay" – that is skeptical. I'm waiting for more information. They have repurposed punctuation to do the work.
So the four key messages from the book (00:32):
all living languages change because humans. Diversity in language is part of the diversity of us, and it should be celebrated as part of the diversity of us. Correctness in language, as I hope I've shown you with some of these examples, is not a stable concept, and we can care deeply about language and be kind to each other. And what I hope we can be is more curious and seeking more information. And I'll leave you with this analogy from the book, which is
AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 (00:33):
Hi. Thanks so much for your great talk. I come from a family where "irregardless" was literally a fight in the household, and my letters home from camp came back edited with spelling corrections! So I have a sort of more philosophical question. There are languages that are more or less poetic. English is not fundamentally a very poetic language. I'm wondering if you've thought about if your language is more poetic, if that has a psychological or cultural impact.
ANNE CURZAN (00:34):
Can you help me understand what you mean by poetic?
AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 (00:35):
Arabic, for example, is much more, the words, the use of poetry embedded in speech, the flowing use of descriptions and understanding.
ANNE CURZAN (00:36):
Okay. So it's a it's an interesting question. It's a much it's a it's as you note, it's a huge question. I want to be careful about a word like "poetic" because, of course, my first reaction is, of course, there's been phenomenal poetry written in many, many varieties of English and one of the things that humans seem to do with language, we we use metaphor. Different languages will do that differently. But English actually employs metaphor all the time. What George Lakoff has called "conceptual metaphors." So for example, we talk about "understanding" as "seeing." And then your ideas are "clear" or "opaque" to me when we say "I see what you mean." I don't "see" what you mean. "Good" is up and "bad" is down. Right? And we then structure a whole way of thinking about language that way. The question of the relationship of language and thought is a huge one. So I recognize it's probably an insufficient answer to your question. But one of the things that I worry about and that all linguists are worrying about is that we are losing languages every week, every year, and that we're losing a lot of cultural knowledge and culture as we lose those languages, because there is a way in which people are capturing the world, speaking about the world, making particular distinctions within a language about the world. And when we lose those, we lose the art, we lose the poetry, but we also just lose the categories and the way of speaking about the world. And that's a huge loss for us.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 2 (00:37):
Thank you so much for your talk. English major as well, followed by business school. Great writer. My pet peeve is when people say "I've been wanting." "I've been wanting to go there." "I've been wanting to travel there." And it sounds awful to me. Why not say "I'd like to go there?" This "been wanting" sounds incorrect. And I've never seen an explanation for the usage.
ANNE CURZAN (00:38):
You are the first person who has ever brought this up to me. Is there anyone else here who is been noticing this? I mean, this is one of the things I love about this talk and giving these talks is that I get to hear new things. So I do not have a good answer for you, but I will get one and it will probably show up on the radio show. That's What They Say. So "I've been wanting." So you don't like the perfect tense there of why have you put it in the I mean, people are saying I've been "I've been wanting this" for a while, right? Because the perfect starts in the past and comes up to the present. I mean, I think that that's what people are trying to express. I'm totally working this out in my head right now. I'd like to suggest only right now
AUDIENCE MEMBER 3 (00:39):
Thank you very much for your talk. Could you please comment on usage fads like, "you know" and "I mean."
ANNE CURZAN (00:40):
The usage of "you know" and "I mean" um. And "um." These are what linguists would call discourse markers. They actually do work in conversation. There's a whole subfield where people study these. It's called pragmatics. Something like "you know" is a way to bring in your audience. You're trying to invite people in. "I mean" is a way to diminish your own authority. Which sounds like a bad thing, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes you want to soften your own opinion. "I mean, I think it's blah, blah, blah," which opens up some space for somebody to disagree with you as opposed to, "I think, blah, blah, blah." "I mean, I think." "Um" keeps the floor. It says "I'm about to say something. Do not talk right now. I still have the floor." "Like" is of course, a very common discourse marker. So they do a lot of work. Where they start to have trouble doing their work is when we overuse them. We don't notice them when they're not common. We're all we all use them. But if someone has a discourse marker that they use a lot, "you know" or "I mean" or "like," then it starts to become prominent because it's overused. So I think we often think discourse markers are distracting. They're not distracting when they're being used at a more minimal level. They are distracting when and we all have them. When I teach, I use "right." It's the way I invite students in, but I use it a lot, that I'll say something "...right? Nuhnuhnuh right? Rrright?" And then, of course, a student pointed out to me when we were doing discourse markers, I was teaching, they said, You know what your discourse marker is, Professor Curzan? I was like, Oh please tell me.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 4 (00:41):
Hi! I just wanted to say thank you for the talk. And I want to say specifically, I really appreciate the nods that you've given about how language can disguise judgment. Something that has been a huge preoccupation for me for the last few years is the usage of words like "good," "bad," "worse," "better," "best" – words that I find really difficult to process because I feel they are so frequently used euphemistically. I'm curious to know if you have any information or thoughts on either the history of the usage of these words or just any thoughts generally how you handle these words that both say so much and maybe nothing at the same time.
ANNE CURZAN (00:42):
So if I'm hearing you right, the concerns about those being used almost hyperbolically. Where "good, "best" are being used for things that might not be "the best?" Is that – okay. There actually, some of you may have seen it. John McWhorter had a really interesting column about this within the last couple of weeks about a, his argument is that humans we often want to be emphatic or over-the-top or extravagant. And so we will speak in hyperbolic ways. And what happens is that then a word over time will lose its strength. And the place where we see this most dramatically in English is intensifiers. So if you look at intensifiers, "truly" used to mean "it is true," it was the adverb of "it is true." And then it just became an intensifier, "it's truly great." "Really" meant "real." "Very" is also related to truth. And all of those as they became intensifies and they lose their strength over time. And so and then so then we have to make new ones like "super" or "uber" or "wicked" in slang to do that kind of extravagant work. So people will lament this as a kind of weakening. But as a linguist, I just see it as change over time that there are words that will get stronger in intensity and their words that will get weaker.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 4 (00:43):
Thank you. I actually I do see the usage there as like an intensifier. I think I was more specific about your comment earlier about like, someone who, Oh that's not good. That's oh a good person wouldn't do that. Or the way that judgment is loaded into the languages and the impact of that.
ANNE CURZAN (00:44):
Okay. Thank you for clarifying. So that is something this is my mission as a linguist trying to do this work is that this is how I was educated, is that there is a right way to use the English language. And then there are many wrong ways to use the English language, and the right way is the formal edited standard way. And then everything else is irregular or broken or slangy or whatever it is, and it's simply linguistically not true. There are formal ways and informal ways to use the language. There are standardized ways and nonstandard ways, and they are all effective in different contexts. So the idea that the formal standard way is the best way to use English, it's just not true. We know that it is actually enormously ineffective in many contexts. It will make you sound overeducated, snobby, pretentious, whatever it is, it will not actually be an effective way to use the language. And linguistically, this you know, I'm trying to get truth about the fact that all varieties are systematic, they're all rule governed. When people try to say to me, The double negative is illogical and broken, I'm like, The double negative is completely logical in language. I know that in math you multiply two negatives, you get a positive. But. I don't care. Math is not language. And if you add two negatives in math, you get a bigger negative. So and if you look historically, most varieties of English had double negative. And then the standardized variety moved to single negation. And many world varieties still use double negation. But the judgments on it are really strong. So you're getting at the reason I wrote this book is that it is so that we can have more informed conversations about language, and if we do that, we actually can A) have more fun because language is fascinating and we can learn about it and the diversity of it and how it changes. And we can be kinder to each other. And embrace all of that diversity and change.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5 (00:45):
Have you come across "out there" as a phrase? I noticed it by in a presentation by a CEO, an investment presentation recently where he used it at least 50 times in 30 minutes. It's like a verbal tic – "out there."
ANNE CURZAN (00:46):
Can you tell – meaning?
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5 (00:47):
Almost no meaning to it.
ANNE CURZAN (00:48):
And this is in a business context.
AUDIENCE MEMBER 5 (00:49):
Yeah, he just threw it in. Yeah. "This is what's happening 'out there.'"
ANNE CURZAN (00:50):
Ah. Huh. Again, I'm going to look at that one, too, in terms of. So business jargon tends to get a lot of criticism. And I've done a couple of podcasts about this. It is there's a lot of new jargon that comes through the business world, I think, because people want new new language. There's a premium on that in a lot of business contexts. I think a lot of people like to harsh on business if they're worried that it has an outsized influence on us generally in the culture. But what's also fascinating about business jargon, so I'm going to have to look it "out there," but some things that used to be seen as jargony
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ALISA ROSENTHAL (00:53):
For more information on Anne Curzan, including the link to her book Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words, head to the show notes or chicagohumanities.org.
Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the staff at Chicago Humanities who are producing the live events and making sure they sound fantastic. Thanks for joining us for a wonderful year in fascinating speakers and sparkling audio. The best way to support our programming is to leave a rating and review, hit subscribe to be notified about new episodes, and check out our backlog for a gem you might’ve missed. And we want to know what you think! You can shape the future of the podcast by taking the short listener survey in the show notes, it helps us out a lot. The podcast is taking a short break, but we’ll be back in 2025 with some really great new programs and some wonderful stuff from our 30+ year archive. Hey thanks for listening, and as always, stay human.
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