Curse of Knowledge

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Several years ago, a researcher at Stanford conducted a study in which she asked people

To tap out rhythms to songs that they had in their heads, and other people were supposed

To guess what the songs were.

Like, for example, I have a song in my head.

Try to guess what it is.

It sounds like a clap that they do at baseball games.

No, no.

What is it?

No, that’s somewhere over the rainbow.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it is.

What am I missing here?

What’s going on here is what we call the curse of knowledge in that I have the whole thing in my head, but you’re not hearing it at all.

And in fact, that’s what happened in this study.

People guess only 3% of 120 or so songs that people were tapping out.

And I was thinking about this recently as I was reading the fabulous new book called The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker.

He’s the psycholinguist and cognitive neuroscientist who often writes about language.

And he has this fantastic chapter in the book where he talks about the fact that the main cause of incomprehensible prose is that kind of curse.

It’s the difficulty of imagining what the reader is taking in.

So what I’ve heard is that this book is probably the new Strunk and White.

Yes.

Even if you have differences of opinion about his various style and grammar rules that he’s talking about,

In general his argument for writing well and clearly is so perfectly explained

That this is a great tool for any beginning or even well-established writer to kind of feel supported,

Feel the impetus, a little wind in their sails from somebody who gets the process and understands what it takes to do good writing.

Exactly.

Yeah, people cling to Strunk and White so tightly, so many of them.

But the fact is that William Strunk was born in 1869.

So some of his advice is a little stale, even with E.B. White’s improvements.

Yeah, I mean, we’re talking about a dynamic, changing thing.

And I can’t recommend Pinker’s book highly enough.

We’ll talk more about it later.

Pinker’s The Sense of Style. You can find it in your bookshops on Amazon.com.

If you’ve got a question about language, something to say, or an opinion about Stephen Pinker’s book,

We’d love to hear it. 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

And you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Salem Rosales calling from Whittier, California.

Salem, welcome to the show.

Hi, Salem. What’s going on?

Not much. My family and I have a debate going on here. So my mom had five kids and we all grew up saying mayonnaise. I’ve never, ever, ever heard anybody say it another way, mayonnaise. But then she drove my stepdad and he also had kids and his whole family say mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise.

Yeah, it’s really weird. I’ve never heard that. And so he says, you know, they say, look at the

Spelling. It’s mayonnaise. It’s not mayonnaise. You know, my stepdad will say that. I’m like,

No, it’s mayonnaise. So every once in a while we’ll be like making a sound like, hey, can you

Pass the mayonnaise? Like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I see the mayonnaise.

And so I had never heard anybody use it. So that was just, it was just kind of a jokey

Disagreement, whatever. So I want to clear this up. Is it mayonnaise, mayonnaise? Have I said it

Wrong my whole life. Oh, dear.

It’s worse than you think, Salem.

It is worse. It is a lot

Worse than you think. For one thing, it’s

Three syllables. Well, for some people,

It’s three syllables. The dictionaries

I’m looking at say three syllables.

You’ve heard me about dictionaries and their pronunciations.

Yeah. Well, sure, but I’m just saying…

They privilege the pronunciations of white Easterners.

Right, but if you look at any dictionary,

I have not seen

One that offers two syllables.

Yes, Salem, here’s the problem.

This is a borrowed word from French, and people have borrowed it any way they pleased.

And it looks weird.

It still has all the signals that it’s a foreign word.

It is not fully anglicized, and the pronunciation is all over the place.

Is that first syllable may or ma?

Is it two syllables or three syllables?

And do you put the accent on the first syllable or the third syllable?

Like the English are more likely to say mayonnaise instead of mayonnaise.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah, it’s a mess.

There is a dialect map that shows that people in Montana, Nebraska, and Wyoming,

You’re more likely to say the three-syllable pronunciation,

And in the South, you’re more likely to say the two-syllable pronunciation,

But everywhere else, it’s about 50-50.

The little pockets here and there of the two-syllable or the three-syllable version.

Sure. In Kentucky, we said mayonnaise.

I grew up saying mayonnaise.

You did?

Yeah, not mayonnaise, but mayonnaise.

But who knows?

I didn’t get my education until I was well into my 20s, and I’m not even sure it stuck.

And I didn’t even get mayonnaise until I was an adult.

We had Miracle Whip.

Oh, yeah.

I was raised in a house that distinguished the difference.

Miracle Whip wasn’t mayonnaise.

Oh, really?

Yeah, people.

Oh.

This is a mess.

Yeah, I was thinking of my house.

Miracle Whip is not mayonnaise.

Even in French, the pronunciation has changed a lot over the many years that it came out of this small city.

I think it was a small port city called M-A-H-O-N.

Mahon.

Yeah, Mahon.

Something like that.

The pronunciation has changed a lot.

You can actually look in the historical dictionaries and see that there’s even some argument among French speakers how to pronounce it

Because some people expect it to be a little more like the name of the city,

And other people do whatever they like to it because they don’t care about the etymology of the word.

Yeah, and it depends if you’re talking about the Anglicized version of that name or the French.

This is the show where you come for a decision between two choices, and we give you six choices.

Yes.

I think you’ve opened a jar of worms.

Something like this.

Use that for a condiment.

Do you at least feel a little bit better?

Yes.

Because I know I’m not right, but I’m also not wrong.

Yeah.

Exactly.

The three-syllable pronunciation, surprisingly enough, is not as common as the two-syllable pronunciation, even among educated folk.

There may be some people who’ve adopted the pronunciation because they believe that it’s better, but they didn’t come by it naturally.

They learned it from a book rather than learning it through their environment.

Well, yeah, and if you’re ordering, you want the food, so you just say it faster.

Yeah, yeah, give me mayonnaise, right?

So you say—

Thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

So here’s the thing.

Go back to the other part of your family that says it the other way and say, well, the truth is we’re probably all wrong.

It should be three syllables and we should say it with a French accent.

So let’s just have a sandwich.

Or change the menu.

Yeah, change the menu.

Good idea.

Okay.

Thank you guys so much.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you, Salem.

Bye-bye.

Have a great day.

Okay, you too.

It’s never easy.

It’s never easy.

It’s never simple.

Even when you call people who’ve done the digging like we have, no.

Is that Barrett’s Law? It’s never simple?

Barrett’s Law. Barrett’s Law is there’s no way to resolve these questions for other people.

You have to resolve them for yourself.

Oh, I like that.

English. She is very complicated.

Give us a call about her, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, remember when we were talking about Murphy’s Law and other laws named for people, and we asked people to send us their laws?

Oh, yeah.

We heard from Peter Van Persim, who is a custodian in a library in Wisconsin.

And this is Van Persim’s Law.

A. Given any two rolls of toilet paper hanging side by side in a bathroom dispenser,

The larger-slash-newer roll will be used more quickly and thus approach the size of the smaller roll faster than the smaller roll will be used up.

B, as the size of the newer approaches the size of the older,

Confusion arises as to which one is bigger,

And both roles will shrink at nearly the same rate.

C, this tendency is exploded if one of the two roles is left wrapped while in place.

That’s so true.

He’s so observant.

Yes, it’s very true.

A janitor would know these things.

Right.

And I wrote him back, and I asked him about our graffiti discussion,

And he said, indeed, he’s seeing much, much less graffiti.

I love that. Well, I know there’s some kind of law about your life. What is the thing that you think rules everything in your world? Tell us, name it, and we’ll talk about it on the air. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name’s Barbara Larson. I’m from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Barbara. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Barbara.

Thank you.

What’s going on?

Well, I thought of something the other day that puzzled me.

My mother had an expression that she used to say called the beatenest thing or that’s the beatenest thing.

And I never thought much about it.

I just used it, too, having heard it my whole life.

But one day years ago, I used it around my husband, and we were dating at the time, and his family’s from Iowa.

So I guess they don’t say that in Iowa because he was like, what did you say?

How do you spell that?

What does that mean?

And I hadn’t thought about it.

I just thought it was a normal expression.

And years have gone by.

And just a few weeks ago, someone I work with used the expression.

It made me think of it again.

And that person is also from West Texas, like my mother.

So I don’t know the history of expression or how it came to be, but it was something I grew up hearing.

And how do you spell it?

Well, I guess it’s B-E-A-T-I-N-G-E-S-T.

And the thing would be T-H-A-N-G, of course, because that would be more of a Texas way of saying thing.

Yeah.

Right.

That’s the beatenest thing.

And so if something is the beatenest thing, what is it?

It’s kind of a puzzling situation that you can’t figure out a solution.

Oh, interesting.

So it’s kind of like saying, don’t that beat all?

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Interesting, because I’ve usually seen beatenest, spelled B-E-A-T-E-N-E-S-T, to mean something that’s really excellent, splendid.

Again, beating all.

And that’s the idea.

It’s something that is the thing that beats everything more than anything else.

But it might be beating it through being exceptional or unusual.

Right.

Right, right.

Rather than excellent or terrible.

Right.

And I haven’t heard it used in more of a, that’s a great thing, it’s more of a puzzling thing.

That’s so interesting to me.

And I’ve never seen it written, so I may have spelled it incorrectly because I’ve only heard it spoken.

Well, you will find it throughout the South and the South Midlands,

So it makes perfect sense that you’d find it in your part of the country

And that perhaps the other friend of yours didn’t know it.

But, yeah.

You said that was your husband from Iowa, right?

Right.

Oh, your husband.

Yeah.

I’m married to an Iowan as well.

They don’t know as much as they think they do.

Oh, exactly, exactly.

They’re not familiar with all these nice expressions.

But that helps me understand it better.

I really had no idea where it came from.

And it has a huge history, a couple hundred years almost.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, sure.

So it’s a long American history of this word.

Use it with pride.

I don’t know if the president will ever use it, but you’ve got a fair claim to it yourself.

It’s quite possible.

Well, good.

I’m glad to hear we’re in good company.

It’s not just my family.

Indeed.

Well, I’m sure your family is great company, but other folks as well, for sure.

Well, thanks.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

Okay.

Well, Barbara, thanks so much for calling.

Thank you.

Great.

Take care.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, we love those regional dialects, and we’d love to hear about the one in your part

Of the country.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I have a question for you.

Yes, please.

If you have a bee in your hand, what do you have in your eye?

Bonnet? No, I don’t know.

A sea?

I have a sea in my eye because I see with my eye.

I don’t know.

No, you have beauty because beauty is in the eye of the bee holder.

Oh.

That’s a laugh of pain.

Yeah, I thought so.

877-929-9673 is the number to call and share your terrible puns.

What’s black and white and red all over?

The English language.

She’s a big topic.

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And hey, there he is, the sexy man, John Chaneski.

Hello.

Hey, here I am.

How are you doing there?

Good to be here, guys.

Looking buff, looking good.

What’s going on?

Thank you very much.

I have a puzzle for you guys.

Do you remember a couple of times I’ve taken you on a puzzle hunt around the world?

Oh, love those.

Yeah, good.

You going to do it again?

We’re going to do another one.

Yeah.

I’m so glad you’re out of it because here we go.

I’ll give you a clue to a place name, and you’ll quote-unquote go there, and then you’ll get another clue.

It’s just like a puzzle hunt, sort of virtual.

Here we go.

You begin your incredible journey in a world capital that is a homophone for a word describing a type of music or a type of food.

Yeah.

A type of food.

I’ll say it’s an Asian capital.

Asian capital.

It’s rather a famous homophone for a type of music or a type of food.

Famous.

Now you’re making me feel guilty.

Well, soul.

Soul is right.

Very good.

Soul music, soul food.

Okay.

When you get there, you are approached by a mysterious woman in a red fedora who whispers to you,

There’s an island named for Christmas.

There’s an island named for Easter.

But your next stop is an island nation merely named for a day of the week.

Oh, for some reason, I guess that’s the tip of my brain.

Yeah.

Sunday?

No.

Monday?

Well, what island is named for Sunday?

Oh, Domingo.

Santa Domingo?

Santa Domingo?

No.

Not the island before.

Dominica?

Dominica.

Oh, Dominica.

Dominica is correct.

Yeah, the nation of Dominica.

Very nice.

When you get there, a trained pigeon lands on your shoulder.

There’s a message on its leg.

Your next stop is a lake.

This lake seems to have some sort of a psychological complex,

Perhaps because it’s often considered the second largest lake in the world.

Is it one of the Great Lakes?

It is.

Oh.

So, Holmes.

Yeah.

I’ll just list them.

Huron, Ontario.

What’s the M?

Michigan.

Michigan, Erie, Superior.

I don’t know.

I don’t know which one it is.

Superior, maybe.

Superior is correct.

It has a complex, a superiority complex.

Oh, I see that.

Even though it is second to the Caspian Sea, which is often considered.

No one needed words.

There’s a clue in everything.

I’ve got to remember that with you.

Thank you.

Now, when you arrive there, yet another trained pigeon lands on your shoulder because new recruits are hard to find.

This message reads,

Your next stop is an unincorporated community in the southeastern U.S.

You can find its name if you remove the first letter of its state.

First letter of its state.

Unincorporated city.

That is, you probably don’t know this place.

Alabama.

I was going to say, Lurida.

Say again, Grant.

Florida.

Florida, Florida is correct.

No.

Really?

Florida, Florida.

That’s got to be a quiz maker’s dream, that place.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, sure.

I figured you probably wouldn’t be intimately familiar with this place,

But I think you’d be very interested to find out it exists.

Yeah.

Put that on my list of places to go.

There you go.

When you get there, the locals throw a parade in your honor.

The marching band holds a banner with this clue.

Go to a world capital that shares its name with a mythological prince

Who started a war.

World capitals.

Paris.

Paris is correct.

Nicely done.

He started the Trojan War.

When you arrive,

You immediately grab a sandwich

Because you’re starving

From all the traveling.

Your receipt bears

The following message.

Your exciting tour

Ends in a national park

Whose name, in one word,

Contains all the vowels

Exactly once.

A national park.

Just blanking on…

No, it’s not Sequoia.

Why wouldn’t it be Sequoia?

I don’t know.

Oh, nice.

There we go.

It’s Sequoia.

Yes.

Well done.

You’ve made your way around the world, Puzzle Hunt.

You’ve done it.

John, I love these.

Thanks, John.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks for entertaining us.

Thank you, guys.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

This is a show about language and how we use it.

If you’ve got something to say, a question to ask, this is the place, 877-929-9673.

Email us to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, iTunes, and a lot of other places.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you guys doing? This is John Mincenzo in East Hampton, New York.

Hi, John. Welcome to the show.

Hey, John.

What’s cooking?

Hey. A couple of weeks ago, I wasn’t feeling too well.

I’d been in bed for a couple of days, and a friend of mine called me up after a few days and said,

You know, are you going to work today?

I said, no, I’m still not feeling so well.

I said, oh, you’re still feeling under the weather.

And, you know, of course, I knew what it meant, but I started thinking, like, what could that possibly mean, really?

You know, if you’re under the weather, that to me is the kind of ideal condition because you don’t want the weather on you, you know, and then it’s raining.

And if you’re above the weather, you’re probably in space.

Under the weather is like where we’re supposed to be.

So why is it when we’re sick, we call it under the weather?

And I started thinking about that.

And I probably have too much time on my hands to think about things like this.

Yeah, well, you were under the weather, right?

I figured I’d give you guys a call.

Exactly.

Well, I have a lie to tell you, and then I have a truth to tell you, all right?

Okay.

So the lie is that it comes from the nautical world,

And it refers to either a part of a boat, such as a railing,

Or a particular level of the boat that was called the weather or the weather deck.

And supposedly, if you were sick from the seas, you would go under the weather because this is where you would be out of the way and least likely to be tossed overboard by a wave or by your shipmates who didn’t want to see you vomiting.

That’s the lie.

That is not a true story.

And the reason I’m telling you the lie is because this is a lie that is repeated in book after book after book and source after source is the supposed origin of under the weather.

It’s wrong.

It’s absolutely wrong.

Actually, unfortunately, the truth is not as much fun.

The truth is simply that the weather affects us.

It changes our health.

It does things to our sinuses, to our bones.

It does things to just the way we feel about ourselves, you know, seasonal affective disorder, for example, when we don’t get a lot of sunlight, maybe make us a little bit depressed, things like that.

So when you are under the weather, it simply means that you are being affected by your environment.

The cold has given you a chill.

Oh, my sinuses.

Yeah, the bone that you broke when you were a kid is starting to ache.

Their sinuses are swollen.

That sort of thing. That’s all that it means. The weather somehow affected your body.

Oh.

Yeah, that’s the origin of it, too. So being under the weather just means you’re under the…

Imagine it’s like under the influence of the weather.

I see.

Yeah.

That’s unfortunately the thing about… You know, John, you listen to the show, you know that’s how it is.

The fun stuff is almost always the lie.

Wah, wah, wah.

Yeah, sad trouble.

The timing doesn’t work out. This word pops up into English in the 1820s or something like that.

And given the nautical history of the English-speaking world,

Just really we should have seen this long before.

Much earlier.

Much earlier.

And it first appears in non-nautical contexts,

Completely unrelated to being at sea.

Huh.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, it makes sense to me.

All right, John.

Well, I hope you’re feeling better now.

I feel fine now, yeah.

All right.

Excellent.

Take care.

Give us another call sometime, all right?

Will do.

Thank you very much.

Take care.

Take care, John.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a question about the origin of a word or you’re feeling under the weather and have a musing about things that are completely useless, we’re the ones to call.

877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And if you’re listening on podcast, that phone number still works for you, so call us anytime.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, yes, this is Joan.

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Joan.

How are you doing?

Hi, Joan.

Good, thanks.

How are you guys doing?

All right, what’s up?

The question that I was calling about is, so I am kind of notorious for moving around a lot,

And I have a lot of friends who live in different places.

And so I know I may not see them, but like once a year.

And so whenever I get up with them, I meet up with them.

I was wondering if there’s a word for just meeting up with someone and reconnecting with them,

Just like you had seen them the day before, just kind of picking up where you left off.

I can give you a couple of words that I use to describe my friends like that.

Oh, perfect. Yeah, that’d be great.

Okay. One of the things that I call them, I call them my anyway friends.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, that’s a good one.

I get it. I get it immediately.

Yeah, I have a good friend who just moved across the border to Tijuana,

And we haven’t seen each other in seven years, and we saw each other last week,

And it was sort of like, anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I have a couple of those.

Yeah.

Yeah. And the other one that I just came up with last night, I was talking with my friend Carol, who has a tortoise.

And I call them my tortoise friends.

I was talking with my friend Carol, who has a tortoise, and she told me that in November she puts her tortoise in the closet until March because they hibernate.

And there’s nothing you can do for them.

I’ve heard people have put them in the refrigerator, in the crisper.

No, no, no. She puts little Huey. Huey is 37 years old. She’s got a 37-year-old tortoise. She puts his tortoise in the closet and makes it comfortable. And then she doesn’t see it again until March. So they’re either my anyway friends or my tortoise friends.

I love it.

Oh, yeah.

I love that feeling that you get.

Like you were literally finishing a conversation that last was held in 2002.

Right.

And you just like pick up.

Yeah.

And you know everything about this person still because they’re essentially the same person you’ve always loved.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, the only phrase that I’ve ever like come up with kind of think of it is like that phrase like riding a bike.

Like you never forget to ride a bike.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So I had a talk with my friend Shannon, who I hadn’t seen for a long time when she was visiting.

And I was like, yeah, being with you is like riding a bike.

You know, we just kind of pick up where we left off.

That’s perfect.

That’s nice.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure if there was like an official phrase or an official word.

How about bike-like?

Bike-like.

My bike-like friend.

You know, because old friend doesn’t quite cut it.

No.

Because that doesn’t express the idea that you’ve been separated for a while or that you can pick up where you left off no matter how much time it is.

Yeah.

Well, we’re going to have to throw this out to the listeners and say,

What do you call your friends who you haven’t seen in a while,

But you can pick up a conversation at any time and it seems normal.

There’s no distance, no weirdness.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Joan, we’ll let you know what we find out, all right?

Yeah, don’t be a stranger.

Okay, all right.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We asked you for slang from your pastimes,

And we heard from Kathy Gregoire from Bozeman, Montana.

She’s a downhill skier, and she called to share the term yard sale.

Do you know this term?

Oh, yes, I know this.

Actually, I have an entry for it in my official dictionary of unofficial English.

Do you?

And they use it in all kinds of skiing and skating,

And this is when you’ve got all your gear on, and you ski down a hill,

And you crash and your skis are over here and your poles are over there.

Exactly. Scattered.

Yeah, so your stuff is scattered in the grass, just like a yard sale.

Just like a yard sale, yes.

I think that Kathy had some firsthand experience with it.

It’s a fun one, though.

This is the stuff we like about slang, the goofy, funny ones.

We love it, yes.

A little bit of humor in there.

Give us a call to share your slang from your pastime, 877-929-9673,

Or send it in email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Guy Hemingway.

I’m calling from Dubuque, Iowa, that’s located along the Mississippi River,

Right where Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois come together.

I’ve been there, been there, been through there anyway.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I’ve just been talking to my wife about some Cajun folks that I have met.

Now, during the 1970s, I worked in the petroleum industry in western Colorado

And in the oil patch,

And I had occasion to meet roughnecks from oil states around the country.

I think my most memorable experiences were meeting people that self-identified as Cajuns.

And at the time and even now, I really wasn’t sure what exactly that meant,

Although I knew that they came from the South or the Gulf, as they would say.

And they spoke, I mean, they had a very unusual accent.

And not only an accent, but their word structure and their use of non-English terms was really, I mean, something I had never experienced in the United States anyway.

And so my question was, it would be kind of interesting to know what the origin or the evolution of the Cajun dialect was.

That’s a great question. Did you have any examples from the Roughnecks, anything they said that really popped out at you?

Oh, yeah. I mean, first off, again, they used words that were non-English.

And then they also kind of put word order was different.

And some of their phrases were just totally foreign to me.

But, I mean, as an example, I said, you know, how many beers are left in the cooler?

And they would say, oh, there are four or three beers left.

So instead of three or four, they would say four or three.

Four or three consistently.

Yes.

And that was very foreign to me.

Or, you know, when they’d say, instead of, what were you doing last night, they’d say, what you was doing last night.

Oh, right.

But one of my favorites was, and this was a phrase, and I guess you just had to try to interpret the meaning,

But I was having relationship issues with a girlfriend at the time, and I said, I’m about ready to call this entire thing off.

And one of them said to me, oh, man, he said, don’t drop the potato.

And I think that something was like to hang on to what you have or something.

I guess that’s what I took from that.

That’s pretty good advice sometimes.

Don’t drop the potato.

But my favorite, if you have just a second, was, and I will use the less colorful version of the language in this,

But we were working on the oil rigs and we had a gentleman from Louisiana in the derrick.

And he kept missing the pipe, which was a no-no, and our griller was getting very angry with him.

And finally he looked up at him and he said, you Cajun son of a gun, he said, if you miss one more of those pipe lengths, I’m going to fire you.

And the guy took a minute and looked down at him and he said, looked down at the drill and he said, a Cajun I is, but a son of a gun I ain’t.

And I’m going to unclimb this, Derek, and give you your satisfy.

And that sentence stuck with me forever.

So I’ve always been fascinated with the culture and the language.

That is a beauty. That is a beauty of a sentence.

Unclimb this derrick and give you your satisfy.

Yeah, and needless to say, he unclimbed the derrick or climbed down, and there was a little bit of a scuffle.

So that was hilarious, actually.

It’s funny. I love how these have stuck with you all these years.

That is the effect that hearing remarkable language has on everyone.

I’m not an expert on Cajun history, but the short version is they have retained, as you’ve suggested,

Some of the syntax of French, which they came by from French-speaking Canada, a part of it called

Acadia, corrupted to Cajun. They came to New Orleans because it was still a French-speaking

Place, spread throughout the bayou and all of the Delta territory, retained a lot of the old words,

Made some new words. They were isolated in some places, so some of the language stuck and some of

It just kind of developed on its own. Any isolated community will always have this happen. Will the

Retain words where the larger language loses them, and they’ll make some new words and structures of

Their own. But you will hear French cadences there, and you’ll hear French syntax. And the other thing

Is there’s a great deal of cultural pride, and cultural pride has a lot to do with a place

Retaining some of the old words, old forms, and old meanings. My colleagues who study Cajun

Culture and English report that most of the variants and dialects are disappearing, unfortunately.

But there’s still a strong identity.

And if the folks down there have their way, it’ll never leave.

It’ll never disappear.

That’s interesting.

You know what I’m going to do?

I’m going to do a little digging and find like the one or two essential works,

Books that you can read about this language.

Maybe you’ll find some mainstream stuff.

And that’ll be the great place to go.

I don’t have one on the top of my head.

No, I don’t either.

But there’s a lot of this.

And it’s really interesting to get into why they hung on to some of those old forms.

Whereas even French-speaking Canada doesn’t have them anymore.

Yeah, and I guess part of that would be the geographic isolationism

That they kind of experienced down in the southern bayou areas.

Sure, and pride, I think.

I mean, think of James Colville.

Yeah.

Yes, that’s right.

Guy, thank you so much for your call.

I really appreciate it.

You bet.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye now.

Bye, Guy.

Bye.

Well, if you know something about Cajun culture

And you’d love to share some of the language

And some of the things that really delight you about it,

We are all ears.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

A friend of mine who doesn’t spend a lot of time in the business world told me the other day that she was in a meeting and she kept hearing people talk about the burning platform.

Have you heard this expression?

The burning platform?

No.

I don’t know this one.

Apparently, it’s becoming very trendy in business to talk about a burning platform, which is a crisis that demands action.

It’s a need for change in a corporate setting that’s frightening, but you have to do it.

Right. Or your business is just done.

Exactly. And it refers to an old story about a guy who was on an oil rig and it caught fire.

And he had the choice of, you know, either frying or jumping into the North Atlantic and possibly being fatally injured or freezing to death.

And he made the choice to jump and survived.

Right. Instead of putting out the fire.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. But if you have a burning platform, it’s something that you must address immediately, even if it’s painful for your business.

Wow. Yeah. Business jargon isn’t all bad. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

If you’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette, and we were talking earlier in the show about the new book by Steven Pinker called The Sense of Style,

Which I have to say is the best book on writing I think I’ve read ever in my life.

Really?

Yeah, and it’s a great example of exactly the kind of thing that he prescribes.

I wanted to share a passage from it.

He was talking about the fact that one way to learn to write

Is simply to develop the habit of lingering over good writing wherever you find it.

And he goes on,

Savoring good prose is not just a more effective way to develop a writerly ear

Than obeying a set of commandments.

It’s a more inviting one.

Much advice on style is stern and censorious.

A recent bestseller advocated zero tolerance for errors

And brandished words like horror, satanic, ghastly, and plummeting standards on its first page.

The classic manuals, written by starchy Englishmen and rock-ribbed Yankees,

Try to take all the fun out of writing,

Grimly adjuring the writer to avoid offbeat words, figures of speech, and playful alliteration.

And then he goes on,

An aspiring writer could be forgiven for thinking that learning to write is like negotiating an obstacle course in boot camp with a sergeant barking at you for every errant footfall.

Why not think of it instead as a form of pleasurable mastery, like cooking or photography?

Perfecting the craft is a lifelong calling, and mistakes are part of the game.

Absolutely. I totally agree with pretty much everything he said there.

Yeah, I thought you’d like that.

Well, there’s a number of things that we say that he’s got in there.

For one, if you want to write better, read better writers.

Right.

The other one is don’t worry so much about the errors because we all make them.

I mean, if you find them, fix them.

And then the third thing is if it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong.

Exactly.

Right?

It has to be enjoyable.

I see my son go through this.

I know I always bring him up, but he’s seven and he’s learning to write longer little essays.

And for him, he’s already feeling the weight of all these rules.

And my wife and I are trying to free him of that.

I feel the weight too sometimes.

It’s hard, right?

Yeah.

And particularly when you know that you’re going to be listened to or read by millions.

Really difficult stuff.

But again, if it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong.

Exactly.

And I would just say again, this book is so much fun, The Sense of Style.

It’s subtitled The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

And that’s by Steven Pinker?

Yes.

And it’s out now.

Yes.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Email us, words@waywordradio.org.

And we just know there’s going to be a big conversation about this book on our Facebook group.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Alexis, and I’m calling from Fort Maid, Maryland.

Hi, Alexis. Welcome to the show.

How can we help you?

I have a question about the phrase, I miss you.

I have a friend who is working abroad for about a year,

And we’ve been writing letters and corresponding online,

And I quickly realized that I’m going to exhaust the phrase, I miss you.

And I could think of three other alternatives in Spanish

And one other alternative in French,

And it occurred to me I couldn’t really think of any other alternative in English.

You feel like you’re exhausting I miss you when you say it repeatedly.

Yes.

So I guess I’m wondering, are there other phrases in English to say I miss you

Or would I just have to continue learning other languages and borrowing from that?

What a great question.

So you’re feeling like the more you say it, the more drained of meaning it becomes?

Yes.

I mean, it was really interesting because the last conversation we had,

He studied French for a little bit, and instead of saying, I miss you,

I said, you are missing from me.

And he said, you know, in French they have a phrase that it’s basically the same thing,

You are missing to me.

To my walk.

Yes.

And it does a better job of expressing that lacking sentiment.

-huh.

Whereas in English, it’s like, it feels lacking, really.

That’s really all I can think of.

That’s interesting.

I never thought about that.

But when you say, I miss you, it’s like you’re doing something.

But if you’re saying you’re missing from me, it’s like a phantom limb or something.

Yes.

But they are the object.

Right, right.

That sentence, literally the object.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you think of yourself as a creative writer?

I would like to.

He’s definitely much better at writing than I am.

So I figured maybe I can one-up him by calling way with words.

We’ll see if we can equip you with a few ideas.

I asked about whether you consider yourself a creative writer

Because I think there’s a lot of room in a relationship to make mistakes of emotion

And not have it be a really big deal and kind of try to put in words things that cannot be put in words

And successfully evoke to this other person who knows you very well what you meant,

Even if you didn’t get 100% of the way there.

That’s a nice thing about a relationship.

A lot of things are smoothed over and forgiven because of what you know about each other that cannot be expressed in words.

Are you talking about writing or talking?

A little bit of both because I did realize that when I’m writing the letter, I sound differently, a little more poetic, actually.

Whereas if we’re just chatting on Messenger, it’s automatic.

It’s just I miss you because, I don’t know, I need a little more time to be more creative.

Right.

I’ll tell you one of my favorite lines that expresses missing somebody, and this is from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

And it is, I wonder how much of the day I spend just calling after you.

And it is, she is calling for somebody who’s not present, who’s literally missing from her life and just turning to them when they’re not at their shoulder like they used to always be.

I like that.

That’s beautiful.

Great lines from literature, yeah.

Well, Alexis, how about if we ask all of your fellow listeners out there?

Because I’m sure that they’ve dealt with the same problem, many of them.

That would be great.

What’s the way, when you’re in a long-distance relationship or you’ve been away for a long time from someone you love,

How did you tell them that you missed them and loved them in a way that felt fresh and new and wasn’t sapped of all meaning?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Alexis, thank you so much for this thoughtful call.

We really appreciate it.

And I hope you find a way to get back together with this person.

I’m going to have to work on it, that’s for sure.

It’ll be an assignment.

All right.

Well, good luck.

Take care.

Thank you very much.

Have a good one.

Bye-bye.

You too.

A friend of mine, Grant, the other day asked me, is it deep-seated or deep-seated?

Ooh, what do you think?

What do you say?

Seated, like seated in something, you know, ensconced.

Okay, yeah, ensconced, like really fixed there, right?

Yeah.

So it’s S-E-A-T-E-D and not S-E-E-D-E-D.

Right, although you can see why people would mistake it and say deep-seated.

Right, it means you planted the seed deeply, so it’s really going to grow some roots.

Yes, exactly.

But the older and more common one is deep-seated.

Deep-seated with a T.

Yes.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jake Oshbacher from San Antonio, Texas.

Hey, Jake.

Hey, how you doing?

What’s on your mind?

Well, guys, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old debate I need help with, with my wife.

Is that a child?

Yeah.

Not yet.

We’re not to those type of debates yet.

Oh, okay.

But this debate has to do with her side of the family versus my side.

So it’s kind of a big deal.

Yeah.

I hope y’all can help.

Okay.

Cranky.

This is serious.

So the past tense word of win for me is won.

W-O-N.

Pronounced as if the word or the number one, O-N-E.

So that’s my side of the family.

We all pronounce it that way.

But her entire side of the family pronounces it won to have won the game.

I won the game.

Yeah, as in a gentleman’s name, J-U-A-N.

Or looking very pale.

Right.

So, you know, it’s kind of this weird thing that I couldn’t find any good information on.

So I thought, hey, I’ll give you all a call.

Great.

That’s a good idea.

I don’t know if we have good information, but we have lots of it.

I’ll take anything at this point, yeah.

All right, so we’ve got to get to the bottom of this.

And so if this is really apparent that there’s a family divide here, I’m guessing there’s something different about where her people are from and where your people are from.

Yes. So my people are German. Her people are English.

But how recently are you German and English?

I think I am third generation, and I don’t think we can really trace hers back all that clearly.

And you’re both Texan families?

Yes.

And what part of Texas?

My family originated in Brownsville and San Antonio, and hers’s originated in San Antonio as well.

Oh, okay.

Wow, this is really interesting.

There are a couple little things that are happening here which I really love.

The first thing that you said that really piqued my interest was that you couldn’t find any information on this.

I think you’re right.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has done a comprehensive survey and then mapped it out to figure out if there’s some regional difference or age difference or heritage difference that would explain this different pronunciation.

The second thing is, in your family, you and your wife together kind of represent a micro version of the United States.

Because this is the way it is for most of the country.

The pronunciation of W-O-N is Juan or one, you know.

I don’t know if everyone can hear those differences.

It’s like the word wand, W-A-N-D without the D.

And the other one just sounds like the number, O-N-E, one.

Juan and one.

The differences that you have in the pronunciation of the word really are happening across the country,

And there doesn’t seem, as far as I can tell, to be a clear-cut regional difference or age difference or education difference or anything like that.

And as a matter of fact, the pronunciation has fluctuated long enough that it looks like both pronunciations are kind of being perpetuated in families.

You know, they’re inherited. You’re teaching your kids rather than learned from their environment.

Maybe we’ll just teach our kids to say that they’ve succeeded in victory.

Yes, yeah.

There’s no winning this one, dude.

There isn’t.

Oh, man.

This word does not have one standard pronunciation.

Now, the problem with this is if you go to the dictionaries, all of them will tell you there is just one pronunciation and it sounds like one.

However, and you’ve heard me talk about this on the show, as a dictionary editor, let me tell you that the dictionaries cannot be entirely trusted on things like this

Because they do not often include dialect versions of words or variant pronunciations that are widespread.

There are many, many, many, many, many places in a dictionary where they don’t account for minority voices,

And this is one of those.

So this is a variant that has occurred over time.

It’s a legitimate, actual, real variant that occurs across the entire English-speaking world.

I think we’re going to leave it as a 50-50 split, and I’m just going to have to stop rolling my eyes, I think.

Yeah, for the sake of the family.

Hey, Jake, thank you so much for calling us.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Call us to talk about the disputes in your household

If they have to do with language.

877-929-9673 is the number to call,

Or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org,

And we are all over Facebook and Twitter.

When Joan called us and asked us if there was a word for your old friend,

What you would call a person that you could reconnect with after years and feel like no time had passed,

I read to you a little bit of a slang dictionary from John Badcock,

But there’s one particular term that I wanted to really make sure I got out there,

And this is to cut circumbindibus.

Cut circumbindibus.

You see a friend down the street and you try to avoid them.

He writes, you dart up an alley, dash across the street, slip into a shop,

Or do anything to avoid the trouble of nodding to someone.

And that’s to cut circumbindibus.

I might have done that a couple of times.

Maybe once or twice.

We’re taking calls about language, anything related to what you say and what you write.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Yes.

Hi.

This is Jan from Abilene, Texas.

Hey, Jan.

How are you doing?

What’s going on?

I’m doing great.

How are you?

Just well, thank you.

What can we help you with?

Well, whenever my parents would do something special for you, maybe give you a toy or take you to the park,

They would say to me, they’d say, who did this for you?

Who gave that to you?

And I would say, you did, you did.

And they would always come back with, do you smell a mouse?

And I just grew up thinking that was a common phrase.

And it wasn’t until I got married and maybe I would cook a special meal for my husband,

And he would comment on it and say, that was a great meal.

And I would say, who cooked it for you?

And, of course, he would say, you did.

And I would say, well, do you smell a mouth?

And he would say, Jan, I have no clue what you’re talking about.

So I just wanted to know if that was just something that was, you know, peculiar to my family.

And that has always been a very sweet, endearing phrase to me because of, well, the connotation it was used in as I was growing up.

Okay.

That’s lovely.

Wow, that is lovely.

That’s a great story.

Here’s the thing.

This is directly related to I Smell a Rat.

Only, I smell a rat is almost exclusively negative. It means you suspect something is amiss,

Or you suspect something bad is going on. I smell a mouse just means that you suspect that things

Aren’t as they seem. And so they could seem positive and actually be negative, but they could

Actually seem negative and be positive, or it could seem normal and actually be unusual. And so as far

Back as the 1850s, we find many examples of I smell a mouse or to smell a mouse. Sometimes it means

That a prank has been played, and when the sucker or the victim figures it out,

He’s like, oh, I smell a mouse, because he gets it, that his leg is being pulled.

But sometimes it’s similar to what you’re describing,

Where someone walks in the house and realizes that things are different.

You know, there are new curtains and the table’s set, and a cake is being baked,

And they’re like, I smell a mouse, which means there’s good news in the offing, right?

Yeah.

Right.

And interestingly, there’s a similar expression in German.

You can either smell a mouse or notice a mouse,

And the same idea applies, that you’re suspecting something.

So it’s got a long history throughout the United States of, yeah,

Basically meaning that you suspect something isn’t as it seems.

And again, not negative like I smell a rat.

It’s often positive.

Oh, great.

Well, I have, you know, just never found anyone that was familiar

Or that their family had used the term.

And I just have always been curious about it.

You’re doing the right thing.

Spread that to your grandkids, and they’ll spread it to theirs, and that term will last forever.

Yep, and you’re definitely not the only ones.

Well, great.

That’s good to hear.

Okie doke, Jan.

Well, we appreciate your calling.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

What have you been saying in your family for generations?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

While we were talking to Salem about the word mayonnaise or mayonnaise or mayonnaise,

I was reminded there were a couple expressions in French that I quite like.

And one of them is la mayonnaise poin, or the mayonnaise is setting,

Which means that things are turning out well.

Oh, I like that.

And the other one basically means to make the mayonnaise rise,

Which means to exaggerate or to overstate something.

Oh, really?

And to me, it seems so utterly French to have your colloquial expressions have the word mayonnaise in them.

Of course.

Share your favorite colloquial expressions from English or any other language with us, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s broadcast, but don’t wait until next week to chat with us.

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The show is directed and edited this week by Tim Felten.

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The show’s coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye-bye.

So long.

Oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.

So if you like pajamas and I like pajamas, I’ll wear pajamas and give up pajamas.

For we know we need each other, so we better call the calling of art.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

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Make your contribution today at waywordradio.org slash donate.