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If English isn't your first language, there are lots of ways to learn it, such as memorizing Barack Obama's speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. Martha and Grant talk about some of the unusual ways foreigners are learning to speak English. Also, a golfer wonders if it's ever proper to say "I'm going golfing" rather than "I'm going to play golf." And they share an easy way to remember the difference between lie and lay.
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Here's the The New Yorker article about Crazy English that Grant mentions.
Why do aviators say "roger" to indicate they've received a message? A pilot phones the show about that, "wilco," and similar language.
For some golfers, the phrase "go golfing" is as maddening as a missed two-foot putt. The proper expression, they insist, is play golf. A longtime golfer wonders whether that's true.
He's sharp as the corner of a round table. She's so sad she's pulling a face as long as a fiddle. If startling similes leaving you grinning like a basket full of possum heads, you'll love the book Intensifying Similes in English, published in 1918. It's available at no cost on the Internet Archive.
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game called "Odd One Out," the object of which is to guess which of four words doesn't belong with the rest. Try this one: dove, job, polish, some.
"Yo!" Why did people ever start using the word yo! to get someone's attention? Grant explains that in English there's mo' than one yo.
It's one of the biggest grammatical bugaboos of all, the one that bedevils even the most earnest English students: "Is it lie or lay?" Martha shares a trick for remembering the difference. See below for her clip-and-save chart of these verbs. Print it out and tape it to your computer. Better yet, laminate it and carry it in your wallet at all times. And if you choose to tattoo it onto some handy part of your body, by all means send us a photo so we can post it on the site.
How are things in your "neck of the woods"? And why heck do we say neck?
Grant reads a few lines from a favorite poem: "A New Song of New Similes" by John Gay. It also appears in the front of the book Intensifying Similes in English linked above.
In this week's installment of Slang This!, the president of the
National Puzzlers' League tries to pick out the slang terms from a list that includes poguey, pushover, noodles, and naff.
In a 1936 episode of Jack Benny's radio show, a woman says that her father sprained his ankle the night before while "truckin'." This has an A Way with Words listener confused; she thought trucking was a term from the 1970s. Grant clears up the mystery, and along the way inspires Martha to bust some moves.
Grant explains the connection between "sauce" and "don't sass me."
Why do some people pronounce the word "wash" as warsh? Martha and Grant discuss the so-called "intrusive R" and why it makes people say "warsh" instead of "wash" and "Warshington" instead of "Washington."
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Martha's Handy-Dandy, Clip-and-Save Chart for "Lie" and "Lay"
Lie — to "repose or recline"
- Present Tense — Today I lie on the couch.
- Past Tense — Yesterday I lay on the couch for two hours.
- Part Participle — Every day this week, I have lain on the couch for two hours.
Lay — to "put or place"
- Present Tense — He lay his checkbook on the table.
- Past Tense — Yesterday he laid his checkbook on the table.
- Part Participle — Every day this week, he has laid his checkbook on the table.
Martha, I believe, wanted to see what trucking looked like. From the description you read, it sounds a lot like what Cab Calloway does for a short while in the Blues Brothers, while doing Minnie the Moocher. You can call up that segment of the movie on YouTube, and I think you'll see pretty quickly what I'm referring to. He does it during the intro to the song.
I familiar with the "warsh" pronunciation of wash. I was born in Ohio, and used that pronunciation. When we moved to Wisconsin, my new friends thought it was hilarious, and "Warsh" became my nickname. I eventually modified my pronunciation over time, more softening the r than losing it altogether. If I were to guess why people say the r to begin with, I think it has more to do with the a is pronounced, more like the a in wall (around here in Wisconsin, it' pronounced more like the o in hot). I think as you start to close your mouth for the sh, it feels natural to let the r flow out. You almost can't help it. In fact, the only way I could soften the r was to modify how I said the a, sort of brighten it.
I had supposed "yo" caught on from the japanese character that vaguely resembles the British pound sign. Denshi Jisho, the online japanese dictionary, says it is used as an interjection mid-sentence to grab someone's attention..
The description of trucking sounds as if the dance resembled the characters on that T-shirt popular in the late sixties, and sold in the back of music magazines (New Musical Express and Melody Maker in the UK) that showed a group of backward leaning guys walking along with a finger in the air - the annotation was “Keep on Truckin'†which would then combine the phrase used at the time with the image of the older dance step.
Chris
After hearing the caller who thought the phrase was "nick of the woods", I started musing that it would be a good name for a character in a story.
Sure enough, it's been done: Nick of the Woods, by Robert Montgomery Bird (1837).
(The plot is not particularly appealing, from summaries I've read.)
"Naff" was used quite famously on the '70s BBC show "Porridge": the writers needed a word to substitute for all the mild and harsh curse-words they couldn't use on air and so they claimed "naff" as their own. This according to the writer-commentaries on the "Red Dwarf" DVDs, who were explaining why they made up the catch-all word "smeg" for their show.
MarcNaimark said:
Re “to go golfingâ€. Can't you “golfâ€? Do you have to say “to play golf†instead?
If you can “golfâ€, why wouldn't you be able to “go golfingâ€?
I run, I go running
I swim, I go swimming
I golf, I go golfingI play tennis
I play hockey
I play golfCurious.
A similar thing was bothering me about this episode (just listened to the podcast today).
Martha referred to the caller as a "golfer" and the caller referenced "bowling" when discussing activities that end in "ing".
In this country (the US), you do "play football" and "play baseball," but we don't call the players "footballers" or "baseballers," we call them "football players" or "baseball players."
Someone who bowls is called a "bowler" the way someone who golfs is called a "golfer." Wouldn't the act of doing either also follow a similar pattern ("bowling" and "golfing")?
You know, we've received a ton of email about the "golf/golfer/golfing" question, and so many of them have to do with what's logical, or should be. But it seems to me this whole discussion isn't about logic, it's about tradition. And there's a tradition among golfers of a certain age to say it one way, and if you don't, you're marked as an outsider by their standards.
martha said:
You know, we've received a ton of email about the “golf/golfer/golfing†question, and so many of them have to do with what's logical, or should be. But it seems to me this whole discussion isn't about logic, it's about tradition. And there's a tradition among golfers of a certain age to say it one way, and if you don't, you're marked as an outsider by their standards.
Guess that just marks golfers as a group (or those of a certain age) as illogical. 
I grew up in Massachusetts, an area famous for its dropped r's, but we had another odd habit of adding r's in places they weren't meant to go. "Idea-r" is one that comes to mind. A funny instance of this is putting a "drawring"(drawing) in the "draw"(drawer). I'm sure there are other examples but I can't think of them right now.
The lay/lie solution was engraved in my brain in elementary school. I distinctly remember my teacher reminding us very sternly that both people and things might "lay," but ONLY PEOPLE can "LIE." This accompanied by a death glare for any little girl who might be tempted to tell lies in her classroom.
Not that it actually corrected my grammar. I'm sure my poor old teacher would have a stroke to hear me combine all forms and tenses into the generic "liedown" for people and "laydown" for things.
As a veteran of many physical therapy sessions and yoga classes I have given up on the lay/lie problem. My stomach churns so much at every yoga class I go to that I sometimes wonder if the benefits of the yoga are completely offset by being told to “lay†on my back.
Peter, I hear you. Dog-training classes were particularly painful as well for me for the same reason.
>>>Not that it actually corrected my grammar. I'm sure my poor old teacher would have a stroke to hear me combine all forms and tenses into the generic “liedown†for people and “laydown†for things.<<<
I don't blame you, harmonicpies. I can see why that teacher's advice would have been confusing.
The whole thing about different phonetic alphabets reminded me of how the illustrations of Richard Scarry's books included numerous references to "Able Baker Charlie". The next two letters, the only ones I remember from *that* set, were "Dog" and "Easy", the latter immortalized in the classic comic book "Sgt. Rock", as "Easy Company". Well, that tells you what I was reading as a child.
Martha Barnette
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