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OMG, text messaging! It's destroying the English language, corrupting young minds, turning us into illiterates. It's probably shrinking the ozone layer, too. Or is it? In his new book, Txting: The Gr8 Db8, David Crystal offers a different perspective, one which linguists have shared for years: Far from obliterating literacy, texting may actually improve it. So put that in your message header and send it!
This episode first aired September 27, 2008. Listen here:
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Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).
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The French phrase au jus means with sauce, which is why it drives some diners to distraction when a menu lists beef with au jus sauce. A Wisconsin listener calls to say this phrase sets her teeth on edge. The hosts order up an answer fresh from the "Waiter, There's a Redundancy in My Soup!" Department.
In medical parlance, your big toe is your hallux. But what about the other four? Do they have anatomical names as well? A San Diego man who hurt the toe next to his big toe is tired of referring to his injured digit as "the toe next to my big toe," and wants the proper medical term. How does porcellus domi grab you? Prehensily?
Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a letter-shaving game called "Curtailments." In this game, Grant and Martha leave everything on the floor.
A caller from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, was puzzled when she moved there and locals asked, "What's your name from home?" meaning, "What's your maiden name?" The community has a strong Polish heritage and she wonders if there's a connection. It's a good hunch. Martha explains why.
Say you have a particularly rambunctious child. Okay, a little hellion. Is it proper to describe the little devil as a holy terror? Or might it be more correct and more logical to call him an unholy terror? A Los Angeles caller thinks it's the latter.
If you've flown from Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport recently, you may have noticed an odd but official-looking sign that reads: RECOMBOBULATION AREA. A caller from Madison was discombobulated to see it, then started wondering about the roots of such words. See if it does the same for you here.
The real problem with texting isn't how it affects language, but what it does to social interaction. Is there anything more annoying when you're trying to have a conversation than watching your companion's eyes flitting to his phone when he sees that a text message just arrived? The hosts discuss the need for a new text-messaging etiquette.
Let's say that you're getting diesel therapy at o-dark-thirty. What are you getting and when are you getting it? A New Jersey contestant from the National Puzzlers' League learns the meaning of these terms in this week's slang quiz.
What do you call a word made from a blend of two other words, like motel from motor and hotel? A listener says his term for them is Reese's Peanut Butter Cup words, after the old commercial: "You got chocolate in my peanut butter! You got peanut butter in my chocolate!" But he wonders if there's another, more established term. The hosts introduce him to the word portmanteau.
When it comes to text messaging and its effect on English, the linguistic apocalypse is not nigh. Quite the contrary, in fact. Grant talks about some eye-opening research about text-messaging and teen literacy.
That's all for this week. L8r!
Another great episode.
WRT portmanteau words. I had never thought of portmanteau in this context as bringing with it its literal meaning of a piece of luggage (or a whole storage item made up of two containers/halves).
I had always assumed it was ("just") a recursive definition, since portmanteau is a portmanteau word itself.
port + manteau = portmanteau (carry + coat = carrycoat)
or rather, in English, suit + case = suitcase
I like Martha's imagery too.
Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.
Yep, z domu is real Polish and it`s pronounced with a z sound and not an s as in pleasure. The literal translation of maiden name, however, is nazwisko panieńskie.
And in case any of you were interested in the names of the other toes like me, here they are.
Hi, Jazyk. Thanks for the pronunciation.
Here's another list of counting rhymes for toes. There was another I saw on the Web that had them from all different countries, but I can't seem to put my fingers on it right now.
Virtually everyone knows the This Little Piggy nursery rhyme.
Google gets over 78k hits on its first phrase. But, I was taught one by my father (in southwest Missouri–family moved there from Iowa (and previously Ohio) shortly after Civil War) that gets no hits on Google.
It goes like this:
(Grab and shake (G&S) the hallux while saying in a deep voice): “Big pig wants corn.â€
(G&S the porcellus domi while saying in a smaller pig voice): “Where are you going to get it?â€
(G&S the third toe while saying, again in the same deep voice): “Grandpa's barn.â€
(G&S the fourth toe — again in the smaller pig voice): “I'll squeal.â€
(G&S the little toe — back in the deep voice): â€(grunt, grunt, grunt) I can't get over the barn door sill.â€
As a way of explanation the “squeal†means alerting or telling Grandpa and a “barn door sill†is the high threshold which a big, fat pig might not be able to climb over from his pen.
Emmett
Hi, my wife and I just moved to San Diego and we love your show. We're 'word nerds' and were surprised that your show isn't carried more widely!
Regarding the slang puzzle in this episode, I thought there were some discrepancies in the use of the phrase, "Alright men! I want you to fan out and locate the enemy's twenty and return to base at oh-dark-thirty."
On the show, Grant described "oh-dark-thirty" as an indeterminate time after dark. I've spent thirteen years in the Navy and Marine Corps, and I've participated in many events that started at "oh-dark-thirty." In my experience, the aforementioned phrase has been used mostly in a tongue-in-cheek manner, not as a means to issue an order or coordinate a return to base. The time itself is indeterminate, but the inference of the 'oh' is that it occurs in the early morning hours. As most folks have seen from the movies and TV, we use the 24-hour clock, i.e. 2 pm is 1400 hours (pronounced 'fourteen hundred') and 9:15 am is 0915 (pronounced 'zero-nine fifteen' or 'oh-nine-fifteen'). In a similar manner, oh-dark-thirthy is a faux-specific time sometime after midnight but well before sunrise; in common use this is some obscenely early time that prevents one from getting sleep on a normal human schedule. I think Martha's friend catching his plane at "oh-dark-thirty" can relate.
Also, I believe that "twenty" is police slang for location (as in, "what's your twenty?" means, "where are you?") There is, admittedly, a good bit of related or shared terminology between cops and soldiers. As of yet, however, I've not seen this slang in use in the military, though I've heard police officers use it frequently.
Thanks for a great show, we look forward to it every week!
Thanks, Joe. We've had a number of people respond and say "oh-dark-thirty" means sometime in the morning, not any indeterminate time after dark.
The whole sentence was written in such a way as to more like the fake television idea of the military than the real military. So there was the intentional mixing of "20" from the police 10-code (10-20 meaning "location"), the absurdity of a CO giving an order using slang, with an imprecise time, too boot, and, though it was accidental, the loosey-goosey meaning in the sentence of oh-dark-thirty.
Martha,
My dad actually probably used "tell". But, since that did not rhyme with "sill", I took poetic license and used (long e) "squeal" since that is what pigs do, would still alert the farmer of the larceny, and did not rhyme any worse.
It sounds like Kentucky folk could finally make this story rhyme.
BTW, southwest of Rolla, MO, is a Kaintuck Hollow. It was always claimed to be named after Kentucky. Sound reasonable? Also, one speculation is that Rolla was named after Raleigh by phonetically spelling the founders' pronounciation.
Emmett
I decided to Google another phrase, “barn door sill†and found this.
Page 420 has a couple of very similar toe/pig rhymes. The Berkshire rhyme ends with the word “grunsel†which the text (and the OED almost) says “= a raised door sill.†Grunsel would rhyme with the “tell†of the Shropshire version later on the page and my father's version.
So, the rhyme does not need Kentucky but may have been in the original versions from England.
I guess this piggy-counting verse illustrates once again the close linguistic ties between the Ozarks and merry old England.
Emmett
I'm the guy you talked to who had the blister on the toe next to my big toe. After our conversation was broadcast, I found, via the Internet, a 2006 article in the Chicago Tribune by Eric Zorn in which he lists all five of the toe names proposed by that Yale medical student (John Phillips) in, he says, a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, apparently in or around 1991. The names for toes in children's rhymes are cute, but they seem a little silly for use by adults. I don't think I could go to the gym and tell the guys I had a blister on my Rudy Whistle any more than I could tell them I had a blister on my porcellus domi. Indeed, afer our conversation, I couldn't even confirm that "the little toe" is an official name for the little toe, even though everyone seems to understand what you mean when you refer to it as such. All of this is an odd little gap in our anatomical lexicon. We need simple, adult names for the toes. As a requisite for a toe name, I propose that the name for any toe has to have the word "toe" in it. So I suggest we start right here and officially designate the toe on the "outide" of the foot as the "little toe" and the toe in the middle as "the middle toe." I'm open to suggestions for the others. Perhaps "the second toe" for the toe in between the big toe and the middle toe, and "the fourth toe" for the toe next to the little toe. The only problem with the latter is the possible confusion that arises if you are uncertain in which direction the speaker is counting. Or maybe "the index toe" and "the ring toe," analogous to the index finger and the ring finger. I will set my mind to work on this and get back to you if I come up with something better. Larry
Martha: The toe next to my big toe is totally healed and has been for some time. Thanks for asking. I don't really like "ring toe." Or "index toe" for that matter. The former could well be mistaken for "ring tone," and I don't know anyone who can point at something with the toe next to the big toe (it being my understanding that is the reason why the index finger is so denominated). So we're still working on this issue and having fun with it. Larry
>>>> I don't know anyone who can point at something with the toe next to the big toe
Larry, you may not believe this, but I can indeed do that, at least with the next-to-the-big-toe on my right foot.
If everyone here is really, really nice, I just might upload a photo. (But only after my next pedicure, of course. Maybe not even then.)
The more I think about it, the more "ring toe" is kind of growing on me!
Larry said:
I don't think I could go to the gym and tell the guys I had a blister on my Rudy Whistle any more than I could tell them I had a blister on my porcellus domi.
Oh, Larry, I couldn't disagree more strongly. There are so many layers of good (adult) humor in this. Just that it's in Latin, so official and medical in form, and yet poking fun at itself at the same time ... it's just delicious.
Too, there's the delight of remembering with sudden surprise the fun of saying this little rhyme either as a child or with your own children, so rediscovering it with medical terminology is fun.
It's always fun, too, isn't it, to announce something to your friends in the gym that sounds just horrendous, to get them all concerned, and then you break the news that it's really a hangnail on your toe. Why do you think April Fools jokes are such popular fun, even for adults.
And let's face it, toes --- whatever they're called --- are just funny appendages. Yes, we would have a hard time walking and running well without them, as they contribute a lot to balance, but to look at them, well, I just think they deserve little piggy names.
Mathetes
Larry, you may not believe this, but I can indeed do that, at least with the next-to-the-big-toe on my right foot.
If everyone here is really, really nice, I just might upload a photo. (But only after my next pedicure, of course. Maybe not even then.)
The more I think about it, the more “ring toe†is kind of growing on me!
How does one be "really, really nice" in this format? Hmmmm.... Martha, I just love A Way with Words! Every week you and Grant continue to outdo yourselves! You have discovered how to improve on perfection...you just broadcast another show! And beautiful!? I can't believe how beautiful you are! Venus would just throw in the towel. It would be no contest. And so keenly intelligent! The Einstein of the verbavores. And witty? Tina Fey move aside! Need I go on?
I have been considering the "under toe" as a name for the toe next to the big toe. And I certainly have seen women wearing rings on their toes, but I couldn't say whether one toe is preferred for that purpose. So, waffling like a willow in the wind, I could go for "ring toe" as the name for the toe next to the little toe. Thus, one possible combination of common names for the toes could be: the big toe, the under toe, the middle toe, the ring toe and the little toe. Maybe you could ask your pedicurist what she thinks as she (how sexist I am) is giving you that pedicure in anticipation of having a picture taken of your under toe pointing at a copy of your latest book.
Mathetes said:
Larry said:
I don't think I could go to the gym and tell the guys I had a blister on my Rudy Whistle any more than I could tell them I had a blister on my porcellus domi.
Oh, Larry, I couldn't disagree more strongly. There are so many layers of good (adult) humor in this. Just that it's in Latin, so official and medical in form, and yet poking fun at itself at the same time … it's just delicious.
Mathetes: Would you believe I actually took Latin in high school and was an alter boy until I was 18, reciting my parts in Latin. But my experience is that eyes tend to glaze over when one uses a Latin phrase. I fully appreciate the humor in the nomenclature proposed by John Phillips for the various porcelli, but if it didn't take at Yale, I submit it's not going to take among the general public. So my goal is to find some simple, common names that ordinary adults can use to refer to their toes without having to revert to childhood rhymes. And I do think that the common names have to have the word “toe†in it. That's really the reason why Rudy Whistle doesn't work for me. Besides the fact that I never heard that rhyme until Martha brought it to my attention. I certainly don't think much about my toes until I whack one on the leg of a coffee table or a blister develops on one. But I once knew a woman who was so obsessed by the appearance of her toes that she subjected herself to full blown surgery to have them straightened. One would think podiatrists or foot fetishists or pedicurists would have long ago filled this odd little hole in the anatomical lexicon. Nice to talk to you.
Grant, I love the military slang. i just got around to listening to this ep on podcast.
There is also a difference between the Army and Marines on the time issue. The Army tends to include the word 'hours' and say 'oh', as in 'oh-five-hundred hours'. It may even be written out, like on the operating hours for the PX: "0700-1900 hours".
The Marines NEVER say the word 'hours', and almost always say 'zero'. And if the time is on the hour, sometimes omit the 'hundred'. Examples: 'Formation tomorrow is at zero-seven-thirty'; 'I had to get up at zero-five to catch my plane'
Martha Barnette
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