Mind Your at Home No. 20 Articles about Language

Dear Language Minders,

Welcome to this brave new world of virus variants and vaccinations!

It was recently reported that the government is being urged to create opportunities for Britons to learn like Polish, Urdu and Punjabi, From Seaspeak to : celebrating other kinds of English By Rosie Driffill in The Guardian in order to effect more social cohesion. According to Cambridge professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett, language learning, and indeed social integration, should not be a one-way street; rather, the onus should also fall on British people to learn community languages. For me, this idea of a two-way street taps into a wider question about linguistic influence and evolution. There is interest and joy to be had not only in learning the languages of other cultures, but also in appreciating the effect they might have had on English. Part of that process is ceding to the prospect of change, noting the ways in which ethnically marked forms of English, such as Bangladeshi and African- varieties, have played their part in shaping how new generations across the country will speak: take Multi- Cultural English, the that has almost completely replaced on the streets of the capital. Advertisement Outside the UK too, creoles and have bent, broken and downright flipped the bird at the rules, offering not only musicality and freshness, but new ways of conceiving of language that staunch protectionism doesn’t allow for. Grammar rules have their place, of course, insofar as they offer a framework for precision and comprehension. But rules can be learned to be broken, leading to the formation of identities, cultural protests and unique means of expression. Not persuaded? Then consider these examples of syntactic rule-bending and linguistic intermarriage that have taken English into intriguing and delightful new directions. Irish English Otherwise known as Hiberno-English, this refers to dialects spoken across the island of Ireland. Frank McCourt immortalised West and South-West Irish English in his memoir Angela’s Ashes, with its liberal use of the definite article (“Do you like the Shakespeare, Frankie?”), and the unbidden musicality that comes with inverted word order (“Is it a millionaire you think I am?”). Some of my friends from Northern Ireland will plump for the past simple form of a where a past participle is usually required, saying things like: “They’d never have did it had they knew.” Rule breaking at its most ballsy: and it’s music to my ears. Singlish Short for Colloquial Singaporean English, a for which English is the (meaning it provides the basis for most of its ) plus words from Malay, Tamil and varieties of Chinese. The Singaporean government rallies against it at every turn with Speak Good English campaigns, to the detriment of some extremely interesting grammatical structures. Take Singlish’s being topic-prominent, for example: like in Mandarin, this means that Singlish sentences will sometimes start with a topic (or a known reference of the conversation), followed by a comment (or some new information). For example, “I go restaurant wait for you.” Grammatically, it’s worlds apart from “I’ll be waiting for you at the restaurant,” but it’s evolved in a region where that kind of sentence structure is the order of the day. ( Kriol) Another English-based creole language, similar to Jamaican , which offers some compelling takes on tense. The present tense verb does not indicate number or person, while the past is indicated by putting the tense marker mi in front of the verb (“ai mi ron” - I ran), but this is optional and considered superfluous if a time marker like “yestudeh” (yesterday) is used. Basic English Basic English was invented by CK Ogden in 1930. Designed to allow language learners to acquire English quickly and communicate at a very basic level, Ogden managed to reduce the language to 850 words, including only eighteen ! Seaspeak A controlled natural language (CNL) based on English that provides a for sea captains to communicate. First conceived in 1985, the premise is simple, grammar-free phrases that facilitate comprehension in often fraught and dangerous situations. It has now been codified as Standard Marine Communication Phrases. Ultimately, English grammar has always been in flux: both in its native land and abroad. When it comes to ‘offshoots’ of the language, whatever label we apply – be it dialect, patois, creole or CNL – each exists as a yardstick for linguistic evolution, and ought to be celebrated as such.

Art of the one-liner: wit and grit for a deadly hit By Gary Nunn form The Guardian

And why the late, great Carrie Fisher deserves to join Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx and Dorothy Parker as one of the genre’s most brilliant exponents

For a while, I had the perfect tagline on my dating profile, and it was all thanks to the wit of Carrie Fisher: “Instant gratification takes too long.” It alerted me to the dimmer bulbs in the chandelier. “Your tagline makes no sense. What could be quicker than instant?” Blocked! But: “Great Postcards from the Edge quote there” = date request! Alas, that led to little success so I’m again taking Fisher’s advice, as echoed by Meryl Streep this month: “Take your broken heart, make it into art.” The art I’ve decided to make is to discover the world’s best one- liner. This one’s for you, Carrie: Some one-liners are so great, they’ve become their own cliches. Some characters deserve their own category for speaking almost exclusively in them - take a bow, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, Mae West, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou. Advertisement What makes a great one-liner? Certainly not an inspirational quote in an infuriatingly pretty font over an evocative filtered landscape. They are more likely to be bawdy, rambunctious and not always kind. The edge makes them memorable, although that’s not to say they can’t be profound. Straight-up humour isn’t enough: the funniest one-liners have a sardonic, sarcastic or even bitchy undertone. The dreamier ones need a tinge of sadness or bitterness. Those offering guidance need to insinuate it’s advice the author of the phrase wistfully - or bitterly - wishes they’d taken themselves. Concision is essential. Some wordplay will make the ‘inspirational’ one liner forgivable for its linguistic merit. Don’t state the bleeding obvious: tell us something counterintuitive, or something that reveals the grit of your struggle and how you’ve mastered words as your response. Retorts are out; if you need someone to rack up a line for you to knock down, then strictly speaking that isn’t a one-liner. It should include all its wit, grit and tips in that standalone line. Metaphors, self-deprecation and genuine poignancy are in. With those criteria in mind, here’s my - unapologetically subjective - stab at the shortlist of the world’s greatest one-liners of all time: Self-deprecating “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap” - Dolly Parton “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted” - Mae West “My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain” - WH Auden Wordplay “I can resist everything, except temptation” - Oscar Wilde “Better to be looked over than overlooked” - Mae West “There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t” - Benchley Perceptive “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself” – Albert Einstein “Faith: not wanting to know what is true” - Friedrich Nietzsche “Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung” - Voltaire “Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research” - Wilson Mizner “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo” - HG Wells Sardonic “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it” - Groucho Marx “Every love’s the love before in a duller dress” - Dorothy Parker “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography” - Ambrose Bierce “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me” - Alice Roosevelt Longworth (and Olympia Dukakis in Steel Magnolias, of course) Underrated “Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length” - Robert Frost “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” - Derek Bok Just brilliant “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think” - Dorothy Parker “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about” - Oscar Wilde Advice “When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time” - Maya Angelou “When you’re going through hell, keep going” - Winston Churchill “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” - Coco Chanel Poignant “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple” - Dr Seuss “At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide” - F Scott Fitzgerald Inspirational “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” - Oscar Wilde “It is never too late to be what you might have been” - George Eliot “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt “If everything is under control, you are going too slow” - Mario Andretti I can relate “Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life” - Lawrence Kasdan I’d best wrap this up because: “He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink” - John Ray And finally, take all these with a pinch of salt because: “The aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a general” - Stefan Kanfer

Why Italians Use Dozens of Words for Simple Instructions And other examples of why more is more in Italy

In Italy, you’ll find signs about face masks with 40 words in bureaucratic language. No smoking signs consist of 109 words of legal text, and simple toilet signs can be made up of 122 words. What reasons can we find for this in Italian society? Among the novelties the Covid-19 pandemic has given us—in addition to face masks and awkward elbow bumps—is a variety of new signs instructing us how to behave. In the summer of 2020, I flew from London to Italy, Denmark, and Sweden, when travel restrictions allowed it, and I noticed some interesting differences in instructions on using face masks. London’s Heathrow airport had posters saying, “You must wear a face covering in the terminal.” Signs at Copenhagen’s airport advised “Please remember to wear a medical mask,” and the airport in Stockholm read, “Use a face mask in the terminal.” At Rome’s Fiumicino airport, however, I was greeted by a sign made up of 40 words: “According to Covid-19 containment measures provided for by the Council of Ministers’ presidential decree of 26 April 2020, the use of respiratory protection is required in interior public places. Therefore, the use of masks is compulsory even inside the airport.”

Despite Italy’s penchant for signs like this in bureaucratese, I’ve long had a passion for Italy and for the beautiful Italian language while growing up in Sweden and Finland. After Italian studies at Stockholm University led me to a student exchange in the northern Italian city of Padua, I lived in Italy for three years. I became fluent in Italian and did a master’s degree in communication studies at the University of Bologna. Although I left Italy in 2014, the country and its language have never left me—especially since my fiancée is from Italy’s southern Apulia region. I currently live in the United Kingdom and I’m always on the lookout for cultural differences between Northern Europe and Italy, which has led to some thoughts on why Italians use so many words for simple signs. Italian used to be an elite language Italian, with its roots in Tuscan dialect, was for a long time only used in literature and opera and mastered by an educated elite. It only became a national language in 1861, when Italy unified into a nation. People in the Italian peninsula spoke regional dialects, many of which are even considered to be separate languages in their own right, like Neapolitan, Venetian, and Sardinian. Italian slowly spread through the school system, military service, internal migration, and, much later on, by television. Bureaucratic language was a characteristic of the new state imposing its laws, and the legacy of this approach is still visible today. You can spot this in “no smoking” signs in restaurants that include 109 words in legalese.

An Italian “no smoking” sign, with 109 words in legalese During the pandemic, the government has frequently spoken in bureaucratese. Announcing new coronavirus restrictions, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has many times presented a “DPCM,” an abbreviation repeated in the news and eventually by citizens and companies. What it stands for, however, is rarely explained (“decreto del presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri,” meaning “decree of the president of Council of Ministers”). The most discussed instance in 2020 occurred when the restrictions for Covid-19 were eased after the first wave of the virus. The prime minister announced that Italians could meet with a “congiunto,” an archaic term for “relative”. People became even more confused when the government tried to clarify what they meant, stating that it included relationships with a “stable tie of affection” (“affetto stabile”). Italian media outlets and talk shows soon attempted to decipher the words, interviewing lawyers and featuring excerpts from the dictionary trying to determine whether this included friends. This bureaucratic form of communication was even called an “anti-language” by writer Italo Calvino. Italians love linguistic complexity Italians value eloquence in writing and speech, and just like with ornamented Baroque Catholic cathedrals, the more you add, the better. A language like Swedish, by contrast—like its Protestant churches—is direct, to-the-point, and stripped down of unnecessary excess. This Italian “more is more” attitude shows up throughout Italy. While European corporate reports are becoming shorter and shorter, in Italy, they are becoming longer each year. One reason is that the humanities and arts are paramount in Italy. It’s quite understandable, given that it’s the land of the Renaissance and boasts the world’s highest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The most prestigious type of high school, the “liceo classico,” teaches Latin and Ancient Greek. The country has double the amount of university graduates in humanistic subjects compared to Germany, and even medical students in Italy study literature and philosophy. The emphasis put on linguistic sophistication is showcased in Italian news. There’s an exaggerated use of synonyms, idioms, allusions, football metaphors, Latin expressions like “tertium non datur,” and English terms, like “smart working” and “election day.” A perfectly normal news story could be: “The rebus puzzle of the Farnesina palace is solved, after white smoke from the Chigi palace” (“Rebus Farnesina risolto, dopo la fumata bianca da Palazzo Chigi”). It simply means that the question of the new foreign minister is resolved, after an agreement by the government.

Italians love preserving traditions Italians adore their traditions, and I’m not just talking about delicious food or celebrations of local patron saints. A national survey in 2015 revealed that 46% of Italians still speak regional languages and dialects at home, to some extent, instead of Italian. Italians also cling to old forms of grammar that other Romance languages have left behind. While the French have relegated the of “passé simple” to written language and stopped using the past tense “subjonctif plus-que-parfait,” Italians still preserve “passato remoto” and “congiuntivo trapassato.” The “passato remoto” form is doing so well in the South that it is used in daily conversation. The public administration also continues to preserve its tradition of bureaucratese. I experienced this myself during an internship at the offices of a regional authority during my studies in Bologna. The perception within government is still that the more bureaucratic a text is, the more authority and respect it will induce among citizens. There are, however, those who try to change things. During my degree in Bologna, key communication scholars, like Pina Lalli, Roberto Grandi, and Alessandro Rovinetti, preached the importance of simplified information to citizens. And during my studies in Padua, linguist Michele Cortelazzo advocated for clear communication by the public administration. Starting in the 1990s, reforms and laws were passed to modernize and simplify government communication. These reforms have, nonetheless, not been followed up by structural change, and positive developments have mainly been limited to individual initiatives, as Cortelazzo concludes. Italian society places high value on linguistic eloquence and complexity, and the authorities have historically addressed the elite. When you couple that with a culture that tends to conserve linguistic rules and conventions, then the presence of long-windedness in perfunctory signs starts to make more sense. Linguist Carla Vergaro has even argued that Italian is a “reader- responsible” language—it’s the reader’s responsibility to interpret and draw meaning of complex texts. English, by contrast, is considered a “writer-responsible” language by linguist John Hinds, where the responsibility to convey efficient communication lies with the writer. This difference was clearly visible when I landed back at London’s Heathrow airport and was again surrounded by short, clear messages of what to do during a pandemic. At first, it was refreshing to see these direct messages after seeing so many verbose signs of legal text in Italy. But eventually, I couldn’t help but feel that the English messages were instructing me as if I were an unruly child. In the end, I found myself secretly longing for an Italian sign again, one with 40 words conveying a simple instruction.

Keep safe, Enjoy this Newsletter and go forward into 2021!

Rodney