Fresh humble pie - would you like some?

I never thought I'd do this. I pride myself on how adept I am with this language, yet in the past week I've come upon two things. Two errors. On my part.

Read the following aloud: Sue read from her English primer.

How did you pronounce that last word? Long I or short? "pry-mer". Me too. But did you know that it's pronounced "prim-mer"? Yeah, me either. I was watching the Microsoft .NET Show (in case you had any doubt that I was a geek), and the host mentions the show will be a "primmer" about blahblahblah. The blahblahblah was what he continued to talk about as my mind grabbed 'hold of the word and started laughing at him. "It's 'pry-mer', you fool!" my mind said. But, just in case there was a regional pronunciation of the word, I looked it up. Apparently the region is Earth.

To comfort you all, I assure you that there is a word pronounced "pry-mer", which has the meaning for explosives and paint, and apparently genetics.


Two days later: pronounce the word "victuals". Even if you don't know what it means, pronounce it. Don't go look it up -- I want you to say it the way I always have. Actually, I'm not sure I've ever actually said it, but the way my mind's voice says it when I read it.

You've possibly heard of the cat food brand Tender Vittles. Vittles. I think we've all heard the word, and if you're like me (you lucky soul), you probably assumed it was a pseudo-word used to mean food. Like «eats».

Nope; "victuals" is vittles. That's how it's pronounced. Ugh.


I've mentioned before that I don't care for people who write words that they've heard, but -- we can hope -- have never seen in print. Intensive purposes. Melon calling.

In my defense, my error is the other way around. I've seen the words in print and have obviously made assumptions on the pronunciation (reasonable ones, in my opinion). At least I could spell them correctly. Or could I? If someone said to me, "spell 'prim-mer'" or "spell 'vittles'". I'd have given them (after a strange look for 'prim-mer') "primmer" and "vittles".

The things you loin everyday. That's right, "loin". From the Latin lumbus, to Old French numbles, as in umbles, or "umble pie". Also known as "humble pie", my title for today, and of which I'm having a nice juicy slice. You better enjoy it, because you won't hear me say I was wrong -- twice -- that often.

INTERNET DOWNGRADED

It was a long time coming - not only changing of Internet to the more commonplace-appearing internet, but the completion of this entry for the Ruckus Room (I started it back in August). I know I capitalized the "I" and will likely continue to do so, until I ween myself of the habit, but accroding to Wired, the status of the word has changed from formal to everyday. I'll be honest, I found a certain satisfaction in correcting people: "It's a capital, actually." Looks like I'll have to find another lingual peccadillo by which to be affronted and then correct. Suggestions are welcome.

As for the rest of the changes to to the Wired copy standards, they don't mean that much to me. To be frank, I never afforded web the same respect. And regardless of where I work, "web site" will always be two words. Thank you.

RENDERED USELESS

I was listening to the radio once again, which, as I've mentioned before, can lead to problems for me, not only from pop music and its liberalizing of language, but from the «professional» public speakers known as DJs.

Our morning pair was talking about a recent poll in Britain regarding the best death scene in a movie.* They mentioned Psycho as number one and Bambi was number six. One DJ asked the other about Old Yeller.

Other DJ: That's a good one, it was very heart-rendering.
First DJ: Yes, heart-rendering.

Heart-rendering. *sigh* Let's see what The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has to say.


ren·der·ing
n.
1. A depiction or interpretation, as in painting or music.


While I've never seen Old Yeller, I'm pretty sure it's about a dog and not a painting of a heart or a musical score. Perhaps the movie itself is a metaphor for the heart?


2. A drawing in perspective of a proposed structure.


The movie's about a boy and a farm and a dog, from what I've heard. I don't think the father was an architect. Maybe a heart surgeon, and the "drawing...of a proposed structure" was of an artificial heart?


3. A translation: a rendering of Cicero's treatises into English.


Perhaps "Old Yeller" is English for "Cicero"? Or "treatise"?


4. A coat of plaster or cement applied to a masonry surface.


This must be it. The death scene in Old Yeller must have put a coat of plaster over viewers' hearts. How poetic.

For you who still don't know what's wrong with "heart-rendering", it's "heartrending", or "heart wrenching". This doesn't stop over 8000 webpages found by Google from using "heart rendering". Luckily, one of them discusses it instead of "uses" it:

Bartleby.com

Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.

heartrending, heart-rendering (adjs.)

The real adjective is heartrending, meaning "heart-tearing" or "heartbreaking" and hence "grief-causing." Heart-rendering is a nonce word, possibly a malapropism, but more likely a deliberate jocularity.

I'd really, really like to believe that the DJs did it on purpose, with "deliberate jocularity", but I cannot. While I can understand (but not excuse) the commonfolk for this misuse (after all, "rend" isn't a word in many people's vocabularies, but "render" might be), it's the «professionals» who should be held responsible. But what would I write about then?

heartrendering  n.

1._  _

 ( \/ )

  \  /  

   \/

* Everyone knows that the best death scene in a movie is Paul Reubens' character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).

ADVANTAGE: SPELLCHECK

Awkshun Serchs

Some lonely eBay sellers, long puzzled by the lack of online enthusiasm for their goods, are now the favored folks for a growing cult of bargain hunters who search the auction site for those who simply, well, can't spell. Yes, a staunch group of eBay hunters are finding some serious bargains by ferreting out such products as labtop computers, Art Deko vases, camras, saffires, comferters, antiks, and dimonds (spellings all found in a recent eBay search). The New York Times reports a growing number of eBayistas search specifically for misspellings, knowing there is likely a frustrated seller on the other end who will accept a lowball bid just to get rid of the item(s). Often these buyers will then turn around and sell the item all over again on eBay for a much higher price simply because they spelled the item's name correctly.

This was from the News Track section of Communications of the ACM, April 2004. There are two things I love about it.

First, the bad spellers are being punished. I may harangue and rant here about all the injustices in language, but it doesn't really accomplish anything, apart from let off a little steam. I can admit that. Never did I think that it was possible for the transgressors to be punished. Note that this is different than someone punishing them because of the transgression, as a teacher might give a low grade to a paper with atrocious word-use*; the eBay misspellers are punished by way of their very mistake.

Yes, you can argue that the original sellers aren't being punished, since they do still accept the lowballed price offered. But you must take into account the reseller's return when they auction off the same item at a reasonable profit. It's that differential in profits that makes up the punishment, because if it wasn't for a simple, correctable mistake, the original seller could have realized that profit themselves.


The second highlight to this piece is the resellers. They're making a profit with hardly any effort (I've never bought or sold on eBay, so I'm only guessing that it's not that hard). These people have found a way to make money by buying and selling items. This is nothing new. Finding markets where an item is cheaply available and selling them in a different market probably has an economic term that I promptly forgot after getting a D in Econ 201. But these people found this new market. I leave the attribution of creation to those lacking a dictionary.

I sat for a few moments after reading the article, trying to decide if I'd ever have come up with this idea. If I was one that trolled eBay in search of deals, I'd certainly notice the plethora of mistakes to be found in such a melting pot, and might even post about them here. But to decide that poor spelling really can harm you? Probably not. And then to take it one step further and realize that someone else's spelling error could benefit you, to realize that those mistakes could lead to opportunity? Definitely not.

This isn't to say that I don't understand the relationship between text search engines and bad spelling. I'm a computer programmer who's worked for one of the biggest search engine companies around. I'm also a websurfer who has on many occasions seen a website and wondered how anyone would find it with a search engine, since such-and-such word -- usually the subject or theme of the webpage -- is spelled incorrectly. But to realize the benefit from this? To see an opportunity for gain? Utter genius. My hat off to you, "eBayistas." You may have found the real way to get through to people. Their wallet.

I'll end with this with the emotion that the article stirred within me, one of my favorite words in this or any other language.


schadenfreude (shād'n-froi'də)
n.

Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.


*Yes, yes, the students are to blame for their low grades, not the teachers, but you get my point.

MAKING FEWER MISTAKES

I've been listening to more news radio than music on my drive to and from work, mainly because the music station DJs annoy me. The drawback to this, of course, is that with less music you get more speech, which just makes me realize many more mistakes than usual.

Less music.
More speech.
Many more mistakes.

Seems fine, does it not? I certainly didn't write "fewer music" or "much more mistakes", did I? Then why would people say it that way? How do people not realize their mistake as soon as they make it?

The "fewer/less" problem has been on my list of peeves for a while. I know, it's hard to believe. In the past, it would crop up every so often, and I'd shudder slightly and let it pass. But now I'm hearing it more and more, and I don't think it's a renewed sensitivity to it -- I think the problem is spreading.

If you're looking for an explanation about the usage of these words, I'll give you my quick version. Some things can be counted. Some cannot. People can be counted, while water cannot. That's right, you can have glasses of water, pools of water, molecules of water, and they're all countable, but water is not. The use of "less" versus "fewer" depends on whether the object is countable or not.

So, you can have less water, but you can't have fewer water. This, I should hope, makes complete sense. Fewer water? And to be honest, I don't think this mistake is made often. But this is becoming all too common: "Less people showed up today than yesterday." To me, this is obviously wrong, glaringly so.

So, why does this happen? My guess is that, with the decline of language and people's vocabulary, they just see "less" and "fewer" as synonyms, and "less" is more common, so it's used all the time. And that's fine.

Well, no, I don't really believe it's fine, but I can accept it, as I know I have to accept all the other errors that are becoming «correct» in today's use. But what I would like to see and hear are professionals, at least, knowing the correct way to write and speak.

And perhaps that's my real issue. More and more, especially on the radio, I'm hearing such poor English. Those same music station DJs that I'm avoiding for their generally annoying morning banter make mistakes all the time. And, I should like to think, they're professionals in the field of public broadcast. Someone has deemed them qualified to speak to an audience.

Sure, live radio should be given some leeway. After all, the majority of it is ad-libbed, so their thought processes might change halfway through saying something, and thus come out incorrect. And I can accept that. But what excuse do the advertisements have? These are pre-recorded. These are, I assume, edited. Edited by editors, who I again assume, are professionals. Is this not their job? Their ONLY job?? Should they not be held accountable, especially to the youth who are going to hear and propagate the mistakes?

Perhaps I just need to make less assumptions.

SOUNDS LIKE STUPIDITY

It has definitely been a while since I've ranted, but not for any lack of material. I find that these things hit me when I'm nowhere near a computer, so I have no way to record my thoughts, and my memory being what it is, they're soon lost. What a shame.

Here's a short one I had pointed out from a friend. It's from a post on a web board, which is a treasure-trove when you are looking for the mistakes of today's youth. At least, I hope it's our youth.

The context isn't important, I believe, so I'll just snip out the really relevant parts.


Nats is confused and melon calling and self-degrading and self-pittying....this is not "evil",

"Evil" would vomit at all the wishy washyness of Nats and Aribeth.

And Aribeth is Psycho in addition to confused and melon calling and self-degrading and self-pitying, and not "evil".


Hopefully your brain paused momentarily, if not longer, on the "melon calling".

Now, working with the context, that all the other terms are adjectives and not verbs (Nats and Aribeth aren't calling out to melons), then what could the author possibly mean? Is melon a misspelled word? Is this slang, with "melon" meaning "head", so "melon calling" is ... insulting someone's head? No no, we ruled out a verb.

Melon calling. Melon calling. It rolls off your tongue, doesn't it? Try it. I promise it'll help. Melon calling. Are you melon calling?

If you haven't gotten it yet - I read it many times before I figured it out - I won't spoil it for you. But this is an extreme example of what I've talked about before, where people are hearing words but never seeing them, and thus are «mapping» them into words that they do know. They get a sense of the meaning of the «word» they've learned, and don't give any thought to how their interpretation could possibly make any sense. Melon calling? Why? Why would you ever believe that that's right? The whole "should of"/"could of"/"would of" issue can be glossed over in print and most readers don't notice it. That doesn't make it right, but at least communication hasn't broken down. But "melon calling"?

I like to think of myself as "hep" and "able", so I can keep up with today's argot. But this? It took me way too long. And the other posters on the message board didn't bat an eye. Was it because they glossed over the unknown and just took in what they could understand? Or was I the only reader on that board that didn't automatically know what the poster meant? Am I that out of touch? Have I fallen behind?

Now I'm feeling a little melon calling myself.