With my business-writer hat on, I took a look at Britain’s big-bang legal reform (and its wider meaning) in this week’s Economist.
With my word-nerd hat on, I chatted about language books with The Economist‘s literary editor.
And finally, I insisted on KPCC public radio that the decision by Waterstone’s to drop its apostrophe wasn’t even the end of the apostrophe, much less the beginning of the End Times. Somehow I still lost the popular vote on the debate.
Many folks think a ridiculous name will doom a child. But given the names Taco Monster, Rockwell Bonecutter, Chuntania Dangerfield and Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr., could you tell who would be a civil servant, who an epidemiologist, who a technology consultant and who a convict many times over? These, more fascinating examples, and my thoughts here.
A review of Michael Erard’s Babel No More:
"CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canonised, his power was close to unearthly. Mezzofanti was said to speak 72 languages. Or 50. Or to have fully mastered 30. No one was certain of the true figure, but it was a lot. Visitors flocked from all corners of Europe to test him and came away stunned. He could switch between languages with ease. Two condemned prisoners were due to be executed, but no one knew their language to hear their confession. Mezzofanti learned it in a night, heard their sins the next morning and saved them from hell.
Or so the legend goes. In Babel No More, Michael Erard has written the first serious book about the people who master vast numbers of languages—or claim to. A journalist with some linguistics training, Mr Erard is not a hyperpolyglot himself (he speaks some Spanish and Chinese), but he approaches his topic with both wonder and a healthy dash of scepticism…" (Read the whole article.)
"The two sides are locked in a standoff. Trial lawyers and their Democratic allies call for health reform along European lines to reduce costs, making torts less expensive. Republicans call for tort-reform first, saying it is the best way to keep costs down. But Massachusetts’s universal health-care law has not (yet) bent the cost-curve, and Texas-style damage caps have not in fact increased doctor numbers. In reality, incentives must change in American health care across the board, and tort reform is only part of that.
Nonetheless, good ideas deserve serious debate. “Loser pays” should not shield wrongdoers. Keith Hylton of Boston University’s law school estimates that the welfare-enhancing effect of making negligence more expensive would be the biggest economic benefit of loser-pays. And high-merit but low-stakes cases should be more economical to file…" (Read the whole story.)
Sigh. There’s an old internet joke that the longer a discussion goes on, the probability of someone comparing someone else inappropriately to Hitler approaches 1. A lighter, but nonetheless serious, version of that has happened in an otherwise fair-to-positive review of You Are What You Speak in the Sydney Morning Herald. Ruth Wajnryb ends her review with several surprising sentences that are supported by no evidence in her review, nor by anything in my book itself. I have just sent this letter to the editor of the paper; following it, I include the passage in the book that Ruth Wajnryb seemed to be referring to.
Dear Madam,
I was stunned to reach the end of the (positive) review of my book You Are What You Speak, to find attributed to me a view I absolutely do not hold. "His tone shows how miffed he is that the Jews didn’t learn the right lessons from the Holocaust. They should have learnt… that the right of national self-determination was permissible to all peoples but not to them." That your reviewer infers this bizarre anti-Semitic view that I do not hold from my "tone" is deeply irresponsible. Throughout my book I am critical of nationalist identity politics: in America, France, Spain, South Africa, China and many others. This does not mean that I regret the creation of those states, nor do I regret the creation of Israel. It’s not my job to wish established states off the map; Ruth Wajnryb seems to have confused me with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I’m very excited to be addressing the small topic "What is English?" at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan next Tuesday, November 9th. The event is near-full, but there are still some tickets available, so if you’re interested, get them sooner rather than later!
I read aloud most of the preface of You Are What You Speak for Australia’s ABC radio and the outstanding Lingua Franca program. This is the most personal part of the book, the stories of my father and grandfather. It was definitely a new experience for me, trying to give it a little "radio voice" but not too much…
For the release of the handsome edition of You Are What You Speak in Australia, I wrote a short piece for Black Inc’s blog, The Inc. Blot : 10 Myths About Language.
1. In English, there are always clear rules; violate them and you’re wrong.
Who says? English has no committee that sets the rules; it never has. (France does, by contrast. More on them below.) The “rules” are frequently laid down in books intended to be authoritative; such books have often perpetuated non-rules that have been violated by great writers and speakers throughout history. The test of whether a rule is a Rule is not whether your English teacher told you so…
I had a great chat with Daniel Midgely of Australia’s "Talk The Talk", well timed for the Australian publication of You Are What You Speak. (It’s the 9/26/11 "Are you a grammar grouch?" edition).
A brief talk I gave to the Economist’s September conference on "Human Potential", looking at the myths and facts around the interplay of language and the mind.
