Cato's Grammar Grumble

[Cato]

Isn the guvermin gonna ban semiotics?

Say wha' ?   

Delicious Typo Dept.:

When one has heard the unstoppable drive of Mravinsky or the opulence of the Berliners under Von Karajan, this performance of the 10th bares little repeat listening.

Actually, that would be right, you know!   0:)

[Karl Henning]

Here's a painful one, and the title of an episode to boot, in The Complete Avengers by Dave Rogers: "The Bird Who Knew To Much."

[The Six]

That's the one about the hungry bird, right? It's just a typo, leaving out the "n" in the last word.

[Cato]

One of the worst errors in a title involved a mistake in geography, rather than spelling.

Krakatoa, East of Java was one of the last Cinerama movies, and was a waste of the talents of Maximilian Schell, Brian Keith, and Sal Mineo.

The problem: Krakatoa, you see, is west of Java!  When it was re-released, it was renamed Volcano!

A crappy movie, and yes, I sat through it!

The score is dreadful, done by TV composer and erstwhile comedian Frank DeVol.  I had to wonder if the score was not supposed to be a satire of scores for incompetent movies:

http://www.youtube.com/v/y1wWALEU5GU

Frank DeVol played bandleader "Happy Kine" of "Happy Kine and the Mirthmakers" on Fernwood 2Night with Martin Mull and Fred Willard.

http://www.youtube.com/v/XkrvnyW8h0o

[Florestan]

Here's a painful one, and the title of an episode to boot, in The Complete Avengers by Dave Rogers: "The Bird Who Knew To Much."

Perhaps they wanted to say "The Bard..." 

[Cato]

From today's Wall Street Journal:

"Computer scientist David Gelernter answering the 2013 annual question of Edge.org, "What should we be worried about?"


"If we have a million photos, we tend to value each one less than if we only had ten. The internet forces a general devaluation of the written word: a global deflation in the average word's value on many axes. As each word tends to get less reading-time and attention and to be worth less money at the consumer end, it naturally tends to absorb less writing-time and editorial attention on the production side. Gradually, as the time invested by the average writer and the average reader in the average sentence falls, society's ability to communicate in writing decays. And this threat to our capacity to read and write is a slow-motion body-blow to science, scholarship, the arts—to nearly everything, in fact, that is distinctively human, that muskrats and dolphins can't do just as well or better.

The internet's insatiable demand for words creates global deflation in the value of words. The internet's capacity to distribute words near-instantly means that, with no lag-time between writing and publication, publication and worldwide availability, pressure builds on the writer to produce more. Global deflation in the value of words creates pressure, in turn, to downplay or eliminate editing and self-editing. When I tell my students not to turn in first-drafts, I sometimes have to explain, nowadays, what a first draft is."

(My emphasis above)
A version of this article appeared February 25, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Notable & Quotable.

[Cato]

"Computer scientist David Gelernter answering the 2013 annual question of Edge.org, "What should we be worried about?"

I just discovered that Gelernter was injured by a bomb from the "Unabomber" in the 1980's, and that he teaches at Yale...some of whose students do not know what a "first draft" is supposed to be.   

[Karl Henning]

Woof

[Karl Henning]

Rather an embarrassing typo on Amazon for the soundtrack of The Blues Brothers:

Theme from Rawride.

[Karl Henning]

A wonderful malapropism... chap meant to say "the plaintive noodle" (personally, I'm not mad about calling an active clarinet figure "noodling," but let that pass), but typed "the plaintiff noodle."

[Cato]

A wonderful malapropism... chap meant to say "the plaintive noodle" (personally, I'm not mad about calling an active clarinet figure "noodling," but let that pass), but typed "the plaintiff noodle."

If the plaintiff is Noodle, then the defendant must be...?   0:)

And Rawride!!!  All I can say is, cowboys probably would agree that there is more than one kind! 

[Opus106]

A wonderful malapropism... chap meant to say "the plaintive noodle" (personally, I'm not mad about calling an active clarinet figure "noodling," but let that pass), but typed "the plaintiff noodle."

Plaintive is the transliteration of the Russian that sounds Plaintiff.

[Cato]

Okay, here we go!  For new people, I teach grade-school (6th, 7th, 8th) Latin...yes, I know, I am lucky to be employed!

The Latin sentence is supposed to equal: "The Romans praised the bravery of the enemy."

The Seventh Grade boy, by breaking practically every rule of the language, comes up with:

The enemy praises the brave Romans.

After I begin some Socratic questioning, the boy, who is normally not dull, deduces that "Romans" should be the subject, and "enemy" the direct object, and that the verb tense is wrong.

But wait!  There's more!!!   0:)

He: So it should be..."The brave Romans praised the enemy."
I: No, look more carefully.
He: "The brave Romans have praised the enemy."
I: No, the verb is fine.  There is a problem with this word (and I indicate fortitudinem i.e. "bravery.")
He: "The very brave Romans praised the enemy."
I: No, you don't need a superlative.  The problem is that you're making an adjective out of a noun.
He: (not thinking at all) The Romans bravely praised the enemy.
I: No, "bravely" is an adverb.  I will repeat: you are making an adjective out of a noun.

And now, with my next questions, I make a mistake, because the question is not quite posed properly for the rather concrete     7th Grade brain.

I: What's the noun for "brave"?
He: Fortitudinem.
I: In English!
He: Romans.
I: No, I mean what is the noun that comes from "brave."
He: (Puzzled) Romans?
I: No, again, brave is an adjective.  It describes a noun.  I need "brave" as a noun.
He: Oh, it's the same!
I: No it isn't!
He: Yeah: like the Atlanta Braves.      
I: Well, that is a noun, but it's "brave" as a person. Look, I need the idea of brave.
He: Oh!  Courage!

And I should have stopped and said: "Close enough!"

But I suffer from rampant Don-Quixote Syndrome!   0:)

I: Well, we're getting closer!  Now give me a synonym for "courage" from "brave."
He: (Silence)
I: Just add two letters!
He: Oh! Bravest!
I: No, that's a superlative adjective again! I need the noun, the idea of "brave" as a noun!  Just add two letters, but not "st"!
He: Bravely?
I: No, that's still an adverb.  Look, let's go back to the sentence: "The Romans praised the ____ of the enemy."  Now if we put in "brave" - will that make sense?
He: No.
I: Good!  Why?
He: (not sure) Because it's an adjective?
I: Yes, great!  Now, put in the noun that comes from "brave."
He: Courage.   

To quote Clint Eastwood's      Dirty Harry: "A man's got to know his limitations!" 

Finally I wrote out B-r-a-v-e-r-y and asked him if he knew the word "bravery." 

No, he claimed that he had never seen it before.

So, today he learned a new word!   

[kishnevi]

Come to think of it, I don't remember the last time I've seen the word "bravery" used in anything a member of the general public would be expected to read on a regular basis.   Hero/heroism seems to have pushed it out the door--I suppose it just sounds more, er, heroic, to refer to someone's heroism instead of someone's bravery....

[vandermolen]

Very popular amongst my students is 'could of' when they mean 'could have'.

[Cato]

Okay, here we go!  For new people, I teach grade-school (6th, 7th, 8th) Latin...yes, I know, I am lucky to be employed!

The Latin sentence is supposed to equal: "The Romans praised the bravery of the enemy."

The Seventh Grade boy, by breaking practically every rule of the language, comes up with:

The enemy praises the brave Romans.

After I begin some Socratic questioning, the boy, who is normally not dull, deduces that "Romans" should be the subject, and "enemy" the direct object, and that the verb tense is wrong.

But wait!  There's more!!!   0:)

He: So it should be..."The brave Romans praised the enemy."
I: No, look more carefully.
He: "The brave Romans have praised the enemy."
I: No, the verb is fine.  There is a problem with this word (and I indicate fortitudinem i.e. "bravery.")
He: "The very brave Romans praised the enemy."
I: No, you don't need a superlative.  The problem is that you're making an adjective out of a noun.
He: (not thinking at all) The Romans bravely praised the enemy.
I: No, "bravely" is an adverb.  I will repeat: you are making an adjective out of a noun.

And now, with my next questions, I make a mistake, because the question is not quite posed properly for the rather concrete     7th Grade brain.

I: What's the noun for "brave"?
He: Fortitudinem.
I: In English!
He: Romans.
I: No, I mean what is the noun that comes from "brave."
He: (Puzzled) Romans?
I: No, again, brave is an adjective.  It describes a noun.  I need "brave" as a noun.
He: Oh, it's the same!
I: No it isn't!
He: Yeah: like the Atlanta Braves.      
I: Well, that is a noun, but it's "brave" as a person. Look, I need the idea of brave.
He: Oh!  Courage!

And I should have stopped and said: "Close enough!"

But I suffer from rampant Don-Quixote Syndrome!   0:)

I: Well, we're getting closer!  Now give me a synonym for "courage" from "brave."
He: (Silence)
I: Just add two letters!
He: Oh! Bravest!
I: No, that's a superlative adjective again! I need the noun, the idea of "brave" as a noun!  Just add two letters, but not "st"!
He: Bravely?
I: No, that's still an adverb.  Look, let's go back to the sentence: "The Romans praised the ____ of the enemy."  Now if we put in "brave" - will that make sense?
He: No.
I: Good!  Why?
He: (not sure) Because it's an adjective?
I: Yes, great!  Now, put in the noun that comes from "brave."
He: Courage.   

To quote Clint Eastwood's      Dirty Harry: "A man's got to know his limitations!" 

Finally I wrote out B-r-a-v-e-r-y and asked him if he knew the word "bravery." 

No, he claimed that he had never seen it before.

So, today he learned a new word!   

I should mention that the student came in during lunch to write an assignment so that he could raise a "D" on a recent quiz to a "C." 

Very popular amongst my students is 'could of' when they mean 'could have'.

I just read an Amazon review full of "of" instead of "have" or " 've" along with monstrosities like "had took."

[Karl Henning]

Cato, that could become the new "Who's on first" routine!

[Cato]

Cato, that could become the new "Who's on first" routine!

After reflecting on the conversation, Abbot and Costello were the first ones I thought of!   

[Opus106]

Very popular amongst my students is 'could of' when they mean 'could have'.

I didn't know that this was a 'phenomenon' in the UK as well.

[Karl Henning]

Lazy English is not a purely American pastime, you see.