Cato's Grammar Grumble

[Karl Henning]

One never knows, do one?

[Cato]

Okay, so, here we go!   

Today in the 8th Grade we came across a Latin phrase which could not be translated literally.  I explained that it was an idiom e.g. "He's sawing logs" for snoring, in which nobody is sawing logs, but someone sounds like that while snoring, and I gave an exaggerated example, which led to this unexpected conversation among my girls (the boys were gone on a field trip):

Girl 1: "Oh my gosh!  You sound just like Abby when she snores!"
Girl 2:  "Yeah, that does sound like Abby!  She's the worst ever!"
Girl 3: (sitting right where I am standing and looking up at me) "Yeah!  She's awful:
        You don't ever want to sleep with Abby!"    

At which comment the girls around her have mouths as big as the Carlsbad Caverns and eyes bigger than pizzas, and are inhaling with difficulty.  So I said very properly:

"You are quite right, Miss Smith!  0:)   That will never happen!" 

And then they were all laughing to the point of gasping...except for Miss Smith, who at first was not sure what her friends found so funny...and then came the dawning!  0:)

Grammar point: at times the impersonal "you" can be mistaken for "you."

One never knows, do one?

Speaking of "you," the pronunciation of the pronoun as if it were a member of the Taxus family of greenery, is something I am finding among some adults now, especially women.

Perhaps it is the 80's "Valley Girl" nonsense at work!

[kishnevi]

Speaking of "you," the pronunciation of the pronoun as if it were a member of the Taxus family of greenery, is something I am finding among some adults now, especially women.

Perhaps it is the 80's "Valley Girl" nonsense at work!

I have to confess that I'm guilty of that in reverse:  on those occasions when I mention the yew (admittedly not often),  I pronounce it the same as "you".  And there's an even chance I will pronounce the word "Jew" as "Ju" even though, being one myself,  I should know better.

And for many years I used think people were "misl-ed" (mizzl'd), until it eventually dawned on me that they were actually "mis-led". 

BTW, it's probably a good thing the boys were on a field trip when Miss Smith made her remark.

[Cato]

BTW, it's probably a good thing the boys were on a field trip when Miss Smith made her remark. 

  And the remark never came back to me!  Nobody came around with "I heard what happened..." 

Perhaps to spare "Miss Smith" from further comments, the girls just let it drop!  They are a nice group.

[Cato]

In an effort to prevent Bruckner's Abbey from being thrown off topic, I will comment here about "pop writer" Sydney Sheldon (creator of I Dream of Jeanie).

By "Googling" his name and the phrase "bad writing," I found the following:

From an essay by Charles Petzold:

...Here then is Sidney Sheldon's A Stranger in the Mirror, the story of comic Toby Temple:

"The Friars Club gave a Roast with Toby Temple as the guest of honor. A dozen top comics were on the dais, along with Toby and Jill, Sam Winters and the head of the network that Toby had signed with. Jill was asked to stand up and take a bow. It became a standing ovation.

They're cheering me, Jill thought. Not Toby. Me!

The master of ceremonies was the host of a famous nighttime television talk show. "I can't tell you how happy I am to see Toby here," he said. "Because if we weren't honoring him here tonight, we'd be holding this banquet at Forest Lawn."

Laughter.

"And believe me, the food's terrible there. Have you ever eaten at Forest Lawn? They serve leftovers from the Last Supper."

Laughter.

He turned to Toby. "We really are proud of you, Toby. I mean that. I understand you've been asked to donate a part of your body to science. They're going to put it in a jar at the Harvard Medical School. The only problem so far is that they haven't been able to find a jar big enough to hold it."

Roars.

When Toby got up for his rebuttal, he topped them all.

Everyone agreed that it was the best Roast the Friars had ever had."

For 35 years, this sentence has given me hope. I know I'm a mediocre writer, but I also know that I would never ever write a sentence as bad as that one.

In addition to the last Sydney Sheldon sentence in the excerpt, I do wonder about the joke using the word "big": would it not be funnier to write that "they haven't found a jar small enough..." ?   

But...such is the nature of bad writing!

See:

http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2011/11/Very-Bad-Writing.html

I should mention that some of the worst writing one can find today is by the teachers and professors who pen textbooks for schools! 

[Cato]

A friend found the opening lines of Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline:

He was seated in the dark, alone, behind the desk of Hajib Kafir, staring unseeingly out of the dusty office window at the timeless minarets of Istanbul...His waiting had the patience of a hunter, the quiet stillness of a man in control of his body and his emotions. He was Welsh, with the dark, stormy good looks of his ancestors. He had black hair and a strong face, and quick intelligent eyes that were a deep blue. He was over six feet tall, with the lean muscular body of a man who kept himself in good physical condition. The office was filled with the odors of Hajib Kafir, his sickly sweet tobacco, his acrid Turkish coffee, his fat, oily body. Rhys Williams was unaware of them. He was thinking about the telephone call he had received from Chamonix an hour earlier.

[Karl Henning]

What a twit Rhys must have been, not to be aware of that fœtid atmosphere, fooey!

[Cato]

What a twit Rhys must have been, not to be aware of that fœtid atmosphere, fooey!

And being Welsh, and in a bad novel, he just had to look "dark" and "stormy" !

Shades of Bulwer-Lytton!   

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

[mahler10th]

A friend found the opening lines of Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline:

  Shame on Sheldon.  What a bloody awful writer.  One doesn't have to read too much into that paragraph to smell the sweat of a racist.

[kishnevi]

I've read one Sidney Sheldon novel in my life.  I don't remember the title, or any particular quote from it, cringe worthy or otherwise:  but I do remember that I could see how the plot would develop, including the identify of the supposed mystery villian that is not "revealed" until the last chapter, by about half way through the first chapter.

Another bad writer is probably Tom Clancy, of whose novels I have read only Hunt for Red October.  Clancy had the merit of coming up with a non formulaic plot that was literally a page turner--I read it as fast as I could to see what would happen next, and how everything would come out.  (It's actually much more interesting than the film version.)   But his descriptive abilities were about the level of one of Cato's students, and his talent for characterization was non existent.  Let me put it this way: the most vividly realized, completely fleshed out character in the novel is the KGB officer who gets killed off within the first three pages of the novel.

And then of course there is Dan Brown.  I once tried to read the DaVinci Code, and threw it across the room in disgust by about the time I got to the end of the second chapter. And I'm not even a Catholic.  Haven't read a single word by him ever since.  Bad prose,  bad plot, bad characterization.....He probably deserves a Bulwer Lytton award for Special Lifetime Achievement.

[Florestan]

And then of course there is Dan Brown.  I once tried to read the DaVinci Code, and threw it across the room in disgust by about the time I got to the end of the second chapter. And I'm not even a Catholic.  Haven't read a single word by him ever since.  Bad prose,  bad plot, bad characterization.....

I read the whole crap. That is the only book I've ever regretted buying.

[Cato]

I came across all kinds of venom yesterday about James Patterson being a popular yet ultimately terrible writer.

Alfred Hitchcock once gave an interview where he mentioned that mediocre or even bad novels can sometimes be turned into a great movie, whereas it is very difficult to take a good or great book and make a good or great movie, because the successful book by definition is much more complex and interesting than a movie can ever be.

e.g.

Psycho was something of a drugstore potboiler by Robert Bloch, who wrote mysteries and science fiction.  I recall that studios were not interested in the book because it was too violent, and so Hitchcock snapped up the rights at a cheap price (c. $10,000).   

[Cato]

"We sale 4G Fones"

This monstrosity was seen at a telephone store: "Fones" is bad enough, but "sale" instead of "sell" ?

Residents of certain southern states are known to mangle short "e's" and and turn them into long "a's".

Perhaps the manager "hails" from "Kaintucky" or thereabouts.   0:)

[kishnevi]

"We sale 4G Fones"

This monstrosity was seen at a telephone store: "Fones" is bad enough, but "sale" instead of "sell" ?

Residents of certain southern states are known to mangle short "e's" and and turn them into long "a's".

Perhaps the manager "hails" from "Kaintucky" or thereabouts.   0:)

Au contraire, you northerners mangle words by shortening the vowel from a long a into a short e, which shows what mistakes can be made by insisting on following orthography. 

But perhaps this store was using sale as a quasi intensive form of "to sell".  To sale an object is not merely to sell it, but to sell it at a discount that makes it cheaper compared to one's competitors.

[Opus106]

I know what Santa Cato will be giving everyone this Christmas!

http://www.gizmag.com/lernstift-digital-pen/26113/

[Cato]

I know what Santa Cato will be giving everyone this Christmas!

http://www.gizmag.com/lernstift-digital-pen/26113/

So the Germans are at it again!   

Many thanks for the link!

The name of the device is a pun in German:

"Bleistift means "pencil."

Blei = lead (the metal)   Lernen = learn  Stift = stick or writing instrument

(Stift is related to steif, the word for stiff.)

So, as the article states, the invention is a "learning pencil."

[The Six]

Are there any Americans who aren't too lazy to pronounce their Ts? Center has become cenner, Toyota is Toyoda, entertainment is ennertainmen, etc.

[Cato]

Are there any Americans who aren't too lazy to pronounce their Ts? Center has become cenner, Toyota is Toyoda, entertainment is ennertainmen, etc.

It is sad, I agree.  Part of the problem is that oratory has disappeared from the schools, and that what passes for oratory today is lamentable, especially when one hears e.g. certain politicians, actors, and commentators lionized as eloquent geniuses, when they are nothing of the sort.

From a semiotic aspect, such slovenly pronunciation may be a sign of deeper problems.

[DavidRoss]

From a semiotic aspect, such slovenly pronunciation may be a sign of deeper problems.

Isn the guvermin gonna ban semiotics?

[Karl Henning]

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.