New Beginnings

Hmmm.... Speaking of language, the phrase I've just used as my title always puzzles me. Aren't all beginnings new by definition? Another pet peeve of mine is calling someone a "personal friend." What's an impersonal friend? Aren't all friends personal? What do you think?

Whatever you call this time of year, in the United States and many other countries in the northern hemisphere the period a bit before or after Labor Day (a United States holiday) marks the start of the school year. I know that some places start school in August, and I'm offering a prize! The first person to post the earliest date that the school year starts in the northern hemisphere will win either a free one-hour online beginning Spanish lesson or editing and comments on up to two pages of a document written in English. So start posting those dates!

I've titled this posting (New) Beginnings to encourage you to think about beginning something new with language. It could be selecting an online or CD program or a book to start studying a language you've always wanted to learn. It could also be signing up for an online writing tutorial with me or taking a course at my company's location in Framingham, Massachusetts. It could be starting to focus on learning more vocabulary in your native language. What's your plan?

Language Fun

As in Lake Wobegone, where all the children are above average, my kids were linguistically precocious. My first daughter, between the ages of 2 and 3, used a wonderful word, "firstable," to emphasize the importance of what she was going to say. Naturally I was proud of her creative use of language. Imagine my shock years later when I actually found this written in an ESL (English as a second language) student's composition. Well, some researchers who study language acquisition and learning tell us that second-language learners go through some of the same stages as children learning their first language, but this was really striking to me. (For a quick overview of different ideas about child and adult language acquisition, take a look at the following: http://members.tripod.com/~chris1066/theories.html. Don't let the abbreviations scare you. FL means "foreign language," FLL means "foreign language learning," L1 is the person's native language, L2 is the language someone is learning.)

Now, let me throw another concept at you. I promise to finish up with an anecdote related to it. The concept is hypercorrection. With respect to language, it means over-correcting in an effort to speak or write correctly. One pet peeve (there's that phrase again!) of school teachers is the use of 'me' for 'I,' as in "Mary and me studied together." Students are constantly corrected when they make this error. This leads many of them to hypercorrect 'me' to 'I' after 'and,' as in "between you and I" rather than the grammatically correct "between you and me." Well, my second daughter used this process quite early, again before the age of 3. (You can see how pushy I was about language back then!) I used to model correct forms for them when they didn't use them. One of these was the use of 'were' in the subjunctive, as in "If I were a rich woman, I would ...." My second daughter caught on to this all too well. After saying something like "Mommy, I was in the bathroom" she immediately hypercorrected, saying "I mean 'I were in the bathroom.'" I swear I wasn't a linguistic tyrant, just pushy, as I said before.

Language for Profit

One of the services my company, Prince Language Associates Incorporated, provides is ESL classes at the workplace. Many of our clients are hotels, which often employ a large number of workers for whom English is a great challenge. I almost always do the evaluations to determine levels of English for our clients, and I sometimes teach the classes. I bond with the participants and am very sympathetic to their situations. However, when I am at a hotel as a guest something changes. I maintain my sympathy for the most part, but if there is a problem or I need something like extra towels I get upset when the person I'm talking to doesn't understand me. And I'm someone who, as I said, is generally sympathetic. I keep it in, but I will write it in the evaluation that I do for my stay. And I may even tell others. I wonder how sensitive business owners and managers are to this type of situation. I know that guest ratings are considered by the corporation the hotel belongs to, but I also think that negative experiences with being understood get around through word of mouth. Please post your opinions and/or experiences with this.

Word for the Day

pontificate

I had another word picked out for today, but someone sent me this one. (She included a photo of a family member pontificating, but of course I'm not going to publish that.) Anyhow, the word means to speak pompously or self-importantly, especially when you're not qualified to. (Yes, it's now okay to end a sentence with a preposition!) The word 'Pontiff" refers to the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, so you may think of pontificating as speaking as if you had the qualifications of the Pope when you don't.

I'm going to sign off for today. I hope to hear from you on this blog soon! BTW, a couple of readers have told me that they've had trouble posting. If you have any difficulty, just sent me an email that contains what you want to say and I will post it for you.


Ciao for now,

Eileen