Learning Korean 10: I told you so

In keeping with my decision to slow down and get my head out of the textbook (and ignore its demands that I keep cramming in vocabulary and new grammar), I've been focusing on one thing for about a month now: the indirect reporting construction. 

This is the "said that" construction, as in "I said that it was cold yesterday."

What makes this difficult (beyond it just being a new construction in Korean) is the different, but related, forms it can take: in the future tense, instead of -다고, -ㄹ거라고 is used

학생이 수업을 다녀요. "The student attends class."

저는 학생이 수업을 다닌다고 했어요. "I said that the student attends class." (Compare with 저는 학생이 수업을 다닐거라고 했어요. "I said that the student will attend class.")

In the future, it's 저는 학생이 수업을 다닐거냐고 물어봤어요. "I asked whether the student will attend class."

저는 학생이 수업을 다니는지 물어봤어요. How this differs from the form above, I don't really understand. I also don't understand what happens when subjects are omitted in these kinds of indirect statements and questions. The subtleties multiply. I'm just trying to keep up with the rudiments.

Incidentally, the direct reporting construction ("I said, quote, it was cold yesterday, unquote.") is very similar to the indirect reporting construction: instead of -다고 it uses 라고.

저는 학생이 수업을 다녀요라고 헀어요. "I said 'the student attends class.'" (Notice how the original sentence—학생이 수업을 다녀요—appears completely intact here, followed by 라고, which acts like a closing quotation mark.)

Anyway, this is what I've been doing: writing sentences and then "converting" them into indirect statements and questions, one after another, hoping the repetition somehow hammers it home.

On Tutoring

I just wrapped up another quarter of volunteer ESL tutoring at Seattle Central College. This was, I think, my fifth quarter, and I still really enjoy it. I like feeling that I can play a role in someone's life, helping to introduce them to English, to Seattle, to the US. I admire these students, who have probably had to overcome far more than I have, and I'm proud to have the chance to help them. Unlike previous quarters, this quarter I had only one student. R is from Somalia. She's peppery. That's the best word I can think of to describe her. She is prone to kvetch, not shy about complaining. But she warmed up to me, and we would laugh as we read together from her workbook or when I quizzed her on past tense forms.

I still think that's one of the toughest things about English. It's just so confounding, the way the language forces you to memorize unguessable exceptions to everyday words, words you'll use and encounter in every English conversation. It seems so mean. R had trouble with this. She couldn't remember some of the most common irregular verbs, and she resorted to a workaround: did leave for left. I told her that didn't sound very natural, but it was good enough for her.

Prepositions in general were difficult, too: I came six o'clock. The truck leave Somalia. She talked him.

Another thing many English learners, including R, have a great deal of trouble with is articles. I'm thinking specifically of the fact that English forbids certain nouns—singular count, or countable, nouns—from appearing naked: *I ate cookie. *We visited museum. *When playing soccer, the man broke finger.

In each of these almost-but-not-quite-English sentences, a singular count noun (cookie, museum, finger) appears without an article. (Actually, what they lack is a determiner, of which articles are one type.) You have to use a determiner with a singular count noun: for instance, I ate the cookie; We visited that museum; When playing soccer, the man broke his finger.

I have seen English learners from all kinds of linguistic backgrounds produce sentences like those, sentences with bare singular count nouns. This particular mistake seems pretty resistant to correction. In my solipsism I always wonder: How can they not hear how... unfinished that sounds? I know that's a dumb reaction. They don't hear it because they haven't yet mastered this arbitrary requirement of English. Just as I haven't yet mastered plenty of arbitrary requirements of, say, Korean (or any arbitrary requirements of Somali).

R and I ended the quarter on a good note. She told me more about her personal story, how she made her sometimes harrowing way to Seattle. And I was reminded, again, of the importance of language. How this person's experiences—all our experiences—are locked away inside until language can send them out into the world.

Korean Planets and the Days of the Week

Warning: This post is likely to be more error-laden than usual.

This is what my Korean teacher and I discovered during a recent lesson. The names of the days of the week and the names of the planets are related. OK. That's not so strange. English has Monday (moon day), Sunday (sun day), and Saturday (Saturn day).

The days of the week in Korean go like so:

Monday: 월요일 (weolyoil)
Tuesday: 화요일 (hwayoil)
Wednesday: 수요일 (suyoil)
Thursday: 목요일 (mokyoil)
Friday: 금요일 (keumyoil)
Saturday: 토요일 (toyoil)
Sunday: 일요일 (ilyoil)

This is where it gets good. Way back, centuries ago, Chinese astronomers could see five planets with the unaided eye, and they named them after the five elements. Mars was named after fire (which came to Korean as 화): 화성. Mercury was named 수성, after water (수). Jupiter was named 목성, after wood (목). Venus was named 금성, gold or metal (금). Saturn was named 토성, after soil (토).

The days of the week are actually named after the planets: Tuesday is Mars day, Wednesday is Mercury day, Thursday is Jupiter day, Friday is Venus day, and Saturday is Saturn day (hey!). That leaves Sunday and Monday, which (hey, again) are named after the sun and moon in Korean, too.

The Problem with English

Learning Korean, I'm usually so focused on a new system—trying to recognize patterns, remember details, and grasp nuance—that I forget I've already mastered a system: English. I'm volunteer-tutoring again, and my student this quarter is from Somalia. She is struggling with English, and today we went over an aspect of English that must drive English learners crazy: the tense system.

Sure, forming the past tense of most verbs is straightforward: add -ed (which has three pronunciations, of course—"t," "d," and "id"—which is its own small annoyance).

walk > walked
stare > stared
compute > computed

But even though this is the standard method (referred to as "weak" by grammarian-type people), there are a great many verbs that don't fall in line:

sing > sang
swim > swam
give > gave

Imagine that you're trying to learn this system, which we should probably call a "system." Maybe by this point, you've tried to find a pattern and you've thought, "Most verbs add -ed, but with some short verbs with an i, you change the vowel to a." Nice try.

fling > flung
bring > brought
hit > hit

How are you supposed to get your head around the fact that the past tense of catch is caught? "Maybe," you might reason, your desperation growing, "words that end in a -tch sound have these bizarre past tense forms?" Words like teach (taught)?

Sure they do.

reach > reached
search > searched
etch > etched

"Maybe common words are more likely to have irregular ("strong") past tense forms? Please!" After all, look at do (did) and see (saw).

But no.

talk > talked
say > said (strange spelling and slightly off pronunciation, but this is basically say + ed)

I'm not even talking about the bizarre words (be and go) that have past-tense forms that come from a different planet. (This happened through a process called suppletion, where two different words get married and adopt a strict division of labor.) And then there's stand (stood) and make (made) and hold (held).

And what happens when you consider the third principle part of verbs, the past participle? This is the form used in the passive and the so-called perfect forms:

watch > watched > watched (this is the typical “weak” verb pattern)
drink > drank > drunk (three different forms of a “strong” verb)
take > took > taken (three different forms that work differently from drink)
sit > sat > sat (two different forms of a “strong” verb)
run > ran > run (two different forms, but following a different pattern from sit > sat > sat)
put > put > put (only one form!)

The patterns go out the window. The bottom line is that while there are indeed generalizations, they will only get you so far. What you'll have to contend with is memorizing the past tense and past participle forms of tons and tons of verbs.

And what about the places where even native English speakers disagree? What's the past tense of spit?

I'm not suggesting I'm the first person to notice all this. I'm probably more like the billion and first. And there's plenty more to say about the patterns and the exceptions and the exceptions to the exceptions.

Professional intellectual and interesting person Steven Pinker wrote a whole book about this, and it's a real page-turner! (It's actually really good. You should read it. It starts with this phenomenon and ends up getting into the mysteries and wonders of the human mind. Seriously.)

I'm going to try to remember all this when I'm struggling with Korean (that is, always and at all times). Every language has its hurdles, and this is definitely one that English sets up in front of beginners. So the problem with English is really the problem of every language: it's hard to learn it on purpose. When you learn it as a baby, it's easy. Yes, you'll make mistakes, but you won't know they're mistakes, and you'll correct them gradually and automatically, as your knowledge of the system grows and becomes more sophisticated.

Then there's prepositions. And the way you can make what are essentially new verbs with them: do in, take over, buy out... And the proper use of articles! And contractions! And...

Learning Korean 9: I was right!

It's a not-so-great thing to be right about, but I was right that the verb 무섭다 (museopta) is confusing. I could never remember whether it means "to be scared" or "to be scary." It seemed like there were plenty of other similar pairs I had had trouble with, but I looked up 무섭다 many times.

At my lesson today, I brought it up with my teacher. Her answer: it can mean both, so my confusion is completely warranted. What a ... relief? Context determines what meaning is intended, and certain situations trigger different verb forms that prevent ambiguity. For instance:

괴물이 집에 왔는데 난 무서웠어! (A monster came to the house! I was scared/scary.) Only "scared" makes sense given the context. 

괴물이 무서워해. (A monster is scared/scary.) Because the (let's call it) 3rd-Person Internal State form of the verb is used—무서워 + 하다—the only possible interpretation is that this is a statement about the monster's internal state: The monster is scared. 

Then there's what happens when the adjectival form (무서운) is used, but I've already forgotten which meaning this suggests. "Scary," I think. 

(There might also be subject/topic nuances, too, but if so, I've forgotten them, and probably didn't understand them anyway.)

Korean Mnemonics 6: juniors and seniors

I have a hard time keeping the Korean words 선배 (seonbae "senior") and 후배 (hubae "junior") straight.

Then I remember (or try to remember) that seonbae and senior start with the same sound.

Sometimes it just takes a while for a word to sink in deep enough that no tricks are needed to keep it lodged firmly in memory. Multiply this problem by hundreds or thousands of tricky, easily confused or forgotten words, and it's a miracle anyone can ever learn another language. How many tricks and shortcuts will I need to come up with? And how am I supposed to remember them?

Listen to Ancient Languages

Have you ever (I mean "always") wanted to know what ancient languages actually sounded like? Here's your chance:

Are these accurate? How should I know? What do I look like, some kind of Proto-Indo-European guy? But it's still fascinating, just to imagine these long-dead tongues brought back to life.

That Thing

It's time for another misguided article in the New York Times about language and how terrible Americans are at it.

This go-around the subject is the @ symbol and what the heck we're supposed to call it. What most of us (most of us Americans) call it, of course, is "the at symbol." The reason for this puzzles the piece's author, which seems strange. I mean, wouldn't you think a journalist could spare fifteen seconds to look it up if he didn't already know? It's called "at" not because it's now most often used in email addresses to signify that So-and-so can be found at, say, the New York Times, but because it's short for "at the rate of" and it was originally used to indicate the rate at which something was charged: 2 lbs. of onions @ $0.69/lb. (Did he actually not know this?)

Anyway, back to the part that really bugs me. After going through the adorable names other languages use for @—in Danish it's elephant trunk A, in Hungarian it's worm, and so on—and being reminded that Americans are a bunch of dopes with no vision, no sense of wonder, we get this pronouncement from a real-live linguist:

"It just doesn't seem like it's a habit of ours as English speakers. If you want to go for some sort of very, very general cultural metaphor, we go for function while the other so-called artistic cultures take an immediately holistic view. Instead of 'What do you do and who are you?' it's more, 'What do you appear to be?'"

Where do you even start with this kind of thing?

First off, "Americans go for function" isn't a metaphor. It's a generalization. 

Second, how is it more "holistic" to name things according to their appearance rather than their function? Or was that word chosen only because it would let her fondle a pet prejudice? I think it's clear that she meant those other cultures (the "artistic" ones!) are clever and cute and charming, and boring-old Americans go for the obvious answer.

(The piece also mentions that quotation marks are called "goose eyes" in Danish and "little paws" in Belorussian. To which I say: Now, hold on. Are you telling me Danes and Belorussians never use more prosaic terms to name quotation marks? I don't buy it for one second.)

Even if we ignore the astounding fecundity of American slang and jargon and confine ourselves to typographical symbols and numbers, we easily see that the piece's thesis is absurd. Here are some "holistic" terms English-speakers use for numbers and typographical symbols:

0  Goose egg
† ‡  Dagger and double dagger
!   Bang
…  Dot-dot-dot (not very clever, no, but also not the functional flavor of boring mentioned in the piece)
“”  Curly quotes (then there are also smart quotes and dumb quotes)
•  Bullet
/  Slash (not something functional, like demarcator)
⌘  (the Apple command key symbol) called clover, pretzel, etc. 
And what about dingbat?

None of these are "functional." They all describe the appearance of the symbols—sometimes playfully—and thus put the lie to the idea that Americans are a bunch of by-the-numbers halfwits. And remember, this is looking only at symbols. Imagine the rich—and virtually endless—stream of jargon from sports, medicine, the military, government, and every other trade, profession, hobby, discipline, and subculture you can name. 

This linguistic abandon and invention was something H. L. Mencken hammered hard in his The American Language, from 1919.

[T]he American, on his linguistic side, likes to make his language as he goes along, and not all the hard work of his grammar teachers can hold the business back. A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meets the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative. The characteristic American habit of reducing complex concepts to the starkest abbreviations was already noticeable in colonial times, and such highly typical Americanisms as O. K., N. G., and P. D. Q., have been traced back to the first days of the republic. Nor are the influences that shaped these early tendencies invisible today, for the country is still in process of growth, and no settled social order has yet descended upon it. Institution-making is yet going on, and so is language-making. [...] The American vulgate is not only constantly making new words, it is also deducing roots from them, and so giving proof, as Prof. Sayce says, that “the creative powers of language are even now not extinct.” 

But of more importance than its sheer inventions, if only because much more numerous, are its extensions of the vocabulary, both absolutely and in ready workableness, by the devices of rhetoric. The American, from the beginning, has been the most ardent of recorded rhetoricians. His politics bristles with pungent epithets; his whole history has been bedizened with tall talk; his fundamental institutions rest as much upon brilliant phrases as upon logical ideas. And in small things as in large he exercises continually an incomparable capacity for projecting hidden and often fantastic relationships into arresting parts of speech.

And then there's this:

American thus shows its character in a constant experimentation, a wide hospitality to novelty, a steady reaching out for new and vivid forms. […] It is producing new words every day, by trope, by agglutination, by the shedding of inflections, by the merging of parts of speech, and by sheer brilliance of imagination. […] One pictures the common materials of English dumped into a pot, exotic flavorings added, and the bubblings assiduously and expectantly skimmed. What is old and respected is already in decay the moment it comes into contact with what is new and vivid. “When we Americans are through with the English language,” says Mr. Dooley, “it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.” Let American confront a novel problem alongside English, and immediately its superior imaginativeness and resourcefulness become obvious. Movie is better than cinema; and the English begin to admit the fact by adopting the word; it is not only better American, it is better English.Bill-board is better than hoarding. Officeholder is more honest, more picturesque, more thoroughly Anglo-Saxon than public-servant. Stem-winder somehow has more life in it, more fancy and vividness, than the literal keyless-watch. Turn to the terminology of railroading (itself, by the way, an Americanism): its creation fell upon the two peoples equally, but they tackled the job independently. The English, seeking a figure to denominate the wedge-shaped fender in front of a locomotive, called it a plough; the Americans, characteristically, gave it the far more pungent name of cow-catcher. So with the casting where two rails join. The English called it a crossing-plate. The Americans, more responsive to the suggestion in its shape, called it a frog.

But that's only H. L. Mencken talking.

You know, it's practically a law: Every generalization about a particular language variety or its speakers is completely wrong. It's true: we call @ by something pretty darn functional. What's your point?

Addendum: I realize now that I might have climbed onto my hobby horse a little prematurely. The piece didn't make a distinction between Americans and other English-speakers. It made a (spurious) distinction between English-speakers and the speakers of other languages. All that Mencken stuff up there is still true—and still worth reading—but not quite as super-duper relevant as I had thought.

Learning Korean 7A: an update

In a recent post, I talked about how difficult the sentences in my Korean textbook are getting. Today, I went over some of them with my teacher, and it was, as usual, humbling.

This was the sentence I discussed in the previous post:

"There are plenty of people who are well-acquainted with proofreading work, but there are never enough who can do document editing well as well."

And this was my Korean translation:

교정하기에 밝는 사람이 많지만 문서를 잘 편집할 수 있는 사람 전혀 충부 안 해요.

And here it is with my errors marked:

교정하기에 밝은 사람이 많지만 문서를 잘 편집할 수 있는 사람은 전혀 안 충분 안 해요. (But that last word would be better translated as 충분하지않아요 instead of the I-guess-it's-clunkier version with 안.)

The first error was in treating 밝다 (be well acquainted) as a verb, instead of an adjective. Then, I should have used the 은/는 topic marker on the second 사람 to mean something like "but these other people, in contrast." And then there was my handling of the negated form of 충분하다.

All in all, I translated that sentence... passably. Of course, it's just one sentence among millions. There's always more to say, more to practice, more to learn, more to improve. (Just ask Sisyphus.)

Ad Watch: why we take off and don't flap

Let's enjoy another Delta Airlines ad narrated by Donald Sutherland.

This one's called "Take Off: Why We Go," and I think they're trolling us now. 

In case you don't want to waste thirty seconds of your time watching an ad on purpose, here's what we got: on top of blurry footage of bands and blotches of color rushing by, Donald Sutherland steadfastly refuses to flap. It's almost heroic.

What’s happening here is not normal; it’s extraordinary.
Two hundred and nineTy-one people, three hundred and fifTy tons,
one hundred and eighTy-six miles per hour. 

(Blah blah blah. A bunch of heavy breathing about pioneers and covered wagons and the wonderfulness of people who sit on planes.) 

EighTy thousand people now, on the ground, in the air, engines on.
Because there is no stop in us, or you. Only go.

In case you're new here, those capital Ts are my way of representing what we (yes, all of us) call aspirated Ts. This is the sound you hear at the beginning of a word like Tuesday. It's very different from the sound we spell with a t, but which we (well, we Americans) pronounce in a word like water. That sound—the one in water—is a flap, and it's what we would expect to hear in the word eighty. But not in a Delta ad. No, sir and/or madam.

Because that would fail to... It would fail to, well... I don't know why they can't do that, but they can't. Like many others, they seem to believe that flapping sends the Wrong Signal. It indicates a lack of precision and maybe even a lack of being able to fly airplanes. It's all very strange.  

Addendum (9/28/15): I didn't include this in the partial transcript of the ad above, but there's another peculiar thing in here, beyond Donald Sutherland's infuriating refusal to flap. At the 0:20 mark:

You're not sure what's on the other side to that time after you land...

If you're anything like me, you're thinking, "Wha?!" On the other side... to something? Did the completely standard English phrase "the other side of something" change when we weren't looking? (But we're always looking!) I simply don't believe that anyone else anywhere has ever said something like, "The remote? Oh, it's on the other side to the couch." Why are advertisements so weird?

The Danger of Dictionaries Part II: The More Dangering

I've talked about the limitations and absurdity of dictionaries before, and I'm back with a new bunch of examples. These all come from a word-finding app called Spellix. When you find a word in the game, you are (sometimes) shown its definition. Now, I have no idea why the game does this. It's of no use as far as gameplay goes. The definitions have nothing to do with scoring, and as they show up after you enter words, all I can think is that the game designers wanted to throw in a little "educational" component.

Which... okay. Fine. The world can always use more "educational," um... components. But the definitions are so strange as to be doubly useless. (But they did provide an additional dimension of entertainment, so that's something.) Here, take a look and see what I mean.

Each of these is such a perfect bauble of superfluous gibberish that it's almost impressive. Why do these things exist? Why did the game designers spend the time (and—oh god—the money?) to produce these "definitions"? They are of no utility for anything. Where they aren't tautologous (SICKS as people who are sick and SING as, basically, to sing), they are almost sort of accurate, in a well-meaning but fevered way (see CAT and BEEPS). And then you come to OGRES, the definition of which—as they say—isn't even wrong. Everything about this is gloriously, breathtakingly unlike anything of any value. Even if ogre had something to do with numbers, who on earth would describe any number as the sum of 7 and 1? And GEN as an informal term for information? Wh—? I mean—? Why did—?

Learning Korean 8: More on KDS

In the same vein as Learning Korean 7, I give you this brief disquisition on Korean Discouragement Syndrome (popularly known as KDS). I have been slowly crawling into Chapter 5, and I'm finding more thorny constructions, this time involving gerunds and nominalized sentences. For instance:

금년 봄이 이렇게 추운 걸 믿을 수 없어.

Keumnyeon bomi iroke chu-un geol mideul su eopseo.

Literally, phrase-by-phrase, this is:

This year's spring—like this—being cold—believe can't. Or, "I can't believe this spring is so cold."

Trying to follow along in my textbook is a matter of deliberate concentration as I pick my way through the sentence. It's only nine words (and nowhere near as complex as sentences get in this chapter), but I might as well be deciphering cuneiform. The basic idea behind this and other sentences in the chapter is simple enough. But when I try to actually do these sentences, I run into a brick wall. And it's only through careful work that I can crack them. How different from truly understanding a language, where it's rarely a matter of anything more than hearing and understanding. The two—the input and the output—seem almost identical, we travel from one to the other so fast.

I can translate simple (written) sentences (simple subjects, objects, conjunctions, and verbs—and maybe a relative clause thrown in here and there), pretty quickly, often almost as fast as I can read them. But anything more complex is a real slog. Which is why I'm still suffering from KDS.

Learning Korean 7: Painstaking and Unnatural

I've been at this Korean business—with varying degrees of diligence—for two years now. (My first lesson was two years and one week ago today!) And trying to do some homework I was struck by how difficult and not-at-all-automatic some of this still is. How far removed it is from my experience with my native language. I guess that's part of what it means to have a native language—that it's original, central, essential. It's not that I never have to stop and think about what I want to say and the best way to say it in English. It's that I usually have to do that in Korean. For me, Korean is still mostly happening at the level of deliberate, analytical behavior, not reflexive, fluent response. So, translating this sentence in my textbook:

"There are plenty of people who are well-acquainted with proofreading work, but there are never enough who can do document editing well as well."

Here's the translation I came up with:

교정하기에 밝는 사람이 많지만 문서를 잘 편집할 수 있는 사람 전혀 충부 안 해요.

Apart from the fact that I had to look up a bunch of vocabulary, and that I wasn't sure how to handle that "as well," and that I'm not confident about how I translated "never," and that I don't know whether I translated the gerund "proofreading" properly—so, apart from the details—I had to approach this with such painstaking attention that it left me feeling exhausted and discouraged. And it makes it hard to understand how anyone can produce or understand a sentence like this easily and with the kind of... thoughtlessness native speakers can indulge in. I feel like I need a calculator just to get to the end of a sentence like this. It's like solving a math problem.

Learning Korean 6: Relative Clauses and Insults

"You big hair-having, ugly shirt-wearing, too loud gum-chewing son of a bitch."

This is exactly how Korean relative clauses work. By which I mean, this is the word order of relative clauses in Korean. So every time I form relative clauses, first I have to translate what I want to say into that kind of swaggering throw-down, which makes relative clauses in Korean a joy.

"The man who chews his food too loud and wears ugly shirts" becomes, basically, "the too-loud-food-chewing, ugly-shirt-wearing man," and that's just cool.

음식을 너무 고성으로 씹는 추한 셔츠를 입는 남자

Actually, that might not be quite right, but my point stands. And if anyone reads this one day and wants to make something of it, they're nothing but a too-much-Korean-knowing, bad-tennis-playing, wet-paint-sitting fool.

Throwing Your Pencil Across the Room

You know those learn-to-draw tutorials? The blogs, the books, the videos? I have the feeling people have tried for centuries to teach people to draw using these kinds of simple, step-by-step techniques. And I assume that for centuries people have been throwing their pencils across the room in disgust when they realize that it's just not that simple. You can break it down into the smallest steps, but eventually you'll reach the point where you'll need to be able to... draw.

The reason I bring all this up is because I've realized something similar goes on with learn-to-speak-a-foreign-language tutorials. They can teach you a bunch of vocabulary. They can teach you some grammar. They can teach you some useful constructions and colorful idioms. But eventually you reach the point where you need to be able to understand and create sentences of your own. And that's where it all breaks down. I mean, if all you want to be able to do is repeat a script of set phrases—a kind of simulacrum of a conversation—you should be fine. But if you want to do more than just repeat something (just like wanting to do more than draw a face by following a formula that starts with an oval, then a curving line across to indicate where the eyes should go), you will soon want to throw your linguistic pencil across the room.

Still, I'm a sucker for the well-meaning tutorials, the apps, the answers-to-all-your-prayers websites.

Word Watch: conserve

Yesterday (9/01/15), I was listening to NPR (infinite geyser of weird pronunciations!), and I heard a correspondent pronounce the word conserve as "conzerve." Repeatedly. It was in a story about the sage grouse and the Endangered Species Act, but that's probably not relevant. Because I'm filled with curiosity about Our World®, I started thinking about this. Was it just a tic, or can we say something more interesting about it?

Conserve is typically (as in, virtually always or maybe actually always) pronounced "conserve." On the surface, this word looks like it's composed of two morphemes (meaningful components): con + serve. After all, English is packed with words that start with con- (contain, conceal, control, confer, and on and on). Let's leave con- and conserve alone for a minute and look at other prefixes that appear to combine with other morphemes to make words in a similar way.

For instance, re-, pre-, and de-. Notice first that these prefixes can have easily understood, "transparent" meanings. re- (can) mean something like again or back, pre- (can) mean before, and de- (can) mean something like negate or rescind. Look what happens, though, when those prefixes are combined with certain one-syllable words starting with s:

re + side = reside
re + serve = reserve
re + sign = resign
re + sort = resort

pre + side = preside
pre + serve = preserve
(Why is there no presign or presort? Beats me.)

de + serve = deserve
de + sign = design
(Deside? Desort? Nope, I guess not.)

In each of these words, the verb that begins with an s-sound when the word stands alone begins with a z-sound when combined with these prefixes. Just like that strange "conzerve" above, right? Not so fast!

Reside, reserve, resign, and resort aren't always pronounced as "rezide," "rezerve," "rezign," and "rezort." When the prefix re- has its "transparent" meaning—that is, when the meaning of the whole word is an obvious, "mathematical" combination of the prefix and the verb—those verbs are pronounced with s-sounds, just like they are when the words stand alone as independent words.

That is, when reside means "to side something again" (or "to install siding again") it's pronounced "re+side" (with an s). When reserve means "to serve again" it's pronounced "re+serve" (with an s). When resign means "to sign again" it's pronounced "re+sign" (with an s). And when resort means "to sort again" it's pronounce "re+sort" (with an s). But in what sense does re- mean again in reside ("to live in")? Now that you mention it, in what sense does side mean side in that word? Where is the sense of signing in resign ("to step down from a position")? Where is the sense of serving in reserve ("to set aside")? They're not there. Those words only look like they're combinations of meaningful parts.

So! It's only when the prefix+verb combo has a meaning that can't be derived by looking at the meanings of its parts that the s-verbs are pronounced with z's. In other words, it's only where there's a distinction between a-word-made-by-combining-parts and a-word-that-only-looks-like-it's-a-combination-of-meaningful-parts that we can sometimes see those s-verbs pronounced with z's.

Let's return to "conzerve." It's clear to me that that word came about on the analogy of what happens to s-verbs when they're combined with prefixes like re-, pre-, and de-. But notice that con- (lacking as it does an easily understood, "transparent" meaning) doesn't lend itself to those tricky pairs (like pre+side vs preside, "to side something ahead of time" vs. "to supervise or lead proceedings"). There's no possible confusion between "conserve" and "conzerve," because con- doesn't really mean anything on its own. Notice also what kinds of things con- typically gets stuck onto. It often only appears to combine with verbs: contain, conceal, control, confer. Tain isn't an independent word. Nor are ceal, trol, and fer. Nor are many of the "words" con-'s cousin com- "attaches" to. Look at compel, compare, combine, compute. con-/com- just doesn't work the same way as re-, pre-, and de-.

And that's why "conzerve" is weird.

Update (9/11/15): I just heard (on NPR, naturally) "rezources." This appears to follow the story I tell above (except "resources" is a noun, so who knows?), where we expect to see a distinction between "resources" and "rezources." Even though the verb resource (meaning something other than "to source something again") would be pronounced "rezource," I still think the noun "rezource" is bizarre.

Lyrics Watch: "Proud Mary"

Breaking news! (Breaking news that's more than 40 years old.) Tina Turner doesn't understand her own signature song!

I'm talking about "Proud Mary," of course, written by John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival and released in late 1968 or early '69.

Ike & Tina Turner first started performing the song in 1970, and their "nice and rough" version eventually came to define Tina Turner.

You know how it goes:

Left a good job in the city,
Workin' for the man every night and day.
But I never lost one minute of sleeping'
Worryin' 'bout the way things might have been.

Only, that's not how Tina Turner usually sings it. She usually says something like, "But I never lost one minute of sleeping—I was worrying about the way things might have been." Which is not only the opposite of the intended meaning; it's also kind of meaningless. (If you don't lose any sleep, it means you're not troubled. You're not worrying. "I never lost sleep; I was worrying about something" is a contradiction.)

I've been thinking about this for a long, long time. How can she have sung this song so many times without singing it the right way? Is that the answer—that she has sung it so many times she's stopped paying attention? She can certainly be forgiven for adopting a less-than-fresh attitude to the number she must have performed a thousand times. (And we all know what she means. We don't really listen too closely, either.) But! Her strange wording goes back to the 70s. She's been singing the song like this from the beginning! (See 1:30.)

But then in this 1982 performance she does it right! (See 3:05.)

Beyoncé got it wrong in her rendition at the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Tina Turner in 2005. Which I guess isn't surprising; she was emulating Tina Turner, after all. (See 1:25.)

Am I missing something? Does it actually make sense the way she (usually) sings it, and I just can't see it?

Korean Mnemonics 5: The Mnemonic That Wasn't

This was all set to be the best Korean Mnemonics post yet. (Which is saying something!) There are a number of similar words for different kinds of responses (reply to written inquiry, reply to spoken question, immediate response, and so on), and I was having trouble keeping them straight.

I realized that one of these words—for "incorrect answer"—came premade in English: 오담 (odam, or, like, "oh damn" sort of). Perfect! I felt pretty good about this for maybe a whole day. Before I realized I had misread this and all the other "reply" words. It's not 오담 (odam). It's 오답 (odap), which doesn't lend itself quite so readily to any memory tricks.

For the record, here are the other words in my list (which I have basically decided to forget):

답 (dap, "answer to written question")
응답 (eungdap, "response, usually immediate")
정답 (jeongdap, "correct answer")
대답 (daedap, "answer to spoken question")
회답 (hwedap, "reply to written inquiry")
답장 (dapjang, "written reply")

Learning Korean 5: Words that Sound Too Similar

There are a couple sets of words I have trouble keeping straight. They're just too similar-looking.

조용하다 joyonghada "to be quiet"
유명하다 yumyeonghada "to be famous"
유창하다 yuchanghada "to be fluent"
중요하다 jungyohada "to be important"
유행하다 yuhaenghada "to be trendy"

And the other set:

곱다 / 고와요 kopda / kowayo "be nice, kind, pretty"
굽다 / 구워요 kupda / kuweoyo "grill, broil"
춥다 / 추워요 chupda / chuweoyo "be cold"
좁다 / 좁아요 jopda / jobayo "be crowded, narrow"

There's something about these groups (and I'm sure the groups will grow as my vocabulary grows) I find challenging. Taken together, they just feel like blobs of the same sounds and strings of sounds tossed together in random combinations. Which, I mean, I guess they are, being words and everything.

I'd love to see troublesome groups of English words that give English learners difficulty. Anyone have anything like that?

Learning Korean 4: The Summer of Chapter 4

I have been stalled on Chapter 4 of my textbook, 한국말 하시는군요 (Book 3, Intermediate Korean 1) for at least two months now. It covers a great deal of territory, and a lot of the material is crucial, but some of the topics feel more like ornamentation than nuts-and-bolts Korean. It's been a slog. And the summer in Seattle has been really hot. I just haven't been so motivated. Anyway.

1. The so-called sentential modifiers: -은, -는, 을

These endings are the workhorses of Korean, as they allow for relative clauses and a whole suite of much more complex sentences. For instance, 먹은 과자 ("the snacks I ate"), 먹는 과자 ("the snacks I eat), and 먹을 과자 ("the snacks to eat"). Things get more complicated than this, though. For one thing, the past tense endings -던 and -ㅆ던, as in 먹던 and 먹었던. Actually, I still don't understand those last two or know how or where to use them. (I think they express the past progressive or pluperfect or... something.) So I'm sticking to the basics for now. I just know that these modifiers are very common and are used in a lot of constructions.

2. The "all you need to do is" construction: -으면 되다

Literally, this is "if you (verb), it works," but in practice, it means "you only need to (verb)." 비가 오면 우산을 가지고 가면 돼요. ("If it rans, you just need to take an umbrella.")

3. It takes (money, time, etc.) to...: -는 데 걸리다 / 들다

주차 자리를 찾는 데 얼마나 걸려?! ("How long does it take to find a parking space?!")
영화를 보는 데 십 불 들어요. ("It costs ten dollars to see a movie.")

4. Have ever done: -은 적이 있다

미국에서 여행한 적이 있어요? ("Have you ever traveled in the US?")
전 어렸을때 스키를 탄 적이 없었어요. ("When I was young, I never went skiing.")

Then there's the slightly (but totally) different form that uses 어/아 본 적이 있다 and means "have tried doing." No, I don't understand which situations call for which of these, as the English translations, while different, seem very similar and, in some cases, close enough in meaning to make understanding the distinction difficult.

5: Know (or not know) how to: -을 줄 알다 / 모르다

운전할 줄 알아요? ("Do you know how to drive?")

Note these two constructions that are similar (to this English-speaker's brain) but not very similar (according to Korean-speaking brains):

운전하는 방법을 알아요? ("Do you know how to drive?" That is, "Do you know the method of driving?")
운전할 수 있어요? ("Can you drive?" That is, "Are you able to drive?")

6: The "noun about a noun" construction: N1에 대한 N2

그 건물에서 일하는 사람에 대한 비밀이 있어요. ("I have a secret (N2) about a person (N1) who works in that building.") See the relative clause? 그 건물에서 일하는 사람 ("a person who works in that building")! Excitement!

7: Through, via, making use of: N-을 통해(서)

그 영화를 통해서 한국말을 배웠어요. ("I learned Korean from (watching) that movie.") That is not actually true about me and any movie. Also, the -을 통해서 construction is usually (often? widely?) used with people. As in "I learned through the squat stranger that the train was canceled." So maybe my example about the movie isn't the most apt.

Update (8/31/15): I'm calling it. Moving on to chapter 5. Enough, already.

The 42nd TOPIK

Well, this'll be short. Registration for the next TOPIK (number 42) came and went, and I never nailed down all the information. The Korean Consulate here in Seattle didn't return my emails. Is TOPIK 42 even offered in Seattle? I couldn't find out. So... TOPIK 43 (44?), here we come.

Flap Songs 2: Getting Better at Flapping

It's the third flap-related post in a row, and this is the timeliest one yet, involving, as it does, a snappy little number from 1967.



So here are the lyrics to "Getting Better," from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, presented in my usual format (where D represents a flap and T represents an aspirated t):

It's geTing beTer all the time 

I used to get maD at my school 

(No I can't complain)

The teachers that taught me weren't cool

(No I can't complain)

You're holding me down

(Ah-ahh)

Turning me round

(Ohh)

Filling me up with your rules

(Ooo)

I've got to admit it's geDing beTer

(BeTer)

A liDle beTer all the time

(It couldn't get no worse)

I have to admit it's geDing beTer

(BeTer)

It's geTing beTer since you've been mine

Me used to be angry young man

Me hiDing me heaD in the sand

You gave me the word

I finally heard

I'm doing the best thaD I can

I've got to admit it's geDing beTer

(BeTer)

A liDle beTer all the time

(It couldn't get no worse)

I have to admit it's geDing beTer

(BeTer)

It's geTing beTer since you've been mine

GeTing so much beTer all the time

It's geTing beTer all the time

(BeTer, beTer, beTer)

It's geTing beTer all the time

(BeTer, beTer, beTer)

I used to be cruel to my woman, I beaT her

And kept her apart from the things that she loved

Man, I was mean, buD I'm changing my scene

And I'm doing the best thaD I can

(Ooo)

I admit it's geDing beTer

(BeTer)

A liTle beTer all the time

(It couldn't get no worse)

Yes, I admit it's geDing beTer

(BeTer)

It's geDing beTer since you've been mine

GeTing so much beTer all the time

It's geTing beTer all the time

(BeTer, beTer, beTer)

It's geTing beTer all the time

(BeTer, beTer, beTer)

GeTing so much beTer all the time

I’m only an amateur flap detective, so there might be a lot more to this business than I’ve been assuming. But considering the post-lexical nature of flapping—the rule’s exceptionlessness—I don’t know what to make of all those places where Paul or whoever is flapping. I would have expected to see “geTing beTer” (each word with an aspirated t) or “geDing beDer” (each word with a flap), and not this hybrid “geDing beTer” flapping. Does it reflect the underlying tensions and cultural upheaval of the turbulent ’60s? The pull between established norms and exciting new possibilities of expression? No, I don't think that's it. But what, then? I know that in my speech, my flapping isn't inconsistent like this is. This is all over the place, a freewheeling ecstasy of unpredictable flapping!

Ad Watch: no flap left behind

And here's another one. On the heels of the "rotten kitten" ad comes this spot, known in the biz as "No Bag Left Behind."

The script:

Traveling can feel like one big mystery.
You’re never quite sure what is coming your way.
Though when you’ve got an entire company who knows that the fewest cancellations and the most on-time flights are nothing if we can’t your things there, too…
It’s no wonder more people choose Delta than any other airline.

Which... fine. I mean, I'm not sure it makes much sense. (When there's a company that knows it needs to get passengers' luggage where it's supposed to go, it's no wonder Delta is the most... popular airline?) The real issue here—surprise!—is that nonflapped t in "You're never quite sure whaT is coming your way."

What TIS coming your way?

What is the significance of this nonflapped t? All this time I've been assuming it's deployed to convey some combination of authority and precision, a kind of stand-in for British propriety. Which, of course, is silly. How does speaking in an artificial, stilted way convey any of those things? And if they wanted a British spokesperson, why didn't they just hire one?

Of course, Donald Sutherland has made a career out of this kind of phony-baloney o-ver-e-nun-ci-a-tion (see also Fishburne, Laurence), so why not him? 

Ad Watch: the rotten kitten

Before I quit this blog and devote myself full-time to the study of flapping (and the denunciation of flap refuseniks), let's look at this commercial that demonstrates a high degree of flaplack.

Here's the script:

I was getting into my car one morning when I heard…
<meow>
It sounded like a kitten was trapped in my car, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Neither could my husband. And neither could the fire department.
<meow>
We couldn’t lure it out. So we decided to drive very slowly to Les Schwab.
The team took my car apart—“Oh! Here he is”—and rescued the kitten. Today’s he’s alive and well and spoiled rotten.

When you watch this thing, the word kitten practically attacks you through the screen. (That is, kiTTen, with that t aspirated, resulting in a pronunciation that is thoroughly at odds with the woman's American English. She also pronounces rotten as roTTen.)

As always with the things I dredge up here, there is plenty of ordinary flapping—I was geDing into my car one morning, I couldn’t find iD anywhere, so we deciDed to drive very slowly—along with the weirdness.

Now, to be fair (and obsessively specific), this is a matter of too-much-aspiration instead of not-enough-flapping. Kitten and rotten don't have flaps; they have unreleased t's and syllabic n's. But I think the impulse that leads to roTTen and kiTTen is the same as the impulse that causes people to run screaming from flaps.

But when the film crew was recording the story, what did they think of that nonstandard kitten and rotten? Was it intentional? Did they ask her to say those words that way? (Why would they do that?) I tried to find other audio of the woman whose testimony the commercial was built around, but I couldn't. I dug up stories on local TV about the story, but I couldn't find her flapping or not flapping. I am assuming she doesn't typically avoid flaps. But who knows? And more to the point, who cares?

Linguistic Bigotry: German is ugly

I came across this video today at All Things Linguistic, and it reminded me of something that's bugged me for a while. It's one of those things we've heard so many times that it usually passes by unexamined: German is an ugly language. I think people (is this only or mostly a belief of English speakers?) really do think there's something to this statement beyond linguistic bigotry. As though German is objectively, almost mathematically, ugly. Would an aesthetic statement like that pass muster if it were about the works of some obscure composer? "Oh, that guy? It's been proven that his music is ugly." Even people who know nothing about German or Germany "know" that German is ugly. It's just a fact.

So. The video. The gag is that we see a Frenchwoman, an Englishman, an Italian, and a Mexican, each saying his or her language's word for a bunch of things—airplane, butterfly, daisy, and so on—and then the German guy barks some "ugly" German word at us. "See? German! Man, you know? Oh boy." No, no, I get it. It's playing on the timeworn idea that German is just plain abrasive. Of course, the video stacks the deck against German: anything's going to sound rough if you scream it. (Also, I'm not sure the video's depiction of Mexican Spanish is accurate.)

I'm not any kind of German aficionado—I took a year of German in college, my surname is German, and I speak a Germanic language. That's as far as it goes. But as a lover of language and languages, I feel the need to come to poor, sweet German's defense. So I will say it: German isn't objectively ugly any more than French is objectively beautiful. Or any more than it's objectively better to bow than to shake hands. (Or vice versa.) Or any more than ketchup on hot dogs is objectively wrong.

One of the things (I think) people have in mind when they say German is ugly—that is, when they're not just parroting cultural biases they've inherited—is that the velar fricative (the ch in the German pronunciation of Bach) is unpleasant. I have news for you: that sound isn't a very rare sound. And if that sound gets your hackles up, I'm not sure how you've survived the French uvular r, a sound every bit as gargled and gross. To my ears, at least. To my tender ears, the "French r" is an unlovable sound. But that's just me. I have my opinions and tastes, the same as anyone else. Still, you won't hear me carrying on about how disgusting and awful French is. Or maybe it's the German language's celebrated love of consonants? Again, this is hardly unique to German.

Yes, I'm sure the common belief that "German is ugly" is influenced by stereotypes we have of German people. Namely, that they are cold and brutish. (So, in another example of illogic, it stands to reason that their language reflects this.) When looked at that way, the offense is clear. Yet when we're attaching our judgments to people's language, we tend to feel justified. We're not really doing anything wrong. No we're just tarring a nation's language with the brush of bigotry. I don't think it's very nice, and I don't think it makes much sense, either.

Now, as an antidote to that German-is-ugly video, try this one. Watch this and tell me you still think German is harsh and unlovable.