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.

The S-Word and the Other N-Word

A few months ago, a news item caught my eye. It was about efforts to remove the word squaw from place names in Oregon. (Here's a list of proposed changes.) Similar efforts have gone on—and continue to go on—in other states.

For ages, before white people got to it, squaw wasn't a problematic word. It didn't refer to or have anything to do with copulation or defecation, for instance, the two things most likely to spawn euphemism as well as insult. It doesn't appear to have been a charged word.

According to my exhaustive* research, squaw can be traced back to a Proto-Algonquian word, *eθkweːwa (something like "ethkwaywa"), which meant woman. This developed into various forms in Proto-Algonquian's daughter languages, for instance iskwēw (Cree), xkwē (Lanape), ekwēwa (Shawnee), and ikwe (Ojibwe). And in Massachusett, the language the Europeans first made contact with in that part of the world, the cognate was squa. Oh, let's just go ahead and spell it squaw. This was first put into print in the early 1600s and was said to mean woman.

In time, when used by white people, squaw came to belong to a category of words we tend to find offensive—words that name female members of racial or ethnic groups. Because words like these—like negress and Jewess—are used within contexts of bigotry, misogyny, and racial hatred, they're all suspect, and they've fallen from favor. They now sound not only offensive but also archaic. They are dehumanizing, almost... zoological. It's hard to imagine even the most racist racist using them with a straight face, although I bet there are plenty who are game to try. In light of that, it's unsurprising that squaw would come to be offensive, even if it started life innocuously.

All of which makes me wish people argued against the word on those grounds. The case against squaw doesn't sound hard to make: it belongs to the category of racially defined gendered terms we have largely rejected, and I'm sure it had acquired an unsavory history as a racist, sexist slur. Instead, the arguments for ditching the word seem to involve falsehoods about the word's origins, and that's the part of the story that bugs me.

Apparently, squaw's humble beginnings were unremarkable until 1973, when Literature of the American Indian introduced the idea that the word is actually derived from the Mohawk word ojiskwa (or something like that), meaning vagina. Then, in 1992, a Native American activist told Oprah (!) that the word was Algonquian for vagina. The problem is that Mohawk isn't an Algonquian language. It's Iroquois. Algonquian and Iroquois are completely separate language families. (Picture Russian and Turkish and you'll see two languages from similarly different language families.) And the white people who first heard and recorded squaw were in contact with speakers of Algonquian languages. And still, if you ignore all that, all you're left with is... a coincidence. Two words in wholly different languages with similarish shapes and related meanings. That's not much to build a case on. It's not even circumstantial evidence. False friends, as they're called, are surprisingly common. Words that look alike don't always have a common origin. 

(You can pick any two languages and easily find loads of words that sound kind of similar and mean kind of similar things, even when the two languages have no historical or "genetic" connection. Let's do an experiment. I'm going to pick two languages from a list. Hang on. OK. Basque. That's interesting. Basque is an isolate, meaning it's not known to be related to any other language. To go with that, I picked Bengali, an Indo-European language spoken far away from Spain. You wouldn't expect to find many similarities, except for "cultural" terms like, say, telephone or taxi. So, after a few minutes with Google translate—of course this isn't authoritative; it's Google translate—I found a pair of false friends: Basque txakur and Bengali kukura, both meaning dog. Boy, is this case ever closed! A smashing success! Drinks for everyone!)

Regardless, this argument—that squaw is a crude, sexualized slur—is now so widely believed that it has taken on the kind of truth that only articles of faith enjoy. Regardless of its actual falseness, it has become true enough to render the word taboo. And so now, it has to go.

It reminds me of the controversy around "the other n-word" when it was used by an aide to the mayor of Washington, DC, in 1999.

As far as I can tell, the mayor's aide was guilty only of having a tin ear. True, the word he used has no racist pedigree, but how could anyone use it and not immediately hear within it a word that, to many of us, is unspeakable? The word niggardly—I have to admit that I'm uncomfortable even typing it—has been contaminated. You can mourn that, as the future-fearing language prigs usually do when word meanings shift and languages rub up against changing cultures. But it's not like we don't have other, perfectly serviceable words at our disposal for meeting the same purpose, ranging from the blunt to the flowery: cheap, stingy, tightfisted, miserly, penny-pinching, parsimonious, and penurious, to name only a few. I want to make sure this is very clear. I assume most English speakers don't even know this term. But, apart from the way the word sounds, it has nothing to do with that famous racist slur. The similarity is nothing but coincidence.

(In researching this piece, I found a Wikipedia article about the DC mayor's aide's use of the word—and many other peoples', too. Apparently, there was something in the air, and the word was thrown around—and objected to—like never before.)

No one will miss the other n-word. As rare as it was, it didn't even bring its own nuance to the table. Or, at least, none I'm aware of. Although it's an innocent bystander, lexical collateral damage, guilty only by association, I still say good riddance.

*I mean not exhaustive.