So, driving home today, I saw a billboard for Mel Gibson’s new “Epic Snuff Film“, Apocalypto. The movie is apparently shot in Mayan (which is cool), and might even warrant me fast forwarding through it. However, what caught my eye was the tagline on the billboard:

No one can outrun their destiny

When I first read this, I felt a disturbance in the force as if thousands of English professors suddenly cried out in horror, and then were silenced.

“Their”, as used in the English of the past, is a plural possessive pronoun. Generally, it was used in sentences like “John and Clarissa stopped by to grab their pie dish” or “The girls all grabbed for their wallets”. This contrasts with the Singular possessive pronouns, “his” and “her” (“John saw his briefcase” and “Kathy hugged her penguin”).

“No one” is, in fact, a grammatically singular subject, which can be counterintuitive at first, because it refers to, well, everybody. We can check this with a simple sentence like “No one sees the purple frog”. Here, we use “sees”, the singular form, rather than “*No one see the purple frog” (Note that an *asterisk before a word or sentence generally means that a sentence isn’t grammatically correct).

So, given that the subject of the sentence (“No one”) is singular, then technically, the possessive used should be singular as well. The tagline, as given, is grammatically incorrect, and if you ask an English major, should be changed to “No one can outrun his or her destiny”. (Read where Language Log discusses this phenomenon.)

This may be more “correct”, but frankly, I think this tagline is cause for celebration. A vast Linguistic party, with lots of books, dictionaries, and a big cake that says “Congratulations, English, on your new gender neutral pronoun!”.

Times are changin’

Languages are constantly changing. When a population needs something new from the language that they speak, they create it. Whether that means new words, new constructions, or new usage patterns, you can’t hold a language still.

Well, English has a new need. Due to modern political correctness, we can no longer say “No one can outrun his destiny”. Although the grammar itself is quite indifferent to the social treatment of gender, it’s true that women are excluded from groups in speech when you use “his” with universal statements. So, we’ve tabooed the “universal his”, but we’ve never had a good way around it. We can use the awkward “his or her”, but human lazyness and reluctance to say more than necessary makes this undesirable. There have been proposals to create gender neutral pronouns (the Spivak pronouns, for one), but they’ve never caught on.

However, as languages tend to do, it looks like English has grown around the problem, and, in spoken usage, the third person plural forms (them, they, their) seem to have sprung up to bridge the gap, at least in this case. Now, this suggestion won’t go over well with lots of prescriptivists (people who think that there is a correct way to speak, and grammar is set), but change is inevitable, and the fact that this construction could make it onto a billboard and be the tagline for a major movie is a good indicator of this direction.

It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t be “acceptable” for some time to come (there are already plenty of blogs trashing this tagline for its rebellion from conventional grammar). However, it will happen. In the same way that “whom” is gradually fading from use, this change will fade in. As one of my favorite quotes goes, “a grammarian trying to stop language change is like a gardener trying to stop continental drift”.

So, slowly but surely, the grammarians will give up, and English will finally have its gender neutral pronoun. When that day comes and the party happens, I’ll be right there at the front of the room, leading everybody in raising their glasses. See, isn’t that liberating?

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Change, Language Usage, Sociolinguistics | 8 Comments


I was Wikipedia surfing recently (drifting from page to page on Wikipedia), and I happened upon the page describing the idea of a “[[Shibboleth]]”. A Shibboleth, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a linguistic “dead giveaway” that can distinguish a member of one group from a person who isn’t. For an example, look at the term itself (explanation borrowed from Wikipedia’s Page on Shibboleth):

The term originates from the Hebrew word שבולת‎, which literally means “stream, torrent”.[2] It derives from a story in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish members of a group (like the Ephraimites) whose dialect lacked an SH sound (as in shoe) from members of a group (like the Gileadites) whose dialect did include such a sound.

In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead inflicted a military defeat upon the tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BC), some Ephraimites crossed secretly into Gilead’s territory in an attempt to escape retribution. In order to identify and kill these disguised refugees, the Gileadites put each refugee to a simple test:

“And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.” (Judges 12:5-6, KJV)

I can understand using these sorts of things to get a better idea of who you’re dealing with (or even for some friendly dialect mockery), but to kill somebody based on their pronunciation seems a little bit overboard. Apparently, it’s not though. The wikipedia site has a whole listing of Shibboleths used in War, including some very interesting examples. Apparently, the phrase “War Weapons Week” (followed by “Welmouth”) was used by British forces to distinguish Germans, who generally have trouble with the English “W”, often turning it into a V sound (“var veapons veek”).

Now, I can understand things like this to be a nice, quick and easy way of removing some initial doubt about the origins of a person. However, I can’t imagine it working as the main system of identification. Take, for instance, the “War, Weapons, Week” example. Yes, the English W is an uncommon sound, and it’s rather unlikely that a German foot soldier with little English training would be able to produce it.

However, it’s very important to remember that the vocal apparatus of a German speaker is no different than that of an English speaker. Human vocal tracts don’t vary across ethnic and social groups. The only reason most Germans can’t pronounce a W is because they’ve not been raised or trained to do so. This is the same reason that English speakers have a heck of a time with the Spanish trilled (or “rolled”) R. The basic lesson to learn here is that given enough time, dedication and training, a speaker of any language can learn to produce pretty much any sound. In fact, one of the things that you’re often tested on in Phonetics courses is your ability to pronounce sounds not found in your native language. Anybody can learn any sound, if they truly care to, so a shibboleth based on pronunciation is only as strong as the dedication of the person you’re testing. It’s also worth noting that Bilingual or multilingual speakers (who have spoken or been exposed to several languages since birth) can have good (if not perfect) pronunciation of more than one language and dialect.

So, it’s quite possible to have a false-positive, somebody who can say the Shibboleth without trouble, yet is still from outside the desired group. Also, I suppose it’s perfectly possible to have a person who is in the desired group, but has some sort of speech impediment or linguistic background which would prevent them from making the proper pronunciation.

Although it’s an interesting concept, and a good first step to identifying somebody, it’s vital to remember that a pronunciation-based test will never be 100% accurate. If you’re cutting people down because they mispronounce a word, you might be killing friends based on the slip of a tongue, and enemy linguists can walk all over you. Ninjas have nothing on us. :)

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Dialects and Idiolects, Language Usage, Phonetics and Phonology, Sociolinguistics | Leave a Comment


I’m a big phan of phonetics (OK, I’ll stop now). Phonetics is the study of speech sounds, and how we make and hear them. One of the very first tasks when studying phonetics is to listen very closely to your native language, and start hearing the sounds that we ignore, can’t hear, or just never think twice about in our native language. This process can be really interesting, seeing the world of complexity in speech that we never quite notice in our everyday lives. To share a bit of this, I’m going to talk a little bit about two English distinctly different sounds that are usually considered to be one sound by Native Speakers: Theta and Eth

A Primer on Voicing

Before we discuss our new phriends, we have to talk a little about how we make some consonants. I’ve discussed the idea of “voicing” before, in my post “Unaspirated T’s from the mouths of Babes“, but I think it might be helpful to review the idea and rephrase a little bit. In the above post, I recommended that readers do the following quick experiment to get a sense of what voicing means. Give it a try again, if you’d like:

Put your fingers on your neck (guys, find your adam’s apple) and say “Ahhhhhhhh”. You’ll feel a vibration. That’s your vocal folds vibrating to give the A its sound. Now, keep your fingers there and say “Dadadadadadadada”. You’ll feel your tongue moving, but the vibration will be pretty constant. Now, try “Tatatatatatatata”. This time, the vibrations will feel like they’re going on an off, off during the T, on during the A. This is because, as I said above, T is a “Voiceless” sound, and D is “voiced”. (If you’re still interested, try the same with “Kakaka” and “Gagaga”, as well as “papapa” and “bababa”).

“Voicing” in phonetics, is just a fancy word for when the vocal folds (a more accurate term for the “vocal cords”) are brought close together, so that when air blows between them, they produce a vibration, and thus, a sound. It’s just like if you press your lips together and blow out your mouth, your lips vibrate (slowly), and produce an (altogether different) sound. For videos and pictures of this (which is taken by a camera inside somebody’s throat, so maybe not for the squeamish), check out this site.

Just like in the above experiment, whether or not the vocal folds are vibrating while your mouth and tongue make the required gestures can be the only difference between two consonant sounds (sounds created by obstructing the airway, unlike vowels). That’s the only difference between “Ta” and “Da”, between “Ka” and “Ga”, and between “Pa” and “Ba”. So, keep this contrast of “voiced” versus “voiceless” sounds in mind as you read on.

A tale of two TH’s

Say “This thistle” a few times. Now, pay very close attention to the TH sounds at the beginning of each word. Put your hand on your Adam’s Apple (or equivalent area on your neck) while you say them.
After a few tries, you’ll notice that, in the words of a friend of mine, the “TH” in “This” is “more buzzy”, or, put more scientifically, voiced. This sound, the TH in “This, That, The, There, Then, Those…”, is called an Eth (pronounced with a voiced, Eth sound). In the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] (IPA), it has this symbol:

eth.gif

The TH in “thistle”, or “theater, theory, think, thought, throw, through…” is called a Theta, and is Eth’s voiceless counterpart (Theta is to Eth as T is to D). Theta’s IPA symbol is, shockingly, a theta, as shown here:

theta.gif

Aside from voicing, there is no difference between them. The sounds are produced with the tongue in the same position, the tongue is doing the same thing for both, and all the other various phonetic phactors (I couldn’t resist) are the same. The only difference between the the Theta and the Eth is vocal fold vibration, but what a difference it makes.

Your writing system is lying to you

Now that you’re listening for it, there’s (eth) a big difference between the two sounds, but chances are, you never gave them a second thought (theta). Personally, I blame the English writing system. Writing systems complicate our lives when we’re learning phonetics, and in fact, the English writing system is the main reason that most English speakers don’t know that there’s a difference between Theta and Eth.

“This” and “Thistle” are spelled with the same TH, and there’s never a situation where the two sounds are used in identical contexts (When you see a TH in a word, it’s always clearly one or the other). In fact, say this made-up word, “thaxis”. I’ll bet you made a “theta”, if you’re a native English speaker. We never read unfamiliar TH words with Eth, and new words with Eth are few and far between.

So, in our everyday life, there’s not much need to know the difference between these sounds. Between our writing system and the system of English Phonology (where and when sounds are used), we’re seldom given a contrast between the two.

So, Theta, Eth, meet your new friend. You’ll never look at “TH” the same way again. You don’t have to thank me when you catch yourself sitting at the dinner table, endlessly repeating a word to figure out if it’s Eth or Theta. Phonetics addiction is Phun, isn’t it?

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Usage, Phonetic Phriends, Phonetics and Phonology | 7 Comments

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