Recently, I’ve been listening to GrammarGirl’s “Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing”. I’ve generally found the episodes to be very interesting, and even though I thought I knew some of the subjects well, I’ve definitely learned something each time. I’d highly recommend giving it a listen.

However, in one of her recent episodes which discussed punctuating questions, she mentioned something that really mystified me: The Interrobang. I’ll quote her explanation below:

GrammarGirl said:
And finally, when you’re asking a question in surprise such as What? it isn’t appropriate to use multiple question marks or a question mark with an exclamation point. You’re supposed to pick the terminal punctuation mark that is most appropriate and use just one (1). Is your statement more of a question or more of an outburst?

I’ve always found that solution unsatisfactory, so I was thrilled to learn that there’s an obscure punctuation mark that was designed exclusively for asking questions in a surprised manner. It’s called an interrobang, and it looks like an exclamation point superimposed on a question mark.

You shouldn’t use the interrobang in formal writing, but I think it would be great if people started using it on blogs and in other informal communications. If you have the Wingdings 2 font in your word processing program, you can insert an interrobang as a special character, and there are unicode values that you can use to add the interrobang to your web site. I’ve put those in the transcript of this episode.

Although it’s a rather cool looking symbol, I think it’s a rather silly idea, and demonstrates one of the most frustrating aspects of prescriptive grammar.

So, the interrobang exists for a very distinct reason: Sometimes, you want to express that you’re surprised as you ask a given question, but you can’t use two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence.

My first thought when I read that was “How have I never heard of that rule?!”

…wait. Something’s wrong. I just used two punctuation marks at the end of a sentence. And… everything’s OK. The reader understood me, understood that the question carried a note of surprise, and most importantly, the English language didn’t collapse in on itself or explode in a blaze of punctuational pyrotechnics. That must mean that the inability to end a sentence with two punctuation marks isn’t a natural, grammatical rule (like “I have walked” versus “I have walk”), but instead, is an arbitrary, stylistic rule.

So, basically, the Interrobang was created because an arbitrary, stylistic rule has forbidden what most people normally do to indicate a surprised question, the “?!” cluster. They’ve broken the language by disallowing the existing punctuation system, then created this new mark to bandage the wound they created. Am I the only person who sees this whole process as more than a little ridiculous?

Keep in mind, though, I’m not against all attempts at expanding our system of punctuation. I think that the Irony Mark might come in handy from time to time, and a sarcasm mark would be very useful for online communications.

However, the Interrobang strikes me as a cute, interesting, but ultimately unnecessary bit of novel punctuation. The interrobang is only necessary if we accept one particular bit of nitpicky stylistic dogma. When you couple its questionable reason for existence with the relative difficulty of finding and inserting the symbol compared to the simple “?!” cluster, it’s no wonder to me that it hasn’t caught on.

That’s not to say, however, that the interrobang is without it’s fans, who need to be represented as well. After forwarding the article to a friend of mine online, she responded with excitement to the idea:

Make sure you talk about the convenience of only one dot. I know you may be against it, but you must talk about both sides and be fair. A dot may not seem like a lot of time to someone, especially if you are particularly crafty with a pen. BUT think about if you are hyperbole happy. All the time you will save over the years. It’s really staggering.

So, although the interrobang has a future amongst hyperbole-happy minimalists and time-savers, the fact of the matter is that for the majority of people, the interrobang is never going to fly. You’re welcome to interrobang your writing to your heart’s content, but just don’t be surprised when your proofreading friend hands you back your essay with a big red circle around your interrobang, and a small note, scribbled in the margins, reading “What the heck is this?!”.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Speech and Grammar Errors, Tirades | 7 Comments


Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of becoming a linguist is the fact that as you study, it begins to slowly work its way into all aspects of your life. Although most people view linguistics as “obscure” and have trouble imagining how it could affect one’s life outside of academics, let me assure you, it can.

The different fields within Linguistics, once you’ve begun to study and ponder them, simply will not let you go. The reason for this is simple: When you study language, you’re studying one of the main aspects of human existence, something that we not only use constantly, but that we simply cannot avoid.

If you’ve got a real passion for language and its analysis, you’ll find yourself constantly analyzing the flurries of language that are constantly surrounding us. However, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

502 Error: Linguist temporarily overloaded

My friends have all noticed a certain tendency that I’ve developed since the start of my Linguistics training, affectionately referred to as “the blue screen of linguistic death” or “Linguist moments”.

Periodically, I’ll be carrying on a normal conversation with people, and then suddenly I’ll stop dead in my metaphorical tracks. Often, I’ll start drawing little trees in the air with my finger, or mouth words over and over again under my breath, and always, I’m pretty much catatonic.

The scary part is that really, I seldom notice when I do. I’ll be going along in conversation, and then somebody will make a speech error, make a strange sound or pronunciation, or just say something that “needs” further analysis, and I’ll just dive straight into linguistic analysis. Sometimes it’s a quick little thing (“Oh, she just combined the first two words into one…”), but from time to time, I’ve been known to actually pull out a piece of paper and do actual analysis complete with word-stress grids and IPA transcription. Generally, I’ll figure things out and pop back into the conversation down the way, but sometimes, these little moments will keep me thinking all evening.

Of course, the problem with this is that you can never really explain it to the satisfaction of the people around you. If somebody asks you what you were thinking about, there’s no graceful way to say “Oh, I was just trying to figure out why the stress pattern varies among the acronyms in the organization’s different regions.” Best case scenario, they’ll find it mildly interesting (although not worth the hour of discussion needed to actually explain), and worst case, they’ll just write you off as somebody who really needs a hobby.

However, linguist moments aren’t always a bad thing.

“Oh yes, please go on. Tell me how your dog got his name again?”

One of the most wonderful side-effects of taking phonetics is that any conversation can become fascinating. You see, when people are talking, we generally just listen for meaning, and the actual sounds never cross our minds.

However, with a little bit of phonetics training, we can make ourselves pay attention to the actual sounds and the little details inherent in them. When you sit back and actually listen, it’s shocking how many corners people cut in speech, how many little tiny speech errors we make, and how complex speech really is. So, even though the subject of discussion might be completely uninteresting, you can always find something of interest, even if it might not be that interesting to somebody without a passion in the subject.

It’s not just phonetics, though. Sometimes, little speech errors or unusual constructions will trip me up, just begging for analysis. Sometimes the analysis yields nothing more than the minor satisfaction of figuring it out, but sometimes, it’ll lead you to help solve a major problem in your own linguistic work, or give you a major insight into the way that language works.

“Wait… what?”

Finally, there are times where constantly having one’s ear to the ground for interesting language use is just mildly amusing, but not much else.

For instance, being obsessed with speech and speech sounds, I’m constantly listening to my friends’ speech. I’ve started to pick up on little interesting speech changes that they all make and that nobody notices. For instance, I’ve noticed that one of my friends (also a speaker of Korean) will pretty frequently replace Eth sounds (ð) with unaspirated t’s. It’s completely irrelevant to life in general, and most English speakers don’t even notice the swap (or just think he’s saying “da” instead of “the”), but it brings me a little bit of joy from time to time.

If you’re passionate, the sword isn’t double-edged at all.

When you become passionate about Linguistics, you’ll quickly find your passion spilling into the language use of your every day life. Whether it’s in the form of sudden bouts of near-catatonic linguistic analysis, sudden insights from random bits of conversation, or just subtle-yet-interesting observations about the world, it’s very difficult to leave your work at the office, so to speak.

However, the beauty of it all is that if you’re like me, and are truly passionate about linguistics and language, then it’s not work at all. You’re constantly surrounded by something that you’ve dedicated part of your life to understanding, and you’re always only a step away from your next insight. Sure, the occasional “blue screen of linguistic death” might be embarrassing, but in the end, it’s definitely worth it.

No matter how passionate a mechanic is about their work, they can only really explore their passion when they’re under the hood of a car. One of the true joys of being a linguist is that no matter where you go or what you do, you’re never far from your passion.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Notes, Phonetics and Phonology, Speech and Grammar Errors | 9 Comments


SomethingAwful is a (generally not work-safe) comedy site that usually gets me laughing with every visit. Perhaps they’re most famous for “Photoshop Phridays“, but they have a variety of columnists and recurring features that are worth checking out for a quick laugh.

However, a recent edition of “Comedy Goldmine” is simply too magnificent not to feature here. The theme? Foreign Language Screw-Ups.

Although they’re all pretty funny, it seems like most of them can be broken down into a few different categories of speech error.

False Cognates

A foreign language word is considered to be a “cognate” if it’s similar in both sound and meaning to a word in one’s native language, and they both descended from the same source, either from a mother language or through borrowing. For instance, in Spanish, the word for ‘computer’ (computadora) is a cognate, as is the word for ‘volunteer’ (voluntario). These cognates happen frequently when two languages borrow heavily from the same language. In this case, English and Spanish both have many words with Latin roots.

However, it’s not uncommon for foreign language students to accidentally use a “false cognate”. These are, as you might suspect, words that sound very similar in two languages, but have different meanings. The textbook Spanish example is assistir (‘to attend’) and atender (‘to assist’). Sometimes, the mistakes can be innocent, but sometimes…

Frog writes…

Last year on a vacation to Cuba I rented a moped and managed to break it. When I returned it to the rental place I used my awesome high school Spanish to say I was ‘embarazado’ about what happened, meaning to say embarrassed. Turns out ‘embarazado’ means ‘pregnant’. I’m a guy.

Note, it’s not just English speakers who can make this mistake:

Dark Chicken writes…

This brother and sister I knew grew up in Mexico and were eating at a restaurant in the States. Well, the brother kept on bothering the sister, so she finally yelled, “Stop molesting me!” The restaurant went dead silent and everybody stared.

This comes from the false Spanish cognate, molestar, which means (completely innocently) ‘to annoy’ or ‘to bother’.

False cognates can make for some wonderful communication issues, but they’re not the only source of interlingual hilarity.

Secondary Meanings

In many languages, it’s common for words to have several meanings. Just like the English “cock” can either denote a male chicken or the male sexual organ, languages are littered with minefields of multiple meanings.

When a non-native speaker looks up a word in the dictionary, especially a small dictionary, it’s not uncommon to see several options listed. So, if a Spanish speaker wanted to tell a woman “You have a pretty cat” and looked the word up in a dictionary, there’s a decent chance that, quite innocently, he’ll use the word “pussy” instead and he’ll end up complimenting her genitalia. Here’s one wonderful example of a hilarious alternate meaning:

QueenOfMistakes writes…

The only thing I can think of was when I was in my German class and we’d been having a heatwave. I said “Ich bin heiss” (meaning “I am hot”), which made my teacher laugh.

Apparently, saying “Ich bin heiss” is one way of saying “I’m horny” in German.

This can also work the other way around. Sometimes, a language will have a word with two meanings, and in the other language, each meaning has a distinctive word.

Luebbi writes…

When I was in London with my class (German students), something hilarious happened at the airport. We where standing in a queue and some Brits came around and started to cut in line. A friend of mine yelled: “You can’t come here! There’s a snake here!”, which not only baffled the British couple, but made everyone else, including our teacher, laugh out loud.

The German word “Schlange” is used both for snake and queue, and he used the direct translation.

Grammatical Errors

Sometimes, you can have all the words right, but a little tiny grammatical error will get you.

Fhqwhgads writes…

Back in High School, while on a class trip to Italy, one of the guys was hitting on a local chick. He was doing well, until he used the word “bello” (instead of “bella”). She slapped him and walked away. Never call an Italian girl handsome.

Here, the writer failed to take into consideration the fact that in Italian (as well as in many other languages), adjectives are marked for gender. In English, we have separate words (a girl is “pretty” and a guy is “handsome”), but in Italian, that little tiny morpheme (unit of meaning) is able to completely derail even the most persuasive of pick-ups. The gender distinction can also change the meaning of words…

Mortanis writes…

Back in high school French, we had to pair off and interview your partner, then relate their day back to the class in French. A friend of mine interviewed a girl, and promptly reported to the class “She likes to play with her cat”.

But used the feminine for cat, which is slang for pussy. Was pretty enjoyable to watch our fairly attractive French teacher start snickering over something like that.

Misleading Mispronunciations

Nearly any foreign language one studies will have some sounds that are different from those in your native language. As a phonetics student, this brings me great joy, but when speaking another language, these differences can lead to some wonderful errors:

Ayreon writes…

“Cook” in Dutch is “kok” which is pronounced “cock”. A friend of mine once tried to “thank the cock for the nice meal” at a restaurant.

A co-worker of my dad’s name is Dick de Cock, which is a perfectly normal name in the Netherlands. However, when he got a promotion and suddenly had to travel all over the world, he got a lot of weird looks.

Here, I suspect that the Aspirated/Unaspirated distinction might be causing problems:

sewid writes…

Walking around crowded night markets in Taiwan after getting a taste of my first giant chicken schnitzel I asked my girlfriend how to say chicken schnitzel in Mandarin which she told me was “gi pai”

Much to her amusement when I misheard her, thinking she said it “gi bai” i loudly proclaimed in Mandarin to all around that I loved “gi bai”

Which I found out shortly sort of means I love vagina.

All it takes is a simple change in the voicing of a consonant to go from loving sausage to loving the polar opposite. Scary, huh?

Conclusion

There’s no shortage of ways to mess up in a foreign language. Between treacherous false-cognates, deceitful second meanings, grammatical gaffes and malicious mispronunciations, sometimes a second of speech may seem like an ocean of opportunity for offensive communication.

However, the beauty of it all is that generally, people laugh when such speech errors are made. If somebody knows you’re a foreigner, you often get the benefit of the doubt.

The moral of this story: Next time you’d like to compliment a girl’s pussy, you’d better have an accent, or else you’re going to be very, very pregnant.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Acquisition, Language Humor, Language Usage, Sociolinguistics, Speech and Grammar Errors, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | 15 Comments

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