Accent Expert Breaks Down Language Pet Peeves | WIRED

Hi, I'm Eric Singer, I'm a dialect coach, have you ever noticed that people tend to have very strong feelings around

language

use, the words we use and even the way we say them today? I want to talk about some of the most common

language

annoyances where they come from and maybe even debunk some of the most persistent myths. Search the Internet for language or grammar manias and you're sure to find people venting about other people using expressions like for all intents and purposes or a new leash. in life these are called egg tripe, no, no, acorns, egg tripe, the original expressions of course are for all intents and purposes and a new lease on life, but you can see where those misheard words come from , they kind of make sense and they certainly sound like the originals.

I'm bringing in my colleague, fellow dialect coach, Eliza Simpson, to help me. Hello, Eliza. Hello, here are some other examples that you may have heard or maybe use yourself. It's a dog's world. I need to nip that in the butt nibble that at the root he's a social leopard he's a social leper curl up in the weak position fetal position do you have any favorites curl his hunger? That's to curb your hunger cold cole slaw also known as cole slaw card shark which is a sharp card originally there is a great clip of Rick and Morty with a corn egg, let's take a look, it really makes you think, huh , Morty, we should never take things for granted.

What I'm just saying, life is short, we shouldn't take things. Of course, are you saying granite? Well, yeah, what I love about this clip is that I think it demonstrates the kind of really strong feelings about the language that we're talking about, concede with a d, take things for granted, did you really think it was Jesus Christ? rick even super polite super genius rick oh you like that huh I bet that really blows your mind I mean yeah that's cool he's misheard take something for granted like take it for granted his whole life so I love those egghorns, I think they are really fun and creative, they are also an example of the way language changes over time, egghorns are a kind of transitional stage, there are many words and expressions in the language, completely official words and expressions and correct ones that started out as the same type of creativity.

Mishearing errors like these egghorns are called folk etymologies. A folk etymology is basically an egghorn that has crossed the line from being incorrect or incorrect or misheard to being, in fact, the only accepted correct version of a word or phrase that actually exists. a hamburger comes from hamburg the city of hamburg with er at the end means someone who comes from there, but it's reanalyzed as ham plus hamburger, so we can take that part out and say oh, it's a hamburger. Shame was originally shameful and fast, which means to be frozen. or stuck in place to be stuck in place by shame, shame quickly, but that's a little archaic, so the shame face seems like it makes more sense, but now it's correct.

The word woman is not etymologically related to the word man. He comes from old age. French female and when she got to English she was like oh, that's like male, so she became female. nothing to do with wood or throwing it, the name comes from an Algonquian language in Narragansett, it's okuchwan, which sounded like groundhog, so enjoy the egg horns you find in nature and maybe don't use them in writing formal, but let's have a little perspective here, today's creative mishearing is, in fact, tomorrow's unquestionably correct usage. Next, I want to talk about Vocal Fry and Up Talk.

You could associate Voz Fry with speakers like Kim Kardashian and I realized it was just the lighting or Lena Dunham. My team was just there. Amazing and I have to give all my love to my team, so what is voice? Your vocal cords that are here vibrate very, very quickly when you are producing a normal voice, what we call modal voice. That's probably about 180,200 times per second. It's so fast that you can't even hear the individual pulses, but if I slow it down like that using a little less air, maybe I'm putting a little extra tension here, you can start to hear the individual pulses of my vocal cords. come together so you can try this at home, let's all start with the modal voice saying uh and then lower the pitch until your voice starts to crackle, it might be helpful if you start to run out of breath a little uh, now I'm almost like that, What is speaking loudly or speaking loudly?

It's rising at the end of a sentence rising with your pitch using a rising tone hi my name is eric linguists call this terminal terminal at the end of a sentence so these two Vocal behaviors of frivolity and chatterbox are the subject of a lot of criticism so What are people complaining about? Well, they complain that both fritility and quackery can make you seem less intelligent, less self-confident, less trustworthy, less competent, less educated, even less attractive. It is sometimes claimed that it damages the voice, in fact, one thing that is difficult not to notice is that most of the time, when people complain about vocal coldness and loud speaking, they complain about women's voices and especially from young women, and it's not just women who do this.

Let's try our own experiment. Let's take a sentence, the first sentence of the Gettysburg Address. I'll do it with a little crunch in my voice. Forty years ago, our fathers brought to this continent a new nation conceived in freedom. and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal eliza would you do the same four years ago and seven years ago our fathers brought to this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal then , What did? Do you think you have different associations when you hear it from a male voice four score and seven years ago and then when you hear it from a female voice four score and seven years ago?

So the squeaky voice actually has a linguistic function in some Danish languages. for example, the word without any creak in your voice means she, but the word means dog, so you have to put that stream and you can change the meaning of a word in Burmese ka means shake and ka means attend, you have to add squeaky. voice and means something totally different otherwise the syllable is exactly the same the mexican language khalapa mazatec actually has a three way contrast between modal voice squeaky voice and breathy voice so we could take the same syllable that with that tone means tree but if do it in a crackly voice, yes, it means it carries and if I do it in a squeaky voice, yes, it means it uses the same syllable, so if creek is a linguistic feature of some languages, you do it all day, it can't be harmful to your voice I think we can put that one to bed next grammar rules eliza sometimes people literally set their hair on fire when other people confuse your and your or use apostrophes for plurals or those signs in the supermarket that say 10 items or less true, because We're supposed to use the word less for that, right, where does that come from the idea that we should say 10 items or less?

Well, let's talk about that, but you know I can't help but notice that you just finished. a sentence with a preposition where did that come from yes, you have a problem with that, can we introduce it? nouns Shakespeare wrote but now to ask the tasker and in another game of dialogue with dust with your shadow converting both the tasks and the dialogue into verbs. It's been happening for hundreds of years. Here are some examples of some really common verbs that started out as male host divorce model nouns. diagnose salt pepper highlight brain It turns out that a lot of these grammar rules you learned in grade school were invented in the 17th or 18th century, so ending sentences with prepositions the first person who apparently had a problem with this was John Dryden in 1672 , who criticized ben johnson, a playwright colleague of shakespeare, for saying that the preposition at the end of the sentence was a common error of his, that rule against splitting infinitives to go boldly has a very similar backstory, appears actually in 1864 in a book a request from the queen's english by henry alford so these prescriptions are based on latin grammar in latin an infinitive is a word you literally can't divide it you can't put something between them the way you can between two go boldly go in English and you can't put a preposition at the end of the sentence in English, you can, of course, Latin was considered by very educated people in the 17th and 18th centuries to be the grammatically perfect language;

It's actually a very, very different language, with different bones. different structure different rules so saying that English should be more like Latin is actually quite ridiculous less versus less was a guy called robert baker in 1770 and he was actually even expressing a preference for the way he thought they should be used or the way he I liked using them, but then our third grade teachers latched onto them and hardened them into a recipe and beat them on us. It's a bit strange, it doesn't change the way most people talk most of the time, so most people don't.

We don't go around saying where you come from, who you went with and what you stepped on, we just don't do that, but we still get the idea that somehow it's wrong, it's not right, the next use of words almost everyone has a pet . I get annoyed by words that feel like they shouldn't be used a certain way, literally no one, literally, of course, means exactly, precisely like that, like I said literally. I'm literally talking to you right now. I'm literally sitting in a chair. It has another. meaning and that meaning is not the opposite of literally it is not figuratively as people sometimes say it is used as an intensifier I am literally dying right now but this is the thing about words: they take on new meanings all the time the meanings they may vary but meanings can also be added to this is part of the process of language change here are some other examples disinterested traditionally does not mean disinterested means dispassionate not invested having no interest in the outcome now often used as a synonym for disinterested actively not interested In something like this, that meaning has been acquired, also ironic, this is a big can of worms, so irony is when something unexpected happens that is the opposite of what you expect.

An example could be rain on your wedding day if you got married in a desert specifically to keep it from raining on your wedding day, that would be unambiguously ironic. Verbal irony is just when you say the opposite is literally the opposite of what you really mean. Now people sometimes use the word ironic to describe situations that may simply be unfortunate or coincidental. travel when you already paid or even good advice that you just didn't take, so I actually sympathize with the desire to complain about at least some of these uses, sometimes there is a nuance or meaning that feels important and useful and I like it. is being diluted or as if it is being lost, the point is that this is something that happens and it is also part of the inexorable process of language to change the word nice, originally it meant fool or fool, the word fool did almost exactly the opposite of what It originally meant something like blessed or worthy before it meant what it means today so you just can't resist the flow, it's going to change no matter what happens here's something that might help, although English is very flexible, the language is very flexible and words can have more than one meaning we continue like this very well, we even have a lot of words that can mean their own opposite, take a word like sanction sanction can mean approve or prohibit and condemn consult can mean seek advice or give tip Sprinkle can mean to sprinkle with a fine powder or remove it from something, so I think we'll agree that you can literally use it to mean exactly what you want, use it to mean, and be understood by other people. we can use it in a very different sense and also understand that they can all coexist together.

The central fact of language is that it changes and is changing all the time. Part of the richness of English in particular comes from some of these borrowings, errors and transformations. and permutations and you can have your own opinions and personal preferences, we all do, but it is important to have a little humility and some perspective and realize that the forms and meanings of words are ultimately determined by the speakers of a language, not by any centralized authority and that it simply cannot be frozen in place and nor should we want to. The diversity of expression of forms of meaning is one of the richest and most fascinating things about language, it is something thatIt should be celebrated and enjoyed.