Words That Cross

It was a brilliant ruse.

She would warn us (well, really my two brothers) that she would individually list our many infractions if we did not settle down.  The misdeeds would be shared with our parents upon their return.

In her left hand was a newspaper section neatly folded into one quarter size. In her right, a pen (not pencil) at the ready to jot down the misbehavior.  This was my grandmother's way of keeping order while babysitting us. It was also a marvelous slight of hand. Each movement of her pen served dual purposes depending on which side of the paper you viewed.  We saw our future punishments multiply as the diligent notation of bad behavior took place.  My grandmother saw the white spaces of her crossword puzzle dissipate as she conquered them with answers.

Four youngsters'  naughty list was one woman's solved puzzle. 

I love thinking about my grandmother's duplicity.  Talk about multi-tasking! She was able to double her pleasure as she maintained control and solved the daily puzzle, proving the pen is mightier than the sword.  Though as a parent I could never match her effectively simple scheme, I did come to love the addiction known as (and I use this verb loosely) solving crossword puzzles.  My two favorites are Merl Reegle's crossword inventions and the New York Times Sunday puzzle.

The puzzles, pristine as I begin my attack each weekend, transform into crumpled, smudged, tattered opponents as I enter the weekly mind bending wrestling match. I attempt to solve them in one day but keep them on my nightstand to return for more attacks during the week. Yes, I am not a speedster in this arena.  I remember seeing the 2006 documentary "Wordplay" marveling to the point of dumbstruck at solvers setting stopwatches to time themselves completing the puzzles. 

Here is the beauty of this playing field.  While the timekeepers are battling it out in the World Series and  I am playing stick ball on a dirt lot, we are all vying with the same opponent.  Now this is fair game!

To any fellow crossword nerds who are reading this, please stay with me now. Are we simpatico? Does the next sentence resonate with you?  If a blood pressure cuff was attached to my upper arm as I looked down the driveway each Saturday morning to see if the half of the Sunday Times was delivered, it would spike precipitously as I unfurled the plastic sleeve contents looking for the Sunday puzzle. Likewise, if the puzzle is missing, another spike will occur measuring profound disappointment.  The Times customer service is always so willing to quickly refund my money if the magazine is missing.  I suffer through the automated menu to reach someone live so I can explain that nothing but the publication containing the puzzle will suffice. (yes, you can get it online, but the tactile nature of the beast is essential.)

The overhaul of the Times Sunday magazine in March of this year readily assured readers that the puzzle was the one item that remained untouched.  In fact the editor's letter was titled "Everything But the Crossword." No matter what you think of the NY Times, you have to admire their common sense.  They may wrestle mercilessly with the Tea Party, tea leaf politics, and world issues of the day but they know better than to mess with crossword geeks ready to storm the castle. 

NY Times Crossword
Puzzle Editor, Will Shortz

For 34 years many of these very soldiers of solving have been meeting at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. "Wordplay" takes us inside once such tournament and it was here that I realized, in this funny little arena,  these are my people.  A little more ardent than I, perhaps, and definitely much more intelligent, we share fervor, humor and appreciation for the usually clever, often brain crushing construction of a puzzle created by a cadre of puzzlemakers,  names of whom I now begin to take note.  All edited by Will Shortz.  And yes, the Times puzzles are tops.  Jon Stewart puts it this way in the documentary: "I am a Times puzzle fan.  I will solve USA Today, but I don't feet good about myself!"

The paper's crossword blog, aptly named Wordplay, provides such quirky, interesting, insight into this wordy world it attracts my oddball sensibilities and delights to my freak core.  Here is a sample:
http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/terrorizers/?scp=2&sq=wordplay&st=cse

There is a minor athletic component to this crossword craziness.  We read the clues aloud, mumble possible answers, try to syphon through the double meanings, bang the table as we are outwitted, and yell at the puzzle maker du jour who teases us with hints that confound.  More than one pen has been chucked across the room as I labored over these moments. 

And here is the final irony - we are required to think outside the box, all the while at war within one large box composed of many little black and white boxes!

My secret wish is to attend the crossword puzzle convention in Brooklyn as an observer, possibly a rookie. Yes, it's time to let my freak flag fly.  In the meantime I am about to make my Saturday walk down the driveway to snag my arcane addiction.

I have words and I am not afraid to connect them! I think my grandmother would approve.

The 3 Ps: Pen & Pencil to Paper

CBS Sunday Morning's top feature story today focused on penmanship.  I was delighted about the topic, entertained by the musings of youngsters learning to write in cursive, and a little melancholic about the waning of what I believe is a magnificently primitive art form used every day around the globe. Well, perhaps I am being a little too optimistic about the suggested frequency.  In a world where 294 billion emails and 5 billion text messages are sent daily, (yes you read that correctly - daily) is penmanship teetering on irrelevant?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nONgyP43Lo&hd=1

 Learning to write in cursive is one of those childhood thresholds that looms large.  Forming letters with rounded shapes that perfectly connect to make words is a milestone of early education.  According to the CBS report, penmanship legibility "peaks at about the fourth grade."  Yikes!  It seems as we increase our writing speed, we often do so at the sacrifice of letter clarity.  I learned to write using the Palmer method in parochial school.  Cursive writing was taught, practiced, graded as seriously as any other school subject.  I liked forming letters and having what was often called, "nice handwriting."  I think it is what led me to try calligraphy after graduating from college.

As I noted in my last post (1/14/11) about viewing letters and notes written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the decline in handwriting is nothing new, but it seems to be happening with little concern. Will children suffer critical thinking skills due to reduced time spent morphing letters into words?  "Probably not," noted Steve Graham, a literacy expert at Vanderbilt University, who was featured in the CBS report.  "You want to be able to make your text legible, and you want to be able to do it quickly, okay? It also can help you learn new words if you trace them or write them out. But if you're asking, 'Does it help you become a better thinker?' there's no evidence that that's the case."

 Naturally, there is disagreement with Mr. Graham's comments by those who assert that penmanship helps stimulate memory and language skills. Mr. Graham is not writing off penmanship altogether, however, he is clear that students are not less served by less time spent on penmanship. As long as there are schools and homes that do not have computers, and as long as paper and pencils are more portable than their larger electronic counterparts, the case for penmanship has staying power.

The question of clarity and quality of handwriting does rise, but not with the stringency I experienced in my grade school education. Handwriting does not have to be beautiful or ornate with multiple flourishes.  I believe it has to be personal and say something about whoever is forming the letters.  I feel connected to the writer when I see his or her handwriting; this results in my saving short notes I receive. It is this very attachment that makes me especially soft on the all too infrequent letter that arrives in the mailbox at the end of my driveway.  The correspondence is the tangible result of someone's hand touching a pen or pencil, which touched the paper, which wound up in my hands.  This physical form, along with its intangible sentiment, softens the sometimes too harsh world.

Listening to Frank Sinatra croon, "I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter," I wonder if that is going to be the only way we receive any handwritten correspondence in the all too near future.  Even the ultra smooth, uber cool Old Blue Eyes can't soften that uncanny possibility.

Epic Word Choice

Epic.

That is the 2010 People’s Choice word as reported in The Hot Word blog on the dictionary website,  www.dictionary.com  I did not vote for this word – well, truth be told, I did not vote at all. I was a little disappointed with the victorious choice. Hearing or reading about someone having an epic adventure or seeing an epic concert rings with a teenage or twenty-something feel in its current use - sort of a Wayne’s World word. I find I rarely use ‘epic’ which may speak more to the lack of “epic-ness” in my life. 

I am good with it.

I favor synonyms such as colossal, monumental, huge.  Scanning Dictionary.com’s thesaurus I found ginormous to be a synonym for epic.  Who knew that was a real word! It sounds so contrived. And, once again, it seems like a generational adjective – something someone under twenty would say.

Ironically, epic poems are those written in ancient times.  Homer's poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey were written somewhere in the 8th or 9th century BC; Dante's The Divine Comedy, was written in the 1300s.  Epic indeed.

There seems to be little middle ground with epic. 

This got me thinking about words that are used in the extreme, which led me to the announcement that an altered version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is soon to be released.  The author, Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Ala., has replaced the word nigger with slave in Twain's novel.

I first find it ironic that just around the time the first volume of Twain’s autobiography is released, (100 years after the author’s death – talk about a farsighted marketing strategy!) another author opts to significantly change Twain’s word choice.  Professor Gribben is not the first, but he is the latest author to tamper with Twain.  There is no middle ground with the word nigger. In a way, it is epic.

In her Salon.com article, “Huckleberry Finn loses the N-Word,” author Mary Elizabeth Williams cites that Twain uses nigger 219 times in his novel.  She writes, “Mark Twain's novel has for years endured an uneasy relationship with the reading lists and libraries of children. Is it a classic work of young adult literature, or a racist tract? Should it be removed from school curricula, pulled from the shelves of libraries? It's one of the most banned books in print.  It's also one of the most beautiful.” http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2011/01/04/huckleberry_finn_cleaned_up

In a recent interview with Publisher's Weekly, Professor Gribben’s apparent intention is “not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind."  From his office at Auburn University, where he's spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department, Professor Gribben notes that, "Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/45645-upcoming-newsouth-huck-finn-eliminates-the-n-word.html

Co-founder Suzanne LaRosa of New South Publishing Company, the publishing house printing this newest version of the text, interestingly notes in the same article that, “he's (Gribben) so compassionate, and so believes in the value of teaching Twain, that he's committed to this major departure. I almost don't want to acknowledge this, but it feels like he's saving the books. His willingness to take this chance—I was very touched."

I am not African American.  Hearing the word nigger is offensive to me nonetheless.  I grew up in a home where it was not part of the vocabulary.  However, I did have relatives who bandied the word about easily.  It was odd to feel the all-encompassing warmth of a dear uncle who also could thoughtlessly and regularly use the word nigger.  It was such a mixed message.  We are complicated beings.

I disagree with Professor Gribben’s choice to update and remove the raw language in Twain’s work.  I don’t appreciate someone playing the self-appointed role of protective parent when it comes to literature.  Why do we run from the complicated, uncomfortable conversation?  Reading the work as intended, and providing age appropriate conversation about racism, slavery, and other issues that arise creates an environment where thoughts are valued and protected – not only words.  I applaud the teacher who takes on this challenge because there is nothing easy about it.  And that is okay.  Discomfort in learning is good.  How else can we possibly nurture critical thinking?

Students learn to discern and come to their own conclusions by hearing discourse all around a subject.  Socrates based his method of discourse and questioning in airing out opinions on a subject and using the conversation as a tool. 

Making pabulum out of literature because it does not seem “current” is dangerous. Altering authorship is wrong.   

In 1907, three years before his death, Mark Twain was no stranger to the uproar his books caused.  Book banning was nothing new in his time.  He chuckled at the uneven ethics taking place when a library would ban his work and keep others.  I think his sharp wit and refusal to take life seriously make the following quote sing.

"But the truth is, that when a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me."

Letter to Mrs. F.G. Whitmore, February 7, 1907

On Language

While questions like If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make noise? can be mildly confounding, an article questioning if language shapes how we think has gotten my ear without making a sound.

In the article, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” author Guy Deutscher provides examples of how language is a unique prism through which we view the world. This uniqueness does not have to divide us but it certainly shades how an English speaker, a German speaker, and an aboriginal speaker each think and process information about the world they inhabit.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?scp=1&sq=does%20language%20shape%20how%20you%20think?&st=cse

In the 1940s a popular idea about the power of language posited that language restricts how we think of the world.  Benjamin Lee Whorf, an anthropology hobbyist caught public attention when he suggested that if a language does not have a word or a specific concept (say, future tense, for example) assigned to it, the speaker has no way to express either.  This theory took hold seventy years ago until it was determined that Whorf had no hard evidence to support his ideas.  Deutscher writes, that according to Whorf’s theory, “If a language has no future tense, for instance, its speakers would simply not be able to grasp our notion of future time. It seems barely comprehensible that this line of argument could ever have achieved such success, given that so much contrary evidence confronts you wherever you look.”  Deutscher goes on to give the example of the present tense question “Are you coming tomorrow?” The idea of a future (tomorrow) is adequately stated without using the future tense – we understand the idea that this is a time period in front of us even though the words are present day.  While Whorf’s idea was debunked, the idea of how language does shape our thoughts is intriguing. 

Take gender, for example.  One of the first things English speakers discover when learning French, Spanish, German and other European languages is the assignment of gender to inanimate things. In English, the word “mountain” is not given a masculine or feminine gender – a mountain is an “it” as are most English inanimate nouns.  However in the other European languages, a gender assignation is given.  In French, a mountain is la montagne (feminine) as it is in Spanish (la montaña) but in German it is der berg (masculine).

So, if a German speaker is describing the mountain, do they instinctively portray it in masculine-type terms such as mighty or sturdy?  Do French and Spanish speakers equally use more feminine characteristics such as graceful?  Does the gender of the inanimate noun guide the speaker to only think of it in terms of its gender?  Deutscher notes, that research has found that French and German language speakers did use feminine and masculine descriptions for the objects that were feminine or masculine.  “In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that “gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory.”   Is it possible that the French feminize a mountain while Germans see it more from a masculine perspective?  Deutscher questions this further by asking, “Do the emotional maps imposed by a gender system have higher-level behavioral consequences for our everyday life? Do they shape tastes, fashions, habits and preferences in the societies concerned?”   

Cardinal directions are another interesting way language shapes our thinking.  I am more comfortable giving directions using landmarks, rather than using north, south, east, west.  Even though English contains specific words for precise directions, I just like using “Turn left at Rita’s Water Ice and drive until you get to the Amoco Gas Station, then turn right.” Yet there are languages in which the cardinal directions are only used to identify place.   Deutscher offers the example of Guugu Yimithirr, an aboriginal language from north Queensland, Australia.  Instead of stating things are to the right or left, the speaker of this tongue uses cardinal directions all the time.  “If they (Guugu Yimithirr speakers) want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table. Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.”

The aboriginals’ compass is not dependent on where the sun is in the sky at the moment – the compass is inside their minds so their sense of orientation is something they feel.  This ancient language strikes me as so advanced and deeply intuitive.  It also has no room for my petty preference of ‘left at Rita's and right at Amoco!’ 

I worked as a company newspaper editor for a manufacturing firm in the eighties and interviewed many engineers and technicians on how and why the company products were made. I befriended a product engineer who had a high regard for knowing where to find information and he celebrated the English language by his precise use of it. In the pre-Internet era, Gene kept a miniature copy of the US Constitution in his wallet, just as a reference. Gene also kept a dictionary and thesaurus close by so the best word use would not elude him. I was intrigued that someone so science based had such fervor for language. 

I came to find that Gene's manner is always about passion and being interested.  One of Gene's pet peeves is using the cardinal directions.  It is unthinkable for him to give directions which state, "go down Main St. to the grocery and turn left."  Gene invokes the four (and often eight if he can include the ordinal directions of northeast, southwest etc.) when he offers directions. And just to make it interesting, he insists on receiving directions in that same fashion.  Gene's pleasure in being precise forces me to be more aware of my comings and goings.  Ironically his initials are 'EPS' -how could he have known that years later 'GPS'  (Global Positioning System) would come to be the bellwether for getting from point A to point B using the cardinal directions?  I am certain that pinprick irony is not lost on him.  

Gene operates from a place of using language to its fullest and most precise capacity.  As he would say, "We have it all right in front of us - we must use it!"  The aboriginal use of cardinal directions makes me think how Gene will delight in reading about the exact beauty of it all. 

So many nuanced things affect how we see the world and the language we are given can shape our perspective in such detailed ways.  It is no wonder that while we can misunderstand and be misunderstood when speaking in the same tongue, using another language opens up more opportunities to see the the point being made in different way.  Now, I don’t believe the glass is half empty here – it is just filled with a different liquid when it comes to language. 

Words Worth Saving

Save the whales!
Save the redwoods!
Save the languages!  Say what??? The languages?

Of the 7,000 known languages in the world, one dies every two weeks, according to the National Geographic Society Enduring Voices project.  The languages most at risk are those of indigenous people where "word of mouth" is truly the only form of communication.  No text. No dictionary. No written record.  If the voices are not alive to speak it, the language dies. So how is this tracked?  There is no fancy footwork or cutting edge technology involved in this process - it is about as meat and potatoes as it gets - specialists go out into the field and visit with the people who speak the endangered languages.  I love that.

National Geographic Society, in conjunction with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages funds the project in which linguists travel the world to identify and help rescue (and by rescue they mean create detailed records)  indigenous languages before their last speaker dies. David Harrison, an associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, is one of the Living Tongues Institute members identifying and recording languages. Someone from our own backyard is doing this work.  I love that even more!
 http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/enduringvoices/about-the-project.html

A nifty interactive world map on the Society website highlights where the most endangered languages are located and the severity of their going extinct.  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/enduringvoices/

The death of a language's last speaker is not the only way a language becomes defunct. Another way  is when it is absorbed into a more dominant one.  This somewhat Darwinian pattern ironically occurs through the youngest members of a culture. The areas most prone to losing their indigenous languages are located along historic migration routes or have been colonized, says Gregory Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute. As the children consider a "colonial" language (languages such as Spanish, English and Russian) as more current or "better" than their native tongue, they move toward that language and away from their roots. It seems kids wanting to sit at the perceived 'cool kids table' of languages has a universal appeal no matter where you live and what you speak.

This brings to mind the many families who speak one language at home and another in school or at work.  Children of immigrant families are uniquely placed in this arena as they attend schools where English is the instructional language but live in homes where their native tongue is only spoken. While this does not necessarily result in the death of a language, there is some sort of sublimation going on. Children are navigating two worlds and expected to satisfy both, all while addressing a myriad of social and emotional changes.  It is humbling to consider the energy it takes to satisfy all those masters. 

In 2006, Joey Vento, owner of the famed Geno's cheesesteak in Philadelphia, became a lightening rod in a hot language debate when he hung a sign on the window of his business.  It read:  "This is America. When ordering please speak English."  Two years later the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission found the sign and the sentiment did not discriminate and therefore did not violate the city's fair practices ordinance.  Vento's little sign opened up a raucous debate between those who ardently believe that English is the sole  language of the US therefore everyone should speak it and those who feel our diversity is a national hallmark so using other languages alongside English is quintessentially American.  Language wasn't dying in this instance but Vento's sign pried open the fear of some citizens that the English language was being buried under the weight of non-English languages and  Philadelphia joined the controversy that boils in Florida and California.

I don't care about Vento's intention when he hung that famed sign four years ago; what I do care about is the conversation that surfaced about language and who, if anyone, owns the right to it.  Are some English speaking citizens afraid of losing their American identity by demanding that only English be spoken? And can the same be asked regarding Spanish speaking citizens - are they afraid of losing their cultural identity by insisting Spanish be an option?  Is there room for everyone in this conversation?  My immigrant grandparents  first arrived in Philadelphia from Sicily in the early 20th century. They conversed only in Italian and when my dad walked into his first grade class and spoke only in Italian, he was laughed at by his classmates. He complained to his parents, who, in turn, insisted he learn English in school even though they continued to speak Italian.  My dad straddled that familiar line of speaking one language at home and another in the world outside home. He adapted. His parents, however, complied in a very limited way.  There was room for both.

Now imagine the pressure on indigenous speakers and what they face in the way of losing the one thing that unites them as a culture - language specific to their lives. In a NYTimes article titled Languages Die, But Not Their Last Words, John Wilford explained that the Living Tongues researchers focused on distinct oral languages, not dialects. "They interviewed and made recordings of the few remaining speakers of a language and collected basic word lists. The individual projects, some lasting three to four years, involved hundreds of hours of recording speech, developing grammars and preparing children’s readers in the obscure language. The research has concentrated on preserving entire language families."  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/science/19language.html?_r=1

The fact that this work is being done at all speaks loudly about the value of context and origin within any language. It also places value on the people who use it.  It tells the world, this matters because this is how we communicate with one another.  Who is to say one language is more important than another?  Is it easily quantifiable? It pleases me greatly to read about the linguists' work in the Enduring Voices project because it tells me in a world where too much volume is often given to the loudest voices that are in no danger of extinction, attention is being focused on capturing the subtle voices which are teetering on the brink of becoming obsolete.  Small steps in a diverse world.