Language Lessons, Part 2: Vowel Sounds

Yes, there are more pressing issues. But this is making me crazy.

I know that language, especially English, is a work in progress. English complicates things by being an assemblage of other languages, and breaking its own rules with regularity. So, things change; I understand.

I can get on board with new words - we had to figure out what to call the Internet after its invention - or new usages (text, anyone?) But we do not need to change or substitute sounds. We really don't.

Here's my problem: the word "yes." It's a perfectly good word. It's succinct and easily understandable. It's one of the first words we learn as infants. We do not need it to be "yass" or "yuss" or "yiss."

I mean, for crying out loud, what IS that? How did it start? For one thing, it sounds like baby talk. How are grown humans OK sounding like toddlers? And WHY in the world have we decided that it's cuter or more acceptable, or... what do people think that it is, anyway? And what mass hysteria is causing so many of us to use it?

My husband has a tendency to mush vowel sounds. You'd think that a man named "Dan" with a father named "Don" would be more attuned to vowel sounds, but somewhere in his elementary schooling (which, he says, did not include phonics or the ubiquitous instruction I often received to "sound it out") some teacher made a passing reference to the schwa, and he internalized the idea that vowels are interchangeable. It makes me crazy. For instance, the word "if" usually comes out of his mouth as "eff." Ugh.

Sometimes, when he mispronounces some vowel sound or other and then rolls his eyes when I correct him, I say, "OK, Dun."

I mean pin, pen, pan, and pun are entirely different words! Vowels - they're important!

The thing is, he's doing it unconsciously, or because he's actually unaware of the correct pronunciation. He hasn't made a conscious choice to mispronounce something because he thinks it's cute or fashionable or somehow, what, more effective than the correct pronunciation. It's an honest mistake, and it still makes me crazy. Imagine how aggravating I find it when someone does it on purpose, for reasons on which I am completely unclear - fashion? Habit? Conformity?

In the name of sanity, when you're enthused, stick with the word we already have - "YES!" Drag out the sound if you want. If you're approximating a Southern US accent, feel free to go with "yay-es!"

Just know that if you write "YUUUUSSSS!" or "YAAAASSSS!!!" or anything similar, on your social media or anywhere else, I think unkind things. I may shave my estimation of your IQ down by several points.

Yes, I know that this makes me a curmudgeon and the language police. I don't care.

We have a perfectly good word. Please use it.

Language Lessons

OK. I know that part of the fault lies with the English language itself. Any language in which "a" and "eigh" can make the same sound is going to be confusing. But part of it is, undeniably, that people aren't paying attention.

Let's not even start discussing there, their and they're. I mean, it's been done. And done, and done, to no avail.

Maybe, just maybe, I can shed a tiny bit of light on apostrophes, call up in your memory something that you learned in elementary school. Most of the time, apostrophes indicate missing letters. "Can not" becomes "can't." "Have not" becomes "haven't." This is called a contraction, because you're shortening a two word phrase to a single word. (See, I did it there: "you are" becomes "you're.")

This is why "it's" will always mean "it is." I know, it's confusing, because usually adding an apostrophe and an s indicates ownership - the dog's bowl, the man's car. But when the word is "it," the form of the word that indicates ownership will simply have an s added. The dog chewed up its leash. When you're not sure which one to use, just say "it is" to know if you need the apostrophe.

Yes, I know that this word is an exception. But really, you can remember it. I'm sure.

But these gaffes are not the ones that are annoying me currently. Currently, I have seen the same mistakes made over and over. I have even seen them in news articles and magazines. I have seen (presumably) educated, intelligent people make them. Recently, I saw a singer/songwriter make one of those gaffes that annoys me - just sends my annoyance level soaring.

I know, everyone makes mistakes. One of my most common is hitting two computer keys at once. Some days, I cannot seem to hit an o or a p without hitting the other - ditto keys i and u.

SpellCheck and GrammarCheck will not always catch your goofs, either. Folks need to engage their brains, not their software. I, myself, once sent out 150 Christmas letters saying that my daughter had worked backstage on "Beauty and the Breast." Yeah, that was a fun time.

The instances in question are not, "Whoops, my fingers didn't work" mistakes, or AutoCorrect mistakes. I see them more and more often, and it irks me every time.

Folks, the phrase is "lo and behold." It is not, and has never been, "low and behold." The word "lo" is not a misspelling. It is a separate and distinct word. Think back to your King James Bible, and Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas special: "And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them." "Lo" means "look." "Low" means being lower than something, being below or on the bottom level. Please, please, do not mix them up.

The word that indicates low water usage landscaping is "xeriscape." I know that your SpellCheck flags it as misspelled, but trust me, it is not. It is derived from Greek, "xeri-" being a prefix that indicates "dry." If you were to substitute an English word, it would be "dry" - "dryscaping." It is absolutely NOT correct to say, "zero scaping" or "zeroscaping." I know that "xeriscape" sounds odd and looks odd, but it's correct. If you don't know the correct term, just use a phrase you do know, like "low water use landscape," or, "landscaped with native plants." I just can't take you seriously if you use made up words. (Yes, even if other people have used, or told you to use, the incorrect word, it's still incorrect and makes you look ridiculous.)

Now let's talk about phonics. I know that phonics as a teaching method has fallen out of fashion. I know that it is widely ridiculed, hence the "Hukd on Foniks Werkd For Me" T-shirts. But PLEASE, retain some kind of knowledge that letters make certain, predictable sounds. Words are made by combining those sounds. C + A + T = cat. B + the vowel blend of "OY" = boy. OK? Yes, I know that letters can make more than one sound. We're all bright enough to remember them, aren't we? Yes?

We're all aware of the existence of silent e, yes? Have, gone, bake - all these words end in an e that is silent. Silent means that it makes no sound. NO SOUND. SILENT. We know this, yes?

And yet, not just teens, but adults will indicate drawing out a vowel sound in the word "love" like this: "loveeeeeeeeeeeeee." Folks, the original e is SILENT. If you are prolonging the word, you do it by adding multiples of the vowel that you do hear, the o: "looooooooove."

I had a (fairly snotty) teen disagree with me when I told her this. "Two Os say "OO,'" (the sound you hear in "moo,") she said. "I don't want to say, 'loove.'"

"If you put a lot of them, it no longer says, 'oo,'' I told her. "If you're worried about it, though, put hyphens in between them: lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ove.'"

She looked at me as if I was an idiot, or an insect. "NO. EVERYONE knows that you write it, 'loveeeeeeeee,' '' Her Highness said. Further attempts at communication were ineffective. At a certain point, you have to realize that the brick wall will damage your head, and move away in graceful defeat.

For the love of sanity, I don't care if "everyone" writes multiple silent letters, please believe me that I'm correct about this! Otherwise, you look uneducated, and not very bright to boot. If you are elongating the word "long," it looks like this: "looooooooong." If you are elongating "fire," it looks like this: "fiiiiiiiiiire." If you are elongating "love," it looks like this: "loooooove."

"Elongate" means "to make longer." If you break the word apart, you'll see the word "long" right there in the middle. This is called a "root word," a small word that you add onto in order to make bigger words.

That's another lesson, involving prefixes and suffixes. Right now, just remember: "lo" is a word. It means "look." "Xeriscape" means a man made landscape that needs little water. In order to make a word sound longer, you exaggerate, draw out or (our vocabulary word for the day) elongate the vowel sound that you actually hear: for instance, "looooooove."

Please, PLEASE tell me that we don't have to go over what a vowel is.