{"id":9504,"date":"2022-02-21T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9504"},"modified":"2022-02-21T08:04:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T13:04:23","slug":"how-fun-language-evolves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9504","title":{"rendered":"“How Fun!” Language Evolves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today, on International Mother Language Day,<\/a> we pay tribute to our first languages, the ones our mothers cooed to us in our cradles. Why I didn\u2019t grow up with a West Texas accent is a mystery. As Visual Thesaurus writer Orin Hargraves<\/a> says, the term \u201cmother language\u201d also suggests \u201cthe source, inspiration, or protector of something\u201d\u2014in this case, the valuable developmental skill of communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots of online commentary\u2014snarky Facebook posts, helpful grammar websites\u2014tackle the topic of \u201ccorrect\u201d language. But what is correct, under what set of rules? For writers of fiction, not just the grammar characters use, but also the word choices, diction, and rhythm of speech support development of distinctive voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

S.A. Cosby\u2019s wonderful Razorblade Tears<\/em><\/a> meticulously captures the small-town Virginia speech patterns of the Black protagonist, Ike, as well as his down-and-out white partner in crime, Buddy Lee. Stephen Graham Jones creates a pitch-perfect rendering of the rhythm of Blackfeet tribe members’ speech in The Only Good Indians<\/em><\/a>. (I read audio versions of both these memorable books, in which the language was further elevated by the quality of the narration.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Anglophone countries, \u201cStandard English\u201d is what educated white people speak. But even in England, many people don’t speak it. Just ask Henry Higgins. Like him, critics of people who speak nonstandard English are affronted by perceived lapses. \u201cThe ways in which some white speakers feel licensed to disparage black speech,\u201d Hargraves says, \u201cis not different in kind from the way the Britons, starting in the 1600s, disparaged the speech of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all languages, English evolves. Reading novels from the 18th<\/sup>, 19th<\/sup>, and even the early 20th<\/sup> century demonstrates how vastly different are today\u2019s ways of expressing ourselves. My story \u201cThe Adventure at Sparremere Hall<\/a>\u201d is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and part of the challenge of writing itwas to immerse myself in the loquacious, roundabout style of John Watson who \u201cwrote\u201d more than a hundred years ago. Here\u2019s a short paragraph. \u201cThis looks promising, I thought, and with a breath of anticipation, I slit the envelope with my paper knife. The letter was indeed intriguing, and when I came to the end I was quite uncertain how the great detective would react to it.\u201d Today, we\u2019d say, \u201cThere\u2019s an intriguing letter here, Holmes. Listen up.\u201d This is to say, what is the \u201ccorrect\u201d or \u201cideal\u201d English speakers should aspire to? The expression \u201chow fun!\u201d first struck me as awkward and ungrammatical. But it\u2019s useful, and everyone understands what I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although many people decry nonstandard English, Hargraves points out that dialects and vernacular speech do<\/em> follow rules, just a different set of them. The people who speak those variants know their rules, which is essential in order for them to communicate with others who share that dialect. Consensus wins out in a population of speakers, Hargraves says, and \u201cthe way most people in a community speak has a way of becoming the way that everyone speaks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a writer\u2019s point of view, it isn\u2019t possible to merely throw in a few \u201cain\u2019ts\u201d or drop a few \u201cg\u2019s” in order to establish a rural character. You have to develop an ear for it, to feel it, like Cosby and Jones do. Then the reader will feel it too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, on International Mother Language Day, we pay tribute to our first languages, the ones our mothers cooed to us in our cradles. Why I didn\u2019t grow up with a West Texas accent is a mystery. As Visual Thesaurus writer … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"It's International Mother Language Day. People speak the way they do because of whom they speak with. Are they breaking the rules, or just following a different set of them?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1288,174,185,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-first-draft-blog","category-language","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ti","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9507,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9504\/revisions\/9507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}