A brief grammar lesson - as a metaphor

over 2 years ago (Edited)

I've just had a huge Mandala effect. It might help if you were to know that I am an experienced English teacher, and trained in Language and Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. I have thought a lot about grammar and how to explain it, with a huge concern over 'sounding right' when you speak.

Some years ago the whole world seemed to be convinced to say 'an historic'. I contended that this was incorrect unless you said it in a british accent - 'An istoric document, luv'. If you pronounce the H, like in history, it should be 'A Historic document'.

The rules of A and AN are really simple, but its about the sounds not the letters. If something starts with a vowel sound, you use AN. Take University, for example.

I say YOU-niversity, and its always a YOU-niversity. But if you have a spanish accent, you are likely to say the u as in boo or do, OO-niversity, in which case its probably more correct to say AN oo-niversity. And when you speak both of these phrases, you will notice that the consonant does some important work in signifying the noun verbally, both of these ways is both easier to say and understand (be understood) than their contrapositives (AN YOU-niversity or A oo-niversity).

Have you ever been convinced that you were right about something that was different than the 'common wisdom'. Its probably one of the premier indicators that you are really learning anything.

So today I find that suddenly all the American style guides agree with me again, whether they changed their minds in the mean time or I find myself in a modified Mandela dimension, who knows.

Here is some history about the issue I dug up:

https://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/drgw007.html

From the article:

Oh yeah, this is interesting stuff here right? Like, have you ever thought about how you make the sounds you do? Can you imagine asking a student to 'briefly close your glottis?'

Actually, I just say - H is like your J

They already know how to move their glottis' thank goodness because I don't think I could teach them.

And notice, that 'earlier', people made H a different way. Which means it made a different sound. This sounds weird, but if you study language you know its true. Here's an example from spanish:

Did you know H used to be F?

That's right, they were Fs in Latin at least.

I first noticed this when reading Colombus' letters to the queen of spain, something we were assigned to do at the University, and I recognized right away by context that this fablar word must be talking about hablar.

And so this made me think of a question, did the sounds change or did the letters change?

Let's go back to Kindergarden

This is what I remember, and I may be wrong, but what I internalized in Kindergarden was that A went before consonants and AN went before vowels.

Remember the actual rule is that A goes before a consonant sound, and AN before a vowel sound. This is a subtle difference that, in practice, makes all the difference in making oneself understood.

An Hour of your time

Over time, things change. And its mostly understood by linguists that the sounds are easier to change than the letters themselves.

Think about groups of friends saying words in funny ways, this is actually indicative of actual real world social behavior, we change sounds in words all the time, or at least kids do this a lot, but also comedians.

When Martin Shorts says that 'the Cack very often determines what kind of Wadding you end up having', its funny because we can actually understand it more than one way. If we couldn't understand it at all, it wouldn't be funny, which is why Steve Martin's character is not laughing.

Accents have lead to a number of funny scenes. I am thinking of a scene in a Ben Stiller Movie where a doctor with a Latin accent gets everything interpreted wrong when seen through the lens of a New York Jewish accent. Why can't I find it is it more Mandala effect? I was pretty sure it was in the Meet the Parents series of movies, but now I can't be sure... (help me find it I will give you prizes!)

Anyway, Somehow we all mostly understand each other though, at any given time, even though we are all generating different sounds dynamically and the sounds that we generate on average are shifting over time. Don't even get me started on the shifting meaning of the same words.

Letters vs Sounds

See the letters are like the rules. The sounds are how you interpret the rules. I'm sure the same thing happens in music when you have some sheet music or tabs vs actually playing and singing or having a jazz jam session.

The whole world is like this.

The whole culture is like this

Its dynamic and changing and at the same time its important that we stick to some conventions, that we keep the fires burning, we also must make it work in practice. It must be alive and practical as well.

We have to understand one another.

If we don't, social harmony may not be possible. There seems to be a growing cultural divide right now in the US, and its not very much at all a language based phenomenon, Its a cultural one.

Both sounds and letters can change, though its much easier to change a sound than a letter. When you pronounce a word funny people laugh, when you spell a word wrong people rage. Ever notice that??

The most common reason for a letter change is because the sound has already changed. There is an update to the letter (rule) because the actual real life interpretation has floated so far away. This is what happened with the Spanish F -> H.

We don't do this in English. We keep our archaic spellings and just continue to modify the pronunciations. Our lettering is basically unchanged since Guttenburg.

Knight didn't used to be pronounced nait. There were real germanic gutterals in that GHT and a K sound at the beginning! That's how people were saying the word with their sounds when publishing started.

Surely it was a slow process. It softened over time, remember language, like culure, is a dance. You can only ever modify to the point where you are still understood - and enough people have to modify in the same direction at the same time (over time) to dance the whole mass of people in that direction.

Source

Here's a very interesting video about how Shakespeare is easier to understand in 'OP' or Original Pronunciation.

Getting around to a Point

The point is things are changing. And they always were. But sometimes they change faster than others, the key is that we all understand.

I remember when I took calculus in college from a heavily accented Vietnamese fellow. It took me a week of classes to understand his accent, but once I tuned my ear into it, I learned calculus quite well.

Some students dropped the class after the first day because they couldn't understand the guy.

The same phenomenon happens with all change. We have to be careful to build the bridges into the new interpretations so that people can cross them, with us. If there is no understanding, conflict is the general result.

And its not conflict that we are seeking, its change. Change for the better, and we can flow with it, participate in the change and guide it. Just like language, we are all active participants, we are all influencing all the time.

Just make sure you are being understood. Sometimes it can take a moment for your ear to adjust.