Accents and Languages

Ask anyone who has learned more than one language and they will tell you that English is probably the hardest language to learn, especially if it isn't your first language. Although many English speaking people will say French is hard because of the masculine/feminine structure, most people whose first language is something besides English or French agree that English is harder.

It's easy to see why. We have all sorts of rules which have contradictions - best example is the I before E rule. It goes "I before E except after C or when sounding like A as in neighbour and weigh." Which sounds like it would cover everything, right? Wrong. It's when the combination sounds like E that you have to know which way a word is spelled. For example niece, liege, and siege follow the I before E rule but leisure and seizure don't.

Then there's British English versus American English, which is more for how words are said rather than spelled unless it relates to OR. British words usually have an U in them like neighbour. American words don't have the U - neighbor.

Then there are all the words that sound alike but are spelled differently - to, too, two, sew, so, sow, toe, tow, read, red, etc - or are spelled the same but sound different - I can read the book, I have read the book.

Then, of, course, there are all the punctuation rules as well.

That's the writing side. Speaking it brings new problems. Because now we get into regional accents. Some places also have speech idioms, things like adding sounds (um, ah, er, etc) to words, local words or phrases, and different sentence structure and syntax (ex. no, it wasn't me).

Imagine, for example, learning to speak English in one area and moving to another where the people add sounds to words like ah. Since some words actually do end with an sh sound, it can confuse a non-native listener. I'm going to the park-ah. She was wearing a parka. To someone for whom English is a new language it can be confusing to know if both sentences refer to  parks or parkas.

So, it's no wonder English is confusing to people.

But you know, all those accents make for some interesting listening. Sure, there can be some embarrassment from mishearing or misunderstanding what someone says. But as long as everyone keeps a sense of humour then it can be a bonding experience. It is still up to the native speaker to be patient with the other person and make sure they can understand one another.

Which is another post.

Clean Language

Ask anyone who knows me and one thing they will all tell you is I never swear. The policy in my house is also no swearing unless there's a really good reason - like cutting yourself. But outside my house you can swear a blue streak as long as you want.

There's a few reasons why I have and follow this policy. Mostly it's because I feel that people who swear are being lazy thinkers. It's easy to throw in a few curse words into any sentence to make people aware that you don;t like something. It's challenging to express yourself without swearing.

Now I don't go ballistic on people who do swear in my house but they will get "The Look". It's remarkably effective. Probably because I treat people as adults who really should know better and expect them to behave as adults. So being given The Look is equivalent to being told to act their age.

I find it amusing how people will change on a subconscious level when they aren't being pressures. I took a course and it was all guys except for me. The teacher tried to enforce a no swearing rule but it was pointless. The guys were too used to swearing when they spoke. Yet, before the course was over, no one was swearing in class and when one did slip it was always followed by them turning quickly and apologizing to me.

What did I do to make this happen? Nothing. I simply ignored anyone who was swearing and if addressed answered with respect and absolutely no swearing. So, in this case, it was a change by example situation. I think it was the fact that i wasn't making a fuss over the swearing that impressed the guys and got them to change on their own. Or at least to stop swearing while they were around me.

I've listened to so-called comedians who tell jokes with so much swearing in them that people aren't laughing at the jokes. They're laughing at all the swearing. I don't find that funny. If the joke can't stand on it's own then it isn't a joke worth telling.

I guess the way I look at it is that swearing was supposed to be something rarely heard and then only in cases where attention had to be grabbed immediately. Someone was hurt or about to be hurt? Loud swearing got people there to help.

Some people can't seem to talk without every few words being some swear word or other. So I have to sort through what they just said to find what they just said. Swearing was meant to grab the attention and it works really well at distracting me from the other words around them.

Now, I do have a couple of sayings for when I need to get attention although I rarely use one nowadays. My daughter loves it though. It was something I learned from my grandmother. When she was mad enough to swear she would say "Horse feathers!"  My daughter still uses that and she loves the reactions she gets from people hearing it for the first time.

Myself, people know I'm upset if I say "Bloody hell" or "Sacre bleu". Sometimes I'll just use "Bloody" when describing something. The funny thing is that in Britain saying "Bloody hell" is considered swearing a blue streak. Good thing I don't live in Britain then. Lol.

What I find amusing about people swearing is the fact that they are using language originally derived from a legal term. Being so fond of words I often like to check on the origins of words in use. And today's favorite swear word - was a legal term for being found under carnal knowledge. When one of my moods hit me I like to point out to people how impossible it is for certain things to have carnal knowledge. Naturally, I get blank looks and have to explain.

At least I find it funny.

Beauty is in the Mind of the Beholder

The popular saying is, of course, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but the truth is that it is actually in the mind. It is what we think is beautiful, graceful, dignified, etc. that defines what we classify as beautiful, graceful, dignified, etc. And it is as varied as the number of people that exist in the world.

Oh, we can agree on generic boundaries but ask a group of people as individuals to rank a series of pictures and you'd be surprised at the results. A percentage will rank the same pictures in the top group although the order will probably vary. But if you were to give 50 people 50 photos to sort through, the odds that the same number of photos and the same photos would end up in the same classifications are not 100%.

Take a look at any poll that lists percentages of respondents. It is rare to have a poll where the top person/object/ideal etc is over 90%. Most of the time the percentage will be under 80%. The difference will usually be in polls that rate political issues, news issues, social or religious beliefs, etc. Things that are not defined by an abstract concept.

Because beauty is an abstract concept. We are conditioned in part by society's acceptance of what is beautiful, pretty, attractive, ugly, etc. Don't believe me? Look at the history of fashion models and see how the size of the models has changed as society's beauty image has changed.

Art, poetry, and music are the areas where the definition of beauty is challenged the most by critics. Personally, I find abstract art to be ridiculous when considered as a serious art form. I'm not good at drawing but I can paint as well as or better than any abstract artist. At least, in my opinion. Because it is an opinion that sets up an  art form as serious art. That opinion is always expressed by a group of art critics. Professional art critics. (Hmm, how can I get a job as one because I can't believe they had training for that job.) (That was a sarcastic comment btw not to be taken seriously).

It all comes down to personal opinions for how popular any piece of art, music, and writing is. While I would never buy an abstract painting, i would buy landscapes and animal pictures. Same for music, there are certain genres I can't stand (grunge) while there are others that I can listen to forever. Same for certain authors. While there have been relatively few authors I can't stand, I will give most a few tries with different stories to see if I like their style.

Which leads to what made me pick today's topic. I take public transport and a few years ago a project was put forth to add signs with poetry written specifically for the buses. They could be any subject but had to fit on the signs. So most people who contributed to the project wrote free form poetry.

Now, I've written free form poetry but I always kept a beat with it. Blame it on my upbringing, I was taught that poetry was supposed to have rhythm if not rhyme. So even free form still had a beat. Otherwise all I was reading (or writing) was prose in non-standard form.

This is where the concept of beauty comes in. To me, a well-written poem has rhythm, might have rhyme, and has a beat that's easy to pick up and follow. The words might not be clear in imagery and meaning but the piece flows together. It is beautiful.

But the poems on the buses? Shudder. The sentences are of varying lengths so there's no beat, no rhythm. It's like listening to a person speaking quickly with a break between each sentence. I have the impression of being jerked from sentence to sentence. So I tend to no longer read the poems.

Which is probably doing someone a disservice. There might be a great piece of poetry on one of the buses that I will miss. Because it's like walking through a museum of Picasso paintings. I tune them out so I will most likely walk straight past a Rembrandt that's been slipped in.

Because to my mind, beauty has form.