Endless Knots

"Talk" about riveting prose

Don't know if you can view this article if you're not a New Yorker subscriber but do whatever you need to in order to read it. "Talk This Way," Alec Wilkinson's portrait of a man who clearly stumbled upon his natural talent then found a way to pick himself up and run is an original. I, for one, knew nothing about how actors learn accents, even as I've marveled at the flawlessness of many. Tim Monich, profiled in depth here, may be the answer. Matt Damon, Hilary Swank, Brad Pitt, Shia LeBeouff and no doubt a much longer list have Monich to thank for sounding variously South African, Amelia Earhartian, German, and as if they're from LungEyeland. One of those couldn't-put-it-down pieces.

Is it really "a great question?"

Another one of those common parlance things that's fun to keep track of - maybe for one meeting's worth... How many times in one day do you hear this? "That's a great question." Is it? Really?

R u worried abt dth of Englsh?

Whew. My English teacher mother is not having a conniption in heaven this morning. According to Carolyn Y. Johnson's piece in the Boston Globe this morning, "Is language dead or evolving?", students still know the difference between the shorthand they use for texting and posting (remember, they don't use email). That said, it ain't exactly my mother's English class:

A growing body of research shows electronic communications channels like instant messaging have created a kind of semi-speech - language that is between talking and writing. Some say it is evidence of evolution, not of decay.

"Languages are always changing, and that's a fact that language snobs need to get over and accept - because the only language that doesn't change is a dead language, like Latin," said Derek Denis, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Toronto. This spring, he coauthored a study comparing the way teens speak and chat online. It was published in the journal American Speech.

Denis's study, "Linguistic Ruin? LOL! Instant Messaging and Teen Language," followed the online and spoken conversations of 71 Canadian teens over three years, tracking about one million IM words and 250,000 spoken words.

Contrary to the view that abbreviations and cute emoticons are at the radical edge of English language, the researchers found that the hybrid of written and spoken language is actually more conservative than speech alone.

Do I ask myself questions? Absolutely!

Do you? Listening to Pete Sampras, asks himself a question. Answers as if someone else has asked. Why are we questioning ourselves like this? Who started it? Is this a fad in French, Vietnamese, Portuguese? I don't know. And why don't I do it? ...

Who's that again?

This one almost slipped past but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, which makes even more sense when I tell you what it is. Jonah Lehrer had a great piece in last Sunday's Boston Globe, "What's that name?", which makes clear how the brain retrieves information that you know is there but just can't find. Happens all the time, right, where you know you know someone's name but can only retrieve the first letter. Now I understand why I put myself through the rigors of the alphabet - starts with a B, Ba, Be.... Reason is that the brain stores information in different places according to unlikely associative patterns. Read the article. Jonah does a much better job than I can quickly do here.

(PS: I'm suffering blog-guilt of major proportions. Just realized I haven't blogged since Tues. Forty lashes with a wet post!)

Worst things said at work (and sadly on occasion at home)

Boston Globe asked its readers for their least favorite "Workplace Jargon." Read it. It's a relief, particularly when you encounter the ones that make you cringe. Mine:

--"reach out," as in, "I just wanted to reach out to you," which triggers the shot back, "Please don't"
--"value-add," typically an early warning that none is to follow
--"touch base," puh-leez, and...

low hanging fruit, ramp up, boil the ocean, circle the wagons, and need I continue? Begs question: Are we thinking when we say these things? (Not me, of course, I'm too busy herding cats.)