TESL certification

If you're going to teach English as a second language here in Ontario, you need to be certified and there are a number of potential pitfalls that are rather easy to get caught in.

The first is the difference between TESL Canada and TESL Ontario. You would think that the national body would have more stringent certification requirements than the provincial body. You'd be wrong. While both organisations require an undergraduate degree, TESL Canada level 1 certification (which is the only national level available for pre-service teachers without a Master's degree in TESOL or applied linguistics) requires only 100 hours of theory and methodology study in a "recognized TESL training program or equivalent" and a supervised practicum of at least 20 hours (10 hours of observation and 10 hours of teaching). Applicants must also show evidence of English language proficiency (roughly TOEFL iBT 80).

In contrast, TESL Ontario requires 250 hours of TESL course work from an institution recognized by TESL Ontario and a supervised practicum of at least 50 hours (30 hours of observation and 20 hours of teaching). Applicants must also show evidence of English language proficiency (roughly TOEFL iBT 103).

In other words, TESL Canada level 1 certification is basically useless in Ontario.

The next problem is programs offered by non-accredited institutions. According to TESL Ontario's own application documents, the only certified institutions are Brock, Carleton, U of T, York, and U Sask; Algonquin, Centennial, Conestoga, George Brown, and Humber colleges; Thames Valley, Toronto, and York Catholic school boards; and among private institutions, the Canadian College of Educators and the Canadian Centre for Language & Cultural Studies. The teach abroad courses offered by, for example, Oxford Seminars do NOT meet TESL Ontario certification standards.

Of course, I teach in the Humber program, which far exceeds TESL Ontario requirements, and consequently produces many of the most sought-after graduates in Ontario. The program is unique in having 500 hours of coursework, and 80 hours of graduated practicum which is entirely arranged by the school (many courses leave it up to students to arrange their own practicum hours, which is becoming more and more difficult in the saturated GTA). Humber is a two-semester daytime program, but come September, it looks like we'll probably be delivering it three days a week. If you or anyone you know is interested, please get in touch.

The categorization of 'so'

The other day I got an e-mail from a colleague who asked about complements to linking verbs. As I was thinking about the various possible complements, the clause it seems so came to mind. "What in the world is so," I wondered. Not really expecting to find any help, I checked a number of dictionaries. The OED has entries for so as an adverb/conjunction and predictably other dictionaries follow suit. But that can't be right.

The word seem can take a variety of complements apart from so. These include:

1. Noun phrases (NPs) and adjective phrases (AdjPs), typically grouped as predicate complements (aka subjective complements).
   He seems happy. (AdjP)
   She seems a good sort. (NP) more common in British English
   
2. Content clauses (aka noun clauses): bare, with subordinator that, and with relative pronoun what
   It seems (that) they have arrived early.
   That did not seem what they intended to convey.
   
3. to infinitives
   It seems to be the right one.
4. Preposition phrases (PPs)
   It seems like a good solution.
   They seem out of place.
5. And, of course, the word so. [My aunt reminds me that not can also work here.]
   

They do not include:

1. Determinative phrases (DPs)
   *It seems any.
   *It seems the.
   *It seems those.
   
2. Adverb phrases (AdvPs)
   *It seems quickly.
   *It seems really.
   *It seems always.
   *It seems too.
3. Content clauses introduced by when, why, how
   *It seems how they did it.
   *It seems why they did it.
   *It seems how they did it.
4. Bare infinitives
   *It seems be OK.
   

So, if adverbs are illegal as complements [but note the possibility of not], why call so an adverb? I suppose the reasoning is: if something doesn't fit another category, it must be an adverb, but that's pretty silly.

And what do I think so is? I haven't figured that one out yet. I'll try to get back to you on it.

[Added May 25, 2009: otherwise also seems to have similar properties.]

A primmer primer

This morning on CBC, Andy Barrie said that later they would have a /prɪmɚ/ on something or other (i.e., basic information about a topic). "You mean /praɪmɚ/," I thought. But he went on to say that he used to say /praɪmɚ/ but he had been told by a listener that, in fact, the correct pronunciation was /prɪmɚ/. "That's right," chimed in Jill Dempsey. "Nonsense," I thought, never having heard anybody pronounce it that way in my life. So when I got to work, I grabbed all the dictionaries I could find.

The Oxford Canadian Dictionary gives both pronunciations, with /praɪmɚ/ listed first. I teach English as a second language, so most of the dictionaries I have on my desk are for learners of English; The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary lists only /praɪmɚ/, as does the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, and the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary, all of which are British. Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary, along with their Learner's Dictionary, gives the American pronunciation as /prɪmɚ/, but also lists /praɪmɚ/noting "chiefly British". The American Heritage Dictionary is the only one I can find that does not list the /aɪ/ pronunciation.

So, dispite the prim listener's protestations about this point, it appears that Metro Morning's host and listening audience have had another incorrection foisted upon them.

Editing poetry

My brother, Michael Eden Reynolds, has won both first and second place in Prism's inaugural poetry contest.

I am not a poet. I rarely read poetry, nor do I write it. It is neither a regret nor a point of pride, merely a reality. But I do try to take an interest in the things that people close to me are doing, so when Michael started getting his poetry published, I was curious. Unfortunately, I must admit finding much of what he sent to me opaque. There were lines I liked, and occasionally a whole poem that would grab me, but often I really didn't know where to start.

When he told me that he was having part of his manuscript edited, I became even more curious. Perhaps the editor's comments would help me understand Michael's poetry. What kind of changes would an editor make anyhow?

When Michael forwarded me the marked up manuscript, I was somewhat disappointed. There was no obvious egress from my comprehensional umbra, but strangely enough, I suddenly understood how you might go about editing something as flexible and creative as poetry, even when you don't understand the whole poem. It would be much the same as when one edits prose, only more stringent.

Now, in general, I think Strunk's injunction to omit needless words is often rather useless advice, but in poems there is more of an imperative to pack the utmost meaning into the fewest mental gestures possible. The editor Michael had engaged seemed to have it in for "gerunds and abstractions and... extra pesky small words, particularly articles." I don't believe in this kind of categorical discrimination, but suddenly I did begin to see lines that would benefit from pruning, and I offered Michael my own editing services.

I began by editing his editor, telling Michael where I agreed and where I didn't. I think he found this a bit of a relief as he had perhaps been a bit intimidated by a lot of the advice he'd received.

During this process, there were times when a more precise or apt word would occur to me. At other times, I found preachy lines where the images had already communicated what needed to be said. With this shift of attention to the technical details of the poems, more meanings began to present themselves and I was able to enter a few more poems, but I also felt that I now had permission to simply say, "I can't make any sense of this at all."

Sometimes, when Michael and I discussed these, it would turn out that he was just stretching the language too far. For example, in the following , I queried arrested... from...

Maze of one, speck of time, arrested
in my pocket from the wide and cloudless
night that apprehends me.

Michael wanted to convey that the speck time had been taken by force, but in the end, we agreed that from is not a legal complement to arrest and that the intended reading simply wasn't available to most readers.

Many times I suggested orthodox punctuation where Michael's was heterodox, often with no obvious benefit either prosodic or semantic. And occasionally, the syntax was simply muddled:

On the boat there’s a slow coil
of water heaps the prow.

became

A slow coil of water
heaps the prow.

There were also questionable metaphors. Consider the following lines:

"It’s the night before garbage day,
the wind’s as warm as a breath
of frogsong, "

I commented that although frogsong may have associations with the warmth of spring, or that it may warm the soul, "a breath of frogsong" itself doesn't strike me as warm at all.The line became:

It’s the night before garbage day,
warm wind stirring the frogs
into song,

There was also some overly-familiar rhyme and the occasional cliche: "rain against the windowpane", "heaves a sigh."

And of course, I got to make positive comments on lovely descriptions like this one of writing in a foreign script

"characters with sloping
shoulders, cats and lizards, coiled shrubs."

I will admit that much of the editing advice I provided Michael was rather mechanical, surface-level stuff: copy editing mostly. To go beyond that, I'd need to learn a lot more about poetry, something I'm afraid I probably won't do soon. But what I have learned was interesting, and it was a privilege to be able to work with Michael on this project.

Clauses vs. phrases

Our final Firsten disection for this quarter begins with the question: "Are non-finite clauses the same thing as what we used to call 'phrases'?"

The distinction between clauses and phrases is indeed a muddy one. I've shown before how it confused the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Apparently, its authors are not alone in their confusion.

The reality of the situation is that the words are used differently by different people, or even sometimes by the same person. And that's fine. Just as long as we can figure out who's using which word what way.

Traditionally, then, a phrase is merely any contiguous group of words that has some connection in expressing a concept, but which is not in itself a clause. A clause, on the other hand, is a whole simple sentence or one part of a complex or compound sentence that contains a subject and a predicate.

These two concepts are generally distinct enough that the distinction is maintained, but things can get messy. What does it mean to contain a subject? Imperatives are thought to be clauses and are said to include implied subjects: you. But then a predicate adjunct such as speaking slowly in Speaking slowly, he explained why he disagreed also has an implied subject: he. Traditionalists, though, would not consider speaking slowly a clause.

Firsten tries to explain this traditional idea of clauses vs. phrases and how it overlaps with the idea of being finite or non-finite.

"Non-finite clauses are the same thing as "phrases." In addition, finite clauses are the same thing as "clauses." The terminology underwent a change some years ago, and now most grammarians use the terms finite and non-finite clauses... A finite clause must have a subject and a verb that carries tense."

This rule of thumb isn't very useful as it ignores the possibility of phrases that contain no verbs at all, while mostly just switching one label for the other without adding any clarity.

So what does it mean for something to be finite? The idea of finite verb has been with us since at least the late 18th century when Lindley Murray wrote, "Finite verbs are those to which number and person appertain." This explains the reason for the label: if something is finite, it has certain limitations. A verb like runs cannot go together with just any old subject; I goes will not do. The verb go in to go, on the other hand, is not limited in this way. That is to say, it is non-finite.

Firsten's explanation is at odds with Murray's use. Murray applies the concept to verbs, where Firsten applies it to entire clauses. But given that English subject-verb agreement occurs only with present-tense verbs and with past-tense be, it seems that they agree that it applies when the verb carries the tense. Firsten doesn't stop there though. He says,

"Come with me to the next TESOL convention is also a finite clause even though the subject you is hidden and the verb is in the imperative form."

Yet, there is no tensed verb here and subject-verb agreement does not apply.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language takes a position rather closer to Firsten's than Murray's, albeit one which is much clearer while at the same time admittedly unorthodox. Like Firsten, the CGEL applies the concept to clauses, not verbs. But it is silent about a subject. Rather it includes the following as finite clauses:

1. clauses headed by tensed verbs (i.e., present tense or past tense; there is no future tense)
2. clauses headed by plain-form verbs in the imperative or the subjunctive.

This has already gone on far too long, so I'll get back to why this is a useful classification in another post.

Backshift and remote relationships

In Richard Firsten's most recent Grammatically Speaking column, he claims that was in the sentence "Was there something you needed to see me about?" is an example of backshifting.

The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics: A Handbook for Language Teaching doesn't even mention backshifting. Nor does the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Even the OED fails to mention backshift. The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Third Edition has no entry for backshifting, but under back-shift it instructs us to see direct speech. Unfortunately, this reference resolves to an entry that is entirely unhelpful on the matter. Apparently, this term is not widely used.

But do not despair. The Oxford English Grammar steps up to the plate. George Yule also talks about backshift in Explaining English Grammar, as does the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. But these books are unanimous in defining and discussing backshift in relation to reported speech, and Firsten's topic has nothing to do with reported speech. Even Wikipedia concurs. Yule, for example, says:

"The change of forms, such as present tense (e.g., 'I am ill') to past tense (e.g., 'He said he was ill') in indirect speech."

Terminology aside, the explanation offered strikes me as generally correct. But for those of us who are obsessed with categorizing grammar, it cries out for a label. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language observes, "three uses of the preterite (past tense): past time, backshift, and modal remoteness." This last term, modal remoteness, is what we're looking at here. The question Is there something you want to see me about? is very immediate. It tramples social distance. This can make things more or less comfortable, depending on what each party gains or loses from recognizing social distance.

The point that tenses have uses beyond the signification of time is one that is not made often enough. Certainly, backshift, being one of those uses, is related to the topic at hand, but only remotely. There may actually be grammar references out there that use backshifting in the way Firsten does, but I've never come across them and some fairly anally retentive searching on my part has failed to turn up any.

[On an almost completely unrelated note, did you hear about the cosmologist who went to the costume party dressed all in red? He would move away from people and then ask them what he was. Answer: redshift]

A whole nother issue

A few days ago, I promised to get back to fixing up Richard Firsten's problematic answers to grammar questions. Although, I said I'd look at backshift, this morning, I was more in the mind to address his second letter, which poses the perennial question: why do we say a whole nother? Richard's reply:

"because it either sounds cute or humorous. And what's really interesting is that you can now find nother in some dictionaries!"

Both of these strike me as true. But one word stuck in my craw: now. A careful reader would be left with the impression that nother is a recent form, perhaps coming out of the seventies when Luke Skywalker famously whined at his uncle, "but that's a whole nother year..." You certainly wouldn't get the impression that it has been in use fairly consistently since at least the 14th century:

• "c1330 Otuel 83 Ich am comen her..To speke wi charles..& wi a knit at heet Roulond & a noer hatte oliuer."
• "c1390 MS Vernon Homilies in Archiv f. das Studium der Neueren Sprachen (1877) 57 280 He wolde him say his onswere on a noer day. "
• "1559 J. AYLMER Harborowe sig. E4, Of Paul I shal speak of at a nother time."
• "1850 ‘M. TENSAS’ Odd Leaves from Louisiana Swamp Doctor 152 Lizey Johnson's middle darter, Prinsanna,..left her husband in the state of Georgy, and kum to Luzaanny an' got marred to a nother man."
• "1963 Word Study Feb. 7, I have to grade a whole nother set of themes."

So why do we have both other and nother? The OED explains:

"From the beginning of the Middle English period, the coexistence of two forms of the indefinite article (an before vowels and a before consonants) often led to metanalysis (the same phenomenon occurs in other languages where the indefinite article ends in -n, e.g. French, Italian, etc.). Variants arising by metanalysis sometimes alliterate with words with initial n- in alliterative verse, and in some cases have become established as the regular modern forms (so that e.g. Middle English a nadder became an adder; compare also apron, auger, etc.), while conversely some vowel-initial forms have gained n- (so that e.g. Middle English an ewt became a newt; compare also nickname). The following examples show the latter process in cases where the variants arising by metanalysis did not become established as the regular modern form."

Michael Eden Reynolds facebook group

You've seen his poetry before. Now comes the facebook group!

Another thought about post-

A while ago, I mused about post- being a preposition-forming prefix. It now occurs to me that I fell into the trap of confounding the function and the category. I wrote, "Clearly though, the word post-Walkerton as used above is neither adjective, verb, nor noun." This is mistaken.

The context was How is the water post-Walkerton? Of course, post-Walkerton can be replaced with a prepositional phrase such as after Walkerton. It can also be replaced with an adverb such as recently. But what I overlooked was that it can also be replaced with a noun phrase such as these days or (with a slight adjustment to the verb tense) last year, or Monday. Given that, I think that post-Walkerton would make most sense as a noun, and that post- is not, in fact, a preposition-forming prefix.

So, it appears, sadly, that there is no productive way of creating new prepositions, though -wards is weakly productive (again, of intransitive prepositions, which many people wrongly call adverbs).

Incidentally, Geoff Pullum recently credited me with discovering post as a new preposition. This is true for certain senses of discover, but not for the sense that I was the first human to realise the situation. As commenters on Language Log have mentioned, the OED lists it. But the OED seems to miss a distinction between post and after, which commenter Mike Keesey explains nicely when he says, "'After' is neutral. 'Post' implies that the event/period in question has fundamentally changed the state of things."

The self-righteous fury of the blogs

If you don't read Carl Zimmer's blog, The Loom, you should. He has a magnificent post about the cl/rash between blogs and the mainstream media (Zimmer also writes for Discover, The New York Times, and other more traditional news sources) in which he writes,

"Take, for example, a recent righteous rant from Ben Goldacre, a British doctor who writes the blog Bad Science. Goldacre is doing fabulous work on his blog, taking on irresponsible sensationalism and misinformation about vaccines, quack medicine, and other offenses. His guns are blazing particularly hot in a recent post about some awful reporting on recent studies on prostate cancer. He concludes with this sweeping condemnation of our trade:

Journalists insist that we need professionals to mediate and explain science. From today’s story, their self belief seems truly laughable.

Goldacre is big on evidence and down on anecdote, but as Zimmer notes here, he's guilty when it comes to condemning the MSM based on cherry-picked stories.

When I am critical, as I often am, I do worry about this, and I hope that I have taken a fair line with who I blame. If I haven't I trust you to let me know.

Coordinating and stacking modifiers

One of the teachers here came by Friday with a question about commas in pre-head modifiers in NPs. In other words, she was asking about the difference between things like:

• a serious political problem
• a serious, unsolvable problem

where these are both noun phrases (NPs) headed by the noun problem and modified by two words coming before the noun. Notice that one has a comma and one doesn't.

The textbook that had led her into this said that there are two types of adjectives: cumulative and coordinate. With coordinate adjectives, you put a comma, but with cumulative ones, you don't.

It's hard to know if this is simply a confusing description of a real situation or whether it is wrong. It suggests that adjectives belong to these two types, which is wrong, but if it really means that adjectives can be listed in two ways, then that's true.

The important point is that it has nothing to do with any particular type of adjective as you can have exactly the same two adjectives with a comma or without. Rather it is a question of coordinated modifiers versus stacked (or what they call cumulative) modifiers. Coordination looks like this: (m , m) h, but stacking looks like this: (m (m h)), where m is a modifier and h is a head noun.

1a) a powerful, new tool (coord)
1b) a powerful new tool (stacked)

In 1a, we have a tool that is both new and powerful. In 1b, we have a new tool that is powerful. This is probably not a distinction worth drawing, but look at this:

2a) a powerful, political force
2b) a powerful political force

In 2a, we have a force that is powerful but also political (as opposed to, say, moral). In 2b) we have a political force that is powerful (as opposed to weak).

3a) a small, happy family
3b) a small happy family

In 3a, the family happens to be both small and happy, but in 3b, the happy family is small (in comparison to most happy families, which we may expect to be big).

Where a modifier is a noun, it is usually indicative of a type and so lends itself to stacking. This also indicates why nouns will come at or towards the end of a string of modifiers.

4a) a big, ugly brick house

But it can also be coordinated:

4b) a big, ugly, brick house

4a is a brick house that is big and ugly. 4b is a house that is big, ugly, and made of brick.

Grammatically Speaking incoherent

Richard Firsten continues to provide questionable answers to grammar question in his "Grammatically speaking" column for TESOL . I must say, I'm disheartened that nobody in the editorial department there seems to have cottoned on to it yet. This time around there are enough problems that we're going to have to break things out into multiple posts.

We'll begin with the following question: is the -ing word in this sentence a present participle or a gerund?

He was famous for consistently picking stocks that gave high returns.

Firsten answers,

"What gives this away as a present participle and not a gerund is the word consistently. A gerund is like the noun form of a verb, so if it's preceded by nothing at all or by an adjective, we can see that it's a gerund, working as a noun."

Amid the confusion here, there are two useful hints. Adjectives do not modify verbs and adverbs do not modify nouns. So if your choice is between a word being a noun and a verb, and it's being modified by an adjective, you can bet the house it's not a verb. Equally, if it's being modified by an adverb, it's not a noun.

The rest of this is nonsense. "A gerund is like the noun form of a verb." And this is "a gerund, working as a noun." So, putting those together, we get: picking described as being like the noun form of a verb, working as a noun. So, is it a noun or a verb? Firsten doesn't seem to know, or if he knows, he's not telling. Maybe he's been reading Cowan's Teacher's Grammar of English.

Anyhow, let's look at another sentence: He was famous for his tan. It would be very unhelpful to say the NP his tan is "working as a noun." Rather, we would say it's functioning as the object of the preposition for. So, being the consistent folk we are, we'd say the clause consistently picking stocks that gave high returns is functioning as the object of for in the sentence in question.

What about picking itself? It's a verb. It's modified by an adverb, as Firsten points out. So, despite some confusion, he gets us to the right answer. But rather than stopping there, he bumbles on:

"If we tweak the sentence and have He was famous for picking stocks that gave high returns, we have a gerund."

No! No! No! This is to suggests that picking is a gerund by default, and that it is only by adding the adverb consistently that we turn it into a verb. That's backwards. Rather, it is because picking is a verb that it becomes possible to modify it by an adverb. But whether there is indeed an adverb there or not is irrelevant.

Then he gets the next part right:

"We also see that picking has a direct object, stocks, so that's another way we know that in this case, picking is a present participle"

Of course, this directly contradicts what he said earlier about it being a gerund, but don't let that bother you. It doesn't seem to bother the editors at TESOL.

Next time, what is backshift?

From blogosphere to hereosphere

Goofy from Bradshaw of the future came by today and we had a nice chat. If there's anyone else reading in the Toronto area, look me up.

pre- and post- as preposition-forming prefixes

[please see the reconsideration of this post here]
This morning coming in to work, I heard Andy Barrie on CBC say something like "How is the water post-Walkerton?" I've forgotten the actual sentence, but it ended "post-Walkerton." (See here for an explanation of the Walkerton Tragedy.)

It struck me that post-Walkerton sounded, prosodically, like one word rather than two, and that, if it were one word, it would be a preposition (albeit an intransitive one, explained briefly here.) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language claims that pre- and post- can form adjectives, nouns, and verbs, but doesn't allow for the possibility of prepositions. Clearly though, the word post-Walkerton as used above is neither adjective, verb, nor noun.

The other way to look at this, I suppose, is that post is itself a preposition rather than a prefix.

TOEFL TV

Just in case you needed to know, the good folks at ETS have found another way to market their juggernaut Test of English as a Foreign Language: their very own YouTube chanel. Teachers and students share their TOEFL tips in some of the most compelling TV you've seen. Actually, it's probably no worse than most of what's on YouTube.

Japanese as a distant language?

We all make mistakes, big and small. I know I do. So I usually do not criticise others for trivial mistakes. Not that I am particularly magnanimous; it is simply that, hey, life is short, let's look for good rather than bad.

So I am not lamenting nor ranting when I say I often come across strange things about the Japanese language written by, of all people, professional linguists. They baffle me. I will give you just a few examples.

While discussing Japanese classifiers on page 70 of Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories, Craig gives the following:

empitsu ni-hon 'two (long) pencils'
inu no-hiki 'two (animal) dogs'
no' chiyo 'the (animal) chicken'
ixim wah 'the (corn) tortilla'

All these are labelled 'Japanese', which happens to be my mother tongue; yet I have difficulties. The first one is fine. The second contains a simple mistake: 'no-hiki' should read 'ni-hiki'. But I simply cannot make out what the third and fourth examples are. Maybe they are some esoteric expressions that I know nothing about - or something has gone awfully wrong (perhaps these two are from some other language).

An introduction to language and linguistics, edited by Fasold & Conner-Linton (2006), is a fine textbook, but apparently the editors did not have enough time to check certain simple facts. On page 29, you have the following warning:

In Tokyo, you want to be careful to order [bi:ru] 'a beer' rather than [biru] 'a building,' and to ask directions to a certain [tori] 'street,' rather than a [to:ri] 'gate' or [to:ri:] 'bird.'

Alas, they will still be lost in Tokyo, ordering some fried gates or grilled streets in a restaurant. The correct combinations, if you care, are: [to:ri] - street, [tori:] - gate, and [tori] - bird. To my knowledge there is no such word as [to:ri:] in Japanese, except perhaps for phonetic translation for 'Tory'.

Incidentally, the same textbook (on page 410) gives a Japanese sentence meaning 'The boy who hit the dog is my brother' - but wait. The Japanese sentence says 'The boy who hit against [i.e. whose (entire) body hit] the dog is (my) brother'. Small difference on paper, big difference in the real physical world.

Even Pinker sometimes nods. In his wonderfully entertaining The stuff of thought, he gives bakatara as a Japanese word meaning 'stupid' (on p.336 of the Penguin edition); the correct word is bakatare. Yes, it's just a single small letter - a tiny letter that distinguishes, say, fad and fed ('The dog has just been fad'? hmm ...)

I will readily admit that language professionals are usually careful, indeed skilled, in dealing with foreign languages (in fact, they are the ones who get my Japanese name right every time, while banks, shops and other institutions get it wrong). George Lakoff discusses the Japanese classifiers in his Women, fire and dangerous things with admirable accuracy; yes, he checked with a Japanese speaking person (whom he thanks in the Acknowledgments). All it takes is just a little time and care.

But then, that's the hardest thing to do - especially when what you are dealing with is something as distant as the Japanese language - or, in my case, something as distant as the English language. That's why it takes me so long to translate - oops, time to get back to work. I have some translation to do, a distant trip. I'll get all trippy.

Pronunciational self delusion

I was having dinner earlier this week with a number of colleagues when the topic got around to pronunciation. After an initial discussion of being laughed at by Americans for our pronunciation of out, the conversation went something like this: A and B are Canadian, and C is British and knows a lot more about phonology than I do.

• A: Canadian English is the clearest. Even the main US networks are hiring Canadians as anchors or their anchors sound Canadian.
• B: Clearer than British English you think?
• C: Oh, yeah.
• me: Which British English?
• C: If you could hear the way my brother talks...
• me: But it just depends what you're used to, doesn't it?
• C: But Canadians pronounce all the sounds clearly. It must be easier for students learning English to study here.
  
• A & B: Sure.
• me: Come on, how do you say Toronto?
• A: toe Ron toe
• me: Really? You don't say Trawna?
  
• B: Maybe the younger people do, but not our generation.

Far be it for (OK, from) me to argue, but I just wanna point out that Patrick Corrigan's editorial cartoon in today's Toronto Star has mayor David Miller's bicycle being eaten by a pothole. A street sign in the background says, "Trawna".

The decline of the subjunctive

There's no doubt that the subjunctive in English has lost much of its historical scope. There used to be present and past subjunctive for all verbs, but the only vestige of the past subjunctive is the irrealis use of were that I referred to yesterday. When you've only got one form, it's hardly worth calling it a system. The simple past tense has taken over much of the work in sentences like If you saw it, you'd know.

Many claim that the subjunctive continues its fade today, but there are a brave few, such as Charles Finney of the University of Tennessee, who actually argue that it's making a comeback. I'm very pleased to see that Finney is at least somewhat interested in the data. He keeps a list of examples that he runs across to illustrate his point. The problem is that you can't show a revival by looking at a single point in time.

So to get a time series, I went to the TIME Corpus and the COCA and used that [pronoun] be as my stand-in for the whole of the subjunctive. I'd say it's a reasonably representative sample, though clearly far from perfect. If you're playing along at home, the query would look like this:
The result from the TIME corpus shows a clear drop off over the last century with only the 1930s and 1990s going slightly against trend. The most recent decade has, however, been very hard on the subjunctive:
The drop off in the last two decades is confirmed by the COCA, though it doesn't look quite as desperate:
The thing I found most interesting is that spoken English appears to be the biggest user of the subjunctive, though academic English isn't far behind.
So it appears that the subjunctive really is continuing its decline.

Whether Grayling know the subjunctive

In making a point about the (in)accuracy of internet sources, A. C. Grayling remarks in passing on the grammar of the following:

Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour. Let no night Seal thy sense in deathly slumber Till to delight Thou have paid thy utmost blessing.

-Walter de la Mare

Grayling claims that Thou have is an error, and one committed by the poet. It should, he says, be Thou hast. But Alan Larman, of Congleton, Cheshire, UK, writes to NewScientist that this is the subjunctive mood and no error at all.

In modern English, the use of the subjunctive is highly restricted and occurs mainly in subordinate clauses introduced by that (e.g., It's important that he be on time; I take were in if I were you to be an isolated irrealis form and not part of the subjunctive, which uses the plain form of the verb). My problem is this: I don't know enough about the grammar of early modern English (the style, if not the time, in which la Mare was writing) to know whether the subjunctive is possible here. The poet was writing in the early part of the twentieth century, at which time thou had been out of use for perhaps 250 years. So it is indeed possible that, in trying to be poetic, he goofed.

There is, however, a still-used frozen form that displays exactly the pattern in question: until death do us part, which suggests strongly that the error is Grayling's.

If anybody can settle this definitively, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Pearson Test of English

On Wednesday night, we were discussing how to deal with graduates of our college who had great credentials and ability, but who couldn't land a job because of their spoken English. We agreed that one issue is having some kind of objective benchmark of speaking ability, and so I brought up (again) the Versant tests.

The next day the associate dean sent me an e-mail about the Pearson Test of English (PTE), which has been in development for a number of years and will be available this October. Pearson is trying to get colleges and universities to say they will accept the PTE for admissions purposes, and somebody there had contacted our registrar about it. She'd forwarded it to the associate dean and he forwarded it to me with the question, "Is the oral test you spoke about yesterday a part of this test?"

This wikipedia article claims that that indeed appears to be the case, though there's nothing to back the claim up.

The makers of the Versant tests have claimed for a long time that they can produce valid reliable scores automatically in a fraction of the time it takes a behmouth like the TOEFL. The problems is that, even if it's true, nobody believes it. The PTE is about 3 hours as compared to Versant's 10-15 minutes, so it will be interesting to see how the statistical properties of each line up.

No word for X

A standard (journalistic) trope for exoticising a language is to claim that it has no word for x. According to an article in the Native Times, Doris Jean Lamar McLemore is the last person alive who can fluently speak "the language of the Wichita Indians," a language so complex that

"it takes 60 to 90 minutes to transcribe even a small portion of it.

There are no words for “hello” or “good-bye,” for example. The closest to a “hello” you can give someone is a phrase for “How are you?” – “e : si : raci : ci.”

I can think of another really exotic language with no words for hello: French. The closest to a "hello" you can give someone is to wish them a good day or good health. I can't say I know much about transcribing, but it seems to me that the speed would have to do much more with familiarity than with complexity.

Finally, it's interesting that nowhere in the article is the language actually named. It's simply called the language of the Wichita Indians.

Only a couple letters off

A few months ago, I wrote about a couple + plural noun (e.g., a couple things vs. a couple of things). Today it's in the news, as pointed out by Geoff Pullum over at Language Log. When there was a typo on a gift from Hillary Clinton to her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, the Clinton adviser Philippe Reines is reported to have protested that the word they printed is only a couple letters off.

Geoff puts only a couple letters off in quotes, but I'm not sure whether he means to attribute that to the newspaper story or to Reines. I can't actually find any stories with those words in quotes, and indeed a Google news search only turns up two stories with that wording, one from Fox and one from Asian News International.

A love letter

Walrus Magazine has just announced the winners of their love letter contest. The following took second prize:

Dearest;

I still remember the day we met; my grade-eight grammar teacher recommended you with forget-me-not, fire-engine-red ink in place of a capriciously employed em-dash.

Only the bravest and worthiest of young grammarians were permitted to adopt you in their prose; hence, from that day forth I've worn you like a badge of honour.

I still recall the moment my juvenile narrative first profited from your mature wisdom. A reluctant convert, I snuck you into a three-hundred-word handwritten exposition on "Casey at the Bat"; I even used you outside of the quotation marks.

Since that day I've been your faithful admirer. My longing for your is even evident when I type en français; my heart commands that I not separate you with a space from the word that precedes you.

In my vintage 1982 edition of The Chicago Manual of Style yours is the best thumbed of all pages–dog-eared number one-forty-seven–where into six little vignettes from 5.68 to 5.73 those know-it-all Chicagoans squeezed your every known use in the English language; e.g. when you appear before the expression e.g. if the break in continuity is greater than that signaled by a comma. (For comparative examples see 5.54.)

But I know you're worth much more than these grammarians perceive; surely the greatest poets and philologists toiling in tandem could never describe the fullness of your beauty.

Oh, how I've sinned in the name of loving you: pride, in objectifying you when no other mark can satisfy me punctually; lust, for the time when I may again see at the tip of my pen your seductive point-and-bend; envy, when those like Vonnegut and Hemingway treat you better than I; wrath, my rage when I see a perfidious comma in what was previously your domain; sloth, when thoughtlessly I start a new sentence rather than employ a coordinate clause; greed, when I wish to hoard you all to myself and not share your muted grandeur with others; and gluttony, my sin when I use you six times in a horrendously long sentence.

Mine is a love unrequited, I know, for you are just a fleeting fleck between a colon and a comma.

But dearest, I would never misuse you, as so many do, next to a callous conjunction that connects two independent clauses, and my love for you is greater than my desire to exploit you as do your many Internet sycophants.

Should you never return my love still I shall remain forever your humble and faithful applicant; accordingly, never will I remit watchfulness of your applicability as semi-colon, the connector of two coordinate clauses; semi-colon, the clarifying attribute dividing a series of two or more objects in a post-colonal sequence with internal punctuation; and semi-colon, the super comma, where an ordinary comma would just be too damn confusing!

I love you always ;
R.A. Johnson

Simplifying rules

After the talk I had with my son the other day, I suggested that he ask his teacher the same questions he asked me. I was disappointed to learn that the response was: "sometimes authors (who begin sentences with and) forget the rules." This was not what I was hoping for, so I sent a gentle letter to school (my wife insisted on editing it to ensure gentleness). I received the following response:

Thank you for sharing your expertise! You certainly know the rules thoroughly!
For grade 2, to simplify things, we generalize that we use 'and' once in a sentence, as a joining word or part of a list. Also, to reinforce the idea of joining words, not to start a sentence with 'and'. Certainly as they enter older grades, refinements as to the use of 'and' and 'but' will be made.
Thanks again for sharing!

I'm glad to learn that she views this as a simplification rather than a real rule. As I said last time, I don't believe it's a needed simplification because I feel confident that a seven-year-old can understand that you can use and at the beginning of a sentence as long as you don't do it too much. I'm also less sanguine about the chance of refinements being made in future grades. Most of the students (pre-service teachers) in my current TESL class came in believing in a no-sentence-initial-coordinator rule, and in some cases I haven't been able to overcome a lifetime's faith in it.

National Grammar Day

In the US, today is National Grammar Day. Bradshaw of the future has an apropos explanation of what grammar is.

It has begun

I think today is the first day that my son asked me about a prescriptive grammar rule. He's in grade two, and he asked me if it was true that you can't start a sentence with and. I asked him why he was curious, and he said that he'd seen it in books but his teacher had said that it was against the rules.

I asked him why his teacher might do that, but he couldn't imagine a reason, so we talked about how kids often tell stories with and between every "sentence" and I asked him how it sounds if you use the same word(s) too many times. In the end, we agreed that you can start a sentence with and but that you just shouldn't do it too much.

Which seemed to satisfy him, until he added, "but you can't have two ands in the same sentence, right?" So we got to look at the difference between coordinating clauses and phrases, and he had no trouble seeing the difference once it was brought to his attention.

If a bright seven-year-old can notice a discrepancy between what he's being told and what he sees, and if he can understand the facts of grammar with a little Socratic questioning, why do we teach all these fake oversimplifications?

Visual interference

The first time you listen to this video, just listen. Don't look. This is to convince yourself that it really is not English (it is purported to be German, but I can't confirm that), because once you do look, you'll only hear English.

xkcd

One of the funniest comics around has to be xkcd. Today's comic is titled "Simple" and references the simple English Wikipedia (be sure to mouse over to read the hidden text). I haven't done much editing on simple wikipeia, but I do a lot on simple wiktionary. Drop by and help out sometime.

Functions in the CGEL

One of the most useful and yet ignored principles in thinking about grammar is the consistent separation of categories and functions. When you can keep them distinct, analysis become much clearer. One grammar that is scrupulous in making the distinction is the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. It clearly sets out the various categories on pp. 22 & 23, which I've visualized in the first image below.
Unfortunately, there's no clear overview of all the functions. I've tried to bring them together in the following graphic. As usual, if you see anything wrong or missing, please let me know.

Wayback

From 1997 until 2003 I worked at Sakuragaoka Girls' Jr & Sr High School in Kita-ku, Tokyo. During the whole time I was there I put my lesson notes and plans online under the title "An EFL Teacher's Notebook". A number of sites still link to it though the server was taken offline years ago. Anyhow, if you're interested in seeing it, the Internet Archive has a copy of it. Probably best to check out the 2003 version.

Another in our irregular series of word lists. Today, all the irregular verbs that occur more than two times in the Corpus of Current American English. I believe that this list is complete, but if I've overlooked something, please let me know. The words are grouped by endings.

1. be
2. do
3. have
4. read
5. spread
6. lead
7. misread
8. tread
9. reread
10. re-read
11. plead
12. bleed
13. breed
14. feed
15. speed
16. shed
17. wed
18. forbid
19. bid
20. outbid
21. underbid
22. rid
23. build
24. rebuild
25. hold
26. uphold
27. withhold
28. behold
29. understand
30. stand
31. misunderstand
32. withstand
33. spend
34. send
35. bend
36. lend
37. unbend
38. find
39. bind
40. wind
41. grind
42. unwind
43. unbind
44. lade
45. hide
46. ride
47. slide
48. override
49. stride
50. flee
51. see
52. oversee
53. foresee
54. clothe
55. lie
56. underlie
57. make
58. take
59. undertake
60. shake
61. mistake
62. wake
63. overtake
64. forsake
65. remake
66. awake
67. partake
68. retake
69. re-make
70. betake
71. strike
72. come
73. become
74. overcome
75. shine
76. shoe
77. rise
78. arise
79. lose
80. choose
81. write
82. bite
83. rewrite
84. smite
85. underwrite
86. co-write
87. overwrite
88. re-write
89. leave
90. weave
91. interweave
92. heave
93. shave
94. give
95. drive
96. forgive
97. dive
98. strive
99. shrive
100. thrive
101. prove
102. freeze
103. dig
104. hang
105. overhang
106. bring
107. sing
108. string
109. swing
110. spring
111. cling
112. fling
113. sting
114. ring
115. sling
116. wring
117. teach
118. beseech
119. catch
120. break
121. speak
122. sneak
123. stick
124. seek
125. think
126. sink
127. drink
128. shrink
129. stink
130. slink
131. work
132. deal
133. steal
134. feel
135. kneel
136. spoil
137. fall
138. befall
139. tell
140. sell
141. swell
142. dwell
143. foretell
144. resell
145. spell
146. misspell
147. spill
148. dream
149. swim
150. mean
151. lean
152. begin
153. spin
154. win
155. learn
156. born
157. burn
158. run
159. overrun
160. outrun
161. re-run
162. over-run
163. undo
164. overdo
165. outdo
166. go
167. forego
168. forgo
169. undergo
170. leap
171. keep
172. sweep
173. sleep
174. creep
175. weep
176. hear
177. wear
178. tear
179. bear
180. swear
181. overhear
182. shear
183. forbear
184. beat
185. eat
186. bet
187. meet
188. get
189. forget
190. let
191. set
192. upset
193. offset
194. beset
195. reset
196. inset
197. preset
198. off-set
199. wet
200. fight
201. light
202. fit
203. hit
204. split
205. slit
206. knit
207. spit
208. sit
209. quit
210. shoot
211. overshoot
212. hurt
213. cast
214. broadcast
215. forecast
216. recast
217. typecast
218. telecast
219. newscast
220. miscast
221. rebroadcast
222. comcast
223. podcast
224. webcast
225. cablecast
226. re-cast
227. hoist
228. cost
229. burst
230. thrust
231. bust
232. cut
233. undercut
234. shut
235. put
236. input
237. output
238. draw
239. withdraw
240. redraw
241. re-draw
242. saw
243. shew
244. strew
245. sew
246. show
247. blow
248. mow
249. know
250. grow
251. throw
252. overthrow
253. overgrow
254. outgrow
255. regrow
256. over-grow
257. sow
258. lay
259. slay
260. overlay
261. waylay
262. underlay
263. mislay
264. pay
265. repay
266. underpay
267. overpay
268. say
269. unsay
270. gainsay
271. fly
272. buy

Thesaurusi (or how descriptivist can you go?)

Over the past month or so there has been an influx of new editors at the Simple English Wiktionary (and you're more than welcome to join us). One of them saw fit to add an entry for thesaurusi, after all, there was one on the English Wiktionary. I headed over there and sure enough, there it was.

You see how it got there don't you? If you look up thesaurus in a dictionary, it tells you that there are two possible plurals +es or +i. Now if you've never noticed that some English nouns that end in -us form their plurals by dropping the -us and replacing it with -i, it would make sense just to stick an -i on the end and voila!

I referred the obvious mistake for deletion, but lo and behold, thesaurusi is actually out there, and not just in the nescient scribblings of some teenage facebook adict.

• 1965, Pierre A. Rinfret, “Changing Population and Changing Demand”, Financial Analysts Journal, Vol. 17 No. 5, page 75: 

  In the closing weeks of 1959 and the early weeks of 1960, book dealers must have had a bonanza in selling thesaurusi.

• 1999, Lynn Tooma et al., Exploring the Bible, ISBN 0884894649, page 49:

  Gather a variety of dictionaries and thesaurusi written for middle-school students as well as adults.

• 2004, Vincent Mary, “MeSH and Specialized Terminologies”, in MedInfo 2004, ISBN 1586034448, page 530:

  UMLS is an integration of several thesaurusi.

A discussion ensued and it was decided to keep it with the following entry:

"(rare, considered nonstandard) Misconstruction of thesauruses, plural form of thesaurus."

At the SEWikt, we've put a redirect to thesauri and left it at that. But don't be surprised if one dark night, just when you least expect it, you stumble across alumnusi, stimulusi, fungusi, nucleusi, cactusi or one of their ilk and you find yourself running screaming down the street, your descriptivist sensibilities flapping behind you in tatters.

Countability and unmarked plurals

Recently, I've run into a few situations that have called for some clarification of what it means for a noun to be countable. You may be curious about just where I run into these things. Do people buttonhole me at parties? Grill me at conferences? Stop me on the street? Sadly, no. Most often these issues come up during some sort of net-mediated interactions.

Anyhow, one particularly observant and self-aware correspondent writes:

"One of the thrills of creating material for students is discovering new areas of my own lack of knowledge. When designing a worksheet on countable and uncountable terms, my examples didn't really work out right.

I had neatly laid out three zones on the sheet: countable, uncountable and those that can be either (like paper and hair), and assigned examples of each from the students' vocabulary lists.

The nouns 'sheep' and 'fish' are not given 's' or 'es' when applied to plural use (in North American English), so I've simply referred to them as 'uncountable' in the past, and placed them into the uncountable zone. But almost instantly, I realized they didn't fit the patterns I was trying to illustrate.

There might be 'many sheep' in the field, but there darn sure aren't 'very much sheep', to my ear anyhow. There are 'a few fish' in the tank, but not 'a little fish'. These seem to act stubbornly as countable categories.

Which tells me that some noun categories are countable, but their labels (like fish and sheep) just don't get a plural form adjustment.

What are the correct terms and categories for these items? What else am I missing?"

Of course, he's quite right that countability of nouns is best looked at by considering the determiners they will allow rather than their morphology. Nouns like sheep simply have a plural form that is identical in shape to their singular form. These are often referred to as unmarked plurals. An analogy with verbs would be something like put, for which the plain form, plain present tense, past tense, and past participle all share a shape. Most verbs have past tense forms and past participle forms that share a shape (shape here encompasses both spelling and pronunciation).

Another issue is that most nouns have both countable and uncountable senses, though typically one sense dominates. Almost all "uncountable" nouns have a plural sense indicating types (e.g., Belgium produces many fine beers.)

There are few nouns that are singular only. I once believed that equipment was one, but I was mistaken. The following are a few that I can think of, but feel free to prove me wrong:

• crockery, footwear, perseverance, nonsense
  
• italics, linguistics, mumps, news
  

There are also a few plural only nouns. I think I got these examples from the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, though I don't honestly recall.

• belongings, clothes, genitals, pants, remains
• cattle, police, vermin

In some language like Chinese, it is my understanding that no basic nouns are countable. All must be identified with a counter (e.g., two cups of water, one rod of pencil, three sheets of cookie).

Finally, it's interesting to note that even among languages that make a countable/uncountable distinction, there is little agreement on what is counted (again, examples may be from the CGEL or perhaps from Pinker's The Stuff of Thought).

• spaghetti: countable in Italian but not in English
• hair: countable in French but not in English
• peas: now countable in English, but previously uncountable pease
  

Indeed, we can look at almost anything both ways:

• opinions, advice
• stories, fiction
• facts, knowledge
• holes, space
• songs, music
• naps, sleep
• lies, bullshit
  

A word for having a word for...

Geoff Pullum has just pointed out that "the general reading public loves the idea that your lexicon measures your life." In other words, he means that they think a language without a particular word for x (hand for example as distinct from arm) is somehow impoverished. As I read this, it struck me that English, mean and ineffectual language that it is, actually has no word for this idea. So, as my humble way to enrich the language I offer the following:

1. alexemic: The state of lacking a word for a particular notion.
   
2. lexemic: The state of having a word for a particular notion.
3. lexemifilia: The fetish belief that a single word ought to exist for any given concept

Examples:

• English, though lexemic with respect to hand is alexemic with respect to warm water where Japanese is exactly the opposite.
• A: Did you see the article in today's paper saying language X had no word for snow?
  B: Yeah, another journalist suffering from lexemifilia.

If you don't like those words, I have alternatives that are a little less grandiose.

1. gouth
2. perd
3. dern

(no real motivation for these particular words, I just liked the sound of them)

Two third of a plural

Yesterday, one of my colleagues sent me the following query:

"I have a grammar question for you. Today, my ESL 300 students (from India in particular) were confused about this sentence that I had asked them to edit.

Two third of the respondents worked or had worked at properties that had websites.
They were convinced that two thirds did not need an 's'. Are there any rules for this? Or, do you think this relates to differences between Indian English and NAE? I know we would say one third, but I told them that two thirds definitely needs an 's.' Do you know why?"

I've never come across such a notion, but a quick search of google.co.in for two third(s) of finds about 20,000 for the singular vs about 157,000 for the plural, a ratio of 1:8. Singulars appear even in headlines in newspapers, so it may actually be a feature of Indian English.

In contrast, the COCA has a ratio closer to 1:100.

When you look at three quarter(s), however, the google.co.in ratio is approaching normal (1:60), so it seems as though it may be a particular fraction rather than fractions in general.

The only other related oddity that comes to mind is half, which is rather unlike all the other fractions, but it's weird in other ways. I don't have a good explanation for the lack of plural marking, but it is certainly non-standard here in Canada. The only use I can think of that might be OK would be as a modifier (e.g., a two-third majority), but even that strains credulity.

English 'Activity' in Japan

I don't know how many people would give a damn about the English language education in Japan - but Brett's post prompted me to jot down the following. After all, I happen to be in Japan, and have been in the industry for a while now.

What has been going on is rather wierd. I shouldn't bore you with details, but let me start with the year 1991, when there was a suggestion to the effect that primary schools should embrace some form of 'special activity' involving a foreign language, such as English conversation. Funny wording, I know - but that's what was suggested: 'special (foreign language) activity'. Judging from what has actually been done, the 'activity' seems to refer loosely to some English-speaking person getting kids to sing, draw, say some words, etc. with no organising principles.

In a country where foreign language education (specifically, the English language education) formally starts at secondary school, this suggestion was new. In the following year, 1992, the (then) Ministry of Education started experimenting with English language 'activities' at primary schools. They did it for one school hour per week.

If you know anything about learning a foreign language, that's not much - especially when what is done is 'activity' rather than actual learning. Years later, researchers found that there were no differences whatsoever between those kids who did this English activity at primary school and those who did not, when they reached secondary school. Surprise, surprise. Those kids just wasted time there ...

Now this is where things get weird. Instead of coming up with a better idea, the Ministry then came back with a booklet entitled 'Practical Handbook for Elementary School English Activities', primarily aimed at non-Japanese teachers, which declared that 'the aim of English Activity is not language acquisition'. It then went on to describe some of the things you, as a teacher, could do in the classroom. Yes, this truly is a totally confused, and confusing, piece of literature (which, by the way, was priced at 100 yen a copy). This was in 2001.

I guess the confusion comes from the fact that they wanted to compile an official-looking manual for teaching English at primary schools, but then, faced with solid evidence that it didn't work, they added some sentences and paragraphs here and there saying 'Well, they may not learn anything, but that's not the point.' Or maybe whoever wrote it was just plain incompetent. Either way, that's my tax money being spent right there. Hey.

Well, people are not stupid; there has been a lot of debate. At the Ministry, too, there is a committee consisting of 21 people to discuss this - er, by the way, twenty out of these 21 people are those who are 'in accord with the government's directions'. What kind of totalitarian regime is this?

But the facts are so against these 20 plus one people that they couldn't come up with a report that would have enabled the Ministry to formally announce that they were introducing the scheme. This was in 2005.

Then in 2006, the Ministry issued a formal statement called 'On English Education at Primary Schools' (this time, they somehow chose the word 'education'). There was nothing in the statement about making English a formal part of primary school education; I guess they couldn't put it there. But the media jumped to it, loudly screaming, 'English classes to be introduced in primary schools!'

What the Ministry - the government - has wanted to do all along is very clear. They want one school hour per week at every primary school taught by a non-Japanese, English-speaking, teacher. They know that there are no educational merits. And they know that they cannot implement it. Their document clearly states that there are 121 ALTs - that is, officially hired English-speaking teachers - in Japan; and there are about 23,000 primary schools.

It is in this context that they sort of turned around and said, 'Hey, English classes ought to be conducted in English in high schools!'

I have just stated facts. I do not wish to speculate. But as I say, people are not stupid, and I just hear them. When America started bombing Iraq, I heard a rough-looking worker saying to his mate, 'It's all too clear, you know. It's about oil.' It wasn't just him; it was like a shared understanding.

This time, the shared understanding may be summarised in four words: 'more jobs for Americans'. I find myself unable to brushing it off outright. But I do not wish to speculate; I would like to remain hopeful. If, and I repeat IF, Japan has democracy that works, people's voices will be heard, and what is best for the kids will be done. But then, don't get me started on how big that 'if' is ...

A country called Turkey

In today's Family Circus, Billy is wondering about a country called Chicken.

The word Turkey in English actually predates turkey, the name of the bird, by about 200 years. The country name comes from medieval Latin Turkia and has been used in English since the mid 1300s. The word turkey, however, wasn't used in English until the mid 1500s.

In fact, the bird is actually named after the country, and not because of any stupid or insulting characteristics, but because it was thought to have come from Madagascar via Turkey. Coincidentally, this is the same kind of process that gives Turkish its word for the same bird: hindi. In that case, the Spanish had brought the bird from the Americas, but at the time, Europeans believed that the Americas was actually India. So the Turks named the bird after the country that they thought it came from, Hindi (Hindistan).

Incidentally, turkey appears not to have picked up its negative meanings until about 1927.

What's up with white in Japanese?

Starting a few days ago hundreds of people have been searching the net for the Japanese word for white and finding their way to a few postings I made back in 2007. I'm very curious about what has spawned this peak in interest, so if anybody knows, please fill me in. If you're still looking, the noun is 白 (shiro), and the adjective is 白い (shiroi).

Teaching English in English in Asia

This past summer, we ran a special TEFL program for a group of Korean high school English teachers. The impetus was the Korean government's mandate that English classes there be taught in English. Now it appears that the government of Japan is following suit.

Interestingly, over the holidays we were talking to my niece who is in her first year of junior high school in Japan. She said that her English teacher is an American woman. She was clear that this teacher was not an assistant, but actually her teacher. I found that surprising because she attends a regular public school. When I was teaching in Japan, I also taught the core English classes for the jr 1 students, but it was a big deal. Nobody had heard of a non-Japanese teacher doing this, and we had a bit more flexibility because it was a private school. How times change!

Words for smells

I've mentioned Russel Smith's writing before. My aunt found his column in yesterday's Globe and Mail interesting enough to forward me a link, and indeed there are some keen observations there, but I'm not very confident of his basic premise:

"The only words for smells we have are comparisons.

Compare our words for other perceptions: We have basic words for colours which are not dependent on the knowledge of specific substances or objects for their understanding. Red, for example. It is not a simile or a metaphor. All it means is red. Similarly with touch: we have smooth, rough, spiky, soft. With smell we must say rose, sweat, tarragon, concrete, wet dog.

We simply have no words for smells. We simply have no words for smells. Acrid, I suppose, comes close to being an abstract word for a smell, but it's more like a kind of smell than a specific one: It's more about an unpleasant burning sensation caused by a smell. We have lots of modifiers like that: Smells are pungent or heady or nauseating. But those words aren't specific smells in themselves.

We have poetic approaches too. Writers will say a warm smell, for example, but their synesthesiacal attempts just underline the paucity of available vocabulary."

I don't totally buy his absolutist claim that "the only words for smells we have are comparisons," at least not if we allow that there are truly words for other senses, but there might be something to this. The normal human eye has only three different types of photoreceptor cells that respond to different colours. These are the cones responding to short (blue), medium (green) and long (yellow-red) light. The tongue similarly has only four different types of taste buds that respond to five different kinds of flavours, though this isn't the simply one-to-one correspondence that exists in the eye.

I have not been able to turn up any such limit or classification for olfactory receptor neurons. And it makes sense that things with a limited pallet have specific labels but that those with more diverse basic components be described in other ways.

I'm less sanguine about Smith's analysis of touch. It seems to me that the textures he lists are kinds of texture rather than a specific ones. And he has carefully avoided discussing sound.

Anyhow, what about his claim that we have no words for smell? I propose at least three: sweet, sour, and bitter.

These are activated by G-channel receptors, which exist both in the mouth and in the nose. It is well acknowledged that our sense of taste is largely influenced by our sense of smell. So I'm not sure that we can clearly say that these are primarily tastes and only synesthesiacally smells.

But even allowing that they are only tastes, the word sweet meant "pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings" in Old English, and bitter comes to us from biting. These are the poetic approaches that Smith dismisses. Here his argument breaks down; either you accept that words based on the poetic approach qualify for both taste and smell, thus accepting words like: acrid, pungent, sharp, green, and fresh or you reject the poetic approach for taste and say that we don't really have sense words there either. Similarly, if salty qualifies as a taste, why would we not accept words like musty, fruity, flowery, oily, and metallic as smells?

But perhaps the most basic problem with the proposal is the idea that a word for something is somehow more genuine than a metaphor or paraphrastic description and that a language that is missing a particular word for a given concept is somehow impoverished thereby. Geoff Pullum exasperates: "Everybody thinks that the key thing about a language is which words it has." No! "Natural languages are much better thought of as systems of conditions on the structure of expressions (words, phrases, sentences). Some of the well-established conditions apply to word-sized units (it really is well established that dog denotes Canis domesticus, and that the is the only acceptable form for the definite article), but the constraints do not entail a roof on the number of words or prescribe which ones are genuinely in the language."