I’m typing this slowly today, but a hard deadline looms and despite the vertigo threatening to wash me off this desk like a rogue wave/waive, I’ll try to make sense/cents through all the fuzziness in my frontal lobes. I feel unanchored and today’s blog post tends to drift as well. If you’ve never experienced this malady, let me explain. A single snowflake would look like a blizzard the way my head is spinning.
But to use a stolen line, I shall endeavor to persevere.
Rev, don’t move your head too fast, and keep it still. At least you aren’t leaning over the porcelain throne like the first time in Key West with the Gilstraps…and it wasn’t the gin or wine/whine then, either. Quit wandering around and focus, Spin Boy!
All right. Debbie Burke’s fun post on A Pair of Pants several days ago brought to mind something that’s been bothering me for a good long while/wile. I guess I shouldn’t let the little things irritate me, but trying to lie/lye still all day yesterday, I found my fuzzy mind wandering, especially after looking at Facebook for a couple of minutes when the world settled down for a moment. This came to me.
I’m afeared the English language all us writers cherish is slowly deteriorating, and it might/mite due to social media.
Authors can use a number of platforms to promote their/there/they’re work, but I’m of the age to embrace only a couple. Facebook works best for me. (I’d always said I’d never have an FB account and avoided it for years until my first book was published. I knew so little about it, I once called it MyFace.) I eventually learned to link it to Instagram, figuring two/too/to birds were better than one.
So that’s where I settled, and I’m dismayed by all the abbreviations and the posters’ inability to use the correct words in a sentence or idea, let alone punctuation. Good lord, we all took English in school, and someone please tell me, did half the population of this country sleep through that class!!!???
Sentence structure aside, it’s/its/its’ the wrong words people select that drives me nuts. I suspect those folks don’t know/no the meaning of the word homophone. I’m not trying to be mean here, but I’m seeing more and more of those same issues arise in novels, whether/weather they’re self or traditionally published. I ask, “where were the copy editors!!!???
Biting down the rising nausea in/inn my office that refuses to be still, let’s get back to the classroom. A homophone is each of two/to/too or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling.
Yep, these words can cause confusion when we use them in error and most word programs should catch the issue, but then again…
For the past few years, I’ve judged professional writing contests and the problem seems/seams to be getting worse. The wrong words with innocent intent are getting through. Here are just a handful I’ve seen in recent weeks, especially on social media and in other places, and in no particular order…wait, urk.
Getting back from the water closet and feeling like a freshman college student on their/they’re/there first night in the dorm, let’s/lets continue with our homophones.
Shear/Sheer
Sale/Sail
Sight/Cite
Bare/Bear
Peel/Peal
Whole/Hole
Roll/Role
Tale/Tail
Waste/Waist
Weather/Whether
Cell/Sell
Four/For
Break/Brake
Die/Dye
Heel/Heal
Creek/Creak
Idle/Idol
Knot/Not
Wright/Right
Sole/Soul
Accept/Except
Affect/Effect
Immigrant/Emigrant
Deer/Dear
Pear/Pair
Whole/Hole
Knew/New
Stationary/Stationery
Flower/Flour
Style/Stile
Know/No
Right/Write
Pane/Pain
Way/Weigh
Sweet/Suite
And of course, There/Their/They’re
Most of these came from Facebook posts I’ve collected over the past several months. Speaking of that platform, when I first became an FB user, I had the noble/nobel idea that it was a new version of the front porch on an old general store where people would/wood sit exchange positive ideas, stories, and information. Instead, it’s become a wasteland of manipulated videos, trolls who incite/insight fright or anger, and political antagonism promoted by those who hide behind an electronic wall and spew anything they want without fear of real/reel repercussion. If any of that had happened in front of a store when I was a kid, someone would‘ve gotten their nose busted and for good reason.
But back to what I was saying, this particular issue with the English language can be traced back to the way vowels were pronounced between the 14th and 18th centuries as individuals were more and more influenced by the introduction of other languages by migrants who moved to England after the Black Death.
Or/oar it might have come from what are known as “French loan words” (where the introduction of these words forced a change in the way English was pronounced). Another suggestion is that as the French language made/maid its way into everyday use during the war with France, general anti-French sentiments caused the middle class to deliberately make English sound less like the French.
Pronunciation is another key, and it’s hard to get specific vocalizations into what we write/right. It originates, I suspect, with our ancestors and region. For example, my former secretary from New Jersey and I often argued over the pronunciation of pen vs. pin. Each time I’d ask for a pen, she’d bring me a needle or map pin just for meanness. Here in Texas, the words are distinguishable only by spelling.
Take the word “here” for example. In Texas, we make it two syllables, whereas country music stars Dolly Parton and Dwight Yoakum have a unique Appalachian pronunciation that’s hard to duplicate unless you’re from that part of the nation. It’s an Old English soft sound produced at the back of the throat and can only be written as “hyer,” but not spoken as harsh as the spelling would dictate. In fact, I prefer their version, and though I’m a fairly good mimic, I can’t get that one down.
I believe those from the Ohio Valley pronounce “hear” with two syllables the way we do down hyer in Texas.
Trying to steer back to my original discussion in this mental tempest, no matter the origin, I suspect there are hundreds of other homophones I haven’t thought about. I bet you have your own to add, along with stories that tweak your Irritation Nerve.
And with that, I hope others find some value here in my version of English 101.
Everyone shout in agreement, here here! Which is what I thought people we saying back when I was in elementary school, (supposedly to authenticate our presence, I suppose). but then again, I soon found that the “dawnzer-lee light” was actually “dawn’s early light” in the Star-Spangled Banner, (it made sense since we pronounced “window-light” for a window pane) but I digress…and the spins are getting worse.
Posted: April 13, 2024
Katherine's Chronicle 