Molluscs of mass destruction
muse@nature.com
It is a crime against humanity when professional communicators manage to get language so horribly muddled, says Henry Gee.
For the past few weeks I've been busy completing a book, and so haven't had much time to listen to the radio, nor watch TV. But now, having switched back on to these means of mass communication, it seems that news and current-affairs shows have been taken over by a horde of lexical barbarians whose mission seems to be to assault my ears with a barrage of grammatical and stylistic solecisms.
Read the column here.
Comments
"That the roots of the words nucula and nucleus are substantially the same cannot, however, be used as an excuse by journalists who confuse one with the other. That President George W. Bush has exercised the nucula option is well known,"
Don't forget Jimmy Carter. Let's keep this equally bipartisan - although I know you'd rather not. (Political opinion for the sake of it in science articles is just in bad taste.)
Posted by: Tony Picking | April 24, 2006 06:52 PM
A funny article, if rather verbose (deliberately so, I am sure). I do wonder if the writer understands the difference between spoken and written language, however, or the nature of language use itself.
Jonathon Swift and Prince Charles would no doubt agree - many people have this notion of a time when the language was 'better' and people didn't 'abuse' it so much. Such people have been complaining for hundreds of years.
Sigh.It's not just the computer-game kids who lack education, it seems.
Posted by: Paul | April 25, 2006 01:40 AM
I agree with Mr. Nicola Jones.I also feel that our children seem to speak a language of their own! As an example: "anyways" intstead of "anyway".Maybe the kids are influenced by popular TV serials, where the characters are saying "anyways" regularly.
[Editor's note: thanks for your post. I'd love to take credit for this column but you'll see it was written by our columnist Henry Gee - I just posted the blog entry. Thanks!]
Posted by: Shrikant Purandare | April 25, 2006 06:26 AM
A message from the writer, Henry Gee:
To Tony Picking -- thanks for pointing out the nucula excesses of former US President Jimmy Carter. The omission had nothing to do with my political leanings, I assure you. My colleagues at Nature know that my politics are as right-wing as those of any taxi driver or plumber, if not necessarily of journalists. But you'd never catch former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saying 'nucula' (now *there's* a hostage to fortune). And to Paul: verbose? Yes, deliberately. Why call a spade a spade, when you can call it a vertically operated fossorial lever?
Posted by: Henry Gee | April 25, 2006 02:15 PM
Entertaining article, but in pointing out that nuclear and nucula have the same route, he undermines his own argument. The flux between these two variants of the same word has been going on since the origin of the words themselves. And that should not be surprising; words are fluid entities. Every word has a stable component that makes it recognizable (say, the sounds /n/ /u/ /k/ /l/ and /r/), but outside of that core component, or kern if you will, is a malleability that varies from region to region, class to class, speaker to speaker. If it weren't for that, there would be no difference between nuclear and nucula (or for that matter, nut) in the first place. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for that variability, we'd still be speaking Sanskrit or somesuch.
Disclaimer: Defensible language or not, Bush is still an arse.
Posted by: Nathan McKnight | April 25, 2006 02:19 PM
News reporters hereabouts can't seem to pronounce "rural" and just say "rule" instead. There's one newscaster I refuse to listen to due to his use of the article "a." He pronounces it as one would pronounce the letter "A." A number of readers at my church do the same thing. I cringe. Then there's the use of the word "guys" which I've even heard national newscasters use when speaking to a group of people, some of whom are women. I tip waiters and waitresses better when they refrain from referring to my wife and me as "guys."
Posted by: Joe Todero | April 26, 2006 01:35 PM
To all knights of linguistic stability:
There is an error that is arguably the most commonly made among the well educated, notwithstanding scientists and science writers. This error involves sentence constructions using "due to," which should be accompanied by an antecedent form of the verb "to be." The only exceptions are sentences in which the verb can be omitted while still retaining the meaning of the sentence.
Correct examples: The war started as a result of misdirection, but most of the casualties were due to miscalculation.
His decision seemed due to confusion rather than purpose.
Incorrect example: Due to the high price of fuel, we will not take a vacation this year.
"Due to" does not mean "because of" or "as a result of, it means "caused by."
Looking over this blog, it seems that even the critics are prone to annoying errors.
Posted by: Randall Reiserer | May 4, 2006 08:49 PM
"I did know you had dandruff"
"I don't"
the correct answer: "I haven't"
"Alternate theory"
should be
"Alternative theory"
or
"Play with alternate hands"
Posted by: Fred Potter | May 4, 2006 09:02 PM
Some more:
"Different from" has now become "different to" and even "different than". This last one was first said by the Mother elephant in the film, "Jungle Book". I've even heard "same than". It has to be "from" because of "A differs from B"
Posted by: Fred Potter | May 7, 2006 11:20 PM