A few stolen minutes out of your day to talk words and communication, because our daily lives are surrounded by the evolution and influence of words. Forget the grammar police. There is so much more to this conversation.
Episode #30 – Shakespeare’s English, Space Travel & the Latest in Words You Should Know
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Approximate transcript:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 30 of the Words You Should Know podcast.
It’s funny how when you tune your ear to it, talk about words and communication is just about everywhere. Football teams suffer because of lack of communication of the field; resumes are weakened by sloppy verbs choices; the messages sent back and forth on a favorite dating app can say so much, intentionally or otherwise; social media giants like Facebook are issuing new corporate guidelines on internal communications; practically every business is learning how to re-imagine team communications when employees are working from home.
Words. We can’t escape them, yet they shape our lives.
The Latest in Word, Language & Writing News
There’s one story that keeps popping back into the headlines, and since I caught in again earlier this month, I wanted to hear your reactions. This is serious stuff. Period. No, really, let’s talk about periods in text messages. Are they aggressive? Are they marks of dramatic seriousness? Are they just little dots of digital ink that the grammatically inclined add from writing muscle memory?
Some argue that positive responses like “sounds good,” “okay,” or “sure” followed by a period turn a simple agreement into a passive-aggressive response, and reporting is showing that this could easily be a generational divide.
What are your thoughts on this? Send me a response. I’d love to know.
And if we’re getting into the subtleties of language and technology, let’s shift from text messages to spoken communications, because a Japanese robotics company called Donut Robotics, yep, you heard that correctly, has recently released a language translator that isn’t just an app on your smartphone but built into a face mask. Did overcoming language barriers while social distancing just become easier? Fascinating. I know I’m following this innovation story.
Technology brings up so many communication quandaries, and I’m not just talking about improving your communications on your favorite video meeting software. Here’s the biggest question that caught me in communications news the past few weeks. Maybe you’re familiar with the evolution of the English language due to colonization over the past few centuries, where American English and Australian English, for example, have transformed over time to have their own particularities, though they both stem from the same British English origin. However, here’s the mind-blowing part: as conversations continue about space travel and a mission to Mars, the question has been posed whether those participants in a Mars mission or any other space mission of duration would create a language time-capsule of sorts, holding onto the language of the day from the month and year they left Earth, or whether this language could transform over time in new settings and circumstances. Thank you, Slate Magazine, for posing this idea.
Think of a regionalism that you might be familiar with, a word or phrase that anyone from one certain place might understand but that an outsider might be confused by. These things happen naturally when language slowly shifts inside of geographical pockets. Now what if that happens on an interplanetary level. This is out there, I know, but not beyond the bounds of what we’ve seen in language history. Will “awesomesauce” endure far after it’s fallen out of use on Earth? Okay, kidding with that one, but aren’t you captivated by this question?
English Language History & Trivia
So, with that as our basis, for today’s language history and trivia segment, let’s delve into little known pockets of language preservation. The English language has shifted and evolved in so many ways, and, of course, it continues to. Some say that until recently, the closest we had to the remnants of Shakespeare’s English were in the communities of the Appalachian mountains in the United States. These were, for a long time, places not greatly touched by American cultural change or outside influences. But Shakespearean English? Is this true? Or is it a romanticized linguistic story to connect American roots with the greatness of Shakespeare and even Chaucer?
Here’s what the research tells us:
According to some historians, some of the non-standard English used in Appalachia was once employed by the highest-ranking nobles of England and Scotland. For example, it wasn’t until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before many people were careful with their usages of “you were” versus “you was.” Much of this, of course, calls back to old singular and plural “you” forms. But in that transition period, “you was” existed. There’s a history to that phrasing. It’s not considered correct in our modern language, and yes, it might rub you the wrong way, but there was indeed a day when it was an acceptable form. Knowing this doesn’t make it standard or correct, but it does give this usage a bit more historical respect.
The same is true for phrasings like, “Bring them books over here,” to quote an example from one historian. In the 1500s, this was commonly used English. Whether the positioning of the object pulls from French usage or has other origins, I’m not sure, but it’s intriguing that there’s a difference between “uneducated” stereotypes and linguistic patterns that have been ingrained and undisturbed for centuries.
Here’s another old usage that remains in pockets of America, the word “reckon.” “I reckon,” meaning “I suppose” or “I consider,” was an expression common in Tudor England.
These language subtleties fascinate me, but it’s the usage of these linguistic roots in the American story that fascinates me even more. If you know anything about the Appalachian region, you know it isn’t and never has been a singular culture. There is room for debate in these boundaries, but the examined speech patterns of Appalachia are commonly ones found in the mountains from Northern Alabama to West Virginia.
There are decades of research, perhaps even a century of citations referring to “William Shakespeare’s English spoken in the mountains.” Which mountains, quite, has remained unclear, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s name has come up enough times to gain public attention too.
So what’s the truth of this legend? It seems to be true that some elements of centuries-old English lingered in certain pockets of America, specifically in the mountains of Appalachia. Naming these certain language patterns and lasting word choices as “Shakespeare’s English” might be a bit of a stretch, but then again the poetry of an Appalachian simile might just make the comparison easier to understand. We do love our tall tales, rooted in truth then somehow magnified, grown as big as Paul Bunyan and his massive blue ox named Babe. Maybe this is just a linguistic tall tale. Storytelling is indeed powerful.
Time, greater ease and necessity of travel, globalization, and ubiquitous media exposure have changed much of the Appalachian reality in recent decades, but this language history is worth paying attention to. Transformations are all around us, but so are memories of the past if we dare to look for them.
Language Challenge
Okay, Since we’re talking Appalachia today, here’s today’s language challenge: how do you spell the word “y’all”? Or maybe I should say where’s the apostrophe?
(laugh) I just felt some of you cringe when I said that. If this was you, I’ll toss a different question your way. If something is routine, nice and clear, or ordinary, would you call it “cut and dry” or “cut and dried”?
So many questions, so little time. The answers, as always are in my show notes.
Personal Update:
For my personal update, I’ll share some excitement. There’s a stage in the publishing process where the book is largely finished. Revisions, edits, and formatting have all come to a close. This is the point where the official “ARC” or Advance Reader Copy takes shape, so pretty much the final book without any review quotes on the back, where there’s room for tiny corrections if needed but hopefully all of that was smoothed over in the line-edit process.
And I have the ARC for my new book in my hands this week! This is that moment after so much work, after the team effort has been underway for a while, when it all becomes real. My ARC will go out to its first batch of early readers this week. What happens next, we’ll see!
As a follow-up to Get A Grip on Your Grammar: 250 Writing and Editing Reminders for the Curious or Confused (Career Press, 2017) and The Novel Editing Workbook: 105 Tricks & Tips for Revising Your Fiction Manuscript (Davro Press, 2020), this is my third book, The Family Story Workbook: 105 Prompts & Pointers for Writing Your History.
The power of harnessing your words and your story, and examining how you can use language to change the world, yep, everything I do is centered right there.
Where are you and your words going next?
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Words. Language. Communications. We’ve got this.