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77. Adverbially Farewell

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yol 5Your Own Language, 5: Adverbially Farewell

I am here to present a eulogy to an old and treasured friend, the suffix -ly.

As adversity separates the men from the boys, the suffix -ly separates the adverbs from the adjectives. At least, it used to.

As a matter of full disclosure, I am not a linguist. I am fascinated by languages, but I haven’t taken the time to learn them. I once spoke two semesters worth of Hindi and I can still embarrass myself in German, but my studies have mostly been as an onlooker. I have read several dozen books purporting to explain linguistics, but books by real linguists make tensor calculus look easy.

Still, I can expound on the really low level stuff.

Two factors are at work in language, position and word endings. Latin was not positional. Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) could be stated in any word order without losing meaning because the form of each word defines its function.

English can be positional. If we say the boy ate the dog, we assume it was a hot dog because word order tells us who was the eater and who was the eaten. If we said the flic ate the flak, we don’t need a dictionary to know who did the eating; word order tells us.

But I also said eater and eaten. These are constructions which depend on endings, not word order. English swings both ways. If I say the eater ate the eaten, we all say, “So what?” But if I say the eaten ate the eater, I am speaking nonsense. Or maybe I meant that the one who is usually the eaten ate the one who is usually the eater, in which case we know we have witnessed an ironic reversal of circumstances.

It can be complicated, but let’s keep it simple. Adverbs typically end in -ly; adjectives don’t. (Ugly is the exception).

Here are three quick nonsense examples, quickly presented. (Okay, four.)

  • “The rapid river flowed rapidly through the canyon.”
  • “The beautiful sunset reflected beautifully off the cathedral.”
  • “The angry citizen spoke angrily to his Congressman.”

Once upon a time and place, say Oklahoma in 1962, teachers taught this distinction and expected student to know it. Even then, however, only word nerds like me continued to make the distinction after the ink had dried on the final exam.

Apparently anchormen never got the word. Ad men say whatever they want, truth and grammar notwithstanding, so they don’t count.

In 2016, if I hear someone making the distinction between adjective and adverb, my ears perk up, it is so unexpected.

I think it is fair to say that Steve Jobs drove the final nail in the coffin. When he urged us all to “Think different”, he made it official that even smart guys don’t need grammar. Now anyone who puts up a sign reading “Shop local” can say, “If it is good enough for Jobs . . .“

Okay, true confession. This isn’t actually the rant it appears to be. I will continue to fight the battle of the adverb personally, but the war is over, and I know it.

Actually, it probably doesn’t matter. I know what Jobs means from context and word order. Losing the -ly ending probably won’t make any difference in the English language. It is just one of the natural ongoing changes that occur in all languages.

Once, in post 53, I said that, as users of the English language facing change, we have only one obligation. If the change is stupid, don’t use it. The loss of -ly isn’t stupid. It just hurts my ears.

Prince of Exile, 6

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“Are you my fate?” the ruffian asked, as he scooped up the ebony casket with a sneer.”

“I am not,” I said, “but I assure you most solemnly that your fate is at hand.”

His fist closed tighter about the alabaster casket and he turned toward the door.

The Prince of Exile stood before him.

For a moment, I thought he would lay the casket aside. For another moment, I thought he would try to bluster or to conceal his intentions, but the look on the Prince’s face put him to shame.

He drew his sword, and the Prince copied his action, two smooth swinging arcs of steel coming up bright and ready from their sheaths, two smoothly functioning warrior’s bodies coming into tension, poised to guard or strike. The ruffian lowered his blade and moved forward on cat feet, pressing the point toward the Prince; not lunging, but testing his resolve. The Prince in turn lowered his blade fractionally and gave no ground. Their points touched at long reach, and the Prince said, “You can still withdraw. Set aside the casket and you may leave unharmed.”

“How often does a man like me see a treasure like this for the taking? I will not give it up.”

There was a sound like wind. I knew that sound.

“Is it a finer treasure,” the Prince asked softly, “than sunshine after a rain, or the warmth of a bedmate at day’s end? Is it a treasure you would die for?”

T’slalas had thought there was innocence in the Prince’s face; now this ruffian thought he saw weakness there. He laughed coarsely and said, “Die for it? I might kill for it.”

The sound grew louder, like the moaning of an animal in pain. It brought uneasiness to the ruffian’s face, and he cast his eyes around, seeking its source.

The sword in the Prince’s hand began to quiver and twitch with a life of its own. It shied away from contact with the ruffian’s blade, and as the Prince brought it back into line, it sobbed.

The ruffian began to look strained about the eyes, but he had gone too far to back away.

Nothing kills more surely than pride.

Now the Prince had lost all aspect of softness. His face had hardened, and there was neither jest nor yielding in him.  “It is a strange, unhungry sword,” he said. “It hates me when I compel it to its duty.”

The ruffian swallowed hard, and would have spoken, but the Prince was done with talking. “You have made your choice,” he snapped, “now back it up, or go away to become a different man than you have ever been. Do as you will, but do it now!”

The swords drew light from the dying fire, and gave back the reflection of blood. The ruffian dropped his point fractionally, as if in indecision, then thrust. The Prince turned the blade and wrote a penstroke across the ruffian’s face from brow to cheek, cutting to the bone. He screamed and leaped backward, one eye split and useless, the other staring at death. The Prince paused, his eyes empty. He said, “The choice was yours.” Then he moved again, snake quick, and skewered the ruffian with such force that the blade went through him and into the door frame. The dying man quivered for a heartbeat then went limp and hung from the sword like an empty coat nailed to the wall. more tomorrow

Prince of Exile, 5

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Time passed. The bones of the night were chewed down by T’slalas’ mellow, ceaseless voice until all our company but Greyleaf, T’slalas, and the Prince had drifted off to their beds. I had moved away from the three of them to take the last warmth from the dying fire. At first the ruffian across the way had drunk ale to kill the time, and I had hoped that he would fall into drunkenness and forget the casket. When he pushed his mug aside and sat back in sullen patience, I knew that he was lost.

Greyleaf saw it too, but it merely amused her. Then, late in the night, there came a stifled noise and everyone in the room jerked into sudden watchfulness – followed by embarrassment as we all realized that it had been Tian’s squeal of pleasure, somewhere within the inn where she had disappeared with Satyr an hour before.

In that moment I caught Greyleaf’s eye and saw a tenderness there which I had not known she possessed. She rose suddenly and glided smoothly over to the ruffian.

She reached out her hand, placed long fingers beneath his chin, and tilted his face up to gaze directly into hers. Her voice was silken as she spoke.

“There is a river,” she said, “that flows over smooth rocks, swift and shallow. In the hottest summer it is cool and refreshing. It lies south from here; you could reach it in a week. In the spring, young women from the nearby villages come to wash out the clothing that has grown musty over the long winter. For two days they scamper naked through the water, playing at washing their clothes, and during all that time, the young men of the villages stay hidden in the trees above the river watching. Of course the girls know that they are there, but they never let on, never cover themselves, or show the slightest modesty. That would spoil the game.”

The ruffian shook his head as if to clear it of the spell she was weaving with her words. “What is that to me?” he demanded.

“Remember that stream, and those young women if you are tempted to sell your life cheaply,” Greyleaf replied. “Remember how good life is.”

“Will you go to that river with me?” he asked, mistaking her. Then he recoiled as all compassion went out of her face, and she spelled out the icy depths of her soul by the tightening of her eyes and the narrowing of her brow. She swept past him into the back of the inn, abandoning him to his fate.

I knew that she would not think of him again.

“Where does a man go to relieve himself?” T’slalas asked, ignoring the by-play.

“Come. I’ll join you,” the Prince replied.

They followed Greyleaf. The ruffian watched them go; he gazed at the dark doorway out which they had disappeared, drummed the table top with his fingers, picked up his sheathed sword and put it on the table top, slid it back into his lap. Finally he rose and belted on the sword, then turned with badly feigned casualness and reached out for the casket of ebony and bone.

He stopped dead when he saw me sitting by the fire, watching him in silence. Greyleaf has so shaken him that he had forgotten all about me. His eyes traveled over me as he estimated my skills. Then he scooped up the casket with a sneer and said, “Stop me if you can.”

“The lady who spoke to you,” I said, “is called Greyleaf. I advise you to heed her warning.”

“Are you my fate?” he asked, half sneering, half in genuine curiosity. more tomorrow

76. What is Language?

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yol 4Your Own Language, 4: What is Language

The last thing I said in post 73 was that if you want to write, you have to create your own version of English. That seems insane on the face of it. Create your own version of English? Why not just use the real thing?

Because there is no such thing as the real thing. I pity the teachers who have to teach “proper” English because that beast does not exist in the wild, and attempts to create it in the laboratory have all failed.

Language, like history, is a product of the winners. You people in New England; why do you think you don’t eat grits, and say ain’t and y’all? It is entirely because Pickett’s charge failed at the Battle of Gettysburg.

No one does linguistic imperialism as well as the English. I didn’t say British. Great Britain consists of England and three other historic countries which were conquered and welded onto England against their will, and whose languages were crushed by the conquerors.

America gained its independence late in this process. English was already the dominant language and its dialects were dispersed throughout America to morph into the dialects we still have. (see post 12) Conquered languages like Gaelic and Scots survived in the backcountry of Britain to see a resurgence in the last fifty years, but died quickly in America.

After American independence, the languages of the two countries diverged until George Bernard Shaw was able to quip, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” Part of the divergence was due to American adoption of Amerindian, African, and Spanish vocabulary, part was natural drift, and part of it was the rise of industrialism in both countries before rapid international communication was common. To put it another way, American cars have hoods and trunks instead of bonnets and boots because cars were invented after 1776 and before the internet.

The French have a government agency designed to regulate proper French. It doesn’t work. Ordinary Frenchmen disregard it, but the bureaucrats still try. Britain attempts to unify and codify it’s many dialects and languages through its public schools. At many times in Britain’s history, in-school use of dialects that deviated from governmentally supported norms was severely punished.

That wouldn’t work in America. If a teacher from London had had the misfortune of landing in the Oklahoma of my childhood, the local farmers would have taken him aside to say, “You’re from England, why the Hell can’t you speak English.” This line would have been delivered in an Okie accent that the Londoner probably would not have understood.

All of this leads to the question, “Who is in charge of our language?”, but that requires a post of its own, next Tuesday, after we attend a funeral on Monday.

Prince of Exile, 4

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Satyr joined us in the yard before the inn. He had hidden the form and face he showed to his companions behind a subtle web of illusion that would fool the touch as well as the eye. Now his eyes and hair were coal black; his face was less narrow and coldly beautiful. His arms and legs, no longer clad in bristly hair, were sleek and firm and he wore a medallion of gold against the pure white of his shirt. He had traded hooves for booted feet.

The inn was very much like the one I had known of old. The ceiling was perhaps two years thicker with soot and the floor was perhaps somewhat cleaner. The rough plank tables were the same and old Harrow the innkeeper was a timeless, jovial imp. The Prince bowed to him, flustering him entirely, and the old man bustled about setting tables together with the aid of his hulking, towheaded son. The thief stayed close to the Prince, as if he were a favored member of our company. I thought he never would be.

Tian came out to take our orders and I remembered her, though she had not yet come to her womanhood when I saw her last. Now she had. Satyr and I exchanged glances and I knew that her blooming would not go unappreciated, or unsampled.

The Prince settled himself into the embrace of a woven ash chair that had been brought from an inner room for him.  The rest of us sat on benches. The Prince loosened his sash and hung it across the back of his chair, along with his cloak, and placed on the table a small casket that had been bound up in the sash. It was of gold and onyx, no longer than the breadth of his palm, but of exquisite workmanship. The catch was cast in the shape of a tiny boar’s head and it stood on tiny gold porcine hooves.

Harrow and Tian brought food. As we ate, we were watched by those who shared the common room. One in particular caught my eye; a bearded ruffian in shabby tunic and hose. He kept a sword in sheath leaning close at hand as he drank in silence, a little way withdrawn from the farmers and merchants who filled the inn. His entire being was concentrated on the casket the Prince had set out so carelessly.

I had thought that it was bait for the bland thief, but the Prince’s ways are beyond my understanding. It may have been for this ruffian that we had returned to Gleian Ellerick.

The thief we had met on the road called himself T’slalas. His voice was pleasantly modulated; it was a joy to hear him speak even though I didn’t believe a word he said. Tian wandered in and drew up a stool to listen and steal sly glances at Satyr. The Prince seemed to give his full attention to T’slalas, but he was quite aware of the ruffian across the room.

The olivewood casket with feet of brass stood mute in the middle of the table and seemed forgotten, but the ruffian’s eyes never left it. There was familiarity and inevitability in it all. more tomorrow

75. Parts of Speech, Oh, No!

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yol 3The next posts are tagged teaching, as well as the usual SF, fantasy and writing. I taught school for twenty-seven years, mostly science, along with a little of everything else, including reading and writing. So pardon me while I rant a little.

My idea of Hell is being an English teacher, working all day with textbooks written by Satan’s emissaries, then going home and spending all night correcting horrible writing. My idea of an angel is someone who does that out of duty, or love of writing, or love of children.

The problem with English textbooks is that they are written by people who can’t write. Or rather, have only written for other English teachers, who learned their trade by writing for other English teachers, who learned their trade . . .

If textbook writers had to sell their wares at Barnes and Noble, they would starve. But people don’t buy textbooks, bureaucrats do.

Let’s start with the most basic lie textbooks tell.

Your Own Language, 3: Parts of Speech, Oh, No!

The next time someone asks you if (insert word of your choice) is a noun, the correct answer is:

  • Yes
  • No
  • Sometimes, but not always
  • It all depends.

That seems evasive, but it is actually the correct answer.

Parts of speech exist and are critically important in understanding and mastering English, but they are not things, they are functions. I am tempted to say verbs not nouns, but partially accurate analogies confuse more than they help.

Wait! I saw you reaching for that off switch.

Of course you are an adult, and far from grammar school (an interesting concept, “grammar school”) but some of you are teachers and most of you are parents, or will be. I want to show you a fallacy. It won’t take long.

Parts of speech morph. Verbs turn into nouns, which turn into verbs again, sometimes with odd results. When I was a boy, if a salesman had said he had to service his customers, he would have been making an off-color sexual reference. Service meant sex, in absence of emotion; bulls serviced cows. Or it meant the carrying out of a mechanical act. The serviceman (noun) at the service (adjective) station serviced (verb) your car.

A salesman served (verb) his customers, and that act was the service (noun) he provided for them. Over my lifetime I have seen the noun service become a verb again with results that still sound wrong to my ear.

Nail. It is a word, but it is not a part of speech. It can act as a part of speech, that is, it can take on a function, but which function it takes on can’t be guessed by seeing the word in isolation.

“He hung his shirt on a nail.” Clearly nail is a noun here because of its function in a sentence.

“Nail that board back up on the fence where the dog knocked it down.” Clearly nail is a verb here because of its function.

“His new nail gun increased his productivity.” Here nail is an adjective.

Most of the time, as children in school, or as adults learning a foreign language, we get our parts of speech as lists to be memorized in isolation. If a child is told to memorize a list of nouns – bat, ball, dog, horse, house – we have already begun a lifelong pattern of generating ignorance. The brightest students will learn in spite of the handicaps thrown in their way; the rest will decide they are too stupid to learn. And all because we taught them things that aren’t true.

Prince of Exile, 3

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Satyr noticed him first and gestured. Base line human, I would have said. The horse was more interesting than the rider, though its only visible modifications were a mane and tail that shifted colors from blue to white to yellow to red, like the last flames that flicker about the embers of a dying fire.

I decided that the horse was chosen to divert attention from the rider, although it was hardly necessary. You’ve never seen a more nondescript Everyman. Even now, I can’t recall the color of his hair or eyes.

He halted in the road before us, doffed his hat – bland gray, of course – and addressed himself to the Prince, saying, “Felicitations. Are you en route to Gleian Ellerick?”

The Prince smiled back and said, “We are. And yourself?”

“The same.”

“Then join us. Here, ride beside me.”

Satyr raised one hair-winged eyebrow at me and I shrugged. Nondescript to the point of invisibility – a thief, no doubt. Perhaps a warning was in order, but he had chosen his profession.

Satyr prodded his dark mount and the creature bounded away. It could not keep the same pace as a horse and they were relieved when it raced ahead. The thief remained, speaking ingratiatingly to the Prince.

*****

What a crew we were! Satyr I will not describe for you.  His name tells you how we saw him, but I could never be sure that it was not merely a mediant shape he chose; a half-demon sufficiently fearsome that it would keep us from pressing him for sight of the greater horror within.

Rollan, Arhe, and Darian were human to the eye and hid the inhumanities of their souls. Or maybe they were merely human – but if so, why were they among us? Myrcryr wore a human body, but his eyes gave him away, and Greyleaf was a cold wind that blew through my soul.

*****

Greyleaf nudged her horse up to walk beside mine, and I wondered if that last, vagrant thought had summoned her. I would never know. She sat straight in the high saddle and her eyes were on the Prince and his new companion. Her skin was tight against the bones of her face. Her age was indeterminate. Her hair was brown, swept back from her high forehead and held there with a band of russet silk that passed behind her ears. Her tunic was of faded saffron, and her fringed skirt was of deerskin. Her eyes were gray, and I had learned early not to look into them. She had been with the Prince nearly as long as I had.

I did not dislike her, but I feared her.

“Another thief,” she observed.

“Another fool,” I agreed.

She looked sideways at me and smiled. Her eyes asked silently when I had become wise enough to judge another man’s foolishness. She could crush a man with that smile.

We rode on in weary silence toward the valley and toward an inn I hoped would be at least somewhat congruent with my memories. more tomorrow

74. Writing vs. Storytelling

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yol 2Your Own Language, 2: Writing vs. Storytelling

Here is a confession. I’ve never read Harry Potter. I’ve tried, but I could never get through the first book; the writing was too dull for me. It would have been fine for a romance, or a modern slice-of-life, or even a western, but fantasies need to sing. At least in my universe.

A Potterfanatic friend of mine tells me that the movies follow the books extremely well, and I find the movies superb. Whatever I think of Rowling’s writing style, she is a first-class storyteller.

We have to judge Homer entirely on his storytelling, since no one has ever heard his original delivery.

Shakespeare is noted for both language and storytelling, and I don’t dispute it. But just between us, if you took one of his comedies with its misunderstandings and cross-dressing disguises, and stripped it of its beautiful language, wouldn’t it look at home on I Love Lucy?

Pavane, by Keith Roberts, is one of my favorites for beauty of writing. If you read the reviews on Goodreads, you will find a strong division between those who praise the beauty of his writing and those who find him confusing, disorganized, and sometimes lacking in believability. I can’t buy that, because his writing trumps any weaknesses in storytelling – for me.

In my own writing, if I had to choose I would take beauty of writing over storytelling. But we don’t choose; we strive for both.

Of course, it’s all artificial. Analysis always is, but analysis is a useful tool if you don’t let it get in the way of creativity. Critics use analysis to tell us how we screwed up, and rarely, what we did right. We use analysis to try to catch our faults before they can.

What about you? This series of posts are meant for would-be writers, not casual onlookers. Which side of the writing vs. storytelling dichotomy do you come down on?

Try this experiment. Choose a favorite novel, then look it up in Goodreads and read at least thirty reviews. You might want to beware of the respondents who are young readers just getting their wings, but you will probably find most of them to be mature and intelligent. It can be eye opening to see how many different ways readers react to the same work.

There are masterpieces that everybody loves and dogs that can’t find a friend, but I find the mid-rated books most instructive. They tend to have their advocates and detractors arrayed around the notion of beauty of writing vs. strong storytelling. I can usually see both viewpoints even when they are trouncing one of my favorites. Or praising something I find unreadable.

Here is another experiment. Try it if you dare. Take the twenty books you most love, the ones which have changed your life. Look them up in Goodreads. If everybody hates what you most love, you may not be destined to be the next Stephen King.

Or not; you never know.

Prince of Exile, 2

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1.

In a far country, the King lay dying.

News had spread throughout the region. For a long time he had grown steadily weaker. Even the peasants in the fields and shopkeepers in the town below Castle Hill knew that the end was near.

As the King lingered on the edge of death, the courtiers, servants, nieces and nephews who normally surrounded him were all shut out by Croayl, the priest.  Croayl and the King had spent their lives together, yet no two men were more different. The King was a man of passions, fiercely held and freely stated. Croayl was all inward. Throughout his lifetime, the King’s court had been open; now at the end of his life, Croayl closed off access to him. It was an ill omen.

2.

We came down out of the hills in the afternoon. The promise of rain had not been fulfilled and a west wind was driving the clouds away before it. Boiling over our heads, they changed from gray to white as the sunlight increased. The hills around us were covered with low, brown grasses. Higher up, hidden by the convolutions of the foothills, snow had begun falling on the steeper slopes, sifting down among the pines, gentle, quiet, and deadly.

I gave thanks to be out of it. The passes we had crossed would be closed for days, and that too was a comfort, for we had been pursued.

It was often that way in the service of the Prince of Exile.

We were weary of riding, all but the Prince, as we made our way downslope in a silent file. There were seven of us in all. People are always joining the Prince’s retinue, following a while for reasons of their own, then wandering off to find their own destiny. But it seemed to me that in the last few years, more had come than had left, and I was uncomfortable traveling with so many.

Now we were making our way down out of the mountains toward the warmth of the valley and, hopefully, toward the comforts of an inn I knew. I could have asked the Prince if this was indeed Gleian Ellerick, but he has a disconcerting way of turning even a simple question into an exercise in metaphysics. It did not matter to me what its ontological status was, as long as my bed was warm.

The Prince was willing to let me remain incurious as long as I did not ask questions that he could misconstrue as philosophical. It was one of the reasons I still followed him after all these years.

How many years? Sorry, that’s one of those questions. You’ll understand what I mean as we move along. more tomorrow

73. Your Own Language

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    YOL 1 Welcome to 2016. I have been dense-packing this website with nine posts per week since mid-2015, in support of the upcoming release of Cyan, the novel which signals my return from the graveyard of forgotten writers.
     Science fiction readers tend to be closet or would-be writers themselves. With that in mind, the next eight posts in A Writing Life will be an unabashed how-to series.

Your Own Language
first post of 8

I have spent the last fifty-five years perfecting the ability to write in a dead language – grammatical English.

Before you close me out without reading further, let me assure you that I fight back against English grammar as much as anyone else who deals with it daily. The grammar books of my childhood and youth were of little use in learning to write well; the ones I saw during my years as a teacher were positively harmful. Most of what they taught needed to be unlearned to avoid becoming a mental cripple.

I have come to these two conclusions about English.

  • Those who slavishly follow grammatical rules end up sounding like pretentious fools.
  • Those who ignore grammatical rules end up sounding like ignorant fools.

As Kirk said to Spock, the truth lies somewhere in between.

I grew up on a farm outside a tiny town in Oklahoma. The version of English my people spoke did not follow Strunk and White, but it still had rules. You would never say to a friend, “Y’all come over after work.” Only ignorant Northerners said that when mocking us. You would say, “Come over after work,” or, “Would you like to come over after work.” In the South, you is second person singular and y’all (you all) is second person plural, a grammatical nicety far superior to the way standard English collapses singular and plural into a single word.

It wasn’t standard grammar, but it was grammar nonetheless, and if you didn’t follow the rule, you looked ignorant.

If I had planned to be a farmer, I would simply have talked like everybody around me. It is a valid dialect, capable of great expressiveness. But I had decided to go to college to become a scientist, so I had to master standard English.

Try that is a tiny town in Oklahoma in the fifties. I dare you.

Fifty-some years, two master’s theses, and many novels later, I’m still working at it. Here are some of the things I’ve learned along the way.

  • There is no such thing as Standard English.
  • What I took for Standard English and spent a lifetime mastering was only a snapshot of a continuously changing scene.
  • The language I made my own, has largely disappeared.
  • What typically passes for English today is as chaotic as a bowl of alphabet soup, but . . .
  • If you choose a typical passage written in 1950, or 1900, or 1850, or 1800 it will be equally chaotic.
  • Chaotic or not, readers read and understand the writing of their own era. And pay for it, if it’s interesting or exciting.
  • Generally speaking, so-so writers make more money than really wonderful writers, if they are also excellent storytellers.
  • You have to create your own version of English.