"Yo yo-yo"

     One of the problems with the English language is that it does not have a gender neutral pronoun. Over the years, many have tried to come up with something to use instead of the standard him or her. Back in the 1880s, lawyer Charles Converse proposed "thon", a mix of the words "that" and "one". Other words put forward to fill the gap have been "nee", "heesh", "huh". While none of these ever caught on, a new contender for the gender neutral crown has come from some children in Baltimore. These children have begun using the word "yo" in the place of "he" or "she" to fill the gender neutral gap.

      Margaret Troyer, a former teacher, published a paper showing that "yo" was replacing "he" and "she" in every day usage for many of her students. Troyer first noticed the change while she was teaching children in a Baltimore-area middle school. From the NPR article on the story:

"Some examples would be 'yo wearing a jacket,' " Troyer says, referring to her research. "Another example from the paper is, 'Yo threw a thumbtack at me,' which is a typical middle school example."
So Troyer began to study her students. She gave them blank cartoons and asked them to fill in the captions — many of the cartoon characters were androgynous.
Troyer found the kids used "yo" instead of "he" or "she" when they didn't know the gender of the character. But they also used "yo" as a substitute even when they did know the gender.
"They said things like, 'Yo put his foot on the desk.' So it was clear from this that they knew it was a male person, but they were just using 'yo' to refer to the person," says Troyer. "And then in other sentences they would use 'yo' to refer to a female as well."

     While the adoption of a new gender neutral pronoun is unusual, Christine Mallinson, a sociolinguist at the University of Maryland, isn't quite sure if it will stick around. "It'll be interesting to see whether they keep that usage as they become adults. Do they keep that in the workplace? If that's the case, it might persist," says Mallinson. "But sometimes slang or linguistic innovations in middle or high school get dropped out as people become adult users of English."

     What do you think? Do you think "yo" is here to stay? Did you have any slang or made up words that you or your friends came up with in school that you don't use anymore? Let us know in the comments!





1. http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/25/178788893/yo-said-what
2. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8f/Us_yoyo_national_2a.jpg

Well, that's to the point

     The German language continues to amaze me with the words they can come up with. They seem to have a knack for combining sometimes complex or long ideas in to just one word, see my previous post about the German word Kummerspeck. Recently, I discovered another interesting German word whose meaning, unlike Kummerspeck, can be very easily deduced, even by a non German speaker.

     The English phrase "birth control pill" directly translates directly to the German word Antibabypille. It would seem that who ever came up with the word wanted to make sure there was no miscommunication about what you were being given.











1. http://en.bab.la/dictionary/german-english/antibabypille
2. http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/Antibabypille.html
3. http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bxr7p/til_the_german_word_for_birth_control_pill_is/
4. http://translate.google.com/#en/de/birth%20control%20pill
5. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibabypille

"Mother may I..."

     In modern English, most people phrase the request for permission to to have or do something by saying "Can I have...?" or "Can I do...?". While this is the generally accepted method, there are those who would say that it is incorrect. For them, the only way to correctly ask if you have permission for a certain action is to say, "May I...?". Which of these is correct?

     For many, from a strict grammatical point of view the correct way to ask if you have permission is to say "May I...". Technically, when you ask using the "Can" form, you are not asking for someone else's permission, but wither or not you have the ability to have a certain item or perform a particular action. For example, when you ask, "Can I go to the bathroom", what you are actually asking is if you have the ability to go to the bathroom, not if you have permission to go.

     However, as the language has evolved, it is becoming more and more accepted to use "Can I...?" in place or "May I...?". According to the Oxford Dictionaries website, you are fine in using "Can I...?" in normal everyday speech. However, if you wish to appear more formal or polite, the older "May I...?" should be used.




1. http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/can-or-may
2. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/can-versus-may2.aspx

   

Resistance is futile...

     

We have all experienced times when it seemed like the world was out to get us. We can't find our keys even though we know we put them on top of the dresser. The phone is ringing but has seemingly hidden itself in some nearby, but frustratingly inaccessible, pocket dimension. We are running late for work, and the stop light that we know stays red for far longer than needed, turns that hated shade of crimson and mocks us form it's high perch as it doesn't change, even though you are clearly the only car for miles around. Just recently, I discovered that some one came up with a word to describe this feeling. The feeling that, no matter what we do, the inanimate objects of the world are waging a hidden holy war against us, and our sanity, is called Resistentialism.

     Resistentialism is the term created by humorist Paul Jennings in 1948 by mixing the Latin word res (thing), the French word resister (to resist), and existentialism (a kind of philosophy). Although Jennings coined the term as part of his humorous retort against the philosophy of existentialism, the idea has been around for much longer. Charles Harrington Elster in his 2003 article gives several earlier examples of famous writers who, while not having the name for the phenomenon, clearly experienced the effects of of objects under the influence of Resistentialism:

     Resistentialism also has a long history in our literature. In his ''Ode (Inscribed to W. H. Channing)'' (1846), Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the resistentialist writing on the wall and proclaimed that ''Things are in the saddle,/And ride mankind.'' In his autobiography, published posthumously in 1924, Mark Twain relates an anecdote about a recalcitrant burglar alarm in his ornate mansion in Hartford. It ''led a gay and careless life, and had no principles,'' he says. ''We
quickly found out that it was fooling us and that it was buzzing its bloodcurdling alarm merely for its own amusement."...  

And in J.M. Barrie's ''Peter Pan'' (1911), Mr. Darling is fit to be tied over his ''little brute'' of a tie: ''This tie, it will not tie. . . . Oh yes, 20 times have I made it up round the bed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be excused!''

      The modern world is filled with all kinds of wonderful things, designed to make almost every aspect of our lives easier. And often, it is those very things that stress us out to high heaven when they inevitably go awry. It is in times such as those we can take a small bit of comfort in knowing that it's not just us as we repeat to ourselves the motto of Resistentialism,  Les choses sont contre nous" -- "Things are against us".




1. http://obsoleteword.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistentialism
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/magazine/21ONLANGUAGE.html
4. http://shirtoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/resistance-is-futile.jpg

Lost letters

    If a restaurant or some other establishment wants to add an older, quainter atmosphere to their establishment, the quickest and easiest method is to add "ye olde" to the front of their name. However, what does this phrase mean? In simple terms, "ye olde" is an older antiquated method of saying. "the old". While dropping the "e" off of "olde" over the years is an understandable shortening, how in the world did the "y" in "ye" come to mean the "th" sound? As it turns out, the Europeans are to blame.

     Well, the Europeans were not the problem really. Their languages, however, are what is to blame. Originally, English included a letter called the thorn, þ. This letter had its roots in the old runic alphabet, coming from the thurisaz rune.

Now, the rune/letter changed shape many times as it was passed down through the centuries. Going from a þ, which kept the same basic shape of the rune, the letter eventually ended up looking like Ƿ. Now all of this was fine and dandy up until the printing presses first came to England. As most of the European languages didn't contain the thorn, the English printers with a quandary, what were they going to do for the letter thorn?

     Fortunately, one bright printer, whose name is lost to history, came up with the solution. In the blackletter, or Gothic script that was popular at the time, the thorn looked very similar to the letter "y". Because of this, printers started simply printing "y" for thorn, and the use of the letter died out. Eventually, English speakers started using the two letters "t" and "h" placed side by side for the "th" sound instead of the "y", and "y", was given a sound of its own.

    As often happens, old things become new again and "ye" started to make a comeback as part of "ye olde" being added to the descriptions or names of things to give them an aged feel. However, there was a problem. Instead of pronouncing the "ye" as "the", most were pronouncing it as "ye". While the spelling had come back, it left the rules for how it was supposed to be pronounced behind. While it reality it doesn't matter if you pronounce it as "the" or "ye", at least you know the way it supposed to "be".







1. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/11/12/31017/737
2. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ye
3. http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2011/01/08/the-origin-of-ye-in-ye-olde-shoppe/
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%9A%A6
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde