E Plural-us Unum

Chris Matthews has finally shined a light on why politicians of all stripes are so insufferable — all they do is talk about themselves! Who wants to spend time with someone like that? Granted, considering that the politician is selling self-as-product, a certain amount of self-reference is necessary. But the more election coverage to which I subject myself, the more I feel like I'm watching Marcia Brady run a brush through her hair 100 times before crawling between perfumed sheets.

Let's take a look at Hillary Clinton's perhaps best-known speech, "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child". The word "I" appears 13 times in the first 15 sentences ("thank you thank you thank you's" excluded).

Now let's contrast that against Barack Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, where in just as many sentences he uses the word "I" zero times. And — here's the kicker — it's his life story he's talking about! There's another word that tends to pop up in Obama's speeches that Clinton doesn't seem to know much about: We. Regardless of whether there are any substantive policy differences between the two — and I'm not convinced that there are — Obama seems to be selling people themselves; the notion that we are capable of taking meaningful political action, not merely capable of selecting some other person-product to do it for us.

There's another politician who liked that "we" word a lot, and the day he became president he said, " We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution." Not "I will carry on the spirit the revolution" but "we are the revolution together." This is not to say that Barack Obama is any John F. Kennedy, but at least he can recognize a product worth peddling.

I wish more politicians would take a page out of that book. If I wanted to hear people talk about themselves ad nauseum, I'd let my teenage students hang out in my classroom at lunch.

Lost in Translation

The English language, while home to nifty words such as nifty, seems to be a bit clunky more often than not. Like its speakers, it is unorthodox and of myriad descent; at times beautiful (see "cellar door") and at times confounding (Who? Whom? Hoo?). While I'm rather fond of the English language, I admit that there are ideas and phrases that seem to lose that certain... je ne sais quoi when they enter through its New World portal. A few examples...

Before: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." — French General Marshal Pierre Bosquet
After: "It is magnificent, but it is not war."

Before: "Veo en tu vida todo lo viviente." — Spanish Poet Pablo Neruda
After: I see in your life all that which is alive.

Before: Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit. — Latin phrase
After: He has left, absconded, escaped and disappeared.

And finally, a particularly illustrative transformation:

Before: Esprit de l'escalier. — French phrase
After: A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late. (In effect, the wit of the stairs.)

Then again, it goes the other way too. In Star Wars III, the subtitles for Darth Vader's dying "Nooooo!!!" become "Do not want!!!" in the Chinese version**, which while in possession of that certain... je ne sais quoi seems like it would be a bit of a deathbed mouthful.

** Props to Lauren for that delightful piece of cultural trivia!

Nails, Meet Chalkboard

The only thing better than an all-day training workshop is an all-day training workshop hosted by someone who likes to use words that aren't. I feel quite comfortable asserting that motivational speakers and their ilk are culpable for some of the most irreverent massacring of the English language since the colonists decided to start calling their knickers underwear. We can thank these would-be wordsmiths for contributions including deliverable as a noun and synergy as, well, a word.

Perhaps you or someone you love is a fan of this sort of guerilla linguistics. If so, I pose a question to you: What in the world is the difference between competence and competency? As near as I can tell they're synonymous, rendering competency unnecessarily redundant, but what the hell do I know? So like any committed researcher, I decided to ask Google.

According to WordNet, competence is defined as "the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually." Conversely, competency is defined as, well, "the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually."

Huh. Well, whatever - that's not a real dictionary anyway. Surely a more reliable source will clear things right up.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, competence is "the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified; ability." Per Merriam-Webster, it's "the quality or state of being functionally adequate." As for competency? Why, how odd! Each dictionary refers back to its entry for competence.

I guess competence just doesn't sound as... refined? Sophisticated? Word-like? Perhaps I judge too harshly. Maybe if I were getting paid the money that these people make for the swill they shovel, I'd feel compelled to engage in these sorts of parlance parlor tricks too.

Or, you know, not.

I move that people who use "words" like competency spend less time figuring out how to add y onto the ends of perfectly good words and more time figuring out why I have to spend two eight-hour days listening to two hours worth of actual information.

An Article about Articles

Apparently the word "the" is out of vogue in some places - and by some places I mean San Francisco, and by out of vogue I mean not used in reference to freeways. A friend of mine visited recently, and when I mentioned that we would be taking "the 5" he said that he'd forgotten we do that down here... that being putting "the" before the freeway number. Rather than getting on "the 5" up in the land of really big bridges I guess they just get on "5."

I can't even type it out without feeling weird.

So is this "the" business just a southern California thing? Do you people articulate your articles when ambulating? Is this where The The got their name???

Please to be disambiguating now.