Ta-Nehisi: So is conversate a word?
Jesse Sheidlower: Of course it's a word, the question is, is it acceptable. There are a lot of things that are acceptable in some situations, and not acceptable in others. "Table" is generally acceptable, but "ass" or "fuck" might not be, In some cases they would. It's the same for "hopefully" or "irregardless." They're all words, but it behooves us to be serious and ask, is it acceptable in this context? If you're delivering the State of the Union address, maybe "fuck" is not acceptable. If you're having sex with your girlfriend, maybe it is acceptable.
TNC: If a word isn't in the OED, does that mean it isn't actually a word?
JS:
Our goal is to include things that are in widespread use. We don't care about things like whether they are acceptable, ungrammatical, or offensive. There are times when we have many, many words for the same concept. People say, "We don't need conversate, we have converse." Well then, we don't need hip because we have cool. We don't need illness because we have malady.
There are factors that we look at. They include how widespread something really is. How long has it been around? How broad is its use? A word that's in widespread use in many places is more likely to be included than a word that is only used in a small place but is widespread.
[MORE]
JS: There a lot of different things. People feel that there is a certain kind of language that's appropriate and a certain type that isn't appropriate. And these judgments are based on many things--some may make sense, some might not. People take these things very seriously. People are told things about the language in school that are demonstrably untrue, and they think anyone who doesn't follow along with those beliefs is stupid or wrong.
Let me give you an example, in terms of looking at things
historically. At the beginning of this conversation you pronounced the
word "ask" as "aks." This is something that people often
object to. People say it's the wrong pronunciation, and it's stupid.
But if you
look at the history of the English language, you can't tell if the
correct pronunciation is "aks" or "ask." The "aks" pronunciation goes back
1000 years. It's in Beowulf. It's in Chaucer.
What happened was both were in use. But at some point, the dialect in which the "ask" pronunciation was used became dominant. But both continued and have been in use since then. When you look at America, the "aks" pronunciation is widespread in Southern American English. African-Americans used this because they were in the South--it's not especially African-American, but its Southern.
Now, if you look at other Germanic languages, the "correct" pronunciation is, in fact, "ask"--but you can't tell that looking just at English and it ultimately doesn't matter. If I asked you to name the ordinal number between "second" and "fourth" you'd say, what?
TNC: Third.
JS: Right, third--but the old pronunciation is "thred," it comes from three. But if you were to say thred, you'd be considered a moron--even though it's "correct."
TNC: Will conversate be included after the next revision of the OED?JS: It's very likely to go in.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
TNC:
Thanks for that transcript. Absolutely made my day.
And see? This is what's great about English. We have no Académie Française to set or police its boundaries. It's rather like American culture that way; capacious, unruly, syncretic, and dynamic. It absorbs, it incorporates endlessly - and the result is a richer stew.
Great, great post! My whole life I wanted to own a complete set of the OED, and now that I have a little girl my goal is to have one for her library. That shits expensive though! Damn!
As for conversate, I overstand what you mean, and hope you will continue the dialog with those who might misunderestimate what you're getting at.
"Irregardless" sends shivers of annoyance under my skin with its absolute WRONGNESS. [See, I can live with most neologisms, just not THAT ONE.]
Damn, I want to become a big time blogger so I can use the OED editor as a bat to smack down people.
Bravo!
Fantastic post, I'm in tears over here. Jesse Sheidlower is one dude I'd want to have a beer with.
"As for conversate, I overstand what you mean, and hope you will continue the dialog with those who might misunderestimate what you're getting at."
Win.
I tell my son that there are no such things as good and bad words, but saying "fuck" around your mother will get you in a world of hurt.
Context is everything.
Now, conversate amongst yourselves.
Also, since spell check flagged conversate, I just added it to my dictionary. So there.
"irregardless" is as much nails on a chalkboard to me as the improper use of "decimate".
"The Cowboys decimated the Rams, 47-3"
Oh, really? Did the Cowboys line the Rams up and kill every tenth guy? Probably the second-string kicker and most of the punt-return team...but, hey, they're people too...
You should put that guy on your speed dial. I ain't tryna tell you what to do but next time ask him about screet and scrimps.
Always important to remember that dictionaries are descriptive, not proscriptive--that's why they're always adding words, but rarely remove them (except for reasons of space and such). We have a living language, after all.
along with ebonics, another thing to conversate about (while you're looking at TV) is the weird lingo spoken by conservatives, so-called "conbonics" and the recent subvariant, "neo-conbonics"
I've been an English lexicon, grammar snob for far too long. This changed my perspective TNC. And, it gave me banter to challenge those other grammatical nerds in my inner circle.
@bdbd
That should be "weird lingo spoken by people claiming to be conservatives".
I think that's what you meant :)
Jesse sounds like a prince among men. That aside, those are probably the worst two "words" in the English language (other than nougat). If words took on physical form irregardless and coversate would be burned with fire, doused with acid, sealed in a lead box, tied to a rock and dropped into the deepest part of the ocean.
Interesting about thred, If I aksed someone what comes between second and and fourth and they said thred, I'd think they either accidentally mispronounced or were from Canada.
"At the beginning of this conversation you pronounced the word "ask" as "aks.""
This made me laugh very hard for some reason. I would really like to hear Jesse break down the different ways to pronounce 'strength.'
Hold on,
So does this imply that "hopefully" is nonstandard?
Wow.
@Stacy
I've always been partial to "stremf". I was going to spell that "stremph", but I realized anyone pronouncing it that way wouldn't bother the additional effort to add another letter when one will do jus' fine.
TNC, if you haven't read it already, David Foster Wallace has a brilliant essay on dictionary wars in his book Consider the Lobster. It's called "Authority and American Usage" (which originally appeared in Harper's in a slightly different form), and it offers a huge dose of perspective for anyone interested in how words become "real."
The answer: not the way Pinocchio does. More like the way the Velveteen Rabbit does.
Check it out.
Oh, and Green, it's considered by some to be incorrect to use "hopefully" to introduce a sentence: "Hopefully, we'll be out of Iraq by 2050." It's all right to use it as an ordinary adverb: "He said his prayers hopefully."
I have a cousin that says dramatical, instead of dramatic... I cringe every time I hear her say it, just as I do when I hear conversate. Whether it's a word or not, it sounds totally uneducated.
Why go thru all the trouble to use it; converse has less syllables!
I'm kind of a grammar nazi myself (writing is part of what I do professionally) but not to any extreme. It never occurred to me that conversate would be anything but a word.
But I'm mainly posting to say : woah, you talked to Jesse.. author of "The F Word", one of my favorite books of all time. I learned from that book, and I was already quite conversant in the proper use of fuck in all sorts of verbal situations, presidential or not. I've always wondered what it said about me that my co-workers (at the time) bought me that book as a going away present...
I just want to take a moment to suggest that anyone who enjoyed this and doesn't keep an eye on Language Log might want to start. It gets fairly technical from time to time, but it's generally smart, well written, and more or less the perfect antidote to language snobbery. (Well, it was for me, anyway.)
AliHajiSheik:
I think you have to add supposably to your lead box before it's dropped in the ocean.
Arggggh! You "added" with the "bonus"! You hurt me with great hurtings**! (And yet I cannot stay away from you!)
Look, just because you have a word that exists doesn't mean tautologies are any less... taut!
**Do not try that one at home! I am a trained professional. ;-D (Don't mind me, I have to be this way or I'd be fired.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G52qSjQIV8s
Start at 5:48. You might find it a useful complement to your interview. Added to which, it's damn funny!
Here's my problem with "conversate". Ta-nehisi is the first well-educated person I've ever heard use the word, and best I can tell, you're using it to spite people. What bothers me about it is that the only people I've heard use it are people who are using it in a context where they're trying to sound professional, i.e. using "big words" and "formal" language, and since "conversate" is neither, it makes me cringe. I firmly believe that language is most effective when it's kept simple and direct.
But if an editor for the OED says "convesate" is a perfectly cromulent word, then so be it.
I've always wondered what it said about me that my co-workers (at the time) bought me that book as a going away present...
That's hilarious, hurls! Were you known for your frequent use of that word?
With all due respect, Scott, I think that it's a bit silly to insist that the word decimate should only be used literally. I should wonder if we should also stop saying that one has been hoisted by one's own petard excepting only those cases where we're talking about actual grenadiers who've had a serious mishap with their ordinance.
If we could only ever use words literally, this word, along with many others, would have become an anachronism ages ago. Indeed, I doubt that it would have ever become part of the English language given that the practice of decimation pretty much ended with the fall of the Roman Empire.
As a metaphor for a ruinous event, though, it's marvelous, and I would be disappointed if it were to be stricken from the language save in discussions of ancient imperial disciplinary practices and those rare calamities that precisely kill one out of ten people.
I don't think anyone can dispute that it's a word, given that a ton of people use it, but that certainly doesn't mean one should use it, especially in writing.
Actually, Webster's Collegiate #11 (which most mainstream U.S. publishers use) allows "hopefully" for "it is to be hoped" now, and dismisses the opposition to it as the same sort of excessive rigidity that gave us "the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
Webster's Collegiate, however, thinks we should hyphenate "unself-conscious," which is just SILLY.
(YES, THIS IS THE SORT OF THING I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT ALL DAY. And you wonder why I'm a weirdo.)
This post was fantastic. I'm a recovering grammar and usage snob, and I'm going to remember this the next time someone misuses the words "ironic" and "unique.".
Unusual words are fine, but please, please, please don't encourage people to start in on the phonetic spelling craziness. I propound unto thee that 'twere the very abyss of despair for philologues the world over that so vile a project should reach its full and thus eclipse all human communication quite.
Lets not take this too far. Aks may very well be an acceptable pronunciation of ask but I wouldn't use it around the office (no offense meant to the host here). Unfortunately the opinions of others do matter and as long as the consensus is that conversate is not a word and that aks or "mines" are improper, than these should be used sparingly in certain circles.
Alot of people in my office say "mines" and I advise them to knock it off. I'm not a language Nazi, I just think its for their own good.
"If you're delivering the State of the Union address, maybe 'fuck' is not acceptable."
This year I would suggest that word as the entire first sentence of the State of the Union address, emphasized as though written with an exclamation mark and followed by a very long pause. I think we would all get it.
Hey TNC,
I know that you aren't a huge fan of John McWhorter, but you really ought to pick up a copy of "The Power of Babel".
Whatever his shortcomings as a pundit, the dude knows language and the book makes many of these same points backed up with a hell of a lot of linguistic research.
TNC, this wonderful post is just one of the reasons why when you really blow-up, and you will, all of your regulars will be able to say we "knew you when."
Serendipitously enough, last night I was re-reading Walter Mosley's "Cinnamon Kiss" and found this passage describing the hero Easy Rawlins' relationship to Ada Masters the principal of the almost all Black LA middle school where Easy is the " supervising senior head custodian in the mid 1960's:"
" 'Ain't is a valid negative if you use it correctly and have never been told that it isn't proper language," I once said to her when an English teacher...dropped a student two whole letter grades just for using ain't one time in a report paper.
Miss Masters looked at me as if I had come from some other planet and yet still spoke her tongue.
'You're right,' she said in an amazed tone. 'Mr Rawlins, you're right."
'And you're white,' I replied, captive to the ryhme and the irony.
We laughed, and from that day on we had weekly meetings where she queried me about what she called my 'ghetto pedagogy'."
Peep.. it was a pretty casual office. It wasn't so much the volume of use (admittedly high) but the variety.
So I can't recommend "The F Word" highly enough.. it taught me a thing or three. One usage involve bald headed gentleman and goats was something I'll carry with me to my grave.
"Lets not take this too far. Aks may very well be an acceptable pronunciation of ask but I wouldn't use it around the office (no offense meant to the host here). Unfortunately the opinions of others do matter and as long as the consensus is that conversate is not a word and that aks or "mines" are improper, than these should be used sparingly in certain circles."
Plenty of studies out there to back up exactly what you're saying. I remember one recently that found that accent doesn't have anywhere near the negative impact in a work environment as improper use of words or improper pronunciation of commonly used words like aks or mines. You can limit your earning potential drastically by doing things like that.
Awesome post...and a thoroughly entertaining comments thread, as always. I'm forwarding the link to several friends who complain about "aks" all the time.
And why did I not know that "hopefully" was wrong? I guess I skipped that entry in the AP Style Manual. Hopefully, it will become more acceptable in the future.
Irre-fucking-gardless. Indeed.
This will be the most passed along blog entry to come across my desk. Thanks for that.
Brucds--How would one intone that? I agree with you--at this point, I sure get it. But with what . . . presence? Ivy league? Chicago? NYC? David Lynch? Or just a tired James Earl Jones?
I'm a supporter of "ain't" actually. (Anthony Trollope used it!) Used sparingly, like a nice spice.
Half the words we think are so very awful today started out as perfectly legitimate words, until the French showed up in Hastings and decided "Non! Zhou must not say 'sweat' -- now zhou must say 'perspire'!"
But we need to think about making English less arbitrary and complex, not more, don't we? It's already hell and a half for six-year-olds to learn phonics. "Conversate" seems to up the complexity, I think.
(I only just gave up the battle against "emails." Bear with.)
Why am I not surprised the OED editor speaks in paragraphs?
TNC
I am beginning to think you are just a rebel without a cause. The use of the word conversate is simply ignorant. That was the summary of what the editor told you. Sure you can use any word you want but discernment tells you when it is not only inappropriate but ignorant as well.
Obama had a description for what you are doing on the campaign trail when Palin and McCain were jawjacking about drilling for oil.
He said, they are not only ignorant..they take PRIDE in being ignorant.
You TNC are doing the same as Palin with the use of the word conversate.
If you recall, American put Palin on a world stage with her downsyndrome baby as a prop and her pregnant teen daughter complete with her foreign policy credentials being her ability to see Russia from Alaska.
Palin thought that was wonderful. She insisted she had the credentials to be VP and that she was more qualified than Obama.
You are doing the same nonsense with the word conversate.
Talking loud and acting ignorant.
It is the absolute worst thing that has happened to the black community. The need to shun mainstream norms in pursuit of some uniquely ignorant actions and expressions that are deemed to be culturally accepted.
The rest of the world just laughs.
PRIDE in Ignorance, is a terrible thing.
As the "James Joyce of the hip-hop generation" TNC can get away with stuff that might not be a good idea for your average job applicant.
Earlier I in one of you posts today (the Bobby Rush/lynching one) I used conversate in my comment, kind of trying to lighten things up after reading the whole discussion of the word yesterday. Hope I didn't offend, it was the opposite of my intent. I think it is a word for the record.
However Irregardless is not a word because it doesn't freaking mean anything. The only worse word in the english language is undescribable. What object, action, or idea is undescribable? It's meaningless. Everything is describable.
elrapierwit,
May I suggest you assume a new handle, because "rapier" or "wit" you ain't. Not at all eponymous. Also suggest you check the OED for definitions of the words "stupid" and "ignorant." You should be able to feel the difference.
This perfectly cromulent post has embiggened my grammar knowledge.
Oh, and on pronunciation, it's funny, isn't it, how people pronouncing a word a certain way shapes how you think of them? I have a co-worker who always says "pacific" instead of "specific." It drives me nuts and I find myself questioning his intelligence even though he is clearly very knowledgeable.
I just want to know, is it a word in the Scrabble Official Dictionary?
If it is - great.
If not - get that word out of here!!
Since these comments have become a great place to air grievances, I have one.
The one not-word that really pushes my buttons is "laxadaisical," a combination of "lax" and "lackadaisical." If anyone around has watched any national NBA or NFL coverage in the last 10 years, I'm sure you can attest to this plague on my ears.
Everything is describable.
I disagree! But since I can't describe the thing that I believe is undescribable I can't make an argument!
Incredible... a man bent on having a ghettoized version of a word accepted enlists the aid of a person whose job thrives on the enlargement of the human linguistic lexicon and the subsequent confusion.
Don't be telling cats they can flow with conversate out there. Shit's real.
@Captain Noble:
Or "flustrated" instead of "Frustrated"...I have 3 co-workers who say this, including the president of our company. I don't know why, but it bothers the crap out of me. I DO end up questioning their intelligence.
However,now that I think about it, like "conversate" I think it's a combo word: fluster + frustrate. Maybe it's actually better than one of those words or another. If you're "flustrated," you're both flustered AND frustrated. Hmmm. I'm feeling less righteous now. Dammit...can't I feel righteous again??
I surely can't claim to be an expert in English --or to write well on it. And my accent is fucking thick.
But still I enjoyed this post supremely.
Also, I love --love-- irregardless. I know it is wrong and that English rejects double negatives and all that but it sounds awesome to me. So emphatic! You are left with no doubt that A doesn't depend on B. No doubt what-so-e-va.
Sara, man, I was living my life perfectly contented without ever having heard or heard of "laxadaisical." Ears! Bleeding! (On the other hand, I am so using that in a novel at some point...)
(Nobody better try and take the use of "so" as an intensifier away from me, though. I protest!) ;-)
Yes because that would be SO fascist!
One thing that might be interesting is to analyze why, in linguistic and social terms, "conversate" is seen as an incorrect form, as opposed to "converse". I am not saying, by the way, that it is incorrect. After all, it's comprehensible and fits English syntax perfectly nicely.
Basically, the issue is one of derivation, and historically "converse" derives from the Latin "conversare", just as "reverse" derives from "reversare". This gives you a pattern, meaning some observed regularity of verbal derivation, and is therefore "correct" or "proper".
"Conversate", on the other hand, does not derive directly from a Latin verb in a parallel fashion. There is no Latin verb "conversatare", as there should be. Thus, we would have to assume that it is a back formation, from the noun "conversation" (in itself a standard Latin derivation - conversatio, from conversare.) The problem with such a back formation is that, although perfectly clear, it immediately suggests that the user either doesn't know how to derive the "correct" form, or, more likely, doesn't know that there is no appropriate Latin form to derive the verb from. Thus, two factors combine to make "conversate" "incorrect": the rules of derivation, and secondarily the social perception that lack of knowledge of said rules suggests ignorance and illiteracy. I note again, for the record, that I don't share those judgments, but that, historically and linguistically, is why "conversate" is problematic. It would be interesting to know when and where the form first appeared.
Scott - How would "one" intone fuck at the SOU ?
I guess some variation of Chicago, considering the dude. But Chicago is linquistically complex, so more specifically I hear it being drawn out and delivered with a bit of a wry laugh. (Still can't "sound like an angry black man" and all that.) A chorus of "You got that right!" from members of the Black Caucus would be a nice lead-in to the substantive part.
suggestion:
to conversate = being part of or having an discussion with/between two or multiple parts.
to converse = to walk...preferably in a pair of chucks...
The OED online doesn't recognize "conversate", which is a little sad, but not wholly surprising. I rather hoped it might have a fine Elizabethan pedigree, but it seems I am doomed to disappointment.
Maliseet, for inscrutable reasons, is the current OED word of the day.
I'm guessing that most of you that fall into the "simple and direct" and "irregardless is like nails on a chalk board" camp aren't big rap fans? The more syllables the better, I say. I feel like a lot of people that claim to love language and words really just love syntax. Many tend to dismiss slang as it breaks too many or all of the (arbitrary) rules of language, not to mention it contradicts (in their minds) with their desire to 'talk educated' -- whatever the fuck that means. English slang is one of the leading reasons why I think it's the best language. There's a reason why non-English rap has never and will never be that popular.* It's not that it's bad, though most of it is, but other languages just aren't as flexible, vast and robust as English. Even 30 years after rap's inception artists are still finding new and exciting ways of talking about even the most banal minutia in their worlds. I shudder to think what that state of modern language would be like without geniuses like E-40 and Posdnuos.
*Reggaetone though immensely popular and very linguistically interesting, doesn't qualify as rap. Sorry.
Next time you talk to brother, ask him why people in NYC pronounce sandwich "sangwich"?
Words are like drugs. Its not the drug, its the person or persons using them. Hence, w00t and pwned are perfectly acceptable while conversate is not.
I used to correct a friend of mine for the longest time. And then I stopped. Now we conversate all the time, irregardless of the hour of day.
Sheesh.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?page=2&term=conversate
For the record, so far the first recorded (in every sense) appearance of the word that I have found is in 1994. The definitions listed in the above dictionary are more malicious than enlightening, and reinforce the importance of social perceptions in defining the correctness of language. They are, occasionally, chuckleworthy, if not chuckleheaded.
If you want to blame anyone for "laxadaisical," blame Billy Packer.
I can't tell you how excited I am to know that I won't have to hear him during this year's NCAA tourney.
Conversate is hardly as offensive as such words forced upon us by out corporate and marketing overlords. Cases in point: monetize and gifting. You probably could use these at work or in a job interview situation. This would make me sad.
I used to argue that Fuck was the presiding deity of graduate students, and was frequently addressed by them during the day with the invocation "O Fuck.."
I can't even argue with you now--you conversated with an editor of the OED. You win. This time.
And, really, you're right--prescriptivists often just want to dictate how the language is spoken, regardless (NEVER "irregardless!") of how the language is actually used in everyday life. But if the grammar police ruled, we'd still be speaking middle English. John McWhorter's book _Doing Our Own Thing_ examines the evolution of language through popular culture--it's worth a read.
Going to object to the objection to decimate for a few reasons.
1) who gives a crap how the Romans used it? That was 2000 years ago. A word not only can evolve, but will evolve in that period.
2) Even if we were to agree that decimate will and always shall only mean killing 1/10th of something, how do you think one of those legions felt after killing 1 out of 10 of their friends at random? Even if you survived, that had to have been one scary ass time. So decimate, in the sense of utterly destroying something, isn't that far off really. I doubt the morale in a decimated legion was all that great and its usefulness as a fighting unit was pretty low. They were ashamed, scared, and the point of decimation was to scare the shit out of all the other units to keep them from doing whatever the decimated unit did. So using decimated to indicate an embarrassing destruction or defeat makes a lot of sense.
3) Latin was a fine language, but trying to apply Latin grammar to the English language as a guide to how to speak English is sheer stupidity. We borrowed a lot of Latin-y words for scientific purposes, but English is a Germanic language, not a Romance language. The grammar is so different that you get moronic rules, like not ending sentences with an infinitive, that make no sense in English grammar.
In summary, fuck the Romans sideways, we'll do it our way, kthx.
Perez, may I suggest that you have felt the difference betweeen the words you need to look up. Your response is quite unimpressive. It borders on nagging. So just do yourself a favor and stop displaying your small mind. The thread topic is use of the word conversate. Not me. Or maybe, you couldn't feel the difference between stupid and ignorant due to being a numbnut.
"Latin was a fine language, but trying to apply Latin grammar to the English language as a guide to how to speak English is sheer stupidity."
No, linguisticus' post is about showing how English words, many of which derive from Latin, come to have the form they do, as a means of explaining why conversate is a problematic form. That's simply linguistic history.
"English is a Germanic language, not a Romance language."
No, it's an Indo-European language, based on Germanic, but with a vast admixture of Old French, Latin, Greek and other languages. Which is why e.g."-ic" is a Latin version of a Greek suffix, "language" derives from lingua (latin for tongue or language), and why in general your statements are simply wide of the mark. You shouldn't confuse understanding how words derived from Latin come to have the forms they do with prescribing Latin grammar.
"So decimate, in the sense of utterly destroying something, isn't that far off really."
Toxic, you are groping for "annihilate" (ad-nihil-are - to reduce to nothing), not decimate. The point of decimation is to make the unit punished more effective, not to destroy it.
I still wish Laveranues Coles would fix the spelling of his name. That does NOT say "la-ver-nee-us." It just doesn't. I have some news for Isiah Thomas, too...
TNC, when you get back to this post, would you please consider nominating elrapierwit for the gratuitously insulting troll/ad hominem award, and despatch it to him or her?
Why go thru all the trouble to use it; converse has less syllables!
That way lies no crossword puzzles.
Are we unanimous in our disdain for "irregardless"?
Toxic, I can't stop you displaying a total lack of understanding about what English is, and how it forms words, but I will say clearly that at no point in my post did I prescribe Latin grammar. I said a couple of times that I had no problem with conversate as a form, and laid out the linguistic reasons why some people would find it problematic. If what I wrote was too complex for you first time around. I suggest you reread the post slowly and with care.
Use of the words conversate, irregardless and double-negatives immediately lowers my opinion of someone's intelligence. This post was good medicine for getting me off my high horse.
I was laughing all throughout the comments until I saw the word "sangwich". Jamaicans say "sangwich" and it.drives.me.crazy!! Hearing a relative say "you want a bully beef sangwich?" sends me into internal convulsions. I had a moment just now even writing that.
holy crap
Charles - it may be that English is the best vehicle for inventive lyricism, but as a rule it lags behind Spanish in terms of cadence and rhythym due to the fluidity of their tongue. I'm talking about rap in Spanish, not reggaeton. Cf. "Que Lloren" off the new Calle 13 album.
But yeah, conversate = wordfail.
Elrapier\Puissant,
You need help, man--mostly on how to effectively sock-puppet. You're banned. But, you already knew that.
elrapierwit said:
"It is the absolute worst thing that has happened to the black community. The need to shun mainstream norms in pursuit of some uniquely ignorant actions and expressions that are deemed to be culturally accepted.
The rest of the world just laughs."
I find this fascinating and I empathize with elrapierwit. I would imagine it sucks when a well-spoken black teenager is castigated by his peers for "acting white" (by the way, does this really happen?). Now, here comes TNC defending the ebonics speaking bullies of this bookish black kid suggesting that the kid is neither creative nor open-minded enough to see the dynamism of language.
elrapierwit's comment reminded me of what TNC wrote in the Michelle Obama piece:
"In most black people, there is a South Side, a sense of home, that never leaves, and yet to compete in the world, we have to go forth. So we learn to code switch and become bilingual. We save our timberlands for the weekend, and our jokes for the cats in the mailroom."
TNC's blog is his playground (mailroom?). But elrapierwit wants him to save it for the weekend and encourage the kids to learn how to compete in the world and go forth.
Awesome post. I've had numerous arguments with language snobs over the years who thought that because I was a history grad student, that I'd be all grammar-nazi like.
Far from it--knowing that almost everything changes over time.. and that language as a part of culture is not immune to this.. I have tried long and hard to get some people to accept such linguistic evolution..
Not that I am a total language relativist.. I am happy with my "whom" and "whomever" and do think that word evolution is a lot easier to accept than changing grammar rules and structures all too fast..
Jesse Sheidlower is a great guy and an early Internet personage: he wrote an online column back in the 1990s when he was at Random House that taught me tons of stuff. Like that it's probably better to drop the apostrophe in the pluralization of decades. And that using single quotation marks when discussing usage is a long-standing lexicographic convention. And that grammar Nazis (I was a teenage one at the time) are actually showing their lack of education when correcting others, since standardization is rarely about clarity and which itself often requires non-standard usage.
@nista206 It's also way uneducated to use 'less' when 'fewer' is correct. But more importantly it's one of those many conventions in English that all of us, at some point, will break.
@Deborah I, at least, am unanimous in my disdain for 'irregardless'.
I have no problem with the word conversate; it's a respectable word with a much warmer feel than converse.
However, I would advise people that conversate is more appropriate for informal English, while converse is more appropriate for formal English.
Conversate is something you do with your family or friends; conversing is what you do with co-workers and especially your boss, unless the conversation is not about work.
I would conversate then with my brother about the meeting I had with work with my division head about year-end close. During this meeting, my division head and I conversed about possible writedowns of some of the company's investments in mortgage-backed securities. Later on, at the office Xmas party, the division head and I conversated about our plans for the holidays.
"I still wish Laveranues Coles would fix the spelling of his name. That does NOT say "la-ver-nee-us." It just doesn't. I have some news for Isiah Thomas, too..."
What about that idiot Brett Favre? That makes no sense, and I swear to fucking christ the 'v' was silent when he came into the league. Brett Far. That makes more sense.
Same for akin ayodele...but since it's "furn"..i guess it should pass...
There's a big difference between "conversate" and "irregardless." The former is a perfectly comprehensible neologism derived from "conversation." It's not wrong in any way -- it's just not common. Over time it could evolve a slightly different connotation from "converse" and thus will enrich the language. Using "irregardless" to mean the same thing as "regardless" is just plain wrong. It shows a lack of understanding of the word "regardless" or the prefix "ir" and its usage tends to confuse the meaning of both. It's an impediment to clear communication.
I would imagine it sucks when a well-spoken black teenager is castigated by his peers for "acting white" (by the way, does this really happen?).
Used to happen to me...but that was in 1987. (and for the record, 1. I was using Jamaicanisms and 2. the rest of my also-black classmates told the individual in question that he was a putz). Does that still go on? Ew.
(Oh, and Shakespeare used double negatives. Not that I intend to start, but it will never not be fascinating, how what's correct evolves.) (Yes, I know what I did there.)
That said, SOMEBODY has to be a stick in the mud. I do not approve of people "authoring" texts. "Impact" -- not a verb!
The way to language change can't just be a buttery slide. Fight for it! (I've already capitulated on "emails" and "friend" as a verb...)
I take the point of this post - but I gotta say, just hearing conversate in a sentence - as when reading BabylonSista and eltoro above - it's just wrong. It is ABSOLUTELY incorrect English.
It's funny - I almost want to say, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the [word]involved in this case is not that."
Toxic:
I agree with anonymuslondiniensis that decimate is almost always used inapproriately. Like my friend Titus Pullo always says: "You don't fuck the Romans the Romans fuck you."
Your centurion,
LUCIUS VORENUS of the XIII'th (actually Laborlibert, who just couldn't let a Titus Pullo reference opportunity pass him by)
Laveranues Coles ... Brett Favre
I knew Michael Schiavo was up to no good when I learned that he pronounced his name "Shy-vo." That name is pronounced "Skee-AH-vo." Three syllables. I understand some things get lost in translation when they come overseas --- I don't fault Mike Scioscia for not pronouncing his name "Sho-sha," but "Shy-vo" is just a complete bastardization.
Adam, it could be worse - just think how Vito Andolini ended up pronouncing his name. *s*
Less/fewer & number/amount drive me crazy but I'm pretty sure that it's a lost cause. I only know about three people who use those words correctly.
As one of the OED-based complainers, I salute this post. And TNC, I will also admit that I had secretly hoped that you would be irritated enough to pull a move like this. It warms my inner word nerd.
However, Jesse's philosophical definition of word seems to be "any combination of letters or sounds which are used with intent to communicate." Actually I may be overly restrictive here - He might also accept grunts as words.
Here's a question though: If "conversate" is a word with as much value as "converse," how about "conversatify?" As in, "Let us sit and conversatify on many intelligentical matters."
Is "conversatify" just as good as "conversate" in your book TNC? If not, why not? It has three useless syllables tacked onto the end of it instead of merely one. Does that make it three times as good?
Lastly, let me say that despite my snark, I wouldn't be here if I weren't a fan of your writing. Don't let the bastards like me get you down.
It strikes me that you can't say that a word is "wrong" or "incorrect" unless it already has some generally agreed meaning. Thus, Aristotle could refer to the word 'blitiri" as meaningless, but would probably not call it wrong or incorrect. Similarly, if conversate has no meaning, it can't per se be right or wrong - it's just empty sounds. Now, it's pretty clear that conversate has a meaning, and one that's understood by the people who use it, which is why it's hard to agree with the people who simply say that it's wrong, and that converse is correct. Yes, conversate is not accepted by certain people and institutions, but that makes it a dialect/idiolect term outside Standard English, rather than wrong. Thus, unless you have a meaning for conversate in mind - implying it IS a meaningful word, calling it wrong or incorrect is itself wrong, or incorrect. Equally, if you want to call it unacceptable, you are ignoring the fact that it is used, and accepted, by at least part of the population. Ultimately, it would be more honest to say "I don't like it" and leave it at that.
@Barbara Don't give up hope! Several grocery stores have actual printed signs saying "10 items or fewer." I'm thinking of Stop & Shop (at least in a store in Connecticut I went to recently) and Whole Foods. Someone had to correct those signs!
On misleading signs, my favorite is the one in the local Dunkin' Donuts, which tells people that that are now charging an additional .25 cents per cup. I have not yet yielded to the temptation to chop my small change into fractions, partly because the laws about defacing the currency are pretty explicit.
TNC,
I am almost--almost--sorry you banned Elrapierwit as this is the first time I have ever been called a nasty name by a fellow poster on any blog. Wow! Of course, he was wrong. As you can tell by my name, I am female so "numbnuts" isn't really appropriate. But as my Mom used to say "a hit dog will holler" so he should probably wear a codpiece.
I call your " sangwich" and raise you "sammitch", which I swear is how some I've heard refer to that food item consisting of stuff stuck between two slices of bread.
While we are at it, is it OK to say " tes" instead of "test" and "breas" instead of " breast" ( plural 'tesses' and breasses)?
Its at this point that I get all prescriptivist.
"flustrate"?, "pacific" for"specific?" "Irregardless" No, no, nooooooooooooooooooo.....
You kind of have to draw the line some fricking where. There's the best usage, acceptable colloqial usage, and plain ignorance. For me " conversate" fits in category two. The abominations quoted above are DEEP in category three.
"I take the point of this post - but I gotta say, just hearing conversate in a sentence - as when reading BabylonSista and eltoro above - it's just wrong. It is ABSOLUTELY incorrect English."
JC,
We will have to disagree about the correctness of the word "conversate". I don't agree that it is absolutely incorrect; it's just not a correct word to use in formal settings.
However, while converse qualifies as a formal word, it is nevertheless a clunky and cold word to use. I see no reason to use "converse" when the word "speak" is so much better. In fact, the beauty of "speak" is that is a much better word in both formal and informal settings. Therefore, I would recommend "speak" over both "converse" and "conversate".
I have to say that I think Jesse Sheidlower is confusing two separate issues. To be a word, as in a semantically meaningful unit, is by definition to be acceptable/significant in some context. The question about conversate is whether it constitutes such a unit, and can fit into English syntax in a meaningful way. That's completely different from the point he makes about appropriate contexts, which have nothing to do with whether something is a "word", and everything to do with whether a word is appropriate. Basically he preempts what would make it an acceptable English word, and never really gives a clear statement of what would or should qualify. Likewise, you asked about it being in a dictionary as a criterion of acceptability - and that also has nothing to do with whether is is acceptable in different social contexts, as his response implies. Also, his point about the acceptability of ask/aks is questionable. Acceptability is much more a matter of social convention than historical linguistics and reconstruction, especially when such reconstructions are often questionable, or even impossible.
Re: Using the word 'fuck' in the State of the Union address. It would really be very simple, and even accurate. "Madame Speaker, Members of Congress, Distinguished Guests, my fellow Americans. The state of our Union is fucked."
Eltoro,
I take the point - I supposed I could have added the "TO ME", when saying It is WRONG, but I wanted to convey how reading that sentence struck me. Now, as I was raised by a Smith English grad - although in Texas - my mom just WOULD NOT let me get away with saying stuff like that.
So, as a kid, I would talk in "proper" English with my mom, an English major transplant to Texas, and then degraded conversation otherwise.
But 'conversate' wasn't used in Texas while I was growing up, even then - not my idiom. So y'all sounds fine, even if I wouldn't consider it "proper: - conversate - still just sounds wrong.
Several grocery stores have actual printed signs saying "10 items or fewer."
Target uses "fewer."
Stacy quotes and writes: ""I still wish Laveranues Coles would fix the spelling of his name. That does NOT say "la-ver-nee-us." It just doesn't. I have some news for Isiah Thomas, too..."
What about that idiot Brett Favre? That makes no sense, and I swear to fucking christ the 'v' was silent when he came into the league. Brett Far. That makes more sense. "
I think "Favre" is a French construction (think "Havre") but Laveranues is just a made up name. If you're going to just make up a name, spell it the way you want it to sound. Laverneus. Simple enough.
The point that many posters are missing here is that language is alive; it changes with the people who speak it and their communicative needs. The poster who suggested Language Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/) is on to something. Try, also, understanding the difference between prescriptive grammar (what usage nazis are engaged in) and descriptive grammar (what dictionary editors do). A good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_grammar.
Realizing that you can't use language wrongly (as long as your communicating partner understands you) is quite liberating. Try it, usage geeks.
Realizing that you can't use language wrongly (as long as your communicating partner understands you) is quite liberating. Try it, usage geeks.
Which is precisely the problem with people who don't pronounce or spell their own names correctly.
Didn't have time to read all the comments to this point, but I just wanted to add that, as a pro writer, the only thing I care about in usage or grammar is CLARITY. Conversate is fine with me because it's quite clear what you mean by that. But your convo with the dictionary guy shouldn't be taken to mean that all language is up for grabs at all times. Once changes in language begin to inhibit clarity and communication, they become illegitimate. (see, for example, Ebonics, which, while legitimate on it's own terms, should not be accepted as English for exactly the reasons I just outlined.)
Usage nazis is hardly a helpful term, Matt, nor is calling people usage geeks. And prescriptive grammar is not simply a matter of enforcing standards, it's also a short cut to accessing a particular language, especially for those learning a second language. Also, your second last sentence is a rather obvious tautology. Basically you've just told us that if people understand you, they understand you. Avoiding tautologies is quite liberating, you know. Finally, if people understand you, it's because you are both playing by the linguistic rules. The real question is whether they understand you fully, or only in part. So yes, you can get it wrong and be understood at the same time.Colorless green dreams sleep furiously - remember?
linguisticus: "Conversate", on the other hand, does not derive directly from a Latin verb in a parallel fashion. There is no Latin verb "conversatare", as there should be.
"Should"? There doesn't need to be:
vacate
resonate
supplicate
etc.
The difference is that the three above, and others, were taken into English straight from Latin, with a nod to the Latin nouns vacatio, ...
Words like converse and inspire came in from French, after the French had already knocked the verb ending down from 'are' to 'er'. The fashion of the day was to throw such a no-account verb ending away; English had been losing its own verb endings at the time, who needed other peoples'?
I was talking to a lady at work once, whose languages were English, Urdu, and a couple of other western Asian languages, and she used the word "childrens". I cracked up (I'd lately been reading Anthony Burgess's _A Mouthful of Air_ and Mario Pei's _A Story of Language_.) The word started as "child", with a Norse plural "childer". Some other teutons came along, thought the word was one like "father", "mother", "sister", and put on a southern plural: "childeren". Then my friend, not seeing a plural form anywhere, created "childerens". I tried to explain what I thought was so funny, but she seemed more puzzled. "Childerens" is a mistake, but its pedigree is solid sterling.
In my music classes they used to say "you learn the rules so you can break them," but stodgy grammarians seem to think that shouldn't apply to language. We're not in school; using technically iffy yet folksy words like "conversate" are style. (Which reminds me of something another teacher told me: he compared using blues licks in jazz with swearing--they can get people's attention when used sparingly, but if you swear all the time people stop listening to you.)
Why do I suspect that the word conversate is starting to feel like Roland Burris standing outside the Senate and wondering if it was really worth all the drama?
I LOVE this blog. Based on the comments, I think I need to add "The F Word" to my personal library.
I'm guessing that most of you that fall into the "simple and direct" and "irregardless is like nails on a chalk board" camp aren't big rap fans?
In order to see somethings as beautiful, you have to see others as ugly. Sure, English evolves. But in order for it to be called evolution, some variations have to fail. Otherwise, linguistic evolution is nothing but a long march to white noise. The only thing more authoritarian than prescriptivism is to declare all value judgments verboten.
Conversate isn't so bad. It just sounds kind of ironic and humorous to me. Irregardless is indefensible. And if you're going to have the "is it a word" debate, then the right way to phrase that is "is this an English word?"
I know someone who hit the glass ceiling at work because he used aks. The HR director told me the position required interaction with boardmembers and they did not think my friend was up to the task (or taks).
And I nominate Dwyane Wade for name spellings that make no kind of sense.
Mel, you mistake my point. I am not saying that Latin should have had "conversatare" as a verb as a judgment on the language. My point was that those who judge "conversate" to be illegitimate do so on the basis of its form, and fact that as a form it lacks the requisite verbal source in Latin that forms analogous to it, yes, like vacate etc possess. Technically you may be right about the intermediary stage, but people judging such formations will refer to the analogy they know, and that's generally the Latin form in this instance. Also, said Latin form is the ultimate source for the French verb as well, so it's tidier in the short term to refer back to it. Either way, the basic point remains, namely that the way in which conversate is formed is technically 'wrong", and for the reasons given.
Sorry if someone made this point above, but I always say that if I say something and someone else understands it - it's a word. Yeah?
I lived for a while in the UK and people would constantly correct everything I "mispronounced". I would ask, "Do you understand what I said?" The answer would be yes. I would ask, "Does everyone in your country pronounce it that way?" The answer would be no. "So why is my pronunciation wrong?" Beacuse it is, of course.
It irritated me to no end. It is why one of my pet peeves is anyone being corrected on their pronunciation/grammar - if it gets the point across, that's good enough.
The difference between converse and conversate is that you use converse when describing how you talked over recipes with your grandma, and use conversate when talking about how you were buttering up some chick so you could bang them later that evening.
People who get upset when others use conversate clearly aren't getting any.
People who get upset when others use conversate clearly aren't getting any.
Posted by Speedfreak | January 7, 2009 7:39 PM
Alternatively, they are getting plenty, and have now moved on to the conversation and cigars stage...
if it gets the point across, that's good enough.
So kid destroyer, you'd approve of "conversatify" then?
I disagree that getting the point across is good enough. By that non-standard, a mime is as articulate as Mark Twain. I have a one and a half year old who often gets his point across with grunts. It's not elitist of me to expect better of him as he matures.
By the way, I totally agree with using language creatively and inventing new words. I just think that "conversate" is a piss-poor invention.
This post was acknickulous!
Doug,
Seconded!
At the very least, we can all agree, don't use it in your formal presentations.
By the way, I totally agree with using language creatively and inventing new words. I just think that "conversate" is a piss-poor invention.
Exactly. (Though I disagree - I like conversate!)
What this all boils down to is that it's a matter of both communication and aesthetics. The fact that you can be stymied in your career for pronouncing it "aks," while totally true, does not make those doing the promoting (or lack thereof) right; it just means they're the ones with the power to enforce their own linguistic preferences.
Sure, English evolves. But in order for it to be called evolution, some variations have to fail. Otherwise, linguistic evolution is nothing but a long march to white noise. The only thing more authoritarian than prescriptivism is to declare all value judgments verboten.
Right, but it is still just aesthetics. There is no moral or objective standard for what makes a word "good" or "bad" or acceptable/unacceptable. But that doesn't mean we don't all have our preferences!
I hate irregardless and would prefer that it was dropped from common usage posthaste. But, sadly, it ain't up to me.
Betsy, I take your point, but only so far. ALL value judgments could be accurately described as "just aesthetics." We have a choice in this discussion - We could either all crack open our old copies of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and re-ask "What is Quality?" or we could descend from the ethereal plane and get back to the nitty-gritty of describing exactly why "conversate" sucks ass.
I go by the Big mos standard...
We conversated, made a laugh, yeah you know me bro
Even though I know the steelo, she wild sweet yo
there u have it...oxford english dictionary or not...its a damn word!!
I would imagine it sucks when a well-spoken black teenager is castigated by his peers for "acting white" (by the way, does this really happen?). --Aubrey
This came up a month or two ago, and the conclusion (made clear in comments) was that it is heavily dependent on neighborhood, friends, etc. And that for small geeks of all races, a heavy backpack of books was the best defense.
There is no moral or objective standard for what makes a word "good" or "bad" or acceptable/unacceptable.
One of my more cynical heuristics is that if you have to deny that anything is better or worse than anything else in order to defend something, that something isn't very defensible. ;)
"If you're delivering the State of the Union address, maybe 'fuck' is not acceptable."
"This year I would suggest that word as the entire first sentence of the State of the Union address, emphasized as though written with an exclamation mark and followed by a very long pause. I think we would all get it."
Fuck. Yes.
I've been enjoying this discussion, and, coincidentally, I just listened to a podcast by the incomparable Stephen Fry on the malleability and pleasure of language. It's available on iTunes or through SF's site: http://tinyurl.com/6sprax .
I know someone who hit the glass ceiling at work because he used aks...
Rosali, your friend did not hit a glass ceiling, as that term refers to the invisible barrier preventing (white) women from rising above their similarly-qualified (white) male colleagues.
He hit the ceiling that was installed at a predictable, and indeed predicted, location: You can't rise above your accent's class indicators.
'Aks' ain't even black, it's Southern. Its ironic usage by educated black folk is one thing, non-ironic use by people of any color is quite another. It's a class marker that screams "When I was comin' up, my folks was po'."
My authority on this topic is derived from having been raised by educated po' folks. My parents didn't punish their kids for lateness, back talk or a messy room but assigned essays as punishment for uses of 'aks', 'ain't', you'uns', 'y'all' or 'fixin to'. Because that will ruin your future.
TNC, I congratulate you on having arrived at the point in your career where you can host a debate about the words 'conversate' and 'irregardless'. I know your goals may lie further down the road, but you have definitely arrived somewhere as a writer.
I always thought the use of "aks" instead of "ask" was very odd until I heard a black sportswriter on a local sports talk show. Someone asked him about "aks" and his response was "why do you call your Aunt an 'ant', there is a 'u' in the word"
"Standard" usage is not a marker of intelligence or education. It is a class marker. It indicates the class that you belong to or aspire to belong to. I can think of a thousand and one reasons to not to want to belong to a class of people who are so insular and vain that they would look down on anyone who doesn't speak the same dialect of English they do.
*to not want to belong*
(I hate not being able to edit comments)
I love this blog!
Even if "converse" is in the OED and "conversate" isn't, I don't think using "converse" is going to help anyone's career along.
"Can we converse about that?
"We conversed in the salon."
"Conversing with you is a delight, my dear."
It's antiquated silliness, so priggish it would make your coworkers worry and your bosses think you've lost your grip.
I asked on yesterday's thread what "conversate" can do that "converse" can't, and now I've thought of something: "conversate" won't get people to wonder why you're talking like you got stuck in a Jane Austen novel.
Surely somebody has raised this point in one of the 400 comments on this subject, but I'll just say this: the reason "conversate" doesn't work is because it makes you sound like you're trying to sound smart by using the word "converse", only you come as even more ignorant than if you had just used a simpler word like "talk." It ain't snootiness to say that trying to make yourself look smart, only to make yourself look dumber in the process, is not the way to go when you're trying to communicate with someone.
Americans use language - in England, I reckon, it is the other way around. I am still undecided which is actually better in which context but at least I do not care anymore. Great post.
I've grown up hating not language per se - but certainly languages. I have never had one of my own. It is a bit like race and nationality (which I also do not 'own'). It sets you free but you get to the prize only after the price? My father has lost his mother tongue and now swims in a soup like me - my mother has not but has gained an additional one instead - my sister has three. Emigration or immigration eh? I have certainly met people who could say things right(ly) but only few who have mastered the reverse.
I've understood by now that this is not a fight between language and communication - albeit it sometimes feels like it. One is actually easy to master and agree on - the other one is too real and powerful to..
Communication is not about ability but will and intentions. Language, the obvious tool that it is, is also.. a game. When we play it - we forget that we strip down naked in all other areas like ostriches (who actually don't bury their heads.. but we humans like to project).
I will digress..
I read these things not to learn about animals but humans. How we, researches or whoever, talk about animals, no matter what language, talks right back at us.
Phoenix, forgive my lack of precision. It's my job to knock down glass ceilings and other barriers so I'm very familiar with the term. I was using it as blog-comment shorthand for "Dude had to look for another job because he was never going to get promoted in that company once he got labeled as the guy who used aks". I like blog shorthand because the other commenters 'get it' and there's no need to insult their intelligence with long, drawn out explanations about elementary concepts.
My younger brother works for one of these corporate marketing-type companies. He told me a couple of months back one of the best fake-ass corporate-speak bullshit words I've ever heard:
"creageous"
That is combining creative and courageous. It would be funny if you didn't know that some idiot is taking the idea behind this too seriously.
It's delightful that we have a post-modern asshat at the head of the Oxford English Dictionary editorial board who can deconstruct for us every inane utterance that some jackass decides to emit and dismiss any attempt to standardize the English language as an antiquated Victorian ruse. Oh Bartleby, oh humanity...
I vote that Ian at 7:19 wins this thread:
In my music classes they used to say "you learn the rules so you can break them," but stodgy grammarians seem to think that shouldn't apply to language. We're not in school; using technically iffy yet folksy words like "conversate" are style. (Which reminds me of something another teacher told me: he compared using blues licks in jazz with swearing--they can get people's attention when used sparingly, but if you swear all the time people stop listening to you.)
Exactly.
P.S. Am I the only one who hears racist snobbery lurking behind grumbling about names that are spelled "wrong"?
Love you Ta-Nehisi! laughing like a mugg over here!
Oh oh OH! What a fabulous post. Absolutely made my day (and a lot of others' too, clearly). Thank you thank you.
There's a TED talk from Erin McKean that dovetails with this nicely: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html
A question to all:
Iron.
Pronounced "Eye-ren" or "Eye-ern"?
Steven Pinker on the subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04pinker.html?_r=1
I've enjoyed this discussion, and the back and forths about it. I do believe that language is as fluid as we need it to be - that we do understand the distinction between the standard (formal) dialect and the colloquial ones, and that we are all capable of learning them. The idea behind ebonics wasn't to avoid teaching the standard dialect, but to respect the one blacks grow up with as valid, and not deserving of a value judgment of stupidity. And yes - TNC proves the point effectively just by being himself - an intelligent, thoughtful black man who is comfortable with the dialect of black folk. And - because English is the way it is - the less stigmatized black english becomes, the more likely the standard dialect will borrow some of it. Conversate may well make it into the dictionary as a synonym or a nuanced kind of talking that differs from conversing. (for me, conversate is more intimate. Maybe because it's colloquial and therefore more familiar??)
Anyway - just wanted to chime in with a familiar example of ways in which we assume we are right, when in fact, we are right, and so are others.
QT
Once again, D&D playing hip-hop minds think alike! I got into the same debate last year, about the same word.
From now on I will point people here, along with this paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for Linguistic Prescription:
Finally, there is the problem of inappropriate dogmatism. While competent authorities tend to make careful statements, popular pronouncements on language are apt to condemn. Thus wise prescriptive advice may identify a form as non-standard and suggest it be used with caution in some contexts; repeated in the school room this may become a ruling that the non-standard form is automatically wrong, a view which linguists reject. (Linguists may accept that a form is incorrect if it fails to communicate, but not simply because it diverges from a norm.)
Christ on a pita. I bet some of you people could suck the fun out of just about ANYTHING. Anyway, I've got nothing of substance to add. Good post. I'll be using this to shut mofos down.
"This year I would suggest that word as the entire first sentence of the State of the Union address, emphasized as though written with an exclamation mark and followed by a very long pause. I think we would all get it."
This may be the best comment in the thread.
The language innovators and the language gatekeepers are always at war, lovers of slang vs grammarians, etc... They will always be, which is good; they need to be. Neither side can ever be allowed to win this war. If the innovators have their way the language will fragment into a myriad of mutually unintelligable local dialects. If the gatekeepers win the language ossifies, shrivels and dies.
I think, however, that there is a point which is missing from this conversation. Our respected OED personage writes:
"We don't need conversate, we have converse." Well then, we don't need hip because we have cool. We don't need illness because we have malady.
But that is a very poor comparison. Yes we have multiple terms for more or less the same concept, each carrying its own connotations. Its what makes our languge great. However, the difference between "cool" and "hip" (or between "coverse" and, say, "gab") is not of the same category as that between "converse" and "conversate", or "regardless" and "irregardless".
Notice the difference not only in connotation, but in sound between the first former pairs. Now compare it with the similarity in the latter pairs. Once again, "conversate" may be a "word", but it is in much closer competition with "converse" that other words which mean "to make conversation" or "to talk", both meaningwise and especially soundwise. I doubt that the two can exist together, the sounds are that close. Its a competition, and one wil prevail. My money is on converse. Not only is it established (and therefore, to many people "correct"), but it is more elegant and effecient. It follows generally excepted rules (tradtionions?) of word family construction, where as "conversate" comes off as clunky and artificial with its extra syllables jammed in.
It's not quite in the same league as "irregardless", however. "Conversate" has a few things going for it in that it (apparently) has an established base in some communities, and can plausably be claimed to have been intentionaly created to express a different connotation than converse. Irregardless, on the other hand, is a simple and obvious error. Why? Because it follows basic rules in its construction, and then violates them in its usage. Ir- is a standard negation, and regardless is an established word with an established meaning (itself built on another term, regardless). People use the term "irregardless" when they meaning "regardless" (the meaning is *exactly* the same) when, according to the rules, it should mean the opposite. That is why the term is so hated: its an obvious fuck-up. But it persits becasue its an easy fuck-up to make if you don't think about what you are saying.
This, by the way, is why "decimate" (often employed to mean the destruction of a sigificantly larger percentage than 10 - maybe even around 90%) is absolutely fine. The meaning of the word has shifted, naturally over time, having gradually been exaggerated. Yes, there are "rules" being violated (deci- means .10 after all) but those rules are latin rules, not English ones. Noone here would contend (atleast not with a straight face) that December, or September were lingual abominations. "Hopefully" (a word which I had no idea was not "established", as the interviewee seems to indicate) seems absolutely natural because it follows the "rules" closely. ("I am hopeful that..." turned into a convenient adverb with the simple addition of -ly). It is also tremendously effecient and useful, and has a valuable role to play in communication.
So, the problem with "conversate" is that you ned to convince people that it isn't a fuck-up. Unfortunately, it is hard to do that because it doesn't fit the pattern well, and because it is too close in sound to "converse". So close, in fact, that the two terms are on a collision course. "There can be only one," and I bet you that its "converse" that will be sitting there in the dictionary a hundred years into the future.
In Response to this:
I vote that Ian at 7:19 wins this thread:
In my music classes they used to say "you learn the rules so you can break them," but stodgy grammarians seem to think that shouldn't apply to language. We're not in school; using technically iffy yet folksy words like "conversate" are style. (Which reminds me of something another teacher told me: he compared using blues licks in jazz with swearing--they can get people's attention when used sparingly, but if you swear all the time people stop listening to you.)
Exactly.
P.S. Am I the only one who hears racist snobbery lurking behind grumbling about names that are spelled "wrong"?
---------------------------
Learning rules to break them is good, great even. But I can assure you that I can get up and give to a musical performance that both breaks all the rules and sounds absolutely terrible.
True, part of that evaluation is subjective, but we will all agree that there is good and bad art, even if we don't agree on what defines those categories. Same for language and names.
You *should* learn the rules, so later you can play around with them. But if you don't learn the rules in the first place, your experiments are probably not going to go well. The rules are there for a reason: They work.
That doesn't mean things can't be improved on. Take American spelling over English spelling. Most of the changes are simplifications, streamlining, and attempts to make a language fraught with exceptions follow its own rules:
Armour - don't really need that "u", do you? What is it doing there anyway?
Centre - ok it looks cool, but it doesn't really make sense phonetically, does it?
Aluminium - too many syllables, really, you don't need 5.
Here is how it plays out for names:
There are two factors involved: tradition and efficiency. You can violate one of these and possibly get away with it. Tradition seems the easier of the two in that regard. Either way it has to be done with "skill" otherwise it looks like you just fucked it up (see my above post on "conversate"). Violate both and you have a guaranteed failure.
I wouldn't be so quick to shout racism, either. It may have a role, but classism seems stronger. Even more basic than those concerns I would say, however, are intellectual snobbery and its twin the hatred of pretentiousness. People will react violently to words or names they feel are "mistakes". They will assume the originator to be stupid or ignorant, and deserving of ridicule (see “ghetto” or “white-trash” names). They will also react against “weird” words or names they see as an attempt to be “special” or identify one’s self as part of a separate “group” (see “yuppie” names). A segment of “black” names gets hit especially hard because it lies at the intersection of these two hotspots: “Sheeneqa” – or whatever the stereotype is – sounds both ghetto (and therefore ignorant and low-class) and (to many whites) a “made up name” designed to identify with a wholly invented (and therefore phony – see Kwanzaa) racial tradition. Contrast this to an established “ethnic” name, which carries with it the weight of perhaps centuries of cultural tradition. (an ethnically Korean, Indian, or African name, for example.)
Or, to put it another way, most of us wouldn’t question a name like Ta-Nehisi. We’d assume it was from another language and cultural tradition, even if we had no idea what that tradition was. We’d ask interestedly: Oh. Where’s that from? How do you pronounce it? and What does it mean? Whereas we would sneer at various names assumed to be “ghetto” or “hick”.
(Not of Irony: Personally I can’t spell, or type, to save my life, so apologize for what must be numerous spelling errors and typos.)
One last thing (sorry!)...
It's much easier to invent new slang (creating a wholly new word, or employing an old word for a radically different purpose, esp. if there is a clever connection involved) than to make small changes to established words or grammar patterns, ESPECIALLY basic ones.
While I'm sure classism has a huge roll in the "ask" vs. "aks" thing, it needs to be acknowledged that "ask" is an increadibly basic, with a very obvious pronunciation from the spelling a-s-k. When you say "aks" the impression given is not of an "accent" but rather an ignorance of basic principles. (That is, a huge fuck up of a very simple thing).
I found the commentary on "third" and "iron" to be extremely interesting. Goes to show the weight of legitimacy granted by "establishment". Sure, there may be no "morally correct" choice in language, but if you want to challange the status quo you'd better bring your A-game.
(PS. Mispelled "note" in my post script apologizing for spelling mistakes above. Awesome.)
Itz nt esy 2 rite bt ppl vil lrn coz of char rstrictns.
That is going to be an acceptable in a few days as people seem to SMS more than they write.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPwEjhAuR8Y
If it's okay with Salt n Pepa, it's okay with me.
I know that I am virtually alone in my love for irregardless. Yes, I know it is a ridiculous word, incorrect usuage of regardless, but I love it for the same reason that my favorite word is circuitous. It just feels good to say. It rolls off the tongue. And that is fantabulous! (There's another one for you folks who hate the hybrid word.)
@Tri re: knowing the rules and breaking them and the name spelling thing. I agree about the "intersecting hotspots" analysis. I guess my issue with African-Americans who name their kids weird made up names that aren't even spelled like they sound, isn't that they don't have a right to do it. Clearly they do.
I just think it potentially places an unnecessary barrier on that child's future when they submit their resume for a job. It's one thing if you want to make up "original" names if you come from the class with the social power and economic power to do the majority of the hiring and firing, but if not and you still go that route, you gotta take your lumps for taking a stand like that.
"Conversate" denotes relaxing, playful talk among friends; "converse" is a little more uptight.
I'm a reporter, and words are important to me, and I struggle with word snobbery. I'm a lot less snobbish after living for nine years in Toledo, where the dominant dialect sounded uneducated to my ears. It still does, actually. It's going to take decades for me to get over myself. In Toledo (and probly in Detroit [yeah, I use 'probly' in casual discourse -- got a problem with that?]), everyone, even educated people, say, "I seen..." As in, "I seen smoke coming from the house, so I called 911." I finally decided that this is correct grammar in that region's dialect.
Lately, two rapidly spreading linguistic horrors have been bugging me:
a) the pronunciation of "forward" as "foward" or "fuhward."
b) standing "on line." Frackin' New Yorkers have been successfully spreading this monstrosity. You stand in line, not on line! Aaaargh!
As I said, it's gonna take decades for me to get over myself.
Linguisticus,
You mistake Mel's point, which is that your analysis is flawed.
Compare the principle parts of two Latin verbs, conversare and decimare:
converso, conversare, conversavi, conversatus
decimo, decimare, decimavi, decimatus
Both of these are regular a-conjugation verbs. From one, we get the verb converse (from the first principle part); from the other, we get the verb decimate (from the fourth principle part).
Now, there may be a rule for when Latin verbs enter English through fourth principle parts or nouns and when they enter English through first principle parts (I suspect not, but I am no linguist). But your analysis of Latin in the original comment demonstrated nothing. If there is a 'reason' why decimate is a verb and conversate is not, it is not the one you stated, which has no basis in Latin grammar. The verbs decimare and conversare are exactly the same form, but yield English verbs that look different.
Sorry to be a pedant. I actually think that Latin grammar tells us literally nothing about whether 'conversate' is a word. But I follow Mel in calling shenanigans on Linguisticus' account of why someone might think it mattered.
- ML
Holdie, you may stand as you wish, as we New Yorkers continue to stand on line. When I visit you, I'll stand in line, and when I visit my family in London, I'll queue up. See how diversity is lovely? ;-)
I would also argue that the intentional use of contextually inappropriate words is a valuable part of the English language. I, for example, adore the word c*nt, because it is one of the few words I can think of that maintains the ability to shock and offend. For exactly that reason, it needs to be used very sparingly, and then only with full intent, because it DOES shock and offend, mightily in some circumstances. And while I'm sure there are those who would disagree, the English language would, in my opinion, be the poorer were we not occasionally horrified by what just came out of someone's mouth or fell under our glance at the page.
I personally don't think syncretic is a word
People who deny elements of the language don't want it to grow, and don't want people to feel equal stake and ownership in the language, and thus, in the society in which it is dominant.
They want to quarantine some language.
Your interview basically all but said it outright. It's about cultural dominance and superiority. It's about hatred.
TNC, There's a blogger down the hall at Atlantic that is excellent reading for those who enjoy the conversation of words.
http://barbarawallraff.theatlantic.com/
I think she's fairly new, but I've enjoyed her musings.
ML, you haven't actually provided a reason for me to change the account I offered of why people find conversate improper, (something with which I disagreed in my original post). All you propose is that certain verbs produce a different derivative form in English rather than following a single pattern for the group that we analyze grammatically under the same category in Latin (i.e. verbs in -are). You might note that I did NOT argue that all English verbs deriving from the Latin -are conjugation follow the same pattern. Decimate, annihilate, macerate etc all illustrate this mode of derivation - but they do NOT invalidate the other mode, which is illustrated by conversare - converse, reversare - reverse etc.
What you've done is simply to show that for some reason, different subgroups within this conjugation produce a different pattern of derivation. This may be because of the phonetic structure of the verbs in question, it may simply be a matter of how a particular derivation works. What it does not alter, and you offer exactly no reason to think that it does, is the basic point about how conversate itself is formed. It is a back formation from conversation, rather than deriving, as converse does, from the Latin conversare. (Yes, we can debate the alleged intermediate influence of Old French).
However, there simply is no "proper" root available in either Latin or French to enable us to form "conversate". You can't conversater in French, any more than you can conversatare in Latin. The reason for this is simple: the base form conversatare does not exist and never did. Given how we do form English verbs from their ultimate Latin roots, and the predictable patterns that exist for us to do so, that makes "conversate" effectively an anomaly - a verb lacking a "proper" root.
This is why it seems to indicate ignorance, or wilful abuse of English to those who care about such things. If you want to disagree with what is a solidly grounded linguistic explanation, please do, but you need to offer a sustainable linguistic account of how conversate is formed in English, and explain why converse has a different form. This is what is lacking in your post, and why it doesn't actually touch on the claim that you believe you are making.
Hmm... You know, the only thing I have a huge problem with is "ATM machine". Because, argh!
One of my best friends says it and I now think it's cute instead of annoying, so, progress. But it still drives me up the wall when I think about it.
Other things do tend to grate on my nerves (nuke-u-lar, irregardless), but I have been trying hard to not be judgmental about it.
I continually smile when reading your post, but dam(n)TNC you just got rid of Ebonics in one post when decided to conversate with OED. So long EBONICS (RIP)
It's interesting how people create new words by going backwards from an existing word, as with "conversate" from "conversation," but it still makes me cringe. I just read "The Dark Side," and every time "rendition" was used as a verb, it brought out the Nazi in me.
I guess this just goes to show how utterly retarded the English language is that you can come up with new words by applying slightly different rules to try to figure out a different form of the same word. There are so many contradictory rules -- and exceptions to those rules -- that it's pretty easy for it to happen.
I'd have to say that one of the immense strengths of English is the ease with which it coins new forms, and accepts new vocabulary. I believe that it has the richest vocabulary of all the world's languages, and that its vocabulary expands at the most rapid rate. That's one reason why it's less likely that Mandarin will take over. Sure, Mandarin can coin words, but it is awfully hard for it to do so and remain comprehensible once you break the two syllable barrier. Equally, it really has problems with transliteration - thus e.g. Curtis Ebbesmeyer transforms into Kedisi Aibesimiye. (If you want the source you can find him mentioned on www.cslpod.com (podcast 102 if I recall rightly).
On linguisticus' postings, I think he's clearly right in what he says about how conversate is formed. Interesting that the versare verbs are all frequentatives, as opposed to decimate and so forth. Perhaps that has something to do with how we derive English verbs from them? ML, you should note that just because verbs share a conjugation, it doesn't mean that they all have to follow the same path of derivation. Linguistics 101. *s*
Scrabble and Ms. Jones, your 4th grade teacher. It's a bit infuriating for me, with two kids in elementary school, to tell my kids to stay in their teacher's box even when they know they are right to drift outside of it. I think after years of being told to stay in the box, we have trouble venturing beyond it.
That said, 'itso' really needs to be picked up as a proper word:
itso — noun, pl. itsos : typographical error involving the use of it’s for its, or vice-versa. You have an itso in the second paragraph.
"I would imagine it sucks when a well-spoken black teenager is castigated by his peers for "acting white" (by the way, does this really happen?)." ~ Aubrey
Yes! This does happen and has happened to me all of my life & furthermore it hurts feelings...
Ok, now i'm going to jump into the fray and add my own two cents. The study of linguistics is a dynamic and fascinating field. Language occupies a space in reality that very few other cultural markers do. Language silmultaneously shapes and is shaped by reality. Things "exist" b/c we name them and "speak them into existence." While, I personally hate the term "conversate" it is most definitely a word that has validity and meaning. People use it therefore it exists. I understand what ppl mean when they use it.
I think the pooh poohing of ebonics (or black english) is ultimatley tied to the devaluing of black americans intelligence w/in our society. Ebonics "sounds" uneducated but really this particular form of english expression adheres to it's own set of grammatical rules. I know this b/c as another commentator pointed out you can actually speak ebonics incorrectly. Furthermore if ppl want to posit that classism plays a bigger role than racism lets stop and think about how class and race are so intimately connected in this country. Po folks are all colors but who is often represented? Brown skinned ppl. Southern v. black language is a moot point in many regards as the southern dialect and black american dialect is often one and the same. That's why black folks sound "country" or "Southern" in Chicago, Philly, L.A., DC (technically the south but I digress), New York, etc. The history that shaped the "southern" accent in this country is the same history that shaped the "black" accent.
Finally, "ain't" and "y'all" are great words. I use y'all all of the time (although I definitely code switch). It's a much faster way to say "you all" or "all of you." Plus i've heard alternatives like the Philly "you'se" as in "you'se guys" and that word is a major fail.
I could spend a day responding to nearly everyone on this thread. I teach English as a Second language, and so many of these issues I have to face every day. (Like the way I put the object before the subject? That's style!)
Ok, we have oration/orate, inflation/inflate, donation/donate... now what happened with corporation/corporate? Instead of the noun being reduced to make a verb, it's now an adjective! Language is funny. (I love my job.)
I have to say that, when some of my students use the word "organizate," I know they've made a mistake, but a mistake that shows they're really internalizing English rules. (I feel I should put a parenthetical remark here, just for the sake of parallelism.)
Someone once told me that "obligate" isn't a word, because it is functionally no different from "oblige". Well, obviously a lot of people consider "obligate" a word. It seems to me that oblige is to obligate as converse is to conversate...
I can't believe some of you guys, stop freaking out and pick up a book about linguistics already. I recommend John McWhorter's "Word on the Street". Regardless (or perhaps I should say "irregardless") of what you think about his racial politics, his books about slang and its role in linguistics are excellent.
I'm surprised that no one thus far seems to have brought up Urban Dictionary, perhaps the farthest linguistic reference body one could find on the prescriptive/descriptive continuum. Forget conversate (which Firefox's spellcheck doesn't like, incidentally), how about textually frustrated, octobong, ponzi crawl, and meatloafing?
Nate, I believe linguisticus pre-empted you on the Urban Dictionary, in his post of January 7, 2009 5:33 PM
College English teacher here. First, grammar is not the issue(grammar is a relatively young study developed to examine Latin, an already dead language in the 19th century); police do not assure an administration of justice. Usage, linguistics, phonetics is what's at stake, cultural bias also. Ain't, which is a perfectly natural simplification of verb inflection with God knows how many precedents in human linguistic history, for reasons of prejudice alone has never made it to the official dictionary despite who knows how many decades and/or centuries of use. The same folks who demand that there are indirect objects in English (where they are in fact objects of prepositions, unlike real indefinite object pronouns in Romance languages), cannot give over to an all purpose are/is--a'i'--subsititute.
Will another more contemporary conjunction, a'ight,a result of natural phonetic elidating, ever get OED status?
"Aks" is a typical phonetic consonant reversal that also occurs throughout history.
Personally, I don't use conversate, though I have no problem with using ain't--ain't nobody's business but my own--and I am quick to say y'all though my daughters who live in Texas never do. Still conversatin' does sound ever so much more comfy than conversing--does anyone really say I conversed with her yesterday--and it does sound both informal (the signifyin' improvisational) and elevated (more than talking--talking with versifying going on at the same time). But in school essays, I recommend the paltry word "talk" cause I know most of my colleagues won't go for conversate without a red pen in hand.
My personal bugaboo, however, is the should of, would of, could of group--the could of if only? They're contractions, bless them. Should + have contracted = should've.
Which do you prefer Stevie Wonder's "up tight" or Bob Dylan's? Poets, song writers--antennae for the way words come alive.
Quoth the Hamlet--"wordzzzz!" Only Shakespeare spelled it differently.
CitizenE, you say "ain't...has never made it to the official dictionary." Of course it has. It typically appears with a usage note cautioning against its use in formal writing, but it's been dictionarized (which is not a word in the dictionary) for years.
CitizenE, you should know that the scientific study of grammar goes back the better part of 2,500 years in the Greek tradition, from which, via Latin, our grammatical conventions are derived.Calling it "young" suggests some alarming things about your knowledge of the subject. Equally, both Arabic and Sanskrit have long traditions, and the latter produced Panini's work (probably 4th century BC), the first generally agreed masterpiece of fully scientific grammar which is preserved for us. Also, to try and separate usage and linguistics from grammar is arbitrary and untrue to the realities of life. Your explanation of ain't is simply silly. Ain't is a typical compensatory lengthening of the vowel once a consonant, in this case "s" has been dropped. Also, the term is elision, not elidating. I sincerely hope you plan to learn some basic linguistics if this is what you've been teaching students.
Cash, I liked DFW as much as the next guy — but his dictionary essay is generally considered to be bullshit by people who actually know what they're talking about.
Copy editor here, with a suggestion that self-described usage snobs shouldn't necessarily give up the fight. While you aren't able to control how English develops, your gatekeeping role is no less important than the role of your more promiscuous comrades.
Inclusiveness has its place. The likes of Tom Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, David Mamet, Richard Pryor and Larry the Cable Guy have done more to turbocharge the English language than thousands of priggish English 101 teachers. Still, all of those men for the most part follow generations of linguistic tradition preserved and passed on by, yes, old-school grammarians.
It's simplistic, I think, to assume elitism is really what drives most linguistic conservatism. Standard "proper" English in, say, journalism, business memoranda or textbooks is a simple matter of respect for a) the busy reader who needs his information presented with a minimum of distracting fuss, and b) the speakers and writers who have brought the language to this point over the last millennium.
Learning elementary Latin and French unpleasantly taxed my adolescent brain, but as time went by I came to appreciate how English absorbed and improved on its ancestors in the same way we appreciate and aspire to the beauty of a Renaissance cathedral while recognizing it's no longer practical to worship in one.
It takes all sorts to make a language, including the prigs. So I'm going to go on changing the verb "impact" for something else, even if Webster's has given up that fight. Someday, its use as a verb won't sound clunky and officious, but it ain't happened yet.
The past three times I've re-clicked on this debate, my brain has converted the word in question to "conservate."
@ brucds,
Please, please take your state of the union address to punditkitchen the day he actually makes the speech? It's brilliant, and it needs to circle the planet a million times before the limo gets back to the white house.
Thanks for the commentary in re ain't, Amy: I ain't never seen it included in the dictionary. Nulliusaddictus, also kudos, for the info on grammar, I had always been under the impression, and have read, just today in fact, that serious scientific study of grammar, is a a 19th century phenomenon. However, insofar as ain't is concerned, the word does not just signify isn't, but also aren't, so while the pronounciation might have derived from isn't, the usage is a conflation of inflections, which I believe is the reason for its acceptance despite its universal usage.
Now, if elidating isn't your cuppa, you aren't cruising with the fusion--pay to play at T-N's house. I guess. And by the by, "which" signifies a non-essential clause that must be sorted off with a comma from the independent clause whose meaning it specifies. Not that rules apply all that much to blog posts, and speech should be free as a bird in my opinion.
English is currently the Nile River of languages. I just went to Austin, Texas where Manchaca St. is pronounced Man-shack. Blanconomics (pronounced Blank-o). It's all in the ear. Language is a living thing. Beejeez above has it right, palaver on a silver salver.
CitizenE, in English, we call such clauses "subordinate", and "which" is a relative pronoun. And no, the serious study of grammar did not begin in the 19th century, although historical linguistics did. As for elision, if you can find a linguistics text or discussion that uses elidating, I shall be unpleasantly surprised. Why make up a gratuitous word when you have a perfectly good one already?
We need to lead people out (a literal gloss of 'educate') of the Panglossian political correctness which maintains that, in current usage, whatever is is right (often misread as 'whatever is new is cool'). It ain't necessarily so, any more than it is in other areas of human society. We agree (most of us, I hope) to respect the person who prefers to preserve and re-use well-wrought old tools rather than replace them prematurely with shiny plastic knock-offs that don't work as well or last half as long. Why not, then, applaud the speaker who prefers not to invent, or copy, ephemeral backformations such as 'conversate' or 'coronate' (except as conscious satire) because he glances in his memory-banks and finds that 'converse' and 'crown' still work well enough? Why not point out to everyone currently writing 'more well known' or 'most well liked' that, well, 'well' has the same simple comparative and superlative forms as 'good', and it's generally neater, 'greener'. and more effective to use the 'better known' and (by me, at any rate) 'best loved' bits of current English in use. The language can change (and will) all it wants after we're gone; all the more reason to savor the best of it while we're here and can think clearly.
I'm sure many of you have already read it, but this post (and it's comments) remind me of an excellent book I read awhile back.
"the mother tongue" by bill bryson. Quick read and filled with interesting word stuff.
So kid destroyer, you'd approve of "conversatify" then?
I disagree that getting the point across is good enough. By that non-standard, a mime is as articulate as Mark Twain. I have a one and a half year old who often gets his point across with grunts. It's not elitist of me to expect better of him as he matures.
Doug - sorry about not responding before, I don't check this site often enough.
Yeah, I have no problem with "conversatify", if I could understand what that meant (I can't).
And when I said that getting the point across was enough, I was talking about using words, yeah? Last I heard, grunts and miming aren't words, they are sounds, at best.
And I did not say anything about the articulability of "mispronouncing" words, I was only talking about what a word is or is not. Clearly, if you want to be articulate there are a lot more rules you have to follow. Being understood is not equivalent to being articulate, and I never like people castigating others for not speaking "properly".
Also, I agree with your opinion of conversate, it is not my favorite word either, but I don't particularly care.
John Perry, I also feel a visceral dislike of coronate, but the OED states that it was first used in 1657, so it's hardly a brash neologism. Ugly, yes, but legitimate. The Columbia Guide to Standard American Usage says:
"A nonstandard back-formation from the noun coronation, perhaps coined first as a jocular nonce word. The Standard verb is to crown or to be crowned, and the usual idiom is to have a coronation."
Interesting that the same pattern holds true of conversate, as linguisticus suggested. Regardless of the history behind coronate, I shall, nonetheless stick with crown. And irregardless is an abomination, although not as appalling as thusly. (If you don't know why thusly is appalling, ask yourselves what "thus" means (as in, "I thus achieved infamy"), and what the suffix "-ly" is used for.)
My philosophy is that if all, or most, native speakers of a language understand the meaning of a word without confusion, then it is a real word.
In that sense, converstate is more of a real word than palimpsest, or some other rare, but real word.
Also, as a side note, I say undoubtably. I didn't even know it wasn't a real word until I was 26. Just this past holiday I heard my father say it, and I think that must be where I picked up this "fake word". Between the two of us we have 7 degrees from top universities and would both be considered well-educated. Using improper words is not a sign of being uneducated. It just means you grew up in an environment where that word was commonly used (and commonly understood). Nothing more, nothing less.
Good subject! For more about "conversate," have a look at my blog entry http://barbarawallraff.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/joining_the_conversate_convers.php
Using improper words is not a sign of being uneducated. It just means you grew up in an environment where that word was commonly used (and commonly understood). Nothing more, nothing less.
Posted by Nylund | January 9, 2009 3:38 AM
It could also be the same thing as perpetuating a mistake made in good faith. Consider the people who write "loosening the reigns", where the metaphor makes no sense whatsoever. "Loosening the reins" goes back to the days when people rode horses for transport/in battle, and loosening the reins allows the horse to lengthen stride and move faster. How does one loosen a period of rule? Also, I know it's politically correct to allow anything and everything these days, but the rules exist for a reason - to facilitate communication and provide a common standard. Destroying that in the name of political correctness is a bad bargain.
Right, but if you use conversate then I have every right to think you sound like a ridiculous idiot (while not believing you ARE an idiot).
Here's my bottom line: I work in an insurance company's call center and I don't mind at all if my co-worker uses words like "conversate" and "aks" in the break room but I have a real problem when he/she ses them on the phone while "conversing" with clients. And my biggest concern is with schools granting diplomas to students who think conversate is appropriate in the office and who don't know how to decline a verb...I hear things like, "I seen him at the mall...or "I be sitting..."...all the time.
The grade school teacher who tells you that conversate is not a proper word wants you to get into a good college, find a well paid job and not miss out on promotions further up the ladder. He or she understands that vocabulary and usage will always have an enormous effect on your income, for your whole working life.
It is almost impossible to challenge the good sense of such a teacher's efforts. She may have a fight on her hands in a school where many students come from homes where english is not spoken, or where the parents had very little education, but she knows that your best chance at success will be to have a very good command of the language.
When a well educated person tries to justify the use of words like conversate, (and let's face it, poorly educated folk don't care), I always detect a hint of cynicism. There is no way they would use the word in conversation with their peers. Telling a child or a person with little education that such a word is quite ok to use reeks of the sort of political correctness that is designed to perpetuate and accentuate class divisions, not to encourage improvement.
This is that odious type of cultural sensitivity that keeps people in the ghetto.
John Crawfor wrote: "The grade school teacher who tells you that conversate is not a proper word wants you to get into a good college, find a well paid job and not miss out on promotions further up the ladder."
Hopefully, a student will encounter a teacher who's capable of having the conversation that Jesse Sheidlower had with TNC. It's very interesting to hear from a truly educated person whose knowledge of the language goes beyond what they can find in a dictionary.
We're not in grade school anymore.
So how do we know you actually talked to an editor??? This could just be your way of adding the usage of a word that isnt a word among the uhm zillions, right, that arent in the dictionary!! So name some of those other zillions please, I would love to know.