GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — At a campaign stop in Rockford, Ill., not
long ago, Mitt Romney sought to convey his feelings for his wife, Ann.
“Smitten,” he said.
Not merely in love.
“Yeah, smitten,” he said. “Mitt was smitten.”
It was a classic Mittism, as friends and advisers call the verbal quirks of the
Republican presidential candidate. In Romneyspeak, passengers do not get off
airplanes, they “disembark.” People do not laugh, they “guffaw.” Criminals do
not go to jail, they land in the “big house.” Insults are not hurled,
“brickbats” are.
As he seeks the office of commander in chief, Mr. Romney can sometimes seem like
an editor in chief, employing a language all his own. It is polite, formal and
at times anachronistic, linguistically setting apart a man who frequently
struggles to sell himself to the American electorate.
It is most pronounced when he is on the stump and off the cuff, not on the
stuffy and rehearsed debate stage. But Mr. Romney offered voters a dose of it
during his face-off with President Obama last week, when he coined the
infelicitous phrase “binders full of women.”
Mr. Romney’s unique style of speaking has distinguished him throughout his
career, influencing the word choices of those who work with and especially for
him. Should he reach the White House, friends and advisers concede, the trait
could be a defining feature of his public image, as memorable as Lyndon B.
Johnson’s foul-mouthed utterances or the first President Bush’s tortured syntax.
Mr. Romney, 65, has spent four decades inside the corridors of high finance and
state politics, where indecorous diction and vulgarisms abound. But he has
emerged as if in a rhetorical time capsule from a well-mannered era of soda
fountains and AMC Ramblers, someone whose idea of swearing is to let loose with
the phrase “H-E-double hockey sticks.”
“He actually said that,” recalled Thomas Finneran, the speaker of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives when Mr. Romney was governor. “As in, go
to ‘H-E-double hockey sticks.’ I would think to myself, ‘Who talks like that?’ ”
Mr. Romney, quite proudly. In fact, he seems puzzled by the fascination with
something as instinctive (and immutable) as how he talks, as if somebody were
asking how he breathes. “It’s like someone who speaks with an accent,” he said
in an interview. “You don’t hear the accent.”
His Mormon faith frowns on salty language, and so does he. A man of relentless
self-discipline, he made clear to lawmakers in Boston and colleagues in business
that even in matters of vocabulary, he “held himself to a high standard of
behavior,” said Geoffrey Rehnert, a former executive at Bain Capital, the firm
Mr. Romney started in the 1980s. Mr. Romney’s father, George, whom he idolized,
shared the same style of refined and restrained speech.
Those around him are so accustomed to his verbal tics that they describe them in
shorthand. “Old-timey,” said one aide. “His 1950s language,” explained another.
“The Gomer Pyle routine,” said a third.
Asked about his boss’s word preferences, Eric Fehrnstrom, a veteran Romney
adviser, responded knowingly: “You mean like ‘gosh, golly, darn’?”
For Democratic strategists, Mr. Romney’s throwback vocabulary feeds into their
portrayal of a man ill-equipped for the mores and challenges of the modern age.
David Axelrod, a top adviser for an Obama campaign that has adopted “Forward” as
its slogan, once quipped that Mr. Romney “must watch ‘Mad Men,’ ” the hit
television show set in Manhattan in the 1960s, “and think it’s the evening
news.”
His exclamations can sound jarring to the contemporary ear — or charming,
depending on whom you ask. Midway into a critique of Mr. Obama’s economic
policies a few months ago, Mr. Romney declared: “They’ve scared the dickens out
of banks,” he said. “They’ve scared the dickens out of insurance companies.”
He declared, “To heck with it!” while urging reporters to use their fingers to
dig into a box of pastries he was passing around on a plane. “Darn good
question,” he replied to a voter in Kalamazoo, Mich., who asked how he would
work with Congress if elected. (His wife also got the “darn” treatment in
Michigan, when he enthused, “Gosh, darn, she is amazing!”) “Thank heavens” is
another favorite.
For people used to peppering their speech with four-letter words, time with Mr.
Romney can prove an exercise in self-control. A half-dozen people recalled the
precise moment when they swore — almost always accidentally — in his presence.
When Robert Travaglini, then the Democratic president of the Massachusetts State
Senate, would curse in front of Mr. Romney, the governor would frown and
interject, “Well, I wouldn’t choose that diction,” Mr. Travaglini recalled.
Mr. Rehnert, the former Bain executive, was mortified when a potential client he
took into Mr. Romney’s office promptly dropped a string of profanities. “Mitt
wanted to know what cats and dogs I was dragging in here,” Mr. Rehnert said.
His cussing colleagues said Mr. Romney took pains not to judge them publicly.
“He did not impose his language preferences on us,” Mr. Finneran said. “But I
wonder if we became a little bit more restrained because we knew this about
him.”
Mr. Travaglini recalled lawmakers’ discussing how Mr. Romney “should be more in
tune with the vernacular of the day and express himself more passionately.”
“But,” he added, “that’s not who he is.”
Mr. Romney does have his own distinctly G-rated arsenal of angry expressions —
“Good grief,” “flippin’,” “good heavens” and even the occasional “crap.”
Perhaps the most intriguing of these is “grunt.” Most people just grunt. Mr.
Romney, however, talks about grunting. “Grunt” he says, onomatopoetically, when
annoyed with a last-minute change in his campaign schedule.
Many of Mr. Romney’s verbal habits can sound like those of a hyper-literate
graduate student who never left school. (In college, he majored in English.) He
favors the gentlemanly qualifier “if you will,” which he invoked three times
during a recent speech.
On how to reduce the debt: “You have to start accumulating, if you will,
reserves.”
On speaking to a group of soldiers: “The cadets were all lined up and sitting at
attention, if you will.”
On his business background: “I’ve had the experience of working in the real
world, if you will.”
In interviews, voters expressed an equal measure of admiration for and curiosity
about his quaint dialect, which many described as a conspicuous break from the
normally harsh tone of politicians.
“It’s a wonderful change,” said Irene Sperling, a retiree from Allentown, Pa.
“He’s a gentleman.”
Wendy Tonn, 63, a Romney supporter who splits her time between Michigan and
Florida, said she found comfort in his vocabulary, comparing it to the simple
innocence of “Leave It to Beaver.” “We are of that era, and we’d like to be
returned to that kind of era,” she said.
Even Dennis Miller, the comedian, has weighed in, suggesting that after four
years of having a “hipster president” in the White House, Americans craved a
“gosh president.”
A few acquaintances have tried to drag him linguistically into the 21st century.
Mr. Finneran, an admitted serial curser, said that after years of working
closely with Mr. Romney, he began to fantasize about provoking him to utter a
particularly crude word.
“It got to the point where I started to think that my greatest achievement of
all time would be if I somehow or other got him to say the word,” he said.
Once, Mr. Romney seemed on the cusp of fulfilling that wish during a heated
discussion. But he caught himself. “And I thought, ‘Oh, God, my closest moment
ever,’ ” Mr. Finneran said. “But it’s not going to happen.”
This article has been revised
to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: October 20, 2012
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article
SILETZ,
Ore. — Local native languages teeter on the brink of oblivion all over the world
as the big linguistic sweepstakes winners like English, Spanish or Mandarin ride
a surging wave of global communications.
But the forces that are helping to flatten the landscape are also creating new
ways to save its hidden, cloistered corners, as in the unlikely survival of
Siletz Dee-ni. An American Indian language with only about five speakers left —
once dominant in this part of the West, then relegated to near extinction — has,
since earlier this year, been shouting back to the world: Hey, we’re talking.
(In Siletz that would be naa-ch’aa-ghit-’a.)
“We don’t know where it’s going to go,” said Bud Lane, a tribe member who has
been working on the online Siletz Dee-ni Talking Dictionary for nearly seven
years, and recorded almost all of its 10,000-odd audio entries himself. In its
first years the dictionary was password protected, intended for tribe members.
Since February, however, when organizers began to publicize its existence, Web
hits have spiked from places where languages related to Siletz are spoken, a
broad area of the West on through Canada and into Alaska. That is the heartland
of the Athabascan family of languages, which also includes Navajo. And there has
been a flurry of interest from Web users in Italy, Switzerland and Poland, where
the dark, rainy woods of the Pacific Northwest, at least in terms of language
connections, might as well be the moon.
“They told us our language was moribund and heading off a cliff,” said Mr. Lane,
54, sitting in a storage room full of tribal basketry and other artifacts here
on the reservation, about three hours southwest of Portland, Ore. He said he has
no fantasies that Siletz will conquer the world, or even the tribe.
Stabilization for now is the goal, he said, “creating a pool of speakers large
enough that it won’t go away.”
But in the hurly-burly of modern communications, keeping a language alive goes
far beyond a simple count of how many people can conjugate its verbs. Think Jen
Johnson’s keypad thumbs. A graduate student in linguistics at Georgetown
University, Ms. Johnson, 21, stumbled onto Siletz while studying linguistics at
Swarthmore College, which has helped the tribe build its dictionary. She fell in
love with its cadences, and now texts in Siletz, her fourth language of study,
with a tribe member in Oregon.
Language experts who helped create the dictionary say the distinctiveness of
Siletz Dee-ni (pronounced SiLETZ day-KNEE), or Coastal Athabascan as it is also
called, comes in part from the unique way the language managed to survive.
Most other language preservation projects have a base, however small, of people
who speak the language. The Ojibwe People’s Dictionary, for example, which went
online this year, focuses on one of the most widely spoken native languages in
Canada and the Upper Midwest.
The 12 other dictionaries financed in recent years by the Living Tongues
Institute, a nonprofit group, in partnership with the National Geographic
Society — which helped start the Siletz dictionary project in 2005 and now uses
it as a blueprint — are all centered on languages still in use, however small or
threatened their populations of speakers may be. Matukar Panau, for instance, an
Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea, has about 600 speakers remaining, in two
small villages.
Siletz, by contrast, had become, by the time of the dictionary, almost an
artifact — preserved in song for certain native dances, but without a single
person living who had grown up with it as a first language.
There were people who had listened to the elders, like Mr. Lane, and there were
old recordings, made by anthropologists who came through the West in the 1930s
and 1960s, but not much else. Mr. Lane wants to incorporate some of those
scratchy recordings into future versions of the dictionary.
What can also bridge an ancient language’s roots to younger tribe members, some
new Siletz learners said, is that it can sound pretty cool.
“There are a couple of sounds that are nowhere in the English language, like
you’re going to spit, almost — kids seem much more open to that,” said Sonya
Moody-Jurado, who grew up hearing a few words from her mother — like nose
(mish), and dog (lin-ch’e’) — and has been attending with a grandson Siletz
classes taught by Mr. Lane.
“They’re trailblazers, showing the way for small languages to cross the digital
divide,” said K. David Harrison, an associate professor of linguistics at
Swarthmore who worked with the Siletz tribe and the other partners to build the
dictionary. Professor Harrison said he went to Colombia recently, talking to
indigenous tribes about preserving their languages, but when the laptops opened
up, the Siletz dictionary, with its impressive size and search capabilities, was
the focus. “It’s become a model of how you do it,” he said.
When settlers were streaming west in the 1850s on the Oregon Trail and
displacing American Indians from desirable farmland, government Indian policy
created artificial conglomerates of tribes, jamming them into one place even
though the groups spoke different languages and in many instances had little in
common.
The Siletz people were among the largest bands that ended up here on this spit
of land jutting into the Pacific Ocean. By dint of their numbers, their language
prevailed over other tribes, and their dances, sung in Siletz, became adopted by
other tribes as their cultures faded.
“We’re the last standing,” Mr. Lane said.
But the threat of oblivion was constant. In the 1950s, the tiny tribe was
declared dead by the United States — a “termination” from the rolls, in the
jargon of the time. The Siletz clawed back — clinging to former reservation
lands and cultural anchors in songs and dances — and two decades later, in the
mid-1970s, became only the second tribe in the nation to go from nonexistence to
federally recognized status. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians now have
about 4,900 enrolled members and a profitable casino in the nearby resort town
of Lincoln City.
School was also once the enemy of tribal languages. Government boarding schools,
where generations of Indian children were sent, aimed to stamp out native ways
and tongues. Now, the language is taught through the sixth grade at the public
charter school in Siletz, and the tribe aims to have a teaching program in place
in the next few years to meet Oregon’s high school language requirements,
allowing Siletz, in a place it originated, to be taught as a foreign language.
December 11, 2011
The New York Times
By AMY CHOZICK
At his best friend’s wedding reception on the California coast, David J.
Peterson stood to deliver his toast as best man. He held his Champagne glass
high and shouted “Hajas!” The 50 guests raised their glasses and chanted
“Hajas!” in unison.
The word, which means “be strong” and is pronounced “hah-DZHAS,” has great
significance for Mr. Peterson. He invented it, along with 3,250 other words (and
counting), in the language he created for the HBO fantasy series “Game of
Thrones,” called Dothraki.
Some people build model railroads or re-enact Civil War battles; Mr. Peterson, a
30-year-old who studied linguistics at the University of California, San Diego,
is a “conlanger,” a person who constructs new languages. Until recently, this
mostly quixotic linguistic pursuit, born out of a passion for words and
grammatical structures, lived on little-visited Web sites or in college
dissertations.
Today, a desire in Hollywood to infuse fantasy and science-fiction movies,
television series and video games with a sense of believability is driving
demand for constructed languages, complete with grammatical rules, a written
alphabet (hieroglyphics are acceptable) and enough vocabulary for basic
conversations.
In “Game of Thrones,” Dothraki-speaking characters greet each other by saying
“M’athchomaroon!” (hello) give each other commands like “Azzohi haz khogare”
(put down that cask) and occasionally utter sentiments like “Vezh fin saja
rhaesheseres vo zigereo adoroon shiqethi!” (the stallion that mounts the world
has no need for iron chairs!) that don’t seem to make sense in any language. And
this being an HBO show, there’s also a fair bit of “athhilezar” (sex).
“The days of aliens spouting gibberish with no grammatical structure are over,”
said Paul R. Frommer, professor emeritus of clinical management communication at
the University of Southern California who created Na’vi, the language spoken by
the giant blue inhabitants of Pandora in “Avatar.” Disney recently hired Mr.
Frommer to develop a Martian language called Barsoomian for “John Carter,” a
science-fiction movie to arrive in March.
The shift is slowly transforming the obscure hobby of language construction into
a viable, albeit rare, career and engaging followers of fantasies like “Lord of
the Rings,” “Game of Thrones” and “Avatar” on a more fanatical level.
At “Game of Thrones” viewing parties in San Francisco, fans rewatched Dothraki
scenes to study the language in a workshop-like setting. Last October, a group
of Na’vi speakers from half a dozen countries convened in Sonoma County, Calif.,
for a gathering known as “Teach the Teachers.” Mr. Frommer gave attendants tips
on grammar and vocabulary and fielded any questions they had about the language.
The rural, wooded setting felt “almost like being on Pandora,” he said. At a
question-and-answer session in July that he participated in, at least a dozen
attendants rattled off their questions in fluent Na’vi.
“There’s been a sea change in Hollywood. They realize there’s a fan base out
there that wants constructed languages,” said Matt Pearson, a linguistics
professor at Reed College in Portland, Ore. He created Thhtmaa (pronounced
tukhh-t’-mah), the language of termite-like aliens in the short-lived NBC series
“Dark Skies.”
“Game of Thrones,” based on the best-selling series of novels “A Song of Ice and
Fire” by George R. R. Martin, may be the biggest television showcase for an
invented language. The books, which primarily follow feuding kingdoms in the
fictional land of Westeros, had a scattering of Dothraki words, but the show’s
executive producers wanted a fully formed language.
Several scenes in the first season of “Game of Thrones” take place entirely in
Dothraki with English subtitles. In one episode the shirtless tribal leader Khal
Drogo delivered a monologue for two and a half minutes in Dothraki, with its
subject-verb-object structure and no copula, or linking verb.
There have been many attempts to create languages, often for specific political
effect. In the 1870s, a Polish doctor invented Esperanto, meant to be a
simplified international language that would bring world peace. Suzette Haden
Elgin created Láaden as a language better suited for expressing women’s points
of view. (Láaden has a word, “bala,” that means “I’m angry for a reason but
nothing can be done about it.”)
But none of the hundreds of languages created for social reasons developed as
ardent a following as those created for movies, television and books, says Arika
Okrent, author of “In the Land of Invented Languages.”
“For years people have been trying to engineer better languages and haven’t
succeeded as well as the current era of language for entertainment sake alone,”
Ms. Okrent said.
The motivation to learn an auxiliary language is not so different from why
people pick up French or Italian, she said. “Learning a language, even a natural
language, is more of an emotional decision than a practical one. It’s about
belonging to a group,” she said.
Richard Littauer, a 23-year-old linguistics graduate student at the Saarland
University in Germany, maintains Dothraki.org, complete with an English-Dothraki
dictionary and grammar guidelines. “I was raised watching Pocahontas speak
fluent English,” Mr. Littauer said. “Linguistic diversity is one of the main
ways you feel like you’re in a new culture.”
The watershed moment for invented languages was the creation of a Klingon
language by the linguist Marc Okrand for “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock”
(on the original “Star Trek” television series, Klingons spoke mostly English).
That led to a Klingon Language Institute (a registered nonprofit), a Klingon
version of Monopoly, an official dictionary and a published translation of
“Hamlet.” (The Klingon race does not worship in the traditional sense, so
instead of Hamlet going to pray, he goes to do calisthenics.)
Klingon, with its throaty, harsh sound, is notoriously tough to pick up. Even
the creator has problems. (“I’ll admit, I’m not a very good speaker,” Mr. Okrand
said in an interview.) Fewer than 20 people are fully fluent in Klingon, he
estimated, though thousands more know enough to get by.
In 2007, Mr. Peterson helped found the Language Creation Society, the first
professional organization for people who create languages. He won an open call
to create a language for “Game of Thrones.” He submitted a 180-page proposal
complete with a dictionary and audio files of spoken Dothraki judged by a
double-blind committee of other language creators and finally, by the executive
producers. It’s not the first language Mr. Peterson has come up with. Before
Dothraki, he invented 12 others. His personal favorites: Zhyler, inspired
loosely by Turkish, and Kamakawi, which nods toward Hawaiian.
Dothraki came with its own challenges. Mr. Martin’s books described the Dothraki
people as nomadic warriors who live in grass fields and survive mostly on
horsemeat.
“First you say, should this word exist at all?” Mr. Peterson said. He decided
that the Dothraki, with their long braids, or “jahaki,” wouldn’t have a word for
toilet, cellphone or even book since that implies they have a printing press.
The Dothraki do however have more than 14 words for horse (including
“hrazefishi” for a teeny-tiny horse).
Next, Mr. Peterson tried to establish words that would be native and basic
(meaning they are not derived from another Dothraki word), toying with letter
combinations and sounds he liked. His favorite sound is “JH” as in “genre,” so
he made the word for man in Dothraki mahrazh.
“I said to myself, if I won the right to coin the word “man,” it better be
cool,” Mr. Peterson said.
After he amassed a small vocabulary, Mr. Peterson tested out basic grammar. He
adored the 18 noun classes in Swahili and the negative verb forms in Estonian,
both influences in his created languages. He scribbled sample sentences and
added suffixes and prefixes to expand the vocabulary.
He aims to eventually expand Dothraki to around 10,000 words — or about the
equivalent of college-level foreign language proficiency. In addition to the
Dothraki site, there is an official Na’vi grammar guide run in part by William
Annis, a 42-year-old who works in information technology in Madison, Wis. He
occasionally consults with Mr. Frommer, Na’vi’s creator.
But as with any language, there is a certain snob appeal built in. Among
Dothraki, Na’vi and Klingon speakers, a divide has grown between fans who master
the language as a linguistic challenge, and those who pick up a few phrases
because they love the mythology.
“There are the language nerds, who just find grammar interesting, and the Na’vi
folks, who paint themselves blue and go to conventions,” Mr. Annis said.
September 28, 2009
The New York Times
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer
Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels,
books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a
hospice in Rockville, Md., on Sunday. He was 79.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Martin Tolchin, a friend of the family.
There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics
and journalism it was simpler: There was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on
one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of
negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”
He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set
up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House
wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and
the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal, which drove the president from
office.
Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice-weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed
page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike
most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr.
Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called
people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.
Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie.
But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously
attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven
administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a
lot of powerful people squirm.
Mr. Safire also wrote four novels, including “Full Disclosure” (Doubleday,
1977), a best-seller about succession issues after a president is blinded in an
assassination attempt, and nonfiction that included “The New Language of
Politics” (Random House, 1968), and “Before the Fall” (Doubleday, 1975), a
memoir of his White House years.
And from 1979 until earlier this month, he wrote “On Language,” a New York Times
Magazine column that explored written and oral trends, plumbed the origins and
meanings of words and phrases, and drew a devoted following, including a stable
of correspondents he called his Lexicographic Irregulars.
The columns, many collected in books, made him an unofficial arbiter of usage
and one of the most widely read writers on language. It also tapped into the
lighter side of the dour-looking Mr. Safire: a Pickwickian quibbler who
gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and
perversely peccant puns, like “the president’s populism” and “the first lady’s
momulism,” written during the Carter presidency.
There were columns on blogosphere blargon, tarnation-heck euphemisms, dastardly
subjunctives and even Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist bumps. And there were
Safire “rules for writers”: Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull
by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words
out. Avoid clichés like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
Behind the fun, readers said, was a talented linguist with an addiction to
alliterative allusions. There was a consensus, too, that his Op-Ed essays,
mostly written in Washington and syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, were the
work of a sophisticated analyst with voluminous contacts and insights into the
way things worked in Washington.
Mr. Safire called himself a pundit — the word, with its implication of
self-appointed expertise, might have been coined for him — and his politics
“libertarian conservative,” which he defined as individual freedom and minimal
government. He denounced the Bush administration’s U.S.A. Patriot Act as an
intrusion on civil liberties, for example, but supported the war in Iraq.
He was hardly the image of a button-down Times man: The shoes needed a shine,
the gray hair a trim. Back in the days of suits, his jacket was rumpled, the
shirt collar open, the tie askew. He was tall but bent — a man walking into the
wind. He slouched and banged a keyboard, talked as fast as any newyawka and
looked a bit gloomy, like a man with a toothache coming on.
His last Op-Ed column was “Never Retire.” He then became chairman of the Dana
Foundation, which supports research in neuroscience, immunology and brain
disorders. In 2005, he testified at a Senate hearing in favor of a law to shield
reporters from prosecutors’ demands to disclose sources and other information.
In 2006, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W.
Bush. From 1995 to 2004, he was a member of the board that awards the Pulitzer
Prizes.
William Safir was born on Dec. 17, 1929, in New York City, the youngest of three
sons of Oliver C. and Ida Panish Safir. (The “e” was added to clarify
pronunciation.) He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and attended
Syracuse University, but quit after his second year in 1949 to take a job with
Tex McCrary, a columnist for The New York Herald Tribune who hosted radio and
television shows; the young legman interviewed Mae West and other celebrities.
In 1951, Mr. Safire was a correspondent for WNBC-TV in Europe and the Middle
East, and jumped into politics in 1952 by organizing an Eisenhower-for-President
rally at Madison Square Garden. He was in the Army from 1952 to 1954, and for a
time was a reporter for the Armed Forces Network in Europe. In Naples he
interviewed both Ingrid Bergman and Lucky Luciano within a few hours of each
other.
In 1959, working in public relations, he was in Moscow to promote an American
products exhibition and managed to steer Vice President Richard M. Nixon and
Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev into the “kitchen debate” on capitalism
versus communism. He took the photograph that became an icon of the encounter.
Nixon was delighted, and hired Mr. Safire for his 1960 campaign for the
presidency against John F. Kennedy.
Starting his own public relations firm in 1961, Mr. Safire worked in Gov. Nelson
A. Rockefeller’s 1964 presidential race and on John V. Lindsay’s 1965 campaign
for mayor of New York. Mr. Safire also wrote his first book, “The Relations
Explosion” (Macmillan, 1963).
In 1962, he married the former Helene Belmar Julius, a model, pianist and
jewelry designer. The couple had two children, Mark and Annabel. His wife and
children survive him, as does a granddaughter, Lily Safire.
In 1968, he sold his agency, became a special assistant to President Nixon and
joined a White House speechwriting team that included Patrick J. Buchanan and
Raymond K. Price Jr. Mr. Safire wrote many of Nixon’s speeches on the economy
and Vietnam, and in 1970 coined the “nattering nabobs” and “hysterical
hypochondriacs” phrases for Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.
After Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, publisher of The Times, hired Mr. Safire, one
critic said it was like setting a hawk loose among doves. As Watergate broke,
Mr. Safire supported Nixon, but retreated somewhat after learning that he, like
others in the White House, had been secretly taped.
Mr. Safire won his Pulitzer Prize for columns that accused President Jimmy
Carter’s budget director, Bert Lance, of shady financial dealings. Mr. Lance
resigned, but was acquitted in a trial. He then befriended his accuser.
Years later, Mr. Safire called Hillary Clinton a “congenital liar” in print.
Mrs. Clinton said she was offended only for her mother’s sake. But a White House
aide said that Bill Clinton, “if he were not the president, would have delivered
a more forceful response on the bridge of Mr. Safire’s nose.”
Mr. Safire was delighted, especially with the proper use of the conditional.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With a touch of geography, the oral rounds of the Scripps
National Spelling Bee are under way.
Thirteen-year-old Lindsey Zimmer of Notasulga, Ala., stepped to the microphone
early Wednesday morning as speller No. 1. The eighth-grader who likes to play
the flute correctly spelled the word ''longitude.''
A record 293 spellers -- including one from China -- are taking part in the 82nd
annual bee, which culminates with a nationally televised finish Thursday night.
The winner gets more than $40,000 in cash and prizes.
The competition began Tuesday, when all the spellers took a written test. The
scores from that test will be combined with the results from the oral rounds
Wednesday morning to determine who advances.
The kind of acronyms
that have spiced up our language
are something
Victorians sorely missed
Monday 6 April 2009
The Guardian
David McKie
This article was first published
on guardian.co.uk at 00.01 BST
on Monday 6
April 2009.
It appeared in the Guardian on Monday 6 April 2009
on p25 of the Comment &
debate section.
It was last updated at 00.12 BST
on Monday 6 April 2009.
This newspaper had a feature on Saturday on "the problem with G20 Wags".
How ever did we survive all those years without the acronym Wags? - short for
wives and girlfriends, though in the case of G20 all the women were guaranteed
wives. We rarely know who invented any acronym, but in this case we probably do:
a writer named Niamh Bugler is credited with having invented the term in 2004,
two years before it started to swamp the media in England's doomed football
World Cup campaign of 2006, in a process that one dictionary calls acronymania.
Some websites claim to list 4m or more of these creatures, but many do not
deserve the title of acronym, which the Chambers dictionary defines as "a word
formed from the initial letters of other words, as radar", and Collins as a word
of this kind that must be pronounceable. So BBC is not an acronym; nor is MI5 -
or G20.
We do know when the term itself was invented - in 1943, by a researcher at Bell
Laboratories who wanted a word to describe the short-form name they had given to
their Sound Navigation and Ranging System: Sonar. The world of warfare was full
of the terms: Radar, Pluto, Salt, Awol (Absent Without Leave), Snafu (Situation
Normal, All Fouled Up). But some peaceable sectors of life also adore them. The
financial word is littered with Peps and Isas, as well as institutions like Gatt
and taxes like VAT. Scuba (for underwater diving) and Laser are acronyms too.
They're a raging addiction in amateur theatre, where sometimes companies call
themselves by names that others may not regard as alluring. The Clare Amateur
Dramatic Society, Suffolk, is happy to be known as Cads, a fate its counterpart
in Claygate, Surrey, has avoided by calling itself the Claygate Dramatic
Society. The Biggleswade Amateur Theatrical Society is glad to be Bats, and the
Tipton Operatic And Dramatic Society is proud to call itself Toads. Medicine is
fond of these practices too, displaying an ingenuity that ranges from Aids to
the clever, but ultimately disqualifiable, Caduceus for Committee Advocating
Development and Use of Chymopapain to Eliminate Unnecessary back Surgery.
The remarkable spread of the acronym though the later years of the last century
and into this one is all the more surprising in the light of its very thin
previous history. Perhaps the happiest and most ingenious of the breed dates
from the reign of Charles II, when some of his lieutenants constituted a
political sub-group whose members were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley
and Lauderdale. The initial letters of their names happily constituted the word
"cabal", which with even greater serendipity had a slightly sinister echo of the
word cabbala (a secret mystical tradition of Jewish rabbis uncovering hidden
meanings in the Bible.)
One might have thought that with such an example before them the Britain of
subsequent years would have hit on many more such ingenious formulas. Yet even
the famously ingenious Victorians failed to follow this lead. The 19th century
swarmed with well-meaning societies. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge; the Society for the Improvement of the Labouring Classes; the Society
for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing-Boys in Cleansing Chimneys; the
Society for Bettering the Conditions and Increasing the Comfort of the Poor; the
Association for the Aid and Benefit of Dressmakers and Milliners - founded after
a 20-year-old woman died at the end of a 26-hour shift; and my own particular
favourite, the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which the celebrated wit
Sydney Smith said should have been called the Society for Suppressing the Vice
of Persons Whose Income Does Not Exceed £500 per annum. There was, it is true, a
Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, but it never, I think, asked to
be known as Spew. By inserting an "immediate" before "rescue" and an
"ostensibly" before "not yet", the Society for the Rescue of Boys Not Yet
Convicted of Any Criminal Offence could have arrived at the catchy title of
Sirbonycaco. But somehow, nobody spotted it.
Once you've started to note the proliferation of acronyms, there's a tendency to
suspect that one of these beasts may be lurking behind quite ordinary words.
Leg: Locomotion Enabling Gadget. Hat: Head Adornment Technology. And Acronym?
Artifice for the Compacted Reduction of Names Yawningly Multisyllabic, perhaps.
But I'm sure Niamh Bugler could come up with something much niftier than that.
February 24, 2009
The New York Times
By PATRICIA T. O’CONNER
and STEWART KELLERMAN
WHEN President Obama speaks before Congress and the nation tonight, he will
be facing some of his toughest critics.
Grammar junkies.
Since his election, the president has been roundly criticized by bloggers for
using “I” instead of “me” in phrases like “a very personal decision for Michelle
and I” or “the main disagreement with John and I” or “graciously invited
Michelle and I.”
The rule here, according to conventional wisdom, is that we use “I” as a subject
and “me” as an object, whether the pronoun appears by itself or in a twosome.
Thus every “I” in those quotes ought to be a “me.”
So should the president go stand in a corner of the Oval Office (if he can find
one) and contemplate the error of his ways? Not so fast.
For centuries, it was perfectly acceptable to use either “I” or “me” as the
object of a verb or preposition, especially after “and.” Literature is full of
examples. Here’s Shakespeare, in “The Merchant of Venice”: “All debts are
cleared between you and I.” And here’s Lord Byron, complaining to his
half-sister about the English town of Southwell, “which, between you and I, I
wish was swallowed up by an earthquake, provided my eloquent mother was not in
it.”
It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that language mavens began kvetching about “I” and
“me.” The first kvetch cited in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage
came from a commencement address in 1846. In 1869, Richard Meade Bache included
it in his book “Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech.”
Why did these 19th-century wordies insist “I” is “I” and “me” is “me”? They were
probably influenced by Latin, with its rigid treatment of subject and object
pronouns. For whatever reason, their approach stuck — at least in the rule
books.
Then, why do so many scofflaws keep using “I” instead of “me”? Perhaps it’s
because they were scolded as children for saying things like “Me want candy”
instead of “I want candy,” so they began to think “I” was somehow more socially
acceptable. Or maybe it’s because they were admonished against “it’s me.”
Anybody who’s had “it is I” drummed into his head is likely to avoid “me” on
principle, even when it’s right. The term for this linguistic phenomenon is
“hypercorrection.”
A related crime that Mr. Obama stands accused of is using “myself” to dodge the
“I”-versus-“me” issue, as when he spoke last November of “a substantive
conversation between myself and the president.” The standard practice here is to
use “myself” for emphasis or to refer to the speaker (“I’ll do it myself”), not
merely as a substitute for “me.” But some language authorities accept a looser
usage, and point out that “myself” has been regularly used in place of “me”
since Anglo-Saxon days.
Our 44th president isn’t the first occupant of the White House to suffer from
pronounitis. Nos. 43 and 42 were similarly afflicted. The symptoms: “for Laura
and I,” “invited Hillary and I,” and so on. (For the record, Nos. 41 and 40 had
no problem with the objective case, regularly using “Barbara and me” or “Nancy
and me” when appropriate.)
But an educated speaker is expected to keep his pronouns in line. Here, then, is
a tip, Mr. President. Nobody chooses the wrong pronoun when it’s standing on its
own. If you’re tempted to say “for Michelle and I” in tonight’s speech, just
mentally omit Michelle (sorry, Mrs. Obama), and you’ll get it right. And no one
will get on your case.
Fri Nov 30, 2007
10:14am EST
Reuters
By Vivianne Rodrigues
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tilt your head to the right side in a job interview and
you may get the job. Tilt it to the left side and you may end up getting ... a
date.
People who tilt the head to the right while talking to someone can appear more
trustworthy, according to body language expert Tonya Reiman. In turn, a slight
tilt to the left is seen as a sign of attractiveness and desirability.
Such nonverbal cues are subtle but have a dramatic impact on the way people are
perceived, Reiman writes in her first book "The Power of Body Language" (Pocket
Books, $25). The book offers advice on how to become aware of those messages and
use them in the boardroom as well as the bar.
"Most people are completely unaware of what their bodies are telling others, and
how it ends up influencing their careers and love lives," Reiman told Reuters in
an interview.
According to Reiman, about 90 percent of our interpersonal communication is
nonverbal. How bodies move, what expressions a face makes, how fast one speaks,
and even where we sit in a business meeting, send messages far more convincing
than any words spoken.
The problem, she said, is that many people have conditioned themselves not to
pay attention to such signals, labeling them as unreliable, irrational or just
superficial.
As a result, according to the book, "we end up getting duped, swindled, jilted,
misled."
For starters, Reiman recommends readers pay special attention to the most common
and usually the first form of physical contact between strangers: the handshake.
The handshake is one of the most critical opportunities to establish rapport and
may be as crucial for job applicants as a strong resume, Reiman said.
Her book lists no less than 12 "wrong" ways to shake hands including the
submissive handshake, the overly affectionate, the sweaty, the forward lean, but
none as dreaded and as dreadful as the limp handshake.
"The limp handshake feels like you're holding a lump of room-temperature
chicken," she said.
The right way that will work with any person in any situation, according to
Reiman, is to go toward the person, lean slightly forward, look them in the eye,
extend the right hand and simultaneously introduce yourself. The whole handshake
should not last more than two to three seconds.
The book moves forward to more "advanced" lessons, such as how to manipulate
perceptions of your status with different sitting positions in a meeting that go
beyond the traditional head-of-the-table spot. And even where to place your desk
in an office in order to avoid a virtual downgrade in rank.
Reiman writes that once while working for a Fortune 500 company, her desk was
moved from the middle cubicle in a row of three to the end of the row. In her
new spot, people would constantly stop by her desk and interrupt with random and
administrative questions."
"By shifting my desk a mere eight feet, I'd gone from being a mid-level
professional to an administrative assistant," she wrote.
While you may not be able to determine your place at the next desk
reorganization in the office, Reiman says some of the worst body language flaws
in the corporate arena are easily fixed: Getting into others' personal space,
slumping onto a chair instead of sitting up straight, not enough or too much eye
contact, looking angry, adjusting clothes during the interview, or perhaps, a
woman adjusting her panty hose.
And what about that head tilt?
"If you are going for a job in accounting, law, medicine, or another field bound
by a strict code of ethics, tilt your head to the right," she said. "Trying to
become America's next top model? Tilt to the left."
A ground-breaking project which has had extraordinary success in helping
hundreds of dyslexic children and others struggling to read and write at primary
school is poised for a major expansion across Britain.
Springboard for Children, an education charity which now has the enthusiastic
backing of the British Dyslexia Association, has achieved a 90 per cent success
rate in returning children with severe literacy problems to mainstream
classrooms. The revolutionary scheme is being used in a dozen schools in
Manchester and London, and the plan is now to set the scheme up in 10 other
inner-city areas – bringing a lifeline to around 10,000 children suffering from
dyslexia and other difficulties with reading and writing.
Experts say there would be no shortage of volunteers for the programme, with
estimates putting the number of dyslexic pupils in state schools at more than
300,000. In addition, national curriculum tests for 11-year-olds show around
120,000 youngsters a year leave primary school failing to reach the required
standard in English. A recent survey by the National Union of Teachers showed
the majority of teachers (77 per cent) believe they are not well enough trained
to teach dyslexic pupils.
The secret of the scheme's success is getting immediate help to youngsters once
a reading problem is identified in their first term in primary school. Pupils
helped by the unit are normally selected by their schools by the end of their
first term.
Dyslexia is thought to be neurological in origin although there is also growing
evidence of a genetic link. Tens of thousands of parents have only realised that
their child may suffer from the condition when he or she falls behind in school.
The Springboard project, which has also transformed the reading and writing
skills of non-dyslexic children suffering severe literacy problems, relies on
intense one-on-one tuition for up to two years, during which a host of
innovative techniques are employed to improve the child's skills.
Volunteers are recruited to read and work with the children. Springboard also
uses a mixture of games and quizzes as well as reading to children to encourage
a love of learning among the pupils it helps.
In one session, children take part in a card game – matching up the names of
animals and objects on a dozen cards with those on a tray. If they get them all
right, the tray flips over to form a perfect pattern.
It works because pupils like eight-year-old Rachel Lomas, who has dyslexia,
finally get a sense of joy from reading if they succeed in making the pattern
after years of frustration and anguish in the classroom, experiencing at last a
sense of progress.
The most startling success has been achieved in Oliver Goldsmith primary school
in Peckham, south London – which serves one of the most deprived inner city
areas in the country – and was once on the "hit list" of failing schools
compiled by Ofsted, the education watchdog.
The scheme was launched by a local resident, Jane Hastings, who had become
concerned about literacy problems in the area and volunteered to teach at the
school. The school's pupils come mainly from a tough council estate nearby.
The school, which has 530 pupils, was in "special measures" – the phrase used to
describe those that have failed their inspection, but has now been taken off the
list. In their latest report on Oliver Goldsmith, inspectors concluded: "The
school has improved considerably since the last inspection."
One of the reasons for the success story has been the setting up of the
Springboard unit in the school – which now provides a guaranteed 70 hours of
one-to-one reading a year for 75 pupils singled out by the school as being in
need of special help.
Inspectors said of the unit: "Pupils respond well to the support given by the
Springboard charity which provides help in English and enjoy working in classes
and individually."
Mark Parsons, the school's headteacher, said: "It has made a significant
contribution to enabling us to improve educational standards and come off
special measures." Volunteers on the project now receive extensive training and
it is assisted by the British Dyslexia Association.
Springboard for Children is now launching a fund-raising drive to spread its
work to other inner city schools – called the "10/10" campaign because it aims
to start the project in 10 more cities within the next 10 years.
Brian Basham, a former journalist and management PR consultant who has worked to
improve resources for dyslexic pupils for years, is spearheading the funding
drive. He himself suffered from dyslexia while at school – a condition which
many teachers did not recognise at that time. He is planning to approach leading
city institutions for financial support within the next few months.
Springboard already receives financial aid from a variety of trusts and
charities – including some set up by businesses including HSBC in the Community
and the Company of Actuaries Charitable Trust Fund.
In a document outlining its plans for expansion, the charity says: "Children
develop peer group awareness at around age eight. It then becomes progressively
more difficult for them to learn almost anything that will help them make their
way in the world and hugely more expensive to provide teaching and support."
The end result of failure, Springboard for Children argues, can be seen in
prisons where 70 per cent of offenders are functionally illiterate. Children who
are functionally illiterate, it adds "stand a great risk of failing to gain
decent employment and of drifting into a life of poverty, anger against their
lot in life, addiction, crime, imprisonment and social alienation".
According to Janet Bristow, education director of the charity, referrals can be
made for a number of reasons. "Most of our schools have seen improved
standards," she said. "Ten years ago it was just in three schools. Now it is in
12.
"Children come and ask us if they can join. There is no social stigma attached
to coming to the unit – as might have been the case in the past with some
provision for those struggling to read".
The scheme that strips away fear and stigma
Eight-year-old Rachel Lomas's natural inclination is to read and write words
backwards – a symptom of her dyslexia.
She was selected for the Springboard unit at her school, Oliver Goldsmiths
primary in Peckham, south London, for specialist help.
Rachel is slightly older than the average pupil at the unit – but her tutor,
Claire Collins, is in no doubt that it has been able to help her to catch up on
her reading and writing skills.
She receives two hours of one-to-one tuition a week. She most enjoys the use of
games to stimulate her interest in learning.
She is given 12 cards with the names of animals or objects which she then has to
marry with 12 different images on a tray – and is asked by her tutor to spell
out the name of the image that she is placing on the tray.
If she gets all 12 correct, she can flip the tray over and find a perfect
pattern has been formed. If any of her answers are incorrect, then she can try
again until she does form the perfect pattern.
The scheme strips away the fear and stigma, to the extent that children at the
unit are proud enough of their achievements to have their photographs taken
while learning in it.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets
together, there's still no one to talk to.
Native Australian Charlie Mangulda is the only person alive known to speak that
language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction.
From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history
and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday.
While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one
of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts
struggling to save at least some of them.
Five hotspots where languages are most endangered were listed Tuesday in a
briefing by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the
National Geographic Society.
In addition to northern Australia, eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and the U.S.
Southwest, many native languages are endangered in South America -- Ecuador,
Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia -- as well as the area including British
Columbia, and the states of Washington and Oregon.
Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant
professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.
''When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time,
seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes,
myths, music, the unknown and the everyday.''
As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he
estimated.
That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language
would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any
kind, he said.
Harrison is associate director of the Living Tongues Institute based in Salem,
Ore. He and institute director Gregory D.S. Anderson analyzed the top regions
for disappearing languages.
Anderson said languages become endangered when a community decides that its
language is an impediment. The children may be first to do this, he explained,
realizing that other more widely spoken languages are more useful.
The key to getting a language revitalized, he said, is getting a new generation
of speakers. He said the institute worked with local communities and tries to
help by developing teaching materials and by recording the endangered language.
Harrison said that the 83 most widely spoken languages account for about 80
percent of the world's population while the 3,500 smallest languages account for
just 0.2 percent of the world's people. Languages are more endangered than plant
and animal species, he said.
The hot spots listed at Tuesday's briefing:
-- Northern Australia, 153 languages. The researchers said aboriginal Australia
holds some of the world's most endangered languages, in part because aboriginal
groups splintered during conflicts with white settlers. Researchers have
documented such small language communities as the three known speakers of Magati
Ke, the three Yawuru speakers and the lone speaker of Amurdag.
-- Central South America including Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia
-- 113 languages. The area has extremely high diversity, very little
documentation and several immediate threats. Small and socially less-valued
indigenous languages are being knocked out by Spanish or more dominant
indigenous languages in most of the region, and by Portuguese in Brazil.
-- Northwest Pacific Plateau, including British Columbia in Canada and the
states of Washington and Oregon in the U.S., 54 languages. Every language in the
American part of this hotspot is endangered or moribund, meaning the youngest
speaker is over age 60. An extremely endangered language, with just one speaker,
is Siletz Dee-ni, the last of 27 languages once spoken on the Siletz reservation
in Oregon.
-- Eastern Siberian Russia, China, Japan -- 23 languages. Government policies in
the region have forced speakers of minority languages to use the national and
regional languages and, as a result, some have only a few elderly speakers.
-- Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico -- 40 languages. Oklahoma has one of the
highest densities of indigenous languages in the United States. A moribund
language of the area is Yuchi, which may be unrelated to any other language in
the world. As of 2005, only five elderly members of the Yuchi tribe were fluent.
The research is funded by the Australian government, U.S. National Science
Foundation, National Geographic Society and grants from foundations.
WASHINGTON, July 29 — Voice of America, the
government-sponsored news organization that has been on the air since 1942,
broadcasts in 44 different languages — 45 if you count Special English.
Special English was developed nearly 50 years ago as a radio experiment to
spread American news and cultural information to people outside the United
States who have no knowledge of English or whose knowledge is limited.
Using a 1,500-word vocabulary and short, simple phrases without the idioms and
clichés of colloquial English, broadcasters speak at about two-thirds the speed
of conversational English. But far from sounding like a record played at the
wrong speed, Special English is a complicated skill that takes months of
training with a professional voice coach who teaches how to breathe properly and
enunciate clearly.
Mario Ritter, a Special English writer and producer, arrived at Voice of America
five years ago with many years of experience. Mr. Ritter has been training for
six months to be a Special English broadcaster. In August, he said, he will be
ready to go on the air live.
“It’s kind of ironic that I normally speak slowly, but it doesn’t give me a leg
up in being a Special English broadcaster,” Mr. Ritter said.
Shelley Gollust is chief of Special English at Voice of America. “People in this
country have likely never heard of Special English,” Ms. Gollust said, “and, if
they have, they often don’t understand the significance of it to people in other
countries. They hear it and make fun of how slow it is.”
A 1948 law prohibits Voice of America from broadcasting in the United States,
but audio and text files of Special English are on the Voice of America Web
site, www.voanews.com/specialenglish.
Students and teachers in other countries say Special English is a good learning
tool. “I like that the program is based on 1,500 words,” Sarah Paulsworth said
in an e-mail message from Azerbaijan, where she works as a journalist and a
volunteer English teacher. “It is a very tangible goal for students. I can
literally see some of my students counting the words they know.”
A vocabulary of 1,500 words is adequate for news reporting, but for features and
biographies, more words are allowed if they are explained in the context of the
sentence.
Words can be added or dropped from the vocabulary. “Sabotage,” a word used often
in the World War II era, may be dropped because it is rarely used in news
stories today.
Jim Huang Jiwen, a 69-year-old mechanical engineer from Hangzhou, China, said he
had listened to Special English on the radio for more than 20 years and, more
recently, on the Internet. He said it had helped him improve his ability to
write and understand English.
“The pronunciation is beautiful, the sentence is sweet and short, and the
content is interesting and friendly to our daily life,” he said in an e-mail
message, adding that he particularly liked technical programs.
François Rennaud, 56, a teacher at a vocational school in Paris, has found
Special English useful in his business and economics classes. “It closes the gap
between textbook English and traditional broadcasts such as BBC or CNN, which
are too difficult for the average student,” Mr. Rennaud said.
A Special English editor at Voice of America, Avi Arditti, said: “There is a
fine line between simplifying and simplification. It’s not so much simplifying,
but clarification. Simplifying can seem somewhat demeaning. You’re not dumbing
it down, but you’re making it understandable to your audience whether they have
Ph.D.’s or are in middle school.”
But some listeners, like Ali Asqar Khandan, 36, an assistant professor from
Tehran, said Special English seemed like “a special program for advertising
American life and culture, not a simple radio station for broadcasting news or
teaching English.”
“We hear this message everywhere: not even in education reports and culture
reports, but in science reports and agriculture reports,” Mr. Khandan wrote in
an e-mail message.
The link between learning English and learning about America has been a constant
thread in the debate in Congress this year about revising immigration policy.
But at home, the Special English branch at Voice of America would support the
use of its programming for recent immigrants in a bilingual model if the law did
not prohibit it.
“If new immigrants could turn on their radios at 8 o’clock and listen to a
half-hour of Special English to listen to the news, it would be very
beneficial,” Ms. Gollust said.
Mr. Ritter added, “That would be a great use of a resource that already exists.”
The PBS documentarian Ken Burns has been
working for six years on “The War,” a soldier’s-eye view of World War II, and
those who have seen parts of the 14-plus hours say they are replete with salty
language appropriate to discussions of the horrors of war.
What viewers will see and hear when the series is broadcast in September 2007 is
an open question.
A new Public Broadcasting Service policy that went into effect immediately when
it was issued on May 31 requires producers whose shows are broadcast before 10
p.m. to adhere to tough editing requirements when it comes to coarse language,
to comply with tightened rulings on broadcast indecency by the Federal
Communications Commission.
Most notably, PBS’s deputy counsel, Paul Greco, wrote in a memo to stations, it
is no longer enough simply to bleep out offensive words audibly when the camera
shows a full view of the speaker’s mouth. From now on, the on-camera speaker’s
mouth must also be obscured by a digital masking process, a solution that PBS
producers have called cartoonish and clumsy.
In addition, profanities expressed in compound words must be audibly bleeped in
their entirety so that viewers cannot decipher the words. In the past, PBS
required producers to bleep only the offensive part of the compound word.
Since May 31, bits of dialogue have been digitally obscured about 100 times in
four PBS programs, most often in two episodes of the music documentary “The
Blues.”
Mr. Burns, in an interview, said he was not worried that his work, which he
called a “very experiential take on the Second World War,” would be affected by
the policy, noting that while the series includes some “very graphic violence,”
there are just two profanities, read off camera.
But several other senior public broadcasting executives said “The War” was
likely to become a test case for PBS and the F.C.C.
The series includes language for which the F.C.C. has previously issued fines,
said a PBS spokeswoman, Lea Sloan. “At this point, the only thing we can do, and
fit the guidelines as they are laid out, is to make sure the series airs after
10 p.m,” outside the F.C.C.’s “safe harbor” zone of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., when
children are most likely to be watching, Ms. Sloan said.
Mr. Burns, perhaps best known for his prize-winning series “The Civil War,”
insisted that “The War” would be shown in the preferred time slot of 8 p.m. He
said he was “flabbergasted” that F.C.C. policy was being applied to
documentaries, particularly when President Bush himself was inadvertently heard
using vulgar language, broadcast on some cable newscasts, at the recent Group of
Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.
He added that he hoped PBS and public television stations could unite and “stand
our ground” in opposing the self-censorship sought by F.C.C. policy, but he
noted that “we’ve also experienced as a family the devastating consequences, and
it is not something that any station or any executive wants to see repeated.”
In March, the PBS station KCSM in San Mateo, Calif., was fined $15,000 over
profanities in “The Blues.” That fine is being appealed.
Ms. Sloan said PBS had to institute the policy after successive F.C.C. rulings
steadily narrowed what is permissible. Moreover, legislation signed into law
last month by President Bush increased by a factor of 10 the fines for broadcast
indecency, to $325,000 a station for each instance.
That was “a real deal breaker,” Ms. Sloan said. “For many of our stations, a
single fine of that magnitude would put them into bankruptcy.”
PBS plans to ask the F.C.C. to re-examine its policies regarding documentary
programming. “We believe that there is a place for documentary filmmaking that
uses language in context,” Ms. Sloan said.
The F.C.C. declined to comment. An F.C.C. official, who did not want to be named
because the issue is the subject of litigation, noted that “there aren’t any
cases where the commission has fined a broadcaster when an obscenity has been
inaudible” but not digitally obscured, adding that “the commission’s analysis
always takes context into account.”
Margaret Drain, the vice president for national programs at WGBH in Boston, said
her station was already examining how it would probably have to edit references
to sexual activities in a coming “Masterpiece Theater” production, “Casanova.”
She said that while she understands how PBS arrived at its policy for
documentaries, the station might not adhere to it for series like “Frontline”
and “The American Experience,” particularly when tackling war topics where
strong language reflects reality.
“The decisions we make in the future, to pixelate or not, may put us in the
position of negotiating with or telling PBS about our position,” she said.
Ms. Sloan of PBS said, “This is an unhappy situation for all of us and we’re
very concerned about the situation,” but added that producers are required to
submit F.C.C.-compliant material.
In mid-June, shortly after the PBS edict, “Frontline” scheduled a last-minute
rebroadcast of an episode on the Iraqi insurgency and digitally obscured the
mouth of a soldier. Ms. Drain said that the same decision might not be made
today, “now that we’ve had time to absorb everything.”
Producers are in a difficult position, she said. “What we’re trying to do is do
our work and bring the same kind of high-quality broadcast programs to the
public. We don’t want to overreact, and we don’t want to self-censor.”
As for “The War,” Ms. Drain called it “the perfect test case for the F.C.C.,
because who’s going to take on veterans of this country who put their lives at
risk for an honest, just cause?”
“It’s not pornographic; it’s not scatological,” she said. “It’s an emotional
expression of a reality they experienced, and it’s part of the historical
record.”
SOUTH FREEPORT, Me. — Frederick Levesque was
just a child in Old Town, Me., when teachers told him to become Fred Bishop,
changing his name to its English translation to conceal that he was
French-American.
Cleo Ouellette's school in Frenchville made her write "I will not speak French"
over and over if she uttered so much as a "oui" or "non" — and rewarded students
with extra recess if they ratted out French-speaking classmates.
And Howard Paradis, a teacher in Madawaska forced to reprimand French-speaking
students, made the painful decision not to teach French to his own children. "I
wasn't going to put my kids through that," Mr. Paradis said. "If you wanted to
get ahead you had to speak English."
That was Maine in the 1950's and 1960's, and the stigma of being French-American
reverberated for decades afterward. But now, le Français fait une rentrée —
French is making a comeback.
The State Legislature began holding an annual French-American Day four years
ago, with legislative business and the Pledge of Allegiance done in French and
"The Star-Spangled Banner" sung with French and English verses.
Maine elected its first openly French-American congressman, Michael H. Michaud,
in 2002. And Gov. John E. Baldacci has steadily increased commerce with
French-speaking countries and led a trade delegation to France last fall, one of
the first since tension with France began after the Sept. 11 attacks. In an
interview, the governor, who is of Lebanese-Italian descent and studied Russian
in high school, added, "I've been working on my French."
The Franco-American Heritage Center, opened in Lewiston a few years ago, fines
guests at its luncheons up to a dollar if they lapse into English — jovial
retaliation for the schools that once gave students movie tickets or no homework
if they squealed on French speakers.
"Reacquisition classes" and conversation groups have sprung up at places like
the South Portland Public Library, giving people a chance to relearn their
mothballed French. Census figures show Maine has a greater proportion of people
speaking French at home than any other state — about 5.3 percent.
And in South Freeport, there is L'École Française du Maine, a French-immersion
program that began as a preschool in 2001 and proved so popular it has added a
grade each year. Many students have French-American parents who were estranged
from the language, and some commute long distances to the school.
"My dad grew up speaking only French and went to school and got teased by other
kids, and he wanted to spare his kids that experience, so both my wife and I are
kind of a generation that got skipped," said Bob Michaud, whose son, Alexandre,
attends second grade at L'École Française, 45 minutes from home. "I'm doing it
because I want Alex to learn more about our heritage and background."
The school has made Anna Bilodeau, 8, and her brother Markus, 7, so fluent that
they routinely speak French with their grandmother Arlene Bilodeau, 68, who
regrets that she did not ensure her own children were well versed in French.
"It made me feel sad — this was our language," Ms. Bilodeau said. "When I hear
Anna and Markus speaking, I just admire what they're doing."
People of French descent poured into Maine and other New England states from
Canada beginning in the 1870's and became the backbone of textile mills and shoe
factories. But resistance developed, and people began stereotyping the newcomers
as rednecks, dolts or inadequate patriots. In 1919, Maine passed a law requiring
schools to teach in English.
French-Americans had a saying: "Qui perd sa langue, perd sa foi" ("Who loses his
language, loses his faith"). But many assimilated or limited their children's
exposure to French to avoid discrimination or because of a now-outmoded belief
that erasing French would make learning English easier.
"There was just a stigma that maybe you weren't as bright as anybody else, that
you didn't speak English as well," said Linda Wagner, 53, of Lewiston, who takes
classes to reclaim language lost as a child.
Suzanne Bourassa Woodward, 46, of South Portland, who recently joined a
conversation group and enrolled her 10-year-old daughter in French classes, said
"my French went underground" in fourth grade because "I was ridiculed, the dumb
Frenchman jokes came out."
"After that," she said, "my parents would always speak to me in French, but I
always responded in English."
As recently as the early 1990's, a character named Frenchie, who caricatured
French-Americans, was a fixture on a Maine radio show until protests drove him
off the air.
The stigma was compounded by the French-American dialect, which can differ from
French spoken in France in idiom, pronunciation, vocabulary — like British and
American English.
French-American French, derived from people who left France for Canada centuries
ago, resembles the French of Louis XIV more than the modern Parisian variety,
said Yvon Labbé, director of the French-American Center at the University of
Southern Maine.
French-Americans may say "chassis" instead of "fenêtre" for window, "char"
instead of "voiture" for car. Mr. Labbé said many French-Americans pronounced
"moi" as Molière did: "moé." A saying illustrated French-Americans' inferiority
complex about their language: "On est né pour être petit pain; on ne peut pas
s'attendre à la boulangerie" ("We are born to be little breads; we cannot expect
the bakery").
"We were always told that we spoke bad French, that we were worthless as people
because we spoke neither French nor English," said Ms. Ouelette, 69.
Indeed, when Jim Bishop, son of Fred Bishop (né Frederick Levesque), took high
school and college classes to recapture French "it was just a nightmare," he
said. "At times I would say words and they would turn out not to be real words."
Maine's French renaissance is partly due to the collapse of the mills and
factories, which put French-Americans into the mainstream. It was aided by a
group of legislators who in 2002 began holding weekly meetings in French.
The revival includes both French-American patois and culture, celebrated at
places like the Lewiston center, and Parisian language and curriculum, taught at
L'École Française. The government of France is also involved, seeing "very big
potential" to "develop trade relations, tourism," said Alexis Berthier, a
spokesman for the French consulate in Boston, which is promoting programs and
events in Maine and working to establish sister cities.
Most Maine schools, like those elsewhere, teach considerably more Spanish than
French. But for those like Norman Marquis of Old Orchard Beach, who takes
reacquisition classes, the resurgence of his lost language is profound.
"It's almost like I found religion," said Mr. Marquis, 68, suddenly choking with
emotion. "My religion, No. 1, was French. I have a personal movement in my heart
for it."
Ariel Sabar contributed reporting from Augusta, Me.,
WASHINGTON, May 26 — What happened to the
Texas swagger?
Maybe it went the way of his poll numbers. Maybe this is a newly reflective
President Bush. Or maybe the first lady had her say.
Whatever the case, when Mr. Bush said at a news conference on Thursday night
that he regretted some personal mistakes, like declaring "bring 'em on" in 2003,
he seemed a little like the chastened husband who finally admitted he had done
something wrong. Whether it worked or not depends on whom you ask.
"Sad day in Crawford, they're hanging their heads," said William J. Bennett, the
former education secretary and conservative radio talk show host. Mr. Bennett
said many of his listeners expressed dismay at what they considered Mr. Bush's
groveling.
"One of the attractive things about the president is that he talks Texas," Mr.
Bennett continued. "But what broke my heart is when he said, 'I need to be more
sophisticated.' What is this, Kerry talk? Is he going to use 'elan' the next
time he speaks?"
Hold on a minute, said Kenneth M. Duberstein, President Ronald Reagan's last
chief of staff. "The country loves mea culpas from the president," Mr.
Duberstein said. "It makes them human. This is part and parcel of the influence
of Josh — making sure you don't go out there and thumb your nose at the entire
world."
"Josh" is Joshua B. Bolten, the new White House chief of staff, who was reared
inside the Beltway, educated at Princeton and has never uttered a Texas
colloquialism that anyone has heard.
Mr. Bush's Texas twang intensifies and recedes depending on the setting. But he
has always prided himself on being plain spoken. When it comes to military and
national security, he made the heaviest use of Texas talk in the first term,
initially after the Sept. 11 attacks and then after the Iraq invasion.
On Sept. 15, 2001, Mr. Bush declared that he would go after the perpetrators of
the World Trade Center attack and "smoke them out of their holes." On Sept. 17,
2001, Mr. Bush declared that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." On July
2, 2003, Mr. Bush taunted militants attacking American forces in Iraq with
"bring 'em on."
White House officials have defended his Texas talk as the kind of plain-spoken
language Americans like to hear, but Laura Bush has at times tried to rein him
in. In a widely reported comment at the time, Mrs. Bush sidled up to her husband
after he said he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive" and asked, "Bushie, are
you gonna git 'im?"
On Thursday, in response to a question about what he thought was his biggest
mistake, Mr. Bush termed his words "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the
wrong signal to people." He added that "I learned some lessons about expressing
myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner" and that "in certain parts
of the world it was misinterpreted."
White House officials would not say Thursday whether Mr. Bush's response had
been planned, but they did say they had prepared for the question. In fact, they
have prepared for the question ever since John Dickerson, then of Time magazine,
asked Mr. Bush at a news conference in April 2004 if he could name the biggest
mistake he had made, and Mr. Bush, struggling, said nothing popped into his
head.
But Mr. Bush's comments were his most personal so far about mistakes he has
made, and they mirrored, friends said, his private conversations.
"What he did last night, which was obviously thought out, was the most complete
public expression of what's happened," said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire Republican
with ties to the White House. "Anybody who has seen him talk about it privately
has seen that he's been consumed with this for three years."
Others were less impressed and said Mr. Bush had made far worse mistakes. "If
there were decisive mistakes, these were not them," said Paul Burka, senior
executive editor of Texas Monthly, who closely followed Mr. Bush when he was
Texas governor. "It's easy to say that he was popping off. But then you get to
issues like should the Iraqi army have been disbanded, did Bremer know what he
was doing?"
But Mr. Burka, who was referring to L. Paul Bremer III, the former top American
civilian administrator in Iraq, said Mr. Bush's Texas talk was popular in the
state.
"I don't think he ever had a self-reflective moment in Texas," Mr. Burka said.
"And let me tell you, even worse, we liked it that way."
