First of all, it’s absolutely essential to see it in 3-D, preferably in IMAX. The three-dimensional effects were absolutely convincing, especially in the outdoor scenes, giving the viewer the sense of being in the action rather than watching the action. The result was a thoroughly entertaining, amazing film. I was totally absorbed by it, having no trouble sitting for nearly [...]]]> What more can I add to all the chatter about James Cameron’s Avatar? Not much, except to share my opinions. You probably already know all that you need to know about this movie, and I certainly don’t want to include any spoilers.

First of all, it’s absolutely essential to see it in 3-D, preferably in IMAX. The three-dimensional effects were absolutely convincing, especially in the outdoor scenes, giving the viewer the sense of being in the action rather than watching the action. The result was a thoroughly entertaining, amazing film. I was totally absorbed by it, having no trouble sitting for nearly three hours. (The Tempur-Pedic seats definitely helped! I guess that’s one of the benefits of seeing a movie in a theater that’s located in a furniture store.)

The linguistically sophisticated artificial language of the Na’vi was of course of interest to me, though it was really a minor part of the movie. Although the three-dimensionality allowed subtitles to hover well in front of the action — thereby making them less intrusive than they would be otherwise — it was still appropriate for Cameron to use the device of having the main Na’vi characters be more-or-less capable speakers of English as a second language. Doing so allowed him to get away with minimal use of subtitles. Perhaps I’ll write a follow-up post concerning their own language .

I was surprised to see some little kids at this showing (early Sunday afternoon). Either their parents had no idea that there would be so much violence, or they didn’t care. Avatar is basically a war movie, after all, so they should have cared.

As a war movie, it included every cliché in the book, and therein lies its major flaw. The flaw isn’t the lack of originality; I discount critics who observe that this movie has been made before. Yes, the theme and story line are taken from other efforts, but so what? It’s commonplace for plays and films to do this; even Shakespeare took story lines from elsewhere. No, the flaw is the piling on of cliché after cliché. Fortunately the action and the visual effects are so stunning that it’s almost possible to ignore this problem, but “almost” isn’t good enough. As an unsubtle metaphor for the Europeans’ destruction of American Indians and their lands, it was bound to be somewhat predictable — but it didn’t have to go to such extremes. The result was a collection of one- and two-dimensional characters who fell into situations that anyone in the audience would have expected.

Despite that flaw, and despite its transparent political correctness, Avatar is still a successful film. Aside from the special effects, the spectacular scenery and the attention to detail redeem the story. Go see it — warts and all!

It also got me [...]]]> “I make order out of chaos.” This is how an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in years explains her transition from linguistics to statistics, when people think it’s a complete change of field. It’s how she explains it to non-linguists, of course — as I already knew the connection. But the phrasing really resonates with me. I’ve described elsewhere how the search for patterns and abstract generalizations is what unites linguistics and math teaching in my mind, but I rather like the step up the ladder of abstraction implied by “I make order out of chaos.”

It also got me thinking about why I like the mystery and science fiction genres in popular fiction. My liking for science fiction is no mystery, so to speak: anyone with a mathematical bent is likely to enjoy the conventions of that genre. But what about mysteries? I’d been thinking about that lately, and it occurred to me that mystery writers also make order out of chaos: the unsolved crime is cognitively chaotic, and the solution creates order out of it. Furthermore, the puzzle that’s often involved bears definite kinship to the kinds of puzzles we solve in both math and linguistics. Just a thought…

“pet; petted; petting” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pet>

“The past participle of ‘to pet’ is ‘petted’.” <http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/19711-pet-petted.html>

But Barbara and I have recently noticed that several people we know have switched to pet as its own past participle. For example:

“My dog likes to be pet all the time.” <overheard> “That cat really likes to be pet.” <overheard> “Do snakes like to be petted?” <http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090310231953AAm1xeY>

Most interestingly, a post from the UK contains the sentence, “But, [...]]]> Maybe I am inadvertently committing the Recency Fallacy, but it seems to me that up until last year or so the past participle of pet was petted:

“Where do your cats like to be petted?” <http://www.mihav.com/en/forum/share-amp-chat/where-do-your-cats-like-to-162014>

“pet; petted; petting” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pet>

“The past participle of ‘to pet’ is ‘petted’.” <http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/19711-pet-petted.html>

But Barbara and I have recently noticed that several people we know have switched to pet as its own past participle. For example:

“My dog likes to be pet all the time.” <overheard>
“That cat really likes to be pet.” <overheard>
“Do snakes like to be petted?” <http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090310231953AAm1xeY>

Most interestingly, a post from the UK contains the sentence, “But, when my rabbit is laying down, he definitely likes to be pet around his whole body,” even though the headline (presumably written by someone else) reads, “How do i know my bunny likes being petted?” <http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091011130535AAHEC77>

It may or may not be relevant, but all the attested forms overheard by Barbara and me come from highly educated women — even our veterinarian — so it’s not an illiteracy. Somehow a weak verb has turned into a strong verb, which is the reverse of the natural course of events. (For example, work → wrought changed to work → worked.) We could gather some evidence of what’s going on by checking other verbs that rhyme with pet, some of which provide possibly explanatory paradigms:

set → set (possibly the model for pet → pet)
bet → bet (likewise)
let → let (likewise)
get → gotten (a different strong-verb paradigm)
jet → jetted (a regular, i.e. weak verb)
net → netted (regular)
wet → wetted (regular)
abet → abetted (regular)
whet → whetted (regular)
fret → fretted (regular)
vet → vetted (regular)

So these data don’t really explain why petted would become pet. And it’s interesting that all the surprising examples that I could find on the Web or in overheard speech have occurred in the phrase “likes to be pet”; maybe this has become new idiom that I’ve been unaware of, in which case the past participle remains petted elsewhere? Just a conjecture…

“That’s not a very high bar,” she replied. She’s right, of course. This article was probably 99% accurate, which is as much as [...]]]> Junior Lauren Avery, one of the editors of Weston High School’s student newspaper, Wildcat Tracks, asked if she could interview me. Of course I said yes, and the result was a half-page article that focused on my transition from linguistics to teaching math. I was pleased with the depth and breadth of the writing, as well as by its unusually high degree of accuracy. “It’s much more accurate than Fox News,” I said to one of my colleagues.

“That’s not a very high bar,” she replied. She’s right, of course. This article was probably 99% accurate, which is as much as anyone could ask for — and I was just kidding about Fox News.

Here are a few excerpts from Lauren’s article:

Davidson’s smooth switch between two seemingly incompatible fields often surprises his students. Despite this, Davidson sees a great deal of similarities between linguistics and mathematics, and to this day he continues to pursue both subjects.

…

A linguist is a person who studies the origins and usage of ancient and modern languages…. By studying multiple languages instead of focusing on a single language, Davidson was able to begin to identify trends and patterns between languages, a concept that played a major role in his interest in mathematics later on.

…

To his current and former students, Davidson’s ability to switch between two fields has given them a new perspective about choosing a career in the future. “It lets me think that it’s not really too late to change what you are passionate about,” said junior Mir Bokhari.

…

Davidson’s switch between two fields has affected him both as a teacher and as a person, and it reflects some valuable lessons concerning education. “You never know if sometimes something you’re interested in can come back. My jobs make use of all the linguistics I had done 20 years earlier in new contexts. My linguistics training helped in math,” Davidson said. “There are surprising connections. Nothing you learn is ever wasted.”

This usage has long seemed completely wrong to me. To my mind, I have some students who struggle and do well. I also have some students who are unsuccessful — precisely [...]]]> At this week’s Math Department meeting, we spent the first 15 minutes or so discussing what we do to help “struggling students” succeed in our courses — particularly what resources we provide. Something was bothering me about the whole discussion, so I waited a few minutes before I said anything. Then I realized what was bothering me: the participle “struggling” was apparently being used as a synonym for “unsuccessful.”

This usage has long seemed completely wrong to me. To my mind, I have some students who struggle and do well. I also have some students who are unsuccessful — precisely because they don’t struggle.

It all comes down, of course, to the meaning of the verb “struggle.” Let’s see what a couple of reputable dictionaries say about the matter. In each case I’ve selected the appropriate sense of the word:

1. to make strenuous…efforts in the face of difficulties… <struggling with the problem>
2. to proceed with difficulty or with great effort <struggled through the high grass> <struggling to make a living>

—Merriam-Webster

1. to be strenuously engaged with a problem, a task, or an undertaking
2. to progress with difficulty <struggled with calculus>

—American Heritage Dictionary

Linguists, of course, always insist on being descriptive rather than prescriptive, and yet they usually rely on introspection or on the use of a small number of informants. I suppose a more accurate technique in this context would be to survey a large number of people and find out how they use the word “struggle”; I have no idea what we would find, but at least the dictionary definitions make it absolutely clear to me that we should stop using this verb as a synonym for “be unsucessful.”

On another front, we spent the next 25 minutes of the department meeting discussing how to solve the equation x² = 2^x. I told my Algebra II class about this, since we’re currently transitioning from quadratic functions to exponential functions, and one of their homework problems called for a comparison between y = x² and y = 2^x. They found it an unlikely topic for a meeting — and they were especially surprised that we were so geeky that the meeting ran ten minutes over before anybody looked at the clock and noticed that we had gone past the announced end of the meeting.

By the way, there are three solutions to this equation. One solution, 2, is immediately obvious; a second solution, 4, is not at all obvious until you give it some considerable thought, at which point it “becomes obvious.” The third solution can be estimated by looking at a graph. Finding this solution is left as an exercise for the reader.

Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We’re facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes.

While I’m sure that many of my students spend too much time on Facebook and too [...]]]> Vincent Rossmeier has written a refreshing article in Salon entitled “Is the Internet melting our brains?” Essentially an interview with linguist Dennis Baron about his new book, A Better Pencil, the article counters much of the typical hand-wringing in the mainstream media and academia:

Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We’re facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes.

While I’m sure that many of my students spend too much time on Facebook and too much time texting, I’m equally sure that their social relationships and their use of English were no better before they indulged in such activities. I’ve reserved Baron’s book from the library, and I’ll post a review here (but only after I’ve read it).

First let’s look at some similarities that go beyond what I hinted at in the first paragraph: For some reason, people who state their uninformed opinions in [...]]]> Just about everyone can speak, so we all have an opinion about language. Just about everyone can count, so we all have an opinion about math. Everyone’s an expert. After reading uninformed opinions about both, I decided to compare and contrast. Off the top of my head I can think of three points of comparison and four points of contrast; if I were writing a thesis on this subject I would undoubtedly find many more.

First let’s look at some similarities that go beyond what I hinted at in the first paragraph:

1. For some reason, people who state their uninformed opinions in public almost always take the conservative side of issues in both of these areas. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, given the general tenor of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other instances of talk radio and its television allies. But it’s still striking that your typical layperson wants to preserve or resurrect obsolete grammar “rules,” wants dictionaries to be prescriptive rather than descriptive, thinks that some languages are inferior to others, etc. And it’s equally striking that the same typical layperson advocates “back to basics” approaches in mathematics and thinks that math is all about memorization of facts, rote algorithms, and the like.
2. Members of the general public are confused equally about what linguists and mathematicians do. They think that a linguist is someone who speaks several languages fluently, so why should they ask a linguist for an expert scientific opinion about language in general or English in particular? Similarly, they think that a mathematician is someone who calculates quickly and accurately, so why should they ask a mathematician for an expert scientific opinion on learning mathematical concepts?
3. Because the general public understands neither subject, they are confused about the connections between the two. The fact that I moved from studying linguistics to teaching math sounds like a complete change of direction, not a natural evolution. It’s the rare person who sees cryptology as a connection or bridge between the two, or who understands that in some sense math is a language (only in some sense, I hasten to add), or who can imagine that one can apply mathematics in any way to the study of language.

So much for the similarities. Are there ways in which we can contrast the general public’s opinions about language and math? Sure. Here are a few:

1. People freely profess ignorance about math. When someone at a party asks what you do, and you say that you’re a math teacher, the most common response is, “I was never any good at math.” Rarely are they ashamed. Often they even seem proud of it. But no one admits to be ignorant about reading, writing, and speaking.
2. On what might be the same lines, people at least have some idea that there is such a thing as a mathematician, even if they don’t know what mathematicians do. (“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems,” according to Alfred Renyi.) But when I tell people that I majored in linguistics, the usual response is either a blank stare or “What’s that?”
3. Perhaps as a consequence of the previous observation, a great many myths about language float around in the popular culture, but there are not nearly so many myths about math.
4. Everyone thinks they can teach English — they can’t, of course — but very few people think they can teach math.

Perhaps in a later post I’ll give some citations to exemplify these seven points, but this will do for now.

But first, of course, being a linguistics geek, I had to go research the origin and connotations of the word “shout-out” — with or without a hyphen. Of several sources, the Wikipedia article seemed pretty reliable. (They* aren’t always, of course.) It’s short enough to quote in its entirety. Here’s most of it:

A shout-out is a greeting or acknowledgment of a person, group, or [...]]]> Near the end of my B Block precalculus class this morning, a couple of juniors happen to mention this blog and asked me to give a shout-out here to B Block. I said I would do so.

But first, of course, being a linguistics geek, I had to go research the origin and connotations of the word “shout-out” — with or without a hyphen. Of several sources, the Wikipedia article seemed pretty reliable. (They^* aren’t always, of course.) It’s short enough to quote in its entirety. Here’s most of it:

A shout-out is a greeting or acknowledgment of a person, group, or organization of significance. It is often done as a sign of respect, synonymous with “giving props”.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term back to 1990, and notes that in the United States the term is particularly used among fans and performers of rap music (shout-outs are of particular significance in hip-hop culture), while in the United Kingdom it is particularly associated with the rave and club subculture. On either side of the Atlantic, the term is not limited to those groups. Contestants on game shows almost always are given an opportunity to “shout out” to friends and family watching the show on television at home, and other entertainment media that involve one-time appearances by regular people (such as talk shows) also occasionally allow shout-outs.

It’s not surprising that a term originating from rap and hip-hop would be popular among a group of white and Asian teens.

And so…I am happy to give a shout-out to B Block! (But don’t feel slighted if you’re in C, E, or G; it was B Block that asked. Ask, and you shall receive.)

——–

^*I know. I used a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent. But the meaning would change to something completely incorrect if I wrote “it isn’t” here instead of “they aren’t.” Sometimes rules need to be broken. (And I had to put this footnote in, since Abby commented on how unusual it is to have footnotes in a blog.)

On the plus side, Kendall teaches us a lot about Roget’s background as a scientist and physician. We learn about his compulsive list-making as a child, whether it be names of farm animals in Latin or lists of the bones in the human body. We [...]]]> I recently read Joshua Kendall’s biography of Peter Mark Roget, entitled The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus. While this book is fascinating, it’s also deeply flawed — especially for those of us who love lists, not to mention those of us who love thesauri and other reference books.

On the plus side, Kendall teaches us a lot about Roget’s background as a scientist and physician. We learn about his compulsive list-making as a child, whether it be names of farm animals in Latin or lists of the bones in the human body. We learn about his organization of all the concepts of the English language in later life. And we learn a little — but not nearly enough — about Roget’s mental problems and how he coped with them. These problems were relevant, indeed central, to the decision to create the first thesaurus in 1852. Compiling lists of words apparently helped Roget cope with depression, anxiety, and probably Asperger’s, though Kendall only barely touches on the last of these.

On the minus side, the reader gains almost no sense (despite the subtitle) of the importance of the thesaurus to Roget’s life and to the world. It’s just one incident among many. I was looking for details — lots of details — about how the thesaurus was compiled. The lack of details is rather ironic, given the subject of the book. And it reminds me of my issues with The Professor and the Madman. The other flaw is the offhand consideration of the likelihood that Roget had Asperger’s, though of course neither the name nor the disorder was known in the 19th Century. These flaws were not enough to deter me from finishing The Man Who Made Lists, but they certainly reduced my enjoyment of the book and meant that I learned far less from it than I had hoped.

Those who know me will not be surprised that I still have an old copy of Roget’s International Thesaurus, a copy that my father gave me when I was eight years old. As I say, people won’t be surprised that I have this, though they might be surprised that I could lay my hands on it so readily. Anyway, when I was eight, this “new edition” of the thesaurus had been out for nine years, so it slightly predates my own birth. It’s instructive to contrast the arrangement and organization of this edition with the modern alphabetical lists of synonyms that still claim the name “thesaurus.” My copy, published by Crowell, contains the following remarks in the Publishers’ Preface [note the subtle placement of the apostrophe]:

The basic principle of Dr. Peter Roget’s original Thesaurus was the grouping of words according to their ideas rather than the listing of words, as dictionaries do, according to the alphabet. This principle — the secret of Roget’s success — has been scrupulously preserved in the various Crowell editions for over sixty years. [Italics as in original] 

The difficulty with grouping words by ideas is that it can be very difficult to find a word, so this edition of the thesaurus contains an index that’s nearly as long as the body of the book. Be that as it may, Roget’s idiosyncratic organization of all possible concepts is a delight, as long as you don’t take it as a given truth. The schema is hierarchical and multi-level. For example, suppose you were thinking about prime numbers, but you couldn’t remember the terminology prime number. You would, of course, look under Class I (abstract relations), Section V (Number), Part 1 (Number in the Abstract), Category 84 (Number), Subcategory 2. You knew that, didn’t you?

Well, no, of course you didn’t; that’s why you needed the huge index. Anyhow, the subcategory in question reads as follows:

complement, subtrahend, multiplicand, multiplier, multiplicator, multiple, submultiple, coefficient, dividend, divisor, factor, quotient, fraction, mixed number, numerator, denominator, decimal, mixed decimal, circulating decimal, repetend, common measure, aliquot part, reciprocal, prime number, totient, quota, differential, integral, fluxion, fluent, power, root, radix, base, exponent, index, logarithm, antilogarithm, modulus. 

Note that this is most definitely not a list of synonyms! It’s a list of words that are conceptually related in some way. Reading it, you spot the term you were looking for (“prime number”) and your mind is also captured by a great many other words that are closely or loosely connected. What a loss to use a modern so-called thesaurus, where you probably can’t even find “prime number” unless you already know the phrase, and then you’ll simply find that there are no synonyms.

You can browse through Roget’s Thesaurus and learn something new on any page. All you are likely to learn from a modern thesaurus is some pretentious near-synonyms that will make you a worse writer.

The Girl of His Dreams is the latest in Leon’s Brunetti series. The characters continue from Blood from a Stone [...]]]> If you can’t travel to Venice in the real world, the next best thing is to travel vicariously in the novels of Donna Leon. Formally speaking, these novels are squarely in the mystery genre, but Leon devotes as much attention to her locale (Venice, of course) and her characters (primarily Commissario Guido Brunetti and his family) as she does to the plot of the mystery. Some readers might find this balance disappointing, but the books are much the richer for it.

The Girl of His Dreams is the latest in Leon’s Brunetti series. The characters continue from Blood from a Stone and Death at La Fenice, both of which I read last year; the stories are independent. This time we have a lot about religion: the Roman Catholic church, Catholic priests, and a somewhat vague alternative but Christian religion that might be a cult or at least a scam. The teenagers are a little less stereotypical now, perhaps because they’re older. There is also a continuation of two themes from Blood from a Stone, ethnic prejudice and the presence of foreigners in Venice. This time the foreign group is Gypsies, who have fled from the former Yugoslavia during the conflicts there. Political issues infuse the novel, ranging from the treatment of Gypsies to the word itself to the Venetians’ attitude toward the Church. Leon’s pace is fairly slow and deliberate, but the book is never boring. Do read it.

A small linguistic note:
Leon is an American living in Venice, so she wrote the book in English, though Italian and Venetian are sprinkled lightly throughout to add an air of authenticity. The linguistic issue arises when two characters decide whether to call each other by the familiar or the polite second-person pronoun. I’m familiar with this issue in French and German, and I’ve asked Spanish-speakers about it in Spanish, but I don’t know much about it in Italian. Nevertheless, I understand that an Italian author could simply make a point by having a character say “tu” or “voi.” This distinction is nearly impossible to translate into English, thereby requiring some sort of circumlocation or paraphrase. But the English-speaking writer can simply have her characters say something like, “Shall we call each other tu?” or even “Shall we use the familiar form of the pronoun?” The latter, of course, would be unbearably pedantic and implausible, so we have to assume that the reader will understand “tu” from context or from familiarity with other Romance languages.

A meme…comprises any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate [...]]]> What’s a meme? Well, those of us who have spent too many years on the Internet (from its inception in 1969, actually, when it was called the ARPAnet) and those of us who have read The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, know what a meme is. Although the Wikipedia article on memes is far too long and leaves a lot to be desired, it definitely includes the correct definition:

A meme…comprises any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.

That’s clear enough, so why is the word used incorrectly these days by so many people, some of whom should definitely know better but most of whom have never learned what a meme really is? Many writers seem to think that a meme is an informal quiz or questionnaire that is passed around by email or by the Web, often of the “you are a _____” variety. Now you can see both the similarities and the differences here: Do they propagate themselves, or do users intentionally transmit them? Are they cultural ideas and behaviors, or are they questionnaires? The word is definitely losing most of its import these days!

As a teacher, I suppose I’d better cite some sources for this claim. I’m sure that some of my colleagues would be aghast that I cited Wikipedia as my source for the correct use of a word, but so be it. As for the current incorrect use, I am reluctant to cite either email messages or websites of friends — for obvious reasons — but I can probably find similar use by strangers without much effort. Let’s see… most of the initial hits from a Google search actually lead to the correct usage (much to my surprise), but I’m sure I can also find the usage I object to… OK, here are a few:

• from Melissa somebody or other
• from one ExileJedi
• from VirusHead (??)

That’s enough. You get the idea. What’s up here?

As the subtitle to Shea’s book suggests, he successfully took on the self-assigned task of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary in a year. You may wonder why anyone would do such a thing — one of my [...]]]> I have recently read two unconnected but closely related non-fiction books: Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea, and The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester. Probably I should have read them in the reverse order, but it was Shea’s 2008 book that impelled me to go back and read Winchester’s, which was written ten years earlier.

As the subtitle to Shea’s book suggests, he successfully took on the self-assigned task of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary in a year. You may wonder why anyone would do such a thing — one of my colleagues would uncharitably claim that Shea must have too muich time on his hands — but never mind, the book is well worth reading on several counts even without a compelling answer to that question. First of all, any reader has to be simply astounded that anyone could accomplish such a feat: it has a fascination similar to any story of the accomplishment of a long-lasting unlikely challenge. Second, the details surrounding the endeavor are of interest to any compulsive reader (not that I would know anyone in that category), ranging from Shea’s physical arrangements for the effort to the effects on his eyes, his body, and his relationships. Third, Reading the OED does not merely recount the story of what Shea did but also includes lots of notes on many interesting words that he encountered along the way. Definitely a niche book, I suppose, but go read it if you’re a lover of words and dictionaries. And if you didn’t grow up with a dictionary in every room, it’s never too late to start.

Winchester’s book is much more of a popularization. Basically it tells the tale of two men in Victorian England: James Murray, “the professor” and the principal editor of the OED for decades during the creation of its first edition; and Dr. William Chester Minor, “the madman” and the most prolific contributor of source material to the OED over the same decades. I wish this book had been around during my father’s life, not only because he was a lover of words and dictionaries but also because of one of the stories he used to tell as a psychiatrist. It concerned a visitor to the large mental hospital where my father was the director; the visitor stopped to ask for directions from the first person he saw, and the reply turned out to be detailed, complex, and accurate. It turned out that the person giving directions was a patient in the hospital. When the visitor expressed surprise, the reply was, “I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”

I’m sure you’ve heard that line before in other contexts, but this (probably apocryphal) story is the context for it that always sticks in my mind. It continued to resonate for me in The Professor and the Madman, where Minor is portrayed as a deeply paranoid schizophrenic who spent most of his adult life confined to the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, as a sentence for shooting a man whom he had mistakenly believed to have broken into his apartment. Winchester tells the entwined stories of Murray and Minor, but mostly Minor’s, which is the more fascinating or the more sensationalistic one, depending on your view of such things. In any case, I did find it fascinating, but I wish there had been more details of the lexicographic procedures used for researching a writing a gigantic dictionary in pre-computer days. If you’re not a dictionary lover, read it for the story of Minor’s life and mind; if you are a dictionary lover, read it not only for that story but also for the account of how the OED was constructed. And, in either case, read it as intellectual history: Winchester’s portrait of the times provides more than just a glimpse of what was happening in Britain then.

Lisa and Michael Josephson of Old Greenwich, Conn., are Mama Jo and Papa Jo, names coined by their daughter’s friend. Timothy Sweet of Watertown began calling his father “Sweet Man” a [...]]]> Just getting around to blogging this, but there was a fascinating article a few weeks ago in the Boston Globe, made all the more relevant to me because it mentioned several of my Weston students and was written by the mother of one of those students. Ellen Freeman Roth’s article, headlined “Not your father’s nicknames when teens talk to parents,” explored what kids call their parents and their parents’ friends:

Lisa and Michael Josephson of Old Greenwich, Conn., are Mama Jo and Papa Jo, names coined by their daughter’s friend. Timothy Sweet of Watertown began calling his father “Sweet Man” a dozen years ago on a Boy Scout trip. Sweet likewise has nicknames for his friends’ parents, including “Glenzo” for Glen and “Pina” for Patricia.

Sarah Switlik, 18, a Babson College student from Princeton, N.J., said her mother, Pam, wasn’t thrilled at first when Sarah called her P-Money. “Initially my mom said, ‘Really, Sarah,’ exasperatedly. Now when she’s texting she signs off, ‘Love, P$.’ It makes her feel like one of the girls.”

…

Caroline Gaulin, 22, of Greenwich, Conn., yelled “My bad, G-Dog!” to her father, Dan, during a basketball game to make light of an error she’d made. “After that we started calling him G-Dog,” she said. “Now he loves it.”

Teachers are almost always called by title and surname at Weston, but at CSA we’re all on a first-name basis. These customs run counter to expectations and fly in the face of the customs for naming of parents and parents’ friends, at least based on my predictions. There are probably some interesting class issues here. Although I grew up calling my parents “Mom” and “Dad,” I called all my other relatives and my parents’s friends by their first names: it was Lillian and Leonard, not Aunt Lillian and Uncle Leonard; Luke and Gen, not Mr. and Mrs. Garner. But Barbara grew up more formally, with Aunts and Uncles and surnames with titles. I’ll have to ask my CSA students what they do; I’ll predict big differences between Weston and Dorchester.

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

Oh, well, it’s Texas. Weston is [...]]]> Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, certainly understands cultural sensitivity with his global perspective:

“What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?” he said. “You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That’s not going to help you master… English. So you really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never ever use again?”

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

Oh, well, it’s Texas. Weston is much too enlightened for such attitudes. We take our global perspectives seriously, as you can see from the list of current projects, which include Giant Chinese Dragons & Lions, Uganda Professional Development Project, Columbian Exchange, Rhythm Kids: An African Drumming Experience, and Bringing the Art Experience of Ecuador into the Classroom.

Although it has been 26 years since the last time I saw My Fair Lady, I still know it practically by heart, since [...]]]> Barbara and I went to see My Fair Lady at the Opera House last night. Not surprisingly, I thoroughly enjoyed this production of the greatest musical in history. 24-year-old Lisa O’Hare was especially effective in her outstanding performance as Eliza. Unfortunately Christopher Cazenove was rather ordinary and unimpressive as Henry Higgins. The rest of the cast ranged from good to excellent; Tim Jerome deserves special mention for his almost-over-the-top rendition of the comic role of Alfred P. Doolittle.

Although it has been 26 years since the last time I saw My Fair Lady, I still know it practically by heart, since it’s unquestionably my favorite musical ever. So I was intrigued by some of the changes from the classic productions of the original cast and the movie. In particular, the director turned “With a Little Bit of Luck” into a highly entertaining production number, “Show Me” into attendance by Eliza at a suffragette rally, and the Ascot scene into mourning for King Edward VII (the date of the action was moved from 1912 to 1910). All of these amounted to a lagniappe for the audience — enhancing the original conception of this musical rather than destroying it.

I’ve been told that the reason I like My Fair Lady so much might be that I have a background in linguistics, but I’m not at all sure that that’s it. Yes, the linguistic aspects of the musical certainly add extra meaning and interest for me, but they certainly aren’t the main theme of the show. Besides, I loved My Fair Lady before I became a linguist. Actually, I’m more intrigued by its meaning to me as a teacher. Or should I be referring to Shaw’s Pygmalion, on which most of My Fair Lady (except for the unfortunate last scene) is very closely based? The Greek myth of Pygmalion is always a cautionary tale for teachers, since we run the risk of taking credit for our students’ achievements — and, by extension, blame for their failures. The entire way that Professor Henry Higgins thinks of Eliza as his personal creation is all too tempting, especially in the current political climate in which teachers are supposed to be “accountable” for what their students do. I’m not going to get on the subject of merit pay now while reviewing a play, but it’s surprisingly relevant. More on this later, perhaps.

Before the show we had dinner at Ivy; I’ll post a review in a couple of days.