The ABCs of English

As the English language has evolved over the past few hundred years, we have created some interesting elements. No one designed the language we use today; its architecture was created more or less after the fact. We can describe English construction pretty accurately and fairly concisely. But if we try to represent it completely and precisely, the result is very, very messy. Most of us learned English by trying to understand all the messy parts. It was no fun.

Many people would think it ridiculous even to attempt to introduce the English language in a few short pages. I disagree. It is a challenging exercise in communications. Start with a complex concept that takes a lifetime to master and boil it down into its basic elements. This thinking has led to most of the world's scientific breakthroughs, and it is one of the skills possessed by good coaches and teachers. Simplify. This section provides my solution to this challenge. For an excellent and concise treatment of English, read Write Right! A Desktop Digest of Punctuation, Grammar, and Style, by Jan Venolia.

PARTS OF SPEECH

The basics of English can be captured in just nine classes of words traditionally called parts of speech. Here they are in (my) priority order:

1. verb expresses an action, occurrence, existence
2. adjective modifies a noun
3. noun names a person, animal, thing, place, idea, quality, act
4. interjection exclaims
5. adverb modifies a verb, adjective, adverb
6. preposition relates one noun to another
7. pronoun stands in for a noun
8. conjunction connects words
9. article precedes a noun

Why this priority? The order reflects my opinion as to which words count the most when writing or speaking. And some words do count more than others. Actions speak louder than the other parts of speech; consequently, verbs are at the top of the list. Many people would place nouns at the top, but most nouns are usually obvious, and they become interesting only when they are specialized (through adjectives) or when they do something (through verbs). Interjections are one of the more underused parts of speech.

The introduction of emoticons (such as smiley faces) in online communications has increased the popularity of communicating with interjections. Emoticons are simply modern-day substitutes for interjections. I have never used a smiley face, preferring the challenge of building "tone" into my style with interjections and careful word choices.

Prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and articles are lower priority because they are mostly mundane necessities. Adverbs, on the other hand, are intentionally low on the list. I think adverbs are the most abused part of speech in today's everyday language. They clutter prose with redundancy, exaggeration, and unnecessary complexity. Learn what adverbs are best used for so that you can be more selective about their use.

PUNCTUATION

Be wary when something is defined by expressing what it is not. This is usually a sign that the definer cannot articulate the meaning clearly or doesn't understand the subject clearly. Nevertheless, this is the best way to define punctuation: all the stuff that is not letters or numbers. The primary elements of punctuation are shown in Table 1-.

Punctuation marks are symbols that serve two primary purposes. First, they help clarify the syntax (structure) and semantics (meaning) of the words that are strung into sentences, paragraphs, and pages. Second, they help the reader understand the pauses and tones intended by the author.

The role of punctuation is best described in Lynne Truss's classic work, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. How important is punctuation? It is much more important than it appears on the surface. Here are some simple demonstrations.

Punctuate the following sequence of words to form a complete sentence.

A woman without her man is nothing

If you are male, you probably punctuated this sentence by putting a period at the end.

A woman without her man is nothing.

If you are female, you may have punctuated this sentence differently.

A woman: Without her, man is nothing.

A change in punctuation turns the meaning of the sentence upside down. Here is another example.

Don't stop. This means keep going.

Don't! Stop! This means the opposite of "Don't stop."

Here is a longer paragraph. This is a little more tortured, but it is still easy to see the power of punctuation. The words are exactly the same in both paragraphs; only the punctuation changes the entire meaning.

Dear Jack,

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy — will you let me be yours?

Jill

Dear Jack,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn! For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours, Jill

These examples illustrate the primary purpose of punctuation: to help you express your intent. The secondary purpose is to help the reader with the flow and rhythm of the words, sentences, and paragraphs. Whereas punctuation was originally invented so that written words could be read aloud, it has evolved into a much more important element of communicating with the proper intent.

The book jacket of Eats, Shoots & Leaves provides a nice example of the beauty of the English language and why there are so many jokes and plays on words that we get to enjoy.

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

That last misplaced comma is consequential. It demonstrates that punctuation is a powerful means for enhancing clarity.

WORDS

The word is the most basic element of our language, the atomic unit of language that has some meaning. Words are composed of only two sub- elements: vowels and consonants.

What are vowels? The simple definition is a, e, i, o, and u. Here is a more precise definition from Wikipedia.org:

A vowel is a sound in spoken language, pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract.

Vowels are the key building blocks of most English words. There are only 127 words in The Official SCRABBLE® Players Dictionary that have no vowels; 107 of these include y. Conversely, there are only five words that are all vowels (aa, ae, ai, oe, and eau).

What are consonants? The simple definition is all the non-vowels. The more technical definition is a speech sound produced by occluding, with or without releasing (p, b, t, d, k, g), diverting (m, n), or obstructing (f, v, s, z, etc.), the flow of air from the lungs. Here is Wikipedia's definition of consonants:

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx. Consonants contrast with vowels.

Good grief! Can you imagine the geniuses way back when coming up with those definitions and selling them to academic authorities who blessed them as the standards?

What are the most popular letters in the English language? Although the answer varies depending on the context of the analysis, the result will come out something like the distribution-of-letter frequency shown in Figure 1-1.

It is important to know this information if you work crossword puzzles, solve cryptograms, play Scrabble, or watch Wheel of Fortune. It is also worth knowing for the everyday enjoyment of English. It is easier to remember if you group the letters into five sets:

Very frequent E T A
Frequent R H I N O S
Average C L U D
Infrequent M W F G Y P B V K
Very infrequent J X Q Z

PUZZLE 2. VOWEL BLENDS

The object of this puzzle is to find the shortest English words that contain each of the possible 25 vowel digraphs (two-letter blends of vowels). Each word must be three letters or more. Score 1 point for each letter used. Score 10 points for each digraph that you can't find a word for.

PUZZLE 3. CONSONANT BLENDS

The object here is to find the shortest English words that contain the following 25 consonant digraphs (two-letter blends of consonants). Each word must be three letters or more. Score 1 point for each letter used. Score 10 points for each digraph that you can't find a word for.

PUZZLE 4. LETTER SEQUENCES

Ten different three-letter alphabetical sequences can be found in legitimate English words. For example, the word first contains the sequence rst, and the word define contains the sequence def. Can you identify the other eight? Here are all the combinations.

abc bcd cde def efg fgh ghi hij jkl klm lmn

nop opq pqr qrs rst stu tuv uvw vwx wxy xyz

Five of the three-letter sequences in Puzzle 4 can begin words. Only one three-letter sequence is a word all by itself.

The four silly sentences in Puzzle 5 were contrived from a set of words that have a subtle similarity. Try to figure out the common characteristic that each word exhibits and put the words in the correct order. When you figure out the common characteristic, the order should be obvious. An elementary school student can solve this puzzle. It just takes a keen sense of observation outside your normal frame of reference.

PUZZLE 5. FIRST IMPRESSIONS

1. Opaque jade cubes befuddled emerald experts.

2. Double-use jeep vehicle teams seemingly evaded enemy efforts.

3. Decent eight-cheese pizzas are ideal.

4. Wise, aged zebras usually escape cagey elephants.

If you need a hint to solve this puzzle, see Appendix C.

The combination of consonants and vowels into a spoken sound is called a syllable. These are the building blocks of words. Wikipedia defines syllable as follows:

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological building blocks of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic meter, its stress patterns, and so forth.

Prosody is another word for tone. For example, you can say the words what is that so that your tone implies a question, a surprise, excitement, or sarcasm. This is the prosody element of the sound.

English vowels and consonants are particularly attractive for putting together words that have teeth — in other words, for creating memorable, meaningful word usage in a specific context. While I can't prove that English has more toothy words than other languages, I believe that people prefer to express their emotions in English rather than French. Here's why.

Canada recognizes both English and French as official languages, and all traffic signs, menus, and public literature are exhibited in both languages. I studied French for many years in school, and while I cannot speak it well, I can understand 60% of what I read or hear. During a year I spent in Montreal, I attended a couple of professional hockey games where the crowd was largely French Canadians. Their clear preference for speaking, with one obvious and notable exception, was French. Sitting in the stands and enjoying some great hockey, I had to strain to understand the people around me except when they used profanity.

It struck me as trés odd that when they cursed, they used English expletives exclusively. I think this was because the folks who invented the King's English took great care to create profanity with consonant and vowel sequences that people love to say. Start with a hard opening constriction; follow with a soft middle sound; and close with a hard constriction. All of our fun-to-say profanity follows this common pattern. (Consider the old George Carlin routine about the seven words you can't say on television.) The French (and everyone else) love to swear in English. I didn't hear anyone say merde, which sounds too subtle and soft and romantic. You just can't match the joy of expressing emotions with English expletives.

Words count. The difference between good writing and good speaking is mostly in word selection and sentence structure. English has evolved over hundreds of years so that we can communicate more clearly and use a single meaningful word to describe the same thing that previously required several words. Yet most people recognize only a small percentage of the words in the English language. Most of the words are obscure and rarely needed. However, the larger your vocabulary, the more concise you can be. A poor choice of words may obscure a great thought. Good ideas are not worth much if they are not communicated effectively. Communicating an idea by writing it down is a great way to organize thoughts, analyze alternatives, and reason through its strengths and weaknesses.

For most people, the key obstacle to communicating better is the tendency to be verbose. We use several words when we need only one meaningful word. We end up sounding overly long-winded (a self-defining example). Long-winded, a word that has teeth, is memorably self- descriptive. It means verbose or overly wordy in getting to the point. Overly long-winded therefore means overly, overly wordy. Why take the emphasis off a great word like long-winded by adding a redundant word like overly? Such annoyingly meaningless verbosity is covered really extensively and with overly long-winded and very redundant wordiness in a later chapter following this one. Ha!

Your choice of words in every communication is a key element of your style and effectiveness. Many of us evolve from children who say exactly what they mean to educated adults who feel compelled to demonstrate their advanced education by using strange words and complex structure to beat around the bush. Aristotle provided some great advice on this topic. Paraphrased:

Think as wise men do, and speak as common people do, so that everyone may understand.

Here are some simple word selection principles that help achieve this goal.

1. Use a familiar word rather than an unusual one.

2. Use a concrete word rather than an abstract word or phrase.

3. Use a single word rather than a roundabout phrase.

4. Use a short word rather than a long one.

If you stray from these principles, as a writer or a speaker, it should be to serve a specific purpose or to make a more precise point. When you use unusual, abstract, or long words, there should be a reason: The alternative word should communicate your intent more precisely. In most cases, people use unusual, abstract, or long words either to add diversity to their wording or to raise the level of perceived literacy expected by the reader. In either case, the alternative word inhibits reading and understanding. Here are some typical tradeoffs.