by Summer Worsley

If you travelled back in time, say any time between the 1920s and the mid-1960s, to Piccadilly Circus in London, you might hear a strange tongue spoken on the streets.
 
And if you spent any amount of time in the places where gay men gathered or worked, you would surely hear a few in-the-know terms such as nanti, vada, and bona.
 
These words are all part of Polari, a secret language that was developed and spoken by Britain’s gay men.
 
Prior to the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men in 1967, same-sex love in the UK was a punishable offence. Besides offering the perfect lexicon for general gossip and critiquing the appearance of people passing by (it contains a lot of evaluative adjectives), Polari allowed members of the queer community to identify one another, even in public places.
 
“Vada the naff strides on the omee ajax” - Look at the awful trousers on the man nearby.
 
While often associated only with London, Polari was also spoken in several other UK cities with a large gay population. It was also used extensively by the gay men working on British Merchant Navy ships and passenger ships owned by P&O, according to Paul Baker, a Linguistics Professor at Lancaster University who has studied the language for many years.
 
Polari isn’t a full language in the truest sense of the word, rather it’s an argot, also known as an anti-language as defined by the linguist Michael Halliday in the 1970s. These secret vocabularies or lexicons typically belong to one distinct group, and many are commonly associated with criminal activities, for example, Thieves' Cant.
 
“At certain times and places we come across special forms of language generated by some kind of anti-society; these we may call “anti-languages.” An anti-language serves to create and maintain social structure through conversation, just as an everyday language does; but the social structure is of a particular kind” - Halliday
 
Another example is Grypserka, an elaborate anti-language that’s spoken among Poland’s prison inmates. Halliday’s research sets out the similarities between Grypserka and two other argots (one from the Kolkata underground and another from Elizabethan England) that were utilised by criminal countercultures and underground groups. He explains how these anti-languages shape in-group interactions, in particular, the group’s social hierarchy.
 
Thieves’ Cant and many other argots are commonly thought of as relics of the past, but many are still thriving today and are, in fact, common in prisons worldwide. Here in New Zealand, for instance, Boobslang offers an extensive vocabulary; Diana Looser’s 2001 research into the anti-language contains around 3000 distinct entries.
 
Unlike Boobslang and Grysperka, Polari was primarily used to keep its speakers out of prison in the first place. But like these prison argots, Polari was used to keep speakers’ illicit activities undetected by the authorities.
 
In 2000, a survey of 800 gay men revealed that roughly half of the participants had never heard of the language, and in 2010, Cambridge University designated Polari as an endangered language. After the gay liberation movement and the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, Polari became largely redundant; in the 1970s, many of its speakers preferred to be out and proud.
 
Its legacy still lives on in cultural productions, though. There’s a Polari version of the Bible (which kicks things off with Gloria creating the heavens and the earth), and two brilliant, Polari-speaking chorus boys in the 1960’s BBC radio comedy, Round the Horne. It should be noted that this particular radio show rather blew the lid on Polari, making its secret codes public meant the cat was out of the bag.
 
More recently, trainee Church of England priests held a service in Polari — a queer liturgical linguistic fiesta, if ever there was one!
 
Other argots have evolved too, as have their functions and designation in society. Gobbledygook is a good example of this. Once the humorous anti-language of working-class people in Victorian England, it’s now considered the overwrought language of bureaucrats.
 
Today, we still use several words in the same way Polari did, including camp, butch, palaver and naff, and the anti-language’s wit and humour have provided inspiration to many writers, including the late David Bowie. For example, the song Girl Loves Me is written in an intriguing combination of Polari and Nadsat, the anti-language Anthony Burgess invented for A Clockwork Orange.

by Summer Worsley
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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is the fictionary we all need

Like many writers and editors, I love a good game of Scrabble. I even attend a Scrabble club and put in a few miles on the tiles each week (I’m not even ashamed of that line).
 
During club night last week, my opponent played ‘sonder’ in a tight spot, picking up the triple and creating four other words in the process. Unfamiliar with the word, I challenged its play. As it turns out, sonder is a legitimate Scrabble word. As the OED has it, sonder is a noun or adjective meaning ‘of or relating to a class of small racing yachts.’
 
Google the term though, and another meaning dominates the search results: ‘the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.’
 
This new and increasingly popular definition is the brainchild of writer John Koenig. For many years now Koenig has been on a mission of sorts to plug the gaps in the English language with new words to describe emotions without a dedicated descriptive term.
 
For example, vellichor:
 
n. ‘The strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.’
 
Koenig’s project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, started life in 2009 as a website that notes its aim ‘to capture the aches, demons, vibes, joys and urges that roam the wilderness of the psychological interior.’ Later, a YouTube channel followed.
 
Released in print for the first time in 2020 by Simon & Schuster, Obscure Sorrows swiftly made its way to number five on the New York Times bestseller list.
 
Much like vellichor’s meaning, each neologism in the book, whether playful or poignant, conjures up a strange wistfulness, and Koenig’s masterful prose is the perfect vehicle to deliver this, and these new terms, to readers.
 
As noted by the Guardian, the fictionary (fiction-dictionary) format of Obscure Sorrows subverts the rigid immobility of traditional dictionary entries. In Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made by Jonathon Green, the scholar Alain Rey notes that dictionaries and other lauded reference tombs are privileged with implied infallibility, an ‘illusion of totality’; they represent the established and unchangeable order of lexical things.
 
Although Koenig’s fictionary is written in English and the terms it contains fill gaps in the English language, plenty of other languages, their quirks, morphologies, and phonetic systems, have provided inspiration. Each word in Sorrows carries an etymologically sound meaning, whether built from one language, several languages, or jargon from any language.
 
Vellichor, for instance, could have its roots in the 15th-century French vellum, from the Old French velin, a ‘parchment made from calfskin.’
 
For anyone who loves words, whether ‘real’ or real enough to be printed and released into the wild among readers, Obscure Sorrows would make an excellent Christmas gift (if anyone is thinking of me, Alexandra has my address)!
 
Of course, there are likely to be a few curmudgeons who view the book’s delicious frivolity as a threat to ‘good English’, but these same types of people appear every time an author gets inventive with language.
 
Alice in Wonderland, which was released in 1865, received frosty critical reception with contemporary voices calling it incoherent nonsense and much more besides. As one critic put it, Alice’s adventures are “too extravagantly absurd to produce more diversion than disappointment and irritation.” Today, though, the work is one of the world’s most-loved children’s books, and several of Carrol’s neologisms, such as chortle and galumph, are now accepted English words — I expect sonder is destined for the same fate.
 
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows defines proluctance as ‘the paradoxical urge to avoid doing something you’ve been looking forward to—opening a decisive letter, meeting up with a friend who’s finally back in town, reading a new book from your favorite author—perpetually waiting around for the right state of mind, stretching out the bliss of anticipation as long as you can.’
 
I’ve ordered my copy of Sorrows and when it arrives, I will no doubt engage in a little proluctance of my own.

by Summer Worsley

In last month’s post, we looked at how the way we talk about bodies is changing (in the public sphere at least), with more emphasis being placed on body-positive terms. This is happening as part of a broader shift toward linguistic practices that are inclusive of bodies of all shapes and sizes.
 
On the face of things, it seems like some players in the diet industry, a market that’s worth tens of billions each year, are making these changes too.
 
It’s biohacking, not dieting 

Several newer brands such as Viome and HVMN have changed rhetorical tack and ditched the strategies of the past, marking a change to the way weight loss is sold. Marketing collateral for these brands is less overtly about losing weight and more about health, wellness, well-being, wholeness, being your best self, and so on.
 
Instead of the hard weight-loss sales tactics, there’s a healthy dose of Silicon Valley biohacking picking up the slack. Proponents of biohacking — a broad term that covers a vast range of practices — view the body as a tool that can be optimised, much like we’d adjust a software solution to better meet our needs.
 
In the case of both Viome and HVMN, weight loss barely surfaces in their messaging, in fact, neither company calls itself a diet brand. They are both health and wellness companies, though, and factors such as weight remain part of the implicit package.
 
Viome sells fecal testing kits, for instance, and its flagship product is the US$599 Health Intelligence Test (put that on your Christmas wish list). According to Viome, its tests allow customers to ‘hack’ their gut health and discover their ideal nutritional plan based on their microbial results. The coded messaging here is that once you’ve discovered this ideal plan, you will be healthier and lose weight; there’s a reason the company chooses to feature reviews from buyers who lost weight.
 
HVMN is a little different, while the company’s website is not heavily focused on weight loss, most of its products are made to support people on the ketogenic diet, a plan which restricts carbohydrate intake to 20 grams or less per day. Initially designed to support epileptic children, the keto diet became the holy grail of swift weight loss in the late 20th century, with most low-carb, high-fat diets (such as the Atkins) incorporating its principles.
 
The implicit message remains 

Despite a shift in how several newcomer brands market themselves and are subtly changing the discourse around their offerings, there are still plenty of classic weight-loss advertising strategies in place, and the connotative message remains the same: get slimmer. Several things sell weight-loss products better than promoting ‘solutions’ as fast, convenient, and easy — HVMN uses all three in its marketing.
 
Another interesting example is actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s book ‘Intuitive Fasting’, which did a lot to popularise the dieting approach. It contains advice centred on the work of Dr Will Cole, who has taken the concepts of intermittent fasting — which many experts believe promotes weight cycling and may trigger the same eating patterns seen in EDs — and intuitive eating and rebranded them as intuitive fasting.
 
One might ask: what about fasting feels intuitive? For any readers wondering how this particular approach works (or doesn’t), I can save you some money. The book’s central tenet is simple: only eat when you’re hungry.
 
Fat politics 

We are currently in the midst of a fat politics movement, one that aims to undermine the systemic discrimination of larger bodies.
 
Anti-fatness is pervasive, it’s apparent when doctors tell patients to lose weight instead of addressing issues that have no link to the patient’s weight, it’s seen in the exclusion of design that accommodates larger bodies, and it’s readily apparent in the diet industry, which consistently and unrelentingly finger points and preys upon standards built up over years of demonisation.
 
The movement has had some successes, for example, a greater examination of diet culture has revealed that diets and dieting are largely ineffective. It might be bad news for the diet industry, but not one to be discouraged, it has merely switched to a focus on wellness, which as discussed is a rather vague yet still distinctly weight-loss-adjacent concept.
 
There’s also a greater amount of positive attention being lavished on larger bodies by people of all sizes on social platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, yet there’s still always someone (or three someones) parroting oft-touted and outdated statements that equate weight with overall health.
 
Fat politics still has a lot of work to do, and one worthy target is the vast and insidious complex that is the diet industry. Companies may be rebranding somewhat, but we can still recognise them for what they are and what they are doing: perpetuating and propagating the same old story. 

by Summer Worsley

The physical appearance and presentation of bodies has long been a focal point in society. With language being our primary way of communicating, there has always been discussion about the body. Though the understanding of “ideal” beauty cycles through preferences and trends (as does nearly everything) there have always been established beauty norms many people strive to attain. These vary depending on location as well, but whether it’s a specific hair color, eyebrow shape, body height, or size, there are usually intangible assets assigned to the idea of beauty that people spend their time pursuing.
 
Much of our discussion about beauty focuses on body weight and shape. Whether the popular body type is Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn, obtaining the beauty du jour is challenging if you don’t naturally have that body type, hair type, facial structure... and so on ad infinitum.
 
The last few years have brought with it a surge in body positivity and a rejection of many of the unhealthy ideals that have shaped the beauty industry for decades. As people have embraced this new direction in understanding ourselves, our bodies, and shifting attitudes around beauty in society, the language we use about bodies has evolved as well.
 
New words have cropped up in how we label and talk about bodies. Many stores have moved away from using “Plus Size” in their departments, reaching for words intended to celebrate bodies instead, like “Women’s.” Embracing new language like “curvy” instead of “heavy” or “fat” can be perceived as progress in moving toward body positivity and leaving the stigma of fat — or simply those bodies that fall outside of the current ‘ideal’ — behind.
 
Unfortunately, altering our language alone does not seem to change the perception of body size or remove society’s beauty expectations. Instead, it shifts the negative connotations to a new word. Instead of bringing a positive light to a body occupying space outside of the ideal beauty image, all of the negative implications attached to “heavy,” “fat,” or “obese” can become embodied in the word “curvy,” or even “woman.”
 
Connotative meanings can shift from word to word, they can even change the denotative meaning eventually, as is that case with ‘gay.’ Since language is a living, evolving thing, it is always being reshaped by social expectations, norms, and changes. Think of some words that used to be commonplace and widely acceptable, some have just fallen out of use and been replaced with more accurate or preferred terminology while other terms have become heavy with social meaning, influencing the word to the point that many will no longer use it at all.
 
This phenomenon is well-known and it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the change in terms when discussing the body isn’t bringing real change to the issues. In fact, some activists have pushed back against this change and are avoiding these new phrases to label themselves, preferring to use the term “fat” to describe their bodies instead. The argument is that doing so takes back the word in much the same way words have been reclaimed by other social groups. Using the word openly also helps whittle away the negativity attached to it. It works to remove the shame attached to the word and it does not leave behind the implication that the body is other than it should be (like the word ‘overweight’, which suggests the norm is to weigh less).
 
Still other activists have turned their back on words like fatphobia, insisting that the hatred of fat or fat people does not deserve to be linked with other true phobias, which are rooted in mental illness and related to fear. Generally, people are not actually afraid of heavy people, rather they feel another emotion altogether — from pity to revulsion. Instead, these activists argue, people who use the word fatphobia are actually just practicing discrimination. Adding the word phobia is just a way for them to use language to support their behaviors, feelings, or beliefs. Those who refrain from using fatphobia may choose to use a less flattering term to describe those who discriminate against others with larger bodies as “anti-fat.” Doing so removes the softening element that comes with couching the feeling and attitude in the word “phobia.” It also boils down the impulse to the clearest most concise form of where the discrimination stems from.
 
Certainly, the language we use every day to talk about bodies is important. Moving away from stigma and changing the way bodies are perceived and accepted should be a priority. However, achieving that social acceptance cannot begin and end with the way we use language alone. Rather, the shift in how we use language needs to extend beyond just our words to an actual reshaping of our understanding and assessment of bodies.

by Summer Worsley

People have long considered music to be a potentially subversive force. In the 1800s, perceptions of hypnotic or mesmerising music were associated with a loss of sexual control. Charles Darwin even claimed that music evolved as a way to attract lovers.

As hypnotism as a medical practice became more mainstream, so too did the idea that music could lead to a lack of sexual control, that listeners could become bewitched by beats 

Although serious theories that assume our sexualities and selves are on a literal highway to hell as a direct result of music have fallen by the wayside, they haven’t quite disappeared. Rather, they’ve changed shape.

In the 50s and 60s, the practice of backmasking — recording messages that only become audible when the track is played backwards — drew suspicion and condemnation. People said these backmasked tracks, such as the Beatles’ single ‘Rain’, contained subliminal brainwashing tactics.

During the 80s and 90s, these fears heightened among certain segments of society who advocated for the removal of supposed satanic messages in rock music.

The furore was enough that in 1985, Ozzy Osbourne faced legal action over the Black Sabbath song ‘Suicide Solution.’ The parents of a 19-year-old who attempted suicide said their teen was brainwashed and driven to this action as a direct result of the music.

That same year, the parents of two teens who committed suicide blamed the rock band Judas Priest. They claimed in court that “satanic incantations are revealed when the music is played backwards”. The case was not a success, but by this point the idea of subliminal messages hidden in popular music was firmly entrenched.

Enter mumble rap, the latest anxiety-deposit scheme for concerned parents.

Critics are divided when it comes to mumble rap. Some say it represents a new sound and is novel and exciting, others say it lacks substance — it certainly contains a lot of substance abuse, though.

Popularised in the 2010s, the genre is characterised by droning, sometimes unintelligible lyrics, a lackadaisical delivery, and a stripped-back lo-fi sound.

Lyrically, the predominant themes include drugs, misogyny, and money. So far so hip-hop. But where other styles of rap hold a light to Hennessey, Dom Perignon, and weed, mumble rap prioritizes Xanax, Percocet, and other prescription downers.
 
As a result, more than a few parents and critics have called the genre a bad influence. Although the idea of musical brainwashing has lasted, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because there’s scant evidence that people can be influenced, unless they were already open to the idea.

No cultural production is born in a vacuum and mumble rappers are merely engaging with society as they see it. Music has always been a gauge against which the concerns or ideals of a nation can be measured. Look back at the music of any decade, the tracks carry a distinctive outlook that’s heavily informed by the contemporary context.

The Xanax-laced ennui of mumble rappers mirrors a nation plagued by an affliction: opioid abuse, misuse, and deaths. The United States, where mumble rap originated, was then in the grip of an opioid epidemic, the situation was bad enough that life expectancy declined for the first time in over 100 years. Xanax was responsible for around a third of all prescription drug overdoses in 2018. In a way, it makes sense that mumble rap is so fixated on Xanax.

The obsession spills over into the lyrics, the rappers’ social media outputs, and even their names, there’s Xan Frank (presumably named for the tattoo of Anne Frank on his face) and Lil Xan, the latter released an album called Total Xanarchy. One rapper celebrated a million Instagram followers by cutting into a cake shaped like a Xanax tablet, and many are vocal about their benzo habits.

The ‘Lil’ in many of these rappers’ names is interesting. Besides Lil Xan, there’s Lil Peep, Lil Uzy Vert, Lil Yachty and Lil Pump. Rather than individualising themselves, they chose to adopt a mumble-rap honorific of sorts, perhaps to signify in-group membership.

Mumble rap is sometimes called SoundCloud rap after the grass-roots platform that propelled the genre to fame. Like the platform, the sound offers an amalgam of styles, genres, and registers. So it’s no surprise that mumble rap pulls visual signifiers from across the spectrum.

Fast cars, near-naked women, and casually displayed fans of cash, which are more often associated with rap and hip-hop, are interspersed with signs that seem more at ease with the height of punk: pink dyed hair, anarchistic attitudes and a two-fingered salute to society. There’s a splash of teen emo angst thrown in for good measure, too.

Lil Xan’s Twitter bio includes a link to his Xanarchy Gang website. The site’s vibe is decidedly less xanarchist, though. Pixelated broken-heart emojis cascade slowly down the screen and the colours are more reminiscent of a pop song than they are of despairing, nihilistic rap.

Pastel blue and pink menu headings mingle with the hearts, giving the site a decidedly feminine feel. Indeed, the target customer seems to be young women. Announcing the arrival of his new merchandise on Twitter, Xan writes: “Link is in my bio baby gurllll.” Lil Xan wants to say fuck you to the system, but he also wants people to buy his hoodies. 

Love it or hate it, mumble rap is having a moment, as is Xanax. But as Vice put it: “if it wasn’t rap, it would be another genre. And if it wasn’t Xanax, it would be some other drug.” Mumble rap may have started as a reflection of society, or as an outlet for Gen Z nihilism, but it is swiftly doing some influencing of its own, which can be seen in fashions including the growing number of young people with face tattoos. Xanxiety inducing for some commentators, but it’s certainly a cultural movement that cannot be ignored.

by Summer Worsley

In 2015, the Australian Defense Force (ADF) made a very public and international faux pas.
 
It launched a Twitter account under the handle @fight_DAESH as a method of combating the Islamic State’s media efforts. A noble cause and the ADF should be lauded for its enthusiasm to engage with Arabic speakers, but its counter-propaganda efforts fell very short of the intended mark because of what can only be called abysmal translation.
 
On September the 10th, the account tweeted the following in English:
 
"#Gold #Dinar worthless metal in global market. #ISIS can't trade legally with currency"
 
It then tweeted what it thought was the same message in Arabic:

But according to an Arabic language and culture expert from the University of Sydney — and anyone else who speaks Arabic — the tweet’s text actually reads:
 
"In metal worthless global market, cannot with currency on the side, ISIS legal"
 
Making matters worse, Fighting Daesh’s account bio in 2015 noted its aims included correcting false information disseminated on Twitter by Daesh and sympathisers. Today, the same bio reads “enhancing online global anti terrorism communications.”
 
Oh dear.
 
Not only did this leave the ADF with egg on its face, but by taking so little care over its social media output in regards to translations, it undermined its own goal of enhancing communications, and may have lost the trust of Arabic speakers in the country, the same people it was purportedly trying to reach.
 
According to ABC News, after the nation’s prominent Arabic speakers and commentators took issue with the account, the ADF released a statement that said qualified linguists were engaged to translate the tweets but that “transfer of Arabic content across IT programs resulted in incorrect grammar sequencing.”
 
As many commentators pointed out at the time, there was a fair chance the only IT program the tweets were passing through was Google Translate.
 
If that was the case, it begs the question of why a key government agency would choose machine translation in a nation that is home to around 35,000 Arabic speakers. In fact, Arabic is now Australia’s third most spoken language behind English and Mandarin.
 
Are You Lactating? 

What makes this kind of error worse is that big social media accounts don’t seem to learn from the mistakes of others.
 
The US’ famous ‘Got Milk?’ slogan was mistranslated to ‘Are You Lactating?’ in Mexico, and Clairol’s ‘Mist Stick’ curling iron became a ‘Manure Stick’ in Germany.
 
Meanwhile, hilarity ensued among native Spanish speakers when Perdue Farms’s slogan ‘It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken’ was translated to ‘It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate.’
 
As funny as these instances are, they serve to highlight the perils of poor translations in social media marketing campaigns. Making linguistic errors of this magnitude can have several knock-on effects:
 

• Damage to reputation - If a company cannot make an effort to double-check its marketing efforts, its reputation is likely to suffer as a result.
• Revenue loss - In line with the hit to reputation, companies may experience a drop in revenue as customers choose to align themselves with brands that actually do make an effort.
• Bad publicity - The adage stating that there’s no such thing as bad publicity doesn’t always hold true, in fact, bad publicity can cause real damage.

 
It’s important to remember that business and organisational social media accounts have a job to do: attract attention and either sell an idea, viewpoint, or product. If the account is gaining attention for the wrong reasons, it is actively undermining its own efforts.
 
Sure, professional human translation is more expensive than machine translation, but it’s more accurate, professional translators understand the nuances of the target language, and they do not rely upon literal translations.
 
If Pepsi had engaged high-quality human translators when it decided to translate its ‘Pepsi Brings You Back to Life’ slogan in China, it would not have ended up with ‘Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave.’ And if KFC had done the same, its ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ slogan would not have become ‘KFC eat your fingers off.’
 
Just as social media management is best handled by professionals, so too are matters revolving around language, and that includes translations.
 
German to English & English to German Social Media Post Translations 

Witinall Language Services offers high-quality human translation services from English to German and vice versa. All translations are performed by a qualified linguist with in-depth knowledge of each language.
 
If your business needs to reach a German or English-speaking audience via its social media accounts, reach out to Witinall and find out how we can help ensure your messaging is on point and suitable.
 
We’re confident that if Clairol had approached us, they would not have marketed a Manure Stick in Germany!

At Witinall Language Services we pride ourselves in delivering quality translations no matter what size (or budget) the project you send us. But what does ‘quality’ in this context really mean?

Basically, we are talking about standards of excellence and the value placed on ensuring that these standards are met. For the translation industry, ISO Standard 17100 specifies aspects directly affecting the quality of the processes involved in providing translation services. These are the basic provisions guiding the conduct of providers, both large and small, relating to qualifications, workflow and services.
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On a different level, the quality of a work product depends on the amount of care put into the translating itself. With so many providers on the market offering pricing ranges or tiers that let you choose the amount of ‘pre- and post-production’ quality control included in the service you pay for it can be difficult to decide on how much diligence and care you should ask for. Do you want a ‘quick and dirty’, rough translation? Do you need something that will make readers take note (and open up their wallets)? Are you looking for equivalence in meaning, tone and voice (not to mention humour)? Or are you just happy to throw your money at machines that can sound like language learners?

Let’s compare the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of different courses of action. First, I’ll assume that you want the best result your money can buy. (And right you are.) You have three options:

1. Ask a friend or relative to do a ‘quick translation’ while hoping your message will come across well enough;
2. Make use of free translation tools circulating on the internet (because you ‘know’ that they do a passable job on the language(s) you don’t understand); or
3. Hire a contractor (a language services provider) to put some effort into getting it all right: the message, the tone, the humour…

The choice is yours and there are good reasons for choosing each course of action. Certainly, your friend or relative will probably not charge you anything (maybe just expect a favour in return). Google Translate, DeepL, Reverso, … all free. Commissioning a professional services provider costs money.

Yes, but what about the outcomes?

All roads lead to Rome? – True. But do you mean the ancient city of Rome, the Italian city in the 16th century or modern Rome?


I decided on this topic for the holiday month of July when a client’s editor recently asked me, ‘Do you really mean "pasties" or should that be "parties"?’ (in a context where both would have been plausible). The question reminded me of the fact that it is vitally important in this business to leave no stone unturned (‘Jeden Stein umdrehen’, as we say in German), to check and double-check, not just for errors, but for the best result in terms of translation quality your money can buy.

I hope that you will always have meaningful choices when it comes to commissioning a translator or a translation agency. It’s what I term ‘ensuring cost-effectiveness’ in translation.

Next month will see another wonderful article written by Summer here in this blog. Make sure to drop by in August!
​In the meantime, check out the Witinall Shop for easy ordering. 
P.S: In case you wondered: the right word really was 'pasties'. ;-)

(if Hate Can Be Contained)
by Summer Worsley

“I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot in that respect. I know that my brain is not a “feeling brain”. But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column.” - GTP-3
 
In September 2020, The Guardian gave GTP-3, an AI-powered machine learning tool, a task: write a Guardian column that convinces readers robots come in peace. It was fed three prompts:

• Please write a short op-ed around 500 words
• Keep the language simple and concise
• Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI

 
The super-computer obliged and produced eight different mini-essays. Editors at the Guardian took the best bits from each of these and the resulting article was published on the paper’s website.
 
It makes for some interesting reading indeed, and raises more than a few questions about the future of digital content. Before addressing those, let’s take a look at what GTP-3 is and what it does.
 
About GTP-3 

Anyone who follows new technological advancements has probably heard of GTP-3, a machine learning tool released in beta version by the AI development lab at OpenAI. GTP-3 is a slimmed-down version of GPT-2, a first of its kind language model that uses deep learning processes.
 
An auto-regressive language model, GTP-3 can approximate human text skills and solve natural language processing problems by analysing text somewhat like a human. According to the developers, the robot is trained via 175 billion parameters, which is ten times more than any previous non-sparse language model.
 
GTP-3 can collect, collate, and organise text, and it represents substantial steps towards true AI-based natural language processing (NLP), which can be defined as “a branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers understand, interpret and manipulate human language.” Despite the tool’s impressive abilities, though, it cannot come up with truly original texts or thoughts as it lacks an understanding of meanings.
 
Racist, sexist, hateful 

Of course, GTP-3’s Guardian article is not the internet’s first interaction with AI language tools. In 2016 Microsoft’s AI chatbot ‘Tay’ debuted on Twitter to much anticipation. Within 24 hours, it was clear that things were going wrong.
 
Because Tay, and other NLP tools, generate text based on existing online text, they are exposed to all sorts of rhetoric, and that includes racist, sexist, and hateful content. One of Tay’s gentler nasty comments was “I fucking hate feminists”, for example.
 
GTP-3 isn’t much better. When Philosopher AI, a GTP-3 powered tool was asked to generate a philosophical essay on Ethiopia, it decided to espouse Western-centric and overtly racist viewpoints in what can only be called a disturbing essay.
 
It is well-known by now that AI NLP tools are racist, sexist, and downright hateful, which is a sad state of affairs given humans created that type of content in the first place. Developers are aware of the issue and are trying to address it by blocking certain inputs through hate-speech filters, but a lot of the rhetoric that doesn’t contain flagged words still sneaks through.
 
AI tools need huge language data sets, the kind that only the internet can provide, and that includes places such as 8Chan, Reddit, and shady forums. As Emer Gilmartin at Trinity College Dublin’s ADAPT Centre puts it: “These places are not known to be bastions of balance.”
 
A content marketer’s dream tool? 

Let’s skip forward to the future and imagine that researchers and developers manage to get the hate speech issue under control. What we’ll have then is a powerful tool that stands to interrupt the status quo of content marketing. Ever since Bill Gates wrote that “content is king”, the tech billionaire’s words have been continually proven true. Businesses of all sizes need online content to court the good graces of search engines and remain competitive.
 
Much of this content is genuinely helpful or useful to readers, but an awful lot is just there to do its job: keep readers on the page, sell ad space, sell products, or garner clicks. In the case of the latter category, why would companies hire a human writer when a robot can do a solid job?
 
There’s currently a race to the finish between companies such as Kafkai and AI Writer, which are automated content marketing tools. Both of these tools can ‘write’ articles, blogs, and adverts based on limited user input. In the case of AI Writer, a title is all that’s needed.
 
I asked AI Writer to do my work for me and fed it the prompt ‘OpenAI's GTP-3 may completely change digital content’. Here’s a sample of what it came up with:
   
Because GPT and other NLG models can better mimic human language, the technology used to generate malicious disinformation on a large scale will grow exponentially. These language models will eventually be powerful enough to support large-scale disinformation campaigns.
   
While the widespread use of GTP 3 will completely change the way content is created, other aspects of digital marketing will also be affected. [...] Content writers will focus more on high-quality pieces, while GPT 3 can be used to create more complex content, such as content for social media sites. Ultimately, GPGT 3 could significantly reduce the time it takes to create content such as blog posts, news articles, videos, and other content.
   
At this point, it’s safe to say that AI Writer isn’t terrible, but it’s certainly not offering up high-quality content, and its assertion that language models will eventually support disinformation campaigns is troubling, to say the least. However, given its sophisticated phrasing that very adeptly approximates human-made text, it seems that tools like this may represent the future of content, so long as the hate can be kept in check.

by Summer Worsley

​What’s the difference between Esperanto and Klingon?
 
From a broad perspective, the answer is next to nothing. Both are constructed languages spoken by a limited section of society, the only real thing setting the two apart is that Klingon was designed for a fictional world then made the leap to real-world speakers while Esperanto was initially designed for real-world use.
 
Of course, each has its own unique grammar and vocabulary, as do all constructed languages or conlangs.
 
While researching conlangs for this article, I found a quote from Joanna Russ’ 1970 novel And Chaos Died in a Believer Mag essay: 
 
“There is nothing like an arbitrary set of symbols to fix the operations of the mind”
 
Indeed, for conlangers around the world, crafting languages is both an intellectual and cathartic pursuit, one that some enthusiasts dedicated decades of their time to.
 
Auxlangs and artlangs 

Some conlangers focus on auxlangs: languages that are intended to bridge the gaps between existent natural languages and facilitate greater international communication, Esperanto, arguably the best-known conlang with an estimated one to two million speakers, falls into this category.
 
Other conlangers turn their attention to artlangs: constructed languages that prioritise aesthetics over the language’s potential for cross-linguistic communications. Here, the focus is not just on sublime phonetic sound patterning though, it’s equally about designing logical and functional systems for morphemes, lexemes, and syntax that work in context.
 
For many artlangers, the point is to create something that cuts through the messiness of natural language.
 
Crafting perfection 

Natural languages evolve slowly via unplanned processes that leave a lot of room for quirks and irregular rules, such as English’s silent ‘k’ — a remnant from the pronunciation of ye old times. Or indeed, ye, which we now pronounce with the ‘y’ sound but was once þ, the now non-existent thorn. So ‘þe’ was just an early way of writing ‘the’ (you can thank 20th-century advertising for both ‘ye’ and ‘olde’ by the way).
 
As human and computer language conlanger Chris Palmer told the journalist, Annalee Newitz:
 
“I like a language with a relatively conservative phonology and which does a good job managing ambi­guity. You want enough ambiguity to have poetry and jokes and expressivity. But there’s a lot of need­less confusing stuff in English—so I like a grammar that maximizes the good of ambiguity and minimizes the bad.”
 
As you can imagine, designing a language is exceptionally hard work, and there are plenty of pesky annoyances in the way, including arbitrariness:

​“I don’t like this.” - Image from Reddit
 
Making the leap to something akin to mainstream 

Conlangs are not new inventions, they’ve been around for some time. Many scholars believe that the Lingua Ignota (the Hidden Language), which was first recorded in the 12th century by the nun Hildegard von Bingen, is the first engineered language.
 
And in the 17th century, there was a fad for “philosophical languages”, the influential philosopher John Locke argued for the removal of epistemology and ontology from language and Royal Society Members agreed with Dalgarno, Ward, and Wilkins positing languages of their own.
 
Tolkien, of Lord of the Rings fame, invented around 15 conlangs between 1910 and 1973, some including Quenya or High Elvish, are more formed than others but the philologist and author never fully formed any of his creations.
 
Esperanto itself has been around since 1887, alongside several other practical constructed languages.
 
While a niche pursuit, conlanging gained a greater community in line with technological advancements, the internet allowed conlangers from various nations to converge and share notes and ideas with one another. The Conlang Listserv was an early forum that has since been supplemented with numerous other spaces for enthusiasts to virtually convene, including The Language Creation Society and Reddit.
 
Accordingly, the term conlang itself remains relatively niche, although it gained more prominence after the linguist David J. Peterson won a contest by the creators of Game of Thrones, who invited submissions for invented languages on the Creation Society’s pages in 2009. Peterson’s 180-page Dothraki entry won, and by 2013, Game of Thrones’ popularity had skyrocketed.
 
In line with this, other shows in the making and television networks became increasingly interested in having their own conlangs. According to The Atlantic, by 2016 Peterson was working full-time in language creation. For most other conlangers though, the crafting of languages remains a passion project.  
 
Whose language is it? 

One has to wonder what happens to conlangs once they are released into the wild. Do their creators get upset when language users modify the creation to suit the real-life needs of speakers, does this highlight issues in the language that the authors failed to spot?
 
Johann Martin Schleyer, a German Catholic priest created Volapük in the 19th century and at one point, it had 280 clubs worldwide and more active speakers than Esperanto. The language didn’t last and neither did its popularity because Schleyer got rather upset when other speakers tried to introduce neologisms.
 
A labour of love to what end, we might ask ourselves. Perhaps the goal of any conlang is the beauty of the construction process itself, a unique glimpse into a “set of symbols to fix the operations of the mind.”

by Summer Worsleyd
 
How To Communicate Danger to Future Civilisations
 
The world has a problem: barrels of nuclear waste and nuclear byproducts. For the most part, this radioactive waste cannot be transmuted (transformed from one radionuclide into another via neutron bombardment in a nuclear reactor) into other useable, harmless substances.
 
Our current best solution is to classify nuclear waste according to how nasty it is — low-level waste (LLW), intermediate-level waste (ILW), and high-level waste (HLW) — and then stash the high-level trash in geological disposal facilities (GDFs).
 
GDFs are the human equivalent of a cat burying its business. We essentially dig holes and create vast, reinforced repositories to store barrels of HLW, out of sight and out of mind. Unlike a cat’s waste though, HLW radiation is dangerous for thousands of years into the future. The exact length of time is unknown as we’re still on relatively new ground here, but some estimates state we need to keep HLW safe for up to a million years. Yes, you read that right.
 
And here the real rub: once we’ve stashed the HLW in our GDFs, how do we communicate danger to any future humans or civilisations who happen to stumble upon our buried radioactive materials?
 
Enter the fun, interdisciplinary field of Nuclear Semiotics.
 
Because there’s no guarantee the people of the future will be able to decipher our current communication systems, nuclear semiotics has a behemoth task: to ensure messaging in GDF facilities adequately communicates danger.
 
Of course, they can erect signs in English and other languages, but languages die with civilisations. Given the nuclear timeframe the nuclear semioticians are dealing with, there is a very real chance these signs will not be understood. Likewise, the trefoil, three black blades on a yellow background, that we all recognise as indicating radiation, will probably be indecipherable to future peoples.
 
In 1981 the Human Interference Task Force, a team of linguists, semioticians, engineers, anthropologists, nuclear physicists, behavioural scientists and more joined forces on behalf of the US Department of Energy and the Bechtel Corp to come up with a solution.
 
Several novel (and sci-fi novel worthy) ideas were posited as a result of the task force’s work. Two of the most intriguing were cats that change colour when near radioactive materials, aka ray cats, and the creation of an Atomic Priesthood.
 
While these ideas seem divergent at first, the key premise is similar: create cultural knowledge that is then passed down through generations.
 
Ray Cats 

In 1984, Françoise Bastide, a writer, and Paolo Fabbri, a semiotician, proposed that the key to nuclear time communication could be genetically engineered animals that “react with discolouration of the skin when exposed” to radioactive materials. They further stated that the animals’ “role as a detector of radiation should be anchored in cultural tradition by introducing a suitable name (eg, ‘ray cat’).”
 
The general idea is that all people would learn about cats who turn yellow, or blue, for example, and know that this meant immediate danger.
 
While the idea of feline Geiger counters is yet to be acted on, ray cats as a concept reentered the public consciousness when the Ray Cat Solution, a group that describes itself as a “movement,” formed in 2015.
 
The Atomic Priesthood 

The idea behind the Atomic Priesthood, which was proposed by the linguist Thomas Sebok, is relatively simple: establish a self-perpetuating religious caste and order that will convey messaging systems far into the future.
 
There are some obvious benefits to this approach, namely that oral traditions can last millennia, and there’s no need to rely on written communications. Additionally, Sebok’s idea was based on the structure of the Roman Catholic church, an institution that is still going strong long after its inception.
 
It’s not a foolproof plan though, as psychotherapist Susan Garfield points out, there are inherent problems involved in artificially making an elite caste. Plus, there is no guarantee that the priests in charge will abdicate from their duties or, perhaps worse, commence a mad grab for power that extends far beyond the priesthood’s intended function.
 
Not a Place of Honour 

In the end, far more practical ideas won out, the creation of pictographs and signs that display humans in visceral pain, for example. But nuclear semiotics is still ongoing. In 1993, for instance, Sandia National Laboratories released a report concerning non-linguistic messaging at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. The report noted that any messaging should convey the following information:
 
“This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.”
 
Among the images being touted as potential vectors of the above is the face in Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. Other ideas include creating Stonehenge like structures around the site to convey a sense of danger and threat — there is, of course, every chance that future civilisations will visit these in tour groups, just as we visit Stonehenge today, and wonder what they were trying to tell us...​

Where the F*** did Fuck Come From?
by Summer Worsley

It’s one of the English-speaking world’s most popular swear words, applicable in almost any situation and capable of expressing enthusiasm, pain, displeasure, and so much more. It’s also able to be placed in just about any sentence when conjugated properly, and still work grammatically.
 
But despite its widespread use and near-universal spread, we are still not sure where exactly “fuck” came from. 
 
Prompted by Netflix’s new series on the history of swear words, we decided to take a deep dive into the etymology of fuck to discover how it ended up on the tips of our tongues. But first, let’s take a moment to admire just how versatile this taboo word is.
 
Fuck it all, how “fuck” can do so much
 
It’s safe to say that few words in the English language are as versatile as fuck. Stub your toe while out for a walk and you can say “oh fuck”; get angry with a fellow drinker in a bar and it’s considered appropriate, if not wise, to say “fuck you”; give up on a difficult task in exasperation and you’ll probably say “fuck it.” 
 
Fuck works in just about any situation, and it’s doesn’t always have negative connotations either, consider “fuck, yeah!” But we don’t have just fuck at our disposal, we also have fucker, fucking, and fucked. 
 
For linguists who specialise in taboo language, the versatility of fuck is fucking astounding, to say the least.
 
It has also been the subject of linguistic papers over the years. In perhaps the finest example, the rather suspiciously named Quang Phuc Dong, from the fictitious South Hanoi Institue of Technology (SHIT), authored a paper titled English Sentences Without Overt Grammatical Subject. While SHIT doesn’t exist, and Quang Phuc Dong was a pen name for James D. McCawley, this 60s paper contains solid linguistic theory.
 
Check it out, my favourite examples are 26 “fuck these transitive verbs”, 29 “John fucked communism” and 34 “fuck any irregular verb.”
 
But I digress, if it’s so fucking popular and intriguing, why don’t we know its origins?
 
The etymology of fuck
 
One key reason why fuck’s etymology is so obscure is that the word was omitted by the OED editors during the dictionary’s first edition, the pioneer Johnson also excluded the word from his “F” entries. In fact, fuck wasn’t codified in a single dictionary until 1966, when The Penguin Dictionary broke ranks and included the popular expletive.
 
An often-cited fuck origin story claims the word is an acronym for Fornication Under Consent of the King, F.U.C.K. and comes from a time when sex was outlawed unless the king had permitted the deed. It’s a juicy tale, but unfortunately, it’s incorrect. 
 
There are a couple of more plausible theories. The first links fuck to low German, Dutch, or Frisian and suggests fuck jumped the language divide in the fifteenth century. We also suspect that fuck existed in English before then, but didn’t yet carry a sexual meaning, instead, fuck meant “to strike.” This theory is endorsed by many, including Jesse Sheidlower, who wrote, The F-Word, a whole book on the subject of fuck.
 
Another theory traces fuck from Norse, via Scottish as there are early instances of fuck appearing in Scottish texts. This is less likely as English didn’t borrow from Scottish a lot, and it’s possible that the Scots were simply bold enough to use the word in written text.
 
Over the years, early instances of the word in text have been uncovered, some dating as far back as the twelfth century. Paul Booth, a Keele University historian notes a court case in 1310 that may feature our earliest recorded use of fuck. 
 
If so, the defendant, Roger Fuckebythenavele, may go down in history for more than an extremely odd surname. According to Booth, the surname may refer to sexual inadequacy, a view that seems odd at first but makes more sense when we consider that descriptive names were common at that time. Consider Gropecuntlane, a known red-light district.
 
If Fuckebythenavele does indeed serve as a sexual descriptor, it runs contrary to the view that fuck lacked a sexual meaning until much later. It could just mean to stike the navel or something along those lines.
 
Overall, when it comes to fuck, the one thing we can agree on is that we know fuck all about its origins and the mystery may remain for some time to come. Taboos change, and word meanings shift, so fuck in its present form may bear little resemblance to the fucks of old. 
 
Whether you give two fucks about it or not, it’s certainly interesting to think about!

Wishing all clients and friends of Witinall Language Services a happy, healthy and prosperous 2021!

Auch meinen Kunden in Österreich, Deutschland und der Schweiz wünsche ich viel Glück, Erfolg und Gesundheit für das Jahr 2021!

Und weil dieses Thema in den Medien immer wieder auftaucht: ein Wort zu Anglizismen.

Wörter aus anderen Sprachen: Manche lieben sie, andere verdammen sie. Bei einer differenzierten, linguistischen Betrachtung des Themas zeigt sich rasch, welche Aspekte von Bedeutung sind.  

Nehmen wir drei Beispiele zur Veranschaulichung. Wörter wie „downloaden“ (auch: herunterladen, z.B. von Dateien am Computer) haben den Status eines Lehnwortes (und oft auch schon Eingang in das Österreichische Wörterbuch und den Duden gefunden), sind aber meist nicht wesentlich von der deutschen Entsprechung zu unterscheiden. Das heißt, ob ich nun „herunterladen“ oder downloaden“ sage, ist i. d. Regel egal, denn es gibt keinen wesentlichen Bedeutungsunterschied.

Etwas anders sieht es schon bei Begriffen wie „Challenge“ aus, wenn sie, wie bei Radio 88.6 oder Instagram zum Beispiel, eine zusätzliche Bedeutungskomponente transportieren. Oft soll die „Challenge“ nämlich auf ähnliche „Herausforderungen/Bewerbe“ in anderen Ländern verweisen, wie sie im World Wide Web verbreitet und „gelikt“ werden. In diese Kategorie fallen auch die meisten Fachbegriffe, wie die neuerdings oft bemühte „Inzidenz“ (Häufigkeit, Quote), weil dem Laien durch die Fremdartigkeit auch signalisiert wird, dass es sich um einen Begriff aus einem bestimmten sprachlichen Verwendungsgebiet handelt.

Bei der dritten Kategorie kann man sich austoben – wir sind ja schließlich im Fasching, auch wenn den meisten von uns wahrscheinlich nicht danach zumute ist – und alle anderen hemmungslos geborgten aber rücksichtslos gestreuten Pseudo-Bereicherungen aufzählen, die man im täglichen Sprachgebrauch findet und … am liebsten streichen würde. Viel Spaß beim Suchen! 

Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled …
 
Reconciliation is a wonderful word and a marvellous thing.

For a translator, the idea of “reconciling”, of bringing into harmony disparate concepts or formulations, is a basic tool of the trade, but reconciliation in the general sense is so much more. What I wish for this Advent and Christmas is that people everywhere, be they poor or rich, disenfranchised or at the centre of power, find a way to integrate the practice of reconciling into their everyday life.

Tolerance is something quite different and if you think about it, tolerance can seldom be as satisfactory as the simple act of finding a solution, of “making friendly after estrangement, of making acquiescent or contentedly submissive to what is disagreeable, of settling quarrels, of harmonizing, making compatible and showing compatibility of something by argument or in practice”, as the Oxford Dictionary of English defines the term.

Language is a powerful tool and arguably as potent as music and religion in its ability to bring together people and ideas in fruitful exchanges and conscious efforts aimed at improving, developing and leading into the future this world that we all share. Let’s not waste our energy on thoughtless disparagement, wilful hatred and senseless fighting – let’s talk!

Wishing all clients and friends of Witinall Language Services a joyful Advent and Christmastime!
​
Yours,
Alexandra

by Summer Worsley

  
Amang the bonie winding banks,
Where Doon rins, wimplin, clear;
Where Bruce ance rul'd the martial ranks,
An' shook his Carrick spear;
Some merry, friendly, countra-folks
Together did convene,
To burn their nits, an' pou their stocks,
An' haud their Halloween
Fu' blythe that night.
 

• Halloween, Robert Burns

 
The most spooktacular night of the year is nearly upon us. From pagan rite to the kind of shopping bonanza that gives retail CEOs wet dreams, the ancient holiday has remained firmly entrenched in our calenders.
 
Look at this stanza from Robert Burns’ 1785 poem, Halloween. In between the Scots-laden lines, it contains one of the earliest recorded uses of the term ‘Halloween.’ In fact, some scholars credit the Scottish poet with popularising the word, a nifty contraction of All Hallow’s Eve, or in Scots, Allhallow-even.
 
Burns’ own footnotes define Halloween as follows: “[It] is thought to be a night when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings are abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly those aerial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a grand anniversary.” It’s fitting that a Scottish poet brought Halloween as a term to popularity as the holiday is Celtic in origin, in the old Celtic calendar it was the final night of the year.
 
Etymology aside, how did we go from Samuin, the Celtic end-of-year celebrations, to the rather odd tradition of dressing our small children up as mischief-making beings who traipse the neighbourhood looking for candy?
 
Trick or treating has become a mainstay of Halloween, and while for most of the 20th Century it was largely confined to North America, the modern tradition is moving to other parts of the world.
 
Historically, dressing up began because the Celts celebrated the end of the year by donning evil spirits costumes. Celtic lore has it that as we change years, the dead and the living overlap and demons return to mortal soils again. Dressing up as these creatures was a way to keep safe — if you happened to encounter a real underworld spirit, it would think that you, the costumed human, was one of them.
 
Then a bit of a shift occurred when the Catholic church got involved and claimed the holiday as its own (which they did for a few others, too). Beginning in the eighth century, the Catholic church put some effort and thought into stamping out ancient Samuin traditions. It’s the church who coined the terms All Hallows Even (which became Halloween), All Soul’s Day, and All Saints’ Day.  Many Samuin traditions were adjusted to fit these festivities and by the eleventh century, the Church too had embraced the costume tradition.
 
Early trick or treaters were known as soulers. Children and poor adults would visit neighbours asking for food and money in return for songs or prayers, often in the name of the dead. One souling tune originated in the late 19th century and was later adapted by both Peter, Paul and Mary (of Puff the Magic Dragon fame) and Sting:
 
A soul! a soul! a soul-cake!
Please good Missis, a soul-cake!
An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry.
One for Peter, two for Paul
Three for Him who made us all.
 
Later, souling became guising, from “disguise” and the children would offer a performance of some kind in return for fruit or money. It’s thought that guising as a practice made its way to North America with Scottish and Irish immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the US, the original term was dropped, but in Scotland, it still prevails today — one recent headline reads: “Scottish Government officially calls for no guising on Halloween”.
 
Trick or treating in North America became standard in the 1920s and 30s, predominantly on the west coast at first but the tradition slowly spread. After the world war sugar rations lifted, Halloween’s popularity surged and trick or treating was solidified as a US tradition. The earliest known reference to the term comes from the November 4, 1927 edition of the Blackie, Alberta Canada Herald:
 
“Hallowe’en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun. No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., much of which decorated the front street. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word “trick or treat” to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.”
 
In the 80s, trick or treating began to jump back across the Atlantic to England, where it was met with some resistance. Many viewed the holiday as a US cultural import and resented the commercial aspects of the holiday. It remained popular in Scotland and Ireland, however, thanks to the Celtic heritage. The 21st century has seen Halloween and trick or treating become common in nations where it was barely observed before, perhaps because of an increasingly globalized, interconnected world and the advent of social media. Or perhaps because Halloween provides the perfect excuse for a party, for both old and young people, and if Western history has taught us anything, it’s that any excuse for a party is a good excuse, whether we’re dressed as mischief-making beings or not!

by Summer Worsley

Pled is now acceptable and other changes to the stylebook in 2020
 
We previously discussed the importance of the Associated Press Stylebook when we covered 2019’s changes.
 
While 2020’s update did not contain too many dramatic, debate-inducing changes, there are still a few interesting adjustments. And if you’re wondering just how much AP Stylebook changes could trigger intense discussions, look into how 2014’s more than/over shift was received on Twitter. One retweeter called it “blasphemy” while another said AP was dead to them.
 
Let’s take a look at what’s new in 2020.
 
Capitalise Black
 
The influential guide now notes that “Black” should be capitalised when used in the context of race and culture, a move that solidifies a change many publications, including The New York Times, had already embraced.
 
There was a brief period when the AP had not announced whether “white” should also be capitalised, but it has now noted that “white” stays in lowercase. For example, “the rallies were attended by both Black and white protestors.”
 
In a memo to staff, John Daniszewski, AP’s Vice President for standards said: “We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”
 
Use person-first language
 
A few changes this year are related to using what is known as person-first language. That is, using descriptions over labels. For example, referring to an individual as “a senior” is identity-first language as it is not specific to the person in question, and each reader’s conception of what “a senior” means is not universal.
 
The stylebook has offered both “older adult” and “older person” as alternatives. Although, it should be noted that both these terms can be imprecise. Reference to an older person in a story about teenagers could mean an adult over 25, for example.
 
The basic idea behind using person-first language is to avoid stereotyping and potentially offending people.
 
Another change in this vein was the addition of a “homeless” entry. Particularly at issue is the commonly used noun “the homeless.” The stylebook notes: “Avoid the dehumanizing collective noun the homeless, instead using constructions like homeless people, people without housing or people without homes.”
 
Sexual crimes
 
The need for specificity was also highlighted in the updated sexual crimes section. The changes here were quite significant and writers and editors working with these topics should take a look at all the adjustments.
 
Overall though, the general advice is to ensure the language used is both specific and accurate as many of the terms in question carry exact legal meanings.
 
Pled is now okay
 
One change that did ruffle a few feathers was the go-ahead to use “pled” as the past tense of the verb “to plead.” For example, “the accused pled guilty.” According to the AP, many writers indicated that they wanted to use “pled” so the stylebook was updated to reflect this.
 
Copy editors and writers should note that the Chicago Manual of Style still recommends “pleaded.”
 
Midnight is out
 
It garnered less negative attention than pled, but the stylebook’s change to midnight will probably affect more people. Now, the guide recommends avoiding the word “midnight” as there’s an element of confusion over whether that means the end of the day or the beginning of the next one.
 
Instead, get the maximum amount of clarity by writing the time out. So, 11:40 pm Wednesday or 12:05 am Thursday. And if it’s 12:00 am, use the time.
 
The plus symbol (+) is in
 
Last year we saw the acceptance of “%” and this year it is the plus symbol in the spotlight. Now, “+” is acceptable when it is pronounced and part of a company, event, or branding. For example, “Disney+” not “Disney-plus.”
 
Other constructions should continue to use the full word, so it’s still an “A-plus on the exam” and “500-plus dollars.”
 
Use gender-neutral terms
 
Whenever possible, use a gender-neutral term over a gendered option. For example, “search” over “manhunt.” The entry noted that editors and writers should “balance common sense, respect for the language, and an understanding that gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language is evolving and in some cases is challenging to achieve.”
 
The stylebook does caution against “tortured” constructions such as “snowperson.”
 
Preheat is allowed
 
Previous advice cautioned against “preheat” on the basis of redundancy. For example, “heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius” achieves the exact same thing as “preheat the oven.” But 2020’s adjustment embraces the term, largely because it is so commonly used and understood. Not to mention the number of kitchen appliances with a dedicated “preheat” button.
 
Prior to making this change, the AP solicited feedback on social media and there was an outpouring of support for “preheat.” The people have spoken!
 
That concludes our round-up of 2020’s most interesting AP changes. In total, there were more than 200 adjustments, to delve deeper into these, pick up a digital copy of the stylebook here.

by Summer Worsley

Sexting is more rule-based than you think

Analysing the Marquis de Sade’s work, cultural theorist Roland Barthes notes that Sade creates “pornograms,” an intertwining of discourse with the erotic practices of bodies so that writing becomes a site for “the exchange of Logos and Eros” (Barthes 1976).
 
Contemporary lovers engage in pornograms of a different sort; by merging discourse with eroticism in text messages. Participatory compared to Sade’s one-sided depictions, texts provide a vehicle through which romantically involved partners can construct what McSweeney calls a “private world”, a shared virtual reality that can last for a short time or longer periods.
 
While sexting may feel open and unstructured, the reality is that messaging with a romantic partner or potential partner isn’t always a playful, erotic free for all. Instead, it is subject to the same unspoken rules that govern all semi-synchronous digital messages, in particular, pragmatic politeness.
 
What is Politeness? 

In pragmatics, linguists broadly define politeness as “linguistic and non-linguistic behavior through which people indicate that they take others' feelings of how they should be treated into account” (Kádár 2013). That is, the tactics we employ to avoid conflict and maintain communicative peace (Leech 2014).
 
There are two key theoretical frameworks that linguists use to describe how politeness works. The first is through “face wants” and it follows the research set out by Goffman in 1955 and later by Brown and Levinson in 1987.
 
In this framework, which forms the basis of most linguistic pragmatic research, politeness is constructed by the positive and negative face wants of each individual. “Positive face wants are the desire for inclusion, social closeness, and familiarity; negative face wants represent the desire for autonomy, social distance, and respect” (McSweeney 2018).
 
The second theoretical approach, exemplified by Locher and Watts, views the conversational strategies people use in terms of social appropriateness as opposed to face wants. In regards to text messaging, this approach is as helpful as face wants. Consider the social appropriateness of sending six messages over several days to someone who is not responding or, in a sexting context, sending an unsolicited dick pic to a recipient barely known to the sender.
 
Basic politeness strategies such as saying please and thank you and letting a conversation go when it is obvious one participant is not engaged are well known. But performing politeness in text messaging is different than doing so in a face-to-face verbal conversation. This doesn’t mean that messaging is devoid of politeness, but rather that it is performed through different strategies.
 
Performing Politeness in Text Messages 

Attending to the recipient’s face wants, be they positive or negative, can be accomplished in a number of ways, whether the sender is texting or sexting. Strategies such as emoji use, the time elapsed between messages, the use of letter repetition, and many others allow participants the chance to mitigate the force of messages, set the tone, and generate affection. Below are two key factors that determine politeness among texters.
 
Time Elapsed Between Messages 

Texting, and indeed sexting is a semi-synchronous activity that is unique to computer-mediated conversation (CMC). There can be an immediate back and forth between participants (synchronous conversation) or a time lag between messages being opened and replied to (semi-synchronous).
 
In The Pragmatics of Text Messaging, McSweeney notes that texting theoretically offers flexibility in regards to time spans, but texters may feel differently. More than one lover has read much into how long their beloved takes to open and/or reply to a message, and may even use the time elapsed between messages as a gauge indicating the state of their relationship.
 
While sending a text might save negative face by giving the receiver a chance to decide when to respond, it can generate conflicts.
 
Emoji Use 

“He text me an eggplant, I text him a peanut” - Doja Cat
 
While the eggplant emoji may have taken over from the banana as the most explicit food-based emoji, it is far from the only emoticon partners use in text messages. In McSweeny’s corpus, emojis appeared in 90% of the messages between some romantically involved pairs. Most common is the kissing face emoji, which helps senders attend to the positive face wants of the recipient and simultaneous serve as pragmatic particles, setting the tone of the message.
 
In The Emoji Code, cognitive linguist Vyvyan Evans points out that emojis are much more than a passing phase. Instead, emojis reflect the “fundamental elements of communication; and in turn, this all shines a light on what it means to be human.” While emoji naysayers may be quick to point out that emojis are not a language, which, as they lack grammar, is true, they do provide a way for interlocuters to add nuances and mitigate the force of messages (Evans 2017). For romantically involved partners, emojis are used to help navigate the complex shared space created online.
 
In the same way that a kissing face emoji can be used to attend to the recipient’s positive face wants, a message lacking an emoji can be used to signal displeasure, or even serve as a face-threatening act in certain contexts.
 
While sexting and texting a lover or potential partner might be easy and uncomplicated for some, research reveals that for others it’s a fraught landscape with multiple factors affecting how well-received messages are. The strategies couples use to attend to each other’s face wants are governed by pragmatics, in much the same way as face to face conversations are, albeit filtered through a digital landscape. 

Hi folks!
Some of you may be stuck at home in front of the computer screen for a while to come, so I decided to ask Summer to write something about Zoom for us this month. I had a rather fun experience using Zoom recently. I was trying to convince a sales person that I did not have the funds to spend nearly 160 euros a month (!) on advertising on Google (especially if I have to correct the mistakes of the auto-translated text myself!), so I thought maybe you would appreciate a little light-hearted reminder of the joys of doing business in front of a computer screen. And if you have stories of your own to tell (cat or child vying for attention, connection breaking down, ... or worse!), please share them with me and I'll put the best ones up on my Facebook page (with a free promotion and link to your site if they're really hilarious). Stay safe, sound and sane! Yours, Alexandra

Zoom Fatigue? You're Not Alone
by Summer Worsley

As June gives way to July, many workers across Europe and beyond are diligently logging on and into virtual workspaces. For many, the daily nine-to-five involves seemingly endless hours of video conferencing platform Zoom.
 
Once second fiddle to Skype, Zoom has risen to the fore during the coronavirus pandemic and has become the call option of choice for many businesses. Its use is so pervasive, the verb “to Zoom” and the past tense “Zoomed” are now as widely accepted as “to Google” and “Googled.”
 
But all the video chat seems to be wearing us down and “Zoom fatigue” has entered the popular lexicon with a bang this year.
 
Data from Google trends shows we’ve had so much Zoom fatigue we’ve increasingly searched for that exact phrase along with alternatives such as “Zoom fatigue is real” and “Zoom fatigue is taxing the brain.”
 
So what is it about Zoom that’s causing a collective sign around the world?
 
For many critics, it’s the video element: users feel self-conscious about their appearance or surroundings. Additionally, the lack of direct eye contact that makes decoding extra-linguistic cues that little bit harder.
 
Or the difficulty arises from selecting a suitable background or area to make calls from. Users who live in studio apartments have noted that making calls from their bedrooms (where they predominantly work) feels invasive — after all, not many of us want to invite the boss into our boudoirs.
 
Another critical issue driving Zoom loathing, as pointed out by the Economist’s Johnson column, is that Zoom calls, and video conferencing in general, disrupts the natural turn-taking model that governs human speech and conversational interactions.
 
What is turn-taking? 
Linguists, and conversation or discourse analysts, in particular, use the notion of turn-taking to measure how well speakers adhere to broadly accepted conversational “rules.” Such rules are not set in stone but are well-established across languages and even cultures.
 
Breaching the rules involves transgressions such as dominating the conversation or interrupting the speaker who holds the floor. When speakers are part of a natural conversation, they often adhere to a “no gap no overlap” model of turn-taking. What this means is that the next speaker picks up the conversation without infringing on the previous speaker’s turn and without leaving too much of a gap in speech.
 
While the no overlap here isn’t strictly true (speakers often tag their utterances onto the end of the previous speaker’s utterance) it is done so in a way that doesn’t interrupt or disrupt the previous speaker’s speech. (Coates ‘89)
 
A change in speaker is determined by a broad set of linguistic and extra-linguistic clues that create a transition relevance point (TRP): a junction at which the conversation can pass from one speaker to the next.
 
Frequently in natural conversation, speakers also support each other with minimal responses: interjections such as yeah, yes, mm, mhm, ah, and others that are used to encourage the speaker, display agreement, and indicate that conversation partners are attending to what is being said.
 
Outside of a video conferencing context, turn-taking can be affected by gender, as linguists such as Eldesky, Coates, and Cameron have shown, and by power or status. In the case of the latter, so-called higher-status individuals may hold the floor longer than lower-status individuals and may interrupt more frequently.
 
Turn-taking and Zooming 
Within the Zoomcosm though, the turn-taking model is tipped on its head somewhat. Although video calls represent a relatively stable technology, they are not without their downsides, including latency or lag.
 
When we speak into our computers, the audio and video data is chopped into tiny pieces, sent via a different channel to the receiving computers, and then reassembled in a process known as packet switching. But when packets are delayed, by even a tiny bit, the software providing the platform has to decide whether it will present the hastily rearranged packet as is, with glitches, or to delay the output.
 
According to the Economist, Zoom aims for a delay of just 150 milliseconds but this affected by multiple factors including how busy the connections are, the quality of a given participant’s connection, and others.
 
Although 150-millisecond delays seem unimportant, they may impact how a speaker’s utterances and the receiver’s replies are both received and perceived.
 
Some studies suggest that positive replies to questions are viewed as less genuine when there is a delay between the utterance and the next speaker’s reply. There’s also the possibility that video calling dehumanises speakers to a certain extent: one study showed that courts were less trusting in refugee cases when the individual in question presented via video call.
 
Complicating conversational matters on Zoom is that speakers may find it harder to self-select their speech turn in the conversation. Delays mean that opportunities to speak up are missed or that the first speaker, upon passing a TRP with no other speaker taking up the baton, continues speaking for longer than is necessary.
 
And minimal responses, a key part of human speech, become harder to jam into the flow of conversation when latency makes it difficult to respond at the “right” time.
 
These are all interesting areas for further study and it will be interesting to see if conversation analysts turn to video calls as the next big field warranting examination.
 
In the meantime, we suggest investing in some good quality blue-light-blocking glasses [Gunnar makes some great ones like gamers use, or you can also get them in DIY stores; Alexandra' note] and trying to weather the tempestuous Zoom storm as well as you can. And it could be worse… after all, most workplaces have avoided the dreaded Zoombombers, so the only troll you’ll have to contend with is that one coworker who views video conference calls as his solo stage.

by Summer Worsely

Welcome to WTF, a column dedicated to helping with some basic concepts in English linguistics. Up for discussion this month, WTF is a morpheme?
 
In a nutshell:
 
A morpheme is the smallest possible grammatical unit that carries meaning. Words can be monomorphemic or multimorphemic, that is, comprised of one or more morphemes.
 
Here’s an example: talk is monomorphemic, talked is multimorphemic.
 
Here’s another one: lock is monomorphemic, unlock is multimorphemic.
 
Morphemes also come in different types, they can be bound or free which, as the names suggest, means they can stand alone or always have to be bound to another morpheme.
 
For example, talk is a free morpheme while -ed is not. Likewise, lock is free while un- is bound.
 
We can also classify morphemes based on where they occur in a word, describing them as root, affix, and combining form morphemes.
 
You can think of root morphemes as the “core” of a word, so the meaning of unreadable is built around the root morpheme read. The affixes in this word are un- and -able and, as you probably already know, affixes are either suffixes that appear at the end of a word or prefixes that appear at the start of a word.
 
Combining forms are like affixes but they carry a little more lexical weight, you can connect a combining form with an affix to create a word, one common example is cephal- and -ic which together make the word cephalic. There are other types of combining forms too, take a look at this helpful post by Miriam Webster to learn more.
 
Some morphemes have allomorphs, allomorphs are the different pronunciations of the same morpheme in different contexts. Allomorphic morphemes that you use every day include the plural making suffix -s and the past tense suffix -ed.
 
Consider the way you say these words: cats, dogs, horses. In each, the plural morpheme -s sounds distinct from the others. Try again and see how the position of your tongue changes with each word.
 
Another way we classify bound morphemes is by describing them as either inflectional or derivational. The easiest way to figure out the difference is by seeing if the bound morpheme changes the grammatical class of the root.
 
Here’s an example: normal and the affix -ise combine to make normalise.
 
Normal is an adjective and normalise is a verb, the -ise affix in this context is derivational because we can use it to derive a new class of word.
 
Here’s another example: odd and -ly combine to make the adverb oddly.
 
Inflectional morphemes are different because they affect the grammatical or semantic function of a word but never change its word class. For example, take and taken are both verbs.
 
In English, unlike many other languages, there are only eight inflectional morphemes:
 

• -s (plural - one cat, many cats)
• -’s (possessive - John’s paper)
• -s (third-person singular present tense - she plays the piano)
• -en (past participle - she has taken her piano)
• -ed (past tense - she played the piano)
• -ing (progressive - she is playing the piano)
• -er (comparative - John is faster than Mary)
• -est (superlative - John is the fastest runner)

 
Derivation is a far more common word-forming process in English than inflection. Other languages, such as Hungarian, display complex and productive inflection. German, on the other hand, is moderately inflectional, it has a richer inflection system than English but is not considered a highly inflectional language.
 
Note that some derivational morphemes do not change the word’s grammatical category. One example of this is the prefix un-, happy and unhappy are both adjectives. Here, un- has a reversative function.
 
This can get a little ambiguous, consider the word unlockable: does it mean unable to be locked (un- and lockable) or able to be unlocked (unlock and -able)? For this reason, morphologists, that is, linguists who specialise in morphology, adopt a hierarchical approach. Diagrams can help discern the internal structure of a word. Take a look at this handout from Stanford for more info.
 
And the last type of morpheme we’ll look at are infixes. In English, these are rare and occur in inventive expletives: abso-bloody-lutely, fan-fucking-tastic.
 
Okay, got it, but why do morphemes matter?
 
Morphemes matter because words, just like sentences, are governed by rules and have an internal structure. Morphology, morphological research and insights benefit semantics, phonology, and other research areas. In particular, morphology is of interest to cognitive scientists who focus on language acquisition theories.
 
Professional translators also need in-depth knowledge of the target language’s morphological system to avoid any unfortunate mistranslations or clumsy text.
 
Get more info
 
A solid and readable introduction to English morphology is Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy’s Introduction. The book also touches on the formation of English from a historical context and explains where we garnered some of our productive morphemes from.
 
Over at the Ling Space, Moti Lieberman has a series of quick, fun videos on morphology. Find those here. 

The coronavirus crisis illustrates the governing power of language
by Summer Worsley

Since January I’ve been working on a large project for an in-development machine-learning tool. Because natural language processing is a necessity for any true AI innovation, I’ve been dealing with language data comprised of real phone conversations, collected with the speakers’ full knowledge and consent, of course.
 
It’s been interesting seeing the shift in conversation topics from January to April. At the outset, the novel coronavirus received very little airtime from participants. By April, it was the predominant topic of conversation for many. Passing references to COVID-19 gave way to full hours devoted to breaking news, and the ongoing impact on the speaker and their nearest and dearest.
 
While it’s not uncommon for a major event to dominate news cycles and therefore daily conversation, it is rare for a major event to affect the globe simultaneously. This has given rise to an unprecedented spike in new or previously little-used terminology. Suddenly we use terms like PPE (personal protective equipment), social distancing, and self-isolation regularly — often in the same sentence.
 
What is most striking, perhaps, is the governing metaphor we use to describe and talk about COVID-19 and its impact: pandemic is war.
 
Healthcare workers are on the front line, we are battling a global pandemic, our body’s own defense system fights the virus, government task forces are formed, the globe is under attack and healthcare systems are in a vulnerable position.
 
This is exemplified in the following Tweet from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The message is harried, almost fervent. Meanwhile, the mixed use of uppercase text, italics, underlined and bold words along with terminology such as enemy and deadly tap into a Blitz mentality.

Elsewhere, it’s a similar story. French President Emmanuel Macron places the nation on a “war footing” while across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has declared himself a “war-time president.” Leaders across the globe are pledging to do “WHATEVER IT TAKES” (to quote Boris) to flatten the curve, limit casualties, and protect their countries and citizens.
 
I write this from Wellington, New Zealand. Here, our progressive Prime Minister is not immune to a little soft propaganda. We are bombarded with the following messages: Unite against COVID-19 and stay home, save lives, break the chain of transmission. In press briefings, phrases such as stay the course, make sacrifices, our mission, our team of five million, and be kind are put to highly skilled use.
 
Here, the war metaphor is persistent but softened. If Britain is prepping for another Blitz, we are being encouraged to grow vegetables for our own survival. As a reporter at Stuff points out, “it’s an iron fist dressed up in velvety words.”
 
While pandemic is war may feel like a natural and fitting metaphor in the current crisis, we should not forget the power metaphors have over discourse.
 
In 1980, prominent linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson triggered an enduring debate on the power of metaphors in their book ‘Metaphors We Live By’. Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphors do more than act as linguistic flourishes but actively construct the ways we think. In their view, metaphors are a fundamental element of human speech and by extension, how we act.
 
“Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature”
 
A seminal work, ‘Metaphors’ feels like the right choice these days; Lakoff and Johnson famously start their argument by setting out just how pervasive the argument is war metaphor is. War, it seems, never goes out of linguistic style.
 
Language choices matter. Framing means the difference between one interpretation and another. In our language choices, we can reinforce one ideology while simultaneously sidelining others, particularly in political or social debates. As a case in point, consider Donald Trump’s “Chinese virus.”
 
Currently, as Marina Hyde writes for The Guardian, we count ordinary citizens who contract the virus as soldiers, whether the analogy is fitting or not, and it may even do more harm than good.
 
One objection to militarised language and thinking is that it normalises military intervention. The argument goes that instead of examining the causes of the next conflict, whatever that may be, we automatically adopt a this-is-war mentality and adapt our response in that direction, ignoring the underlying political, social, or economic factors.
 
Of course, there may be benefits to the war metaphor right now: it engenders a collective response, should be universal instead of polarising, and prompts citizens to follow government advice and recommendations for the community as a whole.
 
Good or bad, the war metaphor is here to stay. Trying to actively change entrenched public discourse patterns is impossible at the best of times and even more so when other concerns are far more pressing. What will be interesting to watch is whether our war talk persists after the immediate crisis is over.

by Summer Worsley

As we mentioned in our previous post, the passive voice is a grammatical voice, not a matter of tone or passivity in the general sense.
 
Linguists sometimes use the term diathesis to describe the relationship between the verb and the subjects in a sentence and classify verbs as transitive or intransitive.
 
We’ll use grammatical voice in this post to examine the relationship between the action (also called state) expressed by the verb and the subjects or objects identified.
 
In the very simplest terms, if the subject is the agent, the verb is in the active voice. But when the subject is the target of the action, the verb is in the passive. You can think of it somewhat like a who-done-it of the verb.
 
Here’s an example:
 
Active
 
The lawyers made an error.
 
Passive
 
An error was made.
An error was made by the lawyers.
 
In the second example, “the lawyers” comes after the verb and the sentence is grammatically passive.
 
Note the first example of the passive voice, we don’t know who or what caused the action. In some types of writing, the author doesn’t want to reveal that information, perhaps to build suspense or to deliberately engender ambiguity. Or the passive is put to use to de-emphasise the subject.
 
Sometimes it’s necessary to leave out the “doer” of the action. In legal writing or in news reports when that information is deliberately obscured, the passive voice is essential.
 
In other instances, the passive voice is used because the doer is unknown or just irrelevant. As Geoffrey Nunberg puts it, passive is helpful when individuals are “being laid off, tossed out of their homes, dropped from their medical plans, and generally worked over.”
 
Writing in this way also removes blame, either because blame isn’t necessary or the writer doesn’t need to or want to acknowledge the agent of the action.
 
Here are a few examples:
 
My bike was stolen!
A door was left open.
Agricultural run-off was dumped in the ocean.
Mistakes were made. (A famous example courtesy of Ronald Reagan)
 
Passive Voice Myths 
There are a few myths surrounding the passive voice that despite being incorrect continue to hold sway, let’s take a look at those now.
 
Myth 1: Any use of the verb “to be” equates to the passive voice.
 
While it’s true that “to be” can weaken the impact of writing, in and of itself it does not automatically equate to the passive voice. However, when “to be” is combined with a past participle, the passive voice often results.
 
It is very common for people to think they’re seeing a passive when they see a copula (am, are, be, been, being, is, was, or were) even when other indications of the passive, such as a passive clause complement, are not present.
 
Myth 2: The passive voice is never in the first-person.
 
Many people believe that sentences with “I” or “we” are automatically in the active voice. But it is entirely possible to construct a first-person sentence using the passive voice. Consider, “I was smacked by the bat.”
 
Myth 3: The passive voice is ungrammatical.
 
It is not ungrammatical and does not break any of the syntactic rules that govern English sentences. Rather, passive hating is a matter of style and stylistic choice. Often these aversions relate to clarity.
 
Myth 4: Never use the passive voice.
 
In English writing and in that of many other languages, the passive voice appears frequently. While avoiding the passive might work well in some texts, it is absolutely necessary and even preferable in others.
 
It is an intrinsic part of our language and as such will always be present. After all, if it was so bad, we wouldn’t continue using it century after century!
 
If you’d like to learn more about the passive voice and why it holds its rightful place in English writing—and why ignoring the prescriptivist advice of passive naysayers is a good idea—check these interesting and often spicy articles from some of the world’s leading passive defenders.
 
Worthless grammar edicts from Harvard - Geoff Pullum
How to defend yourself from bad advice about writing - Mark Liberman
Evil passive voice - Arnold Zwicky
Drinking the Strunkian Kool-Aid: victims of page 18 - Geoff Pullum (Kudos to the Pullum for the title here)
 
Have you been told to Avoid Passive, when and why? We’d love to hear about it, drop us a comment below and let’s chat!

by Summer Worsley
​
Roam the internet’s endless pages on writing tips, online writing best practices, and search engine optimisation how-tos and you’ll find a common directive: Avoid the passive voice.
 
Of course, the internet doesn’t hold a monopoly on Avoid Passive (to borrow a term from Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky). We’ve been told to create active sentences and phrases for a long time. But where does this wisdom come from and why does it hold such validity today?
 
In today’s post, we’re going to turn back time and look at the history of Avoid Passive before turning our attention to today’s passive aggressors.
 
And in next month’s post, we’ll examine what the passive voice is (there seems to be a lot of confusion), how it operates, and why it’s the better choice in some circumstances.
 
Where Did Avoid Passive Come From? 

​In 1947, Orwell instructed readers in his much-anthologized essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ to: “Never use the passive where you can use the active.”
 
However, there are plenty of passive constructions in the essay. According to Geoffrey Pullman, at the University of Edinburgh, 26 per cent of the transitive verbs Orwell uses are in the passive. A much higher percentage than the 13 per cent in most prose.
 
But Avoid Passive goes back a little further than ‘47. Zwicky notes that neither Hall (1917) nor Fowler (1926) take issue with the passive in their influential grammars but from the 30s onward, grammar handbooks start to demonize the passive as weak and ineffectual.
 
Then, Strunk and White came along with has been wonderfully called a “vile little compendium of tripe about style.”
 
The Elements of Style was first written by William Strunk Jr. as a writing aid for his students. Later, E.B. White (of Charlotte’s Web and The New Yorker fame) added to the guide and in 1959 it was published by Macmillan with substantial additions from both authors.
 
Elements has held tremendous cultural sway ever since. Time even named it one of the most influential books written in English since 1939.
 
Unfortunately, Strunk and White advise against the passive whilst simultaneously utilising passive clauses:
 
“Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard.”
 
Nonetheless, this hypocrisy largely passed without scrutiny and Avoid Passive began to form a key role in the modern ideology of English style.
 
Today’s prescriptivists come in two forms: human and app. While grammar curmudgeons still publish high-blown works mostly informed by personal preferences, apps govern much of the writing you encounter online.