Grow a tail, lazybones!

This piece is in response to this piece by Tom Chivers, where he says something about how the Brothers Grimm were linguists. Whilst it’s not brilliant, it is vaguely non-terrible and explains something about the word ‘gonna’ in a very similar way to how I’ve heard general speaker of sense and blogger Michael Bench-Capon explain it.

Nevertheless, I’m picking a bone with it on one main point, which I’ll get to later. Firstly, I’m pointing out the ridiculousness of most – or let’s say several so I don’t have to count them – of the comments. The gist of several comments is ‘I understand what you’re saying about how languages develop naturally but I still can’t stand it when people say X’ or when they ‘misuse X’ or ‘say X when they mean Y’.

This is a clear example of what I call humans being tragically ridiculous: They want to understand the clear and logical explanation and, on a rational level, they probably do. Yet they cannot use this understanding to overcome their silly viewpoints which are fuelled by far more powerful things than reason, such as prejudice, arrogance, snobbishness, being stuck in a rut, flogging a dead horse and downright muppetry. All of these things are perfectly human and to be expected, but they still amuse me when they are put on such evident display by people who think they’re being sensible.

Anyway, now to my main bone. The author of the article, I forget his name, uses the word ‘laziness’ to describe developments in pronunciation such as unvoiced consonants replacing voiced ones or fricatives replacing plosives. He explains how someone called Guy Deutscher claims this, which may be true. Anyway, I don’t like this usage, because I think it suggests an attitude not too far removed from that of the ridiculous commentators.

The word ‘laziness’, as it is normally used, describes a conscious decision not to do something. For example, a lazy man says things like ‘I can’t be arsed’ when asked to do the dishes or tidy up a room. Pronouncing a particular consonant as a fricative instead of a plosive isn’t a conscious decision caused by laziness. It is hard to imagine a teenager saying ‘fish’ and, being asked by his parents to say ‘pisces’, responding ‘I can’t be arsed’. He might well not be able to be arsed, but it’s more because his parents are being idiotic than because of the added effort involved in producing the ‘p’ sound.

For me, what Deutscher and Chivers (I had to look at the blog again so I’ve seen his name again) call ‘laziness’, causing these developments in pronunciation and, if you will, the language as a whole, is better described as efficiency. The human body is reacting to a situation where it can get away with doing something which expends less energy without causing itself any noticeable detriment. Much like where human bodies have long since evolved to stop growing tails because they’re a waste of space now that we don’t have to swing through branches very often.

Being a ridiculous human though myself, I think and agree with everything I’ve just written, but I still yell ‘grow a tail, lazybones’ whenever I see a Manx cat.

Note: This article was written at 1.40 in the morning in a slightly tired state, so apologies for the poor jokes, weak structure and/or typographical errors.

Zulesen

English translation follows the German text.

Hallo.
Ich wünsche Euch ein frohes neues Jahr und kündige hiermit einen nahtlosen Übergang in eine neue, etwas aktivere Phase des Massive Blogs an.
In den kommenden Wochen werde ich, in langer und großartiger Tradition der Gebrüder Duden sowie (in England) die Oxford-Zwillinge, einige Wörterbuch-Einträge veröffentlichen. Sie werden weder chronologisch noch alfabetisch sortiet, noch werden sie alle behaupten, reine Neologismen zu sein. Sie werden aber alle Wörter beschreiben, die ich sehr mag und deren Verwendung ich gerne verbreiteter sehen würde. Hier muss ich auch darauf hinweisen, dass das Wörterbuch nur (nach dem aktuellen Stand der Planung) deutsche Wörter beschreiben wird, weshalb die englischen Übersetzungen, die bekanntermaßen dem deutschen Text folgen, fast immer etwas zu wünschen übrig lassen werden. Wenn Sie das nicht verstehen, brauche ich auch nicht darum zu bitten.
Das erste Wort lautet: zulesen (zu-les-en) - Verb.
Definition: Wenn man sich beim Lesen so sehr auf den Inhalt eines Textes konzentriert, dass man diesen einem anderen weitererzählen kann, nachdem man zu Ende gelesen hat.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Verwendungsbeispiele: "Worum geht's denn in dem Buch?" "Keine Ahnung, ich habe gar nicht zugelesen."
"Verdammt! Wenn ihr beim ersten Mal zulesen würdet, müsste ich euch nicht bitten, es zweimal zu lesen!"
Etymologie: Vgl. Zuhören: Das dermaßen aktive Hören, dass man hinterher weiß, was gerade gesagt wurde.
Häufigkeitsklasse bei wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de: 21 (d.h. der ist ca. 2^21 mal häufiger als das gesuchte Wort)

Das war's.
Bis morgen.



Hello.
I wish you a happy new year and hereby announce a seamless transfer to a new, somewhat more active phase of the Massive Blog.
In the coming weeks I will, in the long and grand tradition of the Brothers Duden and the (in England) Oxford Twins, publish several dictionary entries. They will be neither chronologically nor alphabetically sorted, nor will they all claim to be pure neologisms. They will, however, all describe words which I like very much and the use of which I would like to see be more widespread. I must also say at this point that the dictionary will (according to the current state of plans) only describe German words, for which reason the English translations, which, as it is well known, follow the German text, will almost always leave something to be desired. If you don't understand that, then I'm not going to ask you to.
The first word is: to read to (to read to) - Verb.
Definition: When by reading one concentrates so strongly on the content of a text that one is able to tell this to another person once one has read the text to its conclusion.
Examples of usage: "What's the book about then?" "Dunno, I wasn't reading to it."
"Damnit! If you would only read to the first time, then I wouldn't have to ask you to read it a second time."
Etymology: Cf. To listen to: Actively listening to such an extent that one knows afterwards what has just been said.
Frequency class at wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de: 21 (i.e "der" is ca. 2^21 times more common than the word in question) This refers to the German word "zulesen".
That's that.
See you tomorrow.