Words and Numbers
Tue., April 19, 04:58 PM
I first came to this via the Purple Chai, though I’ve seen it in other pages since. It got me thinking…
Your Linguistic Profile: |
45% General American English |
40% Yankee |
10% Dixie |
5% Upper Midwestern |
0% Midwestern |
As I said, it got me thinking. Most of us learn to talk from our mothers first, and then from our peers. My own speech tends to shift according to those around me. My mother learned English when she lived in Scotland, and she used to tell us how the other kids laughed at her when she first came to America.
I imagine she had a New York accent when she met my father, for some of her sisters never lost that. But Mother was determined to speak properly, whatever that was, and she styled her speech according to what she heard on the radio. When she was home with babies, she said, she would have forgotten how to speak English at all if it weren't for the radio.
A couple of generations ago, the pronunciation heard on American radio was strictly conventional. It sounded the same wherever you were listening. There was actually a book called The NBC Manual of Pronunciation or something very similar to that. Announcers didn’t say “Feb-ew-ary” or “var-able.” Anita Bryant may have touted “Flawrida awrange juice,” but the announcer said it was sponsored by the “Flahrida Ahrange Juice Commission.” We were careful about it. That may be why I still listen for pronunciation and grammar, biting my tongue when I’d rather correct someone.
A woman I knew in college told me, “Between you and I, I hate it when someone says ‘he don’t.’ ” It required a lot of self-control for me to keep from shouting, “that's between you and me, dammit!”
But I’m interested in languages and regionalisms, so now I just listen and compare. Language, after all, is not static. On the one hand, I would hate to see local dialects disappear entirely. On the other hand, language is for communication, and we have to be able to make our intentions clear as well as to understand each other. But is it so difficult to accept a box of “sweets” or a “tin” of beans? Or a “jar of grease” – what I’d call a bottle of oil. We do it all the time, responding to vocabulary that we wouldn’t ordinarily speak.
It’s one of the beauties of English. And perhaps it’s just another example of the versatilities of the human brain.
Numbers, or more properly, “NUMB3RS,” is a new show on CBS. “We use numbers all the time…” says the intro. The FBI uses them to solve crimes. I enjoy this a great deal, but I’m not optimistic about its future success.
To begin with, if you don’t understand the math – and for the most part I don’t – this is science fiction. I like this kind of science fiction more than a lot of other people do. But I do get some of the math; I haven’t got much faith in an audience who can’t make change without a computer.
The star of “NUMB3RS” is Rob Morrow. I hear people say, “Oh, I loved him on ‘Northern Exposure’; it’s good to see him again.” Unfortunately, despite his billing, Don (Morrow) is not the star. He’s the head of his FBI unit, and it’s an important role. But the real star is his brother Charlie (David Krumholtz). Charlie is the math genius whose formulas steer the FBI to their solutions, and Don knows that, no matter how well he does, he’ll never be as smart as Charlie.
Charlie, of course, looks up to his big brother, and they are both guided by their father (Judd Hirsch). David Krumholtz is my idea of a cute kid, but we already know that my tastes are off the beaten path, to say the least. So, once more, I’ll keep watching this show, knowing I might not get a second chance at it.
