Sunday 28 November 2021

Canadian Spelling

As Winston Smith said with unconscious irony, the best books are those that tell you what you know already, and the same goes for opinion pieces in the Globe and Mail, such as this one by Galadriel Watson, “At the ‘center’ of a controversy: a defence of Canadian spelling”.

Like her, I’ve inwardly railed at “Health Center”and similar signs. “Centre”, apart from the fact that it’s spelled that way everywhere else in the English-speaking world, made etymological sense. Why should Noah Webster change it on a whim? Besides, the spelling is the same in French, and better suited to Canada.


The article covers other Canadian spellings which have survived the American influence, such as the “-our” words like colour, the “ll” words like counsellor and traveller, and the verb-noun distinction in practice(n)” and “practise(v) and licence(n) and license(v). The author is concerned that our schools do not always promote Canadian spelling.


[E]ducational settings must be careful – including a child-care facility being built by the school district itself. A habit set in childhood is a habit set for life. My own daughter, as she was about to graduate high school, wrote an essay using “practice” as a verb. I tried to persuade her to change it to “practise.” She declined. She said that spelling it like that would be weird.That’s the point. If becoming Americanized makes us “normal,” I’m all for being weird.


On word that didn’t survive the American influence is “aluminium”, which is, of course, the original Latin. One story has it that current spelling results from the carelessness of an early American typesetter. Fortunately, his negligence didn’t leave us with “sodum”, “potassum”, “barum”, etc.


And now for the most pernicious American influence of all — on the punctuation of quoted words. You will notice how, in the previous paragraph, for example, the quotation marks do not include the comma, for the comma is not part of the quotation. That is how the rest of the English-speaking world, and the Oxford Canadian English Dictionary, would punctuate it. It’s also how the person in the street would do it, because it’s common sense. But look at the quotation from the Globe and Mail, which, like other Canadian newspapers, continues to do it the American way. This malpractice, too, is said to have resulted from the act of an early typesetter who thought it looked neater if the comma or period were tucked inside the quotation marks. So much for tradition and meaning and common sense!


I will conclude with the last sentence from that quotation, correctly punctuated!


If becoming Americanized makes us “normal”,  I’m all for being weird.


For more articles, see Table of Contents.

Monday 22 November 2021

Flush

I’ve railed a lot against ugly words like “fulsome” and “behaviours” and “precarity” and “incentivize”, so perhaps it’s time to share some of my favourites. To my mind, the best words have a sound about them that evokes their meaning. They are onomatopoeic, or what I call pseudo-onomatopoeic. The word “crag” is an example of the latter. But recently, in a loo in North Saanich, I came upon a truly beautiful onomatopoeic word:

Flush

Say it, and feel the tongue moving around your mouth. Four distinct sounds which perfectly convey the process of flushing.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember “pulling the chain” in the old lav back in Perth where the water was stored in a concrete trough above the seat. A chain descended from a lever which released the valve at the bottom of the trough, whereupon the water gushed down a pipe into the bowl, carrying all before it. No sophistication. No meaningful swirl around the bowl. Just a torrent of water. It was effective too. No floaters reappeared. But it could be finicky, not always engaging on the first pull. I can hear it now. You always knew when someone was in the lav.

Clank, clank, clank, gush!

For it wasn’t a flush at all. More of a gush of water down into the bowl. In fact, I don’t think we ever flushed the toilet. “Don’t forget to pull the chain,” my mother would say. 

But back in North Saanich the other day, it was a flush. F-l-u-sh. The water issued forth, swirled around and around, and disappeared with something between a cough, a splutter and a sigh.

Flush. What a beautiful word!

For more about lavs see Dunnies, or consult the Table of Contents.

Friday 5 November 2021

The Old Man and the Leaf-Blower

I saw a solitary leaf 

Blown across the lawn,

I gazed in disbelief,

Just one! Its fellow leaves forlorn

A mottled heap across the way,

A mouldering mass, already in decay.


Back and forth it flew, in vain. 

The victim of an owner’s scorn.

There was no way it could remain

A blemish on a pristine lawn.


Up and down in hot pursuit came Stihl, 

A blast from hell, snarling, roaring like Smaug, 

Farting foul fumes, pollutants worse by far,

Three-hundred-fold, than a gas-guzzling car.


And in a humbler part of town, 

Across the street from me, an old man stoops,

Battling the leaves as well, employing not

The devil’s tool, but from another age

An implement almost as old as time

Itself, that serves its master well — a rake.


The one, a sad reminder of our former state,

The other, foul and potent symbol of our fate.


(These Satanic machines are permitted to operate in a city which several years ago considered suing Alberta oil and gas companies for their contribution to climate change. For other topics, see Table of Contents.)