Read Helen DeWitt's post about her struggle to publish a book with the punctuation and capitalization of her choosing. The story does not pit Editors against Art. It's Ignorance against an author.
And note how well her writing rhythm captures the acceleration and elevation of the conflict.
[via Languagehat]
Earlier today Buffy finished reading The Scarlett Letter. She loved it. And she's not a bit embarrassed by her late introduction to the classic. Honestly. How many of you have read every book that's listed on the back cover of Cliff's Notes? I've never read Walden.
Halfway through she mentioned something about Hester "Prine" and I corrected her without teasing. "Prynne...like thin" I said. Then I had to add "at least that's how I've always heard it." Because names really are all about lexical pronunciation. Read this amusing post about a dissertation defense and Pepys the diarist.
There's no English spelling rule that should make the "peeps" pronunciation obvious. It's only from hearing it said by someone (whom I believed) that I learned not to say peppis peepis pep-eyes peppees peppeez or anything else that would get a laugh. So why should Buffy have known that Prynne doesn't rhyme with line? Some might argue that Prynne looks enough like Lynne/Lynn to make the pronunciation clear. But we all know that analogy is a fallible rule.
So late this evening Buffy interjected a non sequitur into a conversation about politics...or religion...or ice cream...(I can't remember)
"Chester Prynne right?" she asked.
"What?" I collapsed laughing. "Who's that? Hester's twin brother? Did Hawthorne write a sequel called The Azure Letter about Chester and his daughter Gem?"
Buffy insisted that she had said "Hester."
"I said It's Hester Prynne! I said Hester!"
She wasn't sure how I could have misheard so when I started to explain she told me to put it in a post.
When it's begins a phrase the vowel is often elided. Especially when the phrase opens an utterance. This same [ɪ] has been elided from it for hundreds of years. Even Shakespeare saved time by ignoring the poor high front lax vowel. Tis true; tis true tis pity, And pity tis tis true.
So instead of saying "it's Hester" Buffy said "ts Hester." More like one word: tsester. That [h] is chronically truant. And following a fricative it's easily hidden even if present.
This is one of those not so common cases in English pronunciation when the [ʦ] affricate can't be broken by syllabification. As an initial sound there was no coda available to claim the [t]. And in a coda position the /t/ would more likely be a glottal stop [ʔ]. So I was obviously unprepared for an onset affricate with alveolar release [ʦ] and I interpreted it as a postalveolar release [ʧ].
But I do think Chester could be a fascinating character.
As the new semester has begun I've now met with all my professors and learned what they have to offer. First I met with my advisor/major-professor who will help me shape a literature review for phonology. This is expressly intended to serve my studies within my field. My English language history class met today and I'm eager to do all possible learning guided by an excellent professor. It will be a philological focus, but that's fine. The class is usually taught by my advisor who focuses more on linguistics, but I expect my reach will not in this case exceed my grasp. I'm also enrolled in a Middle English Literature class, focusing on works other than Chaucer. This is the difficult part.
I took the advice of a venerable scholar who directed me through Beowulf and insisted it would be wise to continue through to the works that follow nigh. I'm studying the language, should I not study it's literature? It made sense to me. And I've always been one to argue for both great breadth and depth in education. But now I find myself focusing more on my education's relevance value. It's the question we asked our teachers when we were drippy-nosed kids: When will I ever use this? And to that question I immediately hear a very simple answer that shuts me up (for a while): "That's up to you."
And if it's a question about whether I'm up to the challenge, I of course want to prove that yes, I am. But I then change the framing of the challenge. It assumes that I care about this specific form of the challenge. Or that this class is the only way to meet it.
I have done my distribution. At one point it was called elementary education. I met and learned about several subjects with equal focus (with the exception of art which only got attention once a week). Then in middle school some of those classes merged (reading, phonics, writing, spelling > "English") some (Social Studies) split (Geography, history). This splitting and merging continued throughout high school and continues today. I've done well at each point and now I find that my question of "when am I going to use this" is probably better framed as a question of the continuity of investment. My success in a sufficiently broad education has afforded me (by a contract of sorts) the opportunity to choose narrowing paths and to plunge deeper in chosen areas.
And because I have promised to pursue uncommon fruit I have been trusted to change my wide embrace to a firm grip. At this point my grip should procure all things tiny within the language. I've zoomed in on one of the smallest units of language, the phoneme. Haven't I earned the right to tend the neglected details?
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