Open Window

Signs

I love signs, especially those that strike my funny bone or "speak to me" for one reason or another. Generally speaking, signs are intended to identify or advertise a place or an event, or to command your attention and influence your behavior. I find the latter particularly entertaining. On safari in Kenya many years ago I found it funny to read a sign on the path to our tent that announced that the path was for "humans". Who was the sign meant for, the humans or the animals? In Trenton, Tennessee there are signs along local roads that read "Speed Limit 31", not 30 0r 35 but 31! What's that all about?

A friend of mine sent me a photo of a sign she saw in Florida last spring, knowing that I "get a kick out of signs" and that poor grammar drives me around the bend.

Do we really need to drive home this message with a sign, let alone one that is written in poor English. It is downright wrong to use "good" as an adverb after action verbs, and, trust me, Drive, Ride and Walk all qualify as actions. I believe the only behavior this sign influences is the incorrect use of the word good as an adverb. How does such a sign ever get approved? 

My apologies, I'm hijacking my own blog ... this is a subject for another post, let's get back to signs.

On a recent trip, Peter and I came to these crossroads and as the photo was taken I chuckled and thought out loud, "What a wonderful place to live!" 

I'll close with one last photo which is not technically a sign but is something that touched by funny bone and made me chuckle.

I hope you found this post entertaining and that it starts a series on Open Window, because signs can be quite humorous and we all need to laugh more. Have you found any funny signs lately? Share them with us. Send them in and I'll post them as long as they aren't too off-colored and/or hurtful.

Participles and Prepositions

I struggled with English in high school and college, much to the surprise of many who know me today. For the life of me, I couldn't execute the basic principles of grammar - my participles dangled dangerously and my prepositions far too frequently found themselves hanging off the end of sentences.

In days of yore, I would have written about yesterday's walk on the beach ... Walking along the beach, Christmas trees littered the shore for as far as the eye could see, which of course would mean that we have walking Christmas trees on the east end which I assure you we don't. Those pesky participles just attach themselves to the first element in a sentence that they could possibly modify, even if it creates nonsense. So today I'd scribble, Walking along the beach, we found Christmas trees littering the shore for as far as the eye could see. 

You might be asking about now, how, in heaven's name, did she even think to write about this today? Well you can blame Winston Churchill. Today's quote, delivered to my homepage, was:

"This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put."

I certainly recognized the grammatical crime having had teacher after teacher drum into my head, "Never end a sentence with a preposition!" But what did Churchill mean? In what context did he say this and to whom? And most importantly, was Churchill advocating exceptions to the rules?

Meaning first: Pedantry is "pedantic application of knowledge" according to my good friends at Merriam-Webster. Defining a word with a derivative of the same word makes me want to scream, but press on I did, so: pedantic means "of or related to being a pedant". There they go again! Finally, all is revealed, a pedant is "one who makes a show of knowledge, ... [and] who unduly emphasizes minutiae in ... the use of knowledge". I'd paraphrase and say a pedant is a snobbish stickler for the rules.

Well, as the story goes, a civil servant wrote a memo to Churchill objecting to ending a sentence with a preposition and to using dangling participles in official documents. Churchill's arrogant retort, wrapped in succinct superiority and penciled in the margin was, "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put." Ouch!

So does this mean I can or can't end a sentence with a preposition and dangle a participle or two upon occasion? Churchill obviously took the position that he could. Where do you weigh in? Are rules rules, unbendable and rigid, or can we bend them and allow one or two of these infractions from time to time?

Enunciation Eradicated?

According to Answers.com, enunciation is an "old fashioned term" and "when it was in vogue, it referred to saying sounds correctly. Mumbling, slurring and lisping were examples of poor enunciation." They make it sound like enunciation was some Victorian-type of fad that has been eradicated - gone the way of the dinosaur! Not so fast there; I beg to differ and let me tell you why.

Recently my husband and I bought the new 3Gs iPhones and I can honestly say it's changed my husband's life. It's as if he's just discovered the internet, and it's right there in his hand! He hardly ever uses it for its phone features but rather has app after app for everything including (but not limited to) taking photographs, making shopping lists, catching up on news and gossip, checking prices with bar codes, playing poker, finding movies, getting the weather forecast, learning how to grill red snapper and finding his current location.

But I digress, how does this tie in to the eradication, or not, of enunciation? Peter's favorite feature of this iPhone is the Voice Search feature of the Google app. If and when any question crosses his mind, he picks up "the most intelligent friend I know" (his words not mine) and asks! And here is where enunciation is resurrected. This "friend" of his will never give a good answer if he doesn't enunciate his words. Time and time again, Peter has had to resubmit his question when he slurred or mumbled in haste. This "friend" demands a clear, crispness to the words in order to understand any question and if they don't get served up that way, it will make him do it again ... and again ... and again! 

Here in the 21st century, more and more of our technology is being "voice activated" and thus driven by the spoken word. Once again we must enunciate to be understood ... this time by our machines!

What do you think on the topics of enunciation, articulation, pronunciation or anything else crossing your mind this Saturday morning? Leave a comment and let us know.

Enunciation

When we were young our parents would drill in to us the need to enunciate our words so that we could be clearly understood. Slurring words, which is "entirely unacceptable", is also a clear sign of laziness "and you wouldn't want to be thought of as lazy ... would you?"

So drill they did to ensure any lazy streaks were completely expelled. When I would say "I dunno", the halls would ring with "You what?" and the silence would hang there deafeningly until I filled it with the properly enunciated "I don't know!" According to them, I should have been "going to my friend's house" and "rowing the boat". Surely I wouldn't be "goin" and "rowin", who would want to do that? And the one that was guaranteed to get a rise out of my father every time was "I'm gonna do it", to which he'd reply, "I'd prefer if you were going to do it." Those "ing-s" really got his goat. But it appears that the years of repetitious teasings by dear old Mom and Dad paid off as lessons learned if I'm quoting them here so many years later.

Now why, oh why, has she gone off on this tangent you're probably asking. Well this is part one of a two part post, so stay tuned until tomorrow. Until then share some of the expressions your parents harped on until you got them right. I'm sure they'll take us all down memory lane. 

Journey Proud

JOURNEY:  An act or instance of traveling from one place to another. TRIP

PROUD:  Feeling or showing pride: as a: having or displaying excessive self-esteem b: much pleased : EXULTANT :  Filled with or expressing great joy or triumph: jubilant 

"Journey proud" was an expression my mother used to describe how she felt as an impending trip or journey was approaching.  Given the definitions above, I'm a bit perplexed about how those two words came together to describe the sense of anticipation and excitement she would get before embarking on a trip.  Butterflies in her stomach and a sleepless night before the journey began were the usual symptoms of this condition.  The genuine excitement and anticipation of new experiences to come is a wonderful feeling, and I have it in spades!  In the middle of my sleepless night, my husband roused from his sound sleep and asked, "Journey proud?"  The answer must be yes.

We fly this morning via Los Angeles to Maui, HI where neither of us has been before.  We're staying with friends in their timeshare in Hana, for one whole week.  We've heard such wonderful things about Hawaii, but especially Hana and its beauty.  We're laden with every piece of camera equipment we own, a few good books and a bathing suit or two, ready and open for any adventure.

Safe travels to us all today, no matter how near or far we go.