Colours and Language

The human perception of colour seems to be more subject to change than other phenomena observed by the senses. If you ask an American or a Canadian what the colours of the rainbow are, no doubt the Rainbow Song will burst from their lips with the colours . However, if you visit the most Southern Region of Japan, Okinawa, you will find that they divide their colours primarily into only three primary groups - black, white, and red. The various shades in between (what we perceive as individual colours) will fall into one of these categories. One of the most ambiguous colours in existence, perhaps, is green which is often interpreted as a shade of blue. (Take for example, Japan, once again where they consider the grass, vegetables, and the colour for "go" on traffic lights to be "blue.")

Why do I bring this up? It is because, yesterday, I came across such a difference in interpretation in the Italian language as well. The difference exists specifically with regards to the colour of hair. In Italian, there exist the colours blonde, brown and black, but the cut off line between what is actually defined as blonde or brown is different to that in English. Anyone who has seen the colour of my hair will agree that it is a medium to dark shade of brown in English terms. However, when I attempted to explain this to dark haired Marta, I was met with rigid opposition.

"Absolutely not,” cried Marta, “There’s no way. I have brown hair! Yours is "biondo scuro" (dark blonde)."

"She's right," added Ludovica, "in Italy, anyone with your shade of hair would choose to dye it blonde. It is light enough to be possible. As for us, we have true brown hair."

The bristles went up on the back of my neck. I was prepared for a fight. What right had they to steal my identity as a brown haired individual? Yet I managed to hold back, because I realized that not everyone is metalingusitically aware that even something so simple and seemingly straightfoward as the colours in our world are not interpreted in the same way in every culture. Instead, I attempted to explain to Marta that in English, we use "brown" for many different shades, even for shades such as Pietro's, which is verging on dirty blonde.

Did it work? Not quite. "No! You're dark blonde and that's final," she cried at the end of our discussion, and that put the kibosh on that.

Ah well, she is only seven after all!

The Development of the Children's English: 2 Months On

In this post, I would like to make a small update about the changes that have occurred in the English of the children.

Anna: After two months, Anna (age 3) now understands many of the questions I ask her, the most common of which include "What are you doing?" "How are you?" "How was X?" "Do you like X?" and so on. She also understands my commands, especially those relating to regular household routines such as having a bath, brushing teeth, cleaning up, and sleeping. However, she is still the least likely to speak with me in English, and only does so when her siblings speak English as well.

Pietro: Pietro (age 5) is probably learning the most from me as we spend the most time together. Thanks to Sesame Street, he is now familiar with many adjectives such as "heavy, light, long, short, big, small" and so on. The number of nouns he knows are increasing by the day, and he can easily expression emotions, feelings and sensations such as "happy, sad, hungry, sleepy, thirsty, and funny." He is getting used to informal exchanges such as "Hi - How are you? - I'm good" and he has picked up on "run out" and "full" when used with regards to markers and pens.

Marta: Marta (age 7) learns English at school and is therefore the most advanced as she knows plenty of nouns, adjectives and adverbs from her lessons. She is the most willing to speak and is also the eldest, so she is capable of producing the most complex grammatical structures. She is quite comfortable with "because" and the expression "This is my favourite." She has also managed to successfully acquire the structure "If I were a X, I would be..." after teaching me the Italian equivalent.

All three children: The three children have picked up on a number of sayings English speakers use. Their favourite is "Yummy yummy in my tummy" which Anna pronounces as "Yummy yummy tummy." They also like the word "bellybutton" (which Anna has humourously turned into "bacho"). Sesame Street has taught them a number of directional terms such as "around, over, under, through" which were learned through a song sung by Grover, and they have also picked up on the numbers 1 - 20 thanks to numerous games of hide and go seek, Sesame Street, and a hopping game I invented where I act as a monster who counts the number of steps she takes before she captures the children. An interesting developmental error that both Pietro and Marta seem to make is the use of "my" in the place of "I am" and "mine." For instance, they will say "My hungry" or "This is my." They are both becoming familiar with the use of "you" and "your" but often mix up the two, and often use "this" or "this one" to indicate items or the desire of these items.

I apologize for the severe lack of posting as of late. I have only just started to recover from my cold which left me incapacitated for about three weeks. Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of things this coming week!

The Fate of the Apostrophe

An interesting news item was brought to my attention by my mum the other day. Though I didn't see it myself, there was apparently a program on British television featuring a discussion about whether it is worth keeping the apostrophe in the English language. The guest speaker was a professor from Bangor University in Wales, and the final conclusion he reached was in favour of keeping the apostrophe. This is because, without it, clarification of certain sentences like "He always dots all his i's and crosses all his t's!" would become far more difficult.

However, not everyone wishes to protect our little grammatical companion.

According to Dr. Richard Nordquist, those who would abolish the "morbid growth in English orthography" (Byington, 1945) see it as unnecessary for clarification in writing since the context, above all, will tell you whether "well" is intended as "we'll" or if "its" indicates possession or not. The same would go for "He always dots all his is and crosses all his ts!" because it would make little grammatical sense to throw a random "is" in between "his" (possessive) and "and" (connector). In other words, a native speaker would never confuse this particular "is" with the third person singular form of "to be."

On the other hand, some like the members of The Apostrophe Protection Society in England say that while they recognize that languages are forever changing, they feel the need to preserve "the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language." However, there does not seem to be a clear rationale behind why they feel it is necessary to preserve the apostrophe except for the purpose of preservation for the sake of preservation.

So, what do you think? Is the apostrophe necessary or is it simply another reason why second language learners call English the bane of their existence?

Why Obama Really Became President!

It doesn't matter where in the world you are -- "Obama" is the one name on everyone's lips today. But what makes Obama so inspirational to the masses? Most would say it is because he is a symbol of forward thinking and change to the American people. He is the antithesis of "white, old and stodgy," a symbol for young voters, the perfect candidate for an America that pines for reform.

But what else makes him so special? In response to this question, I would like to share with you a short video I found on the CNN website that discusses the linguistic take on Obama's success with the people.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/11/04/intv.martin.obama.reax.cnn?iref=mpvideosview

In this video, Bill McGowan, a body language specialist, explains the criteria which we use to pick our favourite candidate. He explains that our decisions during an election are based on only 30% of what the candidate is actually saying. The rest is based mostly upon "their demeanour, their facial expressions, their tone of voice, [and] their movements."

Obama's appeal exists because his overall demeanour precisely matches what we would expect from a 'president of the United States'. He has the loquacity of a university professor, the energy of a gospel preacher, and the caring tone of a protective father or brother -- all qualities we associate with a true leader. When he speaks, his manner is cool and collected, and his body language, direct and confident.

Perhaps the most important body language cue Obama has down pat is the use of eye contact. McGowan explains that this was most salient during the debates when Obama consistently maintained eye contact with whomever he spoke, and leaned forward to express interest and concern. McCain, on the other hand, was jittery and rarely maintained eye contact with one person for more than a few seconds. Unfortunately for McCain, those who are evasive of the gaze of other people are generally considered somewhat duplicitous, regardless of whether or not they actually are.

Additionally, a personal observation I made about Obama is how he utilizes his hands to earn the trust of his audience. When he speaks, he has the tendency to caress the air, as if it were the head of a young child in need. (Metaphor for the desperate American people, anyone?) And more importantly, as McGoman suggests, he moves his hands only when necessary, mostly to emphasis the presence of an important statement. In contrast, McCain became somewhat of a practical joke after the debates because his movements didn't seem to have a purpose. He would move around sporadically, or simple wander about the stage without a particular aim. This kind of body language can project the image of instability and volatility -- not exactly something the United States needs right now.

Alone, any one of these characteristics would be insufficient to secure a place in the heart of people. But Obama has them all.

What else can I say? Obama = president. I sure am convinced!

Total Immersion Not The Answer

Ahh...what a momentous occasion! Today, I carried out my first full conversation solely in Italian!

This fulfilling event happened at a birthday party to which the family brought me this evening. Our hosts were two relatively wealthy friends of the family called Marco and Nicola who had welcomed over twenty guests to their grand household on the outskirts of Torino. (When I say grand, I mean grand...they have an entire hill to themselves, a massive front and backyard, and gates that open on their own at the front of the property!)

At the party were two ladies who spoke very little English. Armed with all of the idiomatic phrases and grammar Emanuele and Ludovica had taught me over the past month, I managed to speak quite fluently about: my nationality, how I had moved from one country to another five months ago, the languages which I speak, the languages which I DON'T speak - a.k.a. French - and why, despite the fact I received nine years of French education, I cannot speak a word. I surprised even myself because, up to that point, I had never been given the opportunity to use Italian without English as a crutch, mainly because everyone around me speaks English so well.

I think this experience has taught me that it doesn't really matter if you use your native language on a daily basis, because learning WILL occur in a second language environment regardless. Plus, using both it and a little of the second language prevents you, as a learner, from becoming overly exhausted.

So, in short, forget complete immersion. It is too darn tiring and will probably impede your learning rather than foster it! Rather, try mixing your own language with the second. If you do, you will find that all the stresses associated with language learning will fade away.

Shoo Japanese, Don't Bother Me!

My Italian must sound truly alien to native Italians for reasons other than the fact that it is as poor as poor can get. Probably the funniest thing that I do that other English natives do not is unconsciously fall back onto Japanese whenever a word escapes me in Italian.

These words are usually not nouns or verbs, but "fillers" -- those drawn out utterances we use when we are thinking up a response (ummmm!) or when we attempt to contradict someone's opinion (yeah i know but...!) or when we are simply trying to fill an awkward silence (well...).

Here is an example conversation I might have with Emanuele!

(In Italian with highlighted Japanese fillers.)
E: So, did you have a nice day?
H: Maa...it was good.
E: That's good. Are you going somewhere tonight?
H: Nnn sou sou, uh I mean, si si...yes...ahh...what was the question??

I find it most amusing how the brain automatically seems to resort to the second language when words and expressions in the third are inaccessable. And it is even more amusing that this happens despite the fact that Japanese and Italian are like chalk and cheese, while English and Italian are literally long lost cousins.

Perhaps Italian should have been my first opponent in the ring...life would have been so much easier!

Anna the Lean Mean English Machine

Lately, I've been experimenting with various ways to teach 2.5 year old Anna how to speak English. While Marta is quite easy to teach as she already has the basic knowledge of English grammar to get by, and Pietro, despite his protestations, has a fairly good passive knowledge of the language, Anna is a blank sheet waiting to be written upon, making her extremely impressionable! My favourite way so far is put into practice whenever I pick her up from school.

What happens is that whenever we walk home together, we stop at a small shop with a window display bursting with colourful Halloween decorations. Stuck to the window itself are a number of leaf and pumpkin themed stickers, most of which are arranged in an alternating pattern along the edge of the bottom sill. And when Anna runs up to the window, as she always does, I make a point to say outloud "leaf, pumpkin, leaf, pumpkin..." as I point to each sticker.

We have done this for three days in a row so far with no response from Anna except her insistence that pumpkins aren't called pumpkins, and leaves aren't called leaves (they are "zucce" and "foglie" she says!). However, today on the fourth day, just as I was losing all hope, she started copying everything I said! Pumpkin! Leaf! Toes! Knees! Legs! Arms! Belly! Cookie Monster! I couldn't have stop her rampent imitating even if I had wanted to.

It seems that all she needed was daily reinforcement! (And perhaps, the sweetie I gave her after she said "pumpkin" for the first time helped a little as well!)

Hurrah for early second language teaching!

Kissing in Mexico: Friendly, not Flirtatious!

[Setting: the International Students Marquee at the University of X four days previous]

It is the evening before the International Students Cultural Show, and as the buzzing of human interaction slowly fades to a dull silence in the marquee, the last group practicing finally decides to call it a night. We are officially labelled the Mexican Dance Troop, but less than half of us are Mexican in descent. Besides three true Mexicans, we consist of two Chinese, one Taiwanese, and one Canadian-Brit, each of whom decided to put aside his or her true nationality for a day to become a representitive of Mexico's culture - a proud detail, in my mind, since every other performing group was culturally homogeneous.

As I tiredly bent over and gathered my belongings, I could see out of the corner of my eye the form of the handsome yet seemingly introverted Mexican who had taken on the lead male role in our dance brusquely make his way over to me. It was a matter of seconds before I was standing glued cheek to cheek with him, completely dumbfounded, aware only of the sound of an air blown kiss reverberating in my ear. Awkwardly, I placed my hand firmly on his shoulder, for it was all I could do to avoid staggering away in surprise. And then, just as quickly as he had come, he was gone. "So much for being introverted," I thought then, with a stream of colour bubbling to my face, and I too made my exit.

No, everyone, this Single Multilingual will not be cutting the "single" part off of her blog name anytime soon. (For tales of romance, please see a different blog!) What I do want to point out, though, is the differeing use of non-verbal communication in different cultures, and how it could cause misunderstandings.

For me, as a Canadian-Brit, any form of physical contact between members of the opposite sex is suggestive of a deeper meaning. If a Canadian man were to kiss my cheek, for instance, I would consider it forward of him, especially if he were a fairly new acquaintance, and would probably make a point thereafter to put a good ocean's distance between myself and him. But in Mexico, as I learned from this helpful website, it is customary for men to greet women with a small peck on the cheek.

Here are some rules for/things to know about cheek kissing if you ever face a situation where you must perform it:

1. When you cheek kiss, you don't actually kiss the person. You touch cheeks and deliver an air blown kiss in the direction of the ear, as we learned in my example.
2. Always kiss the right cheek or you could end up in a very sticky situation!
3. Kissing is all about "expressing warmth, hospitality, and acceptance" (Roverhaus) and is usually not a form of flirting.
4. Guys don't kiss other guys. (All the guys out there can breathe a sigh of relief!)
5. Forget kissing your maid, local fruit vendor, or garbage man...kisses are special, and are reserved for people you consider to be friends!

I actually feel quite flattered knowing that I was "cheek kiss worthy!" :-)

A word from not-so-crude origins...

"This looks like an interesting linguistic tidbit!" a helpful voice called from out of the kitchen as I sat, knitting my brow over the reams of complicated steps involved in adding a third column to my blog layout. Tired of toying with html, I sauntered over to the voice's owner in response to its call.

"What mum," I said, pausing to skim the first paragraph. "Is it one of those ridiculous forwards again?"

"Yes, but it's amusing all the same."

It went something like this:

1. Dry manure used to be transported by ship in the 16th and 17th centuries.
2. The sea water would wet the manure, causing a build up of methane gas,and subsequent explosions whenever sailors would go downstairs with an oil lantern.
3. Sailors were then on ordered to "Ship [manure] High in Transit" to avoid further mishaps.
4. And from that, dear readers, we got the acronym...well, you know.

Are your fraud sirens wailing yet? Good. Because this forward is a complete falsehood fabricated by people claiming to be experts in the field of etymology.

The expletive sh*t is actually an ancient word dating back to Old English -- that's 1000 years ago, people -- and is said to share a common origin with words like "science, schedule and shield" (Netlore Archive). Not quite as visually evocative as exploding manure, to be sure, but the truth is never as exciting, is it?

Ah well. I can say that the story did succeed in one thing. It put a smile on this html-fatigued blogger's face.

Italian a Sexist Language?

Countdown to Italy: 15 days!

In languages such as Italian, French and Spanish, gender labelling for nouns is common. Add an -o onto the end of an Italian word, and it becomes masculine. -a, on the other hand, makes it feminine. But according to a 2001 statement made by Italy's Commission of Equal Opportunities, the overuse of the masculine -o and il (the equivolent of "the" in English) now equates to linguistic sexism.

The main complaint is in reference to job titles, many of which only have a masculine form. For some women and activists, this has proven irritating since they believe that the grammatical gender of the job title should change in accordance with the sex of the job holder. That is, Maria should be una sindaca (mayor), and unless Giovanni's preferences are of the unconventional type, we would expect to call him un sindaco.

But is the preference for "il and -o" over "la and -a" really sexism? After all, parts of grammar don't wear suits and dresses. People do. Perhaps the preference for the masculine gender is really just a way to seek out linguistic simplification. Swedish is a good example of that -- its two genders have merged into one class called "common gender." Or perhaps it is sexist, for we may be subconsciously valuing one human gender over another in our prescription of gender to words.

What do you think? Can we call a language which employs the excessive use of one grammatical gender over another sexist? Or is it really just much ado about nothing?

Oh, my 'hear' is 'taching'....

When you see the word "heartache," how do you pronounce it? Probably /hart/ plus /eik/, if your linguistic intuition hasn't gone on holiday.

But, in the case that our intuition has indeed packed its bags, couldn't we also be suffering from hear + tache? Technically, yes, but I couldn't tell you what it feels like.

What is interesting about words like "heartache" is that the consonant /t/ could hypothetically marry itself to either...

• the /r/ at the end of "hear" or...
• the dipthong /ei/ at the beginning of "ache"

That's just the way English pronunciation is -- a language thronging with clingy consonants, happy to latch on to either another of its own kind, or a vowel if it is feeling a bit intrepid.

My question to you, reader, is: can you think of any other words that could hypothetically have a variant pronunciation if you cut the syllable boundary in a different place? The funnier the better, but I'll accept any you come up with!

Using Linguistics in Crime

You have just walked into an electronics store in Britain and stolen a video iPod. Dressed in the garb of your annoying roommate, you are assured that not even the CCTV cameras will be able to expose your true identity. Coolly, you text your partner in crime from an anonymous pay-as-you-go cell phone as you put more and more distance between you and the scene of the crime – you know, just to throw the police off the scent:

“hey man, I got it. pretty easy eh.”

A month later, you and your friend are in court and convicted of petty theft. But how was the crime tracked to you?

Say hello to a relatively new type of forensics called linguistic forensics. Even without physical evidence from the scene of the crime, such as camera footage, fingerprints, or DNA samples, forensic scientists are now able to use language to convict criminals. So, how is this done?

A news item posted on the BBC news website (Sept. 8th 2008) describes it best. In a recent incident, a man named David Hodgson was convicted for the murder of 20 year old Jenny Nicholls. Though her body was never recovered, police were able to convict him after forensic linguists found a number of texts on Jenny’s cell phone written in his native Yorkshire, England dialect – a dialect which Jenny never used in her texts. For instance, Jenny would always write ‘myself’ as ‘myself,’ whereas David preferred the more colloquial ‘meself.’ In short, it proved that a Yorkshire man had had possession of her phone after her disappearance. And who says that linguistics has no place in the real world!

Perhaps if the petty thief in our example had remembered to hide his Canadian nationality (‘eh’) and his probable identity as a young man (‘hey man’), he may have been more successful. Luckily for the general public, he and other more serious offenders like David Hodgson forgot what a serious contender linguistics can be in choosing whether your bedfellow that night will be your loving spouse, or your friendly local cell rat.

To find out more about the exciting world that is forensic linguistics, check out this site!

'Subjects' (and cheese?!) subject to disappearing

Countdown to Italy: 20 days!!

Did you know that a large number of languages, including Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Japanese, don't require the explicit use of subjects like "I, you, he, she, we, they and it"? The concept may seem foreign, especially to Canadians who speak English as a first language, and have only dabbled in high school French, but in many languages, subjects are quite redundant. You may be asking - Just how does one figure out who is expressing the sentiment in the sentence if the subject isn't present? - but surprisingly, misunderstandings very rarely occur thanks to the vital information about the subject provided by context.

For instance, in the sentence "(She) ate cheese. And then (she) ate some bread," the subject 'she' appears twice. The first 'she' is necessary because without it, it would be difficult to know whether it was she, a mouse, or the greedy guest who ultimately devoured the cheese. However, the second 'she' is quite redundant in this case since it can be assumed from the context that she who ate the cheese was hungry, and probably followed it up with a piece of bread as well.

Conversely, if there was another hungry being in the house and it so happened that he/she took the bread in a completely seperate incident, it would in fact be necessary to state the second subject. For if you did not, she who ate the cheese would be landed with a double accusation!

So what have we learned? In non-subject languages, the subject can be deleted when we can assume from the context what the subject is, and it cannot be deleted when we cannot!

But what I find most interesting is that in spoken English, we often tend to delete the subject without noticing that we do so. I could say the following sentences and sound like a perfectly fluent English speaker:

"Just popping out for a moment!"
"Bumped into Peter this morning"
or...
"Went to the Superstore today?"

Perhaps some would call this subject droppage incorrect grammar or laziness. Maybe others would call it language change. But no matter what you call it, it just goes to show that, overall, we English speakers are probably wasting a lot of breath pointing out exactly who did what, when we should be able to simply guess!

"Lost in Translation" can apply to your native language, too!

It is Sunday and mum and I are enjoying our weekly visit to the Bewdley tea room, set no more than a two mile walk from our home in Kidderminster. The brilliant sun shining down on our faces feels much like an old friend after almost a full week of solid downpoars, and the piping hot tea we are drinking calms the nerves. Since mum has agreed to pay for our fish and chip lunch later on, I trundle up to the counter to pay for our tea, with every intention of making small chat with the owners of the tea room, a broad, smiling man in his early 60's, and a short, rotund lady with a shining complexion - no doubt, two of the truest Bewdlites you will ever meet.

As I hand the money over and say 'thank you' for the tea, the man turns to me with a cheeky grin and speaks:

"Donburyesself!"

I must have looked like I was seconds from being struck by a bus as I tried to parse what he had just said. "Divert youself?" "Dover yes elf?" Before I knew it, the man, probably wondering why the government still continued to let non-English speaking immigrants into the UK, had gone back to cleaning the tables, and my chance of having a decent conversation floated smugly out the window, along with every ounce of my self esteem.

A few minutes later, I figured out with the help of my mum that he had been warning me not to 'burn myself' in the unusually sunny weather. Doh, queue the well deserved smack to the head!

This kind of situation has not been uncommon since my arrival in Kidderminster. We once met an elderly gentleman who had lost his two greyhound dogs. When he asked us whether we had seen his "dogs," we thought he had asked whether we had seen the "doves," and subsequently directed him toward a nearby forest. (We hope to this day that that is where his dogs had scampered off to!)

I once used to think that all English accents were mutually intelligible by all English speakers. Coming here has made me realize just how wrong I was!

Have YOU ever had an experience where you have not been able to communicate with someone who speaks your own language? Let me know about it!

Spelling not just a bi-product of speech!

In a recent comment, my friend Amethyst asked what a linguist might think of the use of 'net speak' such as "LOL" (laughing out lout) and "pwned" (owned) in speech. While I cannot really comment on the sentiments of the average linguist, what I can say is that the phenomenon of spelling influencing and changing pronunciation is not a recent one -- indeed, after a bit of research, I found that many of the most familiar words in the our language wear a clever phonemic disguise.

Take, for instance, the word "waistcoast" which was originally pronounced as /weskit/. "Clothes" used to be a homonym of "close." The aformentioned "ye" is also a good example of the influence of spelling on pronunication. And Lord of the Rings fans will be happy to know that elephants should not be elephants, but /olifaunts/. In short, all of these words had a written form which influenced the way they were pronounced later on, just like the net lover's dearly beloved "LOL" and "pwned".

What is particularly interesting about "LOL" and "pwned", however, is that these words first took form in writing, whereas all of the above examples were originally used in speech. What I would really like to know is whether there are any other non-technologically related words out there that came about in writing, and subsequently entered spoken language due to their permeation into the written world. Hmmm...!

For more words that have changed in pronunciation due to their spelling, check out this blurb written by Mark Israel.

'Ye' better be surprised by this post!

Here is a random linguistic fact for you all!

Did you know that "ye" as in...

"Hear ye, hear ye!"
"Welcome to ye olde shoppe!"

...should actually be pronounced as "the"? Yes indeed -- modern English speakers have been sorely mislead. In fact, the "y" in "ye" is not at "y" (as we know it) at all. Rather, it was a single symbol which represented the sound "th," and in order to create words such as "the" and "this," one simply had to place a tiny "e" (for "the") or "s" (for "this") on top of the "y." (Funnily enough, this rule apparently wasn't standardized. For instance, the word "this" would appear spelt as both "y" plus a small "s" and as "this." If anyone can tell me why, I would be most obliged!) If you still aren't convinced, look to the right at the photograph I took of a tombstone inside a Gloucester church!

"Hear thee, hear thee"...hmm, it just doesn't have the same ring, does it?

Don't take the 'brary' outta my library!

Sometimes linguists really do go a step too far. The other day on the television, there was a news item on a professor who had the audacity to encourage incorrect spelling, treating it as "language change" rather than laziness of the uneducated masses. He argued that "as long as the words are spelt as they sound, there shouldn't be an issue." So, taking that line of logic, "library" could just as well be spelt as "liberry," and "opportunity" could do very well to drop a "p."

As a linguistics graduate, I can see where this professor is coming from. In linguistics, the first thing we learn is that concepts such as 'correct' spelling and 'upper class' dialects are all results of arbitrary historical change. That is, the Queen's English could just have easily become one of the less respected accents if history had taken a different course. The fact that the Queen's English appears elegant is nothing to do with the inherent qualities of the Queen's accent - rather, it has all to do with how we subjectively perceive and value the accent. In the same way, this professor has taken this way of thinking and applied it to spelling as well. His argument: why should any particular way of spelling a word be valued over an equally valid way of spelling it, particularly if the alternative is closer to the pronunciation of the word?

The problem with this argument, however, is that English spelling has BEEN standardized, and to say that people are free to manipulate it in their own fashion is, in my mind, the same as saying that I have the freedom to pronounce "library" as "loobary." But to what ends? Isn't the point of language to foster communication? If we haphazardly decide to change spelling and pronunciation just because we feel like it, or because we are too ignorant or lazy to learn the standard, we are putting our ability to communicate (or 'mutual intelligibility') on the line. For goodness sakes, if every person spoke their own personalized version of English, while we might feel a little like language pioneers, we would also feel quite alone not having anyone with whom to speak.

So, here is my point. Yes, language change is inevidible (and shall I go as far as to say desirable?), but it MUST happen systematically across a group of speakers so as to preserve mutual intelligibility. If 'library' is going to become 'liberry,' the change mustn't remain a surface variation which shows it's face among a select few of the population. It must be used be everyone to become valid at all. Perhaps that professor should keep this in mind the next time he marks 'langwige' as correct.