EthicalDative

Time was that you had to be an experimental weirdo to ditch vowels. In “Finnegans Wake,” James Joyce used the word “disemvowelled” in a section that includes this exchange of crystal-clear dialogue:

— Nnn ttt wrd?

— Dmn ttt thg.

Before we are all Joyce — God bless him — I would suggest that we take a deep breath, a mndfl one even, and consider the culling of our five (maybe six) friends. After all, there are words that can hardly do without them: muumuu, audio and oboe, just to queue up a few. One cannot text someone “b” and expect them to know one is referring to an oboe.

(John Williams, “Where Have All the Vowels Gone?” NYTimes, 12-29-18)

[I’m dmnd if I can winkle out what the “Nnn ttt” part of Joyce’s “crystal-clear dialogue” signifies.]

(c) 2018 JMN.

The Airprox board said this, combined with a lack of visual warning, had resulted in “a significant and largely unmitigated safety risk” and recommended that RAF Air Command uses a system to receive notification of commercial drone operations.

(BBC News, “Suffolk farm drone in near-miss with Tornado jet,” 12-24-18)

In the above text I would write (and say) “use” instead of “uses,” substituting subjunctive mood for indicative mood. The verb in question is in a subordinate noun clause depending on a main verb “recommended.” It’s a case of an “influencing” statement. The subjunctive helps convey that the action in the subordinate clause is theoretical and not factual. I wonder if other English speakers feel as strongly as I do that subjunctive must be enforced in this sort of utterance.

(c) 2018 JMN

Persons from the UK had a bit of fun with the NYTimes in responding to a query concerning “crimes” to which they had been victim in their native land. The following tweet, among others, appeared in The Guardian in mid-December:

Once I accidentally queue-barged a man in a supermarket. I apologised profusely for not realising they were in a queue. They then apologised for making a big deal about nothing. I then apologised for their apology. Then someone behind us apologised for asking us to move up.

There it is: assault by apology, a tort of courtesy. The low-hanging fruit here, linguistically, is “ ‘queue-barged’ a man.” The phrase “queue-barge,” new to me, is vastly superior to its USA equivalent “break in line” (“I broke in line in front of a man”). The felonious welter of apologies pursuant to the primary infraction is secondarily ravishing. It reminds me of the “thank you”s I had to endure in passing through the Heathrow security check: “thank you” for stepping a bit this way; “thank you” for holding my wallet during the body scan; “thank you” for raising my arms slightly during the scan; “thank you” for retrieving my personal effects; etc. etc. etc. At the end of the 10-minute ordeal I was exhausted from saying “you’re welcome.”

(c) 2018 JMN.