Advanced English Skills

Language Log Mormon Tabernacle Choir vowel variations I departed a total of about 260 miles from my Route 30 / Lincoln Highway running route to come down to Salt Lake City for a few perduring reasons. 1. From the time I was a little boy, I have always wanted to float in the Great Salt Lake. 2. From the time I was in junior high school, I've always wanted to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in person. 3. From the time I was in high school, I have always wanted to visit the world's greatest collection of genealogical records, created at great expense and effort by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Last night I was privileged to hear the MTC — all 360 members, plus 110 members of the orchestra — during their Thursday evening practice session.  Of course, the director paid a lot of attention to emphasis, volume, tonal quality, pronunciation, breathing, and so forth, but what amazed me most of all was the amount of time, attention, and care he devoted to variations in the quality of vowels. At first I was going to refer to this phenomenon as vowel gradation, but then I realized that expression has been coopted for ablaut and umlaut.  So I'm referring to it as vowel variation.  What was particularly stunning was the fact that the quality of the vowels he demonstrated was intimately related to the melodic contours being performed.  The director paid exceedingly close attention to this linkage, and the 360 members of the choir responded immediately and exactingly. I don't think that any notation system (IPA or other) could record on a two dimensional surface the fine gradations / variations of the director's demonstrations.  It had to be done orally and even visually by perception of the director's vocal apparatus (mouth, throat, lips, and — to an extent — tongue):  high, low, front, back, middle, rounded, closed, and so forth, including glissandos from one to the other.   It is this dedication to the precise analysis of tone production that accounts for the smooth, full, rich  sound of the MTC.  Although there were 360 voices, the result was that of an intimate ensemble. The acoustics of the tabernacle (built 1863-1867) are perfect, so I could hear every detail, though I was sitting at the back of the hall in the balcony.  One of the demonstrations of the superb acoustics of the MT is that someone can tear a piece of paper at the front of the hall and you can hear it clearly from any spot in the auditorium. Selected readings * "Vowel chart body art" (12/26/09) * "Tabernacle Choir" (Wikipedia) ➖ @EngSkills ➖

ool of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us. My response: Geoff Pullum uses terms like "aphasia", and phrases like "I don't think there's any structure in there", in describing a quoted passage from Donald Trump's 7/21/2015 speech in Sun City SC. But in my opinion, he's been misled by a notorious problem: the apparent incoherence of much transcribed extemporized speech, even when the same material is completely comprehensible and even eloquent in audio or audio-visual form. This apparent incoherence has two main causes: false starts and parentheticals. Both are effectively signaled in speaking — by prosody along with gesture, posture, and gaze — and therefore largely factored out by listeners. But in textual form, the cues are gone, and we lose the thread. Has anything changed? Certainly not the false starts and parentheticals, and also not the repetitions and the associative jumps in topic. And there's even consistency in the focus on how others don't give him the credit that he deserves. I have the impression that a detailed analysis of his various rhetorical irregularities might show a quantitative increase in some dimensions — but I haven't done that yet, and neither has anyone else. Donald Trump's rhetorical style is certainly different from most other contemporary American politicians. And there are plenty of plausible comparisons to alcoholic speech (though Trump is a teetotaler) and to the effects of various neuropsychological disorders, including some of those associated with aging.  But his style is clearly effective in reaching an audience, and there's no clear evidence of any recent changes. For (a list of far too many) more posts on related topics, see "Past posts on Donald Trump's rhetoric". ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Is there evidence of senility in Trump's speech? Sarah Posner on Bluesky, linking to a kamalahq tweet and a kamalahq Instagram post: In the thread below: a completely rambling, unhinged, incomprehensible quote from Trump at his Flint town hall with Sarah Huckabee Sanders that the Harris campaign distributed, then news headlines about same event. Where is all the coverage that Trump is old and can't speak a coherent sentence? I've been defending Donald Trump against similar accusations since my exchange with Geoff Pullum in 2015 — "Trump's aphasia" vs. "Trump's eloquence". Has anything changed? The answer, I think, is "maybe, but not very much". We'll begin with the 9/17/2024 Flint passage, and then compare the 7/21/2015 passage. The first point is that the cited passage from the recent Flint town hall  is not "incomprehensible". Here's the prompt from Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Your browser does not support the audio element. And Mr. President, we don't mind that you give long answers, because you actually have something to say, because you actually got something done when you were president. And Trump's response (I've edited the kamalahq transcript for accuracy, also including a bit more around the edges, with changes in blue vs. red for the original…): Your browser does not support the audio element. You know, it's a very interesting- cause she- she said- I ((could)) said- I don't think I've ever said this before. So we do these rallies. They're massive rallies. Everybody loves– everybody stays till the end by the way. You know, when she said that, "well, your rallies people leave" Honestly, nobody does. And if I saw them leaving, I'd say "and ladies and gentlemen make America great again" and I'd get the hell out, ok? Because I don't want people leaving. But I– I do have to ((say)) so– I give these long sometimes very complex sentences and paragraphs But they all come together. I do it a lot. I do it with uh… raising cane, that story; I do it with the uh story on the catapults on the aircraft carriers, I do it with a lot of different stories. When I mentioned Doctor Hannibal Lecter I'm using that as an example of people that are coming in, from Silence of the Lambs. I use it, they say it's terrible. So they say– so I'll give this long complex area, for instance that- I talked about a lot of different territory– the bottom line is I said the most important thing. We're going to bring more plants into your state, and this country to make automobiles. We're going to be bigger than before. But the fake news says- There's a lot of them back there, if- You know, for a town hall, there's a lot of peo– but the fake news likes to say, the fake((s)) news likes to say "oh, he was rambling." No, no, that's not rambling. That's genius. When you can connect the dots. ((You gotta connect-)) Now, now, Sarah, if you couldn't connect the dots, you got a problem. But every dot was connected and many stories were told in that little paragraph. But there is something- but they say that- …and onward, through more complaining about not getting credit for his alleged rally sizes and crowd enthusiasm. Incomprehensible? I don't think so — Trump is clearly complaining about various things that Harris poked fun at during the 9/10/2024 debate. There are plenty of false starts, parentheticals, and associative jumps. But the focus on reacting to Harris's jibes is consistent and plain. Compare the 2015 passage that Geoff Pullum reacted to. Here's the audio, followed by the (not very accurate) transcript that Geoff took from Slate magazine: Your browser does not support the audio element. Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton Sch[...]

Word of the Day suppliant Definition: (noun) One praying humbly for something. Synonyms: petitioner, requester, supplicant. Usage: "Oh, God!" prayed the kneeling suppliant, "protect my husband, guard my son, and take my wretched life instead!" Discuss ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Word of the Day Word of the Day: watershed This word has appeared in 168 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence? ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub whacked | whacked out to be very tired, or very intoxicated from the use of alcohol or drugs ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub seal off to stop people from going into an area or a building, often because it isn't safe ➖ @EngSkills ➖

winnow

Idiom of the Day like rats abandoning a sinking ship With great haste and having only personal well-being in mind. (Typically said of people who begin abandoning something or someone that is failing or about to fail.) Watch the video ➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log Cultural literacy at The Guardian There has been an enormous turbulence over the simultaneous explosion of Hezbollah pagers (some call them walkie-talkies) at 3:30 PM on September 17, 2024, involving as it does actors in regions as far flung as the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia.  No one could be closer to the center of the turmoil than the gentleman in the middle of the doorway in this photograph: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/goldapollo.jpg He is Hsu Ching-kuang (Xǔ Qīngguāng 許清光), founder and chief executive of Taiwan tech company Gold Apollo, which is alleged to have made the offending pagers, although Hsu denies it. The photograph comes from this article: "‘This is very embarrassing’: Middle East crisis takes a detour to an office park in Taiwan:  Media spotlight shifted to Taiwan tech company Gold Apollo which has denied supplying the pagers that exploded across the Hezbollah network in Lebanon", by Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin, The Guardian (9/18/24) I do not wish to get embroiled in all of the accusations and counter-accusations of this highly sensitive, high stakes international incident, but I do want to call attention to an uncanny, seemingly offhand remark from the The Guardian article, namely, that Gold Apollo's glass entrance "was still festooned with leftover Lunar New Year decorations wishing for prosperity." Since the event occurred around the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival (9/17/24), one might have thought that The Guardian slipped up and confused Mid-Autumn Festival decorations with Lunar New Year decorations.  Examining the photograph for evidence one way or the other, I spotted the red poster on the wall behind CEO Hsu.  Although the print is very small and I am on the road without a powerful magnifying glass, I think that the parallel verses of the matching couplet say: niánnián hǎoyùn cáishén dào  rìrì cáiyuán shùnyì lái 年年好運財神到 日日財源順意來 "May good luck and the God of Wealth arrive every year; may the source of wealth smoothly come every day" http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/goldapollo2.jpg This is a typical New Year's poster showing a messenger from the Heavenly Kingdom and wishing for good fortune during the coming year.  We may refer to the figure as a ménshén 門神 ("door god").  They are customarily put on the door as spiritual guards on New Year’s Eve and they’d remain there for the rest of the year.  The banner across his chest reads “gōngxǐ fācái / Cant. gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4 恭喜發財“ ("May you be happy and prosperous!") — a Chinese New Year greeting.  Although it may seem gratuitous to mention this detail, I thought it was sharp for The Guardian not to mix up up the Chinese festivals while at the same time evoking the atmosphere at Gold Apollo which is still producing this (somewhat) outmoded technology and continues to make money from it. Selected readings * "2024 Lebanon pager explosions" (Wikipedia) * "Cracking down on the Hezbollians" (7/19/06) [h.t. AntC; thanks to Jing Hu, Zhaofei Chen, Xinyi Ye, and Judit Bagi] ➖ @EngSkills ➖