Category Archives: Now trending

Observing and all too often criticizing language trends

New in New York

A recent discussion on New York City’s public radio station repeatedly referred to “a new initiative” to reduce the number of traffic accidents. As someone who walks around the city every day, dodging bicycles (illegally) on the sidewalk and aggressive drivers in pedestrian crosswalks, I should have been listening carefully. Yet my mind drifted, caught by the phrase “new initiative.” I wondered whether there was such a thing as an “old initiative.”

My dictionary lists four definitions for “initiative,” the most appropriate in this context being “an act or strategy intended to resolve a difficulty or improve a situation; a fresh approach.” That last bit fits poorly with the adjective “new,” because then you’re talking about a “new fresh approach.” It’s worth noting, though, that the dictionary’s sample sentence refers to a “new initiative.” Why?

I was still trying to figure out the answer to this question when my husband snapped a photo of this sign:

So much better than an old tradition.

Traditionally, a “tradition” is a custom passed along from generation to generation. How do you know you’re creating a “new holiday tradition”? By employing a soothsayer? If so, how much does that career pay? For some reason, it’s not listed in the Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the US government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. I can’t imagine why. After all, this is a city in which the marketing campaign for a building under construction referred to the structure as “prewar.” (For non-NYers, let me explain that “pre-war” in a real estate ad generally means “built before World War II.”) Given the state of the world, it’s likely that everything, everywhere, at any point in time is pre- some sort of war, but still, you have to wonder what the builders foresaw.

Mulling all this, I finally came up with a theory. The desire to distance oneself from the past with a “new initiative” or to control the future by establishing a “new tradition” is hardwired into New Yorkers’ psyches. Notwithstanding the fact that the city sports a record-breaking concentration of psychotherapists plumbing our personal pasts, the city that never sleeps never stops changing, too. New Yorkers reinvent themselves and their city. It’s our tradition. Maybe we should slow down and savor what we already have. A change like that, though, requires initiative. New or not.

Pregnant Persons

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On the subway this morning I heard a recorded announcement begging riders to give up their seats to “elderly, disabled, and pregnant persons.” In my experience – and contrary to New Yorkers’ reputation for callous disregard of others – all sorts of people leap up to offer seats to those with gray hair (me, for example) and to others with obvious physical needs. Still, I was pleased to hear the reminder.

A kinder, gentler MTA

I must confess, though, that I spent the whole ride thinking about the phrase “pregnant persons.” The writer wanted three adjectives (elderly, disabled, and pregnant) to modify the noun persons. But because only females can give birth, the gender-neutral term, pregnant persons, sounded odd.

I considered alternatives. Substituting pregnant women doesn’t work, because then you’re being polite only to females, as the other two adjectives attach to women. With that wording, a fragile 90-year-old guy is out of luck, as are men of any age who have broken legs or other conditions that make standing on a moving train a bad idea.

Nor can you simply turn those adjectives into nouns, ceding the seat to the elderly, disabled, or pregnant. This wording reduces complex human identity to one characteristic. I’m old, but age is just one part of me. I imagine that wheelchair users and others with physical issues feel the same way. (For a longer discussion of age-related terms, check out “Euph and Old Age” in this blog. Here’s the URL: http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=479.)

One solution is to rearrange the sequence, so that you’re talking about pregnant women, and elderly and disabled persons. That works, but it’s awkward and may too easily be misread as excluding women from the more general category, persons.

So what’s a train-riding grammarian to do? I’m voting for something like this: “Please give up your seat to anyone who has difficulty standing.” But I’m open to suggestions from every person, including pregnant ones.

Have a Good Whatever

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The New York Times reports that Starbucks has unveiled the 2015 holiday coffee cup, a Rothkoesque shading of reds adorned only with the corporate logo.

Noncontroversial coffee cup available here! Or at least that’s the goal.

The official line is that the company wants to encourage creativity and doodling on cardboard vessels in those willing to pay far too much for a beverage. (Okay, “pay far too much” isn’t part of the official line. It’s my observation.) According to Starbucks, the goal of the 2015 cup is “to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories.” In other words, aim for everyone and offend no one.

Of course, critics immediately blasted the company for “erasing Christmas” and even “hating Jesus.” I must confess that I’ve never thought of turning to a coffee cup for spiritual inspiration. Plus, the official symbols of Christmas in New York City, as far as I can tell, are the giant tree in Rockefeller Center and brightly decorated, strident pleas to spend money on presents. So at first the Starbucks controversy puzzled me.

But then I realized that Starbucks’ new cup is part of a trend toward meaningless generalities. Employees in local stores used to wish that I “have a nice day,” or, from the over- perky, that I “have a really great day.” Counting my change and trying to remember the next item on my to-do list, I paid little attention to these fervent hopes for my wellbeing. But somewhere in my consciousness was a bit of gratitude, and I did notice when the comments changed. Now shopkeepers generally tell me to “have a good one.” A good what? Not that I was crazy about “nice” or “really great” day, but seriously, were those expressions too controversial? And is the next step, “have a good whatever” or, with a nod to Seinfeld, “a good yada yada”?

Sir Isaac Newton held that every action is balanced by an equal and opposite reaction. The rise in blandness, it seems, makes extremism not only possible but inevitable. In other words, that plain red coffee cup sets the tone of the US presidential campaign. Who knew?

(Truly Real) Real Estate

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When the apartment building on my corner was nearing completion, I checked the ads selling its apartments. I wasn’t buying; I was simply nosy. The website touted the idea that the property was “steps from Central Park.” True, if you take a lot of steps. Like, a LOT of steps – a brisk ten minutes’ worth, not counting time spent waiting at red lights. With that definition, every location is steps from Central Park – Nebraska, for example. You just have to keep walking.

That advertisement underscores the need for vigilance in approaching the New York City housing market. Only with constant attention will you know the exact moment when hipsters move in where hip-replacements once dominated. The language of this market is odd. The New York Times once wrote about the true meaning of some common real estate terms. I don’t remember all of them (and I may have added a few myself), but here is a selection:

Cozy means the kitchen is the size of a bathmat.
Private or secluded refers to an apartment whose windows face a brick wall.
A townhouse feel guarantees that passersby can watch you sip your morning coffee through sidewalk-level windows.
If you have skyline views, you probably have to take a train to work.
A charming apartment has an intact, never renovated (or cleaned) 1950s bathroom, which matches the style and condition of other rooms.

And speaking of rooms, do apartments in other cities have half rooms, as in two-and-a-half-room apartment? I never have decoded that one. Does a half room lack a wall? A ceiling? Or just space? If the last definition applies, is there an official standard for half and whole? Most NYC rooms would be third or quarter rooms anywhere else.

And then there are other claims:

No machines?

It took three trips to this construction site to get a photo not blocked by cranes and other heavy machinery, which presumably were not working on these apartments because then the sign would (gasp) be a lie.

I have more to say about what real in NYC real estate, but I’ll save it for another post. My home isn’t handcrafted, but my cleaning is. See you after the vacuuming is done.

And if you have any real real estate stories, feel free to send them in.

What’s in a name?

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Google and others are currently investing a billion dollars or so in . . . well, in what? An invention that has, at best, a dubious name.

Now, assigning a name that attracts attention and doesn’t intentionally mislead is no easy task. (I’m ignoring, for now, names whose sole purpose is to deceive consumers – something akin to “Healthy Cigarettes.”) So consider for a moment the race to develop a car that moves along without an active, engaged, human driver. Of which, judging from what I see when I walk around the city, there are many.

The current leader in the name-race is driverless car. I have a problem with that term. You can’t invent what already exists. True, humans sit behind the steering wheels of today’s driverless cars, but because the drivers are applying makeup, changing the CD, or uploading to Instagram, the vehicles are essentially driverless.

First runner-up is self-driving car, building on the tradition of self-cleaning oven, self-defrosting freezer, and other devices that replace human labor. In my view, this term is better, but picky grammarian that I am, I question the self portion of the name. Can an inanimate object have a self? If the lasagna drips out of the pan and sizzles on the oven floor (a frequent occurrence in my household), can the oven object? Does the freezer know that I have expired food stored in it? I rest my case.

Then there’s the robotic car. But how to differentiate between the sedan that turns left at the corner while human occupants send out selfies (Look at me! I’m inside a robot car!) and one that moves along, sans humans, to sweep the streets or scoop up poop? Plus, a robot car sounds like just the thing to transport sci-fi creatures that have artificial intelligence, unlimited working hours, and no need for health insurance beyond the occasional reboot.

On to autonomous. I liked this one until I looked up the official definition of autonomous and found that it means “independent,” “operating according to its own laws,” or “not governed by outside forces.” Do I have to mention the hefty DMV manual filled with rules a potential driver is supposed to know before receiving a license?

Not that licensees actually obey those rules. In fact, in tests of driverless, self-driving, robotic, or autonomous (pick your favorite label) cars, accidents occurred for the most human of reasons. Other vehicles – those with a human in charge – didn’t follow the rules. Hardly any came to a complete stop at a stop sign, for example. Non-human operated vehicles sat indefinitely, waiting with machine patience, for their chance to cross the intersection. I’d nominate that last term but somehow, somewhere (and probably in New York City) a German Shepherd is tooling along behind the wheel while its human companion considers the pros and cons of doggy daycare and leaves the driving to the canine.

If you have any suggestions for this automotive achievement, let me know. I’m off to walk the streets of Manhattan, self-walking and semi-autonomously. I’ll let you know if I run across any driverless cars, or if any run across me.

Do you have insurances?

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Lately, every time someone mentions a problem with a doctor, prescription, or what physicians call procedures (which are operations to the rest of us), everyone nods and cites Obamacare as the cause. (I have no idea whether they’re right.)

I’m therefore assuming that this problem too will be blamed on the Affordable Care Act:

Insurance policies?

Do you have health insurances? This physical therapy office accepts them, or I should say it, because insurance has traditionally been correct only as a singular form. Following that rule, the sign should say health insurance plans or types of health insurance. However, the word may be changing to reflect the comparisons we all have to make these days between one health insurance plan and another. Recently I’ve seen several signs advertising clinics that accept many insurances or most insurances. Language evolves, and anyone who doesn’t like the direction of its evolution can always blame this expression on Obamacare (or politicians, who are always an easy and generally a justified target).

Here’s another plural issue, this time with a singular form (menu) in a spot where a plural makes more sense:

No menu?

For non-New Yorkers, I should explain that the many restaurants delivering takeout food like to slip menus (plural) under the front doors of apartment buildings, hoping that hungry citizens returning from work will pick one up and order dinner from it. More likely, of course, is that a hungry citizen will step on a menu and do a floppy-armed dance maneuver to recover balance – and then retrieve the offending piece of paper and order dinner from it. Building superintendents and doormen wage war on menu-distributors and the mess they generate. This sign is one tactic, probably ineffective and definitely grammatically incorrect. It is, however, polite.

One more plural, with a twist:

Refiles?

The interesting part of this sign, on a phone store, is the third item: “Prepaid Refiles.” I don’t usually mock spelling, but this one was too tempting. Can’t you picture the clerk, file in hand, sawing away at your phone’s rough edges? Or placing the phone in a file marked “way too many photos” instead of “judicious use of photo capacity”? I’m assuming the sign-writer intended to say “Refills,” but perhaps not. I’m a novice in the phone world. In fact, when I go into a store to “refile” my device, the clerk generally laughs at its antiquity. So if there’s another meaning, please let me know.

Disclaimer: Part of this post originally appeared as a separate page under the category, “Signs of the City,” which I am gradually dismantling.

Time to get to sea

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The narrator of Moby Dick explains that when he feels the urge to walk, “methodically knocking people’s hats off,” it is “time to get to sea.” I know exactly how he feels, because late August in New York has turned me into an even grumpier grammarian than usual.

Two signs illustrate my point. Here’s the first:

What’s with the “pre”?

I’ve become accustomed to reading ads for a “One Day Sale!” that begins on Friday and ends on Sunday, not to mention “pre-Christmas sales” that start on December 26th and last until the following Christmas Eve. But I barely managed not to rip this sign off the window of a store selling housewares and linens. Why should I shop during a pre sale? (And what happened to the hyphen?) I imagine two possible situations: (1) Buy this blanket today, pre sale, for $50. Tomorrow the same blanket costs $30. (2) The pre sale price of the blanket is $30. Once you buy it, though, you owe the store $50. That’s the price at the time of sale.

I couldn’t resist either scenario, so I bought a silk flower during the pre sale. The price tag read $5.99. The sign over the flower display read “Up to Half Off!” The clerk charged me $1.95. Do the math, as I did, and you’ll discover why a popular t-shirt declares “5 out of 4 people don’t understand fractions.”

One more, on a Manhattan outpost of a major wireless network:

Where?

I won’t comment on the fact that the sign unwisely separates Mexico from Latin America, even though Mexico is, in fact, part of Latin America. Instead, I’ll focus on what’s FREE. As written, the sign implies that the caller has to be in Mexico & Latin America to talk and text without charge. Okay, many New Yorkers travel south, so perhaps the sign means that with this wireless plan, they can take their phones and communicate without paying a cent (or a peso or a boliviano or a colon or a something else). Also possible: New Yorkers can call or text people in Mexico & Latin America from New York – or from somewhere else. I didn’t go into this store, so I can’t give you a definitive answer.

See what I mean about grumpy? If you have a boat I can borrow, please let me know. It’s time to get to sea.

Capital Offenses

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A completely unscientific survey of signs in New York City reveals that very few sign-writers understand the conventions of capitalization. Or perhaps they do, and don’t care. Or maybe the store owners wish to associate themselves with the iMac and iPad, with the hope that unconventional capitalization will lead to the level of success Apple enjoys. Regardless, capital offenses abound.

Some sign-writers opt for all caps:

Nothing wrong with this practice – on signs – though all-caps employed to “shout” in emails and blog comments can be quite annoying.

Other signs strew capital letters randomly:

Notice the “State of the Art Subway Line.” Nothing in Standard English calls for capital letters in those words. Perhaps the sign-writer was excited about the “Second Avenue Subway Project,” which I capitalized, as did the sign-writer, because that’s the name of something, in this case a construction site that was originally scheduled for completion years ago and, contrary to what the sign says, shows no sign of being ready by 2016 – or 2017, for that matter. By the way, in Standard English the word “the” is usually not part of a name and therefore is written in lowercase (non-caps).

One more capital letter sign, on a Fifth Avenue store:

Note “the Renovation”!

The usual practice is to capitalize the name of important historical eras, such as the Enlightenment (which lasted a century, give or take a few years) or the Middle Ages (which endured for maybe 1000 years). This store apparently believes that their construction work will go on for quite a while and hit the history books, or at least Wikipedia.

Full disclosure: part of this post was originally a separate page in the “Signs of the City” section, which I am slowing dismantling and placing in the “posts” portion of this site. As far too many signs say, sorry for the inconvenience.

What’s in a Name

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I’m a baseball fan, but even so I can’t avoid a flash of annoyance when I hear the term “World Series” applied to a set of teams based in cities as far north as Southern Canada, as far south as the Southern United States, and as far east and west as the North American coastline. True, players come from a larger assortment of countries than in earlier times, but a real “World Series” ought to include Japanese and South American teams, at the very least.

That said, it occurs to me that coming up with inclusive and sensitive names is a tough task. When I was preparing to study at the University of Madrid, my US-based Spanish teachers told me that the answer to the question “What are you?” was not “American” (americana) but the Spanish equivalent of “United Statesonian” (estadounidensa). If I called myself americana, the teachers explained, listeners would object because the term rightly applies to South Americans also. My teachers gave me one alternative – norteamericana (North American). No one seemed concerned about Canadians’ feelings, an attitude that unfortunately persists in many areas of US policy.

Of course, the very first time I fielded the “What are you?” question from a Spaniard, estadounidensa was met with a blank look and then “Oh, you mean you’re American.” Mindful of classmates from South America, Central America, and yes, Canada, I never could bring myself to say that I was an americana. So I settled on neorquina (New Yorker) and everyone was happy.

My family went through a similar process. My grandparents answered “Austrian” when asked about their homeland because their village was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they emigrated. My parents claimed “Yugoslavia” as the ancestral site, while I say that my background is “Croatian.”

And then there are states. Some are easy (Californian, Texan, and New Yorker, though the distinction between the city and state in that last one may be problematic). But what do you call a resident of Connecticut? The only answer I’ve heard is Nutmegger, because apparently Connecticut calls itself “the Nutmeg State.” How widespread is that knowledge?

Can we keep up with partitions, annexations, and nicknames when we apply a name to someone’s ethnicity or citizenship? Probably not. The best policy may be to go for the detail (“her grandparents lived in Prague before World War II”) but this method crashes and burns when it hits the widespread American (oops – I mean United Statesonian) ignorance of geography.

I’ll stop here, hoping for suggestions on naming from anyone reading this post, because I don’t have a solution. Besides, it’s time to watch the “Miss Universe” pageant.

Traffic and other problems

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Full disclosure: This post used to be a “page” under the heading “Signs of the City.” I’ve decided to change pages into posts, as I include signs in nearly every post and my original notion of two separate categories didn’t work. So if the content of this post Iooks familiar, you’re not hallucinating.

I found myself staring at the sign (from the sidewalk) for several minutes, trying to decipher its meaning. See what you think:

And after 46th Street they turn into pumpkins?

A number of questions arise. First, why “passenger”? If more than one rider is present, is the taxis allowed in the bus lane? Second, what happens after 46th Street? Are any taxis allowed, with or without a passenger, or are no taxis allowed at all? No doubt you are thinking that the people who really need to know what this sign means – taxi drivers – already do, so clarity is unimportant. Not likely. I salute the hardworking, often immigrant drivers who brave NYC traffic daily, but I also know that many are hanging onto the English language with one toenail. I recall the driver who responded, when I asked him to take me to the Port Authority Bus Terminal (a place he had never heard of), “first day this America my.” That’s a direct quote, which brings me to my third question. How likely is it that a taxi driver will cause an accident while puzzling out the rules laid down by this sign?

This sign, on the other hand, is quite clear:

Avoiding double trouble

Handwritten, over-taped, and obviously heartfelt. This store wants NO PETS. The owner may discriminate against Fido, but at least the message is unambiguous. The head-scratching aspect comes from the repetition. Did the owner try a simple “NO PETS” line that failed to keep animals away? Or is the owner a proponent of the “more is more” philosophy of life?

Don’t ask me. I haven’t a clue. I haven’t a clue.

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