When I was in seventh grade, we had a language arts workbook that asked us to fill in the blanks with one of four words. The approaches varied, but the aim was to give students a sense of the range of our language’s vocabulary and how to use it. OK, this may be a little off topic, but I remember a sentence that instructed us to mean “experate.” It’s not expulsion or expatriation, it’s expatriation. I don’t know if I needed that lesson. But these exercises left me with the feeling that our language is a wonderful zoo of words flying around, many of which I didn’t yet know. I was excited to learn them.
But my daughters (currently in 4th and 7th grade at a solid school) tell me they’ve never been taught anything like Ye Olde Language Arts. Instead, they are taught more general things, such as how to structure paragraphs and instructions for writing “expressively.” I have nothing but respect for their teachers, but the modern curriculum they are given to study does not convey the sense that English, and by extension all languages, is a wonder.
I worry that my children will be left with the natural but unconscious belief that language is just words strung together. To think that way is to miss out on wonder and great stories. There is one word for every word, like every living thing and every nation. It’s not just Latin words like “expatate.”
Random example: the word “business”. This came to mind recently when I was watching an antique 1929 musical talkie of his. I do not recommend “So Long, Letty” unless you share with me an unhealthy fascination with the cultural detritus of a distant past. But in one song, the main character uses the word in a completely different way while singing about his business, reminding me how much of a story the word has to tell.
Let’s go. “Business” begins with “busy,” but the first mystery about busy is why it’s spelled that way. We are so used to seeing it that we may not realize how strange it is. You would think this word would be pronounced “booshy” or “boujee.” In fact, it was the hard “oo” sound in Old English that is now used in French words like lune for “moon.” The “oo” sound may change to “ee” or “ih.” I once knew someone who lived in suburban New Jersey who pronounced “shoes” with almost no “woo” sound, so my Martian transcriptionist You might have thought your friend might be saying something more like “shizu.” It actually sounded pretty normal. That’s how you go from being drunk to being “busy.”
So, how can we realize “business”? In the past, this word meant a state of being really busy, in the sense that happiness is a state of being happy. A Scottish poem called “The King’s Book” from around 1400 describes a “little squirrel full of busyness.” I also heard the opposite: “It’s not busy.”
However, today this word is not often thought of as meaning a busy state. That’s also because we pronounce it “busyness” rather than “busyness.” Freed from that aural connection, the meaning continues to float freely, but if you squint, you’ll notice that in sentences like, “Stop working on Stranger Things and get to work!” You will feel the original meaning.
Basically, business is about making money. Yes, the office is a busy place. However, earning money is a very special way to be busy. The process of narrowing down a general category to a specific type is called semantic narrowing. The word “member” followed a similar path. Originally it referred to a part of the body (not just any specific part that comes to mind), but it has since come to refer to other narrower types of body parts, such as people who are part of an organization or club.
Endless changes and relationships you never thought possible. Work when you’re busy, be lazy when you’re slow, what you know and admit. Every word started from a different place than where we are now. But sadly, some people study K through 12 and learn nothing about how it happens.
Some words are abstract. We don’t think about it all together, saying, “It doesn’t matter to you,” but this is a strange expression. It does not refer to business in the dictionary sense. That’s not something you should be busy with. Just as “goodbye” began with “God be with you,” my parents playfully used “nuña” as a contraction for “none of your business.” The situation progressed even further.
After that, business came to be used more abstractly, with the old expression “like someone else’s business,” which means “to an extreme degree.” This is where “So Long Letty” comes into play.
Letty runs a beauty shop, which was considered racy at a time when ordinary women were just starting to wear makeup. She sings about her own customers:
you should see them
Once Letty gets over them
oh what do i do with them
It doesn’t matter to anyone!
But how does this refer to business in the first place? Also consider “Let him handle business!” Or an animal “doing work.” None of these uses have anything to do with capitalism.
I hope I don’t get frustrated (I mean it lasts a long time). But the basics of linguistics – how sounds actually work, why sentences come out the way they do, how language changes over time, and how children learn language There is no reason why it should only be taught to college students who intentionally explore it, such as how to learn. We teach school children about different types of change, such as history and evolution. Why do they come across every time they open their mouths to speak? I highly recommend Of the Lexicon, it’s inquisitive and even smells good.
Whether we like it or not, AI is poised to reduce the urgency for students to learn how to structure sentences and paragraphs. From now on, schoolchildren will be able to call up fluent prose at any time with the push of a button. A modest suggestion: Could some of the time traditionally devoted to teaching writing be devoted to teaching language science instead?
