Oh the Marvelous, Myriad Morass of Malaprops!

Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are just dumbfounding. But these mistakes, if you catch them, might just strike one of those chords.

And no, I'm not pulling a V with that title. (By the way, I'm also not referencing the weird TV series about the aliens with this comment. It's from a comic that was made into a movie in 2006.)

But first, you might be wondering what exactly a malapropism is. Well, there are two ways to find out. You can go read the play "The Rivals" by Richard Sheridan and intuit it from the text, or you can just look it up, which isn't as much fun.

In the end, a malapropism happens when a person says or writes a word correctly but uses it in the wrong context. My copy of the "Webster Contemporary Dictionary" says a malapropism is "an absurd misuse of words that sound somewhat alike."

One of my favorites from the play will always be the "allegory on the banks of the Nile." Though being a "progeny of learning" is something else entirely, and you had better watch out for those "contagious countries" in Europe.

By the way, "The Rivals" isn't a new play by any means. It was written in the 18th century. I believe it was first performed in the mid-1770s.

On a personal note, I had the pleasure of playing this role in high school, in 1999.*

In an earlier post, I mentioned President "Back" Obama and all the things we take for "granite."

One word: Oops.

So if the number of traffic "fatties" is going down, someone is graduating with a "bachelorette" degree, a teenager has been arrested and charged with "passion" of a controlled substance, or you ask for forgiveness saying you will go "flatulate" yourself... Well I think those speak for themselves.

And before you accuse me of making any of those up, I have to say no, I'm not. Every single one of those is a malapropism I have seen or heard. And they are only a few, choice picks, of the mass of such mistakes I have seen.

These may seem like fairly obvious mistakes, but, as I stated in that aforementioned earlier post, you won't catch them unless you proofread. And even then, some might get through.

Still, even in a potentially serious situation, you can find a moment of hilarity. For instance, near the beginning of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, my mother and I accompanied my father to the emergency room after he had fallen one night. While there, I noticed a sign posted on one of the cabinets about hand washing when entering and "existing" a room.

I would certainly hope a person would be existing when entering such a place. And remaining that way upon exiting would be a plus.

Especially for all those drug "attics" who just have to get their fix, ranging from oxycodone to "plackebos." I couldn't figure out any other way to write that one to show how the person mispronounced it...

Enough with the examples for while.

Even though these mistakes can be funny, just like bad writing and grammar, they reduce the credibility of the writer. That is if a reader even notices the mistake.

What makes malapropisms so very tricky is the simple fact that the word IS similar even though it's incorrect. Take the "bachelorette" degree for example. The correct word would be baccalaureate or maybe bachelor's. But if you weren't sure how to spell the correct word, you might take a guess and then use spell check. That might bring up the other, like the horror story I was once heard about a graduate student writing his thesis on Madame "Ovary."

I've mentioned before that sometimes my brain will simply not a register a mistake because to me, it looks correct. But then fresh eyes find problems.

For example, in my post about the spelling and grammar problems in text language, I accidentally wrote something was "detonating" rather than denoting. My sister caught that one, so I'm just as likely to make these mistakes as anyone else.

I have never claimed that I don't make mistakes when it comes to my writing, but that's why, in my proofreading post, I talked about having fresh eyes look at something I write to make sure it's correct.

In the same way, other people may be reading so quickly, they will simply breeze over a mistake like a malapropism and their brain will read it the way it's supposed to be.

Just like this line a co-worker sent to me once - "Too bee, ore naught (knot) two bee." All those words are spelled correctly and the line still reads correctly, but if you've ever read "Hamlet," you'll know it's wrong. Heck, even if you haven't read "Hamlet," just about everybody knows that line and would recognize it (even in Klingon).

In the end though, it all comes back to looking over the words on the paper or on the screen.

Probably the biggest problem with malapropisms is the simple fact that, for many, spell check won't catch them.

So back to proofreading.

Please, I don't want to be "scent" to jail for pointing out these glitches, but still, nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing replaces proofreading as a way to prevent them.


* Funny story related to my playing Mrs. Malaprop... I was out visiting a university in Arizona, auditioning for music and theater. On the flight back to Virginia, my mother was helping me rehearse my lines. She had the script and was giving me my cues. After the plane landed and we were preparing to disembark, I was surprised to get a Standing O from the other passengers, some of whom told us they spent the whole flight listening.

In the end, I didn't attend that university. I got a better offer from the University of Missouri. I happen to be the sixth member of my family to attend Mizzou, and the fourth to graduate.

Writing Like a Text

I've talked about quality writing before and I've talked about how texting is not English. In that latter post, I mentioned that I had other reasons for not considering texting to be English.

Now I will address some other such reasons. Specifically the lack of grammar, punctuation and capitalization in most texts.

Unlike proper written English, text language often has no, or minimal, punctuation. If you're lucky, you might see a period, maybe a comma. (Though I do have to concede that most people sending texts do have to deal with a character limit.) Most of the time, none at all. However, the exclamation mark seems to be the most common since people sending texts lean toward the dramatic...

There is a little fluke with some punctuation. Some words that should have apostrophes but don't when used in text language actually do create real words, just with very different meanings. For example - won't and wont. One is saying you will not do something, but the other is something you are inclined to do.

As for grammar, well since that falls into divisions that are specifically denoted by punctuation as well as sentence structure, and you're not likely to see much of that either.

Say I want to explain something to you, but I want to make sure it's clear. Secondary clauses, agreement and more. That means, if I want to mark each aspect of the idea, I have to show you the divides. That is done through my grammar and my punctuation working in conjunction, demonstrating my idea.

The lack of these two items alone makes the style of text language almost too fluid to follow. Most of the time, you have to read the message out loud to even figure out what it's saying.

And it really doesn't help that things are rarely capitalized. Not even I, let alone the beginnings of sentences or proper nouns. It's a lower case blur.

Capital letters can help express importance or recognize the status of something. If I'm saying something about myself or about a well-known landmark, I should denote such things by capitalizing the terms, such as Montmartre, Harrisonburg, United Kingdom, Hans Christian Anderson, Clovis, just to name a few...

On top of that, the sheer oddity of spelling in such messages... Very confusing at times. And there are days when I have absolutely no idea what someone is trying to write.

For example, here's a sample of text language I recently saw - "i neva wuda thought in million years she wud do sumn like dis."

If you say it out loud, you can get most of the message, which translates into "I never would have thought in a millions years she would do something like this."

Neva for never, wuda for would have, sumn for something and dis for this.

It seems rather ironic to me that some of these idiosyncrasies of texting are actually the way people speak these days. It really bugs me when I hear someone say "ax" for "ask." And all the dropped t's and d's. It's mountain, not mounian. Bottle, not bodle.

The hardest word in the English language might be "the" or it might be "lollipop," but "dat" doesn't mean you should become sloppy and not say "that" correctly!

Somewhere running around there's a children's book that says avoid the gonnas and wannas. Well, I'm going to find that one because I want to have other people remember to speak clearly. I think it's called "English Can be Fun" by Herbert Prescott.

Ever tried to read one of the poems from "Oh Say Can You Say?" by Dr. Seuss out loud? Now that's a test students should take! Not the Standards of Learning exams that seem to leave every child behind and promote mediocrity.

Enunciate! As I often yell at my nephew who has a nasty tendency to mumble and slur his words so badly I have absolutely no idea what is coming out of his mouth...

So from spoken to written. The beginnings of modern text language appear to have developed in sloppy speaking. As Henry Higgins once said, "In America, they haven't used [English] for years."

How about this one - its messed up that sum ppl miss use stuff like this

OK, that one reads "It's messed up that some people misuse stuff like this." Not that tricky a one until you get to the "miss use."

How about this one - "id advise u to get to no ur son a lil better cause from the sound of it u dont no anything about him."

Lots of common forms of text language there. Translation - "I'd advise you to get to know your son a little better because from the sound of it you don't know anything about him."

Here's a nice long one that might mess you up - i cant belive all they gave tht pos is 6 years he should have gt mre oh well hopfully hell get real aquanted with a big black guy n prison he better hope i dnt c him cause we gta talk if i were him id hide cause i gt people in all the correctional facilitys in virginia.... o n sissy pull the wool out from your eyes he was the CROWED he was the influence he gt all those people to follow him.... n hell most of these people were inosent

Translation - "I can't believe all they gave that piece of shit is six years. He should have got more. Oh well, hopefully he'll get real acquainted with a big black guy in prison. He better hope I don't see him because we got to talk. If I were him, I'd hide because I got people in all the correctional facilities in Virginia. Oh, and sissy, pull the wool out from your eyes. He was the crowd, he was the influence. He got all those people to follow him. And hell, most of these people were innocent."

Took a couple of times reading that one to make sense of the mangle. And that specific example is very good to see the degeneration of spelling. Inosent for innocent. Aquanted for acquainted.

Makes me think of that old e-mail joke where the Germans wanted everyone to speak German, not English, but when the other countries wouldn't agree to it, the Germans insisted on various changes and English almost got changed back its Germanic roots in the end anyway... I still have a copy of that e-mail somewhere. I shall have to find it...

But I specifically remember things like getting rid of the hard "c" and replacing it with a "k." Or getting rid of the silent e... Most of the rule changes affected writing... There were numerous examples in the original message. I just can't remember all of them.

And exclaiming "Y'all come back, y'hear!" Or asking someone "D'jeat?" (If you don't know what that second one is, it's "did you eat?")

"Enuf already!!" Are we truly becoming so lazy that we can't even speak, or write, in such a way as to make ourselves clearly and easily understood?

Maybe I'm just plain old-fashioned, but I find the degradation of English to be a disturbing and disheartening transition...

To put it bluntly, I believe texting is becoming the English version of Pig Latin or even Creole.

I'd be most "gr8ful" to never have to see such language again (license plates notwithstanding). People really "shud chek" what they're writing and saying because who knows "whut" you'll see or hear next.

Posting Date - January 30, 2011