ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language, 1989 - 1990 (Part 2).

Ostrava, 1989.

Having resolved to resume contact with my Czech acquaintance Ladislav in the post-Velvet Revolution, pre-Internet winter of 1989-90, I counted myself fortunate to still have his postal address. It had somehow survived unscathed when most of my belongings were stolen in Madrid the previous November. In January, I took pen in hand to congratulate him on the wonderful transformations in Czechoslovakia.

In those archaic times, mail could take ten days or more each way, back and forth across the Atlantic, and so it wasn’t overly alarming when no immediate response was forthcoming. Perhaps the seismic shift in Czechoslovakia had impacted the recovering country’s mail carriers, or more likely, Ladislav’s obvious connections to a now discredited ruling order were such that he wasn’t in a good position to answer.

Granted, there’d been almost no violence during a remarkably peaceful, orderly changeover in Czechoslovakia, hence the revolution’s “velvet” descriptive tag, and yet … who really knew? It was a long way off, scores were being settled in various ways, and communications were not instantaneous like today. Even phone calls could be difficult to place to a country where the totalitarian structure had routinely monitored them only a short time before.

Twice more in early 1990 I wrote to Ladislav, each time enclosing souvenirs from Indiana and Kentucky, including American beer coasters for use in his Tiki Bar, but still there was only silence in return. Soon an entire year had passed since our chat, and the usual stressors of everyday living gradually displaced the glories of my 1989 journey to Europe. Back into the workaday grind I sank, and memories of Ladislav grew increasingly dim.

One day in July, my roomie phoned to announce that the mail had included a letter from Czechoslovakia. Upon closer examination, the return address was mysterious, and the message inside, written by an English-speaking friend of Ladislav’s daughter from a small town near Ostrava, was unexpected.

She thanked me for the letters and gifts, but regretted to say that Ladislav had died of a heart attack, aged 65, in July – of 1989! Remarkably, his sudden death had come less than a month after I departed Ostrava for a wedding in Prague, and then to Moscow.

I was crestfallen to realize that he had been denied the chance to witness the change he’d been so sure was imminent. With sadness, I drove to Sportstime Pizza for a few rounds of Pilsner Urquell as an impromptu memorial.

---

Still reeling from the bad news, I arrived home the very next day to find yet another letter for me. This time it was a big manila envelope from an organization called Education for Democracy (EFD), and inside was the information I’d supposedly requested, which was fine, except I’d never, ever heard of EFD and assuredly had not asked for anything to be sent to me, but just the same, quite soon my heart was racing with excitement.

This unsolicited letter described the outline of an unprecedented opportunity for Americans to volunteer for placement in Czechoslovakia as conversational English instructors. No licenses or credentials were required, although previous teaching experience of any sort was a plus. It was a development made possible by the cooperation of American and Czech academics, who sought to take advantage of the Velvet Revolution’s opening by bringing people together ... to learn and speak English.

The words, the ideas, the sentiments – all of it had been discussed with Ladislav that night at the Tiki Bar in Ostrava, with shots of Havana Club in hand. Now with the providential mailing spread before me on the table, my immediate reaction was to thank Ladislav profusely for referring me to the organization, and yet there was a small, nagging problem: He was dead.

Not only was he dead, but he had died five months before the abrupt success of the Velvet Revolution made the EFD program and others like it possible. He could not have known, and yet there was no rational explanation for the unsolicited mailing. It made me pause. I’m not the sort to believe in ghosts, but there are exceptions for everything, and this one handily fit the bill.

My lethargy jolted, I wrote back to Ladislav’s daughter, thanking her for telling me about his death, and then phoned the EFD office (in Mobile, Alabama, of all places) to put my name on the list. Planning immediately began for teaching English in Czechoslovakia in 1991. It was to be the fruition of a dream for me, and in my addled mind, albeit irrationally, I knew Ladislav was the man to thank for it.

---

In the end, rationality was restored, in the form of a telephone call a week or so later from a Floridian with whom I’d stayed in touch after we traveled together in a group to the USSR in 1987.

A teacher himself, he remembered that I’d been a substitute and had an interest in the East Bloc, and when he caught wind of the EFD program’s advent, he’d taken it on himself to send the organizers my address. In turn, they’d forwarded me the manila envelope, and its arrival a day after learning of Ladislav’s passing was a mere coincidence, nothing more.

But as you can imagine, it always will be more than a simple fluke to me. These events rekindled my fighting spirit, and for the following twelve months, working two jobs and saving as much money as possible, an expedition took shape.

In early September, 1991, I was on the ground in Košice, the second largest city in what now is independent Slovakia, almost the farthest point east in what was then Czechoslovakia, and a very long way from both Prague and Ostrava. My assignment was to teach English to medical personnel in the city’s university hospital.

And so, Ladislav, here’s a tipple to your memory. It’s a shame you didn’t live to see it, but the plot worked out just the way you predicted.

Thanks.

(This story was originally published in October, 2011. This winter I'll be digitizing the slides from the time of the teaching gig in Košice)

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Recent columns:

November 28: ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language, 1989 - 1990 (Part 1).

November 21: ON THE AVENUES: Rest in peace, Kevin Hammersmith. Eight years later, you're very much missed.

November 14: ON THE AVENUES: The famous mishap in Madrid, November, 1989.

November 7: ON THE AVENUES: Pay attention, students, because voter turnout went UP in New Albany.

ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language, 1989 - 1990 (Part 1).

Ostrava, 1989.

Ladislav was a trim, polite, vaguely aristocratic older gentleman who lived in a peculiarly oversized flat amid a modern suburb of Ostrava, the epicenter of communist Czechoslovakia’s steel making and coal mining industries. If I correctly recall the circumstances, he was a retired educator, discretely moonlighting as an English tutor for my immigrant Czech friend’s mother.

We had been invited to his place for a social evening, perhaps because in that particular socialist neighborhood, visiting Americans were rather rare in 1989.

Knowing there would be drinks served, we didn’t dare drive, choosing instead to board the handy tram, and wind through the industrial landscape of the municipality. Ladislav answered the door promptly, and after pleasantries and the ritual exchange of small gifts, he escorted us back outside and downstairs, to a semi-detached building with garage doors.

Right there in landlocked, socialist Central Europe, taking up precious square meters normally reserved for a Czech male’s single most prized possession (his Škoda automobile), Ladislav had constructed a genuine Tiki Bar, complete with bamboo and plasticized tropical plants. But his equatorial showplace, while initially puzzling, actually made perfect sense in the Bloc’s skewed international scheme of things.

Ladislav had traveled to Cuba as part of a cultural exchange program, and the journey made a deep impression on him. Cuban “guest” workers lived and worked in Ostrava; one afternoon, I drank beer with one of them. Like most Czechs, Ladislav grasped the irony of the enduring blockade that kept Cuban goods, which were available throughout both European geopolitical camps, safely out of American hands, and so a bottle of Havana Club rum was sitting on his back bar alongside an array of Cohibas, all earmarked for the occasion of my visit. It was a reverse black market, and a much appreciated gesture.

Sufficient storage space remained in the garage for Ladislav’s bicycles, for he was an avid cyclist. Apart from his set of metal dentures, and what appeared to be a rather hopeless nicotine addiction, he looked the lean and ruddy part of an athlete. The countryside was hilly and rolling, with mountainous areas nearby: Jeseniky to the west, and Beskydy to the southeast. Apart from Ostrava’s wretched air quality, it appeared to be appropriate terrain for challenging riding.

Specific memories of this long evening at Ladislav’s Ostrava Cubano Tiki Bar are fleeting. The revel extended so far into the cool, wet June night that we came very close to missing the last tram to the Motyčka home, located all the way across town, adjacent to the sprawling Nové hutě Klementa Gottwalda – the steel mill named for Czechoslovakia’s indigenous, long-dead, personal Stalin.

However, one part of our conversation never left my mind in all the years to follow, because after all his other guests except for my escorts had offered their goodbyes, it emerged that Ladislav – whose lifestyle plainly suggested an access to privileges of the sort enjoyed by party members – was disinterested in the past. Rather, he wanted to talk about the future.

He engaged me at length about hope, openness and reform, and about Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new” USSR, with glasnost and perestroika breaking out within the bastion of Czechoslovakia’s imperial overlord to the east. He was highly complimentary about my desire to visit the remainder of his country outside the boundaries of Prague, and thought that when westerners did so, and were able to meet normal working Czechs and Slovaks, artificial political barriers irrevocably fell no matter what his or any other government might say about it.

Ladislav, who of course spoke perfect British English, passionately believed language aptitude to be the key to furthering the fall of impediments to good relations between the diverse peoples of the world. He described his vision of the coming time when Americans exactly like me would come to Eastern Europe as English language instructors, and by doing so, further the process of reform and regeneration.

Granted, it was 1989, and the rigid and toadying Husak regime would never permit such linguistic and cultural incursions, but Ladislav was certain that Gorbachev’s revitalization movement eventually would spill out from the Soviet Union, into the satellite nations, and when it did … well, when it finally did, he fully expected to see me again, this time as a fellow teacher, working alongside him in his homeland.

I enthusiastically agreed, dumbstruck at the ease with which Ladislav, a complete stranger, managed to read my mind. While never an accredited teacher, I’d dabbled in education as a substitute. Back home in a file cabinet was a bulging folder of information on various ways to get “English as a second language” teaching certification. My long-held fascination with East-Central Europe was a given. How did he fathom my innermost thoughts?

We said our goodbyes, and a few days later, it was time to depart Ostrava on a roundabout journey to Moscow for Russian language instruction of my own. Weeks passed, life and travel went on, and by late November, I was home again in Indiana, watching CNN with amazement as the last bits of the Berlin Wall fell, and shortly thereafter, tearfully gladdened when the Velvet Revolution swept Czechoslovakia.

The playwright and intellectual Vaclav Havel, whom Ladislav had described to me in glowing terms as the impetus for Charter 77 and a hero of the opposition, suddenly became president of Czechoslovakia. It was incredible to imagine that Havel had been imprisoned as recently as April of 1989, just before I entered the country. Truly, all things seemed newly possible, and as a new year of 1990 dawned, I started wondering what Ladislav had to say about it.

I’d write to him, and find out.

(Part 2 next week. This story was originally published here in October, 2011)

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Recent columns:

November 21: ON THE AVENUES: Rest in peace, Kevin Hammersmith. Eight years later, you're very much missed.

November 14: ON THE AVENUES: The famous mishap in Madrid, November, 1989.

November 7: ON THE AVENUES: Pay attention, students, because voter turnout went UP in New Albany.

October 31: ON THE AVENUES: In which Team Gahan's looming appointment with unemployment is examined.

"How can someone who doesn’t speak the language possibly have an regional accent? Yet Italian-Americans do."

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/LC-USZC4-1584

I've seen this photograph many times before, and it always affects me: Little Italy, New York City, circa 1900. This article will be of particular interest to anyone of Italian heritage, although music lovers might like it, too. After all, languages are quite musical. Open your ears, and just listen.

How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained, by Dan Nosowitz (Atlas Obscura)

A linguistic exploration.

“Don’t eat gabagool, Grandma,” says Meadow Soprano on an early episode of The Sopranos, perhaps the most famous depiction of Jersey Italian culture in the past few decades. “It’s nothing but fat and nitrates.” The pronunciation of “gabagool,” a mutation of the word “capicola,” might surprise a casual viewer, although it and words like it should be familiar to viewers of other New Jersey–based shows like Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey, where food often drives conversation. The casts are heavily Italian-American, but few of them can actually speak, in any real way, the Italian language. Regardless, when they talk about food, even food that’s widely known by the non-Italian population, they often use a specific accent.

And it’s a weird one. “Mozzarella” becomes something like “mutzadell.” “Ricotta” becomes “ree-goat.” “Prosciutto” becomes “pruh-zhoot.” There is a mangling of the language in an instantly identifiable way: Final syllables are deleted, certain consonants are swapped with others, certain vowels are mutated in certain places.

Most immigrant groups in the United States retain certain words and phrases from the old language even if the modern population can’t speak it. But for people outside those groups, and even, often, inside them, it’s next to impossible to pick out a specific regional accent in the way a Jewish American says “challah” or a Korean-American says “jjigae.” How can someone who doesn’t speak the language possibly have an regional accent?

Yet Italian-Americans do ...

Language in the Balkans is Balkanized just like the Balkans.

Tito, Sarajevo -- 1987.

“This soup is as cold as the sea!" But he was not shouting at the soup. He was shouting at the Turks, at the Venetians, at the Austrians, at the French, and at the Serbs (if he was Croat) or at the Croats (if he was a Serb).”
― Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

When I see what passes for the English languages these days on social media ... well, our own Balkanization of language and thought seems fairly well advanced.

What Language Do People Speak in the Balkans, Anyway? by Dan Nosowitz (Atlas Obscura)

No one can seem to agree.

IMAGINE A SITUATION IN WHICH an American defendant hires a British lawyer for a trial in an American courtroom. The accused then demands that a British interpreter be found. British-American legal interpreters are hard to find, so the demand could delay the case for years, possibly even long enough that the case has to be simply thrown out due to the statute of limitations—despite the fact that, obviously, a British lawyer is perfectly capable of being understood in an American courtroom.

This actually happens on a regular basis in the countries that once made up Yugoslavia. The language situation in the Balkans is so unusual that there is no consensus, either among native speakers or linguistic researchers, about what to even call the … thing people speak in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Outside the region, it’s usually referred to as “Serbo-Croatian,” but neither linguists nor the people who actually speak it like to call it that. When asked what language they speak as part of a census, some people in the Balkans simply mocked the question, writing “our language” or, its insensitivity probably owing to distance, “Eskimo.”

For 1,500 years, language in the Balkans has been a galvanizing force, a source of political identification, a blunt tool, a rallying cry. There are languages like it, but no language is treated in quite the same way ...

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "What does the word ‘whore’ actually mean?"

"Language is an important battle ground in the fight for social equality. As the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued, ‘language constitutes our world, it doesn’t just record it or label it’. Language is fluid and malleable; it drives social attitudes, rather than simply expressing them." 
-- Dr. Kate Lister

To begin, the author and her work.

Kate Lister started the Whores of Yore project in 2015. The project aims to give voice to the voiceless, to start a much-needed conversation on the history of sexuality, the plight of modern sex workers, and, ultimately, to extract the prudish stick from the arse of society. The archive provides a platform for academics, activists, sex workers, and archivists to share their experience, research and stories around sexuality and sex work.

This essay is worth reading in its entirety. I'll try to sketch the parameters.

“Tis Pity She’s a Whore”: the ‘Whore’ in Whores of Yore, by Dr. Kate Lister (The Whores of Yore)

Germaine Greer once said she would ‘rather be called a whore than a human being’; but, what does the word ‘whore’ actually mean? Where has it come from, and what does someone have to do to earn that particular title? Why was Joan of Arc, who died a virgin, called the ‘French Whore’? And why was Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, attacked as the English Whore’? The revolutionaries called Marie Antoinette the ‘Austrian Whore’; Anne Boleyn was the ‘Great Whore’ and Air America host Randi Rhodes came under fire for calling Hillary Clinton a ‘big whore’ in the 2016 American elections. Perhaps we think we know perfectly well what we mean should we ever choose to drop the w-bomb, but the word is historically and culturally complex. This simple monosyllable is loaded with over a thousand years of attempting to control and shame women by stigmatising their sexuality.

Diving into the deep end ...

The truth is that I should not have used ‘whore’ in whores of yore; it’s not my word, and if you’re not a sex worker, it’s not yours either. It’s a term of abuse that sex workers hear every day by those seeking to devalue them and shame them. So, why did I call this project whores of yore? ‘Whore’ is a very old word, with a complex and powerful history, and that’s what I wanted to bring to this project. To my ears, whore is an archaic, slightly humorous word, like strumpet and trollop – but, that simply isn’t the reality for many (and a mistake on my part). I have had feedback from many sex workers questioning my use of the term, and for a while I gave serious consideration to changing it. But, the history of that word is an important one, and one that I want to retain, and emphasise. Debate around what ‘whore’ actually means is a conversation worth having.

The word is so old that its precise origins are lost in the mists of time, but it can be traced to the Proto-Germanic ‘horon’, or "one who desires". It also links to the Old Norse hora "adulteress," Danish hore, Swedish hora, Dutch hoer, and Old High German huora. Going back even further to Proto-Indo-European language (the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages), whore has roots in ‘Ka’, meaning ‘to like, desire.’ Ka is a base that has produced words in other languages for ‘lover’, such as the Latin carus ‘dear’; Old Irish cara ‘friend;’ and the Old Persian kama ‘desire.’

‘Whore’ is not a universal word; the indigenous Aborigines, First Nation people and native Hawaiians have no word for ‘whore’, or indeed prostitution, as they do not share the West's shaming of sexuality. It is interesting too that 'whore' is almost exclusively a feminine insult. I accept that 'man-whore' has now entered modern language, and certainly 'son of a whore' has been an insult historically directed at men; but 'whore' is absolutely an insult directed at women. But, 'whore' is not the exclusive preserve of men, to hurl at unsuspecting women at will; women have called each other whores all throughout history. Historical court records are full of defamation cases of woman calling each other 'whores' and all manner of other sexual insults. Tudor women were regularly brought before the courts for defaming other women as 'hedge whores', 'begger whores', 'drunken bitch whores', 'black mouthed, witch whores'; and in 1627, Isabel Yaxley complained of a neighbour alledging she was a 'whore' who could be 'fucked for a pennyworth of fish'.

(snip)

John Webster’s The White Devil (1612) explores narratives around badly behaved women. In one memorable scene, Monticelso defines what a whore is ... Monticelso doesn’t admit it, but what is driving this rant is a fear of women, fear that they can wield power over men; they can ‘teach man wherein he is imperfect.’ Here, whore is not a sex worker, she is a woman who has authority over a man, and must be shamed into silence at all costs. Historically, ‘whore’ had been used to attack women who have upset the status quo and asserted themselves, usually in an attempt to reassert sexual control and dominance over her. But, unlike the word ‘prostitute’, whore is not tied to a profession, but rather to a perceived moral state. Which is why many trailblazing women, with no connection to the sex trade, were attacked as ‘whores’; Mary Wollstonecraft, Phulan Devi, even Margaret Thatcher were all labelled whores by those who were angered at their power. Maybe 'whore' has less to do with sex than we think.

Let's end this edition of Shane's Excellent New Words with a number.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: On beer lists, beer-speak, and beer geeksplaining.

Two decades later, Pints ... and Union.

Once upon a time I was highly visible in beer circles. Then the beer circles moved on, and so did I.

For a month or two, this bothered me, until I began to feel a great weight removed from my shoulders, inaugurating a return to the simple pleasures of drinking better beer.

The adjective "better" is necessary, as I've yet to rewind the film all the way to college daze, which is to say I'm as deaf to debates about "best mass-market swill" as ever before. It's my sandbox, and I've drawn a nice line across it.    

Three years after the Great NABC Schism, I'm just an anonymous older man sitting atop a bar stool and playing dumb, which isn't altogether hard if you've actively avoided keeping up with 6,000-plus American breweries, hundreds of foreign craft start-ups, all the imports that came before, and the tens of thousands of beers annually produced between them.

I still enjoy talking about beer, and very soon, beer-speak once again will be part of my job description. To brush up, there has been some good reading to do.

In terms of beer-speak, the basic universal language stays the same, while dialects branch out in all directions. Some of these are generational. I'll be 58 in three weeks, and my formative beer education came 25-30 years ago during pre-historic times.

Old fogies had books. Today's youth learned beer on the Internet amid a proliferation of bells and whistles. We can understand each other, but at times our choice of vocabulary baffles us both. As noted philosopher Axl Rose once observed, "All we need is just a little patience."

I get out less often than before, and even if I hadn't resolved to blend into the woodwork, bar staffs turn over dozens of times in a year. It's always someone new, and so my new favorite pastime is questioning my server or bartender about the beers listed on the wall.

It's not a cruel hobby at all, although it might be. I'm very low-key in my inquiries, and grade on the curve. My tipping game remains strong. Service is service, and there's no docking gratuities for lack of knowledge, because experience has shown how difficult it is to keep informed even when it's your only job -- as with beer buyers, writers and the like.

The task is far harder on the shop floor. Invariably, they try their best, with often bewildering results.

As for those variable draft selections of the contemporary era, wherein twenty taps spin constantly like the symbols on a slot machine, it should be obvious that a considerable premium is attached to any staffer who somehow can make sense of the kaleidoscope by explaining a different beer each visit in plain language to customers who don't wish to consult their electronic devices.

By extension, there might be an old-school paper list or similarly styled reference guide for the non-electronic. The problem in this instance is the challenge of revising and updating a printed list in the present age of Tilt-A-Whirl taps.

Perhaps the best printed beer list is one that steers a middle ground between simple verbal explanations (it's bitter, or malty, or sour) and explications of the micro-climate of New Zealand hop fields, or the theory and practice of protein rests.

Last night there was a social media discussion about the best way to organize a beer list at a pub in terms of information for beginners. Style? Country? Alphabetically? Sheer whim?

Left unspoken was the most fundamental assumption, this being how one decides which beers to carry and how to manage the inventory. All session-strength? Single hop? Only those breweries coming into existence in the time it took to install the draft system?

There are no right or wrong answers. For a business, it's about what moves profitably -- especially with perishable items like beer. The conventional wisdom in 2018 is that every consumer coming through the door demands constantly revolving beer choices, and regular readers know I've come to differ with this approach in spite of playing my erstwhile part in pioneering it.

With greater stability of inventory comes the chance to be better informed, and to cultivate deeper appreciation. At least that's my personal viewpoint, and whatever else might be said about it, there's a niche in the marketplace for such an approach.

As this pertains to information, it suggests a back-to-basics approach. For me as a returnee, it means foregoing a role I once played with gusto.

2003.

  
It's just my opinion, but beer snobbery surely has jumped the shark. Even at the pinnacle of my powers -- "no Bud Light for you, wanker" -- I was no match for today's beer elite.

Someone long since beat me to the punch line.

Geeksplaining is like mansplaining, only instead of a male telling a female something she already knows, it’s someone with intense knowledge of a limited subject telling exhaustive details of said subject to someone who will never, ever care. Ever.

It is my goal that we'll avoid institutional geeksplaining at Pints&union. Naturally, what beer lovers say among themselves is another story. Whatever ultimate form the beer list takes, it will be allowed to evolve, casually and conversationally.

Sorry, but the beer list will not be housed in a three-ring binder (above).

I'm amazed at the myth and legend surrounding this two-decade old grandiose notion, which eventually ceased not so much owing to the advent of cyberspace, but because it became a full-time job just to keep the binder updated.

In retrospect, the three-ring binder beer list at the Public House was my "Dark Side of the Moon." How do you make another album after that?

But Pink Floyd did, and so will we. Stay tuned for further information as the opening of the pub draws nearer, and thanks for reading.

Golden oldie, no less vital: "Attacking the Language Bias in Transportation Engineering."

Cartoon by Ian Lockwood. 

My advice stays the same.

Print this 2013 article on card stock. Roll it up and add a rubber band. The next time Pinocchio Rosenbarger rises at a public meeting to defend a Gahanian campaign finance clip job, apply the article to Rosenbarger's cheek in a vigorous upward arc.

Congratulations. You'll have struck a blow against auto-centrism in New Albany.

Attacking the Language Bias in Transportation Engineering, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

“Improvement.” “Upgrade.” “Level of Service.” The traffic engineering profession is full of buzzwords laden with meaning — and, for the most part, the embedded meaning is something to the effect of “cars are king.”

Ian Lockwood, P.E., has been working in the engineering profession for 30 years. He served as the chief transportation official for the city of West Palm Beach, Florida, before joining the engineering firm AECOM as a consultant and completing a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard.

Lockwood is on a mission to reform the way his profession uses language. I got a chance to sit down with him last week at the Congress for New Urbanism conference in Salt Lake City. Here’s what he had to say ...

As New Albanians ruefully recall, it was called the East Main Street IMPROVEMENT Project.

AS: Can you give us some examples of biased words?

IL: Probably the one we hear the most is “improvement.” When a conventional traffic engineer talks about an improvement, often it might mean a widening. It’s hard to argue against an “improvement,” because it’s a subjectively labeled word and it implies it’s getting better, even though it might not be getting better for all the user groups. It contains a bias for the automobile user over and above the other folks.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Crimes against language, annoying words and how not to be #blessed.

Welcome to another mind-expanding installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

Around this time each week, wails of self-flagellation and angst begin seeping out of the bunker's down-low ventilation ducts.

Why all these newfangled words?

Why not the old, familiar, comforting words, the ones that sufficed back during the glory days, long before inexplicably naked greed kicked in like a bond-issue-percentage speedball, knocking you back into the turnbuckles but feeling oh so fine, and now, as the Great Elongated and Exasperated Obfuscator of comic book series fame (can Disney World be far behind?) you teach detailed principles of banking to bankers, at least when not otherwise occupied making healthy deposits into your own account?

Thankfully, even if one toils for the Bright Sun of the 21st Century, a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. 

No, not at all. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys reaping handsome remuneration to suppress information, squelch community dialogue and flee the council chamber before being forced to endure dissenting words uttered by grubby martini-swilling constituents, can benefit from this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, as we contemplate TIFs, CPIs, IUDs and IOUs, all we really have is time -- and the opportunity to learn something, if we're so inclined.

This week, crimes against language -- and no, I'm not speaking about the New Albany City Hall web page.

Totes annoying: words that should be banned, by Justin Myers (The Guardian)

The internet is the source of many crimes against language – and these are among the worst offenders

We all have a watershed word – the word that tells us it’s all over, that the internet has won, and our youth is gone for ever. For me, it was Yolo, or You Only Live Once. It was born, I used it, and rooms fell eerily silent as soon as it left my mouth. Yolo belonged to the others, the younger people; it carbon-dated me and I was envious.

You might call it snobbery but, for me, every delicious new bit of slang reminds me I’m being left behind, along with VHS cassettes, legwarmers and Lady Gaga. Susie Dent, Countdown’s resident lexicographer, tells me I should lighten up. “Slang has always moved this way,” she says. “From Cockney rhyming slang to codes swapped among highwaymen, they’re tribal badges of identity, bonding mechanisms designed to distinguish the initiated, and to keep strangers out.” The linguist and author David Crystal agrees: “Remember the old maxim – the chief use of slang is to show you’re one of the gang.”

Fine: I’m not one of the gang. But surely even the experts would admit there are some words that urgently need to be retired, or at least restricted to people under 25? “If a term becomes too popular, its irritant value is ramped up,” Dent agrees. “The impulse is then to replace it with something else.”

This, then, is my highly subjective glossary of words that should be binned in 2017 – the most annoying, the most misused, the most broken. Is one of these your “Yolo”? It’s a hotly contested field.

On language, it's Wolfe versus Chomsky and Darwin. Pass the popcorn, and perhaps a martini.

Evolution, or Elton John?

Has Donald Trump taken a position? What about Jeff Gahan?

Bonfire of the theories: Wolfe battles Chomsky over roots of language, by Edward Helmore (The Guardian)

The arcane study of language has a new literary entrant: the famed New Journalism author Tom Wolfe. Never one to back away from a fight, Wolfe, 85, has picked two disputes in his new book, The Kingdom of Speech – one with Charles Darwin and a second with linguist Noam Chomsky, 87, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

... “The more I thought about it, the less Darwin’s doctrine held, up in my opinion,” he said. Evolutionary development of Homo sapiens, in particular, “drifts into periods where there is no evidence”. Those doubts segued into doubts about the origin of language – man’s singular gift – that he believes was not the product of evolution but a man-made tool.

“My contention is that language is not the result of evolution but essentially a verbal trick that was invented by human beings. It’s a memory aid – a mnemonic – that enables human beings to store away a piece of information and compare it to a new piece of information and draw conclusions.” No other species has a similar ability, making it the secret of our dominance as a species and Wolfe writes: “Humans are pretty pathetic physically. If you weigh 150 pounds and you come up against a 150-pound butterfly in battle, you’re done for. It must be 10 feet tall. But, with planning, humans control every animal on Earth. We’re very generous – we even create animal preserves where wild animals can live. But, oh boy, if they cross the line of the reserve, they’re done for.”

Wolfe then moves on to Chomsky ...

Hello. They're crashes. Don’t call them accidents anymore. Thank you.

Janette Sadik-Khan, author of Street Fight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, tweeted a link to this article.

It's no "accident" that we've excused crashes for decades. Our word choices matter – let's adopt the language of life.

"Roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers."

Words indeed matter, as when my council representative imagines he belongs to a "progressive" political party.

It’s No Accident: Advocates Want to Speak of Car ‘Crashes’ Instead, by Matt Richtel (New York Times)

Roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers.

Just don’t call them accidents anymore.

That is the position of a growing number of safety advocates, including grass-roots groups, federal officials and state and local leaders across the country. They are campaigning to change a 100-year-old mentality that they say trivializes the single most common cause of traffic incidents: human error.

“When you use the word ‘accident,’ it’s like, ‘God made it happen,’ ” Mark Rosekind, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said at a driver safety conference this month at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“In our society,” he added, “language can be everything.”

Almost all crashes stem from driver behavior like drinking, distracted driving and other risky activity. About 6 percent are caused by vehicle malfunctions, weather and other factors.

How to say "My hovercraft is full of eels" in many languages.

This may be the most important link you've ever seen at NA Confidential, so use it sparingly.

My hovercraft is full of eels in many languages

You're welcome. A few examples ...

French:
Mon aéroglisseur est plein d'anguilles

Japanese:
私のホバークラフトは鰻でいっぱいです
(Watashi no hobākurafuto wa unagi de ippai desu.)

Lakota Sioux:
Iyéčhiŋkiŋyaŋka čha kiŋyáŋ mitȟáwa kiŋ hoká ožúla!

They're not car "accidents. They're car "crashes."

The gist is changing the way we use language, so as to change the way we view reality.

Families for Safe Streets has launched a campaign to get people to say “crash” instead of “accident.” They want to emphasize that many, if not most, traffic fatalities are preventable—not inevitable occurrences.

It would help. It also would be beneficial for our process of issuing drivers licenses to require prospective drivers to walk a few blocks in this or any other city, just so it can be seen how badly we drive. I don't exclude myself from this assessment; I've had my share of lapses. Perhaps it's of less significance in the countryside, where the odds of causing harm to another are less.

But here in the city, speed and recklessness kill. Can we be honest about it with the language we use? And, shouldn't we harness better design to discourage the likelihood of crashes, accidents, and general auto-borne mayhem?

Why We Say 'Car Accident,' and Why We Need to Stop: The term suggests fatal crashes are inevitable and beyond our control—they're not, by Sarah Goodyear (City Lab)

... Most people in the United States are compelled by the design of the places where they live to drive nearly everywhere. They are locked into a system where the car is a required tool for fully enfranchised citizenship—the only sensible and convenient way to get to work, to the store, to the doctor’s office, to school.

Anyone who has driven more than a few thousand miles in his or her lifetime has had the unnerving experience of a near miss. Get going fast enough, which is precisely what cars enable you to do, and even a momentary lapse of attention can have you drifting onto the shoulder, or making an unsafe turn. Drive hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and the potential for error mounts.

On some level, we all know that driving is a dangerous activity, probably the most dangerous thing that the average person does in a lifetime. We know that every time we turn the key in the ignition, we are powering up a machine that gives us a stupendous and potentially deadly power. But most of us are in no position to choose another mode of transportation. Most of us must accept the responsibility of piloting that machine as the baseline price of admission to America.

Reframing language so that we can talk about safe streets.

I'm just trying to imagine a world in which Chris Morris comprehends any of this.

Hunter S. Thompson on sportswriting: "It keeps a man busy and requires no thought at all."

Meanwhile, from the Pacific Northwest comes some very useful information that will never be seen in the local newspaper.

Let’s Talk About Safe Streets (Seattle Greenways)

Language is powerful.

The language we use everyday has the ability to change how people think about the world. Our ideas about reframing the language of traffic violence are starting to take root nationally! ...

... This handy cheat sheet distills the our knowledge of what language resonates and what doesn’t.

Public meetings are often when things can get heated. At these meetings, our leaders have learned that it is critical to talk about hyperlocal issues using your neighborhood’s language, and to focus on people and their needs (quiet street to raise a family, walking to the bus stop, being safe dropping off their kids at school, etc), rather than on modes of transportation.

Two must reads: The myth of religious violence, and why there’s no such thing as Islamic State.

It's impossible to reduce this "long read" of Karen Armstrong's into a single convenient pull, but I'll take a stab at it.

The myth of religious violence (Guardian)

... After a bumpy beginning, secularism has undoubtedly been valuable to the west, but we would be wrong to regard it as a universal law. It emerged as a particular and unique feature of the historical process in Europe; it was an evolutionary adaptation to a very specific set of circumstances. In a different environment, modernity may well take other forms.

Another commentary in the Guardian approaches the issue from the standpoint of language:

Why there’s no such thing as Islamic State: From Isis to Aum Shinrikyo, the way language works can distort reality. We must be vigilant in reading between the lines, by David Shariatmadari

 ... Linguists have argued for decades about the strength of this effect: the consensus is that language guides, rather than determines, thought. It can set up habits, no more. But habits can be tenacious.

Politicians have long known this. Advertisers know it. And so do terrorists. And with the evolution of Islamic State (Isis) we have a neat case study in the power of proper nouns.

Seattle: A street doubling as a park. Can it be done here? Let's ask John.

NA Confidential asked John "The Rasputin of Redevelopment" Rosenbarger:

"Here in New Albany, where you've ceaselessly toiled for three decades amid the mouth breathers, would it be possible to shrink a two-lane, one-way street into a partial park without bonding $19 million from TIF?"

His interpreter provides the answer. 

Meanwhile, in Seattle there's an example ...

It's a park. It's a street. Is it safe?, by Marc Stiles (Puget Sound Business Journal)

 ... If you haven't been paying attention, construction crews from AGR Construction of Monroe have been working on Bell Street between First and Fifth avenues to make this road part street and part park ...

 ... You don't have to be an urban policy wonk to see how the $5 million project has significantly altered the character of the area. The two-lane, one-way street was a straight shot with parking on both sides. As part of an extreme "road diet," curbs were removed to create a flat surface the entire length and width of the right-of-way that today is dotted with planters and street furniture along the new roadway that slightly meanders and has just one lane for cars.

It's a grand experiment with the result being like no other street in downtown Seattle. Some people will love it, and some will hate it. Either way, expect to see more street parks in Seattle, where two similar projects already are under way ...

Seamus Heaney and the story of language as a loaded weapon.

Seamus Heaney has died, and Fintan O'Toole places the poet in context.

... (Heaney) had something to convey – especially, it seemed, to his fellow citizens. It was what his whole life as a poet had articulated with such astounding eloquence. In a speech at the National Museum in March he put it directly: “We are not simply a credit rating or an economy but a history and a culture, a human population rather than a statistical phenomenon.”

Of course, YouTube has many clips of the poet. As I watched a handful of them this morning, rejoicing in the wonderfully musical sound of words spoken by an Irishman, vague old memories began resurfacing.

Much of what I know, I learned during the 1980s through reading, traveling, listening ... and watching series like the PBS documentary called The Story of English. The episode I watched over and over on videotape was "The Loaded Weapon," and sure enough, there was Seamus Heaney commenting on the enduring life of language as mythology. Those amazing Irish stays in pre-Celtic Tiger times now come back to me. It's an enveloping thing, indeed.

Perhaps I should have been watching the Dukes of Hazzard and reinforcing my Americanism.

ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language (2).

ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language (2).

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Having resolved to resume contact with my Czech acquaintance Ladislav in the post-Velvet Revolution, pre-Internet winter of 1990, I counted myself fortunate to still have his postal address. It had somehow survived unscathed when most of my belongings were stolen in Madrid the previous November. In January, I took pen in hand to congratulate him on the wonderful transformations in Czechoslovakia.

In those archaic times, mail could take ten days or more each way, back and forth across the Atlantic, and so it wasn’t overly alarming when no immediate response was forthcoming. Perhaps the seismic shift in Czechoslovakia had impacted the recovering country’s mail carriers, or more likely, Ladislav’s obvious connections to a now discredited ruling order were such that he wasn’t in a good position to answer.

Granted, there’d been almost no violence during a remarkably peaceful, orderly changeover in Czechoslovakia, hence the revolution’s “velvet” descriptive tag, and yet … who really knew? It was a long way off, scores were being settled in various ways, and communications were not instantaneous like today. Even phone calls could be difficult to place to a country where the totalitarian structure had routinely monitored them only a short time before.

Twice more in early 1990 I wrote to Ladislav, each time enclosing souvenirs from Indiana and Kentucky, including American beer coasters for use in his Tiki Bar, but still there was only silence in return. Soon an entire year had passed since our chat, and the usual stressors of everyday living gradually displaced the glories of my 1989 journey to Europe. Back into the wage slave grind I sank, and memories of Ladislav grew increasingly dim.

One day in July, my roomie phoned to announce that the mail had included a letter from Czechoslovakia. Upon closer examination, the return address was mysterious, and the message inside, written by an English-speaking friend of Ladislav’s daughter from a small town near Ostrava, was unexpected.

She thanked me for the letters and gifts, but regretted to say that Ladislav had died of a heart attack, aged 65, in July – of 1989! Remarkably, his sudden death had come less than a month after I departed Ostrava. I was crestfallen to realize that he had been denied the chance to witness the change he’d been so sure was imminent. With sadness, I drove to Sportstime Pizza for a few rounds of Pilsner Urquell as an impromptu memorial.

Still reeling from the bad news, I arrived home the following day to find yet another letter for me. This time it was a big manila envelope from an organization called Education for Democracy (EFD), and inside was the information I’d supposedly requested, which was fine, except I’d never, ever heard of EFD and assuredly had not asked for anything to be sent me, but just the same, quite soon my heart was racing with excitement.

This unsolicited letter described the outline of an unprecedented opportunity for Americans to volunteer for placement in Czechoslovakia as conversational English instructors. No licenses or credentials were required, although previous teaching experience of any sort was a plus. It was a development made possible by the cooperation of American and Czech academics, who sought to take advantage of the Velvet Revolution’s opening by bringing people together to learn and speak English.

The words, the ideas, the sentiments – all of it had been discussed that night at the Tiki Bar in Ostrava, with shots of Havana Club in hand, and with the providential mailing spread before me on the table, my immediate reaction was to thank Ladislav for referring me to the organization, and yet there was a small, nagging problem: He was dead.

Not only was he dead, but he had died five months before the abrupt success of the Velvet Revolution made the EFD program and others like it possible. He could not have known, and yet there was no rational explanation for the unsolicited mailing. It made me pause. I’m not the sort to believe in ghosts, but there are exceptions for everything, and this one handily fit the bill.

My workaday lethargy jolted, I wrote back to Ladislav’s daughter, thanking her for telling me about his death, and then phoned the EFD office (in Mobile, Alabama, of all places) to put my name on the list. Planning began for teaching English in Czechoslovakia in 1991. It was to be the fruition of a dream for me, and in my addled mind, albeit irrationally, I knew Ladislav was to thank for it.

In the end, rationality was restored, in the form of a telephone call a week or so later from a Floridian with whom I’d stayed in touch after we traveled together in a group to the USSR in 1987. A teacher himself, he remembered that I’d been a substitute and had an interest in the East Bloc, and when he caught wind of the EFD program’s advent, he’d taken it on himself to send the organizers my address. In turn, they’d forwarded me the manila envelope, and its arrival a day after learning of Ladislav’s passing was a coincidence, nothing more.

But as you can imagine, it always will be more than a fluke to me. These events rekindled my fighting spirit, and for the following twelve months, working two jobs and saving as much money as possible, an expedition took shape.

In early September, 1991, I was on the ground in Kosice, the second largest city in what now is independent Slovakia, almost the farthest point east in what was then Czechoslovakia, and a very long way from both Prague and Ostrava. My assignment was to teach English to medical personnel in the city’s university hospital.

And so, Ladislav, here’s a tipple to your memory. It’s a shame you didn’t live to see it, but the plot worked out just the way you predicted. Thanks.

Previously: ONE THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language (1).

ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language (1).

ON THE AVENUES: Ladislav's language (1).

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Ladislav was a trim, polite, vaguely aristocratic older gentleman who lived in a peculiarly oversized flat amid a modern suburb of Ostrava, the epicenter of communist Czechoslovakia’s steel making and coal mining. If I correctly recall the circumstances, he was a retired educator, discretely moonlighting as an English tutor for my immigrant Czech friend’s mother.

We had been invited to his place for a social evening, perhaps because in that particular socialist neighborhood, visiting Americans were rather rare in 1989.

Knowing there would be drinks served, we didn’t dare drive, choosing instead the handy tram, and winding through the industrial landscape of the municipality. Ladislav answered the door promptly, and after pleasantries and the ritual exchange of small gifts, he escorted us back outside and downstairs, to a semi-detached building with garage doors.

Right there in landlocked, socialist Central Europe, taking up precious square meters normally reserved for a Czech male’s single most prized possession (his Skoda automobile), Ladislav had constructed a genuine Tiki Bar, complete with bamboo and plasticized tropical plants. But his equatorial showplace, while initially puzzling, actually made perfect sense in the Socialist Bloc’s skewed international scheme of things.

Ladislav had traveled to Cuba as part of a cultural exchange program, and the journey made a deep impression on him. Cuban “guest” workers lived and worked in Ostrava; one afternoon, I drank beer with one of them. Like most Czechs, Ladislav grasped the irony of the enduring blockade that kept Cuban goods, which were available throughout both European geopolitical camps, safely out of American hands, and so a bottle of Havana Club rum was sitting on his back bar alongside a brace of Cohibas, all earmarked for the occasion of my visit. It was a reverse black market, and a much appreciated gesture.

Sufficient storage space remained in the garage for Ladislav’s bicycles, for he was an avid cyclist. Apart from his set of metal dentures, and what appeared to be a rather hopeless nicotine addiction, he looked the lean and ruddy part of an athlete. The countryside was hilly and rolling, with mountainous areas nearby: Jeseniky to the west, and Beskydy to the southeast. Apart from Ostrava’s wretched air quality, it appeared to be appropriate terrain for challenging riding.

Specific memories of this long evening at Ladislav’s Ostrava Cubano Tiki Bar are fleeting. The revel extended so far into the cool, wet June night that we came very close to missing the last tram to the Motycka home, located all the way across town, adjacent to the sprawling Nové hutě Klementa Gottwalda – the steel mill named for Czechoslovakia’s indigenous, long-dead, personal Stalin.

However, one part of our conversation never left my mind in all the years to follow, because after all his other guests except for my escorts had offered their goodbyes, it emerged that Ladislav – whose lifestyle plainly suggested an access to privileges of the sort enjoyed by party members – was disinterested in the past. Rather, he wanted to talk about the future.

He engaged me at length about hope, openness and reform, and about Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new” USSR, with glasnost and perestroika breaking out within the bastion of Czechoslovakia’s imperial overlord. He was highly complimentary about my desire to visit the remainder of his country, outside the boundaries of Prague, and thought that when westerners did so, and were able to meet normal working Czechs and Slovaks, artificial political barriers irrevocably fell no matter what his or any other government might say about it.

Ladislav, who of course spoke perfect British English, passionately believed language aptitude to be the key to furthering the fall of impediments to good relations between the diverse peoples of the world. He described his vision of the coming time when Americans exactly like me would come to Eastern Europe as English language instructors, and by doing so, further the process of reform and regeneration.

Granted, it was 1989, and the rigid and toadying Husak regime would never permit such linguistic and cultural incursions, but Ladislav was certain that Gorbachev’s revitalization movement eventually would spill out from the Soviet Union, into the satellite nations, and when it did … well, when it finally did, he fully expected to see me again, this time as a fellow teacher, working alongside him in his homeland.

I enthusiastically agreed, dumbstruck at the ease with which Ladislav, a complete stranger, managed to read my mind. While never an accredited teacher, I’d dabbled in education as a substitute. Back home in a file cabinet was a bulging folder of information on various ways to get “English as a second language” teaching certification. My long-held fascination with East-Central Europe was a given. How did he fathom my innermost thoughts?

We said our goodbyes, and a few days later, it was time to depart Ostrava on a roundabout journey to Moscow for Russian language instruction of my own. Weeks passed, life and travel went on, and by late November, I was home again in Indiana, watching CNN with amazement as the last bits of the Berlin Wall fell, and shortly thereafter, tearfully gladdened when the Velvet Revolution swept Czechoslovakia.

The playwright and intellectual Vaclav Havel, whom Ladislav had described to me in glowing terms as the impetus for Charter 77 and a hero of the opposition, suddenly became president of the country. It was incredible to imagine that Havel had been imprisoned as recently as April of 1989, just before I entered the country. Truly, all things seemed newly possible, and as a new year dawned, I started wondering what Ladislav had to say about it. I’d write to him, and find out.

(Part 2 next week)

The principal should spank her for failing principles of the English language.

Anywhere except New Albany, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a “college professor” should know the difference in usage between an adjective and a noun. Sadly, the crusading Vickster’s imaginary academic alter ego does not.

ACCOUNTING PRINCIPALS... INDIANA STATE BOARD OF ACCOUNTS

Perhaps 3rd district councilman Steve Price can compose a resolution providing “feel good” funding for Erika’s continuing linguistic education, but until that unlikely day, consider …

Principal is both an adjective, which means that it modifies a noun, and a noun. In the adjectival sense, it means, “First, highest, or foremost in importance, rank, worth, or degree; chief.” As a noun, it has several meanings, none of which are applicable to Erika's mistaken usage.

Principle is a noun – it names something – and in the sense that Erika should have used it, it means, “a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived: the principles of modern physics.”

Or, one might say: "The principal principles of the trognonymous Freedom of Speech blog are cowardly subterfuge and malice."

Glance here for accounting principles correctly used.

See, there really are rules, Erika. You simply must learn them.

Thanks to http://dictionary.reference.com/ for definitions.

Anywhere except New Albany, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a “college professor” should know the difference in usage between an adjective and a noun. Sadly, the crusading Vickster’s imaginary academic alter ego does not.

ACCOUNTING PRINCIPALS... INDIANA STATE BOARD OF ACCOUNTS

Perhaps 3rd district councilman Steve Price can compose a resolution providing “feel good” funding for Erika’s continuing linguistic education, but until that unlikely day, consider …

Principal is both an adjective, which means that it modifies a noun, and a noun. In the adjectival sense, it means, “First, highest, or foremost in importance, rank, worth, or degree; chief.” As a noun, it has several meanings, none of which are applicable to Erika's mistaken usage.

Principle is a noun – it names something – and in the sense that Erika should have used it, it means, “a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived: the principles of modern physics.”

Or, one might say: "The principal principles of the trognonymous Freedom of Speech blog are cowardly subterfuge and malice."

Glance here for accounting principles correctly used.

See, there really are rules, Erika. You simply must learn them.

Thanks to http://dictionary.reference.com/ for definitions.