We Wish You A .... What?

(image by Christopher Mapp)

'Tis the season for seasonal display disputes, like this one in North Andover, Massachusetts. Should a local fire station be allowed to display a Merry Christmas sign for multiple days if a Chanukah menorah is only allowed for one night?

I always find that these controversies lead to questions on how to greet someone at this time of year. Happy Holidays? Season's Greetings?

I fall in the Season's Greetings camp when I don't know. I celebrate Christmas, but I know a lot of people who don't. Some don't acknowledge any holiday at this time of year. And "Happy Holidays" is a tough one because the season isn't always happy. It's not the most wonderful time of the year for everyone.

Years ago I worked for a pension fund that offered a "Christmas check" option. Basically, pensioners could opt to have their annual pension monies divided into 13 installments instead of the usual 12. The extra payment came in early December, presumably so that pensioners would have some extra money to go holiday shopping.

But it irked me that they were called "Christmas checks." Maybe I was being overly sensitive or too PC, but not everyone celebrates Christmas. I never knew of any complaints, but I always wondered if the term "Christmas check" bothered any of the pensioners.

What do you think? Would something like this offend you or people you know? Or, is it just making a mountain out of a molehill.

French Pronunciation

(photo by topshotUK)

Lexiophiles has announced its results for the hardest languages to learn. I don't want to give away the store when they've done all the hard work, but I encourage you to access and comment on all the results here. You might find some surprises!

For me, the biggest surprise was French in the #3 spot among languages that are difficult to learn to pronounce. I only studied French briefly, but the thing I struggled with the most was definitely the pronunciation. I felt like I couldn't even get close to the target when my classmates - all adult native speakers of English - fell into it so easily.

If you've learned French as an additional language, did you find pronunciation tricky? What other languages do you find tough to pronounce?

Under the Weather

(photo by manutdonline via www.freerangestock.com)


I'm not feeling all that chipper this week and just explained to an editor that I'm feeling under the weather. Language geek that I am, I then felt compelled to find out why we say this wacky idiom.

According to MedicineNet.com, the phrase has its origins in the British sailing industry. When a sailor was feeling sick, he had to stay below deck - therefore, "under the weather" outside.

I'm just thankful I'm not on a ship....couldn't deal with a rolling sea on a day like today.

Which idioms (in English or other languages) do you wonder about?

Vote for the Hardest Languages to Learn

Ever wonder what people think are the hardest languages to learn?

Lexiophiles is running a poll to answer this very question, taking into account the most difficult languages overall, the hardest ones to pronounce, and the hardest ones to write.

Check out the poll and the lively discussion that follows here.

Which languages get your vote?

Choosing the Right Word

(Photo by Will Harford)

Please note: This post discusses language that some readers might consider offensive.

My ESL student looked perplexed. There was a problem at his apartment building, he said, and he wanted to write a letter to his landlord. The trouble was, he didn't know which noun to use for something not-so-nice.

Then he explained the situation. Many of his neighbors were dog owners. He loved dogs, he said. But he didn't like the fact that some of his neighbors didn't clean up after walking their dogs on the property. He wanted his landlord to know that every morning, the walkway was littered with......what?

It was a good question. This was delicate. Which word would his landlord take seriously?

"I know shit is bad," he said, reddening for saying the word in front of his teacher. "My daughter said to use doo doo, but I don't know. It sounds like a word for children."

I couldn't help laughing a little. "Yeah, you probably don't want to call it that."

He had looked up words in his thesaurus. Excrement. Feces. Droppings. Stool. Dung. Manure. He apologized for saying these words to me. But it was important.

We discussed the implications of using certain words. Some were clinical, some slang. None of them pleasant. He went with droppings and luckily, the landlord did take him seriously.

But imagine if you were the landlord. If you received his letter and he had used a word that was inappropriate for the context, how might you react? And if you knew he was learning English as an additional language, would that affect your reaction?

Free ATMs? Sign me up!

I swore I wasn't going to write another pet peeve post so soon, but this keeps jumping out at me in print and broadcast media alike.

Free ATMs!

Free ATMs are offered by banks around the country, like this one:



Now, I'm not trying to pick on Newtown Savings Bank. I don't live in their local area and have never done business with them. And I'm sure they're trying to do right by their customers. I only include the video as an example of advertising that mentions free ATMs.

But here's the clincher: ATM stands for Automatic Teller Machine. (Or Automated Teller Machine, according to Merriam-Webster) Either way, machine is the operative noun here.

So technically, the banks offering free ATMs are offering free machines. Fascinating! I've always wanted to go into a bank like that and ask about delivery options. Will they set it up in my home? Offer a tutorial? Is there a maintenance plan? And, most importantly, does it come stocked with currency?

I know the banks are offering free ATM transactions, meaning their customers will not have to pay to withdraw money from an ATM. And Free ATMs does sound like a much snazzier way to say it. But, pet peeves being what they are, this still riles me every time I hear it. Don't know why.

I'm stepping off my snarky soapbox now. But as I do, I have to ask: Do any of your pet peeves show up in advertising? How?

Real Friends or Facebook Friends?

It's word-of-the-year time again, when dictionary publishers choose which words stand out among new coinages or increased usage. And according to this CNN report, the New Oxford American Dictionary has selected unfriend as its word of the year.

Oxford defines unfriend as "to remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook."

I've heard defriend used in this context just as often and confess that I am still getting used to using friend as a verb to begin with.

I also notice how the noun friend is changing.

If you're on Facebook, you might make a distinction between your "real friends" and your "Facebook friends." At least I did. My real friends were the people I stayed in touch with regularly. Facebook friends were classmates I never saw anymore or people I'd met a few times. All very nice and all, but not people I considered real friends.

I deleted my Facebook account a few days ago. I briefly considered going back to it, this time refriending (now is that a verb?) my "real" friends and not friending the former "just Facebook friends." But it felt awkward. I knew the distinction in my heart, but was was the protocol for explaining it to others? In the tangled web of friendship, would a former Facebook friend be offended if I commented on a mutual friend's post, thereby learning that I had unfriended him or her? Or would that former friend even notice?

Blech! It gets too complicated. And it reminds me too much of junior high school, which I was more than glad to leave decades ago.

If you're on social networking sites, what changes do you see in words? And do you call one set of friends your real friends and use another term for others?