Something to talk about

If you wish to avoid politics or religion in your holiday conversations with relatives and friends, here’s a safe topic--the English language.

That’s right. How we speak, pronounce words and phrases, what idiosyncrasies we inherit or borrow from our friends and colleagues. It’s especially fun if some of those around the table, or on Zoom, are “from away.”

For example, if your guest refers to the thing you change channels on the TV with as a remote, you may correct him or her. In local dialect, it’s a “clicker.”

Likewise, a drinking fountain is a “bubbler,” a shopping cart is a “carriage,” the liquor store is a “packy,” and if you need something in the basement, you go “down cellar.”

New England directions have their own logic. From Boston you go “up”to New Hampshire, but “down-east” to Maine. While you’re there, you’ll want to master how to say yes. It’s “ayuh.” It’ll also help to know that those diving ducks you see in the “hahbuh” are “shag,” a local name for cormorants. And if you need to step into a skiff to row out to your yacht or fishing boat, you’ll call it a “tender.”

Attitudes about language and what’s proper to say have changed since I was a kid. Then, according to my grandmother, there was only one way to speak the English language, the correct way. I can only imagine her reaction if I had told her I was going to “hang out with my homies.”

Today we know there are many Englishes, and having taught the history of English, I have developed a liking for out-of-the-way phrases and accents, from Irish English to Gullah, the old dialect of African slaves that has influenced how both blacks and whites talk today.

You may not be multilingual, I tell my students, but you are definitely “multi-dialectal.”

Although I’m pretty open minded about the many varieties of my native tongue spoken today, I am fussy about one thing, the misreading of the “y” letter in signs and manuscripts.” For example, have you ever been to “Ye Olde Tavern,” or “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe”?

Call me crotchety, but please don’t pronounce the “ye” as how it looks. And why not? Because there never was a “ye” old coffee shop, or “ye” old anything in English. It was always pronounced “the,” you know, the th sound absent in most Indo-European languages, but sprinkled thickly throughout English.

Here’s what happened. Long ago, Germans and Scandinavian started inscribing runes to tell stories or share information. The Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon runes for “thorn” were shaped something like the small letter “p.” The rounded loop could be angular, and the stem extended higher than our “p,” making it look something like a “y.”

When Anglo Saxons and later Scandinavians invaded England, they brought their runes with them. Over time, these figures gave way to the Latin alphabet. The problem came in the late 15th century with the invention of printing. Printers had no runic letters. So they started using a figure something like the “th” rune, the little y. That’s why if you read old manuscripts, from Canterbury Tales to the Le Morte D’Arthur, you’ll see the little y-looking figure, pronounced “th.”

If all this is too much to take, best to head downtown for more liquid refreshments. Please, just don’t call it “Ye Olde Packy.”

Note: being a teetotaler, the author would like you to know that when he visits the local packy, it’s to get a six-pack of his favorite non-alcoholic beer, Clausthaler.

© Ben Jacques