This week: Reduction is not always reductive and other philosophies. Or, why I sometimes call my dog a pig. Read on!
Piggle
"Why do you call Lucy a pig?"
That's my daughter wondering, rightly, why in the world I would refer to our ten-year old German Shepherd and Shiba Inu mix as a pig, when clearly, she is a dog1. And the answer is...I'm not? Only, I guess I am?
Let's start with this: Lucy and I take two very different kinds of walks. On the first kind, I spend my time staring at my phone and wondering why I've even bothered to get out of bed while Lucy pulls the lead out as far as it will go so that she can sniff all the things. These walks have to be measured in minutes because the meters covered amount to very little.
But then there are the other kinds of walks. The kind where I try to get my heart rate into the fat burning zone and Lucy tries to pull me down in much the same way as Luke Skywalker taking down an AT-AT. If the AT-AT drivers are anything like me, there are a thousand hours of unused footage that is just them swearing a blue streak as their vehicle tumbles to the ground. But I digress. These walks are fast and there's no time to sniff the flowers 'cause we're burning calories, dammit!
Dividing our walks into these two categories was a deliberate decision that came out of the early stages of the pandemic. I suddenly had a lot more free time and a touch2 more anxiety, and so Lucy and I walked. And we struggled between me wanting to get a good pace and Lucy wanting to sniff. So, two walks. As I said though, Lucy was already eight years old. And you know what they say about teaching old dogs new tricks.
And so, because I, like every other rational, logical-thinking pet owner the world over, speak to my dog as though she were an actual people, I trained Lucy to distinguish between the walks by talking to her: "C'mon Lucy, let's pick it up a little bit."
Now, if you're familiar with the concept of reduced speech, you'll know where I'm going. But, for those unfamiliar, a brief intro.
In their book, Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages3, authors Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin wrote a very nice definition:
There are many reduced speech forms that occur in the everyday speech of educated native English speakers. These forms involve unstressed vowels, omitted sounds, and other alterations of the full form, such as assimilation, contraction, and blending.
So, on one end of this, you've got reductions we use so commonly English teachers sometimes feel compelled to teach them as words: gonna, wanna, hafta, and so on. On another, different end of this idea, you've got phrases like Joey's infamous pick-up line: "How YOU doin'?"4 Somewhere in between are all the different ways we slur, elide, blend, and otherwise mangle our sentences.
And that is both perfectly normal and not limited to English at all. But it can be a little frustrating. Linguists have put a lot of time and study into trying to document all the myriad ways in which people reduce their speech. They are hindered, of course, by the fact that people do not all speak in the same ways, much less the same languages. You see this a lot in the way different native English speakers reduce the phrase, "what are you doing?*" Depending on where the speaker is from, the phrase will end up as something like "whacha doin'"5 or "wottcha doon" or "wacher doin".
The frustration for me, as an ESL teacher, is that students are often taught to think that this is the correct way to speak. And let me be perfectly clear about this, there is no such thing as the correct way to speak. There are only more or less effective ways of using speech to communicate the thought or feeling you wish to convey. So, in the classroom, I explain reduced speech and I show dozens of examples and I tell them it’s something they should aim to understand first. I tell them that they will begin to do it naturally as their experience and fluency increases6.
And believe me, I’m not wrong about that. But it takes a long time and a lot of using a target language to get right….er, to get to where they sound like a fluent speaker of the language…and, uh, hello square one, how have you been?
Anyway, back to "C'mon Lucy, let's pick it up a little bit."
I don't mean to shock you, but I like to play with my words. I know, shocking revelation. But, I do. And I often do this out loud. While walking. With my dog. Thus:
"C'mon Lou7, let's piggit up a li'l bit."
"Mon, Lou, let's piggidupa li'lbit."
"Lou, let's piggidupalilbi."
"Let's piggidupalil."
"Piggi'u'alil."
"Piggle!"
And then, finally, we land on the piece d' resistance, the monosyllabic appellation to silence the naysayers, sway the doubters, and rally the freesworn:
"Pig!"8
So you see, dear Reader, it's not that I am calling my dog a pig but rather that I am exorting her to pig. I apologize. I am a monster and I feel the shame deep within my bones. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a dog to walk.
Down the Rabbit Hole
It's year end wrap-up time! I love this time of the year because everyone has done all the homework for me - the best of lists, the things you missed lists, the things to look forward to lists, they're all out there filling up my feeds. And I'm going to be talking in-depth about a few of my favorites in this month's Learned Color Spectacular (for paid subscribers only), which ought to be out this coming Friday. Until then, here are two links about colors:
The Macquarie Dictionary has chosen Teal as their word of the year.
Viva Magenta, an A.I. generated color, has been chosen as Pantone's color of the year.
From the Archives
Speaking of Joey's infamous catchphrase, back in 2019, I wrote about it, at length, in a piece that is the single most widely-read article I have ever posted here. But, just in case you're not yet one of the enlightened few, click the link below. Enjoy!
Although were you to ask her, she would insist that she is a people and therefore deserving of people food.
In the same way that megalodon was just a fish.
Cambridge University Press, 1996. (Google Books link.)
Alternate take on famous reductions: Who you gonna call?
For the best example of an American version, watch any episode of Phineas and Ferb. For other examples, well, YouTube is your friend.
On a serious note, if you’re studying a language and struggling with pronunciation, YouTube is the best friend you could ask for. Pick a topic you’re interested in, change your settings to match the language you’re studying, run a search, and Bob’s your uncle. You’ll find so much native / naturally produced speech to practice listening to that even just watching a video or two a day will probably have an impact on your own speaking. It’s a good time to be a language learner.
I am fully aware that Lou is not the standard derivative of Lucy. I don’t care.
Insert Nicholas Cage voice here.