Great essays about language. They tend to meander a little but usually into interesting areas. I think I liked his previous book better, but they both cover similar ground anyway. ( )

A look at various ways in which people try to control or "tame" language (especially English) by imposing unnatural and artificial rules on it, attempting to stop it from changing, or reducing it to one Only Right Way of speaking, and why such attempts are generally both wrong-headed and useless. Along the way, the author takes some entertaining shots at self-appointed grammar experts who don't actually know what they're talking about, looks at how politicians use language to try to manipulate people (although often not as well as we might fear), explains the difficulties of computer translation, and samples some artificially invented languages, among other things.

There's not actually a whole lot here that was new to me, but Lane is good enough at coming up with interesting examples and vivid, useful metaphors that it still managed to feel fairly fresh. And there's a lot to be said, I think, for the clear and careful way in which he avoids a simplistic blanket condemnation of anyone who smacks of linguistic prescriptivism, but instead takes a nuanced approach, one that has little time for people who make false claims about how language works or unrealistic ones about how it should work while firmly embracing those who offer good, informed advice about formal writing. ( )

Seemed to wander at times, but then again the book is based on a very broad premise. I particularly enjoyed the section on linguistic prescriptivism (and moreover, why it's silly and not nearly as logical as a prescriptivist would like to think). ( )

Like everything else in the universe, language is always changing. It changes with outside influence, with fashion, with fads and by diktat. Sooner or later, writing follows suit. Talk on the Wild Side, Lane Greene’s newest look at English, debunks the “language tamers” and the fussy rules of experts. What I like about it is that the book is fun precisely because it is not judgmental. There is no One Right Way, Greene reminds readers often. (It “actually means linguistic incompetence,” he says). Instead, the book is a collection of anecdotes, criticisms and studies that commend the variety, power, and evolution of language.

There is a wonderful discussion of meaning, and dictionaries, and Johnson, which is not coincidently the name of Greene’s column in The Economist, the weekly newspaper. Meaning, like everything else, is constantly changing, so that words might not mean the same thing they did a century ago. One of the (many, it seems) things that drive me crazy is authors constantly breaking down words to their original Ancient Greek roots, to prove, well, nothing. It is all completely meaningless to a 21st century native speaker of English. Words today are what we make of them today - and don’t count on them meaning the same thing tomorrow. Greene cites the word buxom, which originally meant pliable, then happy/gay, and now, a large-chested woman. The connections are tenuous at best. Which is the whole point.

Like all evolution, languages evolve towards simplicity and efficiency. So, Greene points out, we combine words to make gotta, oughta, gonna and shoulda. And everyone instantly understands the new words. You can even insert a negative in there, if you remember the song “He shouldna hadna oughtna swung on me.” But English also has a nasty tendency to enlarge, pointlessly. My “favorite” examples are orientate for orient and irregardless for regardless. Singular “they” goes back to at least the 14th century and is not a 21st century abomination. Whom doesn’t matter. No one will fail to understand if you use who instead. Prepositions can end any English sentence – just not Latin ones. That rule is simply bogus. So is using the nominative “I” following “is”. He says you could “end a relationship gently by telling your soon-to-be ex that ‘It’s not you; it’s I’. I recommend this only if you really never want to see that person again.”

I disagree with Greene on some points. He thinks all languages are full-formed and effective, if not equally efficient, in communicating among its speakers. But in English we have few or no words to describe things like taste, for example. You cannot experience what I do biting into an apple by my words alone. The same goes for smell. Look at all the absurd words we use to describe wine. We co-opt the words of dozens of other things, from gravel and charcoal to leather and tobacco, not mention all kinds of fruit that aren’t there, to try to communicate a vintage. The speaker is willing, but the vocabulary is weak.

Another topic not in the book is the lack of effect of television. It might be argued that accentless, non-regionals actors, reporters and interviewers would have a slimming effect on all the regional variations. But they haven’t. I would have loved to have Greene’s take on that.

He also misses divergence. It is already the case that we use subtitles for speakers of dialects, even from our own towns. I have seen subtitles for speakers of Scottish English and for speakers of French from the banlieux (suburbs) and from Africa. It won’t be long before the English of Shakespeare is as incomprehensible to native English speakers as Old English is now. The national “Academies” for language purity cannot hope to stop it.

Possibly the most important concept in Talk on the Wild Side is Formal versus Normal (from Geoffrey Pullum). Donald Trump never speaks Formal. He is always Normal (at least in his speech). Regionalisms, right down to street level get classified in the Normal bin. Formal language is a lingua franca that supposedly rises above all the customization by the hoi polloi. Greene says teachers tell kids they are wrong when they speak what is for them Normal. The constant corrections simply turn them off school and learning. The result is adults with no concept of grammar or syntax, no feeling for the derivation or connection of words, and no desire to fit themselves into the Formal bin. Greene wisely prescribes teachers simply teach the difference between Formal and Normal, and not always prescribe the Formal. Formal can be useful in getting a job, or in giving a talk, or writing a report. There is nothing wrong with Normal; you just want the right tool for each task.

Languages, like everything else, come and go. They come into existence and disappear all the time. There are currently about 7000 of them in operation. And there are people who dedicate their lives to reviving dead ones, by, for example, speaking nothing but that language to their children. Of course, no one knows how those languages sounded, so they are colored by the accent of the speaker. Not that it matters.

Dead languages have very little prospect of flourishing. They died for a reason. Languages exhibit the network effect we hear so much about in internet services. The more people use them, the more powerful and important they become, until they are indispensible. Trying to preserve a failing language that few speak any more is a daunting task, and about the only successful implementation is Hebrew, which was, for hundreds of years, sacred, and only used in religious rites. (So it was never technically dead. Millions spoke it.) It is now the official language of Israel, which gives it much more clout. Languages like Cornish, Breton, and various native American languages don’t have the backing of a nation-state, and keeping them going is a struggle. They have been outcompeted and disadvantaged in a very Darwinian sense.

Children pick up language just by hearing and using it. They eventually get all the rules right. Greene says they need to do the same for the written language. They need to “read, read, read and read some more”. Teaching children grammatical rules is not nearly as effective.

There is so much that can be said about language. It fills several disciplines to overflowing. Lane Greene has selected a nice subset to demonstrate the flexibility and worry-free nature of it all.

David Wineberg ( )