Tuesday, December 23

Ephemera: Correct English


Here's another of the gems found in my mom's bookshelves. My mom was the only one of her five siblings who didn't go to college, and she was very sorry about it. She was always trying to better herself and this magazine was one example of her quest.

Some of the articles in it are:
"The Glamour of Great Names", which focuses on well-known classical musicians.

"The Fallacy of Describing the Unfamiliar", about writers who attempt to write about places they've never been.

"Enriching Your Vocabulary", definitions of preternatural, proclivities and prognostic, among others.

and the last: "Boners in High Places". I didn't know that was a fit subject for English class. Did you? Maybe that's a story about Bill Clinton.......The subtitle is "Did you make any of these mistakes?" Yep....could be about Clinton!


This is the back cover; an ad for a correspondence course that purportedly would teach you how to communicate effectively. Mom had the idea that I should be a speech therapist, since studying that might also help rid me of my WV hillbilly twang. Alas, I didn't agree with her so I still speak with that twang, which gets worse when I am around home and family. I have always had the ability (or maybe curse is the right word) to be able to pick up quickly on accents and speech patterns. If I am with someone who has an accent, I tend to (unconsciously) speak like they do after only a few minutes. Put me with a native New Yorker, and I am slinging it with the best of them (albeit with a twang to the slang)......LOL. I am not sure that speech therapy would have ever rid me of that!

14 comments:

utenzi said...

Maybe Boners in High Places is about people that debone chicken in Denver. As for the WV twang, I suspect that sounds great. One of my favorite voices in music is Donna Fargo, and while she's from NC, not WV, she sure does have a twang to her voice.

Merry Christmas, Judy.

Tammy said...

I guess I have the same knack because I find myself enunciating more and speaking with a pronounced British accent when I'm around my ride share buddy.

Kay Dennison said...

Omigod, Judy!!! I can do a West by God Virginia twang. This town is full of transplanted West Virginians who left the hills to work in the steel mills. One friend who still has family down there jokes that he has to go back and renew his citizenship sohe can "talk right".

Star said...

Gee, I never read you with a twang! That magazine sounds ike it would still be useful today. I guess good grammar never goes out of style.

Evil Twin's Wife said...

I lived in the South for 12 years, Kansas for almost 3 and then in WV for 25, so my accent is all over the place! Surprisingly, the Evil Twin, who was born and raised here in WV, doesn't have the accent (at least I can't hear it).

Granny Annie said...

Top speech awards were mine in high school. Speech therapy was my first choice of a college major. I believe it was because I had braces on my teeth. I had to work harder to overcome the braces. Now braces long gone, I have worked my way over the years to total Okie.

Pat said...

I really need to hear the hill billy twang.
When I get angry (not too often) I speak with a broad Lancashire accent which makes people blink.

Anonymous said...

I just found your blog. We are in the same part of the country.

Your comment about boners in high places had me laughing aloud.

I'll be back for another visit. Beware, I do like pink, but don't hold it against me. My favorite color is yellow. ;-)

themom said...

I never thought I had the "twang", it always seemed that more of the southern parts of the state had a definite accent. But we don't really notice these attributes as much as those from other locales. Have a Merry Christmas.

rauf said...

In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity.

Let your conversational communications possess a compacted conciseness, a clarified comprehensibility, a coalescent cogency and a concatenated consistency.

Eschew obfuscation and all conglomeration of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectations.

Let your extemporaneous descants and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and voracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast.

Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolificacy and vain vapid verbosity.

If you are really interested to know, the above means: “Be brief and don’t use big words.”

MERRY CHRISTMAS Judy !

Olyal said...

It sounds like my grandfater and your mother would have got along well. My Grandfather was a radio announcer back in the day and was a big advocate for proper enunciation, punctuation, grammar and spelling.
He used to complain to radio stations and newspapers about their disc jockeys and poor reporting all the time! He would have loved that magazine!

Merry Christmas Judy!

rauf said...

Please accept with no obligation, express, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally-conscious, socially responsible, low-strees, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the Winter Holiday practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, and/or secular practices of your choice, with due and appropriate respect for the religious and/or secular persuasions and practices of others (generally considered to be members of the homo sapiens species and recognized as such) or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally-successful, personally-fulfilling, and medically-uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally-accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent Holiday Greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher...

In other words, have a wonderful holiday and a happy new year!

Anonymous said...

What a great old book! I wonder if it's still in print? Looks like fun although it was torture when my parents tried to get rid of my jersey accent in jr high with a speech therapist!

Happy holidays and all the best in '09!

Chancy said...

I love regional accents. All of them. Hang on to yours. I used to enjoy trying to guess where someone was from originally just by the accent.

Merry christmas