Anne Curzan on Our Changing Language

Linguist, writer, and professor Anne Curzan joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss how language is constantly changing—and how that’s okay. Curzan talks about how, in her work as an English language historian, she’s learned that people have always been critical of usage changes; Ben Franklin, for instance, didn’t care for colonize as a verb. But, Curzan explains, as much as “grammandos” bemoan the evolution of language, it can’t be stopped—singular “they,” “funnest,” and “very unique” are here to stay. Curzan reads from her book, Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Language.

Check out video excerpts from our interviews at Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website. This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

*
From the episode:

Whitney Terrell: When I was reading your book, it made me feel like we’re in a kind of inventive epoch. Am I right to read it that way?

Anne Curzan: You are right to read it that way. There are a couple of things in there. One is that lots of people believe that the language is in a state of decline. It is also true that people have believed that for a long time. I’m a historian of the English language, and one of the really fun things I get to do is study how the language has changed over time, over hundreds and hundreds of years. I study the evolution of people’s attitudes about language change, and I collect concerns from bygone eras of what people were upset about 200 to 300 years ago. For example, Ben Franklin gave up the verb “colonize” as “bad,” and we now think, what was wrong with Ben Franklin? Why was he so upset about that? But we can feel really upset about the verb “incentivize” today.

WT: Why was Ben Franklin upset with the verb “colonize”? Now I want to know.

AC: Ben Franklin was upset about “colonize” because it was relatively new. He was upset about it for the same reason that I don’t particularly like the word impactful, which I noticed that you used in the intro just for me. I don’t have good grounds for not liking “impactful” other than aesthetically. I find it displeasing to me, and for the moment, I have opted out, but I can already tell that I’m getting used to it. 

So the language is always changing. It’s part of a living language. And I would say, sure, we’re in an inventive period right now, but humans are always being inventive with the language. And luckily, that keeps me in business as a historian of the language. 

V.V. Ganeshananthan: So, let’s get back to the mistakes that Whitney made in the intro which, of course, are plentiful. 

WT: We don’t have time for that part. We’re gonna skip over that.

VVG: Well, why is it okay for Whitney to call you a “very unique” guest when the word “unique” is singular and doesn’t require another modifier? Why is he implying that you would approve of the word “funnest”? And if I’m a grammando, should I be happy about that? 

WT: I thought it was gra-MAHN-do, Sugi. I’m sorry. You’re not even saying it right. Well, maybe. Maybe I say it the wrong way.

VVG: Ugh, he’s policing me. Gatekeeper.

AC: And I say gra-MAN-do. 

WT: Oh, dang it.

AC: So, maybe we should just clarify that for listeners. Grammando. That’s a word that was introduced to me by Lizzie Skurnick in The New York Times Sunday magazine, and she defines it as someone who is constantly correcting other people’s grammar. I really like the term over grammar police, or grammar Nazi.

WT: Grammar commando. I see. That’s how I’ll remember it. Okay, that’s fine. 

AC: Exactly. That’s, I think, why I say it the way I do. And one of the things that I realized as I was writing the book was that I think every one of us in our head has an inner wordie and actually enjoys language. Think about how many people play Wordle and Spelling Bee and like to rap and pun. So we have an inner wordie, and we have an inner grammando. And that inner grammando is hearing things in language and thinking, “Ugh, I don’t like that,” and so I’m talking to everybody’s inner wordie and inner grammando. 

So now, if we go to something like “unique,” which I was taught in school was supposed to mean, or meant, one of a kind. That was the only thing it could mean, it had that singular meaning in it. If you look at actual usage now, and this has been true for decades, its meaning has changed or it has expanded. So it can still mean one of a kind, but it can also mean highly unusual. And once it means highly unusual, then it can be very unique, really unique, more unique than something else, because it no longer means only one of a kind. And I know that some people’s inner grammandos are just going nuts right now, and they shouldn’t do that. Language is going to change, and we’ve had this happen before. If you take a word like “decimate,” that has a root in it, which is about 10, and it used to mean to destroy or kill one in every 10, and now it means to wipe out, because words change over time.

WT: Can you get onto the funnest part of this, though? I mean, it’s in the title of your books. I figured it would be okay or funner, at least. 

AC: It is, and there’s a chapter called “The funnest chapter.” I am certainly trying to provoke people by putting “funner” in the title. I know that people are thinking, “What kind of English professor puts funner in the title of her book?” And sometimes in introductions of the book, people have said “a kinder, funnier usage guide,” and I have to say, “Nope, nope, I really did do it, I put funner in the title.”

The story with funner goes back to the word fun itself. Here’s the quick version: Fun for most of its life in English was a noun, and it still is. “We had fun.” But in the first half of the 20th century, kids reinterpreted fun as an adjective, and we can see how they did it. If someone says the party was fun, fun is sitting in the same place that an adjective would sit. The party was great. The party was boring. And once kids reinterpret fun as an adjective, then they’re trying to make it behave like other one-syllable adjectives. 

So if you think about smart, smarter, smartest, tall, taller, tallest, wide, wider, widest, you can see where I’m going. Fun, funner, funnest. Kids are going to try to make it regular until some adult says, “Yuck. Funner is a horrible word, don’t do that,” and the kid just files it away as some weird exception. They don’t know why the adult is upset, but they say, “Okay, clearly I’m not supposed to say that.” 

What I think is happening right now is that adults are having a less strong reaction to funnest so that is slipping in first, and then my prediction is that funner will come in behind it.

WT: I like how you’re blaming all of these problems on the youngs. That’s what we do here. At least I do.

AC: I am crediting the young! I feel like language change is all a celebration of young people.

WT: All right. Well, speaking of celebrations of language changes, the book is organized into chapters about usage issues that often broaden out into sort of larger discussions. I really love the structure of the way you put it together and, like you, Sugi and I have graded our fair share of student papers, and we’ll be doing so again this weekend. I feel this pleasurable jolt of recognition each time you run upon an issue that I’ve had to deal with in so many of these papers. And there’s no way to go through every single chapter in this book, what people should do is buy the book and read it. But I thought that Sugi and I could go through and pick out our favorite issues that really chimed a bell for us, and ask you to sort of take us through your analysis of that particular chapter. Sugi gets to go first.

VVG: All right, so I was really interested in the chapter about the perceived danger of danglers. I have a friend from high school—he and I edited the high school newspaper together—and he had a very particular thing about danglers, and I, for whatever reason, can’t remember his particular preference about danglers. So maybe once a year I text him and I have him explain it to me again, and then I forget. I’m reading student papers, and I can’t remember it. He sort of blames journalism for the spread of danglers. Anyway, can you talk about the danglers?

AC: I would love to talk about the danglers, and what a great way to step into it. One of the things I like about danglers is that it is a nice example of when some of the rules about written language can actually be helpful. One of the things I do in the book is take some of the rules we learned, for example, don’t end a sentence with a preposition, and I say that rule has never been well founded. It’s just not a useful rule. But the rule about danglers in writing actually is potentially helpful. 

So a dangler, for whatever reason, I still remember this sentence from when I learned about this in about fifth grade, and the sentence is: “Clinging to the side of the aquarium, Mary saw a starfish”’ Now, if you’re giggling right now, that is because you hear the dangler which is “clinging to the side of the aquarium, Mary.” So there are technical reasons why people would say that sentence suggests that Mary is clinging to the side of the aquarium because the modifier is sitting right next to Mary. Now, when we hear that in speech, we’re probably not going to interpret it that way, because in real life, we know that odds are, it’s the starfish that’s clinging to the side of the aquarium and not Mary.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Vianna O’Hara. Photograph of Anne Curzan by Mock Tuna.

*

Anne Curzan

Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words • “‘They’ has been a singular pronoun for centuries. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s wrong.” | October 21, 2021 | The Washington Post

Others:

Grammando • Declaration of Independence • Dreyer’s English: And Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer • The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White • Fiction/Non/Fiction Season: One Episode, 12: “C. Riley Snorton and T Fleischmann Talk Gender, Freedom, and Transitivity” • Antonin Scalia • Will Shortz • Maxine Hong Kingston • The American Heritage Dictionary • Urban Dictionary • Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary • Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman