New words for old ideas

One of the joys of being a language nerd is the chance to observe how language is ever changing.  I am seldom bored as long as I have some bit of language to analyze, whether it be a random conversation in the Walmart checkout line or a phone conversation with our thirty-something Californian family members.

Price Point

Home and Garden Television (HGTV) provides lots of opportunities to listen to real people speaking real language.  A term I hear constantly on "House Hunters" is "price point."  The agent assures the eager couple that he can find them a house at their "price point."  Why not say "at your price"?  It is  fun to speculate why speakers begin to use a new term.  What does "price point" provide that good old simple "price" does not?  Is it our aversion to discussing finances that makes us want to bury the reference to money in an expression?

Skill Set

Another term that has turned a word into an expression is "skill set."  Why not just "skill"?  "I don't have the skill needed to turn on Netflix on my new television."  Is it perhaps that modern life has become so complicated that it now takes a set of skills rather than a single skill to survive?  Having just gone through several days of breaking in a new remote controller for our television, I do wish my technology skill set was larger!

Issues

I was teaching a college course in English Linguistics several years ago when I a student told me she was having  "issues" with an assignment. Was she having problems, I wondered? The Merriam Webster Dictionary gives multiple definitions for "issue," the closest one to the idea of a problem being "a point of debate or controversy." "Issue " is used so frequently nowadays that I use it myself. Did we all get tired of talking about problems?  Does the word "problem" have such a negative connotation that we are trying to soften it with a more neutral word?

Reach Out

Our travel agent recently volunteered to "reach out" to the airlines to find us air transportation to Europe this summer.  What happened to contacting people and companies?  Has the word "contact" become too formal?  "Reaching out" to someone does sound more friendly, I must admit.  But it is still a bit too modern for my vocabulary, and I would feel uncomfortable using it.

Optics

I saved the best for last — "optics."  "Don't let the elderly politician appear with his young blond curvy girlfriend.  The optics would be bad."  I like the new use of this word.  Optics used to mean a science that deals with the nature and properties of light.  Now it can mean "appearance" or "perception."  What a leap the word has taken!  Instead of remarking, "That wouldn't look right," we can now say "Bad optics."

Ah, language.

Language is going to evolve in spite of our efforts to put the brakes on.  How about relaxing and enjoying the ride?  Dare I suggest that we all "chill" about language change?

Just enough Italian pronunciation

Does the experience of stumbling over place names as you travel to a foreign country sound familiar to you? Trip planning brings up the importance of pronouncing foreign words in a comprehensible fashion.

My husband, Wayne, and I ran into this very problem as we sat at our laptops recently, hoping to rent a villa in Tuscany, Italy for a summer house party with family and friends.  We found ourselves inventing pronunciations or, as a last resort, spelling the name aloud to each other. Communication slowed to a crawl as we tried to help each other locate listings or find cities on a map.

Explanations of correct pronunciation of the Italian language abound on the Internet.  But who wants to wade through a lot of technical phonetic information?  Not even me, who claims to love anything and everything related to Linguistics!  So I decided to take the baby step of writing down ten Tuscan place names and learning just enough to pronounce them according to rules of Italian pronunciation.

My native language is English, but I also speak Spanish.  I began the task by ignoring Italian sounds that are similar to Spanish.  (So I'm going to speak Italian with a Spanish accent? Probably!)

I struck the five vowel sounds off my list, even though Italian has open and closed versions of "e" and "o" which Spanish does not.  I figured I could pick up that difference by listening to native speakers.

First I learned that most Italian words are pronounced with the stress on the next to the last syllable.  Some words carry stress on the last syllable or the third from the last syllable.  I'll be on the lookout for those exceptions as I listen to spoken Italian.

Here is my list of Tuscan place names that may require special attention to pronounce correctly.

*Bagni di Lucca.  The "gn" is similar to the Spanish "ñ" or the "ny" in the English "canyon."  Double "c" requires a longer pronunciation.

*Ponte Buggianese.  The "gg" is a challenge because the first "g" is the familiar hard sound (as in "golf" in Spanish or English) but the second "g" appears before the vowel "i", so it takes on a soft sound, like the English "gem."  The "s" between vowels becomes a "z" sound.

*Casciana Terme.  The letter combination "sci" becomes a "sh" sound.

*Pienza.  "Z' in the middle of a word is "ts."

*Ponticino.  "C" before "i" has a "ch" sound like "China" in Spanish or English This is a hard rule for me to remember!

*Arezzo. The "zz"  is a strong "ts" sound.

*Cinigiano.  A real challenge!  The vowel "i" is changing both the "c" to a "ch" sound and the "g" to a sound like the beginning of "gem" in English.

*Magliano in Toscana.  The "gl" sound is close to the "ll" in the English "million."

*Pisa.  The "s" sound once again becomes "z" between vowels.

Well, that little exercise was not too painful.  Now I know to watch out for "c" and "g" followed by "i," double consonants, and "s" and "z" in certain word positions.

It's a start on acquiring as much of the Italian language as I can before this summer.  Arrivederci!