an essay on language by Byron A. Marshall, the sage of Pineville, Louisiana

[Michael Eisenstadt]

::::   A  MATTER  OF  GREAT   MOMENT  ::::
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        "...  And I have some problems with 
         spoken words ..."
                     --Litwic Wibberstein



--- Aram wrote, to his friend Jim S:


> Jim,
> 
> I've *never* been able to understand lyrics to
> popular songs,  or the words
> to "cheers" the gorls would yell as they twirled
> their batons. My hearing is
> fine, but I don't understand some people's speech. I
> tried to watch "South
> Park" but had the same problem. In the middle of a
> furius piano solo, I can
> spot a single wrong note, but when I was a kid, I
> dared somebody to do
> something. He said, "Dares go first". I never heard
> that before. He had to
> repeat it three times before I knew what he was
> saying. Maybe it's because I
> don't live in "cliche" land. When I hear some meme,
> I actually parse it. You
> really can't do that for most memes.
> 
> Aram
> 
> PS - I've been waiting a long time to use "meme" in
> a sentence. I hope I
> used it correctly.
> 
> PPS - Remember that song from the 60's called
> "Mellow Yellow"?
> They sing, "Call me mellow yellow" followed by two
> short sounds. Everybody
> assumes you understand the words, and you're too
> embarrassed to ax. I just
> realized recently that those two short sounds are
> "quite right". Forty years
> isn't  too long to have that question resolved.
> 


====================================================
--Aram

====================================================
                   A Commentary

I can't understand sung words, either. Maybe this
explains why my favorite pop singer is Van Morrison.
NOBODY can understand his words. When I listen to a
Van Morrison song, at least for once I know I'm not
alone.

There was an old timey song on a record. It had a
refrain, something like, "Run Mountain ... chug a
little hill." As you can see, this is fairly
inexplicable as it stands. Maybe I've never come even
close to understanding what they were singing. Call
this version of the line "A."

Anyhow, there was another way of hearing this line,
which I now forget. Call it "B."

I started playing this short refrain again and again,
to decide "scientifically" by close examination of the
evidence what they were saying. 

I discovered that if I imagined in advance that they
were saying "A", I heard them singing "A." If I
imagined in advance that they were saying "B", I heard
"B." 

                    *


Chomsky one day presented evidence that the stress
pattern in English, which was reliably heard by
listeners, wasn't there in the sound waves. He pointed
out some other evidence which demonstrates that the
"sound patterns" of the different phonemes aren't
there in a complete way, nor in the "actual" order, in
the sound waves. 

This led me to my epoch-making, internationally
recognized (Nobel Peace Prize) discovery about the
sound system of Swedish. Basically, there isn't any.
Swedish is an extreme example of a corrupted (or
debased, the technical term) language. There is no
correlation at all between the sounds made by Swedes,
which sound like a group of pigs, and what they
imagine they were saying. It's all just a bunch of
snorting sounds, like a group of pigs.

How, then, do Swedes communicate at all? This was my
question, and the basis for my research and my
subsequent prize. At first, I thought it possible that
Swedes don't communicate at all. (The design of their
battleship, the largest ever built, is some evidence
for this. When christened and slid down into the
water, it promptly sank. It is now preserved in the
major Swedish naval museum.) 

However there is evidence that they do manage at least
a rudimentary form of communication, as if it matters.


I was able to pinpoint concrete experimental settings
which demonstrated, without a doubt, that Swedes
communicate telepathically. However, it is imperfect
telepathy at best. For example, the presence or
absense of a negative is entirely random using
telepathy, at least among Swedes. There are other
omissions. Most complex nouns, semantically, cannot be
communicated.

My work was already becoming familiar in the small
discipline of "Swedish Studies", highlighted each year
at the Upsula Conference (which usually takes place in
London, for the obvious reasons), when a visit by the
noted filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (the father of Ingrid
Bergman) provided a vivid and colorful "proof." 

He was visiting New York City for a film festival in
his honor. On the first night, he attended a showing
of his noted, and supposedly very gloomy, "Through a
Glass Darkly", which had been provided with subtitles.

It was the subtitles which made the difference. On
leaving the theater, the noted public figure was
estatic. "I read the subtitles," he said, in halting,
but at least effective, English. "For the first time,
I understand this film. And what I never realize
before. It is a comedy!" 

And he laughed and laughed.

On the other hand, when he saw "Smiles of a Summer
Night" the next morning, he said, grumpily, "So what's
so funny?"

The Nobel Peace Prize Award ceremony, incidentally,
was in English. As a prank, I thought of giving my
acceptance speech in Swedish. The Nobel committee
begged me to use Lithuanian instead. Naturally I
couldn't understand them. I gave my speech in Hindi.

              *      *     *

Aram refers to "Dares Go First." I can understand his
puzzlement. I'm not sure I understand it either, and
I'm READING it. Is it really, "dere goes Foist"? Or
"Dat Slows Wurst?" "Dirm Swirms Foost?" "Dur Swiggles
Toink?" All sound the same to me. I can't make hoods
or snails of it.

Kite Rick.
====================================================
--Byron


PS. The Carter Family in their Grammy winning pop
classic "Wildwood Flower" sang of the "pail and the
leter," or possibly "the Tail and the Leader." Most
transcriptions of the songs compromise and opt for the
"Pail and the Leader," I think. This song was not
original with them, but was a "parlor song" from long
before, and the words are available. It turns out the
original words were "the pale virtiginous spinach."
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