On the Cultivation of Language

[Uncle Arthur]

I find it interesting when some people I know are un able to translate from English to American. Having been exposed to good literature from all over the world I have rarely had a problem. Though I have had to search out some food words like swede. Once I found the definition all was well.

[greensteam]

As other contributors have already mentioned: reading widely, even if not deeply, is essential in order to expose oneself to a wider range of words and usage. I have also always loved dictionaries and can quite contentedly read them for pleasure - etymology* is fascinating**.

* Etymology: late 14c., ethimolegia "facts of the origin and development of a word," from O.Fr. et(h)imologie (14c., Mod.Fr. étymologie), from L. etymologia, from Gk. etymologia, properly "study of the true sense (of a word)," from etymon "true sense" (neuter of etymos "true, real, actual," related to eteos "true") + -logia "study of, a speaking of" (see -logy). In classical times, of meanings; later, of histories. Latinized by Cicero as veriloquium. As a branch of linguistic science, from 1640s. Related: Etymological; etymologically.

**Fascinate: 1590s, "bewitch, enchant," from M.Fr. fasciner (14c.), from L. fascinatus, pp. of fascinare "bewitch, enchant, fascinate," from fascinus "spell, witchcraft," of uncertain origin. Possibly from Gk. baskanos "bewitcher, sorcerer," with form influenced by L. fari "speak" (see fame). The Greek word may be from a Thracian equivalent of Gk. phaskein "to say;" cf. also enchant, and Ger. besprechen "to charm," from sprechen "to speak." Earliest used of witches and of serpents, who were said to be able to cast a spell by a look that rendered one unable to move or resist. Sense of "delight, attract" is first recorded 1815. Related: Fascinated; fascinating.

[Jedediah Solomon]

I, like many of my peers, am a bit of a wordsmith, and an avid reader. It seems natural to default to a somewhat more verbose method of writing, and I often find myself amplifying my thoughts on paper (or keyboard in this case). There are too many Txt mssg shtcts out there, why should we resort to such simplistic styles of communicating on a forum such as this. It is far too easy to become confused with other people's shortcuts, but when discussing technical or important things, such as how to get more pressure in a steam chamber, or why Air Kraken are lighter than air, precise use of ones wording is essential. If I weretexting my wife and found I needed to end the conversation quickly, I can get away with O...g2g asap bitl ttyl. That won't work so well when trying to explain how a Gleason-Torsen Differential works. Nor would I even THINK of saying that I cannot reply by typing ntd (Not texting, Driving) when I have a full keyboard at my disposal.

Of course, in keeping with a Victorian based peer-ggroup, it is essential that one must be clear, in order to be understood, yet not so wordy as to make those with less education feel out of place or self conscious. To do so would be rude, and that, my friends is just NOT cricket

[The Dan Keizer]

I myself am far less well-spoken verbally than in written form.  My surroundings as well as the media I am subjected to will very much influence the language I use.

At my place of occupation, my fellow workers generally speak in a most vulgar and base dialect.  I in turn will use the same colorful but low-class obscenities and expressions while on the clock.

In more formal places, my own language becomes more formal.  The number of contractions are decreased and my use of obscenities is eliminated accordingly.

If I spend the evening taking on a film about gang members in the slums of Los Angeles or listen to the music of that time and place, I may adopt a little "ebonic dialect" in my own speech around the house.

If I spend a lazy afternoon partaking in classic literature I may use such expressions as, "'pon my word" when speaking to my children.

I am sure one's upbringing and primary cultural surroundings make far more impression upon an individual's general speaking habits, but the little things we put our minds to can have powerful impact.

[Crescat Scientia]

It seems to me part of the pleasure of steampunk is the more formal language.  I have always been somewhat anachronistic in how I speak, having cut my teeth on my parents' collection of strange older books when I was small.  It is a pleasure to be on a board where I do not have to colloquialize my writing.

I too am a habitual reader.  Part of the joy of using language comes from seeing how so many different authors play with it.

I prefer physical dictionaries for the simple reason that meandering through them on the way to the word in question can lead to so many interesting other words.  As a child I wandered through encyclopedias in much the same way, retaining a great fondness for the Encyclopedia Britannica edition of 1911.

In much the same way, I prefer visiting open-stack libraries to closed-stack, and I prefer visiting physical bookstores to shopping online.  There is too much serendipity in reality to give it up for the virtual.

[Jedediah Solomon]

Absolutely true, how one's upbringing has an influence on their speech patterns, because it influences their THOUGHT patterns. I try to avoid the vulgarities of my surroundings, and although I do not harp on my co-workers (other than asking them not to defame the name of my Lord, or any Diety for that matter) they tend to mellow their linguistic assaults when talking directly to me. I appreciate that, but the point I was getting to is that as a teen, I had grown up with a King James Bible and it proved an advantage in my High School English classes, when we were asked to read passages of such works as Shakespeare. Where my classmates would stumble with elocution trying to guess at words, I would whisper a cue to them. Also during stage performances of the works of the Bard, I would receive rave reviews.

[Zeppelin Kapitan Fritz]

I prefer physical dictionaries for the simple reason that meandering through them on the way to the word in question can lead to so many interesting other words.  As a child I wandered through encyclopedias in much the same way, retaining a great fondness for the Encyclopedia Britannica edition of 1911.

     I also used to read encyclopedias for pleasure. I really need to read more actual novels.

[von Corax]

I prefer physical dictionaries for the simple reason that meandering through them on the way to the word in question can lead to so many interesting other words.  As a child I wandered through encyclopedias in much the same way, retaining a great fondness for the Encyclopedia Britannica edition of 1911.

     I also used to read encyclopedias for pleasure.

So did I, until my encyclopedia moved to Timmins…

[pakled]

Oh, we have 'rp' (lower case) 'redneck pronunciation'... as far as spelling and grammar are concerned, Appalachia Waives the Rules...

[Hez]

Neither of my parents were readers.  By necessity both left school early to work although my father managed to get his high school diploma through night school.  I was a voracious reader as soon as I could sound out words.  I read much faster than my classmates, gorging on novels and often retained an impression of the book that was as much visual as linguistic as the book became a mental video. Yet  l love to discover words I don't recognize and need to look up.  I love to discover clever bits of wordcraft (as opposed to affected) that are above the usual.  These add to the enjoyment of a story for me while clumsy or insipid wording interferes with the story. 
Occasionally well crafted words can have the same effect on me as fine foods or the perfect cup of tea. Usually these are older and more formal pieces and sometimes poetry.  i slow down to sip.  I read out loud so that I can quite literally feel the words in my mouth; the roll and cadence and swing of them.
I still remember snatches of a poem i memorized in elementary school just because it gave me pleasure to say it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Down in the grasses where the grasshoppers hop and the katydids quarrel and the flutter-moths flop. Down in the grasses where the beetle goes plop an old withered fairy keeps a second hand shop.

And the first time I read the WIndhover I had no idea what it meant but it intoxicated me.  it was on an abandoned piece of paper in an English classroom without title or author.  When I lost the paper it took me years to find the poem again (pre-internet) so I memorized it as well so I couldn't lose it again.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
 
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-   
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding   
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding   
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing   
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,          
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding   
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding   
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!   
 
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here   
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion          
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!   
 
  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion   
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,   
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

I also belong to the AWAD (a word a day) forum (wordsmith.org/board)
But I dove my spell check.

[Maxwell B. Cooper]

I myself am far less well-spoken verbally than in written form.

I'm also far better at expressing myself through my writing. Due to circumstances that I'd rather not go into, I've become rather awkward in social situations, stumbling over my words when speaking. This is particularly evident when speaking to people I don't know, I slur and often mispronounce my words. There are times when I put words in the wrong order or in some cases forget words altogether and as a result have to endure the rather embarrassing situation of being unable to continue the conversation because my vocabulary has failed me.

As a result, I am often ridiculed because of my speech. People who do not understand my situation often assume I'm uneducated or "slow". The effects are far less pronounced when I'm among friends but not absent altogether. For this reason I prefer to communicate through writing. That way I can proof read my contributions to ensure I have constructed my answer to my own satisfaction and don't have to deal with the embarrassment brought on by my often poor command of the verbal language.

[pakled]

I find the written word more facile, since in conversations I'm usually talking around shoe leather... A pause to reflect, edit, and express what I mean it to say, neither more nor less...

[Boston Jones]

Something that happened to me in another post: I replaced the period with a smiley face. 
While I doubt emoticons will replace punctuation it still makes me wonder 

[von Corax]

… in conversations I'm usually talking around shoe leather…;)

Is that another way of saying you suffer frequent attacks of Athlete's Tongue?

[pakled]

Erm, not quite... Whatever it is that makes a good diplomat, I have the opposite... I can tell someone to go to the devil in a way that makes them want to send me on the trip...

[CPT CAVEMAN]

What an interesting discussion!

Several things play into this for me.  One, being from Alabama and a product of Birmingham public education, my natural speech mode is hillbilly.  But, having lived away from Alabama now since 1997, much of that in Europe and the Middle-East and SW Asia, that has become much less noticable.  As a lover of well-written prose my vocabulary and diction have always been fairly precise and varied, but with a distinct accent, which I miss now that it is not nearly so pronounced.

I actually became interested in accent before language, per se.  There are 7 distinct accents, just in Alabama, as I learned doing college theater.  I have spent enough time now, working in Europe and at NATO HQ that I can fairly reliably place someone by the way they speak English, and a subject of Her Majesty's place of birth within the UK by their accent.  This makes watching most modern movies about the South or the UK painful.

I have also been fortunate to study formally several languages, including French (which I pull off fairly well) and Dari (I can get by in a market, but not much else).  Understanding the structure of language is essential to being a wordsmith.  I have also learned how hard colloquialism is to pull off, and how important context is.  If I have a language goal within Steampunk it is to broaden my understanding of Victorian colloquialism.

Most of my previous study has been of the Colonial period, reading the letters of the Founding Fathers and the pamphlateers of the era, I imagine I will be doing much the same research as I begin to broaden my understanding of SP.  

And I fully agree about this board so far, so refreshing to encounter genuine intellectual curiosity combined with courtesy!

[Marasi]

This is such an interesting discussion, it's made me put off getting ready and going out for probably another 20 mins at least!
I'm by no means a regular to any forums, but I too have noticed the quality of language on this one. Maybe the fairly consistent response of people here being avid readers (and readers of a certain calibre of books) has some cause-or-effect relationship with the fact we're interested in steampunk in the first place?

To answer your first questions, I don't actively cultivate a love of words, but this thread has actually made me aware of how important it is to me My mum was a librarian and I was brought up on a diet of books, went on to work in a library myself, then a bookshop and a museum. Books were never forced on me and I never had to be coerced to read- they were simply such a normal part of home life that I never questioned spending several hours a day reading.
I studied Latin at school too, and as so many English words derive from Latin this created a sort of self-feeding loop into my bank of vocabulary. I've always, and definitely before discovering steampunk, found myself using 'big words' and speaking more formally in daily life than most people. To me, it's not a central aspect of steampunk. I'm already challenging my own use of language. For example, I fought against using words such as awesome for a while, but now fully embrace the awesomeness because I've decided that language does evolve and who cares, really, as long as the sentiment is apt? I also read a fantastic article a while ago about using 'Germanic' and 'Latin-based' language- essentially Germanic words sound less fancy, more personable, and make you seem more down-to-earth. Latin-based language sounds more formal, corporate, scholarly. I'm making a conscious effort to use more Germanic words because I realised I tended to use the other and it made me seem aloof. It doesn't matter to me how another person speaks or writes though, as long as it's understandable and isn't rude or threatening.
This relates to two other things you mentioned- formal language's relationship to manners, and being drawn to a particular style of writing. I think both are subjective. Formal language can seem more polite, but it (unfortunately) can also be used to sound cold and even threatening. Formal grammar might gain the respect of people who relate to it and applaud it, but might also leave others out in the cold and uncomfortable. What really matters (just in my humble opinion) is the underlying sentiment- what the words really say, whether formal, beautiful or otherwise.
And in a similar vein, the type of language used in books usually doesn't matter to me. All that matters is that it's a rollicking great read and has some intriguing concepts!

As for the difference between looking up words in a physical or online dictionary, I remember reading somewhere that the brain doesn't process words on a screen as readily as those on a page, so maybe it's easier to forget those words you look up online? Actually, I'd like to use that as an excuse for forgetting to reply to friends' emails too...