Links
Archives
Friday, January 13, 2006
|
ALUM'S OWL TIES DRAW IRE One of the many neurotic/linguistic things UD does is worry incessantly about non-native speakers and newspaper headlines. Newspaper headlines are notorious for slang and jargon and idiom. How can even an excellent foreign speaker of English make sense of them? Look at this headline, for instance, from the Harvard Crimson: ALUM'S OWL TIES DRAW IRE What the hell does this string of three and four letter words mean? Even a native English speaker is going to have to transliterate. "Alum" is "alumnus," let's assume... or alumna. "Owl Ties" -- ties with owls on them? An appropriate look for a Harvard egghead, I suppose... but why would anyone get angry about a tie? It looks as though the headline writer dropped a letter, too. Draw Ire? Does she mean "draw fire"? UD herself knew from the start what this was all about, because she's followed with amusement the mortifying news of Senator Kennedy's own sexist club memberships (the Owl is a private, all-male, once Harvard-affiliated club, to which Kennedy still belongs). “When Senator Kennedy joined the all male social club called Owl, there were no women at Harvard,” one of his staffers explains, forgetting to mention that the club continues to bar women from membership. “As with any finals club on campus we are a social organization established to create friendships among members,” the current president of the club remarks. “The Owl has a diverse membership, ranging from all political, social and economic areas.” Another neurotic/linguistic thing UD does is notice that if you're going to say something ranges, you pretty much need to use the "from...to..." formulation. You can't range from everywhere. You have to range from somewhere to somewhere else. Anyway, the super-secret club's president perhaps reveals, in his use of language, one of the bonds among Owl members -- like Kennedy, they don't speak too good. |