Hypertextbook.com says that an average educated person knows about 20,000 words and uses about 2,000 words in a week. Most sources say that the English language contains between 600,000 to over 1 million words depending upon how you count. (Thank you, Captain Obvious.) Not only do most of us use less than 3% of available words, we employ them poorly. And when I say “we,” I mean “me, myself and I.”
As a charter member of the Failed Writers Society, I recognize my repetitive, trite speech and writing patterns especially when I come across informative reading matter.
A recent article from The New Yorker entitled Alone in the Alps by James Lasdin described the connection between the Via Alpina trail in Europe and its rich culture as follows:
“That sense of multiplicity is still strong. The Rockies may offer wilder wilderness, but you don’t experience the pleasure of sharp cultural variegation as you move from place to place… It’s there […] in the freshly incomprehensible road signs, which is Slovenia are clotted with consonant clusters, as if vowels were an indulgence.”
This description of a consonant-rich Eastern European language is the best I’ve come across since a Car Talk episode called Vowels to Bosnia – http://www.cartalk.com/content/vowels-bosnia
So what’s the connection between not improving your health and improving your writing? Well, if nothing else, not improving your heath will give you less time to improve your epitaph* when that inevitable day comes.
[*Dr. Language Guy wishes to point out that he word “epitaph” comes from the Latin epitaphium, which, in turn, comes from the Greek epitaphion, meaning “over or at a tomb.” This is derived as epi (“on” or “over”) + taph(os) (“tomb”).]
Here are some better examples.
In a London cemetery:
Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann
Dec. 8, 1767
In a Ribblesford, England cemetery:
The children of Israel wanted bread;
And the Lord sent them manna.
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
In Boot Hill, Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
Also in Boot Hill:
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a 44
No Les
No more.
Of a hanged sheep thief, in Lame, Ireland:
Here lies the body
Of Thomas Kemp
Who lived by wool
But died by hemp.*
* A witticism from Cervantes’ Don Quixote states: “One does not speak of hemp in the house of the hanged.”
A lawyer’s epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
In Newbury, England (1742):
Tom Smith is dead, and here he lies,
Nobody laughs and nobody cries;
Where his soul’s gone, or how it fares,
Nobody knows, and nobody cares.
In a Welland, Ontario cemetery:
Here lies all that remains of old Aunt Charlotte,
Born a virgin, died a harlot.
For sixteen years she kept her virginity,
A marvelous thing for this vicinity.
And finally, in Hollywood Forever cemetery:
Fifty Shades of Grumpy Reviews
I really got excited about turning my idea for Fifty Shades of Grumpy into a novel. It could even become a major motion picture!
I already had the basic formula sketched out. I then turned that sketch into an outline. Finally I set to work on a preliminary draft. Before going any further I thought it best to send the draft to selected reviewers to get input. I got back some of their comments and I see that I need to do a little more work.
—-
I have never read anything like it and hope I never do again. –New York Times
If you only read one book this year, don’t make it this one. –Washington Post
This is a book for which the words “out of print” will be a blessing. –Chicago Tribune
Spectacular! Sexy and erotic! Brilliant! A sensational read! These are the words I would use to describe some other book but not this one. –Los Angeles Times
The book should be made of toilet paper so that it would at least be useful for something. –Barron’s
Thinking of all the starving children in the world is preferable to reading this nonsense. –The Wall Street Journal
This book sucks! –Rolling Stone
Mixing the book with sewage would improve it. –The New York Review of Books
Yet another indication that America never mastered the English language. –Guardian (UK)
—-
The critics have spoken, the bastards!
Fifty Shades of Grumpy, NOT coming to a book store near you anytime soon; NOT to be a major motion picture.
Sigh.
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Posted in Rants about Writing
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