Kirk Mahoney . com

I once had a job assignment to monitor customers’ calls to troubleshooting agents.

The agents had to help customers with questions and problems with a combination of communication and entertainment services.

The goals of the call monitoring were to determine how well customers were being served, to identify agents who should be coached on their techniques, and to identify possible improvements to support applications and processes.

The native language of most of the customers, all of whom were in the United States of America, was English.

Spanish, however, clearly was the native language of some customers. These customers had limited or less-than-fluent skills with English, which they spoke with their native accent — for example, from Mexico.

One of my peers had visited a call center in Wisconsin, where none of the agents spoke Spanish.

Listening to calls and watching agents in action, she observed how they handled calls from customers whose first language was Spanish.

What she learned was a bit surprising but also made sense.

The agents who established the best rapport and communication with Spanish-as-first-language customers changed their accents to those of their customers.

Some might call this patronizing — or matronizing — but it makes sense to me.

Because the callers were hearing English spoken in the way that they spoke it, they understood the agents better.

What is your favorite story about changing one’s accent? Let me know!

When I was in graduate school in Los Angeles, California, I met a young man who worked as an administrative assistant in my graduate department.

His name was Angus, and he had a Scottish accent.

I finally asked the department’s secretary about his accent, and she said that Angus was from the Valley — as in the San Fernando Valley, north of L.A.

I asked whether Angus originally was from Scotland. The response: “Oh, no. He simply decided to adopt a Scottish accent.”

And, as far as I know, he never broke his Scottish accent for what is called “Valley Talk”, which is a manner of speaking that is characteristic of those from the Valley.

That ability — to change one’s accent permanently — continues to fascinate me today.

To me, it is akin to changing one’s signature, which is difficult but can be done (I know because I did it.), or changing one’s handwriting style, which must be very difficult.

Put simply, changing one’s accent permanently must take a lot of practice, self-awareness, and effort.

What is your favorite story about changing one’s accent? Let me know!

In my opinion, one of the best ways to learn a new language is to connect it to the language(s) that you already know.

I refer to this as (quote) “making a linguistic connection” (unquote).

For example, yesterday I was discussing someone with my wife, and I realized that the best way to describe that person was to use the adjective “pensive” because one of the definitions of this adjective is expressing thoughtfulness.

Almost immediately, I recognized that the word “thought” in the definition and the letters P-E-N-S in the adjective were connected to verbs in two other languages:

• “pensar”, which in Spanish means to think;
• “pensare”, which in Italian means to think.

I could list many other linguistic connections that I have made over the past few years, but that is unnecessary here.

You can also make linguistic connections within your native language (such as English), too. You do not have to be learning another language to make them.

What linguistic connections have you made, either within English or between English and another language? Contact me!

I saw this in a message from a corporation to its employees yesterday.

Problems:
1. Two exclamation marks appear where only one should appear.
2. Common nouns are capitalized even though they should not be.
3. An apostrophe appears where it does not belong.

Explanation:
The corporate message encouraged readers to nominate others for recognition.

The full sentence was (quote) “Please be sure to recognize your Employee’s and Peers!!” (unquote).

One problem with this sentence is the second exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, as if the first exclamation mark were insufficient.

Can you imagine putting two periods at the end of a sentence? That would be nonsensical, right? Putting two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence is just as nonsensical.

Unfortunately, this seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English.

Another problem is the capitalization of the two common nouns. There is nothing special about an “employee” or a “peer” that requires capitalization in this sentence.

Unfortunately, this also seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English, as if a huge contingency of Germans had moved to the U.S. and started to misapply the German approach to capitalization to all nouns in English.

The third problem is the most glaring. An apostrophe was inserted with the pluralization of “employee”, which is incorrect.

Solution:
“… recognize your employees and peers!”

While recently investigating a system that daily sprays for this pest, my thoughts went to the the correct pluralization of the noun “mosquito”.

Problem:
It is not always clear how to pluralize a noun that ends with the letter “o”.

Explanation:
Years ago, U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle became the butt of jokes when he told a student that the word “potato” should be spelled P-O-T-A-T-O-E.

The veep’s misspelling was likely due to the fact that the plural of “potato” — which is spelled P-O-T-A-T-O — is spelled P-O-T-A-T-O-E-S.

In other words, this singular noun with an “o” at the end is pluralized by adding E-S, not by adding only S.

Similarly, the singular noun “mosquito” — spelled M-O-S-Q-U-I-T-O — is pluralized in English by adding E-S instead of by adding S.

I believe that some American English speakers pluralize the singular noun “mosquito” by adding only an S because this is how the noun is pluralized in Spanish and because of the increasing influence of Spanish on American English

Solution:
Use “mosquitoes” with an O-E-S ending for English. Use “mosquitos” with an O-S ending for a language such as Spanish.

Three events over the past two days have driven home to me the importance of being able to communicate in more than just English.

First, while on vacation on Friday afternoon I saw a “Dr. Phil” TV-show episode in which a woman used French with her son to bad-mouth the son’s wife, who spoke only English, right in front of the wife!

The couple eventually divorced. I believe that a contributing factor in the divorce was that the mother-in-law could use her and her son’s fluency in French against the English-only-speaking daughter-in-law.

Second, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing on Friday night highlighted a small boy who had rescued a couple of his classmates from the recent Sichuan earthquake.

Given his heroism, the boy was already endearing, I’m sure, to billions of viewers around the world. What made him even more endearing to Americans and others was that he already was speaking some English at the tender age of nine.

Third, my wife met a Spanish-, French- and English-speaking black woman from Colombia yesterday who told my wife that she recently overheard a Hispanic woman tell her son in Spanish to be careful what he says because he can never be sure who is listening and understands what he is saying in Spanish.

The Colombian woman also said that she often overhears Spanish speakers here in Houston talking openly about her in Spanish because they assume that she is African-American and therefore that she probably does not understand anything that they are saying.

As these three anecdotes indicate, it pays — beyond any kind of financial gain — to be able to communicate in more than only English. To learn about more non-financial benefits of speaking another language, please read my discussion about Visual Link Spanish.

I saw this yesterday in an online news story.

Problem:
A period is missing.

Explanation:
There are three Latin phrases that mean and others:

• et alii — spelled E-T followed by A-L-I-I — which is masculine;
• et aliae — spelled E-T followed by A-L-I-A-E — which is feminine;
• et alia — spelled E-T followed by A-L-I-A — which is neuter.

The correct abbreviation of any of the three Latin words for “others” requires a period after A-L.

An example of proper use is “the report presented by Jones et al.” (notice the period after A-L).

Solution:
“et al.”

This post is not about a problem, explanation, and solution.

Instead, it’s about an interesting word whose use is designated as Chiefly Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas.

I first saw this word when I moved to Houston, Texas. It was on the sign of a popular restaurant and was written with an apostrophe and ’s’ as “Lagniappe’s”.

I don’t know whether this apostrophe-’s’ form on the sign was meant to be a possessive or was supposed to be a plural noun but was a blunder by a sign maker who is part of the crowd of sign makers who insert apostrophes where they don’t belong.

Leaving aside the possessive-apostrophe/plural issue and focusing on the singular noun, a “lagniappe” is something that is added to a purchase as a gift by a merchant, to say “Thank you!” for doing business with the merchant.

A commercial, mass-marketing version of a “lagniappe” could be a cosmetics bag given with a purchase of Lancôme perfume. However, the noun “lagniappe” is traditionally reserved for what an individual merchant adds, such as a small bag of fertilizer when the customer buys several flower bulbs.

The noun originally was “yapa” — Quechuan for that which is added.

Spanish speakers in Mexico turned this into “la ñapa”.

I don’t know where the French speakers from Louisiana first heard “la ñapa” and converted it into the French spelling — “lagniappe” — for the same pronunciation.

But I imagine that the greater Houston area could have been that location, given its mingling of people from Mexico and people from New Orleans and other French-speaking parts of southern Louisiana.

So there you have it: an American English word tied to Houston at the intersection of Spanish and French speakers.

Here is the verb “cleave” used in contradictory ways.

The verb in (quote) “She cleaved to her mother.” (unquote) means stick fast, cling or adhere. “Cleave” in this case is derived from the Old English cleofian.

The verb in (quote) “She cleaved the limb from the tree.” (unquote) means cut off or split. “Cleave” in this case is derived from the Old English cléofan.

So “cleave” can mean either adhering or splitting.

Talk about confusing English verbs for non-native English speakers!

Here is the verb “seed” used in contradictory ways.

The verb in (quote) “Seed the lawn.” (unquote) means add seeds to (a lawn, etc.).

The verb in (quote) “Seed the tomato.” (unquote) means remove seeds from (a fruit).

So “seed” can mean that one is either adding or removing seeds.

Talk about confusing English verbs for non-native English speakers!