Headlinese 101

A curious phenomenon has recently grabbed my attention as I was teaching journalism students. Although I have always been aware of it, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I was circumstantially obliged to delve deeper into its analysis. I have thereby learnt a couple of interesting truths such as, for example, the fact that newspaper headlines are never written by the authors of the articles they introduce as they have to follow a set of strict formal and conceptual rules – they need to be short and adjust perfectly to the newspapers’ space requirements and obviously attract potential buyers or persuade people to read articles withing the newspaper they have purchased. But apart from these obvious market-led goals, what is most interesting about headlines is the type of language used by their authors – the translators of headlinese, as the "language" is dubbed by some.

A quick glance at some Spanish language headlines reveals a specific use of language that employs short and precise present tense sentences.

La OTAN niega que Rusia haya retirado sus tropas de la frontera con Ucrania

El Gobierno prevé un crecimiento de hasta el 1,5% para este año

Marcelo se rompe y no estará ante el Dortmund

Simplicity is also rule number one in English headlines, yet it is true they go a step further making the message even more compact. A crash course in headline-writing would probably look like this:

1)          Remove articles and unnecessary grammar/lexical elements

2)          Use present tense, gerunds, past participles or plain noun phrases

3)          Use headlinese vocabulary (there are special lists of word used in headlines only)
4)     Use  "to + V" instead of the future tense
5)     It can never start with the article "a" (as argued by Weir 2009)

Migrants face 'living hell' in Greece

Stem cell scientist 'faked evidence'

Not only do headlinese translators, who often hold special headline writing positions in the media, go to great lengths to shorten their messages; they also use humour and word play with numerous cultural references which may make their work impenetrable to non-experts or non-native speakers.

Torrential rain in most arias. (about an open-air opera concert, a word play base on the homophony areas/arias; a textbook example)

  

Sometimes headlinese lends itself to ambiguous interpretations due to the flexibility of the English language when switching between different grammatical categories/parts of speech codified by one word - a phenomenon called conversion (e.g. cut can be both a noun and a verb). The ease with which nouns can play the role of adjectives when placed before a noun doesn’t help. Nor does the fact that those noun+noun lists are not limited by anything but the perceptual and anaylitical skills of the speakers. For example, what does world trade centre exactly mean: is it a trade centre that is unique in the world ([world [trade centre]) or is it a centre of world trade ([[world trade] centre]? The difference may be subtle, yet the first version suggests there is only one, while the second doesn’t. Surprisingly, Centro de comercio mundial receives 401.000 Google search results, while centro mundial de comercio - 329.000. So most people seem not to care.

And how exactly should we interpret these examples taken from a webpage than gathers funny headline botches:

Eye drops off shelf

Squad helps dog bite victim

Dealers will hear car talk at noon

Two Soviet ships collide - one dies 

Does number 1 talk about eye drops that were taken off the shelf [[eye drops] [off shelf]] or one eye that fell off the shelf [[eye] [drops off shelf]]. Or in number 2: whom does the squad actualy help: the victim or the dog? Are cars talking in 3 or is it about a talk in/about the car? Is one correferential with ship in 4 or is there actually a person involved?

Some more nice instances from todays online press:

White House's 'Cuban Twitter' denial

Services sector growth eases

Supreme Court Strikes Down Overall Political Donation Cap

I'll leave it at that. At the end of the day, the Internet's full of examples. 

NOTE: All examples have been taken from the cited sources, except for the world trade centre bit, which has always bothered me personally.

Sources and further reading:

Weir (2009): Article Drop in English Headlinese [online] http://people.umass.edu/aweir/Weir-2009-headlinese.pdf
http://funnies.paco.to/Headlines.html
http://www.theguardian.co.uk
http://www.elpais.es
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese
http://www.uiltexas.org/files/academics/journalism/headline-overview.pdf

How The Ukraine became Ukraine: markedness and politeness

Today I was talking about the current events in Ukraine to a group of students and each time I pronounced the name of the country I did so hesitantly, which resulted in inconsistent article use and haphazard alternation between Ukraine and the Ukraine.

One of the basic rules of English grammar states that proper names denoting countries shall be used without a preceding article. Some common exceptions to that principle are names 1) containing common nouns; 2) referring to geographical features normally used with articles (seas, mountains, rivers, deserts); 3) some of those referring to regions and 4) plural names (hence The United States, the Netherlands (just like the Highlands of Scotland), the United Kingdom, (The) Congo, The Bahamas, The Philippines, the south-east, the south, the Middle East), though it is just a strong tendency. It should also be borne in mind that singular country names in -land have no article (Holland, Iceland, etc.) but -land /ənd/ is normally unstressed there and treated phonologically more as a suffix than a proper noun.

Given the rules stated above, (the) Ukraine is special for the following reasons. 

First of all, although the exact etymology of the name of the country is uncertain, “Ukraina” is probably an illustrative region denomination meaning “borderland” and containing a common noun. (In fact, the word “kraina” in my mother language means “land” as well.) Therefore, the Ukraine would adhere to the trend stated above assuming the awareness of the original meaning of its name amongst those who dubbed the country the Ukraine. 

Secondly, the country recently changed its status from being part of the Soviet Union (the Ukrainian Soviet Republic) to becoming an independent country after centuries of being considered more a region than a country in its own right. The outcome seems to be that nowadays it is both grammatically and politically incorrect to say the Ukraine: grammatically because country names are not used with articles (unless the rules stated above are applicable, which is clearly not the case), and politically, because the country itself has preferred to drop "the" as a way of linguistically reasserting its independence in official documents, as can be seen in the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine.

Thirdly, the perceived regionness of the name Ukraine seems to be corroborated by the fact it is interpreted as a region description when used with a preposition in the Slavic languages (including Ukrainian and Polish), where different prepositions are used for regions and countries. Apparently, there is now a tendency to officially use the "country preposition" amongst the official Ukrainian bodies. In fact, even in English, the articleless version has been spreading exponentially over the past two decades as the graph below shows.

Summing up, the Ukraine, being an exception to the non-use of article with country names, may now be considered impolite in English being a marked (=less frequent/atypical/irregular) form: linguistically different from other countries yet similar to geographical features or regions. Of course, there is nothing linguistically derogatory in using articles with country names, as occurs in French (with all countries) or German (non-neuter ones) where the use of articles is unmarked (=perfectly regular) and thus causing no alarm. But markedness in the Ukrainian case seems to have been interpreted as discriminatory after the change in the country's status, which is confirmed in the following quote from a BBC article:

"The Ukraine" is incorrect both grammatically and politically, says Oksana Kyzyma of the Embassy of Ukraine in London.

"Ukraine is both the conventional short and long name of the country," she says. "This name is stated in the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence and Constitution."

Ukraine it is, then.

Read more at:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/32098/why-did-ukraine-become-just-ukraine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine 

From "ghoti" to "Worcestershire": getting your place name pronunciations right

Well, today I have finally decided to post in and about English. And a simple and practical entry it will be.

It is an obvious yet necessary claim that English is famous for the loose relation between the spelling and the pronunciation of a word; looser in some cases than in others. We all remember the famous GHOTI, popularly attributed to G. B. Shaw; a word that should be theoretically pronounced fish (<gh>as in laugh, <o> as in women, <ti> a in nation). This nonsensical example was devised to represent the aforementioned irregularities, although it does not actually adhere to basic English spelling rules and so dies in the attempt.

  

There is yet another, more preposterous version of this language play as exemplified in the following meme by Grammarly.

A couple of years ago I was working as a group leader on a summer camp in Exmouth /ˈeksməθ/, Devon, with a group of teenagers from all around Europe. I remember most of them would get the pronunciation of the place name wrong, saying –mouth as if it was a word, oblivious of the fact that, although etymologically the suffix –mouth does derive from mouth (where the river flows into the sea), it is no longer pronounced with its original full vowel but it is now unstressed and reduced to a schwa (the neutral vowel that lends its name to this blog). We soon started to jocularly pronounce Plymouth as if it was a mixture of ply /plaɪ/ and mouth /maʊθ/ instead of the standard /ˈplɪməθ /.

Proper names are notoriously troublesome as their spellings tend to be quite conservative following the rules of English in its previous stages or foreign language rules. In this brief entry, I will propose a list of some commonly mispronounced proper names; names whose pronunciation might be a cause of a serendipitous surprise or those which are noteworthy for some other reason. Of course, a great deal of arbitrariness was at work in the selection process and the list is by no means an exhaustive one. It is ineed my personal semi-useful repertoire. Another whole entry could be devoted to extremely odd names, some of which are mentioned at the end.

All the items on the list are transcribed in RP British English. The General American pronunciation can normally be obtained by applying simple correspondence rules. (Nearly) All transcriptions have been taken from John Wells’s Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. <> are used to represent the spelling as opposed to transcription //.

7 KEY SUFFIXES IN PLACE NAMES

1.  - borough is often pronounced /brə/ (especially in British English) although the noun borough is actually /ˈbʌrə/. AmE /-ˌbɝːə//-oʊ/. Cf. Edinburgh (-burgh is a variant of -borough) or Marlborough.
2.  - cester /stə/ – Worcester, Leicester /ˈlestə/
3.  - ford /fəd/ Unlike in ford/Ford /fɔːd/
4.  - ham as in Buckingham /ˈbʌkɪŋəm/ Forget about the <h> in all place names ending in <-ham>
5.  - mouth as in Exmouth /ˈeksməθ/ Wells gives a version with the full vowel, but at least the Exmouth in Devon would never be pronounced this way. The same goes for Plymouth /ˈplɪməθ/. There are other place names which are indeed pronounced with a full vowel (e.g. Tynemouth).
6.  - shire /ʃə/ Although the noun shire is indeed /ˈʃaɪə/.
7.  -wich, -wick (Greenwich, Norwich, Keswick, etc.) The <w> is normally left out.

37 SELECTED PLACENAMES

1. Arkansas /ˈɑːkənsɔː/  No /s/ at the end, although Kansas is /ˈkænzəs/.
2. Asian /ˈeɪʒə/ /ˈeɪʃə/  Both British and American English prefer the first one. The second is very limited in the US and in Britain it is becoming outdated.
3. Cologne /kəˈləʊn/  For both the city (Köln) and the perfume.
4. Connecticut /kəˈnetɪkət/  It is substandard to pronounce the second <c>.
5. Czech /tʃek/  Here the interesting thing is that the spelling actually is the same as in Polish (Czechy). It is also the old Czech spelling and that is (probably) its origin.
6. Danish vs Denmark /ˈdeɪnɪʃ/ and /ˈdenmɑːk/.
7. Ecuador /ˈekwədɔː/  Stress on the first syllable, unlike in Spanish.
8. Edinburgh /ˈedɪnbrə/  The original way this place name should be pronounced, although there exist other correct versions. Americans pronounce it with the ending /-ˌbɝː ə/-oʊ/.
9. Gibraltar /dʒɪˈbrɔːlt ə/ Bengal, Senegal are pronounced with the same vowel, although stress patterns vary.
10. Glasgow / Glaswegian /ˈɡlɑːz ɡəʊ ˈɡlæz-, ˈɡlɑːs-, ˈɡlæs-; ˈɡlɑːsk əʊ, ˈɡlæsk-/ Unbelievable phonetic variety on the syllable boundary: the vowel quality and the voiceless/voiced consonant!
11. Greenwich /ˈɡren ɪtʃ ˈɡrɪn-, -ɪdʒ/ It isn’t “green” and the <w> is left out.
12. Guinea /ˈɡɪni/ As in guinea pig. A useful word to know if you have pets.
13. Illinois /ˌɪləˈnɔɪ/ You should normally forget about the <s>.
14. Arab / Arabian /Arabic /ˈærəb/ /əˈreɪbiən/ /ˈærəbɪk/ Mind the stress!
15. Cadiz /kə ˈdɪz/ Yes, curiously. Mind the stress! Bilbao /bɪl ˈbaʊ -ˈbɑːəʊ/; Malaga /ˈmæləɡə/; Granada /ɡrəˈnɑːdə/; San Sebastian /ˌsæn səˈbæstiən/ Mind the stress here as well.
16. Celt /kelt/ The same for the derived term Celtic. Not a place name, yet interesting.
17. Florida /ˈflɒrɪdə/ There is a stress shift between Spanish and English.
18. Izrael /ˈɪzreɪəl ˈɪzriəl/.
19. Jamaica /dʒəˈmeɪkə/.
20. Lincoln /ˈlɪŋkən/ So forget about the <l>.
21. London /ˈlʌndən/ The first vowel is that in “hut”, not the one in “hot”.
22. Los Angeles /lɒs ˈændʒəliːz -ɪ-, -lɪs, -ləs/ Americans prefer the reduced pronunciation of the ending.
23. Louisiana /luˌiːziˈænə/ It’s a fascinating place name that includes five syllables and a lot of vowel-to-vowel syllable boundaries. Surprisingly, it would only be 3 syllables in Spanish.
24. Marlborough / Marlboro /ˈmɑːlbərə/ /ˈmɔːl-/ In American English (so for the company itself) the pronunciation is /ˈmɑːrlˌbɝː oʊ/, which follows the general rule for place names ending in –borough. The -l- may be left out in rhotic accents as well.
25. Melbourne is /ˈmelbən/ for Australians but a strong vowel in the ending is also possible.
26. Michigan /ˈmɪʃɪɡən/ Pronounced with a <sh> sound, just like Chicago. Apparently it came into English via French.
27. Midlands /mɪdləndz/ Reduce the second vowel, please. The same way as in the Netherlands /ˈneð ələndz/ and most country names ending in <land>. It can be three syllables only in British English where the first schwa may be dropped.
28. Moscow  /ˈmɒskəʊ ǁ ˈmɑːskaʊ/ The first pronunciation is British, the second – American.
29. New Orleans /nju: ɔː ˈliːənz/ Also /ɔːr ˈliːnz/ or even as pronounced by some Americans and the locals /’ɔːlənz/.
30. Norfolk /ˈnɔːf ək/and Suffolk. Please forget about the <l>.
31. Reading /ˈredɪŋ/ Suprise! Although they read in Reading, they don't read it as reading. A university city in Britain.
32. San Diego /ˌsæn diˈeɪɡəʊ/ There must be a diphthongized pronunciation of <e>.
33. Seoul should be pronounced like “soul”.
34. Stockholm /ˈstɒk həʊm/ Again, the <l> isn’t pronounced. The same goes for the surname of Sherlock Holmes.
35. Thailand /ˈtaɪlænd -lənd/ The <th> is pronounced as if it was spelled with a mere <t>. The same obtains in names such as Thames /temz/ and Theresa /tə ˈriːz ə/.
36. Trojan /ˈtrəʊdʒ ən/ Beware of viruses on your computers.
37. Worcester /ˈwʊst ə/ This one is particularly tricky. Even Americans struggle to correctly pronounce the name of the Worcestershire /ˈwʊstəʃə/ sauces, as my experience dictates.

This list could be expanded infinitely.

So remember: next time you end up strayed in Belvoir, Leicestershire, Cholmondely, you're actually in Beaver, Lestersher, Chumly. And don't be afraid to venture into Woolfardisworthy /wʊlzəri/ either. That monster is in Devon. 

I encourage you to do some online research. Go to this or this or this link for some extreme examples or explore Wikipedia. Have fun!