To Each Their Own Language

Even twins aren’t exactly alike in their language – because language is learned, not inherited.

The practical demands of making a dictionary reveal unimpeachable truths about language.

Let me begin with a revelation from Kory Stamper, author of the meticulous, passionate, no-holds-barred best-selling exposé of what really happens in the making of a dictionary, her book aptly titled Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. She reveals her career as a lexicographer at the venerable and venerated Merriam-Webster, beginning with a nervous interview that led to her hiring decades ago. Chapter after chapter tells of discarding naïve and wrong conventional assumptions about language as she learns the truth about what it really requires to write a first-class dictionary.

One of the surprises she encounters at her job interview is this:

“At Merriam-Webster, there are only two formal requirements to be a lexicographer: You must have a degree in any field from an accredited four-year college or university, and you must be a native speaker of English.”

As always, after presenting a surprising fact she follows with a careful explanation that begins:

“We also require that our lexicographers be native speakers of English, for a very practical reason: That’s the language we focus on, and you need mastery over all its idioms and expressions.”

This is a truth rarely mentioned: Unless you have the good fortune to live from infancy in the presence of two or more languages, learning each of them by slow natural development, you won’t be taken for a truly native speaker of more than the one you learned that way.

It even extends to dialects of the same language. Like British actors who alter a few basic vowels, or American Southerners who adopt Northern vowels and toss in salient vocabulary like “you guys” for “y’all,” you can convince an audience that you’ve made the switch but in private life you won’t pass.

This has a connection with the anonymous New York Times op-ed piece about the White House that drew so much attention when published two weeks ago. It leads to the assumption that no two individuals speak or write exactly alike, since each has to learn the language they hear around them, constructing their own rules of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar rather than being born with a standard set. It implies that given enough material to work with, you can tell whether a particular piece of writing was made by a particular suspect. In other words, identification is possible.

With the White House Anonymous, a single edited op-ed is too little to go on. But some have tried, in particular one anonymous blogger who uses a multifaceted evaluation to identify a likely candidate. See for yourself.

Prudently, this blogger begins with a disclaimer:

“This blog presents an UNPROVED theory. It is based only on publicly available information. It probably is wrong. I have no inside info or personal knowledge of the issues involved. Caveat lector!”