UNIX and language!

This is purely magnificent, and it has some analogues in human language. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the joke, here’s a brief explanation.

“sudo” in Unix-based computer systems stands for “Superuser Do”. When you’re using a Unix system, lots of files have complex permissions (so that people can’t do things that they’re not supposed to), and your everyday user account isn’t be able to edit all the files on the computer. If you need to run a command, but don’t have permission, you type sudo , and then enter the computer administrator’s password (if you have it), and then it’ll do the command. This is a double-edged sword, because the computer will let you do ANYTHING, even things that will break, hurt, or destroy your operating system. So, the whole operation will look like this:

$ touch /bin/newcommand
touch: /bin/newcommand: Permission denied
$ sudo touch /bin/newcommand
Password: adminpassword
$

So, sudo is just a way of saying “I have the authority to do whatever I please, so DO IT!”. (See, I told you the comic was funny). However, it’s also a bit closer to human language than one might initially think.

The assertion of authority through speech is a pretty common act, and I’ll bet that several Sociolinguists are quivering with joy at the mere idea of discussing it (and they’re welcome to email me something to post, if they’d like). Just think about how frequently somebody “changes your mind” based simply on intimidation, or a reminder of their authority in your life. Take, for example, this interaction:

Mom: Honey, could you clean your room?
Son: No, I want to play nintendo!
Mom: I’m your mother, do as I say, Jimmy!
Son: (starts cleaning)

If that’s not a “sudo clean /rooms/jimmy”, what is? However, it can be even more subtle:

BOSS: Carol, would you write up a quick report for me on the Jenkins account?
CAROL: Well, I just clocked out.
BOSS: Oh, alright, but I think that doing this report might be helpful for your end-of-year report.
CAROL:.. Did I say “clocked out”? I meant “admired your hair”

See, “sudo write ~/thereport”. However, very, very seldom (outside the military or a gun-to-the-head situation) will the authority of one person in an interaction be absolute as in the Unix example. Generally, people retain much more free will and will question obviously bad commands (Boss: Carol, light me on fire or I’ll dismiss you), so there’s not the same degree of mindless obedience.

Finally, just like in Unix, it’s a bad habit to append “sudo” to everything, even if you are an administrator. In computers, it’s usually unnecessary (the average person won’t need to do this), and it’s very easy to make a typo as a superuser and erase/mess up things you didn’t mean to. If you’re not sudo’ed, the computer will stop you before you do too much damage. As the message says the first time you run sudo, “with great power comes great responsibility”.

In human interaction, “sudo-ing” a conversation is something you never want to do unless it’s unnecessary. Imagine “Carol, give me 3 sheets of copy paper or I’ll fire you right now” as an initial request? Sure, it’d work, but really, pulling rank like that is damaging to your interpersonal relationships, so you should save it for when you really, really need to.

So, I hope you enjoyed this post, and will come back to read again. If that doesn’t work, sudo read -again linguisticdork.

I knew you’d see things my way. ;)

...

English kills you before it skills you!

The English spelling structure is far from being perfect, as anybody who was ever “hooked on phonetics and phonology” will tell you. Letters are far from having a one-to-one congruent connection with sounds (like they do in Indian languages or Russian or even to an extent as in German), and the letter-by-letter spelling of a word is only vaguely related to how it’s actually pronounced. Now, native English speakers usually know this in the back of their heads, just from the pain of grade-school spelling ratings and competitions, but sometimes, it’s good to reinforce the notion.

This poem, that I stumbled upon coincidently on the net, could be given as an assignment in a phonetics class; it is untitled and by an anonymous author (to the best of my knowledge). It is, to this day, one of the most awesome poems I’ve come across. Native English speakers, read this excerpt aloud to yourself:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Now look back at the actual letters of the word. Every line (or pair of lines) has a rhyme, but just looking at the letters, it’d be nearly impossible to tell that. In addition, some things (like “wind”) could either rhyme or not, depending on how you read it. See why it’s such a pain for non-native speakers to learn English?
So, English spelling is a mess, but given the fact that we’ve gone through a ‘vowel shift’, absorbed countless new words, and gone hundreds of years without any major systematic spelling system changes, it’s not surprising. I’m not going to call for a spelling reform, though. It’s not because I don’t think we need it, or because I think it’s impossible.

I might just end up at the bottom of a consonant cluster, wearing concrete boots.