Fluency in Speaking and Writing

My Random Word Generator

Sometimes, like at a wake or after a funeral, it’s really hard to find anything to say. Other times there are way too many words trying to tumble out all at once--for example, times when I recall two funny anecdotes, or two urgent matters, and waver about which one to communicate first. The result is usually speechlessness, which I consider the verbal equivalent of going “splat,” but occasionally the Random Word Generator kicks into gear. The Random Word Generator says things like “be sure to follow the destructions” and once answered the telephone with a very professional “Good Sea Grant” instead of “Good morning.” (“You’re lucky it’s me,” was the response, slightly delayed by a fit of giggles.)

I make fun of my Random Word Generator right along with everyone else, because it seems so inexplicable, but secretly I’m quite pleased by the phenomenon. I just plain like the idea of having an infinite amount of words to choose from. I once argued, in a poetry-writing class, that there are always words for what you need to say, and if they don’t come it just means you don’t know them yet. I believed that then, and I believe it now—but now I also think that some of those words may take more than one lifetime to find.

I have no doubt--in this life, at least--where my limitless supply of words comes from. It comes from the brown flannel board that my mother used to teach me sentences before I ever went off to school. Anyone who’s ever played with “Magnetic Poetry” understands the concept of shuffling words around on a board. The brown flannel board worked in accordance with the principles of static electricity, whatever those may be. At any rate, it was foolproof and fun.

Mom must have started me out with a controlled vocabulary (controlled in an educational sense—limited to the sorts of words a child needs most), but whenever I wanted to use a word that she hadn’t prepared for me she’d simply take a blue or black pen and write the word on a piece of white paper. She'd then use a scissors to cut out a neat little rectangle with the word on it. Imagine, any word I wanted became available within moments!

The brown flannel board was a blessing in my life because it gave me a good command of the English language. To this day when I’m casting around in my brain for “just the right word,” I am searching visually. The words are neatly printed, in my mother’s handwriting, on neat but not exact rectangles, and they have brown flannel spaces between them. This is great for writing. Believe me, I am eternally grateful for facility with writing. But of course I cannot extend this fluency to speaking. It takes time, after all, to read and arrange the words in my head, and sometimes I stop and stare off into space for so long that the people I’m trying to talk to become perplexed or perturbed.


Other People's Foibles

Needless to say, I am not the only person who misspeaks from time to time. There are all kinds of reasons for this, of course. All too often, listeners or readers jump to the cynical conclusions such as "people can't help being stupid or ignorant." As to stupidity--well, we all would do well to remember that we all suffer from that to one extent or another. And as to those errors in speech and in writing that stem from ignorance--they ought to be forgiven to the extent that the ignorance is not deliberate. Speakers, in particular, are innocent until proven guilty! They can't help it if they are young, or if they were born in another country and English is not their first language. Here, in the New York City borough of Queens--ethnically and linguistically the most diverse county in the U.S.--most of the mistakes I hear and see are made by nonnative adult speakers.

While I'm inclined to forgive mistakes in the spoken word, I'm thoroughly dismayed by misspellings on signs and billboards, on TV and computer screens, and in published matter, because I feel these ought to be proper models for people learning to read (both children and nonnative English speakers).

Another thing people can't help, even if they're smart, well informed, and fluent in the language they're using, is the hyped-up pace of living, especially in the public sphere. Newscasters and politicians are particularly vulnerable to getting tripped up in their speech because they generally don't get a lot of lead time to prepare what they're going to say. Although news and sports broadcasters certainly can sound like complete asses, I can't totally condemn them--they're not hired as experts on English usage, but rather for the total image they present in front of a camera.

Politicians should, I feel, pronounce words correctly and construct sentences with subjects and predicates that agree--because it's through their use of language that voters perceive their level of intelligence, education, and other qualifications for office. But the politician, like the broadcaster, is under pressure to deliver "live." In addition, political life demands doublespeak and ambiguity at least as much as it requires polished prose.

Even when a message is delivered in writing, there's still a certain pressure involved. Being a "fluent" writer myself, in the past I never fully understood this--but now that there's less time available in which to write ordinary, everyday things (say, a letter complaining to a health-insurance company or a memo telling a proofreader what to watch out for), I worry that what I produce may not be quite right. I imagine that if I were less proficient with the English language than I am now, and that I wrote more slowly to begin with--well, I can get an idea of the kind of pressure people are under.

I remember chatting with Christina, an interior decorator who lived in New Rochelle and was working as a holiday tree-trimmer in a department store. She is from the Philippines. She got excited about something and told me an anecdote in which she referred to her brother as "she." I'm glad Christina didn't suppress the anecdote for fear of being judged, but I was saddened by something else she said that same day. I asked if she studied decorating in school, and she had. I said, a tad dismissively, that I was an English major. "Ohhh! Do you like writing?" she asked, impressed. So I went "blah blah blah" and then asked her the same. "Oh, yes, I am interested in writing, it seems like a very important thing to do. But I don't write because it takes me so long to get it right."

This is not the first time I've heard this. It makes me sad because I believe that people who are interested in expressing themselves in writing should be encouraged to do so. My dismay and despair make me fear that the battle is lost. There will be--perhaps already are--two levels of language: one accessible only to native speakers who have the time and resources with which to dot their i's and cross their t's, and the other that's not "correct," but rather inflected by Spanish, Chinese, black vernacular, and other speech patterns. This latter language has the virtue of being generally understandable to all--but its prevalence hinders interest in, and understanding of, the rich vocabulary and nuances of multigenerational English.

I worry that when I use somewhat offbeat words that I am partial to--like "inherent" or "concomitant" or "diabolical"--I am excluding lots of intelligent people. At times like those, I wonder if there's anybody out there who longs for an infinity of words-on-demand posted on a brown flannel Web site, with pronunciations, spellings, and definitions that you could access via telephone. I know it would be music to my ears.