Spunk & Bite Page 9

  Fair enough, however, is Rule 20’s advice against mad “sprinkling” of foreign words—a trait sometimes seen among polyglot show-offs or young writers fresh from a Wanderjahr through Europe. One can even nod here and there at H. W. Fowler’s 1908 rant on foreign words in The King’s English, which warns against forced applications, misleading literal translations, and ignorance of a term’s foreign nuances.

  But with hindsight, one can brush off Fowler’s claim that “all words not English in appearance are in English writing ugly and not pretty”; for we now see that his “ugly” examples—employé, Schadenfreude, and penchant, to name three—include some of our most successful borrowings or assimilations since 1908.

  Fowler maintained that the case against foreignisms was not a “counsel of perfection” to be dismissed by all but the most fastidious writers. He argued that there was simply no excuse for substituting unfamiliar or semi-familiar foreign terms for known English ones—not for precision, not even for ornamentation. Fowler’s warning knell, along with Strunk and White’s, is sounded by some conservative mentors today, as if a terrorist might ride in on a foreign term, or English writing might suffer trade deficits in a global economy. But English is protected by the preponderance of Anglo-Saxon (or so-called native) words in daily speech and literature, even if they comprise a minority of the national lexicon.

  As to deficits, there is no worry today: Spoken in one fashion or another by some 700 million people on the planet, English is the world’s most-studied foreign language, and the official language of more countries than any other. English words and Americanisms, to the despair of some governments, are probably the most borrowed; the Japanese alone have borrowed and adapted some twenty thousand. We can certainly absorb the odd umami in return.

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  STYLE AND FREQUENCY OF FOREIGNISMS

  Most style guides agree that italics should be used at least for the first appearance of foreign terms in a piece of writing, along with the original diacritical marks and capitalization. But use roman type for proper names and passages of foreign text.

  Roman is the preferred typeface for “assimilated” foreign terms—those your dictionary authority prints in roman type as main entries, or “head words.” Follow the dictionary’s guidance regarding diacritical marks for these terms.

  How often should foreignisms be used? Try this generalization: Up to three borrowings per article or chapter should be stimulation enough for most readers, unless terminology itself is your subject. This three-word guideline includes terms borrowed for their distinctive meanings and those simply substituting for threadbare English equivalents. Remember that such substitutes—say, dernier cri for the latest thing—also wear thin, often faster than their English counterparts.

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  REASONS FOR USING FOREIGNISMS

  A fatwa against foreignisms, driven mainly by fear of extremes, condemns to non-grata status thousands of expressive terms that might be put to work in English writing. Yet, a barbaridad (fearful amount) of good reasons can be found for using artfully chosen foreignisms. Here are a few of them:

  Precision. Suppose you sought a noun meaning “a code of silence and secrecy sworn to by oath”—to refer, for example, to a corporation’s code of internal affairs. Is there an English word more precise, whether grimly or playfully used, than the Italian omertà? “They think I broke the Kennedy code of omertà,” wrote New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who considered the term familiar enough to her readers that she used it without translation.

  Connotation. A foreign term like omertà carries special associations, unique undercurrents of meanings. In The New Yorker, James Surowiecki described a period of “monetary omertà” at the Federal Reserve, playing on the term’s dark Sicilian origins to suggest a malicious pattern of obscurity and deception. Once it makes headlines, a foreign term blazes through world journalism—and, as a vogue borrowing, may soon burn out or become naturalized. “Greenspan’s real legacy has been to bring glasnost to central banking,” Surowiecki wrote, using the once-explosive, now naturalized Russian word for government openness.

  Freshness. One of the overlooked reasons for going foreign is to make the ordinary sound delightful—not to impress readers, but to entertain them, introduce a little flippancy, relieve the fug of banality. Think of all those German and Yiddish words that tickle the American ear with their schm- and schn- sounds. Right now, the popular term for a lover of eating is foodie, but the lip-smacking German term Feinschmecker gets my vote.

  English may be one of the most versatile languages, but it is not always the most lyrical. To American ears, prestamo interbibliotecario sings like an Italian tenor; interlibrary loan does not. In a classical tongue, the humdrum of cyberspeak suddenly thrums majestically: Inscriptio ordinatralis is the orotund version of internet address, according to Latin enthusiast Konrad Kokoszkiewicz.

  Piquance. Here is how William F. Buckley Jr., another Latin enthusiast, explained to a correspondent his passion for untranslated non-English words: “[D]elicately used,” he said, “they do bring little piquancies and with them, well—aperçu [quick insight] which, because they are extra-idiomatic, give you a fresh view of the subject.”

  Elsewhere in the Buckley collection The Right Word, he compares the deft foreign word to the unexpected jazz chord that pianist Thelonius Monk would strike at the right harmonic moment—different, perhaps bizarre, but not something a listener would want stifled.

  Tone. Even in the most unlikely genres, the refined ear enjoys a touch of the tony—of a language not spoken by every palooka. Cheering foreignisms in sports writing, Indiana columnist William Meehan wrote:

  In a Sports Illustrated article about a boxing club . . . [A. J.]Liebling brings into play not only French but Latin . . . succès d’estime, mouchoirs, in absentia and a poetic transposition of non compos mentis. . . . And he does so sans explanation, against the recommendation of journalism’s leading style manual.

  Synonymity. A foreign term provides an option to repeated words when tired English synonyms won’t do. Imagine a sentence like this: “ ‘A body of works comes from an artist who has worked and worked hard,’ she said, speaking of her own works.” Using “oeuvres ” for the last word sounds better.

  Atmosphere and characterization. Hemingway did it with Spanish, Stanley Elkin with Yiddish, Nabokov with four or five languages: splashes of foreign words and dialogue for authenticity, to put the reader in the scene, to animate characters. What I long recalled from William Styron’s Set This House on Fire, read ages ago, were bursts of untranslated Italian evoking the high-pitched Neopolitan atmosphere: “ ‘Bella Vista,’ he roared, ‘Tutti i conforti . . .panorama scenico . . . prezzi moderati!’ ”

  Generosity When we interpret a reader’s world through the sensibilities of another culture, we present a gift, ideally one worth unpackaging. Like gifts once brought from abroad (before everything could be bought everywhere), these special terms can be savored, treasured, and collected—say, as Mario Vargas Llosa did with morbidezza, an Italian word for a softness “that sounds lustful even when applied to bread.” I expect authors of foreign-themed literature to slip me a few such gifts within their stories, or feel the sting of my peevishness.

  REASONS TO HESITATE

  What reasons are there to withhold these treasures, to deny readers such gifts as karma, cognoscenti, frisson, kiosk, macho, and mojo, all now assimilated into English? Why muzzle the Sturm und Drang? Here, in addition to the pitfalls mentioned by Fowler, are some common objections to using foreign terms:

  Imprecision. We hear it said that “the French have a word for it”—but it’s often more like three or four words. In many cases, when you’re tempted to use a foreign term, chances are that English has a more precise one within its enormous, flexible vocabulary. If “literally” is what we mean, as in, “she took my wisecrack literally,” why use au pied de la lettre?

  Improper tone. Though they appear successfully in every genre, foreign
isms are simply off-pitch in certain works. They may be out of sync with the narrator, characters, or atmosphere of a story—or all wrong for its audience. It’s a matter of ear.

  Bafflement. A page into The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot baffled many readers with four lines of German (“Frisch weht der Wind” . . . ), followed by some French and Italian. But bafflement has its place in high poetry—sometimes that’s part of its intrigue. Great poetry assumes the reader’s willingness to labor over its mystery in exchange for a soul-stirring payoff. Elsewhere in literature, however, long and untranslated foreign passages will be skipped, and probably cussed at.

  Sheer pedantry. One who uses foreignisms mainly for show will show up mainly as un cojudo a la vela—an ass at full sail, as they say in Spanish.

  Ignorance of nuance. It takes moxy to use a newly encountered term when only its literal meaning and perhaps one figurative use are known. According to an American columnist, Chinese journalists call a barely legal act a cabianqiu—the term for a Ping-Pong shot that just catches the table. Handy word—but does it suggest a sly thing, or a deplorable one, or what?

  Foreign slang is especially precarious, shifting according to time and place, offensive to one and not another. One can favor slang terms that have achieved some universality, like the French merde or Spanish cojones, but such terms may have lost much of their punch in the process.

  Erroneous usage. The fear of looking foolish or fraudulent haunts every writer who uses a foreign term without fluency in its source language. Chances for misuse are legion: Transliteration is a nightmare from which no one escapes unchallenged, not to mention the difficulties of understanding case, tense, plurals, and agreement. “She met a dude fatale,” sounds cool; but there is no applying fatale to anything masculine, and fatal loses its Frenchness, as Wilson Follett warned in Modern American Usage. There he argued that “foreign phrases should be used only when no native equivalent is to be had.”

  But here we have argued otherwise; because equivalence in meaning does not always mean equivalence in feeling or delight— in stimulation—for our too-often understimulated readers. Because writers, who always face the possibility of looking idiotic, must muddle along anyway, relying on howls and adjustments over time to make things right.

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  WHERE TO FIND APT FOREIGN TERMS

  Authors usually don’t go fishing for foreign words and phrases to store in their notebooks. Were they to do so, a few dips into sources like The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases would net enough lunkers for a lifetime. Instead, writers tend to gather the most useful foreignisms from travel, study, multilingual friends—and from the borrowings of other writers.

  From journalists come good borrowings for describing contemporary events; creative literature turns up eclectic choices. The first writer to borrow an apt term gets points for originality, but it is perfectly legit to re-borrow someone else’s borrowings if they suit your context. After all, borrowings are just words entering the lexicon as words always do: by pass-along.

  When you do encounter a juicy term, try checking its form and usage in an English reference like the Oxford collection (which features some eight thousand words in more than forty languages) or a dictionary in the original language. If you can’t find the term or even read the original script, take a chance anyway. Shakespeare did, made a few mistakes, and ended up okay.

  USABLE TERMS: A SAMPLING

  I. From newspapers and magazines:

  • fiza (India). The street and marketplace buzz before an election.

  • catastrofista (Italy). Someone who makes a catastrophe out of everything.

  • suji (Japan). The strong “line” or “spine” of philosophical reasoning necessary to make decisions.

  • yoik (Lapland). To chant in a glottal, singsong, yelping manner.

  • mammoni (Italy). Sons who never leave the comfort of home and pampering mothers.

  • noyrwws (Finland). Quiet pride in the past, humility toward the future.

  • gecekondos (Turkey). Hastily built apartment buildings on the edges of a city.

  • dietrologia (Italy). The art of finding dark ulterior motives behind ordinary- seeming decisions.

  • mutumba (Kenya). Bales of secondhand American clothing sold in markets.

  • bidoon (Kuwait). Stateless noncitizens.

  • tutela (Colombia). A citizen’s writ for quick judgment on a violation of rights.

  • Dalits (India). The former “Untouchables” caste. Dalit means “ground-down” or “downtrodden” in Hindi.

  II. From literature:

  • shpatziering (Yiddish). Shameless sauntering: “. . . shpatziering all over India looking either for her soul or some swell new herbal tea.” (—Stanley Elkin, Mrs. Ted Bliss)

  • interesnoe polozhenie (Russian). Literally “interesting condition,” a euphemism for something far more consequential, such as pregnancy: “[N]either [of them] remembered to dope procreation, whereupon started the extremely interesnoe polozhenie.” (—Vladimir Nabokov, Ada)

  • chato / chata (Portuguese). An annoying bore: “ ‘The world can do without chatas like Teresa Caravalho,’ he said.” (—Robert Wilson, A Small Death in Lisbon)

  • neican (Chinese). Restricted, internal: “It is a restricted book—it is neican.” (—Paul Theroux, Riding the Iron Rooster)

  • pur (Greek). Fire. “Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light . . . ?” (—Donna Tartt, The Secret History)

  MONOLINGUAL READERS

  What about those understimulated readers we mentioned earlier? How many of them understand even the most common foreign words and expressions? Americans reared in the U.S.A. are famous for their monolinguism, and the withering of foreign languages in our schools and colleges assures more such notoriety.

  Yet I believe that the majority of modern readers—awash in global communications—will appreciate the stretch, the learning op, of good foreign terms besides pokémon. As for those who would rather swallow a mofongo whole than sample a linguistic savory from the global kitchen, I point to the sensation mofongo evokes before one learns it is a spicy, Puerto Rican dumpling the size of a cue ball. Even for those who pass by words with umami, there is the pleasure of their scent.

  Force

  STIMULATION BY ANY MEANS

  FOURTEEN

  DIALOGUE TAGS WITH OOMPH

  When dialogue needs to be attributed to someone, writers use what is called a “tag” for the job. Said is the usual tag. Harriet said; she said. Or asked, or replied. How many more are there? A study turned up some six hundred different tags in just one hundred novels by twentieth-century British and American authors. Authors averaged a range of about fifty in each novel.

  But pretend you never heard that; because most writing gurus tell you to use no tags—or, if necessary, a single one: Said.

  “Well, this annoys me,” I say pointedly. “This annoys me,” I hiss. “This annoys me!” I trumpet through cupped hands.

  Why? Because I don’t like rigidity in writing advice, the rules of attribution included. And this is not just an authority problem. I admit that the writing pros are 95 percent right when they lay down rules such as these for tagging dialogue:

  • Elmore Leonard: “Never use a word other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. . . . Never use an adverb to modify the word ‘said.’ ” (—“Writers on Writing,” The New York Times)

  • Stephen King: “The adverb is not your friend. . . . I insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions . . . and not even then, if you can avoid it. . . . [And don’t shoot] the attribution verb full of steroids.” (—On Writing)

  So maybe they are 99 percent right. But it’s the 1-percent-wrong part that intrigues me, because that’s where some of our most commercially successful writers live; because that’s where the thrill of risk and reward comes into play; and b
ecause rigidity can hamstring an idea on its way to expression: say, the idea of someone sounding off—as Martin Amis tags it in Yellow Dog—liverishly.

  DRY STYLE

  When should writers be frugal in their tags, shunning adverbs and limiting themselves to the triad of said, asked, and replied? Generally, when a speaker’s manner of expression is already clear. What makes it clear? Such elements as context and content of the dialogue, narrative description, and the speaker’s character. For example, said is attribution enough in this passage:

  A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray’s lips, and he rushed between the painter and the screen. “Basil,” he said, looking very pale, “you must not look at it.” (—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)

  For Dorian to have “gasped” or “said anxiously” would have been redundant, a telling instead of showing, a denial of the reader’s imagination—all that bad business.