So I was interested to stumble on a debate about the Americanism “I could care less” and other phrases whose apparent self-contradiction — “cheap at half the price” — really gives people the hump!

Plain wrong or subtly clever?

Well I recall that ‘cheap at half the price’ is cockney in its roots — definitely not an Americanism — and is either a mocking inversion of what street sellers would shout (implying it was expensive) or simply means “it would be cheap if it was half the price, so I’m selling it at the proper value”. There’s a glut of great books out there which can mollify even the most immovable language purist – for example, the apparently paradoxical “the exception that proves the rule” makes a lot more sense when you learn that ‘prove’ used to mean ‘test’.

Personally, I’ve always been fond of the US variation “I could care less” (i.e. minus the negative). To my ear it is followed by an ellipsis (…) or a second half to the phrase — as in “I could care less… but I don’t” which is has a more jocular insouciance about it than the tart British equivalent: “I couldn’t care less”.

As remarked here:

“I could care less” is a wonderfully sarcastic Americanism with its roots in New York Yiddish culture. Anyone who would want to see it neutered and stripped of its character by inserting a negative is a boring pedant and an enemy of real, living English.

Indeed. But the comment on Paul’s blog which did chime with me — because I haven’t heard it for years — was mis-placement of the word ‘just’. As in:

“I don’t just want to eat tonight” – implication: I want to do more than eat
“I just don’t want to eat” – implication:my main concern is that I emphatically do not want to eat

In my experience, the former is often used, misleadingly, when the latter is intended.

But unlike a lot of the other examples in my idle web reseearch this afternoon, this isn’t a 21st century, “blame EMOs and iPods for the decline in language standards”, modern phenomenon; I remember that frustrating me from the earliest possible age — particularly when it made it into movie scripts and so on — before I even understood why or developed the obsession I have with language today. It just didn’t sound right.

I spent every Wednesday of the last academic year attending a fast track English A level course. Why? Well… to see what later-life learning is like, spy on the state of 6th form colleges in 2008, expand my mind… and — I confess — to see if my 29-year-old self is any more capable of getting a decent A level grade in the bag than my 16-18 self.

I got an A.

Whilst it’s very reassuring to know that, like the pound in my pocket, my A grade is worth less this year than it was last, and will be increasingly worth less (though hopefully not worthless) as the years roll by, there were a number of motivating factors besides adding an A grade to my CV. So a year on, I shall just indulge myself a few paragraphs of reflection on goals achieved and opportunities missed.

Adult Learning

Many adults think it’s going to be hard to learn in later life; in fact it’s much easier. With all your accumulated life knowledge you catch on to a range of concepts far quick than the average 18-year-old. As far as assignments go, you understand far better the person responsible for marking them: they are like you. Therefore the mystique is removed from the examiner.

Sure, if you’ve allowed your mind to stagnate then it’s probably a struggle – but I suspect the ‘it’s hard when you’re older’ line is just an excuse — it was hard when you were young as well wasn’t it?

“Must pass exams” mentality

Apparent from virtually day one (but insidious until about term 3) was the relentless, tunnel visioned focus on passing exams, rather than on learning. Problem is, it’s contagious and addictive. By the end I was not only obsessed with getting as high a grade as possible, but I had lost sight of wanting to learn (thankfully I was rescued by the last text which has probably become one of my favourite novels of all time).

And so I come full circle to why education and me didn’t mix, why I only saw the appeal in learning long after leaving academia. Had I done English Literature aged 18 I’d almost certainly have resented it.

I have a wild and naive hope that one day, the balance between learning and assessment will be such that those in education can put the latter out of their heads, for the duration and enjoyment of the former.

Technology woefully absent

At Futurelab it’s kind of anticipated that we will reduce the emphasis on the technology focus of our work and focus more broadly on innovative practice — because technology will become increasingly ‘invisible’ in schools there will be less need to champion it.

Um. No. Teachers, for the most part, are still pretty afraid of using computers for anything beyond the most basic task so I think we’ll be waiting some time before technology is invisible in the classroom. When it is, we won’t call it technology anyway :-)

The thing to remember about technology is this: it’s not the answer, but it is part of the fabric of students’ extra-curriclar activities and day-to-day lives. When it is missing from the classroom, it makes the learning all the more irrelevant.

UDPATE: Stephen Heppell has some interesting words to say on much of the same stuff, but particularly on the resistance to bring wordprocessors into the exam settting — something which bugged me no end.

Books and stuff are good

…but if you speed-read you probably aren’t taking the time to savour the words and the meaning, or consider the writer’s aims. The syllabus recommends reading each text 4 times — this is probably overkill; I managed to read each text twice only and yet found many, many times the meaning the second time through.

Sigh. How much must we all miss from our paltry single reading of most novels? The benefit of a course like this I suppose is that it has taught me to look for those things *first time* round, clues from the author and so on.

Writing

I remember being told, “if you want to improve at writing, just do more of it”. I’ve done more of it and I think I’ve improved.

And with that I’m putting down my pen.

That’s right — Richard, Adam and Jon who co-founded it are responsible for all the silliness on the bottom, sides, top (“shake before serving – it helps if the top is on”) and even the bottom of cartons (“if you’re reading this you must be bored”). (Great brand stories is worth a read for anyone with an entrepreneurial streak).

So it’s a bit disappointing to read in their recent newsletter that hackneyed phrase “a good time was had by all”. Yawn and double yawn. You can do better than that!

However it does remind me of a delightlfully biting twist on the same phrase used by Bette Davis I recall to describe a less-than-chaste fellow hollywood actress: “she was the original good time had by all”.

See if you can slip that into conversation in the next week!

Toby and Alicia live in a palace! Their vast house with large garden and swimming pool is in the exclusive Mosman Park district, minutes from Perth via the Fremantle train line.

It’s baking hot (32 degrees and rising) but not uncomfortable. Dry heat — that’s new.

Having not seen Toby since the wedding two and a bit years ago (and therefore not since the ritual humiliation of performing Hugh Laurie’s “Mystery” at the evening reception) it was great to see the old dog. An unexpected treat was being reunited with him at his office at St Hilda’s (Alicia picked me up from the station and took me straight to the school), seeing him on-duty, dog-collar on, in his prestigious working environment. Old rascal — I can’t always believe he’s an ordained minister, some of the things he comes out with! Anyway, don’t want to get the man sacked, so moving on…

The rest of the day I just chilled — perfect opportunity to finish Remains of the Day. What a great read. I’d pigeon-hole it firmly with Joanne Harris’ Gentlemen and Players (in terms of style and quality). A page-turning, but gently voiced narrator, piles of subtlety and layers of meaning, with a totally affecting final scene — a rare moment where I’m moved close to tears by the written word.

My literaray emotion is compounded later in the day when I pick up an email with my results for the first round of E Lit exams. Just call me “Mr A”. Quite funny really; not so much that I wrote a crock of sh*t for the Shakespeare essay and still got an A, but that seeing the breakdown, I only dropped 10 marks out of an available 210! Baffling.

Or that is to say, I’ve just enrolled on an evening class studying for an A level in English Literature — first class tonight!

It’s a one-year course with only 3 hours of teaching a week. If it was 4.5 hours, it would still be approximately half the teaching hours of a full time 16-18 A level student so it’s going to be intensive!

I’m excitied, not to mention a little daunted, about returning to education more than seven years after leaving it full time, and exactly ten years since completing my first round of A levels.

The texts are:

Carol Ann Duffy (selected poetry)

Emma – Jane Austen

King Leah – Shakespeare

Death of a Salesman – Miller

Metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Vaughan)

The Changeling – Middleton and Rowley

A Room with a View – Forster

The Remains of the Day – Ishaguro

I also came across a very enjoyable list of Ten Common but Easily Corrected (language) Errors — and son of — which are both instructive and a bit of a giggle.

Now then, I love CXPartners, I really do. They’ve done some great usability testing work for us recently, and their new website is a real winner.

But the language gaffes that blighted the previous site remain. Check out the third par of this page: http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/whatwedo/services/wireframes/

To quote the advice in the previous link: “When you intently study a book, you pore over it. If you pour over it, you are going to have a soggy book”. Tehe.

• Word Spy — a more offbeat, contemporary approach to word of the day
• Common English errors (she must have read my last post! ;-)
• Cliche Finder — make sure your writing is free of cliches….
• Idea book – for the creatively challenged
• Bubble.us — mindmapping tool

1. Website grader allows you to enter your url to get a literary grading on your website (yet to try this myself)
2. Then there’s the WordCounter which does a tally of words you use most frequently used words (useful if you have a habit of over using words such as “literally” as in “I literally died” and “like” – shame we can’t come with a tool like this for casual speech)
3. Fun with Words: more palindromes, collective nouns and common pispronounciations than you ever thought existed!
4. I’ve written about Visual Thesaurus before but if you haven’t checked out this feat of web wizadry go check it out now (go straight to the “look it up” text field).
5. A bit off-road this one, but if your own mail server doesn’t cut it with large file sizes or distribution lists, YouSendIt is worth a look.

Shame she didn’t include the Urban Dictionary and I probably ought to alert her to Word Association from Nameless.

If you’re hungry for more “common errors in English”, try this.

What is disappointing about this fantastic phrase is that it doesn’t mean what one might first think. It is attributed to Steinbeck and is defined by Phrases.org as “Rowdy, boisterous, full of youthful energy” (the latter part of that definition tying in with the Cameron comments).

One might expect there to be a slightly more bite or vitriol to the phrase, but there you have it.

Word enthusiasts out there, be sure to check out a new Web 2.0 app: Wordie; “like Flickr but without the photos”.

Oh, and by the way – it doesn’t surprise me to see the domain for my phrase du jour having been bought up: piss ‘n’ vinegar. Hmm, don’t think I fancy that on my crisps.

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.