Month: August 2008

It pays to be able to speak more than only English.

Foreign Languages

Three events over the past two days have driven home to me the importance of being able to communicate in more than just English.

First, while on vacation on Friday afternoon I saw a “Dr. Phil” TV-show episode in which a woman used French with her son to bad-mouth the son’s wife, who spoke only English, right in front of the wife!

The couple eventually divorced. I believe that a contributing factor in the divorce was that the mother-in-law could use her and her son’s fluency in French against the English-only-speaking daughter-in-law.

Second, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing on Friday night highlighted a small boy who had rescued a couple of his classmates from the recent Sichuan earthquake.

Given his heroism, the boy was already endearing, I’m sure, to billions of viewers around the world. What made him even more endearing to Americans and others was that he already was speaking some English at the tender age of nine.

Third, my wife met a Spanish-, French- and English-speaking black woman from Colombia yesterday who told my wife that she recently overheard a Hispanic woman tell her son in Spanish to be careful what he says because he can never be sure who is listening and understands what he is saying in Spanish.

The Colombian woman also said that she often overhears Spanish speakers here in Houston talking openly about her in Spanish because they assume that she is African-American and therefore that she probably does not understand anything that they are saying.

As these three anecdotes indicate, it pays — beyond any kind of financial gain — to be able to communicate in more than only English. To learn about more non-financial benefits of speaking another language, please read my discussion about Visual Link Spanish.

“return back”

Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Self-negation, Verbs

I heard this on television yesterday.

Problem:
The adverb “back” in “return back” is redundant.

Explanation:
The verb “return” means to go back, so the meaning of “return back” would be to go back back.

Because the “re” in “return” means back, one could argue that someone who “returns back” would never reach the intended destination.

For fun, I searched Google for the expression “return back” (with the quotation marks) and got about 2,490,000 matches. This is depressing.

Solution:
“return”

“Palate” vs. “Palette” vs. “Pallet”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Versus

I sometimes see these words used interchangeably.

Problem:
These three nouns are not synonyms.

Explanation:
A “palate” — spelled P-A-L-A-T-E — is, when it comes to anatomy, the roof of the mouth. It is also the sense of taste, as in “a meal to stimulate the palate”. This noun dates back to the Latin word “palatum”, which also means the roof of the mouth.

The primary definition of the noun “palette” — spelled P-A-L-E-T-T-E — is an oblong, thin tablet that holds small quantities of paints and that has a thumb hole at one end. This noun comes from French but is derived from the Italian word “paletta” — the diminutive form of “pala”, the Italian word for shovel.

A “pallet” — spelled P-A-L-L-E-T — originally meant a bed of straw but now usually means a wooden frame onto which goods are loaded, as in “The roofing materials were delivered on pallets.” This noun is derived from “paille”, the Old French word for straw.

Solution:
Use P-A-L-A-T-E when referring to the roof of the mouth. Use P-A-L-E-T-T-E when referring to an artist’s tool. Use P-A-L-L-E-T when referring to platform for loading and unloading goods.