Image via National Lampoon

Judson speculates that saying "eeee" makes you "start to smile" (that's apparently why we say "cheese" in photographs), and the act of smiling can make us happy, saying words with "e" sounds might make us happy as well. And other sounds can produce different feelings. Judson describes a study that found "that if you read aloud a passage full of vowels that make you scowl - the German vowel sound ü, for example - you're likely to find yourself in a worse mood than if you read a story similar in content but without any instances of ü. Similarly, saying ü over and over again generates more feelings of ill will than repeating a or o."

So do languages with more a than ü for happier speakers? Certainly Italians, with all their -a and -o endings, are said to be garrulous and fun-loving, Germans more dour. But these are just stereotypes, and as someone whose second language is, um, Latin, I'm not qualified to judge the happy-making potential of any spoken tongue besides English. Perhaps bilingual commenters can help me out with this — do you find that you're jollier in one language than another? Relatedly, are some words funnier or sadder than others, irrespective of their meaning? I know a lot of people who find "oi" sounds gross, as in "moist" and "ointment." And I'm in agreement with Judson that "e" sounds are kind of funny — try saying "beekeeper" a bunch of times. But I'm not sure I can think of any words that evoke sorrow, except, with its low moan of an ending, "sorrow" itself.

A Language Of Smiles [NYT]

She did this with every word we tended to overuse in our creative writing projects: very, good, awesome, bad; all of these words were buried with great gusto as she pushed us to try to write without them. As a word made its way to the gloomy graves that stood amidst a mess of shoebox dioramas and various dogeared books, she'd remind us that the words weren't gone forever, just gone until we left fourth grade. "By then," she'd say, "you'll realize you didn't need them after all."

I often think of the word graveyard: after yesterday's Angela Chase Syndrome post, I found myself picturing my teacher burying the words "like" and "you know." But there are other words that need to go. Most notably, the word "app." App must be buried forever and ever, amen. Just say "application," people! Enjoy the extra syllables! They're lovely!

So what words would you bury in the Word Graveyard? Awesome? LOLSpeak? Fake words like "irregardless?" Words used incorrectly, like "literally" to describe something figurative? Feel free to list your Word Graveyard nominees in the comments below.

The woman quoted above is, MSNBC tells us, at the vanguard of a new movement: recession grammar police. Some people have always been good spellers and had excellent grammar. Loads of folks are bothered by errors. A few have always been kind enough to correct their friends and loved ones. But apparently the economic downturn and the corresponding lack of control people feel over their lives has driven language vigilantes to new heights of activism. The results are sometimes funny, frequently annoying, and occasionally illegal.

To hear MSNBC tell it,

The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in books, broadcasts and puckish blogs that poke fun at common gaffes and proffer usage tips for those not in the know. Language love is celebrated via T-shirts, Facebook pages and shiny new holidays such as National Grammar Day. Even Oprah’s gotten in on the style and usage scene by asking Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty to clear up confusion about compound possessives.

But for every "'Blog' of 'Unnecessary' Quotation Marks" (yes, that's what it's called) there's an irritated co-worker chafing at constant criticism; for every copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves sold there's a nursed grudge; for every article on famous authors' spelling errors, there's apparently an obsessive dad who carries color-coded pens and corrects strangers' bumper stickers. As for the illegality, that came about when a couple of folks corrected a historic hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park.

Those who bridle at a misplaced pronoun probably feel themselves on some level to be guardians of the language, a bastion of order in an increasingly anarchic universe. (The fact that Jane Austen, doyenne of order, apparently couldn't spell may or may not reassure them.) Perhaps this is why people are sometimes more than merely annoyed by such criticism: it suggests a fundamental failure. Then too, there is the issue of implicit educational superiority, a naturally touchy subject. The fact that the critic is always right — that there is, in fact, an objective validity to such criticism — can only serve to increase the recipient's sullen truculence. Then too, there is something to be said for appreciating a touch of anarchy: most of us get a kick out of the occasional Tonight Show-style malaprop, and the woman who refuses to eat anywhere with a misspelled name (she counts "Krispy Kreme" and, yes, is the same one whose quote opened this post) is probably an anomaly even amongst high sticklers. Whatever the stakes — and one can certainly make a good argument that proper usage is far more than a mere nicety — anyone who worries about the fraying of society's fabric must acknowledge that civility is at least as crucial.

Fastidious Spelling Snobs Pushed Over The Edge [MSNBC]
6 Wordsmiths Who Couldn't Spell [Mental Floss]

Write Alan E. Kazdin and Carlo Rotella in Slate,

As a parent, you feel a special deep panic when you realize that your child—your beautiful, clever, funny child, who regularly surprises you with precocious bons mots, who built an ingenious bow out of tubing and rubber bands that can shoot a chopstick across the living room with remarkable accuracy—is having trouble learning to read. Meanwhile, all the other kids appear to be breezing along, polishing off Harry Potter books while your child stumbles over the difference between "how" and "now."

While they warn against neurosis, the authors then contradict themselves with the dire words,

Reading ability does predict school achievement and success (which is, of course, related to income, health, and other factors), and reading gains ever greater importance beyond school, as more jobs are now based on information and technology. Failure to read places significant limits on how one fares in other parts of life. And a lot of people never do learn to read well.

They go on to identify the factors necessary in learning to read and suggest techniques (starting in infancy, natch) to help your child gain comfort with reading skills; the kinds of simple books and nursery rhymes that aid in development, the importance of reading aloud. Okay. Great. So now your child can read, and everything will be okay. Or will it? Because, just by chance, a piece by Michelle Slatalla in the New York Times deals explicitly with the tragedy of learning to read too well - of being forced by the rigors of education to read a s a skeptical, analytical adult rather than with a child's wonder.

Unfortunately there is only a narrow window of time, after one learns to read but before one gets old enough to read critically, to fully appreciate the sweet sadness of “Mick Harte Was Here” or the orphan’s longing in “Taash and the Jesters” — I read that one eight times the summer I was 10 — or the trapped restlessness of being the teenaged “Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones.” Among my three daughters, whose ages are 19, 17 and 11, I see signs of an inevitable progression toward being skeptical readers.

This is some of the same ground Caitlin Flanagan covered when she discussed the particular magic a fantasy world can hold for a young girl (not shockingly, Slatalla invokes Twilight, too) and certainly there's a particular magic to a child's reading. But is reading as a grown up really that empty?

Now, it's no author's fault that these two pieces should overlap, and it's a bit cheap to use the confluence to diminish the very real truths addressed in both. However, it's undeniable that the contrast it sets up leaves us with a vision of modern childhood as menaced by varying fears: the boundaries of scientific achievement on one hand, the obsession with romaticized childhood on the other - and, over all, the sense that at the end of the day so much of it is a reflection on the parent. Learn at the approved level, test appropriately - and then we'll have the luxury of watching your childhood slip away! Yes, a child who can't read is a worrisome thing for any parent, I imagine, and yes, the rigors of adulthood complicate our relationship with fiction. But 1)being in the slow reading group in first grade is apparently no barrier to making one's living as a professional writer and 2)neurosis can do more to hinder a pleasure in reading than anything else...my brother, who had trouble reading, found the process so fraught that, although perfectly capable of cracking a book, as an adult he listens exclusively to audiobooks. Whether he does so with childlike wonder is an open question...I'll suggest my mom get on a "Modern Love" about it, stat.

Reading Isn't Fundamental [Slate]
I Wish I Could Read Like A Girl [New York Times]

Earlier: What Do Girls Want? Chastity By Twilight