In Love With Norma Loquendi

 

 

From: Oxsan
Date: 05 Aug 2001
Time: 04:24:56

Did you know that before about 1950 no one ever "bonded" That is not in the sense of forming a relationship or attachment to another person, animal , activity or thing. Oh, you might well have heard Norma Loquendi say that her boyfriend was broke because he "bonded out" of jail but that was not the same thing really. "Bonded" in the sense of an attachment or relationship was a concept advanced by psychologists in the 1950s---before that we just had to do without it. There were some dark rumors about people wearing leather and carrying whips associated with the word "bonding", but I think that was a different thing too. So I had a "bonding deprived" childhood---that should entitle me to something Superglue is said to be a "bonding agent" and whiskey goes through a "bonding" process in barrels but those are not the same thing either. You know what I mean! I am now reading William Safire's book, In Love With Norma Loquendi and Safire says "Getting to know and love" is what "bonding " means. We did a little of that before the fifties.

I was never too friendly with Safire as a political commentator but I will say that he can keep me entranced with his writing, and this book is also teaching me a bit about the language---English, that is. Norma Loquendi is a figment of Safire's imagination and is intended to represent the vast average American public that is shaping our language and causing it to grow and change to such an extent that we 74 year olds frequently have some doubts about our ability to speak English---don't worry , you will get there. Safire says that he loves Norma Loquendi and that she is not as naive and uncultured as you might think. While she will go for destroying the predicate nominative and say, "It could be him" instead of the pristine "It could be he" she would never fall for General Alexander Haig's use of "I'm goin' to caveat the whole thing right now".

The book concerns itself with grammar, pronunciation (do you think that General Colin Powell, would ever name a son Semi), word histories, word usage and language in general. He devotes eight pages to the word "bogey" and its many many meanings. He wonders as I did what happened to Lower Volta. We put an antenna in Upper Volta but I never went there but I have wondered what happened to Lower Volta--there never was a Lower Volta--so why didn't they just call Upper Volta "Volta". You might well ask now whatever happened to Upper Volta for they have changed the name of the country to Burkina Faso now. Safire is of the opinion that a country should not be allowed to change its name more than once a century. I have been to Chad which is right next door to Upper Volta and they had the unmitigated gall to change the name of their capitol from Fort Lamy to Ndjamena---you know why? They said Fort Lamy was hard to pronounce.

Safire also has a lot of fun with the word "Bubba" (red-necked southern American) and boob (breast or fool) and admits that they could have come from lots of places. "Buba" is a Hebrew word meaning "little doll", "bubbi" in German means teat, "bobo" in Spanish means "silly, stupid". "Baba" and "buba" each mean "grandmother". in several Slavic languages, "bube" means "boy" in German. Safire mentions parenthetically that one should not call a defensive end type "Bubba" unless you know him pretty well and for sure don't call him "Bubb".

Safire is a brilliant and witty writer even if he doesn't know anything about politics.

The book is good.