Foreign languages left hanging
JUNE CASAGRANDE
Ah, the food court -- a place where you might get your pizza from a
native Farsi speaker, your wontons from a Spanish speaker and your
burrito from a blond kid from Anaheim named Cody who’d rather remove
his own tattoos with a pencil eraser than speak a kind word to you in
any language.
Imagine my surprise when, at a Valley mall, I realized that the
guy making my crepe was actually French. As his accent tipped me off,
I found myself in a situation I’ve been in a hundred times -- torn
between seizing an opportunity to practice my state U francais or
clamming up and sparing myself certain embarrassment. But as
long-term readers of this column know, I have a very close
relationship with humiliation. I spoke up.
“Do a lot of Americans who come here practice their French with
you?” I asked the crepe chef in butchered French.
“Oui,” he said, piling spinach and goat cheese onto my crepe, “but
most people are afraid.”
Alex, his name was, endured my butchering of his language while we
talked about fear -- the great enemy of all who aspire to learn
foreign languages.
“People are afraid to make mistakes,” he said. “But that’s how you
learn.”
A moment later, I gave him a chance to demonstrate: I botched an
attempt to say in the French past tense “I saw.”
“‘Vu’, not ‘voir,’” he corrected me. “Past tense.”
Well, I knew it was past tense. It’s not like I had been trying to
say, “Yesterday I see.” The problem was that I had forgotten the
participle.
In English, as in French, participles are basically one part of a
multi-part verb. Here in the land of Freedom Fries, participles are
most famous for dangling. And for many people, dangling participles
are fear itself. The very term conjures up memories of some
pinch-faced and black-souled English teacher whose life mission
seemed to be to instill in every child a certainty that learning
grammar is simply hopeless. Yet dangling participles and other
danglers are among the easiest concepts in the language.
Consider the sentence: “Dancing at his daughter’s wedding,
happiness overwhelmed the father of the bride.” What’s wrong with
that sentence? Happiness doesn’t dance.
Let’s try another: “Tired of hearing Americans assault his mother
tongue, the crepe came flying across the food court and landed in my
face.” See what’s wrong here? Crepes don’t tire of hearing bad
French.
Participles are usually words that end in “ing,” “ed” or sometimes
“en.” They’re called participles because they often work in concert
with auxiliary verbs to make compounds such as “was dancing” or “have
tired.” These “ing” and “ed” participles are said to dangle when
they’re not logically connected to the subject performing the action.
Usually, the writer just forgets how he set up the first part of the
sentence, the “antecedent.”
Danglers can even be participle free. For example, “Unhappy with
the outcome, that language would never again be uttered by her.” The
correct, nondangling approach is, “Unhappy with the outcome, she
would never again utter that language.”
Not all danglers are as obvious. Just a few weeks ago I wrote, “As
a columnist, it is my job to take positions.” A better choice would
have been, “As a columnist, I’m expected to take positions,” or, “I’m
a columnist, so it’s my job to take positions.”
To avoid dangling your participles, you don’t need to know the
word “participle” or “dangle.” Just remember to make sense. Make sure
that the “participial phrase” beginning a sentence is followed
immediately by a noun that is the subject of that action. In other
words, make sure the relationship between your subjects and your
verbs is a logical one. Unlike the relationship between your
food-court tandoori and the “gracias” or “arigato” or “merci” or
“shukran” that accompanied it.
* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at
JuneTCN@aol.com.