How many syllables in 'caramel'?

Perhaps you remember this 2003 commercial: Shaquille O'Neal corrects actor Percy Daggs III when Daggs pronounces the ingredient in a new variety of Nestle Crunch as “carmel.”

“It’s caramel,” Shaq says, hitting all three syllables. “Car-a-mel. Can’t you spell?”

I’d been pronouncing it “carmel” all my life. It’s how the people around me pronounced it. It’s all I knew. But then, I grew up in the region of Florida that spawned the first Hooters restaurant, so I didn’t have much faith in the judgment or taste of the people around me. Instead, I put my faith in Shaq. I started pronouncing it “car-a-mel.”

After all, Shaq made a good point with “Can’t you spell?” Three vowels, separated by consonants, sure look like three syllables to me.

As a self-styled “language expert,” I knew I should do a little research. And I did — 22 years later. Here’s what I just learned: the pronunciation “carmel,” with two syllables, is every bit as acceptable as the three-syllable pronunciation. In fact, the two-syllable option comes first in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, which may indicate it’s more standard.

Score one for the town that gave the world chicken wings with a side of hair mousse.

Reasonable minds may disagree. Garner’s Modern American Usage, for example, is on Team Shaq, deeming the three-syllable pronunciation superior.

Jewelry is another word that’s spelled like it has three syllables but is often pronounced with just two: jool-ry. In my world, the two-syllable pronunciation is standard. I almost never hear “joo-ul-ry.”

Merriam’s dictionary seems to prefer three syllables, though it allows two, as well. The difference is subtle, almost undetectable. “Joo-ul-ry” so buries the “ul” that it sounds nearly identical to “jool-ry,” even on the audio clip on Merriam’s website.

The pronunciation you definitely want to avoid is “joo-luh-ry,” with “luh” in the middle instead of “ul.” Merriam’s dictionary calls this pronunciation nonstandard, which is dictionary-speak for “ill-advised.”

“Realtor” is another oddly pronounced word. Instead of dropping a syllable, people add one: “reel-uh-tur.” It’s a little bizarre, but if you pay attention to how your mouth moves to say “Realtor,” it’s easy to hear why the first and second syllables could benefit from a little more separation. Regardless, the three-syllable pronunciation of “Realtor” is widely considered to be wrong. The experts in my language library say it’s always just “reel-tur.”

Perhaps the most hotly debated word of this type is “homogeneous.” Some argue, passionately, that it should be pronounced “ho-mo-GEE-nee-us,” while others insist it’s “ho-MOJ-en-us.” Actually, these are two different words.

“The more common term is homogeneous,” writes Garner’s, “which means ‘of uniform characteristics.’” It’s pronounced as five syllables, with the stress on “gee.” The word “homogenous,” has just one “e” and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable: “ho-MOJ-en-us.” It’s a term from biology that means tissues or organs are genetically related.

Many people pronounce “homogeneous” as if they’re using the other word, “homogenous.” But if you want to say that things are similar or of uniform composition, that’s not a good idea.

“Writers are best advised to use ‘homogeneous,’ and to pronounce all five syllables,” Garner’s writes. 

Regarding "re"

A lot of language experts will tell you to avoid the word “re,” as in, “I’d like to speak to you re scheduling.” It’s pretentious, they say, to use this Latin derivative instead of good old plain English — it’s “tasteless as a gold toothpick,” according to Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide “The Careful Writer.”  All of us outside the legal profession should “leave this one to the lawyers,” he wrote.

Way ahead of you, Bernstein and friends. I’ve been avoiding “re” my whole life. But unfortunately, I can’t claim that my motive has been to eschew pretentiousness, humbly sidestepping every opportunity to show off my deep knowledge of this preposition and its Latin origins.

No, I avoid it because I’ve never understood “re” well enough to even feign pretentiousness. I avoid “re” not because I’m down to earth but because I’m downright intimidated.

Is it “re:” with a colon? Is the R capitalized? Can you use it in the body of a letter or email, or only in the header or subject line? If it’s an abbreviation of “regarding,” does it need a period at the end, or does a colon preclude the need for a period? And why do you sometimes see “in” before “re”? Wouldn’t that be redundant?

The answers to all these questions are surprising — at least to me. For starters “re” is not an abbreviation for “regarding.” It’s a preposition — a real word like “at,” “of” or “with.” It’s defined not as “regarding” but as “with regard to” or “in the matter of,” which makes it a subtle shade different from “regarding” in some uses.

 “Re” doesn’t even share the same roots as “regarding.” It’s from a Latin noun, “res,” which meant “thing” or “matter.” That’s a clue why “in” is sometimes used before “re.” It’s like saying “in the matter of.” But the way Latin grammar worked, the “in” may be implied, anyway. So it’s hard to know whether “in re” or just “re” better captures “res” in what’s called the Latin “ablative” case. At least that’s the assessment of someone who gave up after half a day trying to understand Latin noun cases. (Ahem.)  

What I do know after half a day buried in books is that, in English, the “in” is optional. One of the definitions for the preposition “re” is “in re” — that is, they mean the same thing. So you can choose.

Another thing I learned is that “re” should not be capitalized unless it begins a sentence. It’s a regular word, so it works like one. Just as you don’t write “Put the book On the table,” you don’t write “See me tomorrow Re scheduling.” In fact, you’d be using the wrong word. Beginning with a capital, Re is the abbreviation for rhenium, a heavy metal.

Because “re” is a regular word, it doesn’t automatically get a colon, nor does a longer  phrase like “Re scheduling: See me tomorrow.” Yes, a colon can be used this way, but not because “re” requires it, only because in many instances the colon helps the whole sentence.

Using “re” was hard enough before email came along. Now “Re:” gets automatically added to subject lines when we reply to another message. And whoever came up with that system didn’t bother to tell us whether “Re:” was short for “regarding” or it meant a “reply” to the original email.

I say don’t worry about appearing pretentious if you use “re,” but you might consider whether it’s distracting. We’re so unused to seeing it used correctly in the middle of a sentence, lowercase with no colon, that it will surely look weird to your reader.

A girl wasn't always a girl

Next time you hear someone ranting about how the language is going to hell in a handbasket or complaining about people misusing this or that word, ask him to define the word "girl."

In my experience, "girl" is the best example of why the language Chicken Littles don't have a leg to stand on.

You see, we actually use the word "girl" wrong, according to an older standard, that is. In the 1300s, "girl" meant a child of either sex. Yet today it means specifically a female child.

Think for a moment what it was like getting from that linguistic Point A to our Point B. There must have been a lot of confusion along the way, right? No doubt it gave language doomsayers plenty of fodder. Could you blame any witness to this transition for thinking it was a problem Could you blame him for decrying the ignorance that fueled this change or the chaos that would ensue?

With 700 years' perspective, we know that such doomsayers would have been wrong. The word "girl" as we use it today is perfectly peachy. People aren't confused by it. No one sounds ignorant for using it. Communication hasn't broken down.

In other words, what was once a wrong usage of "girl" is now right. And clearly that's not a bad thing.

When sticklers fuss over "misuse" of words like "literally" and "healthy" and "aggravate," it's because they just don't understand how words change. They don't understand that this evolution is not a bad thing. It just appears bad to anyone who lacks historical perspective.

And nothing proves this as well as a brief history of the word "girl."

Deceptively easy?

Have you ever thought about the word “deceptively”? I hadn’t, until I came across the following in Word Court, Barbara Wallraff’s compilation from her former Atlantic Monthly column.

Here’s what a reader asked her: “A friend and I cannot agree on the meaning of phrases combining ‘depectively’ and a modifier — for example, ‘deceptively easy.’ I contest that something that is deceptively easy is, in fact, easy and is deceptive because it appears difficult. My friend argues that a deceptively easy task is one that appears easy but is difficult. Please help.”

Good one, huh? I always sort of took the former view: that "deceptively" before an adjective means that it has the qualities of that adjective, just it’s hard to see it at first. So someone who talks in a lot of big words but express a simple message is expressing a deceptively simple idea.

Unfortunately, Wallraff reported, it’s not that simple.

“The sad truth is that at this moment in history ‘deceptively easy’ means nothing in particular,” she wrote, citing the American Heritage Dictionary.

Here’s what that dictionary has to say.

“When deceptively is used to modify an adjective, the meaning is often unclear. Does the sentence ‘The pool is deceptively shallow’ mean that the pool is shallower or deeper than it appears?”

Unlike many other dictionaries, American Heritage likes to cite a Usage Panel — a group of esteemed wordy types from all across the word-pushing world — for matters like these. Here’s what American Heritage reported: “When the Usage Panel was asked to decide, 50 percent thought the pool shallower than it appears, 32 percent thought it deeper than it appears, and 18 percent said it was impossible to judge. “

As a result, American Heritage gives this advice, which is basically the same as Wallraff’s: When the context does not make the meaning of ‘deceptively clear, the sentence should be rewritten, as in; The pool is shallower than it looks’ or ‘The pool is shallow, despite its appearance.’”