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LANGUAGE
• Percentage of global computer text stored in English: 80.
• Percentage of the 12,500 international organizations in the
world that use English: 85.
• Percentage of those international organizations that use English exclusively: 33.
• Percentage of all English words throughout history that no
longer exist: 85.
• Number of words listed in the Oxford English Dictionary,
not counting its supplements: 616,500.
• Average number of words added to English each year: 1,000.
• Number of words in the largest dictionaries of German, the
world’s second largest language: 185,000.
• Number of words in the largest dictionaries of Russian, the
world’s third largest language: 130,000.
• Number of words in the largest dictionaries for French and
Spanish, tied for the world’s fourth largest language:
100,000.
• Borrowed words in English versus native (Anglo-Saxon)
words, expressed as a ratio: 3:1.
• Number of languages in the English vocabulary: 300.
• Percentage of English words made from Latin word parts:
50.
• Number of words the average English speaker actually recognizes: 10,000–20,000.
• Percentage of the average English speaker’s conversation
made up of the most frequently used 737 words: 96.
LEDERER ON LANGUAGE
Doing a Number on English
BY R I C H A R D L E D E R E R
R
ecently, some organizations in Germany joined
forces to compile a list of the 100 words that best
reflect the 20th century. AIDS, beat, bikini, camping,
comics, computer, design, Holocaust, image, jeans, pop, single, sex, star, stress — English words that became part of the German language during the past 100 years — are featured in the
list. That’s just one piece of evidence that English has become
the closest thing that humankind has ever had to a universal
language.
“I think that language is a mirror of history, and these words
reflect that,” said Karin Frank-Cyrus, head of the Society for
German Language. “The English language has become a lingua
franca, a language that the whole world understands.”
It is said again and again these days that there are lies,
damnable lies, and statistics. Nonetheless, Americans are fascinated with and by statistics and take a special interest in facts
that can be quantified. Here are some essential facts about our
English tongue, expressed statistically:
• Number of languages in the world: approximately 6,800, 50
to 90 percent of which will be extinct in 100 years.
• Number of people around the world who can be reached by
English in some form: 1.5 billion.
• Percentage of those people who learned English as a second
(or third or fourth) language: 51.5. Both China and India
have more English speakers than the United States.
• Number of countries or territories in which English has official status: 87.
• Percentage of the world’s English speakers who live in the
largest English-speaking country, the United States: 20.
• Percentage of world English that is American English: 66.
• Percentage of world English that is British English: 16.
• Percentage of students in the European Union who are
studying English: 83.
• Percentage of people in the European Union who are fluent
in English: 75.
• Percentage of nonnative speakers around the world who are
fluent in English: 25.
• Percentage of all books in the world that are printed in English: 50.
• Percentage of international telephone calls made in English:
52.
• Percentage of radio programs worldwide that are broadcast
in English: 60.
• Percentage of global box office from films in English: 63.
• Percentage of global e-mail in English: 68.
• Percentage of international mail and telexes written and
addressed in English: 70.
JCR Contributing Editor Richard Lederer, Ph.D., can be reached at
[email protected]. You can visit his Web site at www.verbi
vore.com. Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation, by
Richard Lederer and John Shore, is available for sale in the NCRA Store.
GRAMMAR
Quotation Marks and the
Comma-Cap Two-Step
BY J I M B A R K E R
“I
don’t use quotation marks unless I know that the
words being quoted are the exact words that were
spoken or written.” Every time I hear a court
reporter say those words, my teeth start to itch, my
ears begin to sizzle, my eyes roll up into my head, and I start
writhing, drooling, babbling, and howling at the moon.
It’s time for an exorcism.
In the discussion that follows, I will be talking about direct
quotations, not indirect quotations, which, as you already know,
are not set off with quotation marks: He said he had never been
there before.
In legal transcripts, quotation marks do not attest to the ver-
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LANGUAGE
batim accuracy of the words offered by
the speaker as direct quotes. Quotation
marks merely identify those words
offered by the speaker as though they constituted accurate direct quotations.
When news reporters enclose words
within quotation marks, they (typically)
do so with extreme caution because,
under the rules that govern their profession, they are obligated to verify the
accuracy of the words they treat as direct
quotations. However, no such obligation
exists with respect to quotations contained in transcripts prepared by court
reporters.
By placing quotation marks around
direct quotations, the court reporter is
not implying that the quoted words are
the exact words spoken (or written) by
the person to whom they are being
attributed. Rather, by placing quotation
marks around direct quotations, the
court reporter is indicating that the
words within the quotation marks were
offered by the speaker as direct quotations.
Here is an example: A man with a
chicken under one arm came up to me,
pointed a gun at my head, and said,
“Give me all your money, or I’ll bite the
head off this chicken.”
Question: Does the court reporter
have any responsibility for verifying that
the words “Give me all your money, or
I’ll bite the head off this chicken” were
the exact words spoken by the armed
robber, as opposed to, say, “Give me all
your chicken, or I’ll bite the head off this
money”?
Answer: No.
Question: Why not?
Answer: Because it is not the court
reporter who is saying that the armed
robber said, “Give me all your money, or
I’ll bite the head off this chicken.” The
speaker is doing so. The speaker is
responsible for the accuracy of the words
he or she is attributing as a direct quotation, not the court reporter. By quoting
the words “Give me all your money, or
I’ll bite the head off this chicken,” the
court reporter is clarifying for the record
that the words set off with quotation
marks are words that the speaker offered
as though they constituted an accurate
direct quotation.
Of course, there’s always the commacap trick, which calls for placing a comma before the quote and initial-capping
the first word: He said, Give me all your
money, or I’ll bite the head off this chicken.
Yes, there are occasions when this
approach is quite appropriate (see
below). The comma-cap trick should
not, though, be our default method for
dealing with words that are offered by
the speaker as direct quotations.
Let’s try the comma-cap maneuver
again, but with additional text: He said,
Give me all your money, or I’ll bite the head
off this chicken. You love chicken, don’t you?
In the example, without quotation
marks, who said, “You love chicken,
don’t you?” Was it the robber? the victim? the chicken? What to do? If the
facial expressions, tone of voice, timing
of the words, or other physical mannerisms of the speaker made it crystal-clear
to the reporter that “You love chicken,
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JOURNAL FOR THE REPORTING AND CAPTIONING PROFESSIONS / JANUARY 2006
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don’t you?” was a continuation of the
words being offered by the speaker as a
direct quotation, then quotation marks
should begin the first sentence and end
the second sentence. If it is unclear who
spoke the words in the second sentence,
introduce the entire passage with a comma, then initial-cap the word “Give.”
Yes, in this example, the comma-cap will
result in ambiguity, but it will be an
entirely unavoidable ambiguity — one
that is completely beyond the ability of
the court reporter to rectify.
When it is impossible to tell where a
quotation ends, break out your dancing
shoes and do the Comma-Cap TwoStep. In additional, when very few quotations are in the transcript and the lack
of quotation marks does not lead to
needless ambiguity, confusion, and/or
misreading, the comma-cap approach is
an acceptable option.
Rule 97 from Morson’s English Guide
for Court Reporters, 2nd Edition: “When a
witness testifies to his own words or
those of someone else in the form of a
direct quote and believes those words to
be accurate, use quotation marks, even if
the speaker does not render the quote
perfectly.”
Don’t be a chicken. When quotation
marks are clearly called for, use ’em.
Jim Barker, author of SearchMaster, can be
reached at [email protected]. Visit
his Web site at www.searchmaster.tv.
A. Where?
Q. The first paragraph underneath
the numbered list on page one.
A. Yes.
Q. Who had you been advised by?
A. God.
Q. God advised you?
A. Yes.
Q. Anyone else?
A. That’s it.
Q. Where were you when God told
you that you should outline specific
areas in this memorandum?
A. At the computer.
Lynn Brooks, RPR
DeSoto, Texas
SOLUTION TO LAST MONTH’S
CROSSWORD PUZZLE
1
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16
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advised to outline specific areas”?
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JOURNAL FOR THE REPORTING AND CAPTIONING PROFESSIONS / JANUARY 2006
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