Don't ax me

BORRENDER? -- Lots of folks have been turning up on the reality judge shows claiming that "He borrowed me the money and now he won't pay me back." Alternatively, someone will admit, "I borrowed him the money." Keep them straight: You borrow from, and you lend to.

PONDER QUERY -- From across the Big Water comes this: "What do you think of the recent introduction of X in the word "escape," or should I say "excape"?

RESPONSE -- I haven't yet heard "excape," but it sounds like a dialectal carryover from the pronunciation of "aks" for "ask." On this side of the pond, "aks" is standard in the dialect known as Black English. It's a relic of the Middle English form, which was pronounced the same way. I have also heard the "aks" form in some Irish dialects. I suspect this might be where the American Southern blacks picked it up, about the time of the Famine Exodus, which sent so many rural and poor Irish Catholics to America, where they found themselves on a lower social level than the slaves. It seems that the Received Pronunciation of the upper class Brits is the form that changed, and the others retained the older form.

DOG DAZE  -- We're still looking for a generic term for the search and rescue dogs of the K9 Corps. Any suggestions? We have separate forms for sniffer dogs (drugs and explosives), guide dogs (for the blind) helper dogs (for the otherwise handicapped), and many other modifiers. But there is no general term. In a way, it's like the Eskimo and Inuit languages, which have many separate words for different types of snow, but no single word for snow generally. English does have a single word for snow, but uses modifiers to differentiate the various types. Ask any skier. Arabic has dozens of words for different types of camel, but I'm told there is no single word that would include all types. English has a single word to include all types of horses, but also has separate words for different types: e.g. foal, filly, colt, mare, stallion, gelding. Language develops or invents words for concepts that it needs to express. Look at all the new terms coming into English from the computer field. If the culture does not need to express something, there will be no word for it.

Enough already with the Whorfian Hypothesis!

SPELLCHECK -- It's a useful tool, and the Samurai Rim Man encourages all writers to use it. But remember, it's only a tool, and is not perfect. All it does is compare each individual word in your text to a lexicon, or word list, previously supplied. If a word is on the list, spellcheck lets it pass, but it flags any word it does not recognize. The word may be spelled correctly, but in context may be the wrong word.
Examples: to, too, two; carrot, carat, karat, caret; rain, rein, reign.

RANT OF THE WEEK -- Disable grammar check. It's not worth the space it takes up on the hard drive. And don't use autocorrect. The machine doesn't know context, and is likely to change words that should not be changed. Example: Autocorrect might change actor Kelsey Grammer's name to grammar.

GLEANINGS of an Itinerant Speller -- Shepard is a person's name, and should be capitalized. Someone who cares for a flock of sheep is a shepherd.

ODD THOUGHTS -- Is the Pillsbury Dough Boy the son of the Michelin Man?