# My language arts professor **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 15, 2006, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706 "2006-02-15T22:51:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/21 "2006-02-16T11:41:53Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > When I was teaching, I once had to sit through an inservice meeting in which a college professor claimed that automobile was a compound noun Strictly speaking, “automobile” **is** a compound noun—it just doesn’t happen to be compounded from English words. 😉 > [@LHOD](#): > > She asked a student what it stood for. He guessed, “verb tense?” and she agreed, pointing out that “befouled, -ing” followed and that these were examples of verb tenses. Which, as you note, was the wrong interpretation. (The abbreviation “vt” **is** [sometimes used to mean “verb tense”](http://www.iolani.honolulu.hi.us/Keables/KeablesGuide/PartOne/Verbs.htm#vt1), though.) ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/22 "2006-02-16T13:48:04Z")
So, what does “Og” mean, anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/23 "2006-02-16T14:08:45Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Which, as you note, was the wrong interpretation. (The abbreviation “vt” **is** [sometimes used to mean “verb tense”](http://www.iolani.honolulu.hi.us/Keables/KeablesGuide/PartOne/Verbs.htm#vt1), though.) Interesting–I had no idea! I’ve only confronted her once in class, at least that I remember. She was explaining the concept of homographs (words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently and have different meanings), using “record” the noun and “record” the verb as her examples. She correctly pointed out that “record” the noun has the stress on the first syllable, but then she got sidetracked. When she returned to the example, she told the class that “record” the verb has the stress on the first syllable. Several students looked up, surprised, then returned to their notes, crossing things out and rewriting them; someone said, “Oh, I wrote it down wrong, then.” So I spoke up, saying that I was pretty sure the verb had the emphasis on the second syllable. She argued with me about it in a patronizing voice (what, a student who thinks he knows better than the professor? How quaint!) and even pronounced “REE-cord” for me, so I could hear her placing the emphasis on the first syllable. “You REE-cord a song.” When I persisted in the argument, she told me she was going to go look it up and promised me a lollipop if I was right (no, I’m not making that up, and yes, I’m in college). She had me so off-balance at that point that I actually went to look it up for myself. Thanks for the sympathy, folks. Yesterday I was thinking about the oily black tentacular monstrosity in _Princess Mononoke_, and seeing it spreading through my body a little further every time a professor told me that Wordsmithery is an acronym for choosing the right word at the right time. Now if only I could shoot head-chopping arrows. Daniel Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/24 "2006-02-16T14:10:27Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > So, what does “Og” mean, anyway? I checked with my professor: Og is an infix for correct pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/25 "2006-02-16T14:39:49Z")
Dog Smash! ---
**Author:** ![Plynck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Plynck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plynck)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/26 "2006-02-16T15:45:37Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > She argued with me about it in a patronizing voice … and even pronounced “REE-cord” for me, so I could hear her placing the emphasis on the first syllable. “You REE-cord a song.” Did she say this to you while smoking crawdaddies by the See-ment pond? ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/27 "2006-02-16T16:47:09Z")
> [@](#): > > (I wonder whether “ability” could be further divided into “able” and “ity,” but I’m not sure) No, I don’t believe so. “ity” has no independant meaning; Ability was developed from Able but not by adding an independant unit of meaning. Granted, I only took a little Linguistics, but I think I’ve got it right. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/28 "2006-02-16T17:13:17Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > No, I don’t believe so. “ity” has no independant meaning; Ability was developed from Able but not by adding an independant unit of meaning. Granted, I only took a little Linguistics, but I think I’ve got it right. My thinking is that “perspicacity” means “the quality of being perspicacious”; “laxity” means “the quality of being lax”; “enmity” means “the quality of being an enemy”; “unmicrowavability” means “the quality of being umicrowavable.” The meaning of “ity” is “the quality of being,” or, “the noun form of an adjective which describes the trait indicated by the adjective.” Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/29 "2006-02-16T17:43:31Z")
Your thinking, unlike your language arts professor’s, is correct! The English suffix “-ity” is from the Latin one “[-itas](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-itas)”, a “suffix appended usually to adjectives to form a noun indicating a state of being.” ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/30 "2006-02-16T20:35:00Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > Dog Smash! Damn, you beat me to it. I was going to suggest that “dog” comes from the old French “D’Og” So maybe the LA Prof knows the meaning of “morpheme” and Daniel doesn’t know the meaning of “D’Og.” But an infix meaning “correct pronunciation?” That can only be the product of a med-mixing party. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/31 "2006-02-16T21:21:06Z")
> [@saoirse](#): > > Damn, you beat me to it. I was going to suggest that “dog” comes from the old French “D’Og” So maybe the LA Prof knows the meaning of “morpheme” and Daniel doesn’t know the meaning of “D’Og.” D’Oh! ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/32 "2006-02-16T21:32:53Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > I’m taking classes to become an elementary school teacher. One of the classes I’m taking is Language Arts: I should be learning in the class how to teach children to read, write, listen, speak, and otherwise become proficient users of language. It’s a very important class, I think: we should be reading linguistics, developmental psychology, the writings of the great pedagogues, and so forth. > > Here are the things I’ve learned in the class from the professor: > -In the word “dog,” the morpheme is “og.” > -In the verb “record,” the stress is on the first syllable. > -When “vt” appears in a dictionary after a word like “befoul,” it stands for “verb transitive.” > -In the word “beforehand,” the “o” makes the sound represented by the schwa. > > All of these are horribly wrong, and they’re just a small sample. I suspect that many students will leave her class more ignorant than when they entered. > > But today she took the cake, stomped on it, smeared it in my hair, and cackled like a demon. > > She was teaching about traits of good writing, and moved to the subject of vocabulary. So far, so good: certainly proficient writers wield the language with skill and precision and have a wide arsenal from which to choose. > > She explained it thus (and this is a quote): “Wordsmithery: it’s an acronym for choosing the right word at the right time.” > > Y’all are wondering what’s wrong with our educational system? I got an idea. > > Daniel Perhaps she has had a stroke and is now misspeaking - a symptom of her disease ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/33 "2006-02-16T21:36:32Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Naw, you don’t really need to know what a morpheme is, although it’s an interesting concept. She, however, needs to know what one is, because: > > 1. She’s teaching people about language arts, and it’s an important concept for language arts pedagogy; and > 2. She’s telling people what it means. > > For the record, a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word (that’s a very rough definition). Stephen Pinker uses the example of “unmicrowavability,” a word with four morphemes: un, micro, wave, and ability. (I wonder whether “ability” could be further divided into “able” and “ity,” but I’m not sure). She even told us, in this case, that people had changed what it meant since she was in school and acknowledged that modern authors didn’t always agree that “og” was the morpheme is “dog.” I looked it up later: the word was invented in, I believe, the nineteenth century, and it’s not changed from its original meaning. > > I’m not likely to take a tape recorder to class. I am, however, keeping a record of the ridiculous things she tells us. I keep thinking, “I’m paying money for THIS? I’ve cut my work hours and wages back to attend THIS?” I thought the literature professor at my last school (who interrupted us literally every three minutes while we read out-of-context sections of a text of phonetics so that we could **draw pictures** of the abstract academic concepts we were reading about) was awful, but she was Maria Freakin Montessori compared to this lady. > > Daniel d og = d(arned) og? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/34 "2006-02-16T21:37:44Z")
> [@ouryL](#): > > Perhaps she has had a stroke and is now misspeaking - a symptom of her disease It actually had occurred to me that it might be mild dementia setting in with her: she’s not ancient, but she’s probably in her sixties. In any case, even if it is a mental illness, I think it makes her unqualified to teach language arts to college students, who may end up putting incorrect information in their notes and never having anyone correct it for them. Especially given how unaware she is of her problems. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/35 "2006-02-16T23:09:47Z")
**Daniel** , I hope you and other students are reporting this to the department, and/or mentioning it on your course evaluation forms, or whatever. Teachers who don’t know their subject are doing their institution and their department no credit at all. Just because she’s in her sixties doesn’t mean she has an excuse for not having a grip on the elements of her field. [brief pause for moment of grief and resentment that professors like this are taking up space instead of people like my former graduate advisor who recently died while still incredibly brilliant and industrious and productive and actively teaching and only 72, goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit.] By the way, your remark about “record/REE-cord” reminded me to ask if anyone knows of any similar words that can be stress-accented in one of **three** different ways, depending on their meaning? I only know of one such word, “relay”: “I will relay’ to the mayor the information that it took a whole re’lay of workers to re’lay’ the sidewalk after it was torn up.” ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/36 "2006-02-16T23:25:45Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > For the record, a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word (that’s a very rough definition). Stephen Pinker uses the example of “unmicrowavability,” a word with four morphemes: un, micro, wave, and ability. (I wonder whether “ability” could be further divided into “able” and “ity,” but I’m not sure). She even told us, in this case, that people had changed what it meant since she was in school and acknowledged that modern authors didn’t always agree that “og” was the morpheme is “dog.” I looked it up later: the word was invented in, I believe, the nineteenth century, and it’s not changed from its original meaning. Isn’t there a word similar to “morpheme” that means the simplest components of speech? I rememember there are several hundred in English and only a handful in Japanese. I can see an argument around “do” “guh” vs “duh” “og”. I sympathise though, I remember correcting simple math mistakes my teacher made on the board at the same time I was flunking algebra. She also used to say “t’aint so”. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/37 "2006-02-16T23:31:21Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > Isn’t there a word similar to “morpheme” that means the simplest components of speech? I rememember there are several hundred in English and only a handful in Japanese. I can see an argument around “do” “guh” vs “duh” “og”. > > I sympathise though, I remember correcting simple math mistakes my teacher made on the board at the same time I was flunking algebra. She also used to say “t’aint so”. Found it: phoneme “A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language” ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/38 "2006-02-17T01:56:04Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > Found it: phoneme “A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language” Yep–but “og” isn’t a phoneme either, and she had (correctly) defined phoneme just prior to her mangling of morpheme. This stuff will definitely go on my evaluation for her, but that’s about as much of a wave as I’m likely to make. Even that’s like pulling teeth with some people. Last semester, at a different school, I had an awful professor where almost every class period was a waste of time (although this class is making me appreciate the few things I did learn from her). When we were filling out our scantron evaluation forms, I was giving her C’s and D’s in most categories (there was no F on the scantron sheet), with a few A’s and B’s where she deserved them. My closest friend in the class, a brilliant student who took teaching classes very seriously, was nonetheless sitting next to me marking the professor all A’s and snarked about how she couldn’t understand people graded professors down, how she thought that was sadistic. Hello? If other students had graded that yahoo down, we might not have had to suffer through a semester of making crayon drawings of the history of phonemic pedagogy! Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/39 "2006-02-17T02:31:40Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > When I was teaching, I once had to sit through an inservice meeting in which a college professor claimed that _automobile_ was a compound noun – even after she was challenged by a group of high school language arts teachers. I think that automobile could be considered a compound noun. “Martini never built an automobile but he did draw plans for a man-powered carriage with four wheels. Martini thought up the name automobile from the Greek word, “auto,” (meaning self) and the Latin word, “mobils,” (meaning moving).” That is the problem with Dopers being teachers especially if there is more than one around. Everything goes fine until someone throws out a debatable offhand comment, reference books fly out, and they are off to the races. ---
**Author:** ![Nocturne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9fc348/32.png) [@Nocturne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nocturne)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706/40 "2006-02-17T03:52:03Z")
Lord have mercy. That woman sounds like the grad student that taught my Intro to Mass Communication class. Her: The Industrial Revolution was really important to newspaper development, but I don’t know anything else about it, so I’m not going to go over it. The rest of the class, mostly freshman: Yaaaay! Me: What the hell? How do you NOT teach the Industrial Revolution in a class that focuses on the development of print media? It’s one of the most important (IMO) points in the HISTORY of MEDIA. Idiot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-language-arts-professor/344706.md?page=3)