The 2 Keys to Your Happiness & Defying the Rules of English

This episode focuses on uncovering true happiness and the often misunderstood or restrictive rules of the English language.

1. True happiness involves embracing one’s true self and contributing positively to others' lives.
2. Challenging societal norms about happiness can lead to more profound personal satisfaction.
3. The rules of the English language are more flexible and historically varied than typically taught.
4. Questioning linguistic authorities can lead to more authentic and effective communication.
5. Engaging in helping others not only benefits them but significantly enhances one's own happiness.

1: Exploring Happiness

Stephanie Harrison discusses the flawed societal perceptions of happiness and introduces her philosophy of "new happy," emphasizing authentic self-expression and community involvement. Mike Carruthers: "The idea that I'll be happy when is really the source of so much misery."

2: Linguistic Liberties

Ann Curzan challenges rigid grammatical rules, advocating for a more intuitive and less formal approach to language that better reflects real-world usage. Ann Curzan: "Who decides what is proper English and what isn't?"

1. Embrace your unique identity and let go of perfectionism to enhance well-being.
2. Engage more deeply in your community and offer help where possible, as this can greatly enrich your own life.
3. Question the necessity and origin of language rules that feel restrictive or unnatural.
4. Prioritize personal meaning and satisfaction over societal expectations or material achievements.
5. Cultivate self-compassion, especially during challenging times, to maintain mental and emotional health.

Even though people seem to enjoy dining out, many find the process frustrating and difficult. And the restaurant’s menu has a lot to do with it. This episode begins with the result of a recent survey regarding how people order, what they think of menus (including QR code menus) how much a meal should cost and more. https://www.usfoods.com/our-services/business-trends/american-menu-choices.html

Happiness is a difficult word to define. Even the happiest person in the world isn’t happy all the time. Maybe happiness is more of a philosophy – an overall sense of contentment. Maybe it is the result of the things you do and who you do them for. That’s what Stephanie Harrison believes, and she has studied what makes people happy. Stephanie is the creator of the “New Happy” philosophy. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. The New Happy’s art, newsletter, podcast, and programs reach millions of people around the world. Here's the website- https://www.thenewhappy.com. She is also author of the book New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got It Wrong (https://amzn.to/3WxgOlR). Listen and you will get a deeper understanding of happiness and how to find it.

In English we have rules. For example: Don’t start an sentence with “and” or “but”; don’t end a sentence with a preposition; don’t say “ain’t” because it’s not a real word. Says who? Where do all these rules come from? Who wrote the rules? Are they really rules and or suggestions? Do they even make sense? Here with some insight into the rules of English and the fascinating way our language evolves is Anne Curzan. She is a professor of English language and literature, linguistics, and education and also serves as the dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. Anne is also author of the book Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words (https://amzn.to/44wj7rd).

Some people prefer not to know the gender of their soon-to-be-born baby or name it until after birth. However, there are some good reasons – particularly for new fathers – to know sooner rather than later. Listen as I explain what they are. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/10014909/Fathers-who-find-out-sex-of-unborn-child-more-likely-to-bond-sooner.html

People

Stephanie Harrison, Ann Curzan

Companies

None

Books

"New getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got it Wrong" by Stephanie Harrison

Guest Name(s):

Stephanie Harrison, Ann Curzan

Content Warnings:

None

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Mike Carruthers
Today on something you should know how a restaurant's menu can make or break a meal. Then true happiness. It eludes a lot of people because they think I'll be happy when I get rich, I get married, I get thin. The idea that I'll be happy when is really the source of so much misery. Because not only does it lead us to do things that make us miserable in the moment, thinking they'll bring us happiness in the future, it also distracts us from all of the that we already have in our lives.

Also, is it really better to know a baby's gender before it's born or not? And the english language, it has lots of weird rules. Where did they come from? I'm encouraging people to ask that question. When someone says, you can't do that in writing or that's wrong or that's not a real word, we can all ask says who?

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers hi, welcome to another episode of something you should know. I would imagine that most people like to go out to eat. Some people like to go out a lot, some people just for special occasions.

But most people enjoy the experience. And when you think about it, the menu at the restaurant has a lot to do with how well you will enjoy that experience. The menu is kind of the gateway to your meal satisfaction or lack of meal satisfaction. US Foods, which is a leading restaurant service provider, recently surveyed restaurant goers to get their take on restaurant menus and the whole ordering process. And here's what they discovered.

First of all, menu indecisiveness is rampant. 79% of Americans say they have a difficult time deciding what to order. American diners also do their homework. The survey found that 83% of diners review the menu beforehand and half have already decided what they're going to order before they set foot in the restaurant. Nine out of ten diners say the price of a meal impacts their decision on what they order.

On average, Americans say theyre willing to spend about $44 on a meal for themselves when they go out. Menu preferences theyre kind of all over the map. One in ten people say they prefer using a QR code to view the menu. But one out of six people dont know how to use a QR code. And 51% of people say the whole QR code thing slows down the process.

And 95% of restaurant goers believe that restaurants should always have physical menus, even if they also have the QR code. And 72% of diners said they prefer menus with pictures of the food. And that is something you should know.

In the quest for happiness, it it just may be possible that we misunderstand what it means to be happy. No one is happy all the time. Happiness is not a momentary feeling. Happiness is so much more than that. And it appears we often get it wrong.

As you are about to hear, the secret to your happiness may lie with other people. Meet Stephanie Harrison. She is creator of the new Happy philosophy. Her work has been featured in publications like Fast Company, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review and the new Happy's art newsletter. Podcast and programs reach millions of people around the world.

Stephanie is also author of the book New getting Happiness right in a world that's got it wrong. Hi Stephanie, welcome to something you should know thank you. I'm so excited to be here. There does seem to be lately a big focus on happiness in popular culture, in the media, books, podcasts. And yet you say that we get it wrong sometimes, or even a lot of the time.

So explain what that's all about. Yeah, that's exactly right. The premise of my work is that our society has conditioned us into believing all of the wrong things about happiness. And in fact, those beliefs are not only failing to make us happy, but they're actually leading us towards greater misery and suffering in our lives. Well, that's not good.

I mean, here we are trying to make ourselves happy, and if you are right, then we're making ourselves miserable in the process. So explain how that works. We have been conditioned into these three core beliefs. That, one, we need to be perfect because there's something wrong with us, and we have to prove that we're good enough, and we can do that through what we achieve by doing more and more and more. And that we have to do everything by ourselves.

Stephanie Harrison
And these three beliefs come together into something that I call old happy, which is our societal definition of happiness. And all three of these beliefs actually end up contributing to outcomes like mental illness, loneliness, disconnection from our relationships and our communities, a lack of a sense of purpose, essentially everything that we don't want in our lives. And so what is happiness then, to you? What is. Define it for me.

To me, after doing all of this research and scouring through everything that I could ever get my hands on, written about happiness, I have come to believe that it has two components. True happiness comes from being who you really are and then using yourself to help other people. And it's the integration of both your unique gifts and strengths, and then how you offer it up to others that ultimately contributes to a lasting sense of well being. And not doing those things is what makes you unhappy. Yes.

Or pursuing things like potentially trying to change who you are, or denying who you are, ignoring the gifts that you have that are important and meaningful to you. Or becoming obsessed with external achievement and extrinsic goals. Or thinking that you should separate yourself from other people and be totally independent in the world. If that's all true, why do people seem to go the other way? You would think that we would naturally be inclined to do what you're suggesting because that would lead to being happier.

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it's because happiness is the greatest goal of a human being's life. Right. It drives everything that we do and all of the choices that we make. And so if you have an idea of happiness that's flawed or incorrect, then it's almost like you have punched in the wrong destination into your gps, right?

And you don't actually know until you get to your destination that you're. That you're going to end up somewhere that you didn't want to go. But it's persistent and it's pervasive. We continually are driven towards these old, old happy beliefs simply because they're so ingrained within us. From the time that we were born, we were conditioned into this set of ideas about what we need to do in order to be happy.

And so part of the problem is that we haven't been able to name this issue. We haven't been able to isolate it and point it out and say, hey, that's something that's affecting us. It doesn't mean that it's true, and it doesn't mean that it's me. I can take a step back and move away from that experience and decide if. Is this actually working for me?

Or might there be a better way to do this? So do you think when you feel happy, when you are happy, what is that? Is it a feeling? Is it a thought? What is it?

I think that you can think about happiness in a number of different ways. The first is the feeling, that sense of perhaps it's like a warm glow that you have that signifies contentment, or the joy and brightness that comes with achieving something meaningful in your life, or spending time with your loved ones or families. There's all these different feelings that fall under the sense of happiness that we can have. But then, more broadly, it's also an evaluation of your life, how you believe that your life is going, and what you would say to somebody if they asked you, would you do these things all over again? Do you feel satisfied with the way that your life has gone and where you're going in the future?

So it has both an emotional and a cognitive element to it. But nobody, I don't think, feels that their life has gone 100% perfectly. It just doesn't work, that life doesn't. Life throws things at you that make you unhappy, that are unhappy, that make you go in a direction that you had no intention of going in, because that's what life has dished up. Absolutely.

And I think that really happy people are those who learn how to navigate those challenges, because, as you said, they are inevitable. And they learn not only how to get through them, but even to turn them into experiences that might provide them with meaning and purpose, or help them to develop their empathy and compassion. So they find a way to take those difficult, raw ingredients of life and turn them into something else. This idea of happiness comes as the result of something else, that you'll be happy when you get married, when you get that job, when you have so much money in the bank. That seems to be those things that, you know, that it never seems to work out that way.

No, it doesn't, does it? I think once you've experienced that a few times and you have a couple of those big life events that you thought would make you happy under your belt, you can start to look around and go, yeah, this doesn't seem to be a good strategy. And I think that the idea that I'll be happy when is really the source of so much misery. Because not only does it lead us to do things that make us miserable in the moment, thinking they'll bring us happiness in the future, but it also distracts us from all of the goodness that we already have in our lives and all of the beauty and the joy that's available right here. And we're so distracted by thinking about the future that we fail to attend to it, which is a profound source of happiness that exists that's right in front of us.

Mike Carruthers
So help me understand the difference or how they intersect. Happiness and pleasure and joy. Because pleasure is not happiness, but pleasure seems to be somehow tied to it. And same thing for joy. Happiness, pleasure and joy are, I would call them related, but as you're saying, they do have important differences.

Stephanie Harrison
And so pleasure is most often described as hedonistic in nature. It's the satisfaction of one of your needs or your wants. And so you could find deep pleasure from, lets say, a glass of water on a really hot day. That could give you a feeling of pleasure, but thats not going to make you lastingly happy. And then theres joy.

My favorite understanding of joy comes from the scientific research, and it argues that joy is the result of connection, of being connected to others, to oneself, or even to something transcendent, like your relationship with a God or with a spiritual presence. And that sense of connection provides us with a deeper experience of well being. But again, it's more of an emotion. So it has a rise and a fall and fades away. So it will last for longer than pleasure, but not as long as happiness, which is much more of, in my belief, it's much more of this sense of contentment that lasts, that pervades your life, that allows you to live a happy life amidst those ups and downs that we're talking about the experiences of both joy and pleasure, but also of grief or sadness or anger and all of the other emotions that we experience.

Mike Carruthers
Don't you think, though, and isn't there research that you can talk about that? It really depends in part on your ability to handle those down moments. Some people can handle them, and, you know, it's water off a duck's back, or maybe it's not that easy, but still it's not. So whereas other people just take it and absorb it, and it's really hard to overcome it, whereas other people just life's ups and downs. Well, for some people, those downs really take a toll.

Stephanie Harrison
Yeah, they do. And those people, I think, just were never taught the skills that they needed to process it. And I think one of the most common ways that we actually make this worse for ourselves is when we experience a painful emotion like sadness or grief, we beat ourselves up for it. We tell ourselves that we're bad or there's something wrong with us for experiencing that emotion. And ultimately, all that does is makes it even harder to bounce back for it.

So what I often counsel is to practice self compassion and treat yourself with kindness when you are experiencing those difficult moments. It's not weak. It's not letting yourself off the hook. It's not, you know, wallowing in your pain. It's actually what helps you to transcend it and to move on.

But because we've been told that you just need to kind of practice a stiff upper lip and pretend that nothing affects you, a lot of people silently suffer. And as you're describing, they further absorb those emotions, and they ultimately end up. Really weighing them down, because it seems. That there's plenty of happiness to be had if you know how to find it. But there are a lot of people that they don't know where that path is.

Mike Carruthers
And so they take the hard knocks of life and use that to define their happiness, which is not much. I'm sure you know this, but the brain has a negativity bias, right? So we're always inclined to focus on the things that are going wrong. And that's a part of our biology. And as you're saying, we have to practice what it means to shift our attention away from the achy back or the difficult meeting you had with your boss or the worry about a certain thing on the horizon, and instead learn to focus our attention on something else that's more generative for our well being.

Trey, talk about. Because we've all heard this idea that happiness can come from. There's something in human beings that when you do something for other people, when you help other people, that brings you probably more happiness than the person you're helping often. And I don't think a lot of people get that or know exactly, like, what is that? How does that work?

Stephanie Harrison
I think that this is the secret to happiness, really is, if you want to be happy, help other people to be happy. And it works because we're not disconnected from one another as, as we're talking about. You know, you're, you're connected to other people in ways that you can't even observe. And when you contribute to another person, you get these powerful benefits unfolding within you and around you from even, you know, something that's known as the helper's high, which is the release of hormones and endorphins. When you help other people all the way through to the sense of fulfillment and purpose that you get to a better relationship and a better connection with that person, to increasing your self esteem and your sense of well being.

The benefits, as you're saying, are absolutely huge. And unfortunately, we're missing them. We're neglecting them because we're so distracted by our society's understanding of happiness that we're actually ignoring the opportunity for well being that's right in front of us. By reaching out to help another person in whatever way you can, no matter how small it is, you still will. Benefit, and hopefully, so will they.

Yes, exactly. And so together, that action ends up making the world a happier place. You're not just focusing on your own happiness anymore. You're actually helping to make other people happy. And that adds up to create a world of greater well being.

Mike Carruthers
Were talking about happiness, the new happiness. And my guest is Stephanie Harrison. Shes author of the book new getting happiness right in a world thats got it wrong. A shout out to Clareton for supporting this episode and providing us with samples. You see, for as long as I can remember, I have had to deal with seasonal allergies.

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Join June Parker as she uncovers hidden objects and clues to solve her sister's death in a beautifully illustrated world set in the roaring twenties, with new chapters added every week, the excitement never ends. Download June's journey now on your Android or iOS device or play on PC through Facebook games. So, Stephanie, I love this conversation because I'm one of those people who learned a long time ago that there is so much joy in helping other people. And I can just tell you a quick story because this just happened very recently. There's a woman at my gym.

Mike Carruthers
I don't know her well, but she's struggling financially. She's a single mom. She has a teenage son who's in a wheelchair. I mean, she's been dealt a pretty lousy hand, but we speak at the gym sometimes. We have a mutual acquaintance, and I know that going to the gym is her refuge.

It allows her to get away from the trouble in her life to go to the gym. But she didn't have the money to continue her membership and she was going to have to stop coming. So I just paid it. I paid her membership for the next year and it wasn't a lot of money and it made her happy. And that made me feel so great for helping.

And I'm not looking for a pat on the back or anything, but I find it interesting that I know there were many other people in the gym who were aware of the situation, but nobody else jumped on this. Nobody else volunteered to pitch in. And that's fine. And maybe it's because it's hard to know how to insert yourself into a situation like that if you're not involved. But it helped her out and it made me feel great.

Stephanie Harrison
Yeah. Thank you for sharing. What a beautiful story. I have goosebumps listening to it. And I think you're pointing out something that's so important, which is that there are opportunities to help people that are all around us, but we have to, one, notice them, and then two, take advantage of them.

Right. What you're describing is people who noticed it but didn't hop on it the way that you did, to actually jump in and help in a way that they were likely equipped to do, even if it was just to contribute a small portion of the gym membership for that woman, which I can only imagine how much that meant to her and how grateful she is to have that space for herself and for her own well being. And I think that too often we think of helping as this nice to have thing that will do when we're successful or when we have enough money, whatever that looks like, or when we figured our own lives out. But there is no point in time where we are going to have our lives all figured out, or we're going to have enough and feel like we have everything that we need or have the sense that our lives are complete, and then we can help. It's never going to happen.

We're always going to have this experience of being a work in progress and needing to try for more and grow and all of that. The only solution is to help now. Help anyways. Don't wait to help other people. And it's really admirable that you were somebody who jumped in to do that.

Mike Carruthers
Well, you know, the phrase I hate is the phrase, well, you can't save the world. Yeah. Yes, you can. I mean, you may not save the whole world, but if everybody. There was a great quote that supposedly came from Mother Teresa, but I've never found any reference that she ever said this, but somebody said that she had said this, that if we all took care of our own little corner of the world, the world would be a better place.

And you define what your own little corner of the world is. It's your family, your neighborhood, your school, your church, whatever. But if everybody did that, the world would be a better place. And I've just. I thought that was so even though she's apparently never said it, it's such a beautiful thought, because you can define what that means to you, and you can save the world.

You may not save everybody today, but if everybody tried to do a little bit, we could save the world. Or a good portion of it. But people use that as like, well, since I can't save everybody, screw it, I'm not going to save anybody. Exactly. People give up before they even get started, and then they miss the chance to actually find the happiness that they want as well.

Stephanie Harrison
Right. It's this terrible situation that we find ourselves in because we've been so misled. And I adore the sentiment behind that quote, and I couldnt agree more with it. Everybody has a corner of the world and all of us have not only the opportunity, but also, I would argue, the responsibility to nurture and to care for our corners and to do what we can. And the benefit is your happiness, your well being.

And isnt that what you want the most? So my hope is that through this new understanding, people will come together to help one another in ways that might not have been visible or possible for them in the past. Right. And because the benefit to you is so great that it's not a big sacrifice, which I guess that's how people often look at it, but there's a huge benefit that, whether it's the helper's high or whatever it is, but it feels good to help people. I mean, everybody knows that, but especially when it comes to money, people are very like, well, no, we can't really do that.

Yeah, yeah, I think you're completely right. And sometimes I think that people think, oh, like, you know, helping is sweet, it's nice, but it's not the be all, end all of my happiness. You know, if I can just get more for myself or achieve more or strive to perfect myself, then I'll experience the real type of happiness. Right? Like there's this other more powerful, more pervasive experience of happiness out there once you get to a certain place.

And I think what I would want to say to those people is there isn't, that doesn't exist. The happiness that's possible for you when you help others, and especially when you help others in the ways that you're uniquely positioned to do, that is the purest, greatest form of happiness there is. There isn't anything else out there. So take advantage of what's possible right here and now, because there are, as you've said, so beautifully described opportunities to help people all around you. We sort of talked about this when we were talking about the whole concept of I'll be happy when that something else has to happen first, and then I'll be happy.

Mike Carruthers
And I think that too, that there are people who believe that happiness is the result of sacrifice, that first you have to do something noble or that happiness can only come from sacrifice. You do not have to punish yourself, and you can't hurt yourself into a state of greater happiness. So many people believe that they have to punish themselves for being who they are or for not doing enough or for struggling with something. And it couldn't be further from the truth. If you want to experience greater happiness in your life, you're going to have much better luck if you treat yourself with love and actually love yourself into more happiness.

Well, I'm sure you've noticed there are a lot of books and podcasts and people's influencers who talk about happiness. So I'm wondering, like, are we getting happier overall? Is it all working? The World Happiness report came out, which is a study of all of the countries in the world, led by a number of scholars to look at the happiest countries and the factors that contribute to it. And for the first time, the US has dropped out of the top 20.

Stephanie Harrison
And that's the, the first time that's ever happened in the history of the report. And I think it speaks to the growing sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction that so many people feel. And the desire that they have to learn more is not potentially being satisfied by the tools and information that we have available right now. Well, I like your new happy philosophy because it gives people something really concrete to follow to achieve happiness, as opposed to cheer up and be happy. I've been talking to Stephanie Harrison.

Mike Carruthers
She's creator of the new happy philosophy. And I encourage you to check out her website, which there is a link to that website in the show notes. And the name of her book is new. Getting happiness right in a world that's got it wrong. And there's a link to the book at Amazon in the show notes.

I appreciate you coming on and talking about this, Stephanie. It was fun. Thank you so much, Michael. It was so lovely to talk to you. Hey, us cellular customers, I've got good news, so don't hit skip forward just yet.

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Mike Carruthers
Remember those rules you learned in English class? Like, it's better to not start a sentence with and or but or dont end a sentence with a preposition or ain't isn't a real word. Well, says who? Where do these rules come from? Who makes them?

Who decides what is proper English and what isn't? More importantly, do you really need to follow these rules? Here to talk about the rules of English and what you need to know about them is Ann Curzan. She is a professor of English language and literature, linguistics and education at the University of Michigan. She also serves as the dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts and is also the author of a book called says who a kinder funner usage guide for everyone who cares about words.

Wait, funner is not a word. Hey, Anne. Welcome to something you should know. Hi. I'm delighted to be here.

So these rules of the English language, like I mentioned at the beginning, they oftentimes seem to get in the way, like, okay, we could follow the rule, but it would be a lot easier if we didn't, and it would be clearer if we didn't. So why do we have to follow these rules? If there's another way? And I'm encouraging people to ask that question, when someone says, you can't do that in writing, or that's wrong, or that's not a real word, we can all ask says who so that we can know the answer to that question and be more informed about whether we think that that is a useful rule or not a useful rule. So pick one of those kinds of rules, and let's talk about that one.

Anne Curzan
Is that you should not end a sentence with a preposition. That would have been the first one I picked, too. When I think of rules of English that I learned in school, it's the don't end a sentence with a preposition rule. And yet, if you do that, it makes sentence writing or can make sentence writing very, very difficult, right? Because we can end a sentence with a preposition.

Here's a sentence that ends with a preposition. That's the person to send it to. That's the person to send it to that to is a preposition. It's sitting at the end of the sentence. We're told that we should not do that, and instead we should say, that's the person to whom you should send it.

Now, I think for many of us to say to whom feels very, very formal, maybe a little bit stilted, we're allowed to ask the question, why can't I end a sentence with a preposition? It sounds idiomatic to do so. The answer goes back several centuries, and it started with a personal preference by John Dryden, who thought it was not particularly elegant to end a sentence with a preposition. And when this first entered into usage guides, one of the grammarians actually made a joke about it, and he said, it's not very elegant to do this, but it's a construction our language is inclined to.

Exactly. He had a sense of humor. He got that. In fact, we do this all the time. But Lynley Murray, at the end of the 18th century, wrote a highly influential grammar book, and he picked up that rule and he actually got rid of the joke and said, to which our language is inclined.

And we have been stuck with this idea that there's something wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition when there's nothing wrong with it. What's another example of one of these rules that makes English so difficult? Another really powerful example is singular they. Now, this is one that every time I write about this, I get hundreds, if not thousands of comments, because people have very strong feelings about whether the pronoun they can be singular, because many of us, myself included, grew up being told that they cannot be singular. It's only plural.

It's wrong to use it as a singular. It's not wrong. If you listen to the way we talk, we use they as a singular. Even people who don't like it usually use it. It's something like, someone who knows where they're going should give us directions.

Someone who knows where they're going, someone is singular, they're going, they is singular there. And we often don't even notice that we're doing it, and we've been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years. And the option would be he or she rather than they. That became the option in the eighties and nineties. For a couple hundred years.

We were told it should just be he. We had singular they for centuries. We've got singular they back to the 13 hundreds or so. And once again, I mentioned Lindley Murray. This powerful grammar at the end of the 18th century, and in his grammar, he crossed out singular they, and he put singular he with the idea that he can be generic.

We had that for a couple hundred years. Then by the eighties, nineties, we were told, that's not inclusive. Use he or she. And the question we can ask is, why can't I just use singular they in writing? If I use it in speech?

And people will sometimes say to me, a pronoun can't be singular and plural at the same time. Which is a really interesting argument to make about English because we already have a pronoun that's singular and plural at the same time. And that is you. You are one person, you are many people. And you'll notice that you use the plural verb are even with the singular.

Mike Carruthers
It does seem that how we say things is a better way of saying things often than the way we write things. And that there's like two sets of rules, because you would never say some of this formal stuff that is supposedly correct in writing because it's just. It would sound so ridiculous. I think you're making a really important point about the difference between speech and writing, and it's one of the things that makes writing hard. I remember occasionally people would say, just write it down the way you'd say it, which in general is advice that doesn't work unless you're trying to get through writer's block or something.

Anne Curzan
We are. When we're writing formally, we are asked to write in a way that is different from the way that we speak. But I think many of the rules that we all learned about formal writing create actually stilted writing as opposed to fully effective writing. The rules are helpful when they do things like help us minimize ambiguity. That is one of the really hard things about writing.

When we speak, we can get away with more ambiguity because often the other person is there. We say something that's ambiguous, they look confused, we clarify. They ask a question, we clarify. Most writing were not there to clarify. I certainly remember being told in writing and in speaking that you're not supposed to use the word ain't that you should say isn't not ain't.

Mike Carruthers
That ain't isn't a word. But it is. I mean, it's in the dictionary, so it's a word, right? It's been a word, ain't been a word for a long time. And I agree.

Anne Curzan
You hear this ain't ain't in the dictionary. As you know, it's been in the dictionary for a long time because it's a word. And I've been interested for a long time in this discourse around real words where people will ask me, Anne, is that a real word? And I think, okay, what do we mean by that question? And I think people mean is that word in a standard dictionary?

If it is, then it's real. And of course, that then raises the question of who are the people who get to decide if it's in a dictionary and what are they up to? And what I think many people don't realize is that if you talk with dictionary editors, which I do, because many of them are friends of mine, they will say, we're just trying to keep up with all of you. You keep changing the language, and we're just paying attention and listening and trying to see which changes will stick. And the ones that are going to stick, we're going to put into dictionaries because they're part of the language.

Mike Carruthers
But do we know where ain't came from? And then how it was determined that ain't ain't a word that who says? So the question of what's wrong with ain't is that we've said there's something wrong with ain't. It's a contraction from m not. And there was a time when all of these contractions were condemned.

Anne Curzan
Won't, shouldn't, isn't. Wasn't, ain't. They were all condemned, and most of them have been redeemed. They may still be seen as informal, but they're not seen as illegitimate, except for ain't. And that one, people will say, I don't like the way it sounds.

And I say, well, how do you feel about paint? And they'll say, well, paint's fine. Well, they do rhyme, but we need to realize that when we're judging language, it is often about more than language, and it is about the speakers who use that language. And so these judgments are really loaded. Well, but there are words that I don't use.

Mike Carruthers
Say, for example, ask an axe. Okay. I would never say, let me ask you a question. I would say, let me ask you a question. But when someone says ax, I know what they mean.

So, you know, we're good. I get it. I know what they're talking about. It's not a word I would use, but if you want to use it, go ahead. Okay.

Anne Curzan
I love that example, and I love the way that you're thinking about that. But you, but I don't know about you. I have heard many people who, rather than saying, that's great, you say, ask. I say, ask. We're all good, which is exactly right.

This is variation in the language. It's part of the variation and diversity of speakers. But people have been known to say, if that person who's interviewing for a job says, asks a question, do not give them the job, because asks a question is wrong. I'm a historian of the english language. I study how English got to be the way it is.

And one of the really interesting facts about the history of English is that if you go back, you will see that acts as an axe. A question is as old and perhaps even older than ask that the swap of the k and the s was probably, from what we can tell from ax to ask, not from asking to acts. And Chaucer in the Canterbury tales uses acts as an acts of question. And for the people I know who are extremely judgmental about acts of question, it often turns their world upside down to realize how old, what an illustrious history acts has, and that the social judgment there is exactly that. It's a social judgment, not a question of whether there's something wrong with that pronunciation.

Mike Carruthers
Well, I get that. I love that that's the way you're thinking about this, because living language, a, it always changes, and b, you're always going to get variation. So give me another example of something that's changing in the english language that, well, I don't know if it keeps you up at night, but something that you've noticed that's worth mentioning. I don't know if you've heard this, but many younger speakers are now saying on accident instead of by accident. Well, that's been going on for a while.

Anne Curzan
It has, and they're going to win. But again, I would never say that. I don't care if you say it, but I would never say that. Language, to me, is something that kind of gets embedded in your head and you use it the way you've learned it. Pretty much, yeah.

Mike Carruthers
You might start to vary it a little bit, but things like that, I'm never going to say on accident, but I know plenty of people do, and it doesn't bother me. But going back to the ask acts, I want to ask you a question. It's okay if people say acts, but if somebody came to you and said, you know, Ann, I have a tendency to say acts, and I'm going on a job interview, do you think it's okay if I say it? Your answer would be yes or no. I wouldn't be able to answer it with just one word.

Anne Curzan
I would say, I think you're being smart to think about what kind of audience you may encounter, and it's not fair, but it's smart to think about as being a rhetorically effective, savvy speaker. And we know that there are stigmas out there about acts of question. It's not fair, but you may want to think about depending on the context of this interview, because I also want to recognize that different interviews are going to have different audiences in terms of what's going to be the best choice, because I want this person to feel like they have the choice. And it's not a question of right or wrong, it's what choice do they want to make based on the audience? Okay, that's not the answer I would give because it's just a safety thing.

Mike Carruthers
In some circles, if you say ax instead of ask, people will judge you negatively for doing that. But no one is going to judge you negatively for using ask. So that's the safer way. If you're in a job interview, why not take the safe way? Those things can change over time, and they change over time when we push on those boundaries.

Anne Curzan
Take your point. And I think it's a very fair one that we make decisions about. Am I going to be the person in this context who is pushing this boundary at this moment? Talk about starting a sentence with and because I do it a lot, and I mean, people do it a lot in speech, but sometimes when I write things to say on this podcast, I will start a sentence with and and it sounds funny if I don't. That's exactly right.

This rule is interesting because many of us did you learn this in school as a rule. My recollection of the rule was, it's better if you don't. It wasn't forbidden, you weren't points taken off because you did, but you'd be better off if you didn't. And if every other paragraph had a sentence that started with and that you might have to stay after class. And if you look in usage guides, what many of them will say is this idea that you can't start a sentence with and or but is a myth perpetuated by english teachers.

It's actually not a rule. And if you look at formal writing, fiction writing, you will find, as you note, lots of sentences that start with and and start with but because it can work very well rhetorically. I think where this probably came from is teachers who are working with early or emerging writers and are trying to help them use a range of conjunctive resources, as in in addition, however, and they're saying, don't always use and or but there's a whole repertoire there that you need to employ. And somehow along the way that became, don't start a sentence with and or but. It's fine to start a sentence with but or aunt.

Mike Carruthers
An interesting word. Well, it's not a word, but you use it as a word in the subtitle of your book. And the word is funner. And usually the only people you hear say funner are kids. Kids use funner and they invent it.

Anne Curzan
That is exactly right. And we can explain why kids want to do it. What's interesting with fun is that for much of its life, it was a noun, and we still can use it as a noun in something like we had fun. And when it's a noun, if you had fun that is greater than the fun you had yesterday, then you had more fun. You can also imagine how kids, if they heard something like, the party was fun and assumes that fun is an adjective because you could also say the party was boring or the party was great.

The kid interprets it as an adjective, at which point the kid can say, that was a fun party. And that happened in the early 20th century, that fun became an adjective. What kids now are doing is because fun is an adjective. They're trying to make it behave like other one syllable adjectives. Tall, taller, tallest, wide, wider, widest, short, shorter, shortest.

Fun, funner, funnest. They're just trying to follow the pattern until, as you say, some authority figure is like, no, stop that. That is terrible. Say more fun and most fun right in the long run. I don't know that we'll live long enough to see this, but we might.

Funner and funnest are probably going to win. I think funnest is going to come in first. I've been doing surveys with undergrads for years now, and what I'm seeing is that they have a less strong reaction to funnest. They'll say either I don't notice it or it's not terrible. They will still, most of them say, I really don't like Funner, but I think funist will come in first and Funner will scoot in on its coattails.

Mike Carruthers
Only have a few minutes left here, but I wanted to ask about a word that has crept into the English language. Well, this usage of it has crept into the english language, maybe in the last, I don't know, 60 years. And that is the word, like. So I'm like. And then he's like, that actually does bother me because it isn't really a word in that instance.

It's just filling space. It doesn't mean anything. And when it's every other word, it just sounds dumb. Linguists have devoted a lot of time and ink to the word like, because like is such a versatile word. And I think it's worth noting all the different uses of it, because, Mike, you just described it as a filler, which is one of the things that it can do, but it does many other things.

Anne Curzan
So it's a preposition, it's a conjunction. And there used to be, in the 1960s, around that period, a lot of controversy about, like, as a conjunction. And there was a very controversial ad about Winston's cigarettes that taste like a cigarette should. And people really thought that, like, in that which was on billboards was terrible. Then we have like, as a quotative.

And I think that's what you, the examples you gave Mike. She was like, he was like, now I do this. I realize that when I am speaking, I very rarely use say that. If I'm telling a story, I will say, I just did it there. I will say, I was like, do you want to go to that show?

And he was like, sure, but I'd have to go tomorrow. And I was like, well, that works for me. That is my quotative. And it's doing that work of either quoting speech or quoting thought. Then there is the filler, like, which works a little bit more like, um, or, uh, holding onto the floor.

There is also what some linguists will call focuser, like, which puts the focus on whatever's coming next. And this is something such as, he, like, hit my car, and he, like, ran up to me and said, blah, blah, blah. And that, like, is putting the focus on whatever's coming next. The focuser, like, the filler, like, tends to index youth. We will often notice it.

The fact is, we'll notice almost any discourse marker that is overused. If somebody uses, uh, or, um, a lot. If somebody uses, you know, or, I mean, these little words that function like traffic signals and fillers. If they get overused, they stop doing the subtle work that they can do, and we start to notice them, and then they become less effective. Well, I love discussions about language because it's something everybody uses.

Mike Carruthers
It's changing all the time. People have their opinions of what's right and wrong, and it's fun to kind of throw it out on the table and see where we are. I've been speaking with Ann Curzon. She's a professor of english language and literature, linguistics and education at the University of Michigan. And she's author of a book called says a Kinder Funner usage guide for everyone who cares about words.

And there is a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on. This was fun. Ann thanks, Mike. I really appreciate the questions.

Anne Curzan
They're great questions and such fun to talk with you about language.

Mike Carruthers
I would imagine that most soon to be parents know in advance the gender of their baby before it's born. And knowing that may actually help fathers bond with their unborn child, researchers followed some fathers to be and found that those dads who knew the gender and had already named their baby had an easier time thinking of him or her as a real person when they finally showed up. Those dads were also more likely to be actively involved in the pregnancy and reported feeling more connected to the child the minute they learned the gender. And that is something you should know. And now that you've heard this episode, I bet there's someone you can think of, someone you know that you can think of that would like what you just heard in this episode.

So why not just share it with them? There's a share button on the podcast app. You listen to this on most likely, or you can send them to our website, somethingyoushould know.net, and they'll find every show right there. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

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