To Reason Why
S1: This ad free podcast is part of your Slate plus membership. From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language. I’m John McWhorter and let’s open with a nice sunny segment from the opera Motsyk. This is Act three, scene two. And it’s all about the protagonist and his. Well, listen.
S2: Gertrudis, not Sister Margaret.
S3: Whistle-Stop Hineman Murrihy, oh six, he told.
S1: Well, my opening with that, and it’s actually about somebody who is expiring, well, it’s because this section of the opera was titled by Albon BHAG Invention on a note. And what he meant by that was that the note b b natural just permeates this whole part of the opera. So you could call it an invention on B. And the reason I played that is because I’m going to do an invention. This show is going to be an invention on why not the letter but the word why? I’m going to see how much I can get out of what is actually a really fun little word. But you know what we need? We need an actually sunny opening that was terrible. Here are two people singing a song.
S4: And the reason that I chose the song is because it has the word Y in it and there’s no flower blossoms and my knees all day, all night long, I walk on air. I wonder what. There was a general feeling in my sleep.
S1: Yes, that is me and the little girl is my Dolia and we’ve been learning our call me madam lately. I’ll I’ll discuss later what that is. But in any case, now that we’re in probably a better mood than we were in listening to that murder, we can talk about how we came to be the etymology of why. Where does it come from? Well, actually, it starts out as a word that would have been pronounced juy in old English. And whoI is the instrumental of the word what or an old English. It would have been whatt. So we’re talking about this little list. So there was Huat, which we now have as what then? There was WS, which we now have as who’s then there was Juwana, which becomes our whom. Then they had a ham. And that meant to what? We don’t really have a modern equivalent of that. But then there was whoI. So you had what was wona when we and whoI became our Y. Now you might wonder why don’t we still just say we for example. And the reason is because a very long time ago there was this thing called the great vowel shift in English. And what happened with this vowel shift is that the vowels all took a major step or a step or two away from where they had been more or less around the same time. And it’s a great deal of why, as I’ve discussed on the show before, our spelling system is such a mess. A lot of our spelling was formulated before the shift and so our words to spell the way earlier English was actually pronounced. But one of the things that happened was that the sound E became. I now imagine if you’re saying E in what we think of as a Southern American accent, e like that kind of Gomer Pyle. So e ay ay ay ay ay ay ay. That’s what happened to the sound e the word rights originally was pronounced Reise and now we say rice or the word myse starts out is Meece. Remember that old cartoon. Those of us of a certain age remember Pixie and Dixie and Mr Jenckes and his catchphrase about loving misses the pieces. Let’s let’s hear that.
S5: I think I’ll pick it out on those two missing family. B Oh no, not that we already miss the Yanks. OK, now make like bumblebees.
S6: Bumblebee.
S7: I’ll get you out, out, out, and stay out bumbling around here anymore.
S5: Do you like to play Bumblebee?
S8: Yeah, I read Warlock and don’t ever show your miserable faces around here again.
S1: Well, in that, Mr. Jinx was pronouncing mice in the way that it was pronounced before the great vowel shift. Maybe he was some kind of historical linguist. In any case, that’s where Y comes from. It starts out basically as we except it was pronounced whoI and it’s the instrumental of what. And here we are with it today. You know why we’re in that 1950s era. Let me play you something. Doesn’t this sound familiar? This is going to sound like the I Love Lucy theme song, but it isn’t. Listen to this.
S7: Also, see where Robert Hayes, John, meet Shirley Mitchell, Russell Trent, Walter Kingsford, LBA, Leonard Kirkham and Melinda Ploughman.
S1: See how it sounds like an alternate universe, I Love Lucy. That’s because it’s actually written by the same guy, Elliott Daniel, and the instrumentation is by the same guy, Wilbur Hatch. That is the theme song of December Bride big hit on TV in the mid 50s. It was actually filmed right next door to I Love Lucy. A lot of the same people worked on it. If you watch December Bride, you see a lot of the same guest stars that had the same feel. You can tell they’re breathing the same air. And the theme song is one of those things, if you like the I Love Lucy theme song, but you got sick of it. You can listen to the December Bride theme song. So that’s what that is. In any case, let’s get back to the subject. We’re talking about an invention on why. So I’m going to I’m going to just kind of throw everything in the kitchen sink into this show. But it’s because I really do enjoy why Y is actually a rather crude word in our language. It covers too much territory. It really is kind of a monster in a real language. You don’t have just one word Y that covers all the territory that we think of as unitary. A language makes distinctions. And so, for example, how about one of my very favorite languages that I don’t actually address enough these days on the show? How about good old Russian? There are two words for why if you learn Russian, one of them is Puckerman and then the other one is Zakim. And it’s annoying. At first you think, why can’t they just use one? And you wish it were possible? But no, there are two kinds of wideness.
S9: And what I mean by that is this. Suppose you ask somebody, well, why do you stay home? You could say because I was sick or you could say because I was waiting for the plumber. Those are two different kinds of reasons. If you ask somebody, why did you stay home? And the reason was that you were feeling sick then in Russian you say Puckerman. And so what was the reason that you stayed home? But you multiuse Toltz Adamah, why did you stay home? But then if the reason you stayed home was for a purpose, so it’s not for what reason did you stay home?
S1: What made you so that you didn’t leave home? But for what purpose did you decide to stay home? What was going on that meant that you had to stay home? Then it’s Zakim, which means roughly behind what? So why don’t you stay home while I was waiting for the plumber Zakim Desistance or DOMA. So what was the purpose of your staying home? And then you say you do a of work. I’m waiting for the plumber. So you have two different ones. Why? As in what caused it and then why? As in what was the purpose. So if you ask somebody Zakim, you stay at home, you wouldn’t answer because I was sick. That doesn’t work. It has to be that you were waiting for the plumber or something like that. Now, what’s interesting is that if you’re learning Russian from English, the difference between humans are seem subtle. It’s kind of annoying. But the truth is we actually have equivalents to the same sorts of things. And so, for example, there’s why did you do that as opposed to what did you do that for? So why did you do that? Because you had some kind of deja vu and it made you do something you wouldn’t usually do. What did you do that for? Well, because I knew the plumber was coming or something like that. So we do have that kind of distinction. It’s just that we don’t have a separate single word. So why did I do that? What did you do that for? And it’s interesting what this what did you do that for? Would lead to an English if we would let our language develop? Actually, English is trying to have that same distinction that Russian does because that distinction is normal. It’s English that’s crude in this case. And what I mean by that is if you listen closely to colloquial American English, you can hear some people I really should say you used to hear some people, because I associate this with old radio and old TV and old movies, but I assume they’re still people doing it. As a matter of fact, I know they’re still people doing it, but you can hear people saying something like, what did you do that? And what they mean is what did you do that for? But they leave off the floor because context allows you to know that if somebody says, what did you do that what you mean is why did you do that? And I know that sounds weird, partly because I am not somebody who says that sort of thing. I don’t sound like I have the right tone. Let’s go back to the Abbott and Costello TV show, which is a joy forever because they are mid 20th century, very colloquial white guy speakers and they do it all the time. Listen to Costello when he says, what do you think of that, Sally? In the icebox. What he means is, what do you think I got Sally in the icebox for? That’s what he means, or what do you grab it right away for? But instead, he says, what do you grab it right away like that? So listen to that.
S8: No, no, not not in the icebox. It’s up here all over the place. You’ve got Sallies look, let me ask you something, Lou, have you really proposed to Sally? What do you think? I got Sally in the icebox. What do you think I got Sally here for? I guess the other, as she said yesterday, I got an answer. Every time I pass by, just they get enough nerve and say, Oh, Sally, I love you. Oh, now you’re looking for your nerve. You have no. I lasted four or five times the she said, well, I think she’s very happy about it, but she doesn’t give me an answer, you know, I don’t know. Look, I’ll show you how to propose to Sally and Mary. Sally. No, look. Protagonism not me. No. I want you to be happy, Lou. Oh, I’m. Look, I’ll pretend I’m Sally, obviously, and you’re Lou. And I want to see how you would propose to do so. No, no, no, no, no, no. Look, my Sally, you just pretend now you come over to me, step over this. Now you’re coming over to me. I’m Sally. You come over to me and propose and let me see what what you would really say. Go ahead, Sally, darling. You, the right of women, don’t grab her right away.
S1: So what that means is that if we let English move along, that four could just fall away completely. And so it would be what do you grab her right away? Which would be another way of saying, why did you grab her right away? Because there’s no confusion. What do you grab her right away? There’s no question as to what you grab because you grabbed her. It would just be that we’d have this pleasantly weird, complicated little situation where what could refer to an object or a concept or it could also be used to ask the reason why this is what normal language is. Do I like it when English is becoming more and more normal? Hence, to use a pretentious word? Well, that explains another pretentious word, which is where for so wherefore makes perfect sense. What did you do that for? What for wherefore is an alternate. And it’s one of those Shakespeare words that can confuse you, because to us it sounds like where. So there’s the classic example of Romeo and Juliet. Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo. Deny the father and refuse thy name. Now it’s so easy in this happens in really amateur productions that you have Juliet up there on this teetering balcony and it’s, oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou. And she’s staged as meaning where are you? But the thing is, he’s right there in terms of the whole setting of the play. He’s right this. She knows where he is. She’s not supposed to put her hand over her eyes and seek him out. Where are you, Romeo? What she means is why are you Romeo? Why do you have to belong to that family? So. Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo, why are you Romeo? Deny the father and refuse thy name. Or if thou will not be but sworn my love and I’ll no longer be a Capulet. So that’s what she means. Why must you be Romeo? So it’s cute to imagine it. Meaning where are you. But it’s not. It’s not the case. It’s cute actually in the Wizard of Oz where they get this charmingly wrong. If I only had a brain the Tin Man’s version, if I only had a heart, we can listen to Jack Haley and for one thing, listen to his magnificently Arless old school urban northeast accent. He doesn’t have a heart. He has a heart. But then also listen to the way they handle wherefore art thou, Romeo. What this woman means is Romeo. Where are you? Can’t find you.
S2: I’d be tender. I’d be gentle and sentimental regarding my lover, not I’d be friends with the sparrows and the boy who shoots the arrows. If I only had a. Bob, a boy sings along for Romeo. I hear a beat. Oh, how sweet. Just to register emotion, jealousy, devotion and really real love.
S1: Because if they knew that it was, why are you Romeo? Then it wouldn’t be. Why are you Romeo? They think it means where are you, Romeo? Jolly good old American popular culture. In any case, it’s time for a song cue. And you know, we’re going to use we’re going to use a song called Why Oh Why and Wherefore because it’s just so perfect here. This is by Vincent Youmans. You hear about Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, etc.. Richard Rodgers, of course, Vincent Youmans was just as good as them, but he was sickly. He was a mess. He died in the forties and he therefore never had an original cast album. He was not a classical composer. So there’s no rhapsody in Blue. So you haven’t heard of him if you aren’t part of a certain obsessive set. But this song is from his hit musical hit The Deck of 1928. Even in the 50s, he was still known enough that there was a big musical made of hit the deck. And this is Tony Martin, Victor Moan and Rex Dennis, whoever he was singing this really catchy tune in a very 50s arrangement. This is why. Oh, why.
S10: And wherefore while I with or have I want to care for the where’s my Cinderella gloomy kind of love.
S11: This is such a long. Don’t mind me.
S10: I’m sure we’re only done to wish that I visit the home of some exquisite blonde. Oh.
S12: There should be a dollar rheumy, could be for.
S1: It’s terrible, unbearable and doesn’t look so good for us.
S10: It looks as if we miss the bus. Why? Oh, why is there no one to for while I was one. Why or why?
S1: And so wherefore then there’s another way of saying why that’s relevant here. And that is how come now? How come it is interesting because if you try to look up its first attestation, it looks like it’s some sort of relatively new Americanism. The first attestation is in eighteen, forty eight. That could not possibly be the case, though, because, for example, Dutch has the same thing. Friesian, which we’ve seen on this show as English, is closest relative spoken in various parts of Northern Europe. It has. How come. And Friesian and Dutch and English split off from one another two thousand plus years ago. And so one can assume that there’s been a how come for much longer. It’s just that it’s a colloquial construction. And so it didn’t happen to make it to the page. But you wonder sometimes or at least, you know, I used to why isn’t it how comes isn’t it supposed to be how comes it that you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and instead it’s how come you. Well, where’d the sergo that is probably because you used to also be able to say how came it that how came that you blah blah blah blah blah. So how come you ended up being patterned on that by analogy. And so it’s an idiomatic construction odder than we might think because it should be how comes. But instead it’s how come. But this is the thing about good old. How come. This is what’s really interesting. How come is the way we say what Russian does with Shamoo, for what reason, what caused it? How come you’re so irritable? How come this shrimp tastes like an eraser, that sort of thing. How come the shrimp tastes like an eraser. Now that means that we have how come and then what for? How come and what for are the pots you move and the zakim. How come this shrimp tastes like an eraser. What did you stay home instead of coming to work for? Those are subtly different things. We have that subtlety, but it’s only in the colloquial language which we think of as slangy as not the real thing. So there’s no book that would teach you. Well, English has a subtle differentiation between how come and what for. Instead, those are thought of as just, you know, alternates to why and, you know, let’s move on what’s for lunch. But no, that’s where the language is as subtle as Russian. But nobody tells us the truth. Who will tell the people it’s just not fair? I want you to listen to this. This is this run on Creole that I keep on finding myself talking about on the show. This is spoken in Surinam. This is the lingua franca of Surinam, of whatever ethnicity you are and surname you speak, run on Creole. And this language emerged on plantations there, first under English rule, and then when the English gave the colony to the Dutch, then it existed under Dutch. And so today, the high language, if you will, in Suriname is Dutch and the slangy language, the language that everybody speaks, the language you do, your real living in, that is this strong and Creole. Now, listen to this Saron on pop song and just this part. What he’s saying is Fuson today Fuson a day, and what that means is why unfortunately in the song it’s Why did my father go away, why is my father gone? But Sunny Sun might play that again. So, Fortunata, what is that that’s for what he said, and that’s how you say why in Sorona. So their language is where how you say why gets weirder than, you know, Russian or certainly anything in English. You have really interesting what began as idioms that are now basically just words. So phoo is for Sarney is originally from something and it means what an end is head so Fuson It a means for what head. Now why in the world do they say for what head to mean why. And the reason is because of mainly British expressions such as what he’s got to have his own head and that means he had to have it his way. He has to have his head head as in reason. If you’re listening to Brits, you’re listening to them 400 years ago, you know, for what he said, that might be what you make out of this word head, in addition to it being the thing that is above your neck. And so, Hussan, that day is in session on what and it means for what Head said, often shortened to Cinetic and so what head. So of all things, it starts out in English as something and head. And now there’s this newish language where it means y. Anyway, remember that thing that I played at the beginning where Dolly and me are singing over? Oh no, I can’t say that that Dolly and all singing. Well maybe that was cute, maybe that was disgusting. But I think you ought to hear the real thing that was from the musical call me Madam. Nineteen fifty. It was an Ethel Merman vehicle. It’s still done here and there today. And she actually got to do the movie of it three years later. And the song was called You’re Just In Love. And when this song was first presented to an applauding public in Boston during the tryouts of the show, it said that there were ten encores of it. I doubt that. However, the song was a massive hit. And so here is Ethel Merman and Donald O’Connor singing You’re Just In Love in the movie of Call Me Madam, which I highly recommend.
S13: If you like this sort of thing, you don’t need an ally. There’s no. I just feel like. God, why don’t you give me one more? But they hold up about. Oh, they’re going to release the twinkling lights of.
S14: Come on now, snap out of it. Are you serious?
S1: I know, but I hear singing and now, you know, there’s a little bit more about why and in order to understand why, so to speak, let’s listen to I mean, this is going to be completely unprecedented for the show. Let’s listen to a clip from an old sitcom. This one is Make Room for Daddy. And it is the late 50s. This is with Danny Thomas. And listen to what a man says when he approaches Danny.
S7: Hey, aren’t you Danny Williams? No.
S5: No, I’m not. Hey, his name is Homer, right? I your business. I forgive you, Danny.
S1: Notice that. Say you get used to that. Especially an old thing. Say that’s the guy I saw yesterday. Notice you wouldn’t say it now. Now I know some of you are going to write and say that you do say it, but most of you aren’t. It’s largely an old fashioned expression, I’m pretty sure. I wouldn’t say say, why don’t we put some pepper on that unless I was striking a deliberately archaic tone. That’s a discourse particle. That’s what linguists call those. And they change over time, just as the rest of language does. And they have a lot to do with tipping us off as to where on the time line of a language a text is. Another example of this actually goes all the way back to old English talk about timeline. And so there’s the way what can be used in old English, what it was. So Beowulf, for example, begins with the word what roughly? You can imagine that what it means is what we’ve heard of the glory of those spear Danes and those clan kings in the days of yore. But why would it begin with? What I mean, certainly doesn’t work in modern English. And the truth is that exclamation point, that’s something that we’ve inserted since there’s no punctuation in Beowulf manuscripts. And the truth is, if you look at how what is actually used in that kind of way in Beowulf, you can see that it was actually a discourse particle. What what men was roughly what we would say is so so it’s so it’s so we have heard of the glory of the Spear Danes and the Clan Kings in the days of yore. So it’s a nice, folksy way of beginning what almost certainly was delivered orally around the fire to people as a kind of entertainment. We think of it as a text, but most people would have experienced it as something said by someone. When you say things often these days, especially, you start with. So remember the show I did about that? So that is another one of these discourse particles? Well, you know, there is a discourse, particle usage of y to not something we think about consciously. But what I mean, for example, is this here’s a bit from Gone with the Wind. This is Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara talking. Listen to how she uses why.
S2: Why do you want to know anything about that?
S1: Or here is the grand old Preston Sturges comedy The Lady Eve. This is Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. Listen to what Barbara Stanwyck says. Something about that perfume.
S5: Don’t you like my perfume? Like it? I’m cockeyed on it. I have to say, you’re to be kept in a cage.
S1: So there’s that. Why? And it starts as basically why should I even have to say it? Why? This is amazing. And that just shortens to using y to indicate that you’re about to say something that’s relatively novel or relatively surprising or relatively unexpected. It just becomes a chunk. So just like like begins as a word, that means akin to and now it’s just an articulate kind of stutter that either allows you to hedge a bit or even to, in a very interesting way, emphasize the reality of something. That’s another one of the stories of like remember the show we did with, like way back in about 1958 before it existed. But there’s that. Why so that Y is all over the early 20th century, for example. But by the late 20th century, it’s only being used generally in irony. So, for example, the if I may, the the swishy character as one would have put in the old days in the movie Airplane, he uses the Y, but that is partly because he’s supposed to read as somewhat arch. And in fact, I’m just thinking of this right now. At a certain point he mentioned Barbara Stanwyck. And so listen to him.
S15: There’s one just came off the wire, John.
S1: I don’t think they got this. Well, I think they have a brooch, a pterodactyl, you might think, especially if you’re not old enough to remember people actually using it. It’s going. To the point where not too many people are at least being old enough to remember it being common, you might think that that’s just some old movie ism, that it’s something people only said on stage. But no. And I have a precious source that shows us that that was not the case. I often say that it’s hard to get samples of people just talking before roughly 10 minutes ago, in the old days, even when there was recording technology, it was clumsy such that listening to people in 1951 talking in their kitchen for us is practically impossible. But here it isn’t. So I’m going to play you some people in Iowa in 1951 talk about I Love Lucy, I Love Lucy isn’t even on yet unless this takes place in October or afterward. But it’s 1951. They are farm country folk and they are just talking. And among other things, they actually say Iowa. I have never heard anybody actually say that. I imagine Iowans have. But to me that is something from old songs. But they actually some of them say Iowa. And here we’re going to listen to these people and listen to the way they used the lie. Why not the you know what? Do the right thing to do? And how long have you been elected? Why do. That’s when we got this place. Oh, why you can make this like that? Notice also 19 for most of us now would say 19 to 19 04, but notice how at least some people back then were calling it 19 for you never know how these things are going to go, but those are people who are saying why? And they’re not Barbara Stanwyck. And you get the feeling these are not stagy people. And so people really did use Y in that way. I owe that to my listener, Michelle Meraki. And thank you so much, Michel, for giving me these recordings. You might not believe it, but I’ve actually listened through most of them. I am mesmerized listening to these people talking. What would it be 70 years ago? Basically. Very, very interesting. Thank you so much. As we come to the end, I want to play you the overture. I said I was going to throw everything into this one. The overture to the show that the guy who composed that song, Sleigh Bells, that we always enjoy Christmas, wrote the music for so that don’t add up. But, well, he wrote a whole bunch of songs that are as good as that. And you just know that that person, you know, being a mid 20th century person, he must have tried a musical once. And this overture is one of the favorites of many musical theater fans, including me. The show is called Goldilocks. This is 1958. And it wasn’t about Goldilocks or Bears. You know, I don’t like things that corny. It was about silent film, actually. And part of the reason the show failed is because it’s called Goldilocks. But it was a great score right down to this overture kicks. Right. And you like it even if you don’t know the songs. You can reach us at Lexicon Valley, at Slate Dotcom, that’s Lexicon Valley, at Slate dot com, to listen to past shows and subscribe or just to reach out, go to Slate Dotcom Lexicon Valley. As is likely clear from the show, I do have a lot of old movie dialogue rattling around in my head, but I found myself unequal to finding examples of that. Why everywhere I thought I remembered it. It turned out that the person didn’t say it. I was even looking in the movie the bad seed. Rhoda doesn’t say it. My friend Robert LoBiondo was quite equal to it and almost instantly endless. Thanks, Robert. I’m guessing you like the Goldilocks overture as much as I do, which is why I’m playing it. Why Mike Volo is, as always, the editor. And I’m John McWhorter. So there’s contrition, I was talking about the guilt, there’s the contrition that comes from Con and then basically TRIT that’s Latin for together and Reub, it’s rubbing together, grinding together, and that’s a feeling that you’re supposed to have. It’s grinding together. It’s like rocks grinding. It’s unpleasant. That’s your feeling. And specifically, it used to be about intending not to sin again and knowing that you shouldn’t sin because it makes you a sinful person. Then there was another word and it was attrition. Attrition is from instead of rubbing together, just rubbing on. So not as painful, you’re feeling a kind of a rubbing on. It’s kind of nudging at you and to the Scholastic’s, as in Thomas Aquinas, etc.. The difference was that a person feeling attrition is somebody who isn’t repenting enough. They’re going to not do the bad thing just as a matter of form, but they’re not really thinking about the sin. OK, where am I going with this? Well, you’ve got contrition. You can be contrite, right? You’ve got attrition. Can you be attrite? You could be. It used to be that you had both of those words at your disposal contrite. You’re really sorry. Attrite. Well, sorry I grabbed the cookie, mom. And you know, you’re probably going to grab a cookie again. But this is where else this goes for me. I love the contrition, attrition thing, contrite attrite. But then in my mind, there’s a word attrite. And so now we use attrition to mean not feeling not sinful enough, but we refer to it as meaning something wearing away, talking about the stones, rubbing against each other. Metaphore always happens. So attrition is wearing away, dying off, going down. OK, so it seems to me that if you’ve got attrition and if you can be attrite, if you’re about 500 years old, then things should be able to attrite. I think I’ve used it here and there. It’s called a back formation. When you make up words like that in English because it feels like they should exist, attrite. And, you know, I feel guilty about attrite whenever I say it or often I think it and then I talk around it. I feel a little sinful. I feel attrite about it because I know that there are people who are going to say it isn’t a real word, and that especially because I’m a language person, I’m supposed to know better. But you know what people have been saying attrite since sixteen, forty eight, frankly, long before that. It first appears, though, in writing formal writing in sixteen forty eight. So I feel better because it means I’m not making the word up. It means people made the word up a very, very long time ago and they’re dead and we shall not speak ill of them on the pain of suffering contrition. So let’s use attrite. It is a real word. I’m feeling almost good about it. And that’s your slate plus for this week.
