Carmen: great music, lousy geography

My Pedant self can't believe nobody else appears to have noticed this somewhere on the Web, but... I'm just back from an excellent Carmen at West Bay Opera, but, throughout it (except when Bizet's wondrous music, so well played and sung, just swept my pedantry away for a while!), I couldn't help being troubled by its plot's obvious imprecision regarding the geography of Spain.

Consider: Carmen takes place in Sevilla -- Micaela is coming to meet Don José there (presumably on foot? but, even if she was riding, or on a carriage, that wouldn't change much...) from their native village in Navarra, and claim it's a day trip ("demain je verrai votre mère", "I'll see your mother tomorrow", she tells José -- and said mother is back in said village). Sevilla is in Southern Spain, Navarra in the far North thereof... 912 km by road between Sevilla and Pamplona (the latter being the largest town in Navarra), according to Google Maps.

I also suspect that the mountains on which the smugglers are in the 3rd act are meant to be the Pyrenees, not the Sierra Morena which is reasonably close to Sevilla, simply because it's not clear where you'd be smuggling to and from over the Sierra Morena -- Andalucía to Extremadura? I doubt there were customs officers patroling that administrative border, given that both regions were and are part of the same country, Spain; however, I am not certain about that... it would just go well with the misconception that Sevilla and Navarra are very close to each other (Navarra, of course, is in fact on the Pyrenees).

So I'm disappointed with Meilhac and Halévy, the librettistas -- even though I absolutely adore them for their authorship of so many of Offenbach's best librettos. I revere Halévy and Meilhac when they play fast and loose with geography for good reason -- as in Offenbach's "Les Brigands", ``at the border between Spain and Italy'' (;-)... but in Carmen, they seem to have simply been sloppy and careless -- really unforgivable for two stalwart of the Académie Française!!!

Pedantry: assure, ensure, insure

My (beloved) local (print!) newspaper publishes today (10/13) an article (also available online at http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10711901?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com) claiming that (my emphasis) "To assure continued fiscal security, Kane thinks local officials need to build stronger relationships with state representatives.". Isn't the added value of print newspapers vs blogs supposed to be good copy-editing?! And yet, here they are at least as bad as any unedited blog could possibly be. I'm crying.

A concise explanation can be found e.g. at http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/assure.html : "To “assure” a person of something is to make him or her confident of it. According to Associated Press style, to “ensure” that something happens is to make certain that it does, and to “insure” is to issue an insurance policy.". I can understand hesitation between "ensure" and "insure" (AP has it right, but not everybody agrees on that), but to misuse "assure" as if it meant "ensure", as the quoted newspaper article just did, is simply unforgivable.

The Pedant Reigns

Robert Reich is always worth reading, content-wise... but I'd have to unsubscribe from his blog if I couldn't lower my blood pressure by venting when he slaughters the beautiful English language! In his latest post, he (rightly, content-wise) reminds the reader how the GSEs "blocked any attempt to reign in the risks". Robert, it's REIN IN, not REIGN IN.

Reins (no G in it) are what you control a horse with, and by analogy they're used to indicate such control (as in the idiom you mis-used); it comes from Vulgar Latin "RETINA", constraint, from "RETINERE", to constrain (from "re-tinere", literally "to hold again"); close cognates in English include "retain" and "retinue".

A reign (with a G) is the period during which a certain monarch is on the throne, that monarch's authority and dominion, his or her rule; it comes from Latin "REGNUM", kingdom or reign, related to "REGULARE", ``to rule''; deep down, it coms from Proto-Indo-European root *reg-, just like your own surname, and a wide variety of words such as "right", "rich", "Raja", "rector", "erect", "royal", "realm", "rule", ... which got into English through many different routes.

It IS unfortunate that these unrelated words, rein and reign, ended up in English with the same pronunciation, very similar spelling, and even vaguely cognate meanings...!-). But PLEASE think of their differences, and let your readers focus on the very important and relevant messages you're sending (in this latest blog, about the horrors of the GSEs, Fanny and Freddie, based on private profits but socialized losses), rather than risk apoplexy over your usage of English... THANKS!

The Pedant Awakes

Some are born pedants, some achieve pedantry, and some have pedantry thrust upon 'em.

I'm in the first category. I can't help it: malapropisms LEAP to my eyes, raise my blood pressure, make me feel PAIN. I've long mused that I should start a blog to vent about these painful attacks against my sanity -- the it's/its'/its horrors, the there/they're ones, "reign in" to mean "rein in", "baited breath" for "bated breath".... and so on, and so forth... venting would lessen the pain a little bit, maybe lower the ol' blood pressure a tad, too. But, round tuits tend to be in short supply.

Today's the day the Pedant awakes from his slumbers and SHOUTS -- "I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE". Watch out -- the Pedant awakes, the Pedant is coming!

Google Reader "share with friends" is a delightful little touch... and today my wife "shared" a generally excellent post by Garr at Presentation Zen, so of course I read that... I enjoy Garr's blog and his excellent book, and anything my wife thinks is worth sharing deserves attention.

Midway through... "Fast/slow, loud/quite" -- OUCH. I take a deep breath or three -- come on, that's no malapropism, it's a perfectly normal typo, swapping the final E and T... they can happen to anybody, they happen to me, too. Calm down. Resume reading. But, towards the end... "his son Michael Reagan eluded to today". AAAARGH!!! I stormed upstairs to my wife, shouting, DEMANDING to know WHY, OH WHY, she would ever share a post using "eluded" to mean "alluded" -- it's not as if my life insurance was juicy enough to make her WANT to cause me to have a heart attack, after all... so what WAS her motivation?!

Turns out... she didn't even notice. When the general disrespect and spite for proper usage has become SO bad to numb even Anna -- whom I love, among innumerable other reasons, for being quite a match for me as a pedant and copy-writer supreme -- when SHE fails to notice something as horrible as THAT, well... then it's HIGH TIME for the Pedant to Awake, and Stride the Blogosphere ranting and venting and whining.

So *WATCH OUT* from now on, especially if you write generally interesting and worthwhile prose, whether you actually MEAN "insure" or "ensure" (or maybe "assure"...?!), whether you're REALLY trying to speak about the "File Transfer Protocol protocol" ("FTP protocol" occurs hundreds of thousands of times on the web...) or the "North-Atlantic Treaty Organization organization" ("NATO organization" has over ten thousands hits), whether you mean "except" or "expect", and so forth... if you slip, the horrible price to pay just MIGHT be... *a mention on this blog*!!!