It may pain a writer and confirmed word-nerd to say so, but reading English — as opposed to hearing it, say on TV — will sometimes put a beginning ESL student at a disadvantage, at least when it comes to pronunciation. If it is read more often than it is heard, the word juice might be pronounced “joo-ees,” the word Tuesday might be pronounced “twes-day”; the word built, “bwilt”; the word team, “tee-ahm.” These are honest mistakes. (They may even recall the mnemonic devices you used for spelling tests in grade school.) The student is simply pronouncing the word according to the way it looks.

Just the reverse used to happen in Freshman Comp back home. In Freshman Comp my students would frequently spell words according to how they had heard them. To offer just a few memorable examples from a batch of Othello essays:

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In love with the idea of love,
the girl with the papier mâchè heart
says sometimes I see only what I want
then adds another chipped plate
to her collection of broken things.

She dreams the vagina dentata
beneath the arrows of the night sky,
imagines cutting off a breast before shaking
out ashes, dry leaves.  It’s in here, she says,
holding up a locked box.

She will tell you anything,
give over her assemblage of facts:
the moon is an embryo playing guitar
and all the stars have teeth.  She doesn’t
know it’s after midnight — you are trying

to sleep. This rain-bellied girl takes your pillow.
Where is that freshwater pearl? she whispers,
igniting her spleen. Tired of extraordinary things,
she will ask to hold your eyes.  She will open
her hands and swallow them whole.

The wooden corner of her room holds a closet
where she keeps all manner of quiet things.
It smells of shoe polish and sandalwood. It casts
the echo of an antique mirror.  I know how to take
down my kill, she will tell you, begging to be prey,

holding her breath until she’s covered you with words.

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Shannon Carson’s poems and stories have appeared in The Portland Review, The Suisun Valley Review, The Smoking Poet, and Caffeine Destiny. She’s published an essay in an Oregon anthology and lyrics for a Bay Area jazz musician. Originally from San Francisco, she now lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Pilot Mountain in North Carolina

Yesterday we explored regionalism in language, specifically our personal region — the American South. Geographically speaking, Larry Brown’s Mississippi is far different from our genteel South Carolina and even our second home, the backwoods mountains of North Carolina. Inspired by yesterday’s post, we’re starting today’s flurry with an article on the current state of another language, Yiddish. Next, we remember an oft-forgotten German author, Heinrich von Kleist, and then check out some Soviet-era art. James Wood reviews The Privileges and Union Atlantic, books that explore ethics and money, and The Millions trumpets its new cause: Dave Eggers as Editor of the Paris Review. How’s that for regionalism? – Andrew Geer

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