You Shall Not Pass!

It's a funny old business, language, isn't it? It's amazing, really, the way the various grunting noises we can make have evolved into something so precise, and yet so elusive and changeable, when it comes to conveying real meaning in real life. As with, say, cars, the essential purpose of the thing remains constant, but the form it takes changes constantly, according to need, circumstance, fashion, and accident. Anglo-Saxon never quite recovered from its head-on collision with Norman French, for example, and you should see our little Skoda after the close encounter with a lorry we had recently. The sort of care and attention we pay to both language and cars varies enormously, too: my view of a few bumps and scrapes is probably not the same as yours, and certainly not the same as that of our friendly garage owner, Luke, who managed to convey to me that he would be embarrassed to be seen driving around in anything in quite such a distressed condition. Although "distressed" is not a word he would ever reach for. By comparison, I may be a slob where cars are concerned, but linguistically I like to think I drive the equivalent of a well-maintained Jaguar XJ.

Of course, because, like anyone, I understand and can use a wide range of social "registers", I am able to converge with Luke, and I wouldn't say "distressed" at the garage, either: "a bit of a fuckin' mess" does the job nicely, without causing anyone unnecessary awkwardness. But the fact that I refer to the "um, passenger side?" of the car rather than the "near side" reveals me as an outsider. It's clear that I'm no more a car mechanic than Luke is a librarian. Which is fine: this is an insider:outsider transaction. I'm happy to trust in and to pay him for his expertise, and he's happy to sort out for me whatever needs sorting out. But these little linguistic markers that distinguish insiders from outsiders interest me, particularly when they fall into the category referred to as a shibboleth.

Few people understand Biblical references, these days. The original shibboleth was, in fact, the word "shibboleth" itself, as described in the Old Testament, Judges 12:

5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;

6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

In other words, the ability or inability to pronounce a word "correctly" – that is, as it falls from the tongue of an insider – is a quick and easy way to determine outsiders and slaughter them ruthlessly, Bible-style, or at the very least enjoy an inward smirk of superiority. Looking at the examples of shibboleths in the Wikipedia entry, it seems the Biblical option has more often than not been the consequence of even quite mild and perfectly comprehensible differences in pronunciation. "You say tomato, I say toma... Argh!"

The names of people, places, and foreign words are a particularly tricky set of silent intruder alarms to negotiate. I remember reading out an essay in a tutorial on Shakespeare's comedies – none of which I had seen acted on stage – and pronouncing the name of the character Jaques in As You Like It as "Jacques", in the French manner. My tutor tactfully let me know that the conventional pronunciation is, in fact, "JAY-kweez" or "Jakes". Well, who knew? Everybody on the inside, that's who; but come on in, lad, and shut the door behind you. Similarly, a friend who was studying politics mentioned the difficulty he was having getting hold of something called the "Grundle Gung", which sounded intriguingly Tolkien-esque to me. Of course, when he showed it written down, it turned out to be the single word "Grundlegung", German for "foundation" or "groundwork", and pronounced rather differently: I like to think my mockery saved him from a deeper humiliation. The ruthless slaughter of outsiders is no longer an option in university circles, not least because the whole idea is to turn outsiders into insiders, but the mortification of having revealed the true depth of one's ignorance can be quite wounding enough, especially when only realised with hindsight.

In the end, I suppose what distinguishes a true insider from an ill-informed wannabe is whether you have heard certain crucial words and names spoken out loud in the right company, or merely read them silently on the page. I mean, who would ever have guessed that artist Ed Ruscha's name is pronounced "roo-SHAY", or that photographer Diane Arbus was a "Dee-ahn"? It's true that a facility with foreign languages can take a lot of the mystery out of this, but most of us will stumble over names like Vija Celmins or László Moholy-Nagy. Besides, there is a perversity in the Anglosphere that means that, just as we prefer Munich over München or Florence over Firenze, not even the most interior of insiders will use the native-language rendering of certain long-established names ranging from Titian to van Gogh. That is, as far as I know. Maybe the consistent (mis)pronunciation of, say, Degas as "DAY-gah" on TV and radio programmes – there is no acute accent over the "e", and the French do not tend to stress syllables – is a simple but effective shibboleth that keeps the rest of us out of the connoisseurs' club?

Naturally, as with language in general, the insider's version of any shibboleth is no more "correct" than the outsider's version: it's just that only one will get you across the river Jordan unscathed. It's no good insisting, "Look, mate, that is perfectly good Ephraimite!" when it is precisely your Ephraimitishness that is being tested. The difference between a shibboleth and simple pedantry about "correct" pronunciation is that pedantry gets you nowhere, whereas a shibboleth, like a secret handshake, opens doors. Let's go back to Luke's garage. You might wince at your mechanic's mangling of marques like Peugeot or Porsche, but you're not going to be the one picking up the phone to order a new brake drum at trade discount. The guys at Pete's Parts know and trust Luke's lads, and they all speak the same language. And when it comes to small talk, as lifelong Saints fans and followers of Premier League football, they have no trouble handling names like Ralph Hasenhüttl or Moussa Djenepo, albeit in versions with the rough edges knocked off. Just don't pay too much attention to that umlaut, though, or you'll instantly mark yourself as an overeducated snob like me who doesn't watch Sky Sports; although fastidious attention to such niceties could, of course, open doors elsewhere.

When it comes to pure linguistic pedantry, though, I have a good story which I think I've told before, but here it comes again.

Now, if you don't speak German you may not be aware that the vowel represented by the letter "a", when short, is pronounced rather like an English "u". Thus, for example, the surname "Mann" is pronounced "Munn" in German, and so the writer Thomas Mann is – "in German", as it were – "Toe-muss Munn". However, to give foreign names their full native-language pronunciation when speaking English is both tedious and pretentious, and can have unintended consequences. When I was in the sixth form, we were taught German by a brilliant but eccentric man, whose ability to turn on a sixpence from mischievous, fun-filled provocateur to outraged vengeful tyrant could be disturbing. You learned to read his mood quite closely. So one day, this man – a true pedant, one who habitually pronounced "questionnaire" as "kestionnaire" – decided we needed to know a little about the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. I think you can probably see where this is going. Few things are as painful as forcibly-suppressed mirth, so you can well imagine the agonies of seven 17-year-old boys, all trying not to catch each other's eye as their teacher solemnly expounded the philosophy of a man whose name, in his fusspot rendering, now rhymed with "blunt". I never knew whether this was a deliberate provocation on his part to make us squirm – I wouldn't have put it past him – but it makes me laugh to this day whenever I recall it, and is also a useful lesson in the perils of misplaced pedantry; a self-inflicted anti-shibboleth, a vice that puts you in a category of unwelcome outsiders alongside bores, egomaniacs, anecdotards, and compulsive practical jokers. You shall not pass!