Unpalatable Art Fare?

ITEM: Wall Street Journal, Friday, March 7 (or thereabouts). "What to wear to an art fair." (Really? People need instruction on this?) In  a sidebar to this urgent sartorial advice, a lady by the name of Christina Binkley suggested wearing a basic black backdrop (so to speak), against which one could use a broad palate. Twice. 

As you know, Livia is not one to judge, but--well, OK, she is one to judge. How did this woman earn the right to have her opinions published in a national and well-respected newspaper when she appears to be inviting people to march around art fairs with their mouths wide open? More to the point, why did the editors of the aforementioned journal not catch and correct this howler? Twice?

Livia despairs. People who write for publication owe it to the rest of us to apprehend that our language is filled with homophones. You in the back, there: stop snickering! Homophones are words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings, to wit: palate, palette, pallet. 

• Palate = roof of the mouth; alt., discerning taste. 
• Palette = color wheel.
• Pallet = sleeping mat; alt., flat, wheeled tray for moving numerous or bulky items.

And editors owe it to writers to  protect them from looking foolish or moronic in print. Livia is envisioning a number of potential causes for Ms. Binkley's lapse: She may actually think that "palate" is the right word, in which case there is no hope for her. Or she might have intended to use "palette," but is a less-than-accomplished typist. As for the editor, Livia has some words that cannot be quoted in a family newspaper. It is the editor's job to know the difference, to read a writer's work carefully, and to correct mistakes. Shame on the one who left Ms. Binkley open to ridicule.

The Vanishing T

One of the beauties of the English language is its adaptability: its readiness to accommodate new coinages, accept foreign words as its own, change its orthography (look it up, loveys), and allow the correct meaning of a word to shine through a wide variety of pronunciations, both regional and dialect. Yet Livia finds herself yearning for the beautiful, crisp sound of the letter T defining the middles of words. Global communication and a tendency in America toward a non-accent accent, however, are gradually erasing that lovely letter.

Think about it for a moment, loveys: when was the last time you heard the name of the dreary season pronounced with its central T? "Winner" seems to describe both the season and the person picking up the lottery check. Shopping malls (and hospitals) have become "cenners"; horses now "canner"; and fugitives are "wan-ed."

And the words with doubled-up letters are faring no better: the two in this sentence (sennence) are pronounced "leder" and "beder."

Livia is certainly not suggesting that we all begin to sound like snooty butlers in bad drawing-room comedies. She does suggest that the trend toward extreme casualness in American life leads to a variety of unappetizing results: enter (enner?) any office building on a Friday in the summertime, and you'll get the idea. On her good days, Livia attributes sloppy pronunciation to an overabundance of informality.

On her bad days, she believes that a rising tide of anti-intellectualism is destroying American culture and that sloppiness in pronunciation is simply a manifestation of a truly frightening dumbing-down of our populace. She can only hope that, now that we have actual grown-ups running the country, attention to thought and expression will regain a central place in public discourse.

But don't hold your breath.

LIVIA DRUSA