Writing Tips at GarySpeer.com

Idioms are fun for writers but they make language learning a real challenge for everyone.

I love learning about language, words, and all that relates to writing and speaking. I took two years of Spanish in high school and seriously considered majoring in Spanish in college. When I started college, I found the school’s Spanish instructor was a native of Venezuela, and more than half the Spanish class were Basques — those mysterious and wonderful people who are natives of a mountainous region on the border of Spain and France (I think). One week of understanding nothing beyond the rapidly spoken phrase, “Senor Speer,” quickly discouraged my Spanish language pursuit.

I’ve always been intrigued, though, about linguistics and languages. One of the things I did learn from my rudimentary Spanish studies, and my rudimentary English skills — as well as two years of Greek in college — is the importance of idioms: Phrase or expressions that mean something different from what the words actually say. If you aren’t a native speaker of a language (in my case that language is English), it is sometimes bewildering to understand the radical differences in meaning a word or phrase has when used idiomatically. For example:

“Yeah, it was a second marriage for him. He brought a lot of baggage into it.”

Means something entirely different than:

“Yeah, it was a second marriage for him. He brought a lot of luggage into it.”

The words “luggage” and “baggage” are synonyms. But in this idiom, you cannot use them interchangeably. In the first sentence, the guy is carrying a lot of emotional problems, entanglements, any number of difficulties into his second marriage. In the second sentence, he apparently owns a lot of suitcases, briefcases, etc., that he can share with his new wife.

One of the real difficulties for anyone learning a language is learning the abundance of idioms in that language. As a writer, if you are writing in a language you’re learning, you would do well to run your writing (see — another idiom) past a native speaker to check out (another idiom) your idioms to be sure they ring true (one last idiom).

Some months ago, I wrote of a site called ThereTheir.com — DON’T WRITE LIKE AN IDIOT. I had forgotten about that site until one of my readers came here searching for it and left a comment discussing the site.

When I say this is a language site that opens by berating “idiots” and language misuse, that’s just what I mean. Go look for yourself. If you can’t get there right how, allow me to quote the site’s opening paragraph:

“You may not notice it yourself, but if you don’t know the difference between YOUR and YOU’RE, you come across as an idiot whenever you use them. That’s right, the difference is obvious, and everyone sees it but you (and the other idiots). They are not interchangeable, and neither are THERE, THEIR, and THEY’RE, nor any of the examples explained below.”

I confess I probably am not QUITE that straightforward or “harsh” about grammar and language errors, but I’ve often felt that way. In a world where “political correctness” seems to reign, perhaps we need to be more direct and call an idiocy an idiocy. When I wrote about the site the first time (that was here), I see the site owner has added my all-time language pet peeve: “THEN#THAN.”

Go back to the site when you have time and look around. It’ll help you sharpen your language skills, and it offers a degree of solace to those of us battling for correct word usage, grammar, and all the other matters which SHOULD be important to writers.

I’ve written a few parodies in my day, usually something short as in a blog post. Parodies can be fun and they can be very effective.

A well-written parody can be an extremely effective way of making a point in a way that moves people to action, brings them to tears, fills them with anger. A column in our local newspaper last February used Valentine’s Day to poke fun at those ultra-conservative religious folks who see “satanic attacks” and other forms of deviltry in celebrating such widely accepted holidays as Christmas. In this case, the writer made up and elaborate history of St. Valentine, of the original intent of the holiday being one of honoring God, but condemning modern Valentine’s Day observers for “taking St. Valentine out of St. Valentine’s Day,” a broad shot at all who sound the alarm over “taking Christ out of Christmas.”

Whatever your “beliefs” about St. Valentine or Christmas, the parody was written well and did an effective job. In fact, over a three week period following that publication, the newspaper carried a couple of letters from angry readers who were passionately angry at the mockery the column made of Valentine’s Day — they never “got it” that the whole thing was a parody.

Any subject that generates widespread interest, especially if it engenders strong emotion, is fair game for a good parody. You can poke fun at social institutions, such as religion and politics. You can poke fun at self-help gurus, self-help programs, AA, drug treatment centers or any sort of drug rehab, AAA, colleges, customs, sports — the list of targets is endless.

Have any of you written successful parodies you’d like to share with us? Leave a comment and tell us about it. What are some of your tips for writing parody?