I Am Not Lazy…
Recently, as I was browsing YouTube, I came across a video from a linguist. A few weeks later, I happened across another one from a different linguist. I am not a linguist, by any means. But, as a nerd in good standing, I enjoy such intellectual journeys into, what is to me, the unknown.
These particular videos discuss different aspects of how English, written and spoken, have gone through changes through the ages.
However, something in one of the videos reminded me of a phenomenon I had noticed some years ago. I became aware of this particular phenomenon after watching (again) Victor Borge’s “Phonetic Punctuation” routine. After picking myself off the floor, I noticed that, while we don’t (normally) pronounce punctuation marks as we speak, we also don’t pronounce or acknowledge in any way the existence of spaces.
Spaces are not words, not punctuation and they’re not grammar. They exist only in the written form of a language and do not appear when speaking. When writing, we need some sort of cushion to separate one word from the next but when speaking, werunallthewordstogether and let the mind of the listener parse that long sound into component words.
