A funny question (for discerning minds)

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[ISU Alumna]

Here's something funny that I remember from ISU Bible Studies:
Everybody mispronounced the word "discern." They pronounced it with a "z" sound instead of an "s" sound. By the same token, they mispronounced all words based upon it, such as "discernment," "discerning," etc.
 
It stuck out like a sore thumb. There we were, in a place where everybody outside the church pronounced the word one way, and everybody inside the church pronounced it a different way.
 
I have always wondered where the error stemmed from. Could it be that just because Jim McCotter pronounced the word a certain way, everybody else felt they had to follow suit? If so, it's a marvelous metaphor for so many other things that were screwed up about that church.

[AgathaL'Orange]

I don't remember that from my times, but there were some odd usages of certain words... we have a thread around here somewhere about that.  I remember "winsome" being one.

[Linda]

I always notice the use of the word "ones" to refer to people in general.

[newcreature]

"Saints!"

"Good morning, saints!"

"Rise and shine, saints!"

"Hop on the bus, saints!"

"Let's pray, saints!"

"Let's sing, saints!"

"Let's break bread, saints!"

"Be wise as serpents, saints!"

"Don't be deceived, saints!"

"Praise the Lord, saints!"

"Good night, saints!"

(They should start a new "work" in New Orleans since the Saints won the Super Bowl.)

[Linda]

Rekanized.

As in, "I don't think he had been "rekanized" as an elder yet."

[AgathaL'Orange]

http://forum.gcmwarning.com/general-discussion/comedy-of-repetition/


Here is the thread I mentioned. 

[ISU Alumna]

Thank you, Agatha, for posting that link. Reading that thread made me chuckle, over and over again, as forgotten old tapes in my brain got dusted off and replayed.

"Ones have told me...." -- Yes! I distinctly remember people back in Ames who talked like that!

And now there are more voices coming back to me....

"It was really lucky that...." -- "No, sister, it was a blessing."

"I saw some old friends over the weekend, and...." -- "Unless you were sharing the Word with them, sister, you must have been backsliding."

"The music in charismatic churches is really beautiful and inspiring...." -- "Charismatic practices are not scripturally founded, sister, so there cannot be anything edifying about them."

"I'd like to share the Word by helping with...." -- "No, sister, the Classroom Evangelism Task Force has laid out plans that are more appropriate for saints who are younger in the Lord."

 

[theresearchpersona]

You know, I'm not really that surprised about the use of "ones": it's an analogical extension of the normal plural to the neutral English pronoun; some think using "one" in reference to an unmarked genderless third person is stuffy or formal, but really it's not only considered correct and proper, but is actually more precise than a neutral "you"  (letting "you" take yet another role besides the four it is already filling is disastrous to clarity) , and does in fact constitute the daily speech of millions of dialects differing from colloquial speech in other parts of the country. I'm sure it's more prevalent on the east coast, and as a child I had a great deal of exposure to it through reading as well as those who used it naturally in their speech.

There's some comedy in the use of "ones", however, in that it takes an increasingly uncommon proper (as opposed to aberrent "you", e.g. "one should always take heed of one's steps" vs. "you [used nonspecifically] should always take heed of your steps")  pronoun and extends it into the plural properly according to convention, but in so doing renders an improper usage (proper would be "some" or some other pronoun), but it's the comedy of the kind that one pokes fun at for giggles, not for being mean or nasty. : )

For years depending on "audience" (company or recipient of something written) I have code-switched back and forth between using "you" in the place of "one" or "one" where it won't make people feel uncomfortable; for a while I fell into the bad habit of using just the former--but kicked that; these days I don't so much care, and decide upon the former only when it seems prudent to blend with someone who also uses the former for a neutral third person singular. I'd bet the use of "you" in such a capacity is itself quite old--but remains a usage considered incorrect because the masters of English have never given up on correcting it, (as opposed to authorities themselves mocking the anti-splits and others who would try to force more unnatural speech without good cause); neutral "they" for the third person neutral could be considered another such case of strange but long standing usage, although to be used with care, not wholesale just to avoid reference to gender or sex (which so often diminishes or warps writing).

On a related topic: it's funny how of late in the fights over neutralized Bibles that authoritative writers of the past have been quoted using the 'they' this way, yet they do so more sparingly, and that it ignores the question of what is actually appropriate to a set of texts (the Scriptures) wherein when "he" or "men" (even "brother") and so on are used they almost always actually do refer exclusively to men (those actually addressed directly most of the time), rather than both sexes neutrally. (In English, context will often tell if a grammatically masculine pronoun is neutral or otherwise--but sadly that doesn't hold true for reading English translations, since the originals almost always intend truly addressing those verbally indicated.)

For other interesting notes: though note sure, etymologists think that our "one" may have come from the French third person neuter pronoun "on", (but, no, really, that's not a sure etymology); I can't imagine (at the moment) why "discern" and its derivatives were pronounced with a [z] in place of voiceless 's', however.