Story of the Day: Thusly is Not a Word

It is so dreadfully easy to discompose Bartleby Crulge. As a librarian and scientist extraordinaire, he cannot but take everything seriously, and the best way to get him to do exactly what you want is to purposely make a mistake and wait for him to fall into the trap of correcting you:

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Brogan pulled the hatch open, and Bartleby was launched into the air. He saved himself from hitting the railing by careening into the side of the hull, and with a whip of his robes, he rolled back over the hatch before Brogan could lift it up. “How dare you making a japingstock of me!” Bartleby cried,flailing his arms. “Mutiny! Mutiny, captain!”

                “There is no mutiny here, my old friend,” said Danaco, “excepting that which is being committed by a certain scientist who refuses to give his captain his own glass when he asks.”

                A brow was raised, fingers were drummed along the table, and Bartleby, under the ascendence of the Captaincy, relenting and inclined his head.

                “There’s a much easier way to do this, captain,” Ujaro suggested.

                “There is,” said the captain, “but shall you be the one to do it?”

                “No,” Ujaro laughed. “Will you, captain?”

                “Nay, nindano. I dare not make such aspersions. I should injure my literate soul, if I could, and Bartleby would never believe me capable of such a scandal besides.”

                “What is this, what is this?” said Bartleby, craning his neck, putting a hand to his ear. “What’s all this, captain, about my not believing something of you?”

                Danaco nodded to Brogan, who knew exactly what he should do. He winked in replay and prepared for the attack. “While yer talkin’,” said he slowly, “I’m just gonna open the hatch thusly.”

                An oppressive silence followed, the wind died,  and Bartleby’s shoulders leapt, his neck sinking into his robes in a sudden thrill. His ears twitched, his fingertips threatened his palms, and his face crimsoned in anger, his furnishings frilling out in extrusive rage.

                “NNYAH! NONONONONO,” he garbled, his fists pounding against Brogan’s arm. “By my wordbook-- What ignorant rigamarole just tripped out from your mouth?”

                “What?” said Brogan, laughing and looking unassumingly at the captain. “Only said thusly.”

                “YESIKNOWWHATYOUSAIDTHEQUESTIONWASRHETORICAL,” the old man sibilated. “How dare you— how dare you breathe such a churl’s cant-- and in front of me? You should be thoroughly ashamed-- Disgrace and denigration! You should be flogged for such brazen insolence! I am hurt—very hurt-- that you ever even considered disparaging the Common tongue, a language that gave you knowledge and superior understanding-- You know it agitates me when you make up things that aren’t true and then spread them over the ship. Libel! Libel, I say! How could you say so disingenuous and hateful a thing? You have wounded me to the heart with your ditch-drivel! Oh, captain!” he cried, in a disconsolate voice, “make him apologize for saying such a thing! Oh, my heart is on the wrack!”

                Bartleby tossed an arm out to the side and sobbed into his own shoulder, and Brogan glanced at the captain for an indication to go on.

                “But thusly is a word,” Brogan continued. “I heard it bein’ used--”

                “Said by bumblers and fools in plays,” said Bartleby sharply, rallying himself, “to emphasize how nonsensical they are and how ridiculous they sound when a country mouse tries to make himself sound like a lion.”

                “Well,” Brogan sniffed, “if it’s in plays, means I can use it.”

                “No, it does not give you license to band it freely about like a careless bally-go-bangstraw. Say it, by all means, if you want to sound like an illiterate farmfly that just crawled off the backside of a sow.”

                “But if people use it, it’s a word—“

                “NO, IT IS NOT—“ The old man pinched the bridge of his nose and looked severely pained. “A word may be fashioned together when there is no other word to describe a specific thing. A new piece of machinery is built or a new method for something is formed, and therefore a new word must be crafted and agreed to by committee. You cannot go making up words on the gad and using them at haphazard! It is not done! There are rules, man, regulations to be followed, to keep language uniform, for ease of understanding and passing on.”

                “Well, you understood me when I said thusly, so I’m usin’ it.”

                Bartleby raised his hands, made as if he were throttling Brogan, and yarled. “…CAPTAIN!” he trembled, gnashing his teeth.

                “You ask to be beaten, nindano,” Danaco simpered. “Bartleby will tear a page from his notebook, roll it and bat you on the nose with it, and tell you to take that for you adverbs.”

                “Hrm…” the old man thrummed, “yes, that is what I would say.”

                Bartleby momentarily rapt in his own cogitations, Danaco nodded to Magochiro, and said, in a quiet tone, “The glass, Mago, if you please.”

                Magochiro silently slipped away from the table and melted down the open hatch, leaving Bartleby to give his treatise on the proper use of adverbs in Modern Common and to tell Brogan again that thusly was not an acceptable word.

                “But I heard other folk in my town sayin’ it,” Brogan continued, “meanin’ it’s a word.”

                Bartleby inhaled sharply through his nose. “A word or pronunciation of a word used in dialectal speech does not make that word acceptable in the classroom. There is language, a system of communication with universal rules, and then there is colloqual speech, or the used dialect of a given area, one that has developed over a certain period of time, rather like a tongue that has got away from its master. There is the written standard, which is the proper and formal way to have an exchange, and then there is the regional drawl, and while I’m sure I do not care about what your region of the world does for language, I do care about letting your blasphematory folderol permeate the Common spoken on this ship. Your accents are bad enough-- keep your regional phrases in the region they came from and away from me! There is a reason they are not allowed to play with the other children when brought to the Academy, because they are silly and often unintelligible. Proper diction and the accepted vocabulary are preserved in learning institutions, and while language is to a certain extent constantly evolving, there is no need to sprinkle it with your linguistic flavour.”

                “But I got proper diction and vocab’lary.”

                “For someone who grew up in your radish row, but not to the average—and below average--” eyeing him ferociously “—Modern Common speaker. That is why you go to school, to erase the furrow from your mouth and replace it with elocution and education.”

                “I went to my lessons, same as everyone in Frewyn,” Brogan proclaimed, nodding proudly.

                “And a lot of good they did you. Were you taught by the scarecrow or the hay rick to say a word that does not exist?”

                “Taught by my ma and da, and the brothers and sister at the church, and they all understood me. The boy understands.”

                He pointed at Rannig, who was currently wondering  how many follicles on Peppone’s head were suppressed by the fungal film crowning his scalp.

                “Rannig understands banging two pebbles together to make a rock better than he does comprehend the intricacies of vernaculary preservation.”

                Rannig touched the pet rock he had in his pocket and whispered, “Don’t listen to him, rock. I’d never hurt ye like that.”

                Brogan spied Magochiro emerging from the hatch behind him and went on. “Marridonians think us Frewyns are all fadge and farls,” he huffed, making grand gestures, keeping the old man’s attention, “but Marridonians don’t think to chew twice before they swallow. I like my speakin’ just fine. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with how I talk.”

                “There is everything wrong with how you talk, mumblemouthed malapert,” Bartleby wittered. “Your pronoun usage is scant, your contractions are hideous-- a dialect is not its own language. A dialect it supposed to be a garnish, the sour flavour on a well-established verbal salad, one that is usually-- USUALLY mutually intelligible with his hierarchic counterpart. Any backhoe with a broadside can be taught to speak the local variety, but it is a science speak and write Modern Common with fluency.”

                “I can write Common, auljin,” Brogan asserted. “I can write in Auld Fremhin and Galleisian too.”

                “Yes, well, good for you,” was Bartleby condescending reply. “I suppose writing alone is impressive for someone who thinks an adverbed adverb is a word.”

                “It is.”

                “IT IS NOT. There is already a word that means that very thing—thus! Thus is the word you wanted, and thus is there for your use at anytime! It does not go away because your mouth refuses to repeat it-- and your DIALECTAL nonsense, because it is dialectal and not part of the official lexicon of Modern Common,  is a redundancy, by adding an –ly onto something that does not need it! Thusly is acceptable in the field and in the mine, and that is all. It is not a word, and that is the very end of this discussion.”

                “But Bartleby,” Rannig implored, “I thought language about communication and all.”

                “It is supposed to be, and with your southern drones drumbled out on broken lips, I have no idea what many of you mean to communicate half of the time.”

                “Many a deckscraper has murdered the Marridon tongue,” Danaco announced, with an elaborate flourish, “a language burnished over years of careful hammering and standardization. I stab the language in the heart betimes, when I am feeling partitularly ruriginous.”

                “You are highborn, captain,” Bartleby reminded him.

                “I am, but I thought an admission of guilt might coddle you.”

                Bartleby aimed his flat look at the deck and began to wonder what immolation felt like.

                Rannig was still ruminating. “But how come a dialect is allowed to have new words in it and a language isn’t?” he asked.

                “Ain’t,” said Brogan, incorrectly corrected him.

                He glanced at Bartleby, to see whether he was grinding his teeth or wringing his robes in anguish. The old man was doing both.