Happily Ever Arter

0:00Blowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand, when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

0:30Energía baja. Falta de concentración. Nebla mental. You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero Powders han sido diseñados científicamente para ayudarte a mejorar el balance de hidratación en el cuerpo. Hechos con la mezcla número uno de electrolitos, sin colores ni sabores artificiales. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Signos de de hidratación leve y moderada. Consulta a tu médico si los síntomas persisten. From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

1:06I'm Mike Volo with a brief introduction to this bonus episode by John McWhorter, who will discuss ardor. A-R-T-E-R. It's a word that Jim uses in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. John will tell you what it means. I associate it with a different character. Looking after this here, Miss Avapera Allen. And I'll tell you who in a few minutes. Something else about what Black English was like in the 1800s, especially regarding Huckleberry Finn

1:41being spoken of so often these days because of, one, the use of the N-word, but then also the thick and rather to us peculiar seeming Black dialect that Jim is speaking. Some people think of that as a distortion. We associate that rendition of Black English with minstrel shows and the like. The truth is that his dialect is quite accurate in terms of how many Southern Black people spoke at the time. There's one word in particular, which if you ask me, is almost as interesting as the N-word,

2:13and it's the way Jim says after. It's always ardor. And so you read it the first time and you think it's a typo. Actually, he always says ardor. Maybe you think, why can't Jim pronounce after? Is this some little joke that Twain is playing? No, actually, ardor was something real. And it's something that I only ran across by accident 10 or 15 years ago when I was at a linguistics conference. And during one coffee session, I happened to be talking to some British people, and they weren't from London. They had grown up upstate, so to speak.

2:46And they were talking about the things that their elders had sometimes said to them, the sayings and the warnings that were in the local dialects. And one of the things, I forget what Anthony said, but something that one of his elders said ended in ardor, like, you don't know, then I'll be coming after you're ardor or something like that. And I asked him, wait a minute, you said ardor, right? And he said, yeah. And I said, is that after in the dialect you grew up in? And he said, yeah, exactly. It's ardor instead of after. And at first you think, well, that's strange.

3:17Then it also makes something make sense. One, it's why Jim is saying ardor. But then again, you could have just known because. Think about Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after? That's never really made any sense. And you kind of think, is that really the best they could do? I mean, is it that medieval people weren't really as smart as us because not as much history had happened, or they weren't as clean, or something like that?

3:48But no, medieval people were actually more scrupulous when it came to rhyming than we are today in some ways. And so why is that after? Think about it. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling ardor. And so, especially with the British accent, water, ardor, that rhymes. And so the after is a kind of fix for us because we don't say ardor, but clearly that's what the original rhyme was. So when Jim is saying ardor, what he is saying is the kind of thing that the people who created

4:24Black English would have learned from the whites who they learned English from. And it was not whites who spoke like Henry Higgins. If you were that kind of person, you didn't go across the ocean and, you know, rest plantations out of the land. It was white people of lowly station who were often indentured servants. It was kind of a variation on slavery in many ways. And those are the people who a generation of Black people created Black English by working alongside of and learning their English. These are people who would have said ardor rather than after.

4:56And that's why a Jim would have. That drops out of the language in America because nobody says ardor. But for a while, it would have held on. And so Huckleberry Finn is interesting for not only the N-word, but also this A-word. And it also makes a very peculiar nursery rhyme. Makes some damn sense. This is Mike Volo again. I first encountered ardor in Huck Finn in high school, for sure. But then I encountered it again and again and again when I started reading Dickens.

5:28Sykes uses it in Oliver Twist. You see it in Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Nickleby. I'm not sure there's a Dickens novel in which it's not used at least once or twice by some character. And the one that uses it the most, I would think, is the great Sam Weller from the Pickwick Papers. It comes out of his mouth dozens of times, and he will always be the fictional person that I associate most with ardor.

6:00Lexicon Valley is produced by Livia Bloom Ingram. Bob and I will be back next week. Until then. It's football season, and you can now get almost anything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a running back delivered, but you can get baby back ribs delivered. A strong defense? No. A strong deodorant? Yes. A six-pack of abs? Nope. Six-pack of beer? Yes. Get almost, almost anything for game day delivered with Uber Eats.

6:34Official on-demand food delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. Alcohol 21 Plus and in select cities. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Experience a membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business Platinum. Get two times membership rewards points per dollar on eligible purchases in key business categories, as well as on each eligible purchase of $5,000 or more, on up to $2 million in eligible purchases per calendar year. American Express Business Platinum. There's nothing like it.

7:05Terms apply. Learn more at americanexpress.com slash business dash platinum.

7:12NFL football season is here, which means when you switch to Verizon, it feels like because you get NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube on us when you buy an eligible 5G phone on select unlimited plans, which means you can watch every out-of-market game every Sunday afternoon. And it's all on us. Now that's the Verizon way to kick off the NFL football season right. Switch and get NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube on us, only with Verizon.