Names, Again   I refer again to the two unusual given names discussed in the previous essay. There are also curiosities with family names, such as with those that come into an English-speaking environment from other languages, and so often those names get mangled. I’ve seen it happen with Polish, German, Italian, and other names. Take a name like Chopin. If someone doesn’t know how it’s pronounced, the tendency is to pronounce it as it is spelled, as though it were an English word. Such a pronunciation would be Choppin’, as in choppin’ wood. We smile at that, but these so-called spelling pronunciations happen all the time. Take the French word for oak, SHEN, which is also used as a family name. It is perfectly pronounceable in English. However, the standard French spelling of SHEN is chêne, and when many English speakers see that spelling they take leave of their senses, and pronounce it as an English word. That is the origin of the family name of Vice-President Dick Cheney and silent-film star Lon Chaney (“The Man of a Thousand Faces”). That non-existant E at the end of chêne becomes a second syllable, and it’s curious what happens with the Ê. Dick Cheney’s family kept it as an E, but Lon Chaney’s family further anglicized it to an A. And what was originally a spelling pronunciation, that is, a mispronunciation, ends up written in stone.

Hudson Valley Dutch   On the east coast of North America, between the Saint Lawrence River and the major multiple-river system connected with Chesapeake Bay, there are three rivers of note, all flowing north to south. The Connecticut River, which divides Vermont and New Hampshire before bisecting Massachusetts and Connecticut, while attractive, never developed into a major commercial artery, largely because its entrance was not deep enough, and remains of minor historical note. The two remaining rivers, however, located on either side of New Jersey, became the two major commercial rivers of the region, as shown by their early names of South River and North River.

There had of course been major English settlements in Massachusetts (Plymouth) and Virginia (Jamestown), but both the South River and North River valleys were instead settled by two other peoples from Northern Europe, although eventually both of those colonies were nevertheless taken over by the British. Just as the English settlement in Massachusetts gave its area the name New England, a name that curiously and uniquely remains to this day, these two river valleys got the names New Sweden and New Netherlands.

We know the South River today as the Delaware River, also an attractive river separating Pennsylvania and Delaware from New Jersey. This was first settled by the Swedes—yes, the Swedes--in 1638, as New Sweden. Beverly and I have visited sites in Wilmington, Delaware still connected to the Swedes, and opposite this area, in New Jersey, there is still a town called Swedesboro. But by 1681 New Sweden was taken over by William Penn’s new colony, and after 43 years of colonization, there is little trace of the Swedes today beyond churches, cemeteries, and historic log cabins.

The North River is today the Hudson River of New York and New Jersey. It is by far the most spectacular of the three rivers, leading from Lower and Upper New York Bays up its broad and long estuary past the cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades, through the wide spot in the river known as Tappan Zee, and then up through the Hudson Highlands in the vicinity of West Point to points further north. Because of the Hudson Highlands, this river is often called the American Rhine. I know of no other river that spawned a major art movement, the Hudson River School in the mid 1800’s, with the romantic paintings of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt. Like the Rhine, the Hudson has its share of “castles”, such as Frederic Church’s Victorian Gothic mansion Olana, with breathtaking views down to, and along, the river valley.

The Dutch arrived here in 1624 to form New Netherland, and the British took over in 1664, so both events happened here a bit earlier than in New Sweden, and New Netherland lasted 40 years, a similar time span. But the Dutch in the Hudson Valley didn’t just leave or disappear, just because the British took over. They remained a distinctive element in the population for a long time, and their influence is still felt today.

It’s harder to tell Dutch heritage in everyday people, but you can certainly see it in the names of the wealthy of the Hudson Valley: names such as Vanderbilt (Van der Bilt), Rockefeller, President Martin Van Buren, how about Roosevelt--Theodore, Franklin, Eleanor. Cartoon characters in the US who are to be portrayed as being wealthy are always given Dutch, or pseudo-Dutch, names starting in Van, which is a reflection of the wealthy Dutch families of the Hudson Valley. This is not common practice elsewhere. And there are mansions all along the river, now mostly museums, many having belonged to these families. In the Great Estates Region south of Hudson NY to Poughkeepsie, in addition to Olana, are Clermont, Montgomery Place, Wilderstein, Mills Mansion, the Vanderbilt Mansion, Springhill, which is the Franklin Roosevelt National Memorial, Val-Kil, which is the Eleanor Roosevelt National Memorial, Locust Grove, which is the Samuel FB Morse home. Further south, beyond the Boscobel Restoration, lies Sleepy Hollow Country, with Van Cortlandt Manor, Philipsburg Manor, Kykuit, which is the Rockefeller Mansion, Lyndhurst, and Sunnyside, which is the Washington Irving Mansion. Beverly and I have, over the years, visited every one of these sites. Some are further described elsewhere in this essay.

The stories and legends that had been part of New Netherland remained, and some were collected later by Washington Irving, and have become part of American culture: Rip van Winkle, Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman, indeed the whole Sleepy Hollow canon. It was also the Dutch custom of celebrating Saint Nicholas on his day, December 5, who appeared accompanied by his moorish servant, Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) that established the concept of Santa Claus (curiously moved later in December to Christmas) as we know it in all of North America. By 1773, over a century after the official end of New Netherland, it was noted that Dutch families in the Hudson Valley had been celebrating Sint Nikolaas, also nicknamed in Dutch Sinter Klaas (it’s funny how the “Ni-“ in Nikolaas morphed and moved to become a syllable at the end of Sint). It should also be noted the extent to which Washington Irving promoted and popularized this Dutch Santa Claus figure in his writings on New York and the Hudson Valley.

It’s worth mentioning that the New York City flag consists of three vertical stripes, blue, white, orange. One always recognizes the color orange as representing the Dutch House of Orange. The city’s seal fills the center of the white stripe. It includes, besides a Native American, a Dutch sailor, with the blades of a windmill in the middle.

And then there are the names. Everyone expects names of Spanish origin in the Southwest, but I don’t think people are aware of our Hudson Valley Dutch heritage. I’m going to “travel” up the Hudson now twice, each time getting down to the language level, specifically, place names. Most of these places were named by the Dutch, some have the names of Dutch families. My purpose is to show the Dutch linguistic heritage of the Hudson Valley. This listing is a selection for purposes of illustration, and is by no means exhaustive.

Entering New York Harbor, you have Brooklyn on your right. This is Breuckelen, which contains the neighborhood of New Utrecht (Reflections 2004 Series 13). Another area of Brooklyn was the settlement of Boswijk, now the neighborhood of Bushwick. (I could translate Boswijk as “Forestville”.) Further west, now in Queens, was the settlement of Vlissingen, now the neighborhood Flushing. Further on Long Island was the village of Heemstede, now the town of Hempstead.

Back in the Harbor, to your right is Staten Island. It started out as Staten Eylandt, named in honor of the Staten Generaal, the States General, which was the governing body in the Netherlands at the time. A neighborhood there is New Dorp, which had to originally have been Nieuw Dorp “New Town”. (Dorp is like German Dorf in Düsseldorf.)

Manhattan is an Indian word, but of course it had been Nieuw Amsterdam, and uptown was Haarlem, named after the Dutch city, now Harlem. Street names had been Dutch, such as the Bowery (2004 Series 2). Across the Harlem River, on the only part of present-day New York City that’s on the mainland of North America, was the farm of the Jonas Bronck family. People referred to going to visit the Broncks, which is why today we include “the” in The Bronx. The part of the Harlem River where it joins the Hudson, at the very northern tip of Manhattan Island, is to this day called Spuyten Duyvil. It had at one time been treacherous waters, and is either translated as “Devil’s Whirlpool”, or “In Spite of the Devil”, this later translation again popularized by Washington Irving.

Across the Hudson is Hoboken, the original of which is outside Antwerpen/Antwerp (2004 Series 14). Nearby, actually opposite my window, is the Jersey City neighborhood Pavonia. One of the first settlements in New Netherland, it was named after Michiel Pauw. His name means “peacock” (Pfau in German), and he latinized his name to Pavonia in naming the settlement.

Going upstream, just past the New York City line is the City of Yonkers. It’s rather large in size, since it covers what was the entire estate of Adrien van der Donk. He was referred to by the term jonker (German Junker), which is based on jongheer “young sir, squire”. Just as you talked of the Broncks’ farm, you talked of the jonker’s landholding, and today it’s Yonkers.

Beyond Yonkers is the exceptionally wide area of the river named after the village of Tappan. As a similar wide area in the Mississippi River in Minnesota is called Lake Pepin, you would expect this to be called Lake Tappan, but no, we have a Dutch heritage, and we call it instead in Dutch the Tappan Zee, which is today crossed by the Tappan Zee Bridge.

It continues up the valley. The Rockefeller estate is called Kykuit (kyk=look, uit=out). Beverly and I used to have occasion to drive through the village of Valatie, which I just now found out is pronounced va-LAY-sha, but which I always knew is based on valltje “little falls”, named after the waterfall in the middle of town. President Van Buren’s town is Kinderhook (kinder=children, hoek=corner). Up in Rensselaer, named after that family, is RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. And this is only a selection.

But that selection is not quite complete, because I want to “travel” upstream one more time, this time with everything based on one single word. I have always been impressed and confused by the word “kill” (not what you think), as used in the Hudson Valley. It always seemed to be applied to waterways, but I could never determine in a Dutch dictionary that it still is a Dutch word. Finally, I checked in an English dictionary, and, sure enough, it says it comes from Dutch kil (which might now be archaic in Dutch), and means “channel, creek, stream, river”. The dictionary also labels it as “US dialect”, which I was delighted to hear, because now I know it has to be referring specifically to the Hudson Valley. Let me show you (and again, this second list is also not exhaustive).

Staten Island is separated in the west from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill, and in the north by Kill Van Kull (you can’t get much more Dutch than that name). The famous landfill in SI is known as Fresh Kills. A section of Queens near Newtown Creek is called Dutch Kills (double-Dutch again).

Upriver is the city of Peekskill, named after the Dutchman Jan Peek. A bit further is Fishkill. The Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site is her cottage at Val-Kil, the only place I know of that retains the original spelling with one L.

And further still, in the land of Rip Van Winkle, are the Catskill Mountains. Actually, they are named after a creek called the Katerskill (a favorite subject of Hudson River School artists). Katerskill Creek still has the original Dutch version of the name (kater=tomcat).

I also know that there is a kind of fish used for bait called killies. The dictionary confirms that the official name is killifish. It’s fun to juxtapose “killifish” and “Fishkill”.

I need to go off on a digression, as part of this discussion to talk about juncture. The term refers to where a word “shows a seam”, and where it can obviously be taken apart. For instance, “understand”, has three syllables, but the juncture, shown by a plus sign, appears here: under+stand. It like when you roll two pieces of modelling clay into a ball. A seam always remains, and you can easily separate the ball into the sum of its parts.

I mention this because sometimes, strange things happen with junctures. Sometimes they shift, usually moving just one sound forward or backward. When they do, the division becomes blurred, and the meaning of the word, or perhaps why it means what it does, is not as clear. Look at these words, all based on the negative prefix mis-. Say them, and see if you can tell which one has undergone a juncture shift: misread, mishandle, miscast, mistake, misdeed, miscarriage.

Most come apart easily at the seam, such as mis+read, mis+carriage. The word with the juncture shift is mi+stake. That’s the way it’s pronounced, even though logically you would expect mis+take, because the word clearly refers to “taking” something incorrectly. With the juncture shift, it sounds like you’re talking about a stake in the ground. The juncture shift obscures somewhat the meaning of the whole word.

Anima means soul, un- means one, and you’d expect that the juncture in un+animous (“as one soul”) would be as shown, but it isn’t. It’s pronounced u+nanimous, like you’re talking about a nanny.

It can happen between words. Normally we say at+all, but sometimes, some people for emphasis say “I don’t like it a+tall!” In this case, the variation is optional, and is called free variation, as in either (EE-ther, EYE-ther) or tomato (to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to).

Juncture shift explains some interesting historical changes. “Napery” means table linen, and therefore “napkin”, meaning “small cloth”, makes sense. Apron should fit in with napery as well, and would have, if it hadn’t been for a juncture shift. The word had been “napron”, but over time a+napron shifted to an+apron. To make this shift seem as startling as it really is, make believe it had happened to “napkin” as well. In that case, today you’d be saying “Use your apkin”, just as you can say “Use your apron”.

One last one before getting back to the Hudson Valley. A kind of snake is an adder. The German word is Natter. HA! Sure enough, in English a+nadder became an+adder.

Now the reason for this digression. Look at the place names including the word kill. Several have undergone juncture shift, making these sound a bit funny. Can you find which?

There’s nothing odd about Fish+kill, but listen carefully to Peek+skill. The kill named for Jan Peek would logically be Peek’s+Kill, but the juncture has moved, making it sound that Peek had a skill (who knows, maybe he did).

The other ones are Cat+skill and Kater+skill, which logically would have to have been Cat’s+Kill and Kater’s+Kill.

This was going to be the end of this part, but I used the term “double Dutch” earlier, which brings up another point. Ropemakers for centuries have usually plied their trade in port areas, since ships are a major user of their product. (An example of ropemaking can be seen at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.) Ropemakers walk backward in long areas called ropewalks with hemp around their waist twisting two strands of rope into uniformity. (The center of night life in the major port Hamburg is centered about the street called the Reeperbahn, which means ropewalk.) Runners bringing more hemp had to jump carefully around these ropes. Eventually this evolved during free time into a game, just as surely pitching horseshoes could have started at the blacksmith’s shop.

The Dutch settlers brought this two-strand rope-jumping game, where the two ropes turn eggbeater-style, to New Amsterdam. When the English saw the game, they called it Double Dutch. It has been a New York favorite ever since. After a period of decline, it revived in recent decades, and now is played nationally and internationally, by both boys and girls, although usually in urban settings. There is now a National Double Dutch League and an International Double Dutch Federation.

December Time Travel   There were the usual December activities this year, the museum party at South Street Seaport, the South Cove treelighting at the corner of my building, the party in our building lobby (which conflicted with the Merchant’s House party, which I had to skip). I took family to Wallsé, the Austrian restaurant, and family and friends to Ulrika’s Swedish restaurant for the Luciafest. But two activities are worth discussing in a bit more detail.

The New York City Alumni of Middlebury College had their reception again this year. Last year it was at the University Club. In the past we went to it once at the Union League Club and also once it was held at a reception room upstairs at Carnegie Hall. This year it was at the newly refurbished Museum of Modern Art. I’ve never seen so many come to a Middlebury party. There must have been several hundred. An entire section of the museum lobby was a party area with a large bar, then up a flight of stairs was another area, with two bars, closer to where you could also see a bit of the collection (sorry, not to my taste). There was no one I knew, but I chatted up a number of people. The bars had everything, including Veuve Cliquot, which I enjoyed. Downstairs, next to the famous statue of Balzac by Rodin was a string quartet. Unfortunately, the din of conversation reverberating off the glass and steel of the lobby made them all but totally inaudible, sort of musicians playing in a silent movie. I stood right next to them to hear some Mozart, and during a break I apologized for standing so close. They, too, said they couldn’t even hear each other. The music notwithstanding, the reception was very enjoyable.

But then I have to tell you about the time travel, and this time, a unique time travel on two levels. We have been members of Historic Hudson Valley for many years, since we lived in Westchester. It is an organization originally started by the Rockefellers in the 1930’s to preserve monuments from the past. They own Washington Irving’s Sunnyside, own Montgomery Place, in whose orchards you can go apple picking in the fall, run the tours of the Rockefellers’ Kykuit, and have a number of similar properties. Of particular interest to me are two of them on small side rivers flowing into the Hudson, primarily because they are the oldest and because they have the Dutch connection from a very early, very rural period. One is the Van Cortlandt Manor on the Croton River, and the other is Philipsburg Manor on the Pocantico River. Historically, they are adjoining estates dating to the 1600’s, when the Van Cortlandts and the Philipses were neighbors. The Philipses were an Anglo-Dutch family whose main residence was on Pearl Street at Wall, not far from me. Philipsburg Manor was more of a working mill and farm way up in the country, from which they shipped goods up and down the river. (Unfortunately, Frederick Philipse chose the wrong side during the Revolutionary War and, as a Loyalist had all his property, covering much of Westchester County, confiscated, and went into exile, not to the Netherlands, but to England.) Both estates are fascinating, but my December adventure this year in time travel involved the latter.

Over the years we had gotten invitations from Historic Hudson Valley during the holidays to candlelight tours at some of the properties, most often Philipsburg Manor. When we still lived up in Westchester ourselves we went regularly; in more recent years we took my mother twice, but I hadn’t gone in quite a while. When the invitation came this year for a candlelight reception right on December 1, I decided this was the time to go back.

Philipse would probably have taken his boat from Wall Street on the East River, around to the Hudson side where I now am, and up the Hudson right to the Pocantico River. His alternate choice would have been to go up Broadway, a few blocks from me, which runs all the way up to Albany. It goes right by Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow NY, opposite which is the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow of Headless Horseman fame, and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. (Frederick Philipse himself had had the Old Dutch Church built.) I, however, was prepared to take neither route, and took contemporary parkways instead. Going up the west side of Manhattan on West Street and the Henry Hudson Parkway, I crossed Spuyten Duyvil on the Henry Hudson Bridge, then on through Yonkers and other towns. It took less than an hour to end up to find myself going through Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, on Broadway once again, just “further up the pike” from my neighborhood.

In the cozy, but modern, visitor’s center there were hors-d’oeuvres and pastries, hot cider and hot chocolate. But then it was time to go back time traveling down the slope to the restoration. Although the weather had been mild, this night was a wool-hat and scarf night. Gloves helped, too. My mind’s eye recalls rather bright moonlight, but it’s known to lie even over short timespans.

Even during the day you get a feeling of isolation from contemporary life; traffic on nearby Broadway on your right disappears; just off on the left you don’t really hear the rail line along the Hudson. But at night, a cold one at that, it’s perfect. The darkness and cold are invaluable aids in time transport. Trying to keep warm and trying to find your way guided by the frequent candles in little lanterns on the side of the path help you forget time as you walk back into a period between the 1690’s and mid 1700’s. The Pocantico River (really, a creek) is dammed to form a millpond, and you cross the long wooden walkway over the dam, lanterns on the railings, the rushing sound of water flowing over the dam under you. You cross over to the Other Side, and in more ways than one. An attendant in costume asks if you know the way; you assure him you do. Tonight the wooden grist mill is closed, but in past years, even by candlelight they demonstrated grinding grain by engaging the water wheel. A few cats would watch the proceedings in the flickering darkness and cold.

A bit further on is the stone Manor House itself, which had company offices with a residence upstairs. It is filled with period furnishings, and costumed interpreters. The dining room table is set for the holidays. There is a fire in the hearth in the kitchen.

Walking over toward the barn, there is a welcome, huge bonfire to stop by, with wooden benches in a circle. Two black interpreters represent the enslaved Africans that worked at the manor at the time. One was playing 18C tunes on a fiddle, the other was attending the fire. I chatted with him a bit, and he said that at the time, Christmas and Sinter Klaas celebrations would be more likely in New York than here, since the family would rarely come to the mill during the holidays. Curiously it was more likely that the Africans at the time would really be celebrating Kwanzaa. They were of course, both costumed appropriately. He said that on occasion, he did dress up in the Zwarte Piet costume to accompany Sinter Klaas, but its an awful lot of work just to get into that costume. Again, the roaring bonfire, and the darkness, aided the time travel experience.

Just beyond the bonfire you come to the furthest building, the barn. It is totally authentic, but not original to the site, as over time, original buildings disappear, especially a barn once the area was no longer rural. Apparantly a barn from the period, and a Dutch one at that, had been found near Albany and moved here.

A barn being maintained in the style of three centuries ago aids time travel by having the additional sensory element of smell. Coming from the cold night into the large, semi-lit wooden dirt-floor structure, there is the immediate scent of animals, and moist hay. There are stalls on both sides, and there were three long-horned oxen sticking their heads out through the wooden bars. They are really used for plowing, and are massive animals, almost appearing in the dim light like pygmy elephants.

For the first time in my experience, there was a special activity filling the entire center of the barn. A storyteller had been invited to tell period tales. He was dressed in period costume, with a tricorner hat, and long hair. An audience, maybe half kids, half adults, was seated, quite authentically, on bales of hay. He was telling about Sinter Klaas, quite animatedly, and I sat down to listen.

After a while I felt it was getting cold, and I was ready to go, so I went back to the Visitor Center for some cider and hot chocolate to warm up, and some nibbles. Then it struck me, fatefully, that it was still too early to go home, so I went back down to the restoration, enjoyed the bonfire and fiddle music again for a while, and went back to the barn to hear another story. This one was a fairy-tale type story with a man going up and down the Hudson trading one item for another. The storyteller also expertly used different voices for each character, and frequent arm gestures for illustration, such as fingers and an elbow pointing forward to illustrate a goose being carred under the arm. During the break between stories, I decided to go have a chat with the storyteller, to comment on a—surprise—language point, as I often do. He had mentioned that a certain Dutch ship was named Goede Vrouw (Good Woman) and had pronounced the first syllable as “GOO”. Being sure he appreciated authenticity, I pointed out about Dutch G’s, and said it would be “KHOO-de frau”, just like Gouda, both the cheese and the town, is pronounced “KHOW-da” in Dutch. He caught on immediately and brought up Vincent van Gogh, and I said, yes, he’s “fan KHOKH” in Dutch. We then had a pleasant little chat about the Hudson and Westchester in general, and I said that, although I live in the City now, I taught for 28 years at John Jay in Katonah (my only teaching job). He said he was a student at John Jay in the early ‘70’s. I said we must have been there at the same time then, since I started teaching in 1964. He asked me my name and I told him. He said he was Jonathan Kruk, and was in my German class in 1973.

There’s a lot more to tell here, but let me break this narrative for a digression. I’m sure there must be some teachers and students who stay in touch for a while after graduation, but that’s rarely been the case with me. While I was still working I had a pleasant surprise. The very first class I ever walked in front of to teach was in September 1964. It was an advanced German 4 class in High School first thing in the morning, and because of its advanced nature, it only had five students, one of them I recall being Ellen Hirning. Many years later on a parents’ night when I was teaching in the Junior High, a mother, whose daughter was then in my class, came up to me and identified herself by her maiden name. It was Ellen Hirning. I’d been teaching her daughter, who of course had Ellen’s married name, and hadn’t known it.

But that was while I was still working. Only one person had gotten in touch with me after I had retired. I had had Carter Brey in several levels of German. He played the cello, and in 1971-1972, when Beverly and I were on sabbatical, when we were in Vienna we picked up some applications, just in case Carter might want to go to school there. In the early 1990’s I got a postcard forwarded from my school that Carter had sent, looking for me. He invited Beverly and me to his home here on the Upper West Side for a visit. He said he remembered Beverly well, because we both had taken some of our German students together on a trip to a German restaurant. I had followed Carter’s musical career over the years in the papers. He is now first cellist for the New York Philharmonic.

As we take up the narrative again, this was the slender background to which Jonathan Kruk added his name, only the second student I’d met again after I’d retired. (I’m sure I don’t remember every student, but Jonathan came clearly to my mind.) Another surprise—as we compared notes, and I mentioned Carter’s name, Jonathan said that Carter had sat right in front of him in that class in 1973. So, talk about time travel—in a flash I went from 2005, not only back to the early 1700’s, but then also to 1973.

So Jonathan is now a full-time storyteller, and calls himself “Storyteller-on-the-Hudson”, which I like. You’ll also note that that title corresponds neatly to topics at both the beginning and the end of this essay. It was fateful that I went back the second time to the barn that evening, and it is also à propos that it was a language discussion—and Dutch in particular—that was the spark for that initial conversation. I’ve invited Jonathan and his fiancée to visit in early January, and I’ll take them out to dinner. Rare and charming coincidences like this have to be nurtured.

Storytelling   For several years I’d been thinking about how the fundamentals of language logically fit into more advanced refinements such as storytelling and drama. As I see it, the following description I’ve plotted out is the logical answer.

The only thing I’ve NOT plotted out myself, but that’s a known language fact is the primacy of the spoken language over written language. As a matter of fact, the phrase “spoken language” is within itself redundant. Yet we have such respect for literacy, which of course means having learned to read and write the written language, that many lay people become unaware of priorities.

Humans have had (spoken) language for 10,000 years. Written language, which is essentially a system to record what people say, to put spoken language in stone, has existed only for the last 2,000 of those years, and if you consider the Gutenberg story, the majority of the population has had access to written language only for the last 500 years or so of its existence. Yet ask some lay people what language is, and they might say it’s that stuff that’s (written) in the dictionary.

A child with normal hearing picks up (the spoken) language automatically from its environment. If it hears more than one language on a regular basis, it will pick them up as well. It is not necessary for parents to tell a child to “say da-da”, since the child will eventually do so anyway. Learning the writing system is however, an acquired skill that must be taught.

The spoken language is fundamental. The written language is an overlay, a later development invented for recording purposes. In the last century, we’ve developed other means of recording language, such as audio tapes, video tapes, film and so on. With these additional recording systems, you can now record your Last Will and Testament on video tape instead of recording it in the traditional written language. Yet on the other hand, if Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm hadn’t collected those fairy tales and written them down, they would be lost today.

Why do people put such great weight on the written language? It’s best described in the philosophy of this Latin phrase: Verba volant, scripta manent. This says that “What is spoken flies away, what is written remains”. That is essentially true, although verbal contracts can be just as legal as written ones. But it can’t be denied that human speech came first, way, way first.

[Another digression about translation: some things translate better into one language than another. Look at all the words English needs to say what is in just four original words, and look at the neat pattern in the original: -----a -----nt, -----a -----nt. As it turns out, the same phrase in German is just as neat: Gesprochenes verfliegt, Geschriebenes verbleibt. Even the pattern is attractive: Ge(sch)-----enes ver-----t, Ge(sch)-----enes ver-----t.]

So what’s the structure of this fundamental basis? Well, language is communication, and I imagine most people who’ve heard the terms first, second, third person, and may have even used them successfully in working on their native language or on an acquired language don’t really understand what these “persons” are all about. Who are these persons? I would also venture that most people are totally unaware that two of those persons work together as a pair, and one of them is nothing more than a catch-all. Let’s first look at language in an intimate, private setting at home, and then later in a public setting.

Private Forum: Dialog   Two people are sitting in their cave around a fire. One says: “I see you” and the other says: “I see you, too”. Look carefully at this inane conversation, and you’ll see an invention as fundamental as the wheel. Person A used “I” to refer to himself, then Person B used that same “I” to refer to herself. The word “you” flip-flopped similarly. This rather simple-seeming ability is the basis for communication.

A conversation is a dialog, and has a Speaker and a Listener. These roles flip-flop. The Speaker is the First Person in this conversation. The Listener is the Second Person. And the roles keep reversing. That’s what it’s all about. These are the two Persons that form an eternal pair. Everyone else, and every thing else, in the world is outside the current, given conversation. Everyone else, and every thing else, is therefore the Third Person, of relatively minor, passing importance to that conversation.

Also, if you learned that pronouns are defined as words that replace nouns, that is true ONLY in the Third Person: “That’s Mike; he’s my friend”. The words I, we, you (sg), you (pl) fit only in this Speaker and Listener pattern. They replace no nouns whatsoever.

Dialogs are rarely as inane as above. Almost always, they are enlivened by questions resulting in answers: --I was home today. Where were you? --I was hunting down by the river.

Private Forum: Narrative   A dialog can eventually turn into a narrative. Instead of the original speaker constantly saying “And what happened next?”, the second speaker, perceiving interest in the story, can keep volunteering information to such “understood” questions: --I was home today. Where were you? --I was hunting down by the river. I saw a sabertoothed tiger. I ran after it, and threw a rock at it.

Indeed, the storyteller doesn’t even need the original question within this dialog as a stimulus. He can expect interest in advance, and just tell his story. In this way, a narrative is just a one-sided dialog, with the storyteller as Speaker. But there is always a Listener when there’s a narrative, even if he/she remains silent.

Although fundamentally, the Speaker in a narrative would be talking in the First Person, as above, it would be an extension of the narrative process to start mixing the Third Person with it: “I saw the tiger. He was behind a tree.” Although highly unusual, it’s possible to even narrate in the Second Person: “I saw you through the window. You did ABC, and then you did XYZ”.

Considering the fact that narrative is a one-sided dialog, it is highly ironic that in time, narrative grew to actually include dialog. Rather than telling a story that includes: “He said he wanted to be king”, it’s much more forceful and colorful to add dialog to the narrative: “He said: ‘I want to be king!’ ”. One just has to recognize the humor and irony of dialog coming around full-circle.

People lie. It’s fundamental to human nature. It can happen in dialogs, and in narratives: --Where have you been?—Er, I had to work late at the office.

You have to take what the second speaker said with a grain of salt. Or, he can extend his statement into a narrative, and really lay it on thick. Caution: listener beware!

But for a part of dialog, or a narrative, to be a lie, it has to be malicious and self-serving. Compare the above with someone saying this: “This grasshopper walks into a bar and says to the bartender ....”

That is clearly not true (of course, the point is: “clearly”). But untruth is OK as long as there’s no malice, and it isn’t self-serving. We now come to making up a story for entertainment purposes. Sometimes you know immediately you’re being entertained; sometimes you have to get into the story before you say to yourself: “He’s making this up, right?”

So now, in addition to dialog, we subdivide narrative into non-fiction and fiction. We have to be wary about the first two being falsehoods, but we KNOW (at least eventually) that the third one is by its very nature, false.

So how does this all appear in our daily lives? Dialog is constant with other people, either live or on the phone. By extension, watching or listening to a news broadcast is dialog.

Non-fictional narrative in the private forum appears in the form of anecdotes. Fictional narrative in the private forum appears mainly among adults in the form of jokes, as in the grasshopper story above, and telling a child a bed-time story (without props), either a traditional one, or a newly made-up one, certainly counts. (Using the prop of a book to READ a bed-time story to a child is a hybrid activity including a written-language overlay; the same for librarians or teachers reading to children. Another hybrid activity is reading to the blind, or to others, and listening to books on tape.)

Adding the overlay of written language, we have the fact that for the first time in human history, private dialog appeared in writing in recent years with the advent of instant messaging. E-mails include dialog (to be answered promptly), non-fictional narrative, and, in the case of e-mail jokes, fictional narrative. Before that, writing letters, although mostly narrative, but including questions, and then waiting days or more to get an answer, was a form of written dialog.

Public Forum   Traditionally, the only form of dialog, more or less, on a public forum was a public debate. Since the advent of radio and television, dialog appears in the form of public interviews, and talk shows, whose very name implies dialog.

Non-fictional narrative on the Public Forum would be Julia Child demonstrating cooking a roast, or a math teacher explaining the Pythagorean Theorem. Public speeches would fit in here. Fictional narrative on the Public Forum involves both storytelling and drama, to be discussed extensively below.

The written overlay hardly applies to dialog, beyond writing up transcripts of debates or interviews. But it is in narrative, non-fictional and fictional as well, that the written word has swamped the market. This includes textbooks, but just go to a library to see the extent to which we rely on the recorded word for our non-fictional and fictional narrative. You can even read the text of a drama. Yet maintaining written recordings is not exclusive. We also maintain recordings in libraries of the oral history of individuals. And some people read newspapers, while others get their news orally from radio and TV.

Yet the most interesting aspect of all this is now worth getting back to, that part of the Public Forum represented by oral fictional narrative. It’s clearly storytelling. But most people don’t realize how drama must have developed from storytelling.

Let’s go back to the original, primitive storyteller around the campfire. He must have had a special talent to have brought him into the Public Forum. Where did he get his material? Actually, he must have started with non-fictional anecdotes, and in the re-telling, they got embellished. Even today, how much of Robin Hood and King Arthur is genuine, and how much is a later build-up of fiction? It gets to the point that we don’t even know if they really existed as people. The same goes for George Washington. We do know he existed, but that cherry tree business, and throwing the dollar over the Potomac are clearly later embellishments of his actual story. But then, that’s the entertainment factor of fiction. The original story may be good, but “it doesn’t hurt” to sweeten it a bit for entertainment value. How many dramas are “based on” a true story, but never claimed to be fully truthful due to these dramatic embellishments?

Another thing about storytelling: it isn’t the ending, it’s the telling (and retelling) that counts. We all know what happens to Scrooge in the end. Has that ever prevented anyone from seeing (or reading) A Christmas Carol again and again? How about “It’s a Wonderful Life” and all the others we see over and over?

It is clear that in the beginning the fictional narrative in public forums was exclusively the domain of storytellers. Drama was an outgrowth, and it’s interesting how it must of happened. I say it’s all due to audience participation, and that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the development of dialog within narrative.

As a storyteller, try saying this to any child, or group of children: “And the Papa Bear looked at his bowl and said: ....” Just stop there, and see what happens. You know as well as I do that any child will add the dialog that’s missing: “Who’s been eating my porridge?”

It doesn’t at all just happen with children. Say to any adult, or group of adults: “And Rhett put his hand on the doorknob, turned, and said to Scarlett: ....” You will hear a chorus saying “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Or this: “Dorothy fell from the sky and said to her dog: ....” And you’ll get: “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

I need two more examples to prove some points. “In Rick’s bar, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa turns to Dooley Wilson at the piano, as Sam, and says: ....” The two possible responses here are interesting. The chorus will say: “Play it again, Sam.” But then that one person in the crowd will say that she never said that. What she said was: “Play it, Sam, play ‘As Time Goes By’.”

So what does this prove? Go back to Robin Hood. It is human nature to embellish fact when it comes to fictional storytelling. It is this embellishment above, that first statement, that remains in the public mind. Even those who know it’s not accurate don’t care. It’s just too much fun to believe the embellishment. It’s different from Robin Hood in that now, we can go back to the film and check the actual dialog. It’s the same as Robin Hood in that—we don’t really care all that much when it's a matter of being entertained.

My last example is the campy, cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I understand the people who enjoy that film still go to midnight showings in movie theaters everywhere. Each has a favorite character, and the whole audience repeats the film’s dialog as it plays on the screen. Furthermore, many if not most of the audience actually dress as their favorite character. (I understand something similar is done at showings of The Sound of Music.) Now presumably, with everyone repeating the dialog, you could turn off the film, that is, remove the narrator, and audience participation will result in the show still being presented. And this is my whole point about how storytelling developed into drama.

Back to our campfire storyteller. The audience knows his story already. When the storyteller comes to dialog, he himself imitates the voices of the characters. But it’s not a far leap to where the audience starts filling in the dialog. It is also not a far leap to where select audience members join the storyteller to be better seen, and we now have nothing other than Greek drama, with these select former audience members, but with talent, join the storyteller on stage, who now appears as the Greek chorus, with either fewer or more members. The chorus starts out filling in the remaining narrative between dialog; then later on, is reduced to just commenting on the action, reminding the audience of past events, or stating the audience’s fears. Eventually, playwrights learn to incorporate these things back into the dialog, the Greek chorus is no longer needed, and we have come full circle. What originally had been dialog begets narrative, which comes to include dialog within it, which takes over the narrative, so that the narrative begets dialog again in the form of drama! The difference between two real people in a dialog at a dinner table at home, and two actors in a dialog at a dinner table on stage is the fact that the element of fictional narrative—storytelling--has been inserted between the two pairs of people—yet the three layers have been telescoped and the narrative per se is now totally invisible! The storyteller is “built in” to the actors and narrative is given through dialog.

There is an additional overlay on the subject of (oral) language here: music, as used with fictional narrative (storytelling and drama). The ancient storytellers might have told their narratives in the form of poetry, to the accompaniment of lutes and lyres. As drama developed, it, too, developed a musical overlay to become opera, operettas, and musical comedy.

So what does all this look like today in the Public Forum? Drama in theaters, films, videos, and elsewhere, both straight and musical, thrives. But this essay is named Storytelling, so how’s that doing? It could be better, considering that drama has taken over, and the tail (drama) now wags the dog (oral storytelling). You could stay that many stand-up comedians do their routines in the form of stories. I’m thinking of Lili Tomlin, Paula Poundstone, to some extent George Carlin, and others. Singers tell stories, going back to the musical tradition of the ancients. Surprisingly, rap music tells stories rhythmically, as did the ancient poets.

But we have precious little of straight narrative presentations, such as done by professional storytellers like Jonathan Kruk, for adults as well as children. How about hearing a retelling of an Edgar Allan Poe tale? Maybe O. Henry? Saki (H.H. Munro)?

The master of storytelling today is Garrison Keillor. On his radio program “A Prairie Home Companion”, there is always about 10-15 minutes devoted to his telling about “the news from Lake Wobegon”. Much of it is just a bit Keillor-style weird, but the listener falls into a trance and is carried away by the narration. It is consummate storytelling. In addition, he has his standard opening: “Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my home town ...”, which serves admirably as the equivalent of “Once upon a time ...”

And, just like “...and they all lived happily ever after” he has his own stock closing: “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average.”

I, however, shall end this, my own non-fiction narration, late at night by using Samuel Pepys’s narrative closing: