What’s the Word: An effective way to learn language
Well, hang on to your hats. Today I’m going to start out by going into the correct usage of two words which have confused readers, writers and speakers for some 500 years: affect and effect. You see them used almost interchangeably, but they are definitely two different animals, according to linguists.
One of the better explanations I have seen about these two head-scratchers is from David M. Martin on the Word Maven Web site. Mr. Martin writes:
“They’re not the same thing, although some senses are similar and the words are often pronounced similarly or identically, which leads to a confusion that has been around for 500 years.
“Let’s get the noun senses out of the way first: You probably want to use effect. The noun affect is a technical term in psychology meaning ‘an expressed or observed emotional response,’ as in, ‘the blunted affect of schizophrenia.’ It is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. In all other cases, the noun ‘effect,’ the main sense of which is ‘result; consequence’ (‘the effect of the oil spill’) is the right term.
“There are two different verbs ‘to affect.’ One means ‘to pretend or assume; put on a false or pretended show of’: ‘I affect an English accent’; ‘She affected an outrageous costume.’ The second, and the one most likely to cause confusion, is ‘to have an effect on; influence’: ‘His poor study habits affected his grades’; ‘Music affected her deeply.’ But ‘effect’ has a verb sense too, just to muddle things a bit more, and it means ‘to bring about; accomplish’: ‘The administration effected radical changes.’
“‘Effect’ as a verb has been erroneously used in the ‘influence’ sense since the late fifteenth century, showing that this confusion is nothing new. I’ve given a rough guide here, but if you’re still in doubt, look up the two words in the Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, which gives more extensive detail for every sense and subsense of the words,” Martin added.
Well, thanks for clearing that up Mr. Martin. I’m sure we all feel better now.
As for myself, I hope no one is adversely affected by the effect of learning how these two confusing words have had a correspondingly adverse effect on the effectiveness of communicating in the English language. And I say that without any undue linguistic affectations. Effectively, I hope. But of course, I won’t really know the effect this has had until people actually tell me how they were affected by all this.
On the other hand, maybe I should just drop this before I effectively lose my readers here.
Of course, the English language is just full of these kinds of confounding and confusing words. Like “enquire” and “inquire” for instance. I see them both used and have always wondered if there is some subtle difference in meaning.
Strangely enough, after looking into it a bit deeper, according to experts the only real difference is that one is spelled with an i- and the other with an e-, and that’s about it.
It is one of the things that separates us from our cousins in merry old England though. Here in the “colonies” the more common spelling is “inquire,” while “enquire” is typically used in more formal situations. In England, on the other hand, they’re about even. Interesting. Most American dictionaries list “inquire” as the preferred spelling, but you won’t be considered wrong if you go with “enquire,” just a little pretentious maybe. At any rate, they both come from the Latin “inquirere”: to search out; investigate.
And that’s what I’ve tried to do here. Inquiring minds want to know. On the other hand, they do call it National Enquirer don’t they? Go figure.
Charlie Johnson is news editor for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].