Fragments From Floyd

We see our son not so often these past few years, and each time, after he's lived in yet one more far-off place, he brings home a new way of talking. In college, he lived in Tennessee, so there really wasn't a lot of difference in their southernisms and ours in southwest Virginia. Then during his junior year, after 9 months in Ireland and Europe, the jigs and reels and lilting tones of voice persisted for months after he returned home. With graduation, he moved to Vermont for a year and brought south new words and ways of saying them. Recently, we visited him in Vancouver, BC.

At our first time alone after spending the evening with our son, I asked Ann "Is it my imagination or does the boy end all his sentences with question marks? Have you noticed the rising inflection, and if so, does it bug you the way it bugs me?"

We discussed this with him, just wondering if he was aware of it. "It makes you sound indecisive, and wears me out to listen, because it's like you're asking me (or any listener) to approve of every declarative sentence offered as a question. I thought you should know."

He wasn't aware, and agreed it probably makes him sound a lot less sure of himself and his opinions than he in fact is.

Since then, I've learned this isn't just one of my little idiosyncratic language peeves. Uptalk Makes Me Upchuck says one writer; and another speaks of the linguistic affliction of the helium-filled inflection.

So if the speech patterns of someone you love? end with those little upturned apologies?, do them a favor? Make them stop?