Everyone’s a diacritic
Travis Sullivan is confounding. He and his Bjorkestra just last week released Enjoy!, a surprisingly good album of orchestral jazz reworkings of 10 relatively well-known songs by Björk, the quirky Icelandic songstress known for flitting about her music videos and having a J that sounds like a Y in her name.
But reread the first half of that sentence, and the Bjorkestra’s folly becomes clear. In composing what’s ostensibly the ultimate tribute to Björk, they’ve committed the lowest disrespect: They killed the umlaut.
Make no mistake, I’m no fan of unnecessary accents. They slow down the reader and waste ink.
“Café”? No way. “Façade”? Just for appearances. “Crème brûlée”? Delicious, but it should be topped with caramelized sugar, not diacritics.
But proper names are a whole different bag. Nary an Angry Grammarian fact-checker has missed Björk’s umlaut and lived to tell the tale. Messing with someone’s name is robbing them of their identity. It’s the difference between something cool and exotic and something just weirdly foreign and unpronounceable.
Beyoncé needs her acute accent for that extra flair. It gives the kind of pizzazz Destiny’s Child could never provide.
Where would early-’90s one-hit wonders Tony Toni Toné be without that acute accent? Misnomered, and probably still writing their name with three ridiculous exclamation points, as they did on their first album. (Yes, they had more than one. Shocking.)
Heavy metal as a genre would likely collapse, with Queensrÿche, Mötley Crüe and Motörhead all imploding from lack of umlauts.
Hm. Then again, maybe those accents should be a little more discriminating. On with your bad self, Bjorkestra!
What’s the difference between “hard” and “difficult”?
When you’re using the two words to mean the same thing, “difficult” is a more efficient way of saying something is “hard to do,” “hard to manage” or “hard to understand.” One word vs. three; “difficult” wins.
Besides, “hard” is much more versatile, with 14 dictionary definitions, most of them containing lots of subdefinitions (everything from hard liquor to hard feelings). “Difficult” is more precise, doing one job and doing it well.
Stick with “difficult” for the elegance, and let “hard” do the rest of the heavy lifting.
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